I'm Something Other Than Straight: Young Women’s High School Coming Out Experiences in the Post-Gay Era

• In Event: 194 - Regular Session. Sociology of Sexuality: Queer Identities

Abstract

This study explores young women’s experiences “coming out” in high school. I analyze ninety-two ethnographic interviews of college-age women about their process of coming to identify or act upon queer attraction in high school. Most young women in this study who experienced sexual or romantic feelings towards other women in high school come to understand their sexuality as fluid or without a label. These young women who come to identify with fluid identity categories understand and label their sexualities differently, and have a different coming out experience, from those who come to identify with more traditional and implicitly static sexual identity categories such as “lesbian” or even “bisexual.” I find, however, that across both groups, young women have similar experiences coming to first recognize and understand their queer sexualities.

Author

• Lillian Taylor Jungleib, University of California-Santa Barbara