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Article

Is sexuality research
dirty work?
Institutionalized stigma
in the production
of sexual knowledge

Sexualities
2014, Vol. 17(5/6) 632656
! The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/1363460713516338
sex.sagepub.com

Janice M Irvine
University of Massachusetts, USA

Abstract
Sexuality research has a long history of controversy in the USA. This article examines
sexuality research as a form of dirty work, an occupation that is simultaneously
socially necessary and stigmatized. Using survey data of contemporary sociologists
engaged in sexuality research, historical data on 20th century sexologists, and content
analysis of top-tier sociology journals, I focus on the university system and its related
functions of publishing, funding, and ethical review boards. I argue that sexuality
research is constructed as dirty work by systematic practices of the university
system, and further suggest that these practices impose stigma effects that are not
simply individual but represent persistent patterns of institutional inequality. Further,
I show how these institutional practices are shaped by cultural schemas regarding
sexuality, enacted through cognitive and affective bias of institutional actors. The construction of sexuality research as dirty work affects not only researchers themselves but
shapes the broad production of sexual knowledge.
Keywords
Dirty work, inequality, sexuality research, stigma

Sexuality research has long struggled for academic and professional legitimacy.
Sexologists in the 19th century faced derision, while mid-20th-century researchers
like William Masters and Virginia Johnson conducted their early studies in secrecy.
Their laboratory was vandalized once their work became public. In addition to
constrained training opportunities, funding sources, and job prospects, sexuality
Corresponding author:
Janice M Irvine, University of Massachusetts, 200 Hicks Way, Thompson Hall, Amherst, MA 01003, USA.
Email: irvine@soc.umass.edu

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researchers faced challenges in disseminating their research ndings to the public.


These included censorship, public controversy, ridicule, even death threats. At the
same time, however, broad public interest fueled demand for sexuality research.
Prominent sexologists like Alfred Kinsey received volumes of mail from the public,
seeking sexual information and guidance.
It is tempting to assume that historical change has brought a cultural liberalization that has dispelled controversy over sexuality research. However, this notion
of linear progressionthat sex (and by extension, sexuality research) is increasingly
free from repressionis too simple (Foucault, 1978). Indeed, while sexuality
research has expanded across disciplines, recent conicts belie an uncomplicated
notion of progress. For example, in 2009, two sociologists who study sexuality at
Georgia State University were targeted by state legislators as justication for large
budget cuts to state universities (Kelderman, 2009). Representative Calvin Hill
charged that their topics of researchoral sex and male prostitutionwere extraneous and said, Im personally outraged that our taxpayer money is supporting
professors, that this is what theyre oering as their services (Sheinin, 2009).
Depicted as sex-obsessed by lawmakers, the researchers nevertheless successfully
defended the public health signicance of their projects before the Senate Higher
Education Committee (Stripling, 2009).
Certain occupations entail a mix of public need and repudiation. This is the
paradox Everett C Hughes (1958, 1962) called dirty work, in which society disavows a type of work, while at the same time recognizing it as a crucial form of
labor. Sexuality research is a compelling case study of dirty work, since the eld
itself produces paradoxical cultural reactions. On the one hand, venues for academic research have expanded over the last decades, many people are eager for the
knowledge that sexuality researchers produce, and in some circles the eld is
respected, even trendy. On the other hand, sexuality researchers have attempted
for over a century to establish academic legitimacy in the face of deep cultural
anxieties about their subject of study.
The stubborn persistence of controversy amid public demand generates my
research questions: Is sexuality research dirty work? More pointedly, how
might it be constructed as such, and through what systematic practices are its
dirty workers produced? This article examines two cohorts of sexuality researchers: sexologists of the 20th century, and contemporary sociologists in the USA
whose research concentration is sexuality studies. While dirty work is an apt
frame for analyzing sexuality research as a sub-eld and for examining the career
experiences of researchers themselves, this article thinks dierently about the
stigma of dirty work. In contrast to previous dirty work literature, which concentrates on individual or occupational stigma management, I focus on institutional
and cultural mechanisms through which dirty work is produced. I bring the dirty
work literature into dialogue with research on institutional inequality as a way to
more deeply analyze structures of stigma and occupational bias. In particular,
I spotlight the university system and its related professional functions of publishing, funding, and ethical regulation. I argue that sexuality research is constructed as

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dirty work by systematic practices of the university system, and further suggest that
these practices impose stigma eects that are not simply individual but constitute
persistent patterns of institutional inequality. In this way, sexuality research is
dierent from most social science elds in that it must not only negotiate the
disciplinary politics of knowledge production, but also the institutional and
social opprobrium associated with dirty work.

Sexuality research: A brief, paradoxical history


Over the last century, sexuality researchers have produced knowledge in areas
central to public health and social policy, for example surveys of sexual behavior,
physiological research on sexual functioning, and historical and ethnographic studies of sexual communities and cultures. Sexuality research spans disciplines such
as biomedicine, the biological sciences, public health, and increasingly, the social
sciences and humanities. In this article, which is necessarily a brief history, I suggest
that sexuality research has been beset by similar but not identical paradoxes: the
dirty work paradox; and the coexistence of a speakers benet (Foucault, 1978)
and speakers burden (Irvine, 2005). Stigma is core to both of these paradoxes,
and this article examines its history in US sexology and its persistence among
contemporary sociologists of sexuality.
The scientic study of sexuality as a eld of research is linked to the German
physician Iwan Bloch, who stressed the need for physicians and social scientists to
study the sexual life of the individual. Bloch coined the term, Sexualwissenschaft, or
sexology. Sexuality became a focus of medical study for scientists such as Richard
von Krat-Ebing (18401902), Havelock Ellis (18591939), and Albert Moll
(18621939), all of whom developed new methodologies and taxonomies of sexuality. By the early 1930s in Europe, approximately 80 sexuality organizations, with
thousands of professionals and laypeople, staed clinics to provide medical and
sexual information and counseling. With the establishment of journals, institutes,
and collaborative projects, sexual scientists built the infrastructure of a scientic
enterprise and professionalization project (Irvine, 2005). By the mid-20th century,
biologist Alfred C Kinsey at Indiana University and physician William Masters
and collaborator Virginia Johnson made sexual science visible in the USA, fostering the growing medicalization of sex.
Sexology in the second half of the 20th century attracted a diverse constituency,
as it was one of the few public platforms for sexual dialogue. Invisibility or isolation in their own academic elds and workplaces typically motivated those
studying sexuality to identify as sexologists. The group identifying with sexologyregardless of whether they were physicians, social scientists, educators, or
health activistssought colleagues in order to pursue sexual knowledge.
Sexology prompted paradoxical cultural reactions. On the one hand, sexologists
enjoyed what Foucault (1978) called the speakers benetadvantages that
accrue to those representing themselves as liberating sex from repression through
speaking about it. In the context of mid-20th-century social changes concerning

