Unpacking the T: Sharing the Diverse Experiences of Parents/Guardians Navigating Schools for Trans Youth

• In Event: 45.079 - Transgender and Gender-Expansive Youth: Supporting and Affirming Queer Identities

Abstract

In this mixed-methods study, authors use survey data from 47 parents/guardians of trans youth to understand their experiences navigating schools. Authors share their process of “unpacking the T” as they recognized that how students identified and the categories used to identify them: male (“just a boy”), trans male, beyond the binary, trans female, female (“I’m a girl”), mattered to parents/guardians’ stories. They use trans theories and concepts of materiality, embodiment, and subjection to understand data beyond thematic analyses. Their findings indicate the need to attend to students’ lived material bodies, how their embodied experiences differ based on how they are read/which “rules” they “break,” how masculinity and femininity might be regulated differently, and how schools perpetuate dangerous normative standards.

Authors

• Bethy Leonardi, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Amy Nichole Farley, University of Cincinnati