Rowen Francisco is a fourth-year Sociology student with a minor in GRSJ.
Their research used in-depth interviews to explore how queer conceptions of friendship can be used to disrupt patriarchal ideologies that privilege the monogamous romantic partner over other forms of intimacy.
Outside of academia, they enjoy reading sci-fi, making art, and playing with their cat.
The Radical Potential of Queer Friendship in Disrupting Mononormativity
The family as an institution is upheld by narratives that emphasize the importance of monogamy and uphold the nuclear family as the hegemonic standard. Queer feminist theory has problematized these ideologies, identifying a relationship hierarchy that underpins normative kinship expectations.
The relationship hierarchy is used to illustrate how monogamous romantic partnership is valued more than other forms of intimacy, particularly friendship. Despite existing theory emphasizing how deconstructing this hierarchy is essential to subverting patriarchal kinship ideologies that perpetuate the dominance of the nuclear family, this framework has not been utilized in empirical research.
My research draws on this body of literature to explore how queer university students are conceptualizing and practicing friendship in relation to romantic relationships to extend the existing theoretical framework. I performed 11 in-depth semi-structured interviews to collect data on how queer university students in Metro Vancouver between 19 and 25 years old are practicing and conceptualizing friendship, romantic partnership, and family.
Preliminary findings have revealed that participants are rejecting the ideologies that uphold the relationship hierarchy in a variety of ways. The most radical of approaches involve rejecting the labels tied to particular forms of relationships entirely, while others seek to get married and have children while implementing a community-oriented approach to domestic life.
This is significant as identifying alternative relationship practices has implications for family law, as marriage is the only way relationships can be legally legitimized despite the diversity of significant relational forms. Further, this research offers a gateway to future research surrounding relational practices that disrupt patriarchal expectations as there is minimal empirical research in this vein.
How did you become interested in this topic? Why did you choose it for your thesis?
I have often felt a tension with the social expectation to center a romantic partner in my life because I have felt entirely fulfilled by my friendships and wanted to focus on fostering them. In my conversations with other queer people, I found that many of them felt the same.
When I looked into the literature on the topic for an essay I wanted to write, I found that disrupting expectations to partner has been a topic of conversation in queer feminist theory for decades now but that there is little to no empirical research on the subject, inspiring me to explore how queer people are disrupting these expectations.
Can you summarize your project and its main findings for us?
My project aims to identify how queer university students in Metro Vancouver are practicing and conceptulizing friendship in relation to the relationship hierarchy.
Preliminary findings demonstrate that queer students are actively deconstructing what the concept of love means to them; many understand love to be the same across relationship spheres which allows them to equalize their platonic and romantic relationships. Participants primarily seek to build their lives around a network of significant relationships (both platonic and romantic) rather than centering their lives around a singular romantic partner.
What was your favourite part of doing research?
I greatly enjoyed interviewing my participants. It was fun to hear everyone’s stories and insights in response to my questions. Many told me how excited they were that I was doing this research, as this is a topic that is important to them.
What is the state of the current Sociology literature on your topic? What unique or interesting insights do you think your research might add?
As I previously mentioned, there is very little empirical research on the topic of queer friendship and disrupting mononormativity. The research that does exist on queer intimacy focuses solely on queer romantic and sexual relationships or the chosen family. All of which are important topics, but do not cover how queering intimacy extends beyond dominant relationship schema.
My research identifies how queer people are actively disrupting social expectations to delineate their relationships into particular spheres that hold varying values (eg. romantic partners and familial relationships are typically more privileged than friendships). By exploring the alternative forms of intimacy queer people are praticing, this research offers insights into how this relationship hierarchy can be subverted.
If you could continue this project, what other facets of your topic or research question would you want to explore?
I would love to explore how practices and conceptions of friendships change throughout the life course. This research focused on university students because they are at a stage of life where friendship is typically more central to their social worlds.
It would be interesting to find out how attitudes change once participants reach an age where they are expected to settle down with one partner. This would either provide more concrete examples of what queering intimacy looks like throughout adulthood, or identify the barriers people are facing when it comes to practicing alternative relationship forms.
