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This chapter studies the effort to reauthorize and expand the reach of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). In September of 1994, after years of grassroots advocacy, U.S. Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and President Clinton signed it into law. VAWA provides federal funding for enhanced law enforcement, social services, and legal services for victims of domestic violence. The legislation was originally enacted with a sunset provision that required that Congress reauthorize it after five years, a feature that was repeated in subsequent reauthorization bills. When the law was due for reauthorization in 2011, however, the process did not go as smoothly as it had before. Instead, although VAWA had bipartisan support, advocates wanted to strengthen it with provisions they saw as essential to keeping all survivors of domestic violence safe. These additional protections were met with resistance in Congress. In advance of the 2012 presidential election, advocates sought to amend the legislation in ways that would strengthen the protections offered to Native Americans, undocumented immigrants, and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) communities. In the last reauthorization battle, the ability of advocates to harness the medium, their networks, and their message provides a contemporary example of the social change matrix at work in the age of social media.

This chapter argues that the traditional structures and purposes of colleges and universities are intended to produce two outcomes: the expansion of knowledge, principally in the disciplines but also at their interstices, and the development of students' cognitive capacities and subject matter knowledge. The chapter shows that these objectives gave rise to two movements. One was the movement to use university research to advance economic development through the invention of new technologies with commercial potential. The other was to use colleges and universities as instruments of social inclusion, providing opportunities to members of previously marginalized groups, including women, racial—ethnic minorities, and members of the LGBTQ community. They were driven both by external parties and the great philanthropic foundations, and by campus constituencies who benefited from their advance.

This chapter considers the potential dangers and harm associated with being socially recognized and misrecognized by others. In this chapter, cis women describe instances of being welcomed within heterosexual social spaces and how this welcome may, paradoxically, make them feel both unsafe and invisible. Interviewees also recount instances of being misrecognized as heterosexual or having their partners’ legitimate membership within LGBTQ spaces questioned and the marginalization and stress that this misrecognition often entails. Despite encountering social stigma, strain, and danger, the cis women partners of trans men interviewed also discuss powerful processes of social support and community in operation in their lives. Finally, this chapter explores sources and networks of social support for trans partnerships and families, considering how they might be strengthened and broadened.

Chapter Five extends beyond the protest aspect of Pride, examining the lively and communal characteristics of the celebrations. Pride parades are not just about challenging cultural stigmatization, they are also about building LGBT community by having fun together. Parades bring the small, sometimes hidden LGBT segment of the population together both physically and emotionally and give many a welcome release from everyday hostile culture. In Chapter Five, the author shows how Pride’s central messages of visibility, celebration, and support work simultaneously to challenge external power and foster community.

This concluding chapter highlights the limits of commercial media as a route to social change and critiques the institution of marriage as a route to inclusive citizenship. It first considers how gay marriage in the 2000s was interpreted as a case of trouble for “straight America,” a reflection of the larger anxieties over an institution that appears to be fragile and falling out of favor. It then examines how the same-sex marriage debate also meant trouble for gay rights activists who sought to influence news frames and images and for the LGBTQ community more generally. It argues that the images and narratives employed in both activist strategies and news media discourses may unwittingly work to stigmatize (unmarried) gays and lesbians—and especially bisexual, transgender, and queer citizens—who do not fit the “normative” mold in this new era of visibility.