For the past decade, the leisure and recreation literature has sought to develop
and support a discourse of queer youth at-risk in order to call attention to the need to
help these youth function normally in society (Grossman, 1992; Grossman, 1995; Kivel,
1997). As a solution, creating safe spaces for queer youth has been advocated, without
necessarily considering how the identity of practitioners might affect these spaces, or
what types of norms these spaces might simultaneously reinforce. This research study
drew on queer, feminist, and spatial analysis theories, to investigate how
heteronormativity functioned in queer youth spaces within two different municipal
recreation contexts. I focused specifically on the physical and discursive boundaries of
the spaces, as well as the influence of the youth workers' identities and practices.
The research methods included observations, document analysis, and semistructured
interviews. The findings demonstrated that the youth workers' identities were
highly influential in both spaces, as they affected the negotiation of spatial boundaries
and systemic discourses in very different ways. The spilling over of queer bodies out of
the spaces worked to expose the boundary between queer and normal space as
discursive, rather than natural or real. Furthermore, the central focus of both spaces on
a queer identity re-created certain norms around race (read as whiteness) and gender
(read as binary categories); however, this occurred in different ways in each space.
Finally, systemic discourses of risk, support, and safety worked to both disrupt and
reinforce notions of heteronormativity. By calling attention to an existing silence about
queer youth, they were simultaneously constructed as helpless and in need of saving.
Those who theorize about and work with queer youth might want to consider how
certain discourses support notions of an idealized subject that can be further
marginalizing. In addition, although queer youth spaces can be enabling for some
youth, they are constraining for others. Research and practice that advocates for queer
youth spaces as the solution, might want to deliberate the ways in which this approach
can fail to trouble normalcy, and potentially reinforce the value of certain ways of being
queer. / Education, Faculty of / Kinesiology, School of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/16231 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Shubat, Tammy |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Format | 6850427 bytes, application/pdf |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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