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sexuality and gender, and the emergence of new forms of the commodication of
the self, sexology in the USA built a market by addressing cultural fears about the
survival of heterosexuality and marriage. The anxiety associated with instability of
traditional gender and family structures produced a ready focus for sexology, while
an increasingly public ideal of erotic satisfaction generated consumers readily
enticed by promises of more and better sex. This is the promise at the heart
of the speakers benetthat, as Foucault (1978) put it, tomorrow sex will be
good again.
On the other hand, sexologists also suered from what I have called the speakers burden (Irvine, 2005), that is, the stigmatization that attaches to those with
any visible connection to sex. Stigma burdened sexual science even from its earliest
years. For example, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, obscenity controversies arose over publication of sexology texts. In May 1933, Nazis raided the Institut
fur Sexualwissenschaft, and removed books and papers, which they later burned in
the streets of Berlin. Within a short time in Germany, sexology journals folded,
institutes were closed, and many sexual scientists were arrested or went into exile,
many of them to the USA. In the USA, the National Research Council established
the Committee for Research in Problems of Sex in 1921, and sought to confer
scientic legitimacy to a subject which languished in dispute. Yet controversies
continued, including over the work, in the mid-20th century, of Alfred Kinsey,
Masters and Johnson, John Money, and others. The speakers burden manifested
in diverse forms ranging from the absence of employment opportunities to volatile
controversies such as those examined earlier in this article.
Today the landscape for sexuality research has changed. The towering gures of
20th-century sexology are gone, either retired or deceased. Contemporary sexology
lacks a comparably prominent researcher, and the pharmaceutical industry now
dominates the eld (Tiefer, 2004). Moreover, sexology is no longer the only
professional rubric for sexuality researchers. Sexuality research within the academy
and medicine has expanded.
Sub-elds within the social sciences and humanitiesin particular sociology,
history, literary and cultural studieshave created new academic space for critical
sexual inquiry. In addition, interdisciplinary (and overlapping) elds of sexuality
studies, LGBT studies, and queer studies have burgeoned over the last two decades,
inextricably bound with the intellectual inuences of poststructuralism and feminist
theory, as well as feminist, queer, AIDS, and trans activism. These various sites of
contemporary sexuality studies examine sexuality as an analytic domain rather
than as an ascribed characteristic. This diers from mainstream US sexology in
the critical interrogation of sexuality as a broad social domain involving multiple
elds of power, diverse systems of knowledge, and sets of institutional and political
discourses. The constructionist argument that sexuality is best studied as a domain
whose meanings change across cultures and history, rather than as the universal,
biological drive posited by sexologists, prompted rich studies on varied levels of
analysis: the nation, institutions and workplaces, communities, public cultures,
embodiment, and more. This research challenged the biomedical and essentializing

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discourses of early sexology with the recognition that sexuality is profoundly


historical and social.
I suspect that there is a dierence between sexology and these new sexuality
studies sub-elds regarding the speakers benet. In particular, its critical, theoretical edge and social science/humanities academic locations have cost contemporary
sexuality studies the therapeutic market enjoyed by a biomedical and behavioral
sexology. Critical researchers in sexuality studies do not produce the self-help
books, therapies, or pharmaceuticals to support any promise of better sex tomorrow. Indeed, they are more likely to be critical of such technologies. They are, not
surprisingly then, unlikely to receive funding from the primary corporate source of
sex research fundingthe pharmaceutical industry. Contemporary social science
and humanities scholars work without the advantages of a therapeutic market, but,
as I will show, under conditions of persistent vulnerability to workplace stigma.
Dirty work is the second paradox besetting sexuality research. As initially conceived by Hughes, dirty work refers to a socially necessary job which society
nonetheless marginalizes. On the one hand, sexual information can be important
for sexual health. Indeed, early sexology emerged in Western Europe out of late19th-century public concerns about issues such as prostitution and venereal disease.
Moreover, if sexuality is socially constructed, then sexual knowledge helps us to
locate our sexual desires (Warner, 1999). Sexology always had an eager public,
suggesting its social signicance. (This, in fact, bespeaks yet another paradox.
Foucault contended that sexual discourses such as sexology are not inherently
liberatory: an argument against the grain of assumptions that speaking more
freely about sex frees us from repression. Yet while bringing sex into sexological
discourse inevitably helped to regulate it, constituents of sexologists have clamored
for more talk about sex, claiming to nd it personally freeing.)
Every major gure in sexology was inundated with desperate and adulatory
letters. For example, biographer Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy (1998) examined
public correspondence to Alfred Kinsey, noting that as he read letters in the archive, there was gradually borne in on me the huge preponderance of despair, the
mess of lives, the frustration and pain of those who wrote, until sometimes the
great weight of it and the endlessness became overwhelming in its sadness. The
mainstream lm, Kinsey, depicted this sentiment in a poignant scene where an
elderly lesbian recounts to the researcher how his work transformed her life.
Many of the letters to sexuality researchers reveal a vast ignorance about sex
and a yearning for the knowledge produced about it. Sexuality researchers in the
book, How I Got Into Sex (Bullough, et al., 1997), recount overwhelmingly positive
public response to their work (alongside their stories of receiving public threats and
insulting letters).
And so stigmaagainanchors the opposing pole of the dirty work paradox.
The persistence of stigma toward sexuality research is striking, coterminous with
public demand and any professional benets that might accrue to those studying a
culturally fraught and therefore sensationalized topic. Dirty work conceptually
captures this paradox. The notion of dirtphysical, social, or moralraises the

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question of why certain occupations are stigmatized and through what broader
dynamics.
Sociological literature widely accepts the social construction of dirtiness.
However, few studies examine the mechanisms of this construction. The stigma
that dirty workers manage is derived from social factors and cultural discourses
specic to their occupations, which are largely unexplored in the literature. Its
focus on individual and collective-level identity management obscures broader systematic practices of stigma production, leaving it unclear how stigma emerges and
translates into institutional disadvantage and occupational bias. By contrast,
I examine institutional structures of stigma in dirty work, along with their reinforcing cultural schemas. If sexuality research is a form of dirty work, then how is it
dirty? And how have sexual scientists been constructed as dirty workers?

