Negotiating queer and religious identities in higher education: queering ‘progression’ in the ‘university experience’

Abstract

This article addresses the negotiation of ‘queer religious’ student identities in UK higher education. The ‘university experience’ has generally been characterised as a period of intense transformation and self-exploration, with complex and overlapping personal and social influences significantly shaping educational spaces, subjects and subjectivities. Engaging with ideas about progressive tolerance and becoming, often contrasted against ‘backwards’ religious homophobia as a sentiment/space/subject ‘outside’ education, this article follows the experiences and expectations of queer Christian students. In asking whether notions of ‘queering higher education’ (Rumens 2014) ‘fit’ with queer-identifying religious youth, the article explores how educational experiences are narrated and made sense of as ‘progressive’. Educational transitions allow (some) sexual-religious subjects to negotiate identities more freely, albeit with ongoing constraints. Yet perceptions of what, where and who is deemed ‘progressive’ and ‘backwards’ with regard to sexuality and religion need to be met with caution, where the ‘university experience’ can shape and shake sexual-religious identity.

Keywords:

• Sexuality
• religion
• education
• queer youth
• transitions
• diversity

Notes

1. Respondents were overwhelmingly from middle-class backgrounds, yet prohibitive educational conditions of increased competition and tuition fees arguably render once expected or ‘entitled’ middle-class educational journeys somewhat precarious. Respondents’ compulsory educational journeys were often described rather ambivalently, also being spaces of homophobia, bullying and silences, which included the formal learning environment as well as informal spaces. Higher education was described by this mostly middle-class coherent as offering a different kind of, individually chosen, space. Much research has shown how working-class youth are excluded from educational possibilities and often very early on. The precarity of different types of middle-class youth was somewhat represented in the sample as Jacob (30 years old) describes: ‘For me? I would say I’m a traveller. I’m ready to pack and go, if the situation doesn’t go well for me. So I would say I am low class, for the moment. Low class. I would say I am a traveller. I’ve got everything … always in boxes. With the cuts, with the situation, with my own personal vulnerability, in one month or two, you know, maybe I need to go. Survival, traveller, it’s not medium class, no. I am more “pack and go”’.

2. Stonewall collates and publicises the (LGB) friendliness and attractiveness of universities, based on a 10-point ‘diversity’ measure (see: http://www.gaybydegree.org.uk). For a critique of such measures, see: ‘Degrees of Diversity in “Gay by Degree” Index: Please Count us Present – If not “Correct”’. Accessed January 5 2015. http://weekscentreforsocialandpolicyresearch.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/degrees-of-diversity-in-gay-by-degree-index-please-count-us-present-if-not-correct/.

3. Mary Lou Rasmussen has written widely on secularism, religion and sexualities, with her 2010 article unpicking secularism claims to provide ‘progressive’ sex education, as against a ‘backward' or regressive religiously orientated sex education. While sex education in itself is not the focus of our article, this argument is nonetheless useful in similarly seeking to interrogate secularism as the proper part and place of a liberal state, now seeking to protect and support ‘queer youth’ as ‘new’ or modern sexual citizens. Like Rasmussen (2010) we argue that ‘religious’ perspectives are themselves diverse and that, for example, Christian and queer religious perspectives can be intermingled.

4. Duggan (2002) untangles the ‘new homonormativity’ paradigm and sexual politics of neoliberalism by analysing the symbols of ‘progressive’, ‘old’, ‘extreme’ or radical politics of gay rights. A ‘third way’ rhetoric is now widespread in western politics: ‘It invokes a political mainstream described as reasonable, centrist and pragmatic … [t]he “new” centre is contrasted with unacceptable poles of “extremism” or “old2 politics on the Left and Right’ (2002, 176). Those who do not fit with the progressive arguments for gay acceptance become the ‘queer unwanted’ (Browne, 2011), incapable of ‘moving forwards’ or becoming mobile, choosing subjects able to shape themselves as fitting into space.

5. The definition of ‘Christian’ and indeed ‘religious’ is contested – and often especially so for youth people generally and queer youth in particular (Yip and Page 2013; Taylor and Snowdon 2014a). Various Christian denominations have articulated different perspectives that are enormously complicated and contrary (Gross and Yip 2010). The diversity within Christian organisations and practices as well as between Christian individuals is acknowledged, while this paper focuses on commonalities amongst the sample. Most participants identified with the denomination of their church: Church of England (6 participants), Methodist (3), Catholic (2), Quaker (2), Charismatic (1), Ecumenical (1), and Evangelical (1). Two participants identified as Unitarian but with Pagan and Buddhist leanings. Where churches were non-denominational, like the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) (15 participants), some participants also identified with the denomination within which they had been brought up (Church of England, 3 participants; Catholic, 2; Greek Orthodox, 1; and Methodist, 1). A substantial body of work on the LGBT population entirely disregards any religious aspect of LGBT lives or refers to such (dis)associations as negative, harmful or superficial (Jordan 2011; Gross and Yip 2010; Kubicek et al. 2009; Yip 1997). Whilst non-heterosexuality is still often associated with secularism, this study works against this dominant discourse by exploring the experiences of young LGBT people’s connections with Christianity. Rather than assume that sexuality and religion – in this case Christianity – are separate and divergent paths, the ESRC ‘Making Space for Queer Religious Youth’ project explores how they might mutually and complexly construct one another (Taylor and Snowdon 2014a, 2014b). There is considerable variety within the category of ‘Christianity’ and it is the ‘queer’ stretching, fitting (‘sounding’ and ‘feeling’) which the broader research project highlights, also questioning the binary of (non)traditional approaches and backwards versus progressive stances towards religion and sexuality. Thanks are given to the Economics and Social Research Council for financing this research [RES-062–23-2489]. Prof. Yvette Taylor is principal investigator for the project, Dr Ria Snowdon was research associate (2011–2013) and Dr Emily Falconer was research assistant (2013–2014).

6. While somewhat beyond the scope of this article, it is important to recognise that empirically research subjects are located in particular neoliberal educational times when universities self-market themselves as able to deliver on the ‘student experience’, combining and claiming particular lifestyles, benefits, positions and orientations for current and future students (see Mountford 2014). Clearly, certain universities and more adept and more resourced at this self-aligning promotion, while others risk being positioned as ‘stuck’, with the post-1992 description being a vivid temporal distinction of ‘new times’. Empirically, most of the interviewees for this research project did indeed attend traditional pre-1992 universities and, as we hint towards in the Conclusion, attention needs to be given to further classed-based distinctions in queer religious youths’ (non-)attendance, including at different types of universities.

7. McDermott (2010) remains cautious of class differences for those who are more at ease with their sexuality, and asks who gets to (self-)situate as ‘progressive’, ‘choosing’ and ‘mobile’ in and through university, education and global travel (see also Taylor 2007, 2009). This article assesses how the opportunities, freedoms and constraints afforded by the university experience affect what ‘types’ of identities emerge for queer, religious students.

8. The Civil Partnership Act 2004 allowed same-sex couples to obtain essentially the same rights and responsibilities as civil marriage in the United Kingdom.

9. Conference on Feminist Writing, Centre for Feminist Research, Goldsmiths University, 6 June 2014. Accessed November 17 2015. http://www.gold.ac.uk/centre-for-feminist-research/events-activities/ and http://www.gold.ac.uk/gold-stories/heidi-safia-mirza.php.