Speaker
Description
While research has shown that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) students are at more risk of being bullied than their heterosexual and cisgender peers (e.g., Espelage et al., 2019), relatively little is known about the lived experiences of these young people at school. Drawing on the theoretical concepts of misrecognition (e.g., Fraser, 2001), stigma (e.g., Goffman, 1963) and affect (e.g., Ahmed, 2010), this paper explores the direct and indirect experiences of bullying that young transgender people have had at schools in Sweden. The results stem from on an ongoing qualitative research project based on semi-structured interviews with LGBTQ+ young people (aged 15-19) around Sweden. The preliminary findings presented in this paper are based on interviews with 18 of those young people, which were transcribed and thematically analysed (e.g., Braun & Clarke, 2021). They highlight that the transgender young people in our study have had stigmatising experiences of being deadnamed and misgendered by students and teachers, who have subjected them to misrecognition by calling them by their former name or by the wrong pronoun. The findings also demonstrate how deadnaming and misgendering are experienced as emotional triggers and thus serve to affect the young people in particularly harmful ways. Taken together, the results of the paper demonstrate not only the importance of actively preventing and combatting transphobic bullying, but also the need for increasing awareness about gender complexity, correct pronoun usage, and the various forms transphobic bullying can take in schools.
Keywords
Sexuality, gender, experiences, transphobic bullying, qualitative
| Please also indicate what kind of contribution it is: | Scientific |
|---|---|
| Please indicate what type of scientific contribution it is | Qualitative method study |