Methods
This article is based on historical evidence, survey data, and content analysis. Most
of the historical data are archival or derive from secondary sources such as biographies and autobiographies. I worked in three major archives for earlier projects
related to this topic, and rely here on these data: The Kinsey Institute (Indiana
University) and the Schlesinger Library (Harvard University/Radclie). Archival
material consists of letters, personal documents, and media coverage. In addition, I
draw historical evidence from a series of autobiographies and biographies of sexologists. There are no survey data of earlier sexologists; I use evidence from archival and other sources to examine potential continuity in occupational stigma.
The data on contemporary sociologists in this article derive from a survey of
sexuality researchers. In 2011, I conducted an online survey with members of the
American Sociological Association Section on Sexualities. I inquired about aspects
of their academic careers, such as graduate training, access to funding, promotion
decisions, Institutional Review Board experiences, and controversies. The section
had approximately 450 members at the time of my survey. The data pool consists
of 169 responses, a response rate of 38%. The nal sample matched the section
population almost identically in terms of degree-date, gender, race, and regional
distribution, lending condence to the conclusion that these survey data do a good
job of describing this ASA Section on Sexualities. This is the rst survey to examine
the career experiences of sociologists who study sexuality and therefore represents
the only sample of its kind. The quotations in this article from sociologists currently conducting sexuality research are from the open-ended comment boxes in
the survey.
I also conducted content analysis of top-tier sociology journals to determine the
number of sexuality-related articles published in two time periods. The analysis
revisits an earlier gender-related study of sub-eld publications during 19951997
in the American Journal of Sociology (AJS), American Sociological Review (ASR),
and Social Problems (SP) (Karides et al., 2001). My analysis returned to this
studywith sexuality research in mindreplicating the initial 19951997 time

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period and also comparing publications in the three journals 10 years later, 2005
2007. Two coders reviewed all the journal articles in these three journals during the
two time periods, examining title, abstract, literature review, and discussion. For
the 19951997 period, we analyzed 338 articles (159 from ASR, 81 from SP, and 98
from AJS) and in the 20052007 period we examined 321 articles (125 from
ASR, 85 from SP, and 111 from AJS). There were so few sexuality-related articles
published that we could analyze a complete census of these articles (rather than
a sample).

The institutional production of sexuality research


as dirty work
Sexuality research is produced as dirty work by the broad university system, and
the practices by which this occurs represent institutionalized bias. As Foucault
(1980) has noted, institutions are where power becomes embodied in techniques,
a critique that assumes signicance in analyzing the unequal practices of university
bureaucracies on specic elds of knowledge and researchers. If the university
produces sexuality research as dirty work, by what specic techniques does
this occur? Sociologists have persuasively demonstrated the power of organizations
in the production of inequality (Stainback et al., 2010). Joan Acker (2006: 442) for
example, argues that intersecting inequalities of gender, race, and class are reproduced within the local, ongoing practical activities of organizing work.
Inequality regimes, in Ackers terms, are the uid, sometimes invisible, but very
systematic practices and processes by which organizations such as workplaces produce systematic disparities among workers over access to myriad forms of power
and privilege.
Universities function on multiple levels in producing, privileging, or marginalizing certain forms of knowledge. The university acts in its ocial, institutional
status, for example supporting (or not) academic freedom. Universities have not
infrequently stood by sexuality researchers during conict. Indiana University
President Herman Wells, for example, steadfastly defended Alfred Kinsey through
years of controversy (Gathorne-Hardy, 1998). More recently, The University of
Michigan supported Classics Professor David Halperin, whose courseHow to be
Gaytriggered conservative attacks (Halperin, 2012). Moreover, organizations
within the university also have institutional status (i.e. status accorded by ones
position within an institutionThornborrow, 2002), sometimes producing internal
contestation. For example, in 2010, the Academic Senate of Marquette University
condemned the Jesuit universitys decision to rescind a job oer to sociologist Jodi
OBrien because it considered her sexuality research not in keeping with its mission.
Sexuality research often benets from a strong institutional commitment to
academic freedom and freedom of speech.
However, there are many less visible university practices that shape the production of knowledge. As I examine in the following sections, sexuality researchers
describe a range of academic dynamics that render them dirty workers.

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These include the absence of comprehensive graduate training; systematic challenges by Institutional Review Boards; and barriers to funding, publication, and
promotion. Tenure is a particular source of anxiety for sexuality researchers who
fear uncomprehending or trivializing evaluators. Moreover, sociologists who study
sexuality report challenges to their professional and personal identities. These take
the form of snide comments, jokes, assumptions about their sexuality, and challenges to the legitimacy of sexuality research overall. While sociologists referred to
these dynamics as stigma, the stigma of dirty work is best analyzed as structural
inequality in the form of systematic barriers and practices by those with institutional status. In the following, I focus on their role in training scholars, and their
organizational practices as workplaces themselves. I also examine the universitys
related professional functions of ethical regulation of research, funding of research,
and the publication of disciplinary journals.

Workplace and Training


Numerous activities transpire within the institutional context of employment and
training, including formalized practices such as hiring, the admission and evaluation of graduate students, and faculty promotion and tenure. Quotidian norms
and practices also represent institutional inuence on research, such as access to
and quality of mentorship, intellectual interactions with colleagues, and access to
structures of recognition. As workplaces and training sites, university departments
explicitly and implicitly nurture research in some elds while discouraging it
in others.
Historically, educational institutions often proved unsupportive of sexual science. Many prominent scientists of the mid-20th century told journalists that
they had been actively discouraged by mentors from studying sexuality; instead,
they were instructed to establish successful careers before risking the stigma of
sex research. William Masters, for example, was advised to wait until he
was older and a respected gynecologist before starting his sex research. Years
later, his student, Robert Kolodny, noted that colleagues warned him that he
was throwing away his medical career, since sex research was regarded as some
frivolous, almost voyeuristic area that no serious person would ever engage in
(Maier, 2009). In the late 1980s, psychologist Clive Davis told the Chronicle for
Higher Education
I think a lot of people in this eld have felt some sort of negative reaction to their
work. It ranges from comments like, Well, thats not serious science, to much more
blatant kinds of discrimination. I continue to advise any students of mine to understand what theyre in for, because they are going to face people in the academic world
who dont think its an appropriate thing to do. (McDonald, 1987)

Educational institutions shape sexuality research through practices that convey


whether this work is signicant or trivial.

