Double jeopardy: (Trans)versing higher ed as queer trans advocates

Abstract

Higher education professionals with a keen eye and commitment to advocacy face many obstacles through their work. Manifesting the realities of embodiment of these identities, with professional duties and implications can be treacherous. Evidence exists of marginalized voices being silenced by the majority when speaking about their own lived experiences and community, but how is this situated for queer and trans educators? This project aims to investigate this phenomenon to better understand how these educators transverse educational institutions who continue to relegate issues of inclusion to a tertiary level, preferencing instead neoliberal logics of diversity management regarding LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, & transgender) inclusion. Education professionals who have queer embodiments face a dilemma. Do we do our job and forsake our activist commitments, in turn, being complicit in oppression, or do we forsake our job to stand in solidarity with our kin? This project explores the way three activist-scholar navigate being an outsider in the academy. Using creative autoethnography to explore our own experiences of facing personal and professional backlash, we explore how to tear down the brick and mortar in order to build a new formation of an institution built upon radical inclusion.

Keywords:

• higher education
• trans
• queer
• autoethnography
• queer theory

Note

Notes

1 We use the term folx as an umbrella term for people with a non-normative sexual orientation or identity (Peters, 2017).