“Are You Trying to Make Them Gay?”: Culture Wars, Anxieties about Genderplay, and the Subsequent Impacts on Youth

Abstract

Using a queer theoretical lens, this conceptual paper explores the complexities of working with queer youth in leisure spaces by using genderplay to explore gender identity. Given the current social and political climate in Canada, researchers in this area face considerable professional road blocks from gatekeepers, despite providing often life-saving access for youth to queer mentors, community, and health resources. This paper, therefore, provides insight into the pervasiveness of the image of the child that informs the anxiety present in current political, social, and cultural discourses about queer children and the danger that image is putting these actual children in by limiting access to the above stated resources. Moreover, we expose how the image of the child is always invested in ideals of middle and upper-class whiteness, able-bodiedness, and imagined straightness from the outset, which further limits access to leisure spaces for queer children who may be otherwise marginalized.

Keywords:

• Childhood sexuality
• drag performance
• institutional review boards
• queer youth
• research ethics

Notes

1 As further evidence of the messiness of leisure research, we are unable to identify this community member’s name, position, or relationship to this project. We will add, however, that they are a gatekeeper that had the potential to limit or completely shut down the workshop, so their comment serves as a poignant example of the impact that ideologies of childhood that are rooted in heteronormativity and innocence can have on queer youth’s access to leisure and care.

2 We use the term ‘queer’ here in two ways: first, as a shorthand for the 2SLGBTQI acronym. However, we are aware that within the discourse of queer theory, from which we inherit our theoretical tools in this article, ‘queer’ is used in myriad of ways, including as a gesture to any identity that is positioned against that which is ‘normative,’ particularly within a Euro-Western society. Therefore, second, we use queer as José Muñoz (2009) does, as a horizon that may never arrive, as a becoming without end (p. 1), which is particularly useful for youth whose gender identity, sexuality, and gender expression are often in a state of constant flux.

3 It is worth noting that the person who made this comment is arguing against an individual who writes that gender play is “for children, too” and lists themselves as an “abortion dula,” so it may be abortion that has become the debate here and not gender play.

4 Despite the move of the American Psychiatric Association to replace “Gender Identity Disorder” from the DSM V and replace it with “Gender Dysphoria,” to demarcate the difference between a disordered identity and instead name a condition of distress (APA, 2013), the policing of the binary body (e.g. explicitly male or female) by helping professions continues to be acute (see Monro et al., 2019).