Queer People Research Articles

The effects of intersectional identity affirmation on the relationship between racist or heterosexist microaggressions and mental health for LGBTQ+ people of color

ABSTRACT Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people of colour (POC) live at the intersection of multiple marginalised statuses. While previous literature has linked positive, affirmed identity with better mental health for LGBTQ+ individuals, identity affirmation may be compromised by intersecting systems of oppression. This study 1) investigated how multiple intersecting forms of oppression (i.e. racism within LGBTQ+ communities and heterosexism within ethnoracial communities) relate to anxiety and depression for LGBTQ+ POC, and 2) examined the indirect effects of intersectional microaggressions on mental health through identity cohesion. A subsample of participants who identified as both a member of the LGBTQ+ community and person of colour (N = 417) was drawn from an extant dataset. Mediation models tested direct and indirect effects of intersectional microaggressions on anxiety and on depression. Analyses revealed direct effects of intersectional microaggressions on both anxiety and depression (t ranged from 7.86 to 8.31, all p-values < .001), as well as significant indirect effects of both forms of microaggressions on depression via the pathway of lowered levels of cohesion. Racism within LGBTQ+ communities and heterosexism within ethnic or cultural communities may undermine the protective effect of intersectional identity cohesion, thus, contributing to poorer mental health outcomes for LGBTQ+ POC.

When Your Sibling is Trans Too: How LGBTQ Siblings Help LGBTQ Youth Navigate Cisnormativity and Heteronormativity in the Family

ABSTRACT Scholars have recently emphasized the importance of siblings in the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people. However, most of this literature assumed that these siblings are heterosexual and cisgender. This study considers how LGBTQ siblings may impact the experiences of LGBTQ youth, particularly as the youth navigates cisnormativity and heteronormativity within the family. We analyzed interviews with 26 LGBTQ youth who have LGBTQ siblings from the Family, Housing, and Me (FHAM) project. We find that LGBTQ siblings offer positive social support to LGBTQ youth, particularly for transgender and nonbinary youth who have transgender or nonbinary siblings. For most of the youth, having mutual disclosure of their gender/sexual identity with the siblings strengthened their relationship and built sibling solidarity. LGBTQ siblings were a consistent source of LGBTQ identity support and often shared the burden of confronting cisnormativity in family life. This work has implications for understanding the social support available for LGBTQ youth.

LGBTQ+ Families, Welfare, and Same-sex Marriage Legalisation in Taiwan: A Social Policy Perspective

This article examines whether and to what extent legalised same-sex marriage can assist lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ+) people to develop family life and protect them from defamilisation and familisation risks. It focuses on the provision of and gaps in welfare for LGBTQ+ people since Taiwan’s same-sex marriage legalisation in 2019. A content analysis of online community discussions since marriage equality shows that local LGBTQ+ community discussions were filled with concerns about the lack of familial status for cross-border couples, lack of legal parental status and rights for same-sex parents, and questions about heteronormative values and kinship ties. This article reveals how heteronormative assumptions embedded in the policy system and in the wider society adversely influence LGBTQ+ people’s welfare, and identifies supplementary and alternative measures. It highlights the importance of providing universal basic services free from heteronormative biases and prioritising the well-being and rights of all citizens.

Introduction to political storytelling: populists, Islamists, far-right groups and nostalgic nationalism in Europe and beyond

ABSTRACT This Special Issue shows that narratives of domination are political storytelling that promises its audience that ‘becoming the people' is possible via a shared history that can continue to exist if an obscure ‘they’ and its subjectivity are obliterated. Nowadays, systematic killings and starvation of Palestinians, rampant attacks and murdering Muslims in Britain and Queer peoples in the USA are good examples of why listening closely to political storytelling is called for. It has become paramount to listen closely to political storytelling, its dehumanisation and inhuman capacities and distortion of historical facts since 7th October 2023. The suffering and struggles of Palestinians, the destruction of Gaza and the genocide are misused to either mobilise and appease right wing populism in Western Europe (especially the Netherlands and Germany) or mobilise religious populism in states where Islam is constitutionally acknowledged primary religion (especially Islamic Republic of Iran and Pakistan). Listening closely to political storytelling is about teasing out populism as doing politics rather than thin fables emerging from misinformation and disinformation or deception and malintention.

