#queer study

[chenqingweijue]

Wrist-Grabbing and Other Soft Gestures: An Untamed Photo Essay

For all those friends who have leveled up with their Untamed viewing, this is a little meditation on the intersection of gender, agency…

[queervienna]

Hallo alle zusammen!

Im Rahmen meiner Dissertation an der Medizinischen Universität Wien über die Wirkung von Gesundheitsvideos auf LGBTQ Jugendliche suche ich für meine Studie Teilnehmer*innen im Alter von 14 bis 22 Jahren, die sich als schwul, lesbisch, bisexuell, pansexuell oder queer definieren oder noch im Coming Out sind bzw. sich noch nicht sicher sind.

Bei der Studie siehst du ein Kurzvideo zu einem Gesundheitsthema und füllst davor und danach Fragebögen aus (Dauer max. 30 min).

Vier Wochen später gibt es noch einmal Fragebögen zum Ausfüllen (Dauer max. 13 min).

Hier ist der Link zum Fragebogen.

Die Teilnahme an der Studie ist komplett anonym! Am Ende der Teilnahme gibt es genauere Infos zum Zweck der Studie.

Die Studie läuft noch bis 2021.

Ich würde mich sehr freuen, wenn es Interessierte gibt, die an der Studie teilnehmen wollen. Bitte teilt auch gerne die Studie, wenn ihr Interessierte kennt, die an der Studie teilnehmen möchten.

Vielen lieben Dank für eure Unterstützung und liebe Grüße,

Stefanie

[micahthemoon]

October 31 2024

So my bike’s tire is flat which means I had to take the bus to work. Luck would have it that those 20 minutes I gained were the time I needed to answer a questionnaire for the HRT study I’m a part of. Imagine me standing 10 meters from the door with my phone answering questions about how much facial hair I’m growing, how my mood has been lately and if I’d judge myself to be healthy. It was very silly yet also nice to know that I am indeed still actively contributing to the study.

[lgbtqhealthpsych-blog]

LGBTQ Health Study

Hello!

We are a team of researchers interested in studying LGBTQ health and personality factors. Your participation is voluntary. Our survey takes less than 20 minutes of your time. If you would like to participate, please click the link below. The link will redirect you to Qualtrics.

https://utsa.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_39irj82uzeYBrUx

[kmclaude]

I'm done for tonight I swear but y'all... only on page 22 and this book has me hooked, this is so painfully true and it's awful how many people, even progressive people, forget this.

I know my queerness was the luck or unluck of the draw. Could've been straight, could've been cis, could've been one of many paraphilic orientations! It's a genetic lotto. I know I could have had a much different shakeout--for better or worse!

Treating people as purposefully immoral for feelings they just HAVE, for who they are, for the way the genetic lots fell for them, truly is cruel.

We don't choose our mental wiring.

Anyway please read PERV by Jesse Bering. It's a very accessible style.

[thequeeryareader]

I would really appreciate people's thoughts on something

Just like it can be hard to find lgbt+ lit, the same goes for academic books. I've only found four really, and two of them are completely inaccessible. Only one of them is cheap and easy to get your hands on- Are the kids alright? By B.J. Epstein.

I have a lot of problems with this book. Just on an academic level, it has things that wouldn't even be allowed in a student essay. Her research isn't great, as she seems to think that she is the first person to suggest that there can be queer performance (like Judith Butler's gender performance), which would be great if Eve Sedgwick hadn't coined the idea over a decade earlier, and is very much a staple in the lgbt+ lit research. That was in the introduction.

She completely refuses to look at context, and suggests that helplines for gay youth in the back of lgbt+ books in the late 90s/ early 2000s is a bad thing. Her use of evidence is iffy at best- she often makes huge generalisations, seemingly, about all LGBT+ children’s literature ever.

She also writes that if there is a queer character in a kids/ya book, it is targeted at a queer audience, which makes it an 'issue book' (or problem book- basically any book that attempts to address a societal issue). Ironically, she quotes David Leviathan a few times and seemingly misses (in 2013) his, and many other authors, push against the issue book. One of the most popular LGB ya books and authors, who was already very popular at the time, was Malinda Lo- it would be a serious stretch to say that that Ash, Huntress or the Adaptation series are about the 'issue' of being a queer woman. And despite the popularity of Malinda Lo at the time of Epstein's book (2013), her work never appears in her study.

At one point she states that the reader is being given a mini-lecture on their attitude to changing gender by a teenage trans boy's inner monologue, and she says that it's unbelievable because that's not how a trans teenager would think- with no evidence of any kind. She, as a cis woman in her late 20s, doesn't think that's how a trans teenager would think, and that's all the evidence she needs, apparently.

These are just a couple of issue, but for me, the biggest problem is that her perspective comes from a place of privilege. Her general thesis is that there should be no need to 'normalise' or show any difference in queer books. That's all well and good, but she never wants to look at the real world context- she might think that the coming out plot is an unnecessary difference, but for a kid who's never understood how a "gay person thinks" (best way I could think to put it), reading a book from a gay perspective and watching them come out can be life changing for some kids. For some kids, the coming out story is hope that one day they can tell the world that they are gay and there will be people, somewhere, who can support them. Issue books are dying out in LGBT+ YA lit, or ones where sexuality is the issue, but they were needed, especially in their own contexts.

Here's where I would really like to here people's opinions: she talks about how her local library has a lot of queer lit for kids. Multiple picture books for young children (in a 'new experiences section) and a 'loud and proud' section in the teen section, featuring fiction and non-fiction, and even books on how to plan a same sex wedding for the adults (like myself) who enjoy queer YA lit. She takes issue with the fact that these books aren't with the other 'normal' books because it others queer people.

This is where I believe her privilege shows, because while I think that the identification of LGBT+ books should be more subtle, with maybe just a small rainbow sticker on the spine, I believe it's important for them to be easily identified as queer. My local library uses the system Epstein wants- we don't have any books for children, only teen books, and they don't have any identification.

To find any of the few queer books, I have to look at the blurbs for every book that looks like it could be queer, and I believe that this experience is far more 'Othering' than marking a book as queer, because I read a thousand variations of one sentence: 'when a girl meets a boy'. You read it over and over, hardly ever seeing 'when a girl meets a girl' or 'when a boy meets a boy', and that sends a powerful message- queer books are different, not normal- you're different, you're not normal. And it's the same at all my bookshops as well. On the official library catalogue for my whole county there are less than thirty queer books, and they're mostly male, and some are very outdated and homophobic.

As an adult, it's not pleasant doing this, but for a child or young adult who is questioning, seeing those words over and over could be devastating. And I don't think that Epstein recognises the privilege she has to not have to do that.

But I really want to hear your opinions, whether it be on identifying queer books, anything else I've talked about or something that maybe I've missed.

Thank you for reading, lovelies! ❤