(Re)Considering LGBTQ Students' Decisions in Naming Their Gender and Sexuality in Educational Research

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

Abstract

Poststructural theory contends that people can simultaneously hold multiple and contradictory positions. Most educational research employs conceptions of identity that are stable across time and context, (re)producing essentialized notions of gender and sexuality. This paper complicates and destabilizes hegemonic notions of gender and sexuality as categories of identity through narrative analysis of queer and trans* college students' reflection and meaning-making.

We take up various pressing questions in this research: (How) are queer and trans* students being (mis)recognized in educational research efforts? (How) are these students' narratives of surviving and disrupting cisheteronormative institutions of education flattened in most research efforts? What opportunities exist to disrupt hegemonic power relations and trouble the cis/het gaze that shapes educational research?

Authors

• finn j. schneider, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Tania D. Mitchell, University of Minnesota