1 I use the acronym “LGBTQ” as an umbrella term to describe people who are not straight and/or cisgender identified because it seems to be the most commonly understood way to collectively describe this group. Throughout the book, while continuing to use “LGBTQ,” I simultaneously problematize the various identities the acronym encompasses, the ways it conflates sexuality and gender, and the ways it conflates queerness with non-heterosexual sexualities and gender normative people.
All names of people and places in this book are pseudonyms to protect the privacy and confidentiality of the research participants.
Regarding pronouns, I asked interviewees to share their gender identity with me but did not ask what pronouns they use. I did not realize what an oversight this was until I was completing the book and found myself unsure in a few cases which pronouns a youth uses. Therefore I use the pronouns that, to the best of my memory, the youth regularly used to describe themselves and their peers in the space. While five interviewees described their gender identity as non-binary (using various terms), it was not the case that these same youths insisted that others use gender neutral pronouns to refer to them. The most common scenario among Spectrum youth who did not state a preference for a gender binary pronoun was to state that they did not care what pronouns people used to describe them. Therefore, I am fairly confident that I have used pronouns that the youths themselves would identify with, but I acknowledge that I may have erred in a few cases and offer my apologies. I discuss pronouns in much more detail in chapter 3.
2 Ghaziani (2010).
3 In her book Queer Phenomenology, Sara Ahmed (2006: 19) borrows a phrase from landscape architecture as a metaphor for orientation, “desire lines,” which describe “unofficial paths, those marks left on the ground that show everyday comings and goings, where people deviate from the paths they are supposed to follow. . . . Such lines are indeed traces of desire; where people have taken different routes to get to this point or that point.” While heterosexual desire would be an example of a path one is “supposed to follow,” I’m arguing here that it still suggests choosing a path.
4 Ahmed (2006): 566.
5 Ahmed (2006): 554.
6 Waidzunas (2012): 219.
7 Savin-Williams (2005): 21.
8 Pascoe (2007): 65.
9 See Fields’s (2008) ethnography of how debates over abstinence-only-before-marriage sex education versus comprehensive sex education play out across three different school districts in North Carolina. She finds that administrators and educators advocate very differently for students depending on their race and class and that sex education curriculums are heterosexist and heteronormative.
10 For more on the ways that girls, people of color, and LGBTQ-identified people often bear the brunt of sexual health interventions, see Fields (2008); and M. Fine and S. McClelland (2006).
11 For good examples of the point I am trying to make here, see Cauterucci (2016) and P. Y. Lee (2016), two editorials on the way women are held solely responsible for pregnancy in the wake of recent outbreaks of the Zika virus in Latin America.
12 Dennis Altman (1994: 508) discusses the ways that community organizations responded to the HIV/AIDS crisis in the face of neoliberal policies that privatized various services that had once been the responsibility of the state via public health departments. He states, “If the epidemic developed in a world of structural adjustments and privatization, it also developed in a world in which feminism and gay assertion meant the existence, in at least some places, of existing organizations and communities able to respond to the new crisis. The very idea that community-based organizations should play a leading role in meeting the challenge of a public health crisis is related to a whole series of political and social developments over the past twenty years.” In the United States, as community organizations like LGBTQ centers responded to the HIV/AIDS crisis in the face of government neglect, these organizations became de facto experts on matters of public and sexual health. It was through the efforts of community organizations, not the government, that accurate, evidence-based information about how to prevent the spread of diseases like HIV made their way into communities.
13 Overby (2014).
14 For more on how strategic essentialism has been important to LGBTQ identity and social movements, see Gamson (1995); Seidman (1993); and Vance (1989).
15 For a concise account of how social constructionism in sociology pre-dated and therefore influenced queer theory, see Epstein (1994). See Ward (2015: 84) for a critical account of the “hegemony of bio-evolutionary accounts of sexual desire.”
16 Rich (1980); Rubin (1984); and Warner (1993).
17 Ferguson (2004): 149.
18 Nagel (2003); and Stoler (1995).
19 Beyond the notion that choosing not to have children resists the straightening effects of heteronormativity, Edelman (2004) argues (largely symbolically) that refusing to reproduce is a queer act in that one refuses to perpetuate myths about a hopeful future.
