Queer Street Smarts: Gender, Sexuality, and LGBTQ Youth Navigating Homelessness

• In Event: 1466 - Section on the Sociology of Sexualities Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 1. Children/Youth and Family

Abstract

Street smarts are forms of lived experiences and knowledge that marginalized people – often black and brown youth – develop to face the social structures and obstacles in their paths, while also coping with the insecurities of poverty that shape their lives. Based on 18 months of ethnographic research on LGBTQ youth homelessness, I present the concept of queer street smarts to show how the LGBTQ youth develop knowledge around gender and sexuality to navigate the heteronormative urban landscape and streets. The LGBTQ youth in this study, who are mainly poor gender expansive and transgender black and brown youth, had to gain queer street smarts to find safe places to sleep, get food, make money, navigate service systems, and meet their daily needs. These queer street smarts involved knowing which parts of town are dangerous if one is LGBTQ, and which shelters, bathrooms, and showers were gender-segregated, and hence, unsafe for the youth. The youth also learned to navigate gendered administrative systems to get an identification card with the proper gender markers and to gain employment in the formal economy. Moreover, the youth utilized their sexuality – through building relationships and sex work – to gain resources on the streets. Through documenting the lives of mainly poor black and brown LGBTQ youth, this study illuminates how gender and sexuality intimately shape urban landscapes, the consequences of the heteronormative streets on certain youth’s lives, and the strategies that LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness develop to challenge and resist the heteronormative public sphere and social services.

Author

• Brandon Andrew Robinson, University of California, Riverside