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Stigma may be conveyed early to students with an interest in sexual science. For
one, there is scant graduate training in sexuality research. A 1995 report on sexuality research by the Social Science Research Council criticized the absence of
formal research training and noted that graduate mentoring opportunities often
occur through serendipity and rarely represent a thorough and sustained approach
to the subject matter (di Mauro, 1995). The sheer absence of mentors is among the
barriers that have faced graduate students. Within interdisciplinary elds such as
sexuality studies or queer studies, graduate training is contingent on whether or not
there is a faculty member in the disciplinary department. Despite the expansion of
sexuality research across the disciplines over these last 20 years, there has been
no systematic study of current university experiences. My survey of sociologists
provides a systematic glimpse into one discipline, sociology.
My respondents suggest that some sociology departments have addressed this
problem. Of all respondents, 65% said that sexuality is a recognized area of
research in their department, while 70% of graduate students found mentorship
within their departments. They noted:
I teach a graduate course in sexualities and have many graduate students writing their
dissertations in this area.
Students can take a comp in sexualities and students who do sexualities and GLBT
courses are allowed to teach special topics courses without issues.
Faculty hired me enthusiastically based on my sexuality studies experience.
Generally colleagues and administrators are supportive. I am very lucky to be in a
feminist department where gender and sexuality research is highly valued and
respected.
The department voted to tenure me, unanimously. Everyone has been respectful of me
and my research thus far.
Overall, this department has been quite supportive of my research. I have things all
over my oce, do colloquia, and routinely share my data with colleagues.

However, many respondents reported that departmental support for sexuality


research was equivocal: I have not had any problem writing about sex and
having it taken seriously within my department, probably because Ive downplayed
somewhat the extent to which I study sexuality and have emphasized that my
research contributes to scholarly understanding of the reproduction of inequality.
Or worse, the support amounted to the absence of hostility: [my sexuality
research is] recognized, but not valued. Barely tolerated, not accepted. Of
the total sample, 23% said sexuality was not a recognized sub-eld in their
departments: Throughout my pre-tenure years, I was advised to emphasize the

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non-sexuality aspects of my research and not put sexuality-specic words


(e.g. LGBT) in my titles, and The university and community have been quite
supportive. However, there are two major areas of problems: occasional, subtle
undercutting of graduate students in the area; and a sense that my research is
tolerated but not strongly encouraged, and The general climate at my university
suggests that, without a disease or health outcome, sexuality research is seen as
frivolous or not really sociological.
Many sociologists reported obstacles to graduate study, ranging from active
hostility to an absence of training and structural support to passive disparagement
of the eld:
Although all of the people on my dissertation committee seem to respect my work,
I would say that most of the other people in my department do not think sexuality
research is valuable to academia; they think it is supplemental to what should really be
learned.
While its a recognized area of study, largely no departmental support is provided for
the area of study.
I also believe that unlike other areas, having one sexuality researcher is seen as
enough. There is no real interest within traditional departments to create entire programs based on sexuality research and scholarship. This also makes it dicult to bring
students for training in the eld.
I learned in graduate school (by a mix of outright hostility and lower grades) to keep
sexuality research a sideline.
I could not take sexuality as a sub-eld for my qualifying exams. I had to study
gender with sexuality studies as a sub-eld.
It makes me feel like the work is not important, like its a niche instead of the core of
sociology.

In addition, 35% of graduate students said they did not nd mentorship in sexuality studies:
Finding committee members for my dissertation was quite dicult and working with
non-judging faculty has been a challenge.
My mentor left this institution and I do not currently have a mentor in my grad
program.
Sexuality studies is recognized in my institution but not highly regarded. [Ive had]
diculty in nding a mentor and someone to agree to oversee my grad work.

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I was unable to pursue sexuality research since I did not have mentorship in the area.
I joined a Queer Theory Research Group and took classes outside of the department,
but this was looked at as merely an interest, not a signicant area of study within my
department.

Faculty members who conduct sexuality researchers reported a range of diculties


associated with their topic. They noted that most diculties related to stigmatization or marginalization of the eld:
I think that most faculty members see sexuality research as a marginal area of
research. However, most faculty members respect me and as such they respect my
personal work but not the eld of sexuality.
My colleagues are uncomfortable with the topic, which is displayed through comments and asides at faculty meeting, avoidance of sexuality-related talks and discussions, and choices around hiring new faculty.
The university library highlights books published by faculty and included my book
(with title and book cover) visible. In an online newsletter, there was a story of four
professors who published books that year (I was one) and I noticed the book covers
were fanned so that the picture on my cover was hidden. It could have been
random, but there is no question that my cover was the most sexual.
I think that the study of sexuality is believed not to be touching on the big
questions.

Some researchers found it dicult to discern precisely which factors shape departmental responses to their work. In some cases, sociologists suspected that methodological preferences inuenced how their departments evaluated their sexuality
research. There was a sense that quantitative methods lent legitimacy to sexuality
research. One representative comment was: I think because I am using quantitative methods it is respected. I am not sure what the situation would be if I was using
qualitative methods.
Finally, it is worth remarking that a number of survey respondents reported that
they have needed to abandon either sex research, the discipline of sociology, or
academia:
Sometimes I think it would be much easier to commit my energy to a dierent subject
area that is not stigmatized in the way that human sexuality is. While I think that the
trend in this research area is good (its getting better), I recognize that my subject area
has a lot more baggage than some of my colleagues or supervisory faculty members.
Its certainly not the path of least resistance.
I had to switch my primary appointment from Sociology to Womens Studies.

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Im continually nervous given what I saw happen to a mentor of mine when she was
denied tenure for being a sexual minority who researched sexual minorities. It still
haunts me. And it, in part, shaped my decision to avoid research universities as places
of employment.

As institutional workplaces and training programs, the status of sexuality


research within sociology departments at universities in the USA varies. Some
respondents report enthusiasm toward their research and courses while others
report precarity. The establishment of a Section on Sexualities by the American
Sociological Association in 1997 helped institutionalize sexuality studies. Still, there
is marginality. Figure 1 shows the network structure of specialty sections of sociologists who are members of the American Sociological Society.