20 On the least-adult role, see Mandell (1998).
21 See Mean Girls (2004).
22 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2009).
23 “Assent” is the term used to distinguish a child’s agreement to participate in human subjects research from “consent,” the term used to describe an adult’s agreement to participate. Although the two terms are very similar in meaning, assent is not legally binding since a minor is not a legal adult.
24 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2009).
25 Williams (2014): 232.
26 For more on the social construction of adolescence and youth, see Best (2011); Buchholtz (2002); and Lesko (1996).
27 Waidzunas (2015); and Ward (2015).
1 When I was at Spectrum, the survey had about one hundred questions in total and was completed by youth on a computer. Although the hope on the part of the researchers was that every new visitor to Spectrum would complete a survey, this required quite a bit of diligence on the part of the staff. Therefore, completion rates were quite low. It’s possible that this was a result of some resistance on the part of the staff to subject youth to research surveillance, but it also could have simply been a result of failed communication.
2 Ghaziani (2010).
3 Protection of privacy and confidentiality as determined by human subjects research protocols prevents me from identifying the name and location of the city in which I did my research and therefore prevents me from citing the source of this demographic data.
4 Dank (1971); and Plummer (1981).
5 Although many would argue that the Stonewall and Compton Lunch Counter riots in New York City and San Francisco were youth led, there was not a visible youth movement comparable to that of the Civil Rights Movement’s Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, for example.
6 Miceli (2005).
7 See Melinda Miceli’s (2005) work for a comprehensive history of LGBTQ youth organizing in the 1980s and 1990s, in particular regarding gay-straight alliances (GSAs) in schools.
8 Gibson (1989).
9 See the sociologist Tom Waidzunas’s article (2012) for a complex explanation of the matter of the Gibson numbers and the resulting risk/resilience narratives about gay youth. See also Gibson (1989); Miceli (2005); Savin-Williams (2005).
10 The sociologist Tom Waidzunas (2012) uses Ian Hacking’s (2006) idea of “making up people” in his thorough exploration of the rise of the gay youth suicide discourse. In order to argue that LGBTQ youth are vulnerable in society, they have to be countable, which requires a shared understanding of what defines an LGBTQ youth. Is it based on self-identification? Identification by others? Sexual conduct? Genderqueerness? As the LGBTQ youth subject has become institutionalized in society through resources like GSAs and LGBTQ centers, for example, the very subject under investigation changes. In other words, there is a risk of essentializing sexual orientation/identity by labeling gay youth “at-risk,” rather than focusing attention on the social conditions that give rise to problems like homophobic bullying.
11 Miceli (2005): 4.
12 Marx and Kettrey (2016): 1269.
13 Walls, Kane, and Wisneski (2010).
14 Kosciw et al. (2016).
15 CenterLink (n.d.).
16 Romijinders et al. (2017): 346.
17 Herdt and Boxer (1993).
18 Whittier (1994): 290.
19 Hacking (2006): 23. It is thanks to Tom Waidzunas (2012) that I discovered Hacking’s article “Making Up People,” which influenced my thinking here.
20 Barnes (2013); and Bumiller (2011).
21 Calmes and Baker (2012).
22 Parker-Pope (2010).
23 Markoe (2012).
24 Dvorak (2012); and Padawer (2012).
25 Although the 113th Congress passed ENDA, it never went up for a vote in the House of Representatives, as it was not expected to get the votes it needed to pass. After Congress’s vote of support, President Obama signed an executive LGBT non-discrimination order that applies to federal contractors and protects federal employees. As I write this, ENDA has still not passed into federal law. In March 2017, President Trump rescinded the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Order, an Obama-era executive order, effectively preventing the federal government from ensuring compliance with the LGBT non-discrimination order.
26 Ford (2017).
27 Fording (2017).
28 Peters, Becker, and Davis (2017).
29 Hirschfeld Davis and Cooper (2017).
30 Southern Poverty Law Center (2017).
31 Donovan (2017).
32 Leatherby, Manibog, and Kao (2016).
33 See Lilla (2016) and Soave (2016) for discussions about the effect so-called political correctness had on the election of Donald Trump for president. To be clear, I am not arguing that it is in fact true that identity politics resulted in Trump’s election. Rather, among those who voted for him, there is a pattern of expressing a strong distaste for identity politics and political correctness.
