“Queer as hell media”: Affirming LGBTQ+ youth identity and building community in Metro Atlanta, Georgia

Abstract

Within the United States, the American South holds the largest number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ+) people, which totals to 3.8 million (LGBTQ in 2016). Metro Atlanta is uniquely situated within the South’s geography; the City of Atlanta is hailed as a queer mecca while the suburbs and surrounding rural areas are assumed to reproduce and reinforce racist, conservative, and religious ideologies. A total of 12 qualitative interviews with LGBTQ+ youth (ages 18–26) at Kennesaw State University offer a more nuanced understanding of being LGBTQ+ in the South by shedding light on the ways they thrive, form relationships, and seek out knowledge regarding LGBTQ+ identity and experience. Findings highlight that LGBTQ+ youth utilize all forms of media to affirm their identities, create like-minded communities, and take up space as a “fuck you” to the imagined cisheteronormativity in Georgia. The article centers the voices and critiques of LGBTQ+ young people as they negotiate competing discourses of queer acceptability and inclusivity, turning to new media platforms as spaces where they can find safety, as well as curate themselves and their experiences.

Keywords:

• LGBTQ+
• youth
• queer
• qualitative interviews
• Atlanta
• Southern
• new media

Acknowledgements

We are appreciative of the LGBTQ+ research participants, specifically the youth, who have shared stories with us about taking up space in the State of Georgia and curating “queer as hell media.” We also wanted to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their critical and pointed feedback, which has strengthened the manuscript for the better. We write this article for all the LGBTQ+ youth struggling to “fit in” in the State of Georgia and the South.

Notes

1 The +, positive symbol, or *, asterisk symbol: “signals greater inclusivity of new gender identities and expressions and better represents a broader community of individuals” (Tompkins, 2014, p. 27). For example, some research participants, were interpolated by the acronym LGBTQ + and identified as non-binary or demisexual.

2 Cisheteronormativity “extends the more commonly used ‘heteronormativity,’ [by] describing the oppressive, pervasive orientation and organisation [sic] of society around a compulsory heteroromantic heterosexuality, which can in turn alienate those that identify their sexuality queerly … in order to include the compulsory cisgender norm that oppresses and alienates trans people” (Marzetti, 2018, p. 702).

3 Metro Atlanta, defined by the 2012 US Census as the combined statistical area of “Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta” is used to encapsulate the City of Atlanta as well as some of the amalgamated suburban sprawls (Wilson, 2012). While Kennesaw State University is situated within the City of Kennesaw, and thus falls outside of the US Census boarder, we nonetheless use “Metro Atlanta” as a way to organize the research participants—they commute across city and county borders to go to school, work, and home.

4 It Gets Better has been widely criticized for the ways its stories and narratives reproduce the “good life”; in particular, the ways success is measured in and though economic and cultural capital. Sakal Froese and Greensmith (2019) note that the systems of inequality young people find themselves, typically mattering at school in the form of “bullying”, are rarely questioned, instead, young people, in order to be recognized, need to place themselves into neoliberal mechanisms of productivity and worth, which public figures amplify in their videos. Ellen has been criticized for her inequitable treatment of crew members, and at the age of 62, is worth $330 million (Hoffower, 2020).

Additional information

Funding

The project was funded by Kennesaw State University's Office of Diversity and Inclusion's 2018-2019 LGBTQ Faculty Fellowship program.

Notes on contributors

Cameron Greensmith

Dr Cameron Greensmith is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Work and Human Services at Kennesaw State University. His research and writing asks how queerness becomes professionalized and its impact on marginalized peoples. Dr. Greensmith's researchs investigates how professionals, in positions of power, can unlearn, give up, and work domination and oppression.

Bo King

Bo King is a Master of Social Work candidate at Kennesaw State University. He aspires to influence practice among underserved populations by utilizing his research as a means to affect policy and practice through utilizing queerness and intersectionality as lenses to challenge theoretical perspectives of normativity.