The concept of the selected family existed in the LGBTQIA+ community and other non -heteronormative communities as a safe space that differs from the historical “traditional” family standards. It is a group of people who actively vote for each other to play an important role in the life of the other, even though they are not biologically or legally related.
After Sage cyclopedia of marriage, family and couple advice, advice, “Selected families are not biological relationships, whether legally recognized or not, deliberately selected in order to be mutual support and love.” These selected families could “consist of friends, partners, partners and ex-partners, biological and non-biological children and others who offer relationship support”.
Selected families consist of people with whom we share a connection or joint experiences. In contrast, traditional families – typically defined by the institutions of marriage and biological reproduction – have excluded the LGBTQIA+ community due to legal, social and cultural ties. For a large part of the story, this person was refused to recognize marriage and educational rights, which inappropriately the traditional family structures became inaccessible. As a result, selected families served an important source of love, support and resilience.
Traditional families: Set patriarchal and heteronormative norms
The traditional families, which are structured by heteronormativity, and at the same time strengthen men as household heads that heterosexuality is normal, gender inequality and limit the autonomy of women in the household. In this way it can be said Abnormal and at the same time maintain the rigid gender roles that women are exposed to in these households. The idea of traditional families therefore requires heterosexuality within family structures; Women who are exposed to rule and domestic and emotional work are norms, and everything that rejects this livelihood within a society are foreign or others.
Feminist theorists have long criticized the traditional atomic families and the patriarchal forces that they reproduce. Because the gender is socially constructed and gender roles are learned more than by biology. Traditional families thus become the main institutions that put people in these gender roles.
In feminist theory: from the edge to the middleBell Hooks criticizes the traditional nuclear family structure as a place for patriarchal rule and proposes alternative models for the development of relationships that are rooted in feminist values, and promotes sisterhood among women regardless of the layers. It emphasizes the need to reinterpret the family and the community structures, the mutual care and egalitarian relationships. The idea of the selected family thus disturbs the rigid roles and patterns that are assigned to traditional families.
Audre Lorde, a black lesbian feminist, has emphasized the importance of community and love in her numerous works in order to oppose systemic oppression.
“Share of joy, whether physically, emotionally, mentally or intellectual, forms a bridge between the Sharern, which can be the basis for understanding a large part of what is not divided between them and reduces the threat by their difference.”
Challenge the norm through collective resistance
The failure to fit into this heteronormative system often leads to marginalization or exclusion for people within the LGBTQ+ community. People who experience sexuality in different ways do not fit into this rigid binary gender roles that are assigned by the traditional family systems. If these people are rejected by these systems, they do not receive the right support that is necessary to fully grow and thrive in this space between social norms. As a result, many LGBTQ+ people from selected families, as an alternative systems, turn to support each other, to support and promote the growth of the other and to heal the wounds caused by systems that do not support heteronormative people.
While the idea of non -biological relationships is not only related to the LGBTQIA+ community and can be practiced within different cultures and communities in the LGBTQIA+ community, the practice, to violate what is considered a “norm”, becomes a tool of resistance and survival.
Selected families do not come in properly packaged boxes in which everyone is assigned a certain gender role, and the importance of these families is different for everyone. Typically, these families have a reaction to the social and family rejection of people who are faced with people in their legal and biological families.
In the cultural policy of emotions, Sara Ahmed speaks about how emotions bind people to communities and serve as political functions. Therefore, the individuals within the selected family may not be organically related, but they share the feelings of rejection and the resistance of survival within the systematic oppression, which is added to them, which becomes an instrument to reclaim their identity and dignity. From common circumstances, selected families are emotionally and mentally supported as biological families.
Mental health, support and autonomy
Due to the increased cases of family rejection and task within the LGBTQIA+ community served close relationships with people outside the family of origin – structured families – as an important source of social support. The Rejection The biological family is strongly associated with mental health problems, drug abuse and sexual risks. In such crucial times, a support system in the poisonous social systems is required. It is also important to note that the need for this support system in adolescence is strong whether the family is biologically or selected. Having these community and family ties is essential, and the influence of these social situations on adolescence is particularly reflected in their transition to young adults.
Teenage is a challenging transition, and for those who have to deal with their gender identity, the process can be even more complex and emotionally more strenuous. Therefore, it becomes crucial for these young people to have access to a strong and confirming support system that can promote them and offer a space in order to grow and embrace their identity and at the same time combat the discrimination they inflicted. These selected families create bonds, empathy and mutual care and thus help to transform the term family into a social practice of human quality and relationship instead of being limited to the strict roles that are assigned in traditional families.
It can be argued from a feminist lens that the chosen family gives individuals a feeling of autonomy – a right to define their own relationships outside of social norms and what is suitable for cultural practices. Traditional kinship systems often have implicit obligations and control, while selected families are based on approval, intentionality and mutual support. The roles are not pushed for humans, and individuals have the agency to choose their roles and relationships within the selected families.
The idea of creating safe spaces and taking care of each other for centuries has been with strange people, especially for transgender people, in queer people, in particular transgender people. It strengthens the non-biological forms of relationship as a form of resistance to the heteronormative and cisnormative structures of society.
Selected families represent more than just alternatives to traditional family structures – they become space for resistance, survival and liberation. The chosen families do not threaten the existing family structures. Rather, they contribute to this. The selected families form human bonds through the common experience of marginalization that lie beyond social norms – the importance of relationship as space for love without conditions, love that goes beyond sexual or biological terminologies.
Reeba Khan is a student of political science at the University of Delhi. As a writer and student journalist, she has a great interest in questions of identity, conflict and belonging. She writes to remember and resist