34 Schilt and Westbrook (2015).
35 Judith Halberstam (2005): 37.
36 Mary L. Gray’s (2009) award-winning ethnography, Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America, is a good example of sociological research that complicates the urban/rural divide as relates to sexuality and youth.
37 Marantz (2017); and Penny (2017).
38 Penny (2017).
39 Marantz (2017).
40 Peters, Alter, and Grynbaum (2017).
1 Warner (1993): xxiii.
2 Ahmed (2006): 562.
3 Puar (2007): 3. Much of my analysis regarding the queer orientation of the youth of Spectrum is strongly influenced by Jasbir K. Puar’s (2007) Terrorist Assemblages: Internationalism in Queer Times.
4 Ahmed (2006): 566.
5 This example using the non-sexual interaction with a doctor to describe sexual scripts comes from Gagnon and Simon (1973).
6 D’Augelli, Grossman, and Starks (2008); Gibson (1989); and Savin-Williams (1998).
7 Savin-Williams discusses this point in his book The New Gay Teenager. He attempts to clarify a variety of misleading assumptions about the origins of same-sex attraction and orientation, including the notion that gender atypical kids must be gay. He states, “Perhaps the best early subjective predictor of a same-sex orientation is a child’s feeling of being different from peers. Objectively, this is usually linked to atypical gender expression. In other words, if ‘inverted’ in one, then ‘inverted’ in the other. . . . Influenced by stereotypes of their culture, adolescents with same-sex attractions come to understand that their pervasive sense that something is ‘not quite right’ and their acting like a tomboy or a sissy are the first signs of homosexuality” (Savin-Williams 2005: 94). He goes on to explain, as I have as well, that gender atypicality is most certainly not a universal experience of those who have same-sex attraction and orientation.
8 See Stephen Seidman’s (1994) Beyond the Closet, where he argues that same-sex sexuality is becoming more normalized and therefore heterosexuality less compulsory. He asserts that people are more likely to identify themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual and less likely to conceal these identities among family, friends, and co-workers. In his book Straights (2015), James Dean looks specifically at how many straight women are more likely to embrace sexual fluidity and reject notions of compulsory heterosexuality, especially compared to straight men.
9 Ward (2015).
10 Ferguson (2004): 53.
11 Ferguson (2004): 149.
12 Magic: The Gathering is a trading card game, and D&D is Dungeons & Dragons, a role-playing game.
13 Warner (2000).
14 Duggan (2004): 50.
15 Warner (1993).
16 The Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), the leading advocacy group for LGBTQ kids in the United States, formed in 1990 and began conducting its biennial National School Climate Survey on the school-based experiences of LGBTQ youth in 1999. Prior to the 1990s and the rise of the gay-straight alliance (GSA) movement, there was virtually no acknowledgment of LGBTQ students in schools, but of course that does not mean there were no LGBTQ-identified young people prior to this time. See Miceli (2005) for more on GSAs.
17 Ward (2015): 202.
18 Seidman, Meeks, and Traschen (1999).
19 The well-known sex advice columnist and gay rights activist Dan Savage’s (2015) critique of NYU Press’s description of Jane Ward’s (2015) Not Gay is a good example of this.
20 Diamond (2008); Waidzunas (2015); and Ward (2015).
21 Pascoe (2007).
22 Waidzunas (2015): 16.
1 When I was conducting fieldwork around 2010–2013, “preferred gender pronoun” was the language being used in queer spaces like Spectrum. Since then, it has become more acceptable to drop the “preferred” part, as it suggests one’s gender is somehow inauthentic. I’ve chosen to use “preferred” in my account since it is consistent with what was happening at the time.
2 Ahmed (2006): 60.
3 Butler (2004): 216.
4 Butler (2004): 217.
5 Muñoz (2009): 185.
6 Stryker (2006): 9.
7 Serano (2007); Stryker (2007); and Stryker and Currah (2014).
8 Dean (2015): 249.
9 Each of the following three readings are nuanced discussions about the intertwining relationship between gender and sexuality: Gagné, Tewksbury, and McGaughey (1997); Valentine (2004); and Vidal-Ortiz (2002).
