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Critical Perspectives on Youth
Growing Up Queer: Kids and the Remaking of LGBTQ Identity
LGBTQ kids reveal what it’s like to be young and queer today
Growing Up Queer explores the changing ways that young people are now becoming LGBT-identified in the US. Through interviews and three years of ethnographic research at an LGBTQ youth drop-in center, Mary Robertson focuses on the voices and stories of youths themselves in order to show how young people understand their sexual and gender identities, their interest in queer media, and the role that family plays in their lives.
The young people who participated in this research are among the first generation to embrace queer identities as children and adolescents. This groundbreaking and timely consideration of queer identity demonstrates how sexual and gender identities are formed through complicated, ambivalent processes as opposed to being natural characteristics that one is born with. In addition to showing how youth understand their identities, Growing Up Queer describes how young people navigate queerness within a culture where being gay is the “new normal.” Using Sara Ahmed’s concept of queer orientation, Robertson argues that being queer is not just about one’s sexual and/or gender identity, but is understood through intersecting identities including race, class, ability, and more. By showing how society accepts some kinds of LGBTQ-identified people while rejecting others, Growing Up Queer provides evidence of queerness as a site of social inequality. The book moves beyond an oversimplified examination of teenage sexuality and shows, through the voices of young people themselves, the exciting yet complicated terrain of queer adolescence.
Growing Up Queer explores the changing ways that young people are now becoming LGBT-identified in the US. Through interviews and three years of ethnographic research at an LGBTQ youth drop-in center, Mary Robertson focuses on the voices and stories of youths themselves in order to show how young people understand their sexual and gender identities, their interest in queer media, and the role that family plays in their lives.
The young people who participated in this research are among the first generation to embrace queer identities as children and adolescents. This groundbreaking and timely consideration of queer identity demonstrates how sexual and gender identities are formed through complicated, ambivalent processes as opposed to being natural characteristics that one is born with. In addition to showing how youth understand their identities, Growing Up Queer describes how young people navigate queerness within a culture where being gay is the “new normal.” Using Sara Ahmed’s concept of queer orientation, Robertson argues that being queer is not just about one’s sexual and/or gender identity, but is understood through intersecting identities including race, class, ability, and more. By showing how society accepts some kinds of LGBTQ-identified people while rejecting others, Growing Up Queer provides evidence of queerness as a site of social inequality. The book moves beyond an oversimplified examination of teenage sexuality and shows, through the voices of young people themselves, the exciting yet complicated terrain of queer adolescence.
- GenresNonfictionLGBT
224 pages, Paperback
First published November 27, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 19, 2020
Assigned class reading. A bit of an academic read, but not so much that it is bogged down.
There were three basic definitions: Queer as slur, the Queer movement in response to the slur that seeks to deconstruct labeling around gender and sexuality and promote equity, and Queer as a verb - as in being set outside the norm (so, in part slur in verb form, but a bit broader). The last one is where it felt muddy. I felt some non-heteronormative things were rolled into Queerness as an example of being set outside the social norm, but it seemed to dilute the purpose of the Queer movement and the reasons for specifically deconstructing gendered labels or those attached to sexuality. But I may be wrong in that and I was glad for a better understanding of queer in general.
There was a lot of good information that invites a rethinking of the binary model of gender identity and gender roles. Great information about gender and sexuality and the spectrum of identity and presentation. I.E. same-sex behavior does not necessarily equate to homosexual identity, and so forth.
Overall this sparked in me the feeling that it would be an amazing world to grow up in, where you could ask yourself: who do I like? who do I feel like? how do I feel about that? as questions un-weighted by social expectations, whether those are secular or religious. Imagine moving into adolescence without struggling with questions of being 'too' feminine or masculine, or not enough, or worrying about attraction indicating an unwanted identity (or worrying about a lack of attraction). My generation didn't have that and the idea of future generations having that freedom to figure it out without fear of hellfire or discrimination is a wonderful ideal to aim for.
There were three basic definitions: Queer as slur, the Queer movement in response to the slur that seeks to deconstruct labeling around gender and sexuality and promote equity, and Queer as a verb - as in being set outside the norm (so, in part slur in verb form, but a bit broader). The last one is where it felt muddy. I felt some non-heteronormative things were rolled into Queerness as an example of being set outside the social norm, but it seemed to dilute the purpose of the Queer movement and the reasons for specifically deconstructing gendered labels or those attached to sexuality. But I may be wrong in that and I was glad for a better understanding of queer in general.
There was a lot of good information that invites a rethinking of the binary model of gender identity and gender roles. Great information about gender and sexuality and the spectrum of identity and presentation. I.E. same-sex behavior does not necessarily equate to homosexual identity, and so forth.
Overall this sparked in me the feeling that it would be an amazing world to grow up in, where you could ask yourself: who do I like? who do I feel like? how do I feel about that? as questions un-weighted by social expectations, whether those are secular or religious. Imagine moving into adolescence without struggling with questions of being 'too' feminine or masculine, or not enough, or worrying about attraction indicating an unwanted identity (or worrying about a lack of attraction). My generation didn't have that and the idea of future generations having that freedom to figure it out without fear of hellfire or discrimination is a wonderful ideal to aim for.
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December 12, 2024As an ethnographic study of a queer youth center, it does its job. Fittingly, though frustratingly, as an academic monograph, the text and terms already feels a bit behind its 2019 publication date, given the time it takes to complete and then publish research and the speed of shifts within identity language currently occurring.
But the title implies a much broader cultural examination of changing patterns in identity formation and expressions of queerness in younger generations than the actual scope of this very focused sample study. So i'm letting it go at 50% through. This will no doubt be a useful resource for continued scholarship, but ethnography just doesn't reach far enough into the questions I brought to the text.
But the title implies a much broader cultural examination of changing patterns in identity formation and expressions of queerness in younger generations than the actual scope of this very focused sample study. So i'm letting it go at 50% through. This will no doubt be a useful resource for continued scholarship, but ethnography just doesn't reach far enough into the questions I brought to the text.
January 29, 2019
I picked this up in our library's new book section, thinking it was a book written for popular consumption. Imagine my surprise when the book turned out to be a scholarly tome written largely for sociologists. The author admits that the book wasn't exactly what she had intended, and that she is untrained in the type of qualitative research that is the foundation of the book. With that disclaimer, I'm surprised this book made it to press. It is not for the faint of heart, written in a boring, turgid scholastic style, and with weird section breaks. It was hard for me to draw much conclusion from this extremely limited study at one site. I did learn some things about distinctions between "queer" and "gay" but I wonder how generalizable the experiences are.
January 26, 2021
A very useful text for both academics and practitioners alike. The researcher presents a clear and well researched argument for approaching LGBTQ youth from a growth and strengths focused approach. The author articulate a very strong argument against the narrative that queer youth are “in crisis.”
September 17, 2019
reviewed for VOYA magazine. Not sure why they pegged this YA since it is clearly an academic paper and highly discombobulating.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews