Addressing sexuality and sexual orientation in supervision relationships

Abstract

This article focuses on ways in which issues of sexuality and sexual orientation are negotiated within supervisory relationships. In supervision, probation officers hold organizational (or structural) power afforded by their role within the criminal justice system, and are expected to use that power to facilitate change in offenders. However, this explicit understanding of power may not reflect any of many other dynamics of power within the relationship: it is not the only understanding of power that is present in the interview. Individuals negotiate, gain and lose personal agency in many subtle ways that also reflect structural differentials like race, culture, class or ability. This paper draws on research that focused on the interplay of behaviours that creates or limits power. Specifically, the ways in which sexual orientation or gendered and sexualised behaviours change the roles of supervisor and supervisee in supervision sessions are interrogated. Supervision is used as a description of a relationship of power, applied to specified relationships between staff members as well as to supervision of offenders.