10 As Valentine (2007) explains, the term “transgender” was not widely in use until the mid-1990s in the United States. Therefore, the use of this term to describe children is a new phenomenon. See Meadow (2011, 2018) and Travers (2018) for more on the experiences of parents raising transgender, gender non-conforming, and genderqueer kids.
11 Dvorak (2012); and Padawer (2012).
12 Walsh (2015).
13 Petrusich (2015).
14 Kessler and McKenna (1978).
15 Kessler and McKenna (1978).
16 One of the reviewers of this book commented that she was surprised at these findings since her gender studies students are very adept at using gender neutral pronouns. While I think there are certain geographical and cultural locations where the use of gender neutral pronouns are becoming more common, my research leads me to believe that these places remain exceptions to the norm in the United States.
17 Lucal (1999): 785.
18 For more on the pathologizing of trans*, see Bryant (2008); Butler (2004); Irvine (1990); Mason-Shrock (1996); and Stone (1991).
19 Parekh (2016), citing American Psychiatric Association (2013).
20 The Parable of the Lamp is found in three of the New Testament gospels, Matthew 5:14–15, Mark 4:21–25, and Luke 8:16–18.
21 Butler (1990).
22 Lucal (1999): 791.
23 In my interviews with youth who identified as transgender, I intentionally did not press for information about surgeries, medical treatments, or hormone therapies because I felt that doing so would reinforce existing ideas about who is and is not a legitimate trans* person. Some participants disclosed this information to me, and at times I mention these details when I think it’s contextually important, but it was not the case that among the people I interviewed being trans* also meant taking hormones or having surgeries. I approached this matter from the perspective described by the critical studies scholar Julian Carter (2014: 235), who discusses the term “transition” for TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly: “Many North American trans-communities insist that ‘everyone transitions in their own way’: open-ended refusal to define ‘transition’ is a principled stance against institutionalizing any given form of trans-being. Such resistance reflects decades of struggle over who decides what counts as legitimate trans-/gender expression—struggle that clings to the word itself.” Therefore, when I talk about gender attribution and how secondary and tertiary sex characteristics play a role in how we interpret each other’s gender, I’m not concerned with how a person came by these characteristics but, rather, how they function in the attribution process.
24 Hormone replacement therapies involve prescribing hormones or hormone blockers to people for a variety of different reasons. For transgender people, hormone replacement therapy is a form of gender confirming healthcare that can alter the effects of secondary sex characteristics in order to align with one’s gender identity.
25 For more on being genderqueer or gender ambiguous, while not feeling as if one is the “wrong” gender or wanting to change gender, see Devor’s (1989) concept of “gender bending,” Judith Halberstam’s (1998) “female masculinity,” and Lucal’s (1999) personal experience of embodying gender ambiguity.
26 See Davidson (2007) for a smart and concise discussion of the ways in which the term “transgender,” as an umbrella term, is understood within the trans* community. In particular, Davidson addresses some of the contestation between those people who have transitioned from one gender to another (transbinary) and those who embrace gender fluidity and non-binary gender.
27 Spade (2011): 152.
28 In October 2017, the State of California became the first to allow a non-binary gender option on birth certificates. Both Washington and Oregon have non-binary gender options on driver’s licenses.
29 Westbrook and Schilt (2013).
30 Schilt and Westbrook (2009).
31 North Carolina General Assembly (2016).
32 U.S. Department of Justice (2016).
33 Schilt and Westbrook (2009).
34 David Valentine (2004) troubles the relationship between sexuality and gender as categories showing how once we assign a label to an experience, there is a risk that the label becomes the fact, not the experience. He is pointing to the difference between a theoretical separation of gender and sexuality—often in the service of social justice activism, academic research, and service provision—and the actual lived experience of one’s gender and sexuality, which is interwoven. Valentine suggests there is some risk in society’s increasing emphasis on gender identity. How much do the categories—often created to describe others—come to subsume people’s lived experience of their sexualities and/or genders? Further, whose genders and sexualities get erased in the process of categorization?