Figure 1. Network Ties of American Sociological Association Sections.

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In Figure 1, network ties are dened by joint memberships divided by total


membership. Sections are grouped together as a function of a high proportion of
joint members. Sections with more ties to other sections are more central to the
contemporary intellectual structure of US sociology, and more intellectually marginal sections are found in the periphery (Tomaskovic-Devey, June 2012, personal
communication). Although Sexuality is not as marginal as Animals and Society
and Peace, War and Conict, it is clearly still in the periphery 15 years after being
founded. By comparison, other sections founded even more recently, such as
Economic Sociology (2001), or in the same time period, such as Race, Gender
and Class, are found to be far more central. Despite some institutional recognition
of the eld, many sociologists report the absence of graduate training, the failure
of colleagues and department chairs to recognize sex research as legitimate, and
general hostility in their departments toward sociological work in sexuality.

Discipline and publish: Sociology journals


If knowledge production has been vexing, the dissemination of that knowledge has
been fraught. Sexuality researchers have encountered various diculties in publishing their books, including censorship. Publication of sexuality research in academic journals was similarly troublesome. In the early 1960s, prestigious medical
journals refused to publish the work of William Masters, calling it pornographic.
Sexuality researchers responded to a mainstream reluctance to publish by launching specialty journals, such as the Journal of Sex Research (1965), Archives of
Sexual Behavior (1971), and the Journal of Homosexuality (1974). While these
journals opened new venues for sexual knowledge, they also had little mainstream
recognition.
Disciplinary journals matter. They play an important role in shaping the contours of a discipline, privileging some specialties over others. At the same time,
publishing in top-tier disciplinary journals plays an important role in the career
advancement of scholars. And yet prominent mainstream journals may disadvantage some scholars because particular sub-elds are underrepresented (Karides
et al., 2001). Within sociology, a 2001 study published in Social Problems compared
top-tier journalsthe American Sociological Review, the American Journal of
Sociology, and Social Problemsover the period 19951997 and found that these
three journals publish from only 10 sociological sub-elds, thereby marginalizing
other sub-elds (Karides et al., 2001). This study did not list the Sociology of
Sexuality as a sub-eld. One author later noted that there were virtually no articles
on sexuality published in these prominent journals during the time period under
study (Misra, 2003, personal communication).
A return to these journals with Sexuality Studies in mind shows scant progress in
the expansion of space for sexuality research. As part of this study, I updated the
content analysis of these three top-tier sociology journals. During the 19951997
period studied earlier, the American Journal of Sociology published one article on
sexuality, the American Sociological Review published two, and Social Problems

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published four sexuality articles. Ten years later, the numbers are little changed. In
the 20052007 period, AJS published two articles on sexuality, ASR published four
articles, and SP published four articles on sexuality (and a 2006 symposium on
feminism and sociology that included an article on sexual assault and an article on
abortion). These negligible publication rates are signicant given the pressure
experienced by sociologists who conduct sexuality research. Although my survey
did not ask about journal publication, many scholars mentioned departmental
pressures to publish in mainstream sociology journals:
My colleagues are ne as long as I publish in major sociology journals, as opposed to
interdisciplinary sexuality journals.
Ive felt defeated, my publications have been slowed given the scarcity of wellrespected venues for publishing sexualities research and my desire to place my work
in mainstream journals (which often requires multiple extensive revisions if these
journals will send the pieces out for review at all), a slower publication track record
means a poor placement in terms of employment.
I have been advised to change titles of my articles so my other colleagues would not
know what I was writing about.
I do know that tenure evaluators are often confused by journals such as The Journal of
Homosexuality, Journal of Lesbian Studies, Sexualities, etc. They dont know how to
evaluate publications in these journals.

Importantly, the slim publication rates of sexuality research by top-tier sociology


journals does not reect a dearth of scholarship. By the1990s, new interdisciplinary
journals like Sexualities (1998) and GLQ: The Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies
(1993) reected the expansion of sexuality research from biomedicine to critical
social and humanities perspectives. In addition, a number of university presses
launched book series in sexuality studies, for example the inuential Series Q at
Duke University Press, New York University Presss series, Sexual Cultures, and
Temple University Presss Sexuality Studies, among many others. The eld was
expanding, a development not reected in mainstream sociology journals. The
absence of sexuality research in disciplinary journals represents a marginalizing
practice, given the power of top-tier publications to shape the parameters of disciplines, legitimate or marginalize subject areas and methodologies, and dene
what forms of knowledge count as important.

Institutional review boards


Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) represent another example of institutional
bureaucracies whose practices help construct sexuality research as dirty work. I
have written elsewhere about IRBs as federally mandated bureaucracies that can

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constrain sexual research while reinforcing stigma attached to it (Irvine, 2012).


Here I will briey note that many contemporary sociologists reported a range of
problems with Institutional Review Boards. In an area such as sexuality research,
guidelines that call for minimizing risk and protecting vulnerable populations can
be misapplied. Some noted that sexuality projects automatically raised red ags
for IRBs, who assumed risk and danger. Some claimed that IRBs forced them to
destroy all of their data, under the guise of protecting condentiality. Respondents
reported demands that certain questions be expunged from surveys and interview
schedules (they objected to asking questions about sex life), or protocol requirements that impeded the project (the IRB would not allow me to conduct traditional snowball sampling of women who are consultants for at-home sex toy
parties, despite the fact that my participants often advertise their businesses in
public places.) And they reported that IRBs routinely blocked research on
adult sexual minorities, particularly LGBTQ communities, because of their alleged
vulnerability: (Queer students are treated similarly to prisoner populations with
my IRBHigh Risk, and They made me change the reporting of names to be
completely anonymous even though almost all of my subjects WANTED to be
identied in the study, and I was always aware. . . that in doing research with a
homosexual population I was automatically dealing with sensitive information
that they would not want releasedeven though it was a Pride organization whose
entire goal was about being out and proud!!)
Restrictive IRB practices may construct sexuality researchers as dirty workers,
disadvantaging them for promotion or other career moves. One junior scholar
noted: Its made [my research] actually very dicult. Im facing tenure review
right now and needing to explain, for example, why my books not published yet.
Well, I spent a year and a half getting IRB [approval]. Many faculty in my survey
reported that their students had experienced trouble getting IRB approval for
sexuality projects. One professor said, I think that what happens is that graduate
students have a sense of what the IRB will and wont approve. So they dont even
try to do certain kinds of research because they assume that it wont be approved.
Some professors explicitly warn students away: I have tended to discourage students from trying to investigate topics of youth sexuality, generally telling them
that it will be hard to get past IRB. IRBs can marginalize a eld of knowledge and
discourage researchers, through loosely dened but restrictive bureaucratic
requirements.