'Better than Google': Information Activism for LGBTQ+ Young Adults in a Rural Community

For young lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people, and those belonging to other marginalized sexual and gender identities (LGBTQ+), accessing information to develop one's identity and community is essential. Yet information and resource access is a particularly complex process for LGBTQ+ youth living in rural areas and small towns without dense, visible LGBTQ+ networks. While efforts to remove LGBTQ+ resources and demonize LGBTQ+ people intensify, this study asks a group of young LGBTQ+ adults living in and around a college town in the rural Midwestern United States to document their experiences with navigating information landscapes in low-resource settings. Despite the remarkable everyday creativity required to craft their information practices, participants' current efforts produce several vulnerabilities that make local queer information networks precarious and often inaccessible. We lay out several patterns in this data, including experiences of both connectedness and disconnectedness, the role of organizations in information sharing, and the existence of both active and passive information search. Building on prior research that found increasing demand for multi-modal access to relevant information that is digitally enabled, but deeply embedded in localized social geography and LGBTQ+ community, we use this data and complementary interviews to identify problem areas and potential interventions to strengthen rural LGBTQ+ young people's information access. In response to the informational needs and desires of LGBTQ+ youth in this community, we propose a series of imaginative designs. These speculative artifacts are embedded in local communities to strengthen grassroots webs of knowledge. We focus on contributing solutions that fall under three problem areas in participants' information ecosystem: increasing information stumbling, building expert capacity and support, and bridging the disconnected to the connected. We propose speculative conceptual designs that address core challenges in LGBTQ+ information networks, working in the tradition of ''information activism'' to create and maintain access to otherwise precarious and ephemeral resources and spark social change.

Improving dissemination products and practices for community-based organisations serving LGBTQ+ communities in the USA: a thematic analysis

BackgroundIn the USA, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) people report higher rates of tobacco use than non-LGBTQ+ people due to diverse factors, from anti-LGBTQ stigma to targeted marketing...

Reimagining the Future of Reproduction from a Black Queer Lens: An Art-Based Approach to the Study of Reproductive Health Care

ABSTRACT Black Queer people’s reproductive experiences are largely under-documented and under-reported in health communication research, despite the omnipresence of their storytelling within humanities-based literature. Drawing from a larger health study using Black feminist perspectives and centering Black Queer people’s lived experiences with reproduction, previous health research, and Black Queer poetics, this study uses an art-based research approach to create erasure poems that detail how Black Queer birthing people resist and survive reproductive-based injustices. Specifically, through this innovative approach, I construct eight erasure poems developed from the previous insights of Black Queer people’s answer to “What is the future of reproduction?” These poems detail unparalleled truths about the needs and strategies that necessitate efforts to improve reproductive justice for my community. The poems detail Black Queer people’s discussions of the importance of community networks along our reproductive health journeys, creating new conceptualizations of motherhood and parenthood, new understandings of reproductive-based stigma and oppression, and our use of spirituality as a tool for reclaiming reproductive autonomy.

Queer, Migrant Non-Parenthood in Désorientale by Négar Djavadi and Gabrielle by Agnès Vannouvong

Abstract Désorientale (2016) by Franco-Iranian author Négar Djavadi and Gabrielle (2015) by Franco-Lao-Thai author Agnès Vannouvong both emerge at a moment when queer people have some rights (marriage and adoption) but no access to assisted reproductive technology (ART). They take up the issue of what I term “political infertility,” rebuking the notion of queerness as an unproductive sexuality. These novels’ queer (migrant) characters experience compounded forms of exclusion, along the lines of race, gender, sexuality, and cultural difference. I explore how the queer (migrant) nonparent speaks to a particular precarity within a system of power, revealing the complex way in which the nonparent is entrapped by competing modes of legitimatization, visibility, and access to full and fulfilled subjecthood.

‘People need support and society needs change’: vulnerability and collective agency in queer youth organization

ABSTRACT The present article draws on narrative interviews with 16 young queer people who are involved in organizing meeting places and activities for and with other queers. Here, I explore how queer youth describe their needs and motives for engaging in organizing, and how narratives of agency and vulnerability are expressed and intertwined. Drawing on Judith Butler (2016. ‘Rethinking vulnerability and resistance’, in J. Butler, Z. Gambetti, and L. Sabsay (Ed.), Vulnerability in Resistance. Duke University Press), I argue that vulnerability among LGBTQ + youth is not the opposite of resistance and that agency is not the opposite of exposedness. In this context, LGBTQ + youth’s own acknowledgement of and collective resistance to dominant sexuality and gender norms, which put them at risk for exclusion, offence and violence, constitute a mobilization of vulnerability. The motives for organizing are described as three narratives concerning social needs and how queer youth relate themselves to a collective. The first narrative recognizes the person’s need for other people, the second other people’s need for them, and the third concerns the need for a community. The results show how queer youth use collective agency to create their own spaces and communities as well as to formulate and practice resistance.