1 Weinrich (1997): 62.
2 For a sampling of various empirical studies and theoretical analyses on this topic, see Bryson (2007); Craig et al. (2015); Gray (2009); Jack J. Halberstam (2012a); Muise (2011); Saraswati (2013); Stryker (2008); and Weinrich (1997).
3 Pascoe (2011). See also Craig et al. (2015).
4 Charmaraman and McKamey (2011) used focus groups with urban-based youth to learn about sexuality and relationships. Media was found to be a common and influential way that youth were exposed to and learned about sexuality.
5 Prensky (2001).
6 Döring (2009); and Weber, Quiring, and Dauschmann (2012).
7 Weber, Quiring, and Dauschmann (2012): 410.
8 Pascoe (2011).
9 Goffman (1959).
10 Gagnon and Simon (1973).
11 Gagnon (2004): 118.
12 Gagnon (2004): 125.
13 Green (2008): 605.
14 Green (2008): 606.
15 Fejes and Petrich (1993); and Keilwasser and Wolf (1992).
16 Sedgwick (1991).
17 Russo (1981): 27.
18 Russo (1981): 30.
19 G. Black (1994).
20 G. Black (1994).
21 Silence of the Lambs (1991).
22 Russo (1981): 52.
23 Avila-Saavedra (2009).
24 Avila-Saavedra (2009); and Kanner (2003).
25 Jack J. Halberstam (2012a): xix.
26 Napier (2005).
27 Roncero-Menendez (2014).
28 Hall (2010).
29 Cartoon Network Wiki (n.d.); and Anime Savvy (2010).
30 Roncero-Menendez (2014).
31 The closest U.S. equivalent to the Japanese host/hostess bar might be a strip club, but host club workers do not typically engage in nudity, dancing, or sex acts inside the clubs; they play the role of chaperone while entertaining their upscale clients and, most important, getting them to spend as much money as possible while in the club. Ouran High School Host Club is not a depiction of high schoolers engaging in sex work; rather, the host club is a social space where the wealthy girls of Ouran High go for fun and to flirt with boys.
32 InuYasha Wiki (n.d.).
33 Napier (2005): 13.
34 Napier (2005).
35 Rowling (1997–2007).
36 R. Black (2008): 13.
37 Collins (2008–2010); Meyer (2005–2008); and Rowling (1997–2007).
38 Thorn (2004): 183.
39 R. Black (2008); Busse (2005); Jenkins (1992); Kustritz (2003); Scodari and Felder (2000); and Somogyi (2002).
40 Jenkins (1992): 219.
41 Thorn (2004): 179.
42 Mizoguchi (2010): 159.
43 Welker (2006): 866.
1 In her work examining the social construction of the pedophile and its relationship to shoring up the patriarchal family, Elise Chenier (2012: 174) claims, “In the modern western state, the family is ground zero for sexual normalization.” See also Ferguson (2004); and Stoler (1995).
2 D. Smith (1993).
3 Stacey (1993): 545.
4 Hill Collins (1994); Neubeck and Cazenave (2001); D. Roberts (2002); and Stoler (1995).
5 The Moynihan Report is a 1965 report published by the then assistant secretary of labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan, titled The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. Moynihan’s objective was to convince Congress that civil rights legislation by itself would not solve the problem of racial inequality, arguing that some of the causes of inequality could be found within the structure of the Black family itself. The Moynihan Report has been a source of fierce debate since it was published, one of the strongest critiques being that it blames the Black family for problems that are in fact institutionalized in U.S. society. See Geary (2015) for an annotated edition of the Report published in the Atlantic.
6 Bennett and Battle (2001): 56.
7 See Ferguson (2004).
8 For more on ways that heteropatriarchal family formation makes women and children vulnerable to violence and reinforces gender norms, see Chenier (2012); Gordon (1988); Kaye (2005); and Stacey (1993).
9 See Moore’s (2011) work on gay Black women, in particular her discussion of the recent shift among Black people to live openly as gay, which Moore argues is resulting in shifting norms around homosexuality in Black communities. See also Weston (1991).
