Tilburg University Resisting homonormativity Tilsen, J.B. Publication date: 2010 Link to publication in Tilburg University Research Portal Citation for published version (APA): Tilsen, J. B. (2010). Resisting homonormativity: Therapeutic conversations with queer youth. Prismaprint. 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Download date: 03. okt. 2021 Resisting homonormativity 1 Resisting Homonormativity: Therapeutic Conversations with Queer Youth Julie Tilsen Resisting homonormativity 2 Abstract Youth who are queer-identified face many challenges in a heteronormative and increasingly homonormative world. Among those challenges is how to construct and maintain performance of a queer identity within the dominance of the gender binary and hegemony of essentialist notions of identity. Traditional developmental theories posit that the goal of identity development is the attainment of a sustainable and fixed identity. While contemporary inquiries into queer youth development have offered some critiques of traditional developmental models, the alternatives generated from these critiques continue to rely on the notion of “development.” This reliance reifies the regulatory regime produced by any developmental model. The very notion of “development” is an inappropriate metaphor to guide queerness; rather, queer is constitutive and non-essentialist, thus requiring a metaphor of construction and performance. Consequently, the queering of one’s identity is consistently threatened by dominant cultural practices that attempt to fix, limit, police, and regulate individuals toward stable notions of the “self.” The purpose of this dissertation is to center the experiences of queer youth by creating a queer space for conversations about identity. As a discursive frame, these insider knowledges will share the page with academic literacies from queer and post-structural theory in support of a radical queer re-conceptualization of identity, therapeutic practice, and youth-adult relationships. This dissertation will attempt to bridge the gap between the practice of therapy and the bodies of scholarship generated within interdisciplinary fields of study such as queer theory and cultural studies. Resisting homonormativity 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Title Page.................................................................................................................................1 Abstract....................................................................................................................................2 Table of Contents....................................................................................................................3 Acknowledgements.................................................................................................................6 Chapter 1 Introduction...........................................................................................................8 Bridging the worlds of theory, practice and lived experiences.........................................8 Queer conversations, queering conversations, queered research....................................11 Meeting the participants..................................................................................................13 Practice implications.......................................................................................................14 Chapter 2 Social Construction and Queer Theory: The Audacity of Difference.................16 Social construction 101.............................................................................................16 Discourse and knowledge: Toward multiple realities.........................................18 Un-doing interiority.............................................................................................27 From identity to relationship, from essence to text.............................................29 Beyond text to discourse.....................................................................................31 Queer theory: Queering theory, theorizing queer.....................................................35 Queer theory and social construction..................................................................35 Queer theory: Out of the head and into the embodied.........................................38 How did we get so queer? A briefly queer history..............................................44 It’s a white thang, right? Intersectionality and becoming visible in the queer Sphere..................................................................................................................49 Resisting homonormativity 4 Chapter 3 Re-search, We-search: De-methodologizing Conversations of Meaning...........55 Part 1—From methodology to de-methodologizing.................................................56 Ethical inquiry through relational engagement.......................................56 Queer theory, radical research.................................................................60 Part 2—The story of this de-methodology................................................................62 Background to this inquiry project (Or, How did I get here?)................62 Language (Or, What do I call these people that are telling me what to write?)......................................................................................................64 The creation of the Q-squad (Or, How did all these people end up in my living room?)......................................................................................65 Setting (Or, How to be sure not to engage in “research”).....................72 Process of inquiry (Or, How to just have a conversation...or a conversation that’s just)..........................................................................74 Impact of the inquiry process (Or, What did they think about this mess?)......................................................................................................76 Part 3—Use of material from the inquiry process...............................................78 Chapter 4 Queer as youth: Resisting the homonormative of identity development............79 Introduction...............................................................................................................79 Stage one: Resisting hegemony................................................................................81 Stage two: Undoing development.............................................................................83 Stage three: Coming in from coming out..................................................................87 Stage four: Theory and praxis—Queering therapy...................................................90 Discourse considered...........................................................................................91 Resisting homonormativity 5 Watch your language...........................................................................................92 Stage Queer: The end is never near—Proliferating possibilities and resisting normativities..............................................................................................................96 Reflections on chapter 4............................................................................................97 Chapter 5 Bringing sexy back: Sex positivity and the rejection of erotophobia..................99 Two girls doing it: What my 10-year-old niece always knew..................................99 Teach the children well...........................................................................................104 Shame-less justice for all: From sex-negativity to sex positivity...........................107 Dirty dialogics: Sex positivity in practice...............................................................113 Reflections on chapter 5..........................................................................................117 Chapter 6 iQueer: Pop culture’s shaping of identity/Youth’s queering of media texts....119 Introduction to inquiry process for chapter 6..........................................................119 Section 1.0 I am what I own...................................................................................120 Section 2.0 Don’t shoot your TV—OR—Why this stuff (material) matters..........121 Section 3.0 Meaning, Inc.: A cultural studies-informed practice...........................123 Section 3.1 Consumer advisory: Explicit corporate blatancy.................................128 Section 4.0 And now, something from our sponsors: Reflections on Chapter 6.........................................................................................130 Chapter 7 Resisting conclusions: Performing an ethic of praxis and humility..................132 Breaking the right/wrong binary.......................................................................132