No boy in lady’s room: How China’s radical digital feminists alienate themselves from mothers, girls, and gays

ABSTRACT This article employs semi-structured interviews with 57 Chinese women rallying behind the Weibo hashtag #NoBoyInLady’sRoom to explore their discursive strategies in defending women-only public spaces and their registration of antagonism toward China’s son-preferential gender norms. Distilling and discussing the three main discursive strategies adopted by these self-identified feminists to make sense of their collective motivation behind the bathroom crusade, this article finds streaks of exclusivity and alienation of Chinese digital feminism that target not only men but also mothers, girls, and queer people in the pursuit of a fundamentalist cause. Relying on the understanding of the contemporary state-platform dynamic in China as well as the historical legacy of China’s socialist women’s movement, this article further critically inquires into the politico-cultural implications of the radicalizing tendency of Chinese digital feminism and proposes a more communicative as well as inclusive approach to the grassroots solidarity of anti-patriarchy forces in authoritarian China.

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer People's Experiences of Stigma Across the Spectrum of Inpatient Psychiatric Care: A Systematic Review.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and other diverse sexual orientations and gender identity groups (LGBTQ+) face high rates of poor mental health. In the most severe and emergent of instances, inpatient psychiatric care may be required. LGBTQ+ people report experiences of mistreatment in healthcare settings broadly, such as denial of healthcare services and harassment from healthcare providers and other patients. However, little is known about the experiences of LGBTQ+ people in inpatient psychiatric care settings, specifically. The purpose of this review was to assess the existing literature for descriptions of LGBTQ+ people's experiences within inpatient psychiatric care. We searched multiple databases (i.e., PubMed, PsychINFO, CINAHL, Web of Science and Google Scholar) for peer-reviewed articles that described the experiences of LGBTQ+ people within inpatient psychiatric care that were published in English. The included articles (N = 14) were analysed using a conceptual model of stigma and organised within those strata (structural, interpersonal and individual stigma) across the inpatient experience, (admission, inpatient unit, and discharge). Themes identified included: noninclusive intake tools and pervasive misgendering during the admission process; lack of healthcare infrastructure, inadequate training and lack of cultural humility, pervasive discrimination and victimization, silencing of LGBTQ+ patients, and feelings of fear and shame while on inpatient units, and lack of community resources during the discharge process. Clinicians should consider the perspectives and experiences of LGBTQ+ people to enact identity-affirming care practices that may increase mental healthcare engagement and improve long-term mental health outcomes.

Legal hostilities: Navigating queerness, emotion, and space in asylum law

Asylum laws, policies, and bureaucracies are structured by spatializing logics of emotion such as compassion, sympathy, fear, anxiety, and hostility. For lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) people who seek asylum, legal recognition as a refugee is contingent on the extent to which receiving states believe they are deserving of compassion and care. This materializes spatially through racialized legal and administrative cartographies of safety and danger that position LGBTIQ people as being at risk of a “well-founded fear” of persecution. Meanwhile, those LGBTIQ people who seek asylum in a “disorderly” manner or present “disrupted” narratives of either their identity or persecution generate administrative anxieties and hostilities as states seek to “guard” the border from disingenuous claims and dangerous bodies. For LGBTIQ people who seek asylum in the United Kingdom (UK), these affective tensions become apparent in the hostile bordering practices of law that seek to narrowly codify sex, gender, sexuality, race, culture, and harm. Drawing on a rich data set of LGBTIQ asylum cases from the UK, this paper adopts hostility as a novel analytic lens to map carefully how: (1) hostility materializes as a substantive object of legal or administrative scrutiny when understanding the nature of LGBTIQ identity and persecution and (2) hostility emerges procedurally through status determination processes as an “emotional grammar” to limit the possibilities of legal recognition. This affective critical work is normatively significant if we (as scholars and lawyers) are to create spaces within law and policy to support LGBTIQ people who seek asylum.

Queer Voices in the Digital Barricades: Exploring Social Media Use in Information Resistance

This paper interrogates how queer people use the Facebook group Queer Exchange to build community and meet information needs. Research indicates that queer people face social exclusion in mainstream society, which leads to health injustices. Social media can then become a space to build inclusion, necessitating the study of queer virtual space. The study consists of 12 semi-structured interviews with queer adults living in rural communities in Western Massachusetts. The themes identified include community-sourced information, community building by identity, and reproducing offline oppressions. The paper uses de Certeau’s theory of tactics and Chatman’s small world theory to frame the research. The study concludes that Queer Exchange plays an essential role in the digital information worlds of rural queer people.

