There has been little research conducted in general that explores the impact of sexualized violence on lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) youth. There is even more limited qualitative research, and almost none of it from a therapeutic perspective. This led me to engage with the fictionalized stories of LGBTQ youth characters who have survived sexualized violence to learn how these stories might inform the work of helping professionals. This thesis provides a reflexive thematic analysis of three novels written by queer authors. Through the lens of response-based therapy, intersectional feminism, and queer theory, it considers the ways in which the characters are impacted by their experiences with sexualized violence and their responses to it. Findings indicate that the characters were affected by childhood sexual abuse at a time in their lives when their sexual identities were on the cusp of being formed. Their experiences with sexualized violence impacted the ways that the characters learned to live with contradictions; experienced ambivalence in the relationships with the adults who caused them harm; and engaged in small acts of resistance against the impact of sexualized violence in their lives to create futures in which they could thrive. The characters’ experiences with casual sex and sex work are shown as an act of resistance against violence. This research aims to queer the discourses on LGBTQ youth who have experienced sexualized violence, expose the small acts of resistance that they perform against the impacts of sexualized violence, and transform the ways that child and youth care workers, therapists, social workers, and other helpers understand the resilience and experiences of LGBTQ survivors. / Graduate

<p dir="ltr">For many, spiritual beliefs and religious affiliation exist as a protective factor, providing significant emotional, psychological, and social support (Ibrahim & Dykeman, 2011). However, for others, abuse within the power structures of religion can also inflict great harm—particularly within marginalized communities—resulting in religious trauma. The LGBTQIA+ community has historically experienced marginalization and discrimination within various religious contexts and doctrines, becoming a group particularly vulnerable to religious trauma (Simmons et al., 2017; Swindle, 2017). This type of trauma has often been overlooked in the therapy room and within the broader Marriage and Family Therapy field. This thesis addresses this gap through the creation of an introductory training for therapists on religious trauma that many in LGBTQIA+ community experience. Grounded in religious trauma research and trauma-informed client care, the training seeks to enhance therapists' capacity to navigate these complex terrains with empathetic and informed care (Ellis et al., 2022). The aim is to create a therapeutic landscape where healing and self-compassion become more accessible to LGBTQIA+ individuals impacted by religious trauma.</p>

This essay examines the body in post-cyberfeminist art to study possible changes in how the body is perceived in the shift from cyberfeminist to post-cyberfeminist art. I have studied the body by examining power and identity in four cases of post-cyberfeminist art, using postmodern feminist theories and concepts such as gender, gender performativity, heterosexual matrix and intersectionality. The essay consists of image, moving image and textual analysis and two shorter comparative analyses. In the first comparative analysis, I have compared the four cases of post-cyberfeminist art with each other. In the second analysis, I focus on a comparative analysis between the four cases of post-cyberfeminist art and earlier cyberfeminist projects. In the discussion, I present my results and elaborate on a possible shift in how the body's materiality is viewed within digital landscapes of post-cyberfeminist art. I argue that the cyborg, central to the earlier cyberfeminist project, might have been replaced by transformable avatars.

L’art abject est entré comme terme et comme concept dans le dictionnaire du monde de l’art dans les années 1990. Son utilisation a été consacrée par l’exposition Abject Art : Repulsion and Desire in American Art du Whitney Museum en 1993 qui a, de surcroît, influencé les critères établis pour déterminer si une œuvre est considérée, dans l’imaginaire collectif, comme étant abjecte. Cette exposition a ainsi véhiculé une compréhension de l’art abject comme étant, d’un point de vue matériel, à la fois dégoûtant et fascinant. Lors de la recherche menée pour ce mémoire, il a notamment été question d’élargir le concept d’art abject pour qu’il recouvre dorénavant des œuvres représentant des identités appartenant à des communautés marginalisées par un pouvoir ou une identité dominante. Plus précisément, nous nous sommes penchés.es sur des œuvres exposant des identités abjectes par rapport à une identité dominante allégoriquement hétéro-homo-normative masculine et occidentale s’exprimant par l’entremise du tableau de 1814 peint par Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, La grande odalisque. Ce tableau est devenu le dénominateur commun d’analyse pour nos trois études de cas, soit les œuvres Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? des Guerrilla Girls, Tapestry de J J Levine et La Grande Intendante de 2Fik. Ces œuvres – toutes trois ayant été exposées au Canada depuis l’an 2000 – ont permis de questionner la définition dominante de l’art abject. Elles font conjointement parties d’un grand dialogue, à la fois contemporain et transhistorique, visant à explorer le potentiel didactique de l’abjection, afin de comprendre le pouvoir subversif et transformateur contenu dans ce type de création. En effet, en utilisant les techniques d’autoreprésentation et de réappropriation de motif, les artistes issus.es de communautés abjectées neutralisent ultimement leur abjection, leur déshumanisation et leur aliénation politique contemporaine et produisent une culture dont les représentations sont plus inclusives. / Abject art is a term and concept introduced in the art dictionary in the 1990s. Its use was enshrined in the Whitney Museum's 1993 exhibition Abject Art: Repulsion and Desire in American Art, which further established the criteria for work to be considered in the collective imagination as abject. This exhibition thus conveyed an understanding of abject art as being, from a material perspective, both disgusting and fascinating. Part of the research for this study is focussed on expanding the concept of abject art to include works that represent identities that have been marginalized by a dominant identity. Specifically, we examine works that expose abject identities in relation to an allegorical dominant hetero-homo-normative Western male identity expressed in Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres' 1814 painting La grande odalisque. This painting became the common denominator of analysis for our three case studies: the Guerrilla Girls' Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?, J J Levine's Tapestry and 2Fik's La Grande Intendante. These works - all of which have been exhibited in Canada since the year 2000 - have allowed us to question the dominant definition of abject art. Their analysis also sparks a larger contemporary and transhistorical dialogue that explores the didactic potential of abjection in which these types of creation contain a subversive and transformative power. By using techniques of self-representation and motif reappropriation, artists from abjected communities ultimately neutralize their abjection, dehumanization and contemporary political alienation to produce a culture that is more inclusive in its representations.

We all have stories to share, to build, to pass around, to inherit, and to create. This story - the one I piece together now - is about a Thai-/Bengali-/Muslim-/American-/Feminist looking for home, looking to manage the tension and conflict of wanting to belong to her family and to her feminist community. This thesis focuses on the seemingly conflicting obligations to kinship on the one hand and to feminist practice on the other, a conflict where being a good scholar or activist is directly in opposition to being a good Asian daughter. In order to understand how and why these communities appear at odds with one another, I examine how the material spaces and psychological realities inhabited by specific hyphenated, fragmented subjects are represented (and misrepresented) in both popular culture and practical politics, arguing against images of the hybrid body that bracket its lived tensions. I argue that fantasies of home as an unconditional site of belonging and comfort distract us from the multiple communities to which hyphenated subjects must move between. Hyphenated Asian-/American bodies often find ourselves torn between nativism and assimilationism - having to neutralize, forsake, or discard parts of our identities. Thus, I reduce complicated, difficult ideas of being to the size of a thimble, to a question of loyalty between my Asian-/American history and my American-/feminist future, between my familial background and the issues that have become foregrounded for me during college, between the home from which I originate and the new home to which I wish to belong. To move with fluidity, I must - in collaboration with others - invent new stories of identity and belonging.

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