Seesaw of (In)visibility: How trans and nonbinary students navigate gender in high school

• In Event: Children and Youth Section Open Call Paper Session

Abstract

This study investigates how trans and nonbinary (TNB) high school students navigate the daily “seesaw” of (in)visibility within cisheteronormative school structures. Drawing on 22 interviews at a progressive public high school, including 20 with nonbinary youth, we ask how TNB students experience gender at school and what they need to thrive. Students oscillate between invisibility, experienced as exclusion, and hypervisibility, in which asserting their identity attracts negative scrutiny. This repetition creates a burden of self-advocacy that undermines belonging and learning. This gendered mechanism reveals broader patterns shaping the experiences of marginalized students navigating forms of (in)visibility. We uncover practices that reduce seesaw moments and foster belonging. The study contributes to feminist debates by theorizing gender as an intersectional, relational, and institutional process, and showing how it operates analytically, experientially and pedagogically in schools. We argue that institutional recognition and a pedagogy of trans joy are essential to affirm TNB students’ full humanity.

Authors

• Cinzia D. Solari, University of Massachusetts Boston

• Skylar Rathvon, University of Massachusetts-Boston