Ethical and Methodological Considerations in LGBTQ-focused Online Ethnography: A Proposal of a Systematic Review

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people constitute a vulnerable population that requires research about their needs, representations, and challenges. Among the variant research methods, ethnography is particularly effective in understanding participants and their lived experience. The development of information and communication technologies has transformed traditional ethnography research and contributed to the emergence of online ethnography research that holds potential for studying vulnerable populations (e.g., LGBTQ people) and relevant topics. We propose a systematic review to explore how researchers have considered and addressed ethical and methodological issues in LGBTQ-focused online ethnography research. We used the core collection of the Web of Science to search for relevant literature. We crafted the search query based on studies of LGBTQ populations, online ethnography studies, and other data sources like the Homosaurus vocabulary. Two groups of search terms were compiled and used in combination, including population-related terms (e.g., “queer”, “LGB*”, “GLB*”, and “sexual minorit*”) and method-related terms (e.g., “online ethnograph*”, “netnograph*”, “digital ethnograph*”, and “virtual ethnograph*”). In this review, we focus on empirical journal articles using any type or variant of online ethnography to investigate LGBTQ-focused topics. The eligible articles may include LGBTQ people as participants or stakeholders (e.g., LGBTQ staff), or analyze LGBTQ-related content (e.g., YouTube videos). Most importantly, we will analyze the ethical concerns (e.g., informed consent, power imbalance, cultural sensitivity, and beneficence and justice) and methodological aspects (e.g., research design, sampling, recruitment, data collection, data analysis, and roles of LGBTQ people) of these studies.

Queering the Rome Statute: Searching for the International Criminal Court’s Potential to Do Justice to Queer People

ABSTRACT The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is tasked with holding individuals accountable for the perpetration of the most heinous international crimes. However, the Rome Statute does not provide express grounds for protecting queer people. This article examines to what extent the ICC can protect queer people, by adding a queer reading to doctrinal interpretations to trouble and problematise uncritical legal protection. The crime of genocide and the crime against humanity of persecution serve as the main sources of study, in addition to international human rights law due to its connection with the Rome Statute. The queer reading demonstrates that despite the ICC’s ability to protect queer people in some ways, the interpretations of the Rome Statute are limited in their potential to do justice to queer people. As such, this article ventures out into a discussion on the possibility for the ICC to ever provide justice for queer people by navigating queer abolitionist critiques. It argues for an approach that de-centres the ICC, thereby creating space for legal transformation to resist queer erasure, whilst simultaneously looking for alternative (re)imaginings that queer abolitionism creates.

Surviving Exile. Queer Displaced People’s Lived Experiences of Aid, Risks and Coping in Kakuma

This paper examines the lived experiences of LGBTQ+ displaced individuals in Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya. Drawing on situated knowledge and relational agency, it delves into how queer people experience the humanitarian-aid system on-site, what risks they encounter, and how they exert agency to cope with the prevalent challenges of day to day life. Findings reveal that, in a country context where same-sex relations are illegalized and queer people criminalized, those displaced face heightened risks. They are confronted with the heteronormative paradigms inherent to the humanitarian-aid system, ones resulting in their neglect and denied access to much-needed assistance and protection. Structural and physical violence such as discrimination, exclusion, harassment and threats of murder exacerbate unrelenting fears and tangible risks in the camp. To navigate these challenges, they employ diverse individual and especially collective coping strategies, creating safe spaces for mutual support, exchange and hope.

Procreative Possibilities: Analyzing The Philosophical And Ethical Dimensions Of Queer Couples Raising Children

Families are what matters the most, so how do queer families handle their roles? This research paper addresses the metaphysical aspects of queer couples raising children, going against traditional family roles. It also examines the ethics of parenthood, the associated moral considerations when queer couples decide to become parents and questions how responsibilities are perceived in queer households. It examines the ethical, social and legal implications of Aided Reproductive Technologies (ART) and adoption policies. Queer people have existed for centuries although these types of families are rather modern concepts. “Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) parents raise well-adjusted children” .The study endeavors to explore conventional beliefs about gender, sexuality, and the nuclear family by referencing feminist, queer, and intersectional theories. We wish to understand what prejudices are held against the children of these queer couples and how they handle such issues. In particular, the research focuses on the duties and ethical issues of persons who abandon past relationships or familial commitments to form queer families. It also explores the philosophical and ethical aspects of moving from a heterosexual lifestyle to a queer one. And in abandoning these responsibilities how these individuals disrupt the conventional family structures. It also looks at the positive ways in which such parenting can impact our societies and fundamentally change the way we look at diversity, equality and justice. In a changing society where traditional ideas of family are being reinvented, this research is crucial. It offers a thorough philosophical examination that can improve social fairness, guide public policy, and advance a more accepting conception of parenthood and family variety. Through an analysis of modern discussions and case studies, this paper seeks to enhance the understanding of family and parenthood to be more inclusive in the 21st century.

