Heteronormativity in dissolution proceedings: exploring the impact of recourse to legal advice in same sex relationship breakdown
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
Authors
Colleges, School and Institutes
Abstract
This chapter explores how heteronormativity, normative ordering of society to correspond with heterosexuality, shapes experiences of dissolution of formally recognized same-sex relationships. We present qualitative data from in-depth interviews with both clients and solicitors with direct experience of civil partnership dissolution. Drawing on insights from legal-consciousness studies, we explore the extent to which legal intervention in relationship breakdown creates an arena of strategy and self-interest. Overall, these data demonstrate the ways in which ‘law’ is conceived of as a product of its actors, rather than as being an entity of ‘the state’. We show that heteronormative understandings of gender roles in relationships have been carried over from (different-sex) marriage into civil-partnership proceedings. We argue that lesbians and gay men retain a level of resistance to this legal heteronormativity that has the potential to have transformative effects on contemporary understandings of the place of gender in marriage.
Details
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Philosophical foundations of children’s and family law |
Editors | Elizabeth Brake, Lucinda Ferguson |
Publication status | Published - 8 Mar 2018 |
Keywords
- heteronormativity, civil partnership dissolution, same-sex marriage, same-sex divorce, legal consciousness, gender roles, LGBT