Growing Up Queer: Kids and the Remaking of LGBTQ Identity (Critical Perspectives on Youth, 3)

**LGBTQ kids reveal what it’s like to be young and queer today** Growing Up Queer explores the changing ways that young people are now becoming LGBT-identified in the US. Through interviews and three years of ethnographic research at an LGBTQ youth drop-in center, Mary Robertson focuses on the voices and stories of youths themselves in order to show how young people understand their sexual and gender identities, their interest in queer media, and the role that family plays in their lives. The young people who participated in this research are among the first generation to embrace queer identities as children and adolescents. This groundbreaking and timely consideration of queer identity demonstrates how sexual and gender identities are formed through complicated, ambivalent processes as opposed to being natural characteristics that one is born with. In addition to showing how youth understand their identities, Growing Up Queer describes how young people navigate queerness within a culture where being gay is the “new normal.” Using Sara Ahmed’s concept of queer orientation, Robertson argues that being queer is not just about one’s sexual and/or gender identity, but is understood through intersecting identities including race, class, ability, and more. By showing how society accepts some kinds of LGBTQ-identified people while rejecting others, Growing Up Queer provides evidence of queerness as a site of social inequality. The book moves beyond an oversimplified examination of teenage sexuality and shows, through the voices of young people themselves, the exciting yet complicated terrain of queer adolescence. "Growing Up Queer explores the changing ways that young people are now becoming LGBT-identified in the US. Through interviews and three years of ethnographic research at an LGBTQ youth drop-in center, Mary Robertson focuses on the voices and stories of youths themselves in order to show how young people understand their sexual and gender identities, their interest in queer media, and the role that family plays in their lives. The young people who participated in this research are among the first generation to embrace queer identities as children and adolescents. This groundbreaking and timely consideration of queer identity demonstrates how sexual and gender identities are formed through complicated, ambivalent processes as opposed to being natural characteristics that one is born with. In addition to showing how youth understand their identities, Growing Up Queer describes how young people navigate queerness within a culture where being gay is the "new normal." Using Sara Ahmed's concept of queer orientation, Robertson argues that being queer is not just about one's sexual and/or gender identity, but is understood through intersecting identities including race, class, ability, and more. By showing how society accepts some kinds of LGBTQ-identified people while rejecting others, Growing Up Queer provides evidence of queerness as a site of social inequality. The book moves beyond an oversimplified examination of teenage sexuality and shows, through the voices of young people themselves, the exciting yet complicated terrain of queer adolescence." -- Publisher's description "Mary Robertson offers groundbreaking research on the first generation of young people to embrace their queer identities as children and adolescents. Drawing upon the voices and stories of young people themselves, she shows how today's LGBTQ-identified youth navigate queerness within a culture where being gay is the 'new normal,' challenging and expanding the boundaries of twenty-first-century adolescence. Her research reveals many differences for today's queer youth: it is the standard and not the exception for them to be out to their parents and friends; for many it was their gender nonconformity as children rather than a sense of sexual desire that first led them to consider a queer identity; many learn about sexual practices through pornography on the internet and through fan fiction written by other youth; and many have at least one parent or relative who is gay-identified. [This book] paints a picture of a world where queer kids feel they have more options than previous generations when it comes to their gender presentation and sexuality, providing new insight into today's LGBTQ youth."--Back cover of paperback Cover GROWING UP QUEER Title Copyright Dedication CONTENTS Introduction: “A Whole Lot of Queer” 1. Welcome to Spectrum: A Place to Be Queer 2. “That Makes Me Gay”: Not Born That Way 3. “Let’s Be Trans”: Going beyond the Gender Binary 4. “Google Knows Everything”: Finding Queer Media 5. “It’s Going to Be Okay”: Queering the Family Conclusion: The New Normal Isn’t Queer Acknowledgments Appendix Notes Bibliography Index About the Author