Communal Intimacies

The reproduction of the American home hinges on a clear public/private distinction, wherein the private sphere is traditionally viewed as domestic — a space for interpersonal care and social reproduction, distinct from the abstract political culture of the public. Due to American legal and cultural norms maintaining this division, the mainstream LGBTQ rights movement has privileged privacy as a portal of legitimation, often to the detriment of poor, queer people of color without access to private property. Amid residential segregation, mass incarceration, and welfare reform, queer people of color must reshape and repurpose both public and commercial space to collectively affirm their erotic desires and care for each other through “communal intimacies,” the spatial-kinship practices that decouple care from the domestic, create a pathway for the transfer of libidinal pleasures, and act as a foundation for envisioning and enacting a world of belonging and transformation despite gentrification. Through cultural analysis of John Leguizamo's performance of the “Manny the Fanny” character from his 1991 show Mambo Mouth and Sean Baker's 2015 film Tangerine, this article illustrates novel forms of homemaking that blur the boundaries denoting the public/private spatial divide inherent in neoliberal property regimes.

Addressing unique challenges and crafting inclusive policies for Queer living with disabilities

Background: This article addresses the intersectional challenges faced by Queer people living with disabilities (QPwD).Objectives: The article aims to highlight the nature and extent of their struggles while proposing inclusive policies for societal integration and equality. Amid global efforts to promote Queer rights, discrimination and violence persist, particularly affecting those with disabilities.Method: Drawing upon a comprehensive review of literature and empirical research, this study investigated the experiences of QPwD, identifying key challenges such as limited access to inclusive services, heightened vulnerability to abuse and systemic unemployment. The methodological approach used in this study involves synthesising existing scholarship and empirical evidence to inform the proposed inclusive policies.Results: The findings reveal pervasive barriers encountered by QPwD, including societal stigma, attitudinal biases and physical obstacles. Discrimination in employment, education and healthcare further exacerbates their marginalisation, necessitating proactive measures to address systemic inequalities and promote social inclusion.Conclusion: In conclusion, this article underscores the urgent need for policy reforms and societal interventions to uphold the rights and dignity of QPwD. By advocating for Queer-inclusive workplace policies, enhancing accessibility in public infrastructure and fostering governmental support for equality initiatives, this study contributes to advancing social justice and inclusivity.Contribution: The article calls for concerted efforts to create a more equitable and inclusive society where all individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation or disability status, can thrive and fulfil their potential.

Moving beyond vulnerability and focusing on resilience: An intersectional posttraumatic growth model for LGBTQ+ people of color.

In the context of the legacy of deficit-focused research and application of theoretical models in research on minoritized groups that are underrepresented in the literature, we explored the strengths-based literature among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people of color to develop a more inclusive and relevant understanding of how posttraumatic growth (PTG) occurs in this population. Our intersectional PTG model is tailored to the experiences of LGBTQ+ people of color that builds upon previous models of PTG, intersectionality theory, and empirical findings of trauma and PTG among LGBTQ+ people of color. Our intersectional PTG model incorporates the unique intrapersonal, interpersonal, institutional, and cultural factors that are unique to this population and contribute to PTG. We challenge the limited scope of Criterion A traumatic events and emphasize empirical findings that support that LGBTQ+ people of color often experience posttraumatic stress after oppression and discrimination. Our model also recognizes the impact of intersecting risk factors, such as gendered racism, that may occur on various levels. Our model acknowledges that LGBTQ+ people of color have often demonstrated PTG in the face of adversity. Intrapersonal factors such as cognitive flexibility, interpersonal factors such as social support, and institutional and cultural factors such as identity-related activism are identified as key contributors to resilience. We discuss practice implications, highlighting that clinicians should recognize limitations of traditional trauma frameworks and adopt culturally sensitive approaches when working with LGBTQ+ people of color. Overall, our model provides a foundation for strengths-based interventions and research, emphasizing resiliency and potential for PTG in this population.