Making Space for Queer-Identifying Religious Youth

Yvette Taylor

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781137502575
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137502599
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Christentum

Making Space for Queer-Identifying Religious Youth charts young people's understanding of religion, investigating the experiences, choices and identities of queer - lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender - youth involved in inclusive churches. Rather than assume that sexuality and religion, and in this case Christianity, are separate and divergent paths, this book explores how they might mutually and complexly construct one another in times of religious-sexual citizenship. Taylor presents a methodological discussion on the 'public sociology' of religion and sexuality studies, and provides an illustrative focus on substantive fields often separated in disciplinary dis-orientations. These examples illustrate how participation shapes identifications; how marginalization and discrimination are managed; and how religion and sexuality serve as vehicles for various forms of belonging, identification and expression. 'Religion' and 'sexuality' are mutually constructed through gendered spaces, online spaces, and sensory spaces.

1

Contradictory Subjectivities? The Space of Research-Researcher-Researched Identities

Abstract: This chapter situates the methods of ‘queer productions’ as an occupation involving the research-researcher-researched (Taylor and Addison, 2014). It contextualises the interviews, diaries, and maps produced by young participants, locating mixed and visual methods as a way of re-engaging, representing, and even resisting identities and practices based on sexuality and religion.

Keywords: feminist methodology; hard to reach groups; LGBTQ; researcher subjectivities; sensitive research

Taylor, Yvette. Making Space for Queer-Identifying Religious Youth. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. DOI: 10.1057/9781137502599.0005.

FIGURE 1.1 ‘You have taken away my identity’

This chapter explores the methods of studying queer placements and productions as an intersectional occupation involving the research-researcher-researched (Taylor and Addison, 2014; Braine, 2014). As Browne and Nash (2010: 1) note: ‘Many scholars who use queer theorizations can use undefined notions of what they mean by “queer research” and rarely undertake a sustained consideration of how queer approaches might sit with (particularly social scientific) methodological choices’. Macke (2014) responds to