(GAS5a) Worldbuilding In and Around Schools: Mapping the Struggle over Gender and Sexuality I

Homophobia and transphobia are rapidly spreading across North America and the globe, evidenced by shifts in public discourse, educational policy, and legislation that contribute to the structural, discursive, and physical violence faced by 2SLGBTQ+ people. This rise in hate is reflective of the ongoing ‘culture wars’ concerning gender and sexuality, of which schools have been a critical battleground. Using a sociological lens, this session will examine the ways in which anti-2SLGBTQ+ sentiment and the current sociopolitical climate of rising hate are being reinforced and resisted related to K-20 educational institutions. The session aims to outline how discourses of gender and sexuality are being mobilized in and around schools to uphold an increasingly rigid cisheteropatriarchal status quo, as well as trace how queer and trans youth and their allies are resisting hate and mapping new, more just worlds. Tags: Education, Gender, Sexuality

Organizer: JJ Wright, MacEwan University; Chair: JJ Wright, MacEwan University

Presentations

JJ Wright, MacEwan University

Queer and Trans Joy as Disruption to Rape Culture

2SLGBTQ+ young people are facing a climate of rising homophobia and transphobia, which has resulted in increased rates of gender-based violence (Goetsch, 2023). Queer and trans youth already experience disproportionately high rates of gender-based violence compared to their cisgender heterosexual peers (Jaffray, 2020). Sociological scholars have predominantly responded to this violence by reporting on victimization, which is understandable given that sociology is a study of social inequities, however, the focus on victimization has had the effect of homogenizing queer and trans life as misery. To avoid reproducing this joy-deficit (Shuster and Westbrook, 2022), I propose a novel approach that centers queer and trans joy in gender-based violence prevention education. As rape culture is symptomatic of cisheteronormativity, queer and trans sexual joy offer a useful analytic with which to subvert gender-based violence. In this paper presentation, I examine how queer and trans sexual joy represents a disruption to rape culture and offers lessons for a transformative framework for gender-based violence prevention education, particularly sexual consent education. Drawing on findings from The Queer Sexual Joy Project, a mixed-methods study involving 100 2SLGBTQ+ young adults aged 18-35 from Canada and the US, I will argue that queer and trans sexual joy disrupts rape culture and that these ruptures to the white nationalist, able-bodied, able-minded, cisheteronormative status quo can inform transformative, liberatory gender-based violence education and particularly sexual consent education. The Queer Sexual Joy project involved two focus groups, one-one-one interviews, participatory visual arts-based workshops (cellphilming (or short films created on phones) workshops, and two surveys. Analysis was completed using a grounded theory approach. A code set was developed iteratively, and the data set was re-coded as needed on Dedoose. Highlighting participant voices, this paper presentation will first examine what queer and trans sexual joy is, articulating the importance of the themes of safety, play, authenticity, and “intercreativity.” I will also discuss the barriers that participants encountered to queer and trans sexual joy and how they found their way to these experiences of embodied joy despite these barriers. I also explore how participant’s experiences of queer and trans sexual joy were healing. 75% of survey respondents identified as sexual violence survivors, and almost all other participants discussed surviving gender-based violence. Survivors in the study who had had sex with other 2SLGBTQ+ survivors articulated how they were much more supported by these partners and experienced much more embodied pleasure during sex compared to sex with partners who were cisgender heterosexual men. Queer and trans sexual joy offers many lessons for creating sexual cultures that reject the cisheteronormativity underlying rape culture and cultivate more just, mutually pleasurable sexual cultures. During the presentation, I will also touch on how the lessons from The Queer Sexual Joy Project may be practically implemented into gender-based violence prevention education.

LJ Slovin, University of Toronto

Trans youth and the labour of world-building

For decades, caring adults have understood trans and gender-nonconforming youth as especially at-risk in schools. As a result, they have worked to create inclusive policies to accommodate, protect, and safeguard these young people from the increased challenges they are presumed to encounter. This presentation offers that accommodation approaches in schools participate in narrowly defining a particular form of trans identity as the only or ‘right’ way to be trans. Drawing on scholarship from queer and trans theory, youth studies, and the field of education, this presentation questions an investment in legibility and visibility as incontrovertible paths to safety and progress for trans and gender-nonconforming youth. Many trans, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming youth are missed and excluded by these policies and practices because their genders and lives do not align with whitewashed, colonial, and ableist societal expectations of transness. Based on a yearlong ethnography in a high school alongside youth who were rarely recognized as trans, this presentation explores the often-unnoticed labour youth performed as they worked to exist and thrive, regardless of whether others understood them. Trans and gender-nonconforming youth worked hard every day to navigate the transphobic elements of East City High, a large urban high school in Western Canada. However, they likewise performed the labour of world-making, which was aimed at creating other, queerer spaces in the school where they could exist outside and in rejection of adults’ narrow ideas about gender. Thinking alongside Tourmaline, Stanley, and Burton’s concept of trapdoors as well as José Muñoz’s work on queer utopia, I consider the myriad forms of care work that youth engaged in to not only navigate the cisheteronormativity of East City High but to make queer and trans worlds of their own. I explore youth’s creation of trapdoors , queer and trans utopias that already exist yet were rarely noticed by adults in the school. The youth built these physical and imaginary worlds as important spaces of escape and refuge where they could explore and engage with their genders and each other more expansively. This presentation highlights one of these worlds: the tech booth. I examine how youth daily worked to invite expansive genders in school, demonstrating the potential and importance of educational spaces that want trans youth to be present. I call on educators to cultivate a desire for youth to be and grow up trans by turning away from ideas of risk and concern. This is the critical labour youth performed as they explored and lived in their gender-nonconformity. They engaged in this labour because they cared – about themselves, their genders, and the trans communities they were building together at the school. Through their care and their labour, they show us that different, queerer worlds are possible in schools. In fact, they are already happening, if we know where to look.

Jaeden Wilson, McGill University

Transgender and Gender Diverse Youths' Self-Empowering Practices in Secondary Education (and Beyond)

Transgender and gender diverse (TGD) youth are more than the risk they face and the environments they inhabit. This study looks past victimizing and passivizing factors to contribute to an emergent body of work which explores how TGD students exercise agency within oppressive environments – particularly in secondary schools. So, this research asks: how do TGD youth foster their self-empowerment during their secondary schooling? What does this illuminate about how schools can better support TGD students? To answer these questions, TGD participants engaged in a digital focus group or one-on-one interview (n=5). These semi-structured discussions were based on exploring a reframing of the concept of ‘self-empowerment’ in high schools, but conversations sometimes strayed beyond that setting. Analysis and member checking identified three avenues to self-empowerment travelled by these youths. Participants described engaging in practices during and after secondary schooling which contributed to 1) re-learning gender and their identities, 2) crafting their social environments, and 3) taking control over how they present themselves. These avenues provide tangible examples of TGD students empowering themselves which participants linked to their well-being, feelings of belonging, self-understanding, and perceived ability to make change. Identifying obstacles along these avenues enabled an additional exploration of how educators can support the agency and wellbeing of gender diverse learners. Altogether, findings show that TGD youth use their voices and agency to empower themselves wherever possible. As such, the avenues showcase the value of educational practices which give these youths space and opportunities to shape their secondary schools for equity.

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Non-presenting author: Aliya Khalid, University of Oxford