Everyday Queerness, Everyday Activism

• In Event: 72.039 - Queeruptions: Queer of Color Analysis as a Basis for Radical Action and Education Reform

Abstract

This paper takes up this panel’s theme of “queeruption” by centering everyday actions as forms of activism by genderqueer, trans, and queer youth. That is, this paper focuses on seemingly mundane and quotidian moments and happenings that, upon closer examination, represent acts of resistance and noncompliance with dominant systems controlling gender, sexuality, and race. Centrally, it examines the times and spaces in young people’s daily lives where they are actively confounding normative expectations of their bodies and behavior through subversive acts commonly overlooked and ignored—even though their actions often appear ‘normal’.

Following de Certeau’s (1984) theorizing about everyday life, I suggest the commonplace occurrences in trans, queer, and genderqueer young people’s lives that might easily be passed over by the eyes of teachers, researchers and policymakers alike provide productive times and spaces to examine how these youth are coming to make sense of themselves and the worlds around them. Pulling on data from an ethnographic study of queer, genderqueer, and trans youth in New York City, I suggest exploring instances that appear happenstance and insignificant are useful for examination as they “narrativiz[e] social and moral orders and mak[e] a text not just an object of knowledge but the very place where the social code is continually dissolved and reconstructed” (Stewart, 1996, p. 38). This study of 11 trans, queer, and genderqueer youth comprised of almost 40 go-alongs (Kusenbach, 2003), a combination of ethnographic interviewing and participant observation methods, where I accompanied and talked with youth as they moved through their everyday lives.

For this paper, I pull specifically on the ways participants’ gendered presentations, expressions, and identities consistently chafe against normative expectations of what “youth” are ought to be, including assumptions about youth identified queer and trans. Meaning, many of my participants expressed less concern with stating definitively “I am ____” but were more concerned with mitigating various reactions they received from society for the ways they performed gender, sexuality, and race. Their stories include: experiences strategically using either or both public gendered restrooms; the act of getting dressed for the day in ways that affirm their identity as a source of daily emotional trauma; and navigating their social positions while experiencing issues with housing instability, financial security, and educational disenfranchisement. These experiences are of particular importance in this cultural and political moment with Black Lives Matters movements, the spread of “bathroom bills” targeting trans students, and the continued murders of trans women of color as these experiences go beyond the trope of queer and trans youth jubilantly coming out, defining their identities, and overcoming hardships (Brockenbrough & Boatwright, 2013; Author, 2015; Reck, 2009). Rather, these youth’s stories highlight how their identities and presentations are always in the making and how race, gender, sexuality, class, and ability intersect in ways that make it dangerous to attempt to define a “single story” (Adichie, 2009) of what trans, queer, and genderqueer youth can be/come.

Author

• Sam Stiegler, The University of British Columbia