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Queer Youth in Straight Spaces: Tactics of Survival

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Queer Youth in Straight Spaces: Tactics of Survival Queer Youth in Straight Spaces: Tactics of Survival Author Buttigieg, Bob Published 2018-03 Thesis Type Thesis (PhD Doctorate) School School of Hum, Lang & Soc Sc DOI https://doi.org/10.25904/1912/1869 Copyright Statement The author owns the copyright in this thesis, unless stated otherwise. Downloaded from http://hdl.handle.net/10072/380562 Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au Queer Youth in Straight Spaces: Tactics of Survival Robert Buttigieg BA, BA (Hons) School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science Arts, Education & Law Griffith University Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2018 ABSTRACT This thesis draws from interviews conducted between late-2012 and mid-2013 as an ‘intimate insider’ (Taylor 2011) with twenty one young queer people living on the Gold Coast, Australia, at the time we spoke. It also draws from my own autoethnographic stories about growing up queer on the Gold Coast. Through these stories of self and others, I map out shared and unique experiences of youth, queerness, and the local setting of the city of Gold Coast, in order to identify and interrogate ‘tactics’ – in de Certeau’s (1984) sense – of survival: everyday means of ‘getting by’ in spaces that are ordered (built, controlled) by dominant forms of power (viz. ‘strategies’). These tactics provide a window into the effects and affects produced in/on young queer people by heterosexed public space and by those individuals and institutions that underwrite and authorise explicit and implicit forms of violence against us. The collection of survival tactics compiled herein, which is neither complete nor authoritative (due to the nature of tactics as products of necessity and creativity), is also in a sense an ‘instruction manual’ for young queer people who might read this thesis and draw inspiration from these everyday means of getting by, to develop their own tactics of survival. Emerging as central to my mapping of tactics are the multiple forms of friendship engaged in and developed by my participants and by me, which serve as key providers of resources in the ongoing task of survival. Collecting stories about surviving heterosexed public space and the strategies that order it is only half of the task: the final two chapters of this thesis are dedicated to means of challenging the dominant forms of power – those strategies – which impel such tactics in the first place. Dehumanisation is identified as the process underlying many instances of anti-queer rhetoric and violence, and the dual endeavours of education about and visibility for young queer people are proposed as means to produce counter-hegemonic discourses that undermine the dehumanising process. Ultimately, continuing to live, and doing so as we want, is suggested as a political task for young queer people that poses a direct challenge to heteronormative power. In this way, by becoming ‘examples’ in Agamben’s (1993) sense of the word, grounds on which we can cleave together in our simultaneous similarity and difference is produced, from which we can mobilise queer political power to improve the lot of all queer people, not just those whose lives align with the dominant, but for their sexuality. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ............................................................................................................................................. 2 Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................. 3 Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................... 5 Statement of Originality ................................................................................................................... 8 Publications arising from the Dissertation ...................................................................................... 8 Ethical Clearance ............................................................................................................................. 8 Chapter 1: Introduction .................................................................................................................... 9 Coming Out .............................................................................................................................................................. 9 Tactics ................................................................................................................................................................ 10 Narratives .......................................................................................................................................................... 12 Speaking Out ......................................................................................................................................................... 15 Heading Out .......................................................................................................................................................... 17 Chapter 2: Incoherence and Multiplicity ........................................................................................ 21 Fireworks ............................................................................................................................................................... 21 Stories of Self .................................................................................................................................................... 27 Stories of Others .............................................................................................................................................. 30 It all falls apart… .................................................................................................................................................. 32 Queer Identities and the Privilege of Identifications ................................................................................. 38 Mainstreaming .................................................................................................................................................. 41 Complicating Queer Collective Identity ....................................................................................................... 49 Chapter 3: Movements .................................................................................................................... 52 Moving Out ........................................................................................................................................................... 52 Youth and Mobility .......................................................................................................................................... 55 Queer and Mobility .......................................................................................................................................... 60 Navigating the City ............................................................................................................................................... 63 Individual ........................................................................................................................................................... 64 Spatial ................................................................................................................................................................. 65 Temporal ........................................................................................................................................................... 70 Sociocultural ..................................................................................................................................................... 70 Intersectional .................................................................................................................................................... 71 Chapter 4: Queers in Schools ......................................................................................................... 74 That’s so gay… ..................................................................................................................................................... 74 Schooling and the Hidden Curriculum ............................................................................................................. 78 3 Surviving School .............................................................................................................................................. 85 Sex Education ................................................................................................................................................... 91 Chapter 5: Surviving the City .......................................................................................................... 97 Loitering ................................................................................................................................................................. 97 Producing the City ................................................................................................................................................ 99 Feeling Wrong ..................................................................................................................................................... 104 Surviving the Nightlife ......................................................................................................................................
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