On the violence of heteronormativity within the management classroom

This chapter is positioned as a provocation against, and an evaluation of, business schools as sites of normative violence toward lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT) students and faculty staff. In particular, I discuss the reproduction of heteronormativity and harmful effects for LGB students and educators alike. As I point out, in specific business school work contexts there may be stern disapproval and judgement for any manifestations of LGBT and ‘queer’ sexualities and genders, queer sexualities and genders being particularly attuned to disrupting and rupturing heteronormativity. It is my hope that this chapter, a composite account and review of academic sources and my reflections as an openly gay male business school academic, will throw into sharper relief two questions: how are business schools sites of heteronormative violence toward LGBT academics and students; how can business schools foster research and teaching that problematizes and dismantles heteronormativity? In this chapter I aim to expose the heteronormative contours of the business school and the management classroom, thereby building on emergent research that has only just begun to consider this topic from the perspectives of LGBT educators. In so doing, this chapter will enrich a wider nascent organizational literature that has sought to problematize the heteronormativity of the business school through a feminist gender lens.