What’s wrong with tolerance? And how could it possibly undermine real gay equality? In this talk, Walters considers how the pseudo-science of “born this way” can combine with demands for marriage equality and a place in the military to create a “trap.” The trap is to imagine that being tolerated is the same as robust integration for America’s gay citizens. We tolerate what we find unpleasant: pain, medicine, annoying relatives. Walters looks at how science, law and popular culture work to create a world where we have marriage equality and gay celebrities, but we also have historically high rates of violence against LGBTQ citizens, a variety of anti-gay legal initiatives and a supposedly gay-friendly Hollywood where very few stars actually come out. Tolerance is not the end goal, but a dead end for anyone seeking genuine equality.

Suzanna Danuta Walters’ work centers on questions of gender, sexuality, family, and popular culture. Her most recent book, The Tolerance Trap: How God, Genes, and Good Intentions are Sabotaging Gay Equality (NYU Press, 2014), explores how notions of tolerance limit the possibilities for real liberation and deep social belonging. She has also written extensively on feminist cultural theory, mothers and daughters in popular culture, queer theory and LGBT studies, and popular culture. She is currently Editor-in-Chief of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.

This talk is presented by IRWG's Lesbian-Gay-Queer Research Initiative (LGQRI), and co-sponsored by Department of Communication Studies and Screen Arts & Cultures.