Neoliberalism in media coverage of queer families

Rakel Anna Boulter (hún/hennar)

On the lecture: Mommy, Mommy, Children and Car by Auður Magndís Auðardóttir and Íris Ellenberger

The media plays an important role in shaping society's attitudes, but media coverage of gay people has not been studied much, neither in

Iceland nor abroad. Some readers will no doubt be familiar with Íris Ellenberger and Auður Magndís Auðardóttir, who both work at the University of Iceland.

Auður is an assistant professor in pedagogy and Íris is a historian and associate professor in social studies at the Faculty of Education. Íris and Auður have been researching the portrayal of queer families in the Icelandic media between 2010 and 2021. They gave a lecture on the project entitled Mamma, mamma, börn og bíll (Ice. Mommy, Mommy, Children and Car) to present their findings.

Recent trends regarding queer issues

At first, Íris highlighted the legal changes which took place in gay matters in the last three decades and put them into context with changes in the media's discourse about gay people after the turn of the century. Íris emphasises and wants readers to bear in mind that her and Auður are a married couple who come from traditional middle-class families.

“We are both white, college-educated, non-disabled, queer women. We belong to the group we are studying. This group enjoys the most privileges in Iceland within the set of 'queer people'. With these articles, we want to take a closer look at these privileges and what consequences they have."

It is also worth looking at what kind of interviews with queer families have been given space in the media. Auður presented the data of the research, and stated that the vast majority of the interviews were with homosexual people, of which about three times as many were with women. Only one of the interviews is with a trans person and eight interviews are with other types of families. To this we can add that based on the occupation class, it’s reasonable to assume that the people, based on their line of work, belong to the middle class and none of the interviewees had a visible disability or disabled children.

Neoliberalism in family life

The study highlights the influence of neoliberalism, as the rise of neoliberalism occurred at the same time as a more positive representation of queer people began to emerge. According to the ideas of neoliberalism, competition is mixed into parenting, so it is not enough for parents to give their children care, food and housing. "Parenting was seen first and foremost as the process of working tirelessly to weigh and evaluate different options to ensure that children have everything they need to have an advantage over other children."

Not queer - we’re like the others

A major theme highlighted in the study is the tendency to reiterate that queer families are no different from other families. This naturally creates tension, as queer families often face obstacles or micro-aggression while other, more "traditional" families do not. Another theme deals precisely with how the aforementioned obstacles or micro-aggression are framed as opportunities to become stronger individuals and is titled "Queer Parents Raise Resilient Citizens." Another cumbersome concept in the study is homonationalism. This applies when previously marginalized social groups start to be considered "us" and are then incorporated into the nation, often at the expense of other groups, who are still considered "the others". In the media articles covered by Auður and Íris, you can see how the group that has been incorporated into the nation is first and foremost homosexual people who fit well into the image of the model middle-class citizen, in terms of class, family structure, origin, etc.. They feel this is especially present when the nation's image of itself is to be a model country among countries - Iceland has precisely prided itself on being a paradise of equality.

A narrow definition of what constitutes a good life

Queer people often describe their traditional family life as part of their positive transformation as individuals. This promotes the idea that "the good gay life is a traditional family life." It is particularly interesting to examine this position in the context of lesbian-feminist radical emphasis on critizising family values, whose stance made its mark on the queer and feminist fight for equality in the 1970s and 1980s.

"Such opposition is nowhere to be found in our data. They are written by the dominant discourse of neoliberalism, which implies that each person can achieve a good life by taking responsibility for their own life…”

Many aspects of the issue are examined in the study, and interested readers are encouraged to read the results of the study once they are published.