It (Doesn't) Get Better: LGBTQ Students' Experiences of Oppression and Liberation in High School and College

• In Event: Trans, Queer, and Nonbinary Students' Experiences With Schooling

Abstract

LGBTQ youth are inundated with narratives that promise progress and acceptance, particularly in education. Often, LGBTQ people come to believe that negative experiences in high school are a temporary stepping stone on the path to liberation in college environments. In this paper, we illustrate the ways in which the lived experiences of queer youth in Alabama and Mississippi diverged from these tidy educational narratives. We highlight the complexity and contradiction of high school and college experiences to argue that participants understood and described their experiences through these progress narratives, describing high school as a place of oppression with common exceptions (e.g., liberatory moments) and college as a place of liberation with common exceptions (e.g., oppressive moments and bias incidents).

Authors

• Kamden Strunk, Auburn University

• Hannah Carson Baggett, Auburn University

• Payton Hoover, Auburn University

• Wilson Scott Lester, Auburn University