10 See Weston (1991) on LGBTQ kinship. For more on shifting norms regarding same-sex parents and families, see Biblarz, Carroll, and Burke (2014).
11 Martin et al. (2009); and Savin-Williams and Dubé (1998).
12 D’Augelli, Grossman, and Starks (2008); Gibson (1989); Herdt (1989); Savin-Williams (1998); and Troiden (1989).
13 See Savin-Williams (2001) for a complex analysis of problems with the data on sexual minorities and suicide, in particular his discussion of the “suffering suicidal” script.
14 The reader should understand that I am primarily referring here to the coming-out experiences of sexual-minority youths, and this discussion does not necessarily reflect the experiences of young people coming out to their parents as transgender.
15 The gender atypical children in question do not include trans-identified youths but, rather, cisgender youths whose gender expression and presentation marks them as atypical males or atypical females. See D’Augelli, Grossman, and Starks (2005).
16 Savin-Williams (2005).
17 D’Augelli, Grossman, and Starks (2005); and Savin-Williams and Dubé (1998).
18 Seidman, Meeks, and Traschen (1999).
19 Stacey and Biblarz (2001).
20 Judith Halberstam (2005): 40.
21 Moore (2011).
22 Newman and Muzzonigro (1993).
23 Edin and Kefalas (2005); and Fields (2001).
24 Fields (2001).
25 Fields (2001).
26 Jack J. Halberstam (2012a): 58.
1 Fausto-Sterling (1993, 2000b); E. Stein (1999); and Wade (2013).
2 Hill Collins (1990).
3 Schwartz (2012): 13.
4 Schwartz (2012): 43.
5 Jack J. Halberstam (2012b).
6 Jack J. Halberstam (2012a): 26.
7 Jack J. Halberstam (2012a): 81.
8 In October of 2017, the State of California became the first to allow a non-binary gender option on birth certificates. Both Washington and Oregon have non-binary gender options on driver’s licenses. For more on how institutions regulate gender, see Currah and Mulqueen (2011); Fogg Davis (2017); and Spade (2011).
9 Preston and Cushman (2012).
10 In “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” Gayle Rubin (1984: 13) describes a hierarchy of sexual value in which “good, normal, natural, and blessed” sexuality—like heterosexuality, monogamy, reproductive sex, and vanilla sex—resides within the “charmed circle,” while “bad, abnormal, unnatural, and damned” sexuality—like homosexuality, promiscuity, unmarried sex, and sadomasochistic sex—resides in the “outer limits.”
11 For more on whiteness and the color line, see Gans (1999); J. Lee and F. Bean (2004); and Steinberg (2004).
12 Duggan (2004); Ferguson (2004); and Puar (2005).
13 For a particularly surprising look at some of the ways the state compels asylum seekers to prove their sexual identities, see Rachel A. Lewis’s (2014) Sexualities article.
14 See the concluding chapter in Waidzunas (2015), in which, based on his research in Uganda, he makes a compelling argument for rethinking the way human rights agendas frame sexual orientation.
15 In her book Respectably Queer, Jane Ward (2008: 149) calls for “a movement-based return to ethics” and a rejection of profit-motivated calls for equality.
16 Gilmore (2007); Rodríguez (2007); and Spade (2011).
17 Ahmed (2006): 570.
18 Black Lives Matter (2017a).
19 Black Lives Matter (2017b).
20 Stryker (2008): 150.
21 Stryker (2008): 150. See also Spade (2011).
22 These are common stereotypes or myths that circulate within the LGBTQ community, so common, in fact, that the young people in our discussion group had no problem identifying them when prompted. A colloquial reference to research similar to that found in American Couples: Money, Work, Sex by the sociologists Philip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz (1983) suggests that women in long-term lesbian relationships tended toward being less sexually active than other couple formations. The notion of lesbian bed death has been criticized for being a myth and not truly representative of lesbian intimacy. In contrast, gay men are portrayed in the popular imagination as hypersexual partiers who use drugs to intensify sex. Again, while there is no denying that sex and partying are components of gay male culture, they are not actually representative of all gay men. Finally, stereotypes of transgender people often result in either hypersexualization—as in the transwoman sex worker—or asexualization—the idea that trans people are not sexually desirable.