Funders and their discontents


Funding agencies are structurally central to knowledge production. Their expectations shape the academic worldview and politicize the balance of knowledge
among various elds (Cozzens and Woodhouse, 2001). The actions of federal
funderssuch as the National Science Foundationrepresent state support, or
its absence, for particular types of knowledge construction; as such, they are political agencies. Funding decisions themselves, however, are typically

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operationalized through peer-review panels made up of individual scholars who


have institutional status through this role to shape the direction of certain disciplines (Lamont, 2009). These panels directly connect funding agencies to the university system, representing a form of university bureaucracy.
Historically, material resources such as funding have been minimal for sexuality
research. Governmental and non-governmental organizations that support sexuality research have been vulnerable to attack by legislators, conservative groups, or
the media. Prominent sexologists of the mid-20th century struggled for research
support. Alfred Kinsey secured funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, but after
controversy drew congressional scrutiny to the Foundation, it terminated its support. Repeatedly denied federal funding in their early years, Masters and Johnson
turned to the Playboy Foundation for nancial backing, leaving them open to
criticism for doing so. Recently, sexologist Leonore Tiefer (2004) has suggested
that sexology is in danger of cooptation by the pharmaceutical industry, which
lavishes nancial incentives on researchers in the chronically underfunded eld.
In the context of broader social and political arguments about federal funding of
social science in general, sexuality research nonetheless stands out as one eld in
which controversy has been acute and visible (Epstein, 2006). These agencies can be
the vehicle through which politicians criticize sexuality research. In 1975, for example, social psychologist Elaine Hateld, then at the University of Wisconsin, was
given the Golden Fleece Award by US Senator William Proxmire (D-Wisc) for
having received National Science Foundation funding for her research involving
love and sexual desire. This was the very rst of Proxmires highly publicized
monthly events where he criticized allegedly wasteful government spending.
Hateld later described this attack as the most damaging blow to my research
program. She never again received public grant funding (Hateld, 2001).
In later cases, Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) regularly blocked federal funding for
HIV and sexuality research projects in the early 1990s (Ericksen and Steen, 1999).
Sociologist Edward Laumann described a highly confrontational atmosphere
during the political battles over the funding of the National Health and Social
Life Survey in the early 1990s (Laumann et al., 1994). Later, in April, 2003,
Congress ordered the National Institutes of Health to justify its grants for research
projects which involved sexual behavior and HIV transmission, after several congressmen complained that the studies were improper and wasteful. By that fall,
NIH launched a review of 160 sexuality-related studies, after complaints that the
research was a waste of taxpayer money (Brainard, 2003). An eort to block NIH
funding for four grants that some lawmakers had labeled ridiculous, bizarre,
and outrageous, was narrowly defeated. Thirty-ve organizations, such as the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American
Sociological Association, signed a statement supporting the peer-review process
at NIH and criticizing ideological interference with research on sexuality.
However, federal funders had already become wary. Program ocers, undoubtedly under their own pressures, responded defensively to the threat of political
controversy. Psychologist Harry Reis (2006) recently reected on the 1975

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Golden Fleece controversy, Not long after Proxmire carried out his shameless act,
a program ocer at the National Science Foundation told me that studies of
romantic love, even if cloaked in scientic jargon, could not and would not be
funded by the agency. In April 2003, the New York Times reported that the
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) might apply unusual scrutiny
to grants with key words such as gay, sex worker, anal sex, and men who sleep with
men (Goode, 2003). A designated spokesperson for HHS denied this, although an
anonymous federal ocial conrmed the practice (Goode, 2003). Anxieties about
these types of political attacks persist.
Sexuality researchers in my survey reported similar funding diculties in the
current climate. Some respondents perceived scant funding resources (There are
few fellowships available, and in response to a question asking whether they had
ever applied for an external fellowship: Are there any? and Im not aware of
any currently for advanced scholars.) Still, 51% of sexuality scholars applied for
an external grant during their career, to federal funders such as NSF or the
National Endowment for the Humanities or private funders such as the Williams
Institute. They reported a range of experiences. Some described negative responses
from funders:
I was told by a program ocer at the Ford Foundation that they were not willing to
consider funding research on a topic this controversial.
One reviewer said that research on gays and lesbians in the Midwest was uninteresting.
Again, I think that Sexuality Studies is not thought of as being serious and therefore
not deserving of funding.
I did not receive a large internal grant due to these assumptions [of stigma]. The
verbatim message said, We do not wish to support research that will land [the university] on the front page of the newspaper.

Of the pool of respondents who had ever applied for a grant, 18% said a funder
had asked them to modify the grant proposal in a way that downplayed its focus on
sexuality. This included eliminating dirty words in their proposals:
I received an NSF Sociology Dissertation Improvement Grant. The program sta at
the time redacted the word sexual from the project title, presumably so as not to
arouse the ire of conservative Republican lawmakers. The program sta did not notify
me that they were going to make this change. I stumbled on it when looking up
information on the grant on the NSF website.
After the fact, I was asked to change the title of my NSF grant to make it less sexy.
I expect that my applications to other, private funders have been less successful
because of the topic.

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We often have to mask public submissions with titles like traditionally underrepresented or diversity, rather than using terms that convey that the research is about
LGBT individuals.
I was asked [by a funder] to change the title, which included sexual orientation.

The dirtiness of sexuality research prompts closeting practices, such as stealth


framing of sexuality research:
These experiences made me feel as if I need to frame my research in a manner that
obscures its true nature in order to receive support (e.g., mentorship as well as
funding).
I am always careful with how I phrase my research. At times I even leave out
sexualities.
In a workshop at ASA for sexuality researchers, we learned to censor our use of
trigger wordsi.e. anything directly related to sex or sexuality, so as to avoid
making our work a target for political criticisms.

The censorship of sexual words in proposal titles suggests that sexuality is


disreputable. Even when implemented by sympathetic program ocers,
this practice institutionalizes a view that sex is not a legitimate area of social
inquiry.
How might we understand these institutional mechanisms that construct sexuality research as dirty work and its researchers as dirty workers? I suggest that the
stigma of dirty work is not only individual but is an institutionally produced form
of inequality. Still, as Michael Schwalbe (2000) notes, analysis of institutional
inequality fundamentally requires the identication of agents, actions, and patterns of interaction that yield unequal results. We must know who does what to
whom. Earlier in this article we saw actions carried out by department chairs,
academic colleagues, journal editors and reviewers, program ocers at the
National Science Foundation, IRB members, and other institutional actors who
treated sexuality research with mistrust or disdain. We can see further examples
from my respondents of specic individuals with institutional status engaging in
practices that disadvantage researchers:
I have been advised by my Director of Graduate Studies to avoid sending my work to
gender & sexuality journals and, instead, to send it to generalist journals.
Provost asked to see my syllabus, which was not asked of any other course.
I was oended when a student referred to me as a pervert in a conversation with
another faculty member.

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There is always concern about how the legislature will respond to courses that overtly
deal with LGBT sexuality.
When I was applying to graduate schools, I spoke with a faculty member at another
department who told me that his department doesnt do sexuality studies. I got
the impression that he didnt think sexuality studies were valuable or important
in sociology, and it made me question whether sociology was the right disciplinary
home for me.
I am about to have my third year review and I suspect I will be told that I should
speak more to mainstream sociology. People also make jokes about my research a
lot. It is supposed to be in good fun but it is denitely seen as strange.
The sexual harassment enacted by some of my respondents is no fun either.
[I have felt] kind of creepy, actually. Made me realize that its a stigmatized and
misunderstood area of research that men, especially, have a hard time understanding.

These examples illustrate the myriad practices through which specic institutional
agents, whether mentors, promotion committees, or colleagues, can systematically
generate and sustain inequality.

Institutional inequality: Culture matters


Recent sociological research on academic bureaucracies oers clues for explaining
these practices of organizational bias. Essentially, culture matters. Joan Acker
(2006) notes that inequality regimes intertwine with broader cultural contexts.
Cecilia Ridgeway (2011) explores the ways by which cultural schemas related to
gender infuse institutions and forms of organization. In separate studies that examined on-the-ground decision-making in peer-review panels and Institutional
Review Boards, Michele Lamont (2009) and Laura Stark (2012) found that
while panelists strove for objectivity, academic judgments are actually shaped by
myriad factors including broader evaluative cultures, individual proclivities of
board members, and real-world constraints. Cultural dimensions, then, specically
those of the sexual culture, may well shape institutional practices that construct
sexuality research as dirty work.
Sexual culture, for the purposes of this study, entails the myriad discourses and
practices that constitute sexuality. It encompasses sexual beliefs, values, ideas,
symbols, languages. Like dirty work itself, our sexual culture is paradoxical. It is
taboo yet considered the core essence of the modern self. Cultural ambivalence,
even antipathy, toward sexuality as a topic of research may nd institutional
expression.
One mechanism for this is through cognitive bias (Bielby, 2000). The concept of
cognitive bias integrates cultural and institutional levels of understanding

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organizational inequality. Biasoften based on stereotypic cultural attitudes or


status beliefs regarding race, class and gendercan shape the practices of institutional actors in ways that reproduce inequality. These practices might involve
hiring, promotions, allocations of resources and the like. Systematic disparities in
these practices represent structural inequality. My survey respondents oer examples of this, as related to the subject of their research:
On a job interview I was told by a faculty member of the school I was interviewing
that my research clashed with his religious beliefs and that he wouldnt comment on
the merit of the work because of this issue.
From scheduling faculty meetings during my departmental presentations, to referring
to graduate students in joint programs as muddying the waters of sociology, it has
always been clear to me that my research on sexuality is not highly regarded here.
The word sex sets o a set of red ags that can double or triple the amount of red
tape I have to go through to get IRB approval for my research.
I am frequently pigeonholed by my colleagues as someone who does little other than
sexuality when I have wide-ranging interests.

In these cases, researchers describe various institutional actors operationalizing


bias against a topic of researchsex.
I would suggest a complementary dimension to this dynamic of cognitive
biasthat of aective bias. A critical turn in organizational studies in the last
two decades has foregrounded the role of emotions in the workplace (Fineman,
2010). From sociologist Arlie Hochschilds classic study of the commodication of
emotion among ight attendants (1983) to contemporary research on emotional
regimes in organizational management (Reddy, 2001), this interdisciplinary literature explores the structures, processes, and interactions of emotions in the workplace. Dirty work, which is characterized by visceral repugnance of people to
these jobs (Ashford and Kreiner, 1999), has a clear emotional core. Stigma produces the emotions that are the very denition of dirty work, for example disgust,
anger, fear. Therefore, dirty work is deeply emotional, both in the ways it is culturally produced and the ways it is culturally, organizationally, and individually
managed.
Aective biases are not solely individual proclivities, but derive from cultural
biases, braiding through institutional structures and practices. Signicantly, our
sexual culture itself has a deep aective component in western societies. Sex is a
domain of desire and dread, excitement and fear; simultaneously disgusting and
vital to our happiness. Sex educators have an inside joke about this emotional
paradox: sex is dirty, save it for someone you love!
Aective biases concerning sexuality likely interact with cognitive biases against
this research on sexuality. This dynamic represents, as cultural theorist Raymond

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Williams put it, not feeling against thought, but thought as felt and feeling as
thought (Williams, 1977). This mix might manifest in various ways, for example
anxiety and embarrassment about sex research. Sociologists currently doing sexuality research reported these reactions in my survey. One respondent said, about
her IRB: They were concerned that my topic would be embarrassing to participants. Other responses include: No one at my university will even talk about the
work. They seem to think its shameful, and Audiences from outside my department have suggested that my research is oensive. Implicit in Michele Lamonts
(2009) analysis of funding decisions is that decision-making is also deeply shaped
by how professors feel. Institutional practices, then, are not merely cognitive but
entail both understanding and feeling. And, as Laura Stark (2012: 28) argues in her
study on IRBs, the visceral responses of board members could exercise a powerful inuence on board decisions. This aective aspect of institutional bias is important when considering sexuality research.
This meld of cognitive and aective biases may manifest as moral judgment in
academic bureaucracies. Lamont (2009: 195), for example, found that judgments
about grant applicants moral qualities was part of the normal order of things on
peer-review panels. Laura Stark (2012) found that one key aspect of IRB decisionmaking was the members assessment of the researcher. They read proposals like
tea leaves for signs of good character. This strategy, unfortunately, disadvantages
sexuality researchers, who have historically been vulnerable to mischaracterizations
such as pervert and sex-crazed. As noted earlier, many respondents in my
survey reported such stigmatizing experiences. A typical comment: Ive been
called obsessed with sex in a derogatory and judgmental manner. As Stark
notes, group process in IRB meetings can elicit both the strengths as well as the
most unsavory biases of individual members. It would not be surprising, given
broader cultural suspicion about sex, if some board members gazed with mistrust
upon sexuality researchers. Other survey respondents reported suering various
moral judgments: Sta member refused to work with me on course development
because she believed the course was immoral, and Im continually afraid that I
will be accused of some sort of unethical or immoral practice.
As Stephen Fineman (2010) notes, emotionologiespolitical, social, and cultural constructs of emotionshape the values accorded to specic occupational
groups. One aspect of such cognitive and aective bias is the belief that sexuality
should not be a eld of academic inquiry. From this perspective, sexual knowledge
is inappropriate, since sex should remain in the realm of enchantment rather than
rationality. This bias is clear in a case described earlier. In awarding the Golden
Fleece to psychologist Elaine Hateld, Senator Proxmire objected to funding sexuality research, saying: Im also against it because I dont want the answer. Indeed,
Proxmires action, as chair of the Senate subcommittee that oversees the NSF,
shows the states role in the stigmatization of sexual knowledge. Proxmire awarded
the Golden Fleece to federal agencies which he saw as wasteful, noting, I think it is
time the National Science Foundation put a stop to this Federal version of The
Love Machine and rearranged its research priorities to address our scientic, not

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our erotic curiosity (Shaer, 1977). Mockery of sex as a topic of study re-emerged
in later years, as right-wing religious groups targeted the federal funding of sexuality projects, casting this research as ridiculous, even disgusting. Today, some of
my survey respondents still suered from this bias, such as one who said, My
research is not considered, by many, to be a credible PhD research topic or social
science topic, people tend to wonder why someone would waste their time studying sexualities. As a subject of social research, sex, like dirt, is out of place
(Douglas, 2002). These diverse cases show how culture matters. Cultural anxieties
related to sexuality can produce cognitive and emotional bias, which, when enacted
through the practices of institutional actors, naturalizes the inequality of
dirty work.

Conclusion: Dirty workers and sexual knowledge


Is sexuality research dirty work? I have presented evidence from archival, survey
and other sources suggesting historical continuity in experiences of marginality and
stigma in medicine, the natural sciences such as biology, and in the social sciences. I
have focused on bureaucratic practices in universities and their related professional
functions of disciplinary publishing, Institutional Review Boards, and funders.
Consistent with calls to show how institutional inequality is created both strategically and inadvertently (Schwalbe, 2000), I bring together cultural and institutional analyses, arguing that cognitive biases generate specic organizational
practices of stigmatization and marginalization in the workplace. Moreover, I
extend research on cognitive bias in the area of institutionalized discrimination
by introducing the powerful role of aect, specically aective bias. I argue that
aective bias and cognitive bias braid together, producing practices within these
bureaucracies that result in systematic inequality. Sexuality research is a powerful
case through which to theorize the operations of emotions in the workplace
because of its saturation with cultural aect. It is likely, however, that aective
bias operates in institutional practices related to many other stigmatized
occupations.
My survey ndings suggest the need for further research. Research across the
disciplines and from other countries would advance our understanding of potential
persistence and variability in the structures of stigma I discovered. Do sexuality
researchers have varying career experiences across disciplines? Is sexuality research
evaluated dierently among social science disciplines, is research on sex more
acceptable in the natural sciences, are there dierences between the humanities
and the social sciences? Historians of sexuality have recounted bias in faculty
hiring (Duggan, 1995; Stein, 2001), dismal assessments of the job market for historians of sexuality (Committee on Women Historians, 1993; Stein, 2001), and bias
in federal funding (Stein, 2006). What about literature and the arts? While classics
professor and critical theorist David Halperin (2012) describes a volatile controversy over a sexuality course, there is no further evidence from these elds. Are
humanities scholars less constrained by the demands of funders and the imperatives

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of a certain scientic rationality and therefore less stigmatized, even rewarded for
sexuality research? And my project has focused on researchers in the USA. How do
dierent sexual cultures and institutional arrangements shape sexuality research?
Finally, it bears remembering that many sexuality researchers reported positive
experiences at their universities; what conditions foster such acceptance, for example geographical region or university status?
If university-related practices construct sexuality research as dirty work, what
are the implications? This article presents preliminary answers to this question. For
one, institutional inequality impacts researchers themselves, imposing a speakers
burden in the form of diminished career outcomes. In earlier sections, for example,
we saw how faculty and graduate students lacked institutional support and were
blocked by IRBs or discouraged by funders or colleagues. Some sociologists abandoned sexuality research outright.
While university practices shape the careers of scholars and teachers, they also
shape and constrain what knowledge can be produced about sex. And so this article
extends contemporary research in the history and sociology of sexualities. New
research foregrounds the crucial role of the state and its institutions in the production of modern sexuality, such as Regina Kunzels (2008) study of the sexual culture of prisons over the last two centuries, and Margot Canadays (2009) study of
the production of sexual citizenship through 20th-century federal policies of immigration, the military, and welfare. My article examined the institutional location in
which studies such as these are conductedthe modern bureaucratic universityarguing that stigmatizing practices shape and constrain sexuality researchers
in the wider university workplace. Therefore, the production of sexuality research
as dirty work aects not only the researchers themselves but shapes the broad
production of sexual knowledge.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to my astute readers: Sarah Babb, Kathy Davis, Don Tomaskovic-Devey,
Steve Vallas. I could not have completed this survey without the help of Don TomaskovicDevey, Michelle Roseneld, and Abby Templer. Thanks to Ken Hou-Lin for graphic
assistance.

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Janice Irvine is a faculty member and Chair of the Department of Sociology at the
University of Massachusetts. Her most recent book is Talk about Sex: The Battles
Over Sex Education in the United States (University of California Press, 2002). She
is currently co-editing a volume entitled, Transnational Queer Activism, and also
conducting research on the history of the sociology of deviance.

Downloaded from sex.sagepub.com at CAMBRIDGE UNIV LIBRARY on November 17, 2016

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