A gay reflection on microaggressions, symbolic normativities, and pink hair

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Volume Title

A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä

Date

2022-09

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Language

en

Pages

18

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Gender, Work and Organization, Volume 29, issue 5, pp. 1594-1611

Abstract

This autoethnographic essay addresses microaggressions and normativity of gendered performances in relation to gay employees' and their sense of organizational belonging. In my puzzled account, through retrospective fragments, I explore my daily experiences in an organizational context as a homosexual person: the story includes reacting to intentional and unintentional microaggressions, navigating my sense of belonging, and finding my way through symbolic boundaries of gendered normativities. In particular, this paper sheds light on microaggressions as symbolic expressions of iterative gendered norms, which repeatedly lead to some employee experiences being cast as ‘normal’ and some as ‘the other’. Methodologically, this paper furthers scholarly discussion on the use of autoethnography in understanding the daily struggles of lesbian, gay, bi, trans, and queer employees, whereas theoretically it elucidates the harmful effects of both microaggressions and iterative gendered norms on one's sense of belonging and the performance of the self, as well as discusses the difficulty of reacting to discursive violence.

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Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors. Gender, Work & Organization published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Keywords

autoethnography, belonging, gay employee, gendered norms, microaggressions

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Citation

Soini, A 2022, ' A gay reflection on microaggressions, symbolic normativities, and pink hair ', Gender, Work and Organization, vol. 29, no. 5, pp. 1594-1611 . https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12851