Speaking back to gender-based violence in New Brunswick schools through queer maker literacies with 2SLGBTQ+ youth

ABSTRACT

Schools are a site of gender-based violence for queer, trans, and non-binary youth. Drawing on a participatory visual research project with three queer, trans, and non-binary youth, we argue that selfie and cellphilm production offer a glimpse into queer maker literacies. We suggest that the practice of making do-it-yourself (DIY) media productions with queer youth and older community collaborators in out-of-school settings provides opportunities for new intergenerational friendships and networks to be built. Through a discussion of the processes of critical making within the workshop, and the themes that arise in the cellphilm, including gender-based violence, queer experiences of school structures – and the way that friendship is positioned in relation to solidarity, collaboration, and speaking back – we argue that through facilitation and co-production of media, workshop spaces can be engineered with participants as spaces of solidarity, action, and safety even amidst institutional settings.

KEYWORDS:

• 2SLGBTQ+
• cellphilms
• gender-based violence
• New Brunswick
• queer maker literacies
• youth

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The acronym 2SLGBTQ+ refers to Two Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and the + refers to the complexity of sexual and gender identities not encompassed in the first letters of the acronym.

2 Status of Women Canada (2020) defines gender-based violence as ‘Gender-based violence, commonly referred to by its acronym GBV, is violence that is committed against someone based on their gender identity, gender expression or perceived gender. If you look closely, you will see the roots of GBV all around you – in the jokes that demean members of the LGBTQI2+ community, in the media messages that objectify women, and in the rigid gender norms imposed on young children’ (1).

3 We are compelled to use the term ‘queer’ throughout the paper, drawing on the work of Michael Warner who suggested, ‘The preference for “queer” represents, among other things, an aggressive impulse of generalization; it rejects a minoritizing logic of toleration or simple political interest-representation in favor of a more thorough resistance to regimes of the normal’ (1993, xxvi). In our work, queer refers to a spectrum of sexual and gender identities.

4 Of course, we acknowledge that people experience multiple categories of difference, and point to New Brunswick artists and activists, such as, Indigo Poirer, and Jeremy Dutcher as examples of those whose identities are at the intersection of matrices of oppression, and highlight how their activism and the civic contributions of their communities and ancestors have been erased from inclusion in compulsory schooling curricula. We also note that our examples are young people, and how few historical examples we draw as their contributions have been minimized and/or erased.

5 All participants have been provided with pseudonym.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number 430-2018-00264]; New Brunswick Innovation Fund under the Emerging Projects [grant number 2019-005].