Darken Your Clothes, or Strike a Violent Pose: Iero's Story of Strength, Resistance, and Solidarity

• In Event: Justice-Focused Praxis in Qualitative Research With LGBTQ+ Youth

Abstract

Purpose:

In alignment with the AERA 2025 conference theme, this presentation seeks to transform the oppressive socio-political tensions for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and/or questioning, intersex, asexual, two-spirit, and the countless affirmative ways in which people choose to self-identify (LGBTQIA2S+) youth living under record-breaking anti-LGBTQIA2S+ legislation in favor of making space for strength, resistance, and solidarity for LGBTQIA2S+ youth.

Perspectives:

Queer theory challenges such systems of oppression. Queer theory is purposefully complex, intentionally distancing itself from concrete definition or concise articulation. As queer theory is situated as “defining itself against the normal” (Warner, 1993, p. xxvi), scholars who employ queer methods engage in the challenge of power, using “methods strategically […], as resources for understanding and for producing resistances to local structures of domination” (Denzin, & Lincoln, 2012, p. 29). Moreover, queer theory employs scavenger methodology in which researchers use a pastiche of methods to “collect and produce information on subjects who have been deliberately or accidentally excluded from traditional studies of human behavior” (Halberstam, 1998, p. 13). Therefore, this presentation uses queer theory as a framework and methodology.

Methods, Data Sources, and Point of View:

We are working with two high school Gender and Sexuality Alliances (GSAs) within the same district in the Midwest. Using a queering approach to narrative inquiry, we think narratively while embracing our data and the “big picture of the research standards” (Kim, 2016, p. 89). We imagine a lifespace as an “act of imagination” (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006, p. 481), where LGBTQIA2S+ youth are seen, heard, and loved through the creation of our composite character, Lero (they/them).

Because “we must see through the eyes of the dispossessed and act against the ideological and institutional processes that reproduce oppressive conditions” (Apple et al., 2009, p. 3) for schools to become emancipatory rather than oppressive (Earl, 2014), our critical storytelling seeks to find ways in which schools include or do not include their LGBTQIA2S+ youth. For purposes of this proposal, we trace Lero’s experiences and dissonances as a 10th grader in a predominately white, heteronormative high school located in a red, partially rural area within a blue state. During Lero’s story, there is a highly contentious school board election and referendum vote to support their school district. Like many local school board elections, the alt-right, anti-LGBTQIA2S+ factions have situated oppressive candidates to attack their identity as a member of the LGBTQIA2S+ youth community.

Scholarly Significance:

In solidarity with Keenan and Nicolazzo (2021), the significance of our project is to see all youth learn how to learn and grow together in a shared space where schools are more focused on responding to the learning needs and overall well-being of their students rather than policing their bodies and identities. Further, through tracing Lero’s experiences and dissonances, we seek to identify ways to re/imagine the future possibilities and wellness of LGBTQIA2S+ youth in educational institutions and beyond.

Authors

• Linsay DeMartino, Arizona State University

• S. Gavin Weiser, Illinois State University