[Note from the author: This piece was submitted for publication to Lingua Franca and The Chronicle of Higher Education and was rejected.]

In the current battle over the recognition of gay and lesbian rights in our culture, there is an issue that seems to have been overlooked: i.e. the issue of same-sex partner hiring in the academy. My feelings towards this specific and contradictory issue are indeed "mixed," to say the least. Beyond the idea that we, academics, are quite privileged, pampered and certainly enough enjoyed a panoply of "benefits" and other so-called liberatory initiatives, I nevertheless notice generalized discriminatory practices towards gay and lesbian academic couples.

Let me state from the outset that I am not talking from what one would call a "disinterested" position. However, I don't see my own experience and agenda being the ultimate goal of this comment. On the contrary. Through what I've been experiencing as a lesbian academic involved in a long-distance relationship with another lesbian academic -- I spare you the details here of the curse to be in an international long distance relationships -- I see a strong correlation between promotional discourses on gay and lesbian rights and the responses that such struggles raised for both our colleagues and the institution. What is interesting and fascinating for me is the fact that there seems to be absolutely no desire and no real policy to commit by most of the institutions towards gay and lesbian couples.

Indeed, some universities are now granting same-sex partner benefits, including my home institution, Concordia University. This is worth mentioning in these days where most of gay and lesbian discourses are quantified and measures successful in terms of numbers and tax credits. However, same-sex benefits follow a policy that is easily applicable under very precise rules, while spousal hiring falls in the category of the unruly privilege. In other words, the application of the recognition of same-sex benefits fulfills the very nature of what constitutes a policy, i.e. the setting of rules that would apply under very specific modalities or constituencies. But what happens when what is at stake is a matter of privilege? This question of "rights" vs. privilege is what has actually been framed as central in the most recent debates around gay and lesbian equity, visibility, coming out. And there is something in these debates that bothers me profoundly, because most of the debates obscure the complexities that emerge from "framing rights" as the main emancipatory way for the gay and lesbian minority to reach equality and gain the same privileges as the heterosexual majority.

I don't pretend to be an expert on questions of discrimination and rights. However, what I certainly can address is how issues of visibility and practices of regulation of sexual differences within universities and colleges are undermined by the perverse effects of discourses of gay and lesbian rights. In other words, what I want to underscore is how the academy is not only ruled by sexual politics, but is completely mapped by sexualized assumptions about intellectual/pedagogical practices.

The privilege of heterosexual spousal hiring in the academy is an unspoken, though widely applied practice. How can we understand such an unruly practice in a context of sexual discrimination towards gay and lesbian couples? First of all, one has to acknowledge that spousal hiring is a very nebulous condition, or privilege, not easily circumscribed, neither clearly stated, and most of the time a secret weapon used at the "discretion" of the hiring committee, or the Faculty. And the sheer nebulousness of privilege attached to it just makes it easier to discard the fact that what is an unruly although legitimized practice for heterosexuals becomes an obscure impossibility for gay and lesbian couples.

This becomes even more explicit if you take the practice of spousal hiring in the academy for candidates for an academic position. Spousal hiring doesn't occur through specified rules of hiring, but rather through a set of official and unofficial channels within which the spouse of the newly hired or the "top candidate" would be considered for hiring in the same institution -- given indeed that the partner is fully qualified, or even on some occasions, tenurable. For heterosexual couples, from the very outset of the hiring process, way before the hiring becomes a reality, spousal hiring is an assumed part of the process, eventually implicit to the process of serenading future candidates. It is implicit and actually part of the hiring package of the candidate selected, whether we have an academic star or not. For gay and lesbian couples, things are way far from being so. From the very beginning, the question of spousal hiring is silenced and completely erased from the process of job market. And I insist here: the exclusion is not a question of visibility, but a question of institutional practices of silence.

Worse: the erasure of same sex couples in academia is not only a matter of institutional policy, but is also "nourished" by other professors. Even if some colleagues might inquire about the eventuality of a long distance relationship for same-sex academic partners, these conversations are likely to be carried on behind closed doors, over cocktails, in a benignly and supportive fashion, but nonetheless safely remote from the hiring process. This question is troubled by the fact that most gays and lesbians involved in such situations keep silent on such matters. The legitimacy of the hiring committee's silence on spousal hiring is further reinforced by most candidates fear of calling attention to it. The rationale being that our jobs are so hard to get anyway, what candidate would jeopardize her chances by even bringing it up such an issue? What candidate would be foolish enough to break the silence around spousal hiring privileges? In such a context and as far as gay and lesbian rights are concerned, the rule that prevails is overruled by the privilege granted automatically to most of heterosexual candidates involved in such a process.

What I wish to highlight here is that, while history, gossip, and department faculty lists all over the continent have shown us that "spousal sumptuary hiring laws" seem to have prevailed for heterosexual couples,¹ that is surely not the case for gay and lesbian partners. In the few exceptions where a same-sex partner has actually been welcomed to an institution along with the new hiree, those few marginal cases are used as an alibi, a way to exhibit the token successful queer to silent all the other discarded cases. This is not to say that heterosexual academic couples aren't facing at all any issue in terms of hiring; but whereas heterosexual academics are considered as couples, queers are necessarily framed as singles. It is not only a question of discrimination, but also the rule of denial, silence and rejection of gay and lesbian identity and culture, under a very strict politics of compulsory heterosexual privileges. What is at stake here is not only a culture of difference and ways of representing and speaking for different subjects, but also a politics of difference strictly monitored for the sake of maintaining a safe heterosexual visibility.

THE ECONOMY OF THE INVISIBLE.
Because it is a privilege, spousal hiring falls in the category of the economy of the invisible, which doesn't mean that it is economically invisible. Hundreds of years of racism and sexism have allowed a system of class and cast to economically survive on the basis of this exploitative structure. In other words, as a privilege, spousal hiring can't be visible, but its consequences are necessarily economically and monetarily visible. Within such a framework, because it is in principle invisible rather than ruled, heterosexuality also becomes invisible, erasing the fact that spousal hiring is commanded by sexual politics. Paradoxically, what becomes visible though, even too visible, is same-sex relationships. Herein the urge not to address it in the process of hiring a queer candidate, because it goes against the logic and the rational of the privilege.

I am not seeking to battle over the paradoxes of visibility and invisibility for gays and lesbians. The question in any case seems almost obsolete. However, what strikes me here is how the rights-based strategy of many gay and lesbian groups obscures the incredible resources that society possesses to go around the compulsory equality stated by the Charter of Rights or any kind of other official document or social contract that controls, regulates and monitors the space of equality for the social subject. What we call privilege in economic terms, refers bluntly to discriminatory practice in social and political terms. Moreover, privileges and benefits cost money. Hence the systematic practice of limiting them to a so-called demographically safe and stable population (queer lifestyle being portrayed as unstable and highly risky).

What I want to offer in this commentary is not a plea for participation in privilege. Instead I wish to foreground the limitations and frustrations of orchestrating gay and lesbian struggles solely around questions of rights. It is like censorship. Just as censorship will never disappear, neither will privileges. Both are the structural bones of a culture where the unsaid and the unseen are still the best guarantors of a certain social order. Such a social order celebrates a strict notion of marginality as the privileged expression of one single voice, whereas two constitute a chorus, something that might arouse too much attention.

Privileges are truly informed by an economy of the invisible. This invisibility is a lucrative one, and that not only in terms of an exchange market, but also as a social and political constituency. In this sense, individual privileges aren't so much privileges, as important elements of control and of instrumentalization of the economy of sexual identities. This is not a phenomenon that occurs exceptionally, but on a systematic basis. The apparent marginality of the issue of academic spousal hiring, superfluous, "micro-located" and exceptional as it may seem, shouldn't banalize the systematic regulation that afflicts "the sexual" within various societal institutions, from the legal apparatus, to the media, to the sanitized forum of academia.

This is why expanding privileges to more individuals won't solve the problems that most academic institutions have with gay and lesbian couples: i.e. that queer necessarily means duplication, no matter how different are the intellectual/pedagogical projects of the two partners. While two Dickens experts, three cultural studies scholars, four Hollywood "thinkers" won't ever be seen as the same, and on the contrary be evaluated in their complementarity, two queers are doomed to be queers. In other words, one of the core institutional problems with 'queer' is that whereas one is cute, two are already overwhelming. Or to say it bluntly: one is acceptable, two is redundant. While straight couple hirings are seen as a source of continuity, balance, and strong commitment towards the institution, same-sex partners hirings are perceived as a dramatic (read excessive) representation of sexual politics in the institution, regardless of the areas of expertise or research pursued by the candidates. A queer couple -- even not in the same department or the same faculty -- threatens the fragile balance of power that commands most of academic units.

Beyond internally regimented institutional policies, what is at stake here is the unruled and invisible privilege of maintaining the space of knowledge and collegiality as heterosexual as can be. This is why any intervention in terms of truth and justice for the individual is necessarily exposed to the same law of silence, as well as the markets of rights and identities: temporary gratification obtained at the cost of deeper silences, and yes, "discriminatory" practices. To quote (badly) Nietszche, science masters the language of lies . . . for good or for evil. That is certainly the rule that best defines same-sex couple hiring in academia: mum's the word.

1. For a good example of celebratory representation of heterosexual couples in the academia, see this article by Robin Wilson (1998). "When Offices Are Also Roommates." The Chronicle of Higher Education (April 17): A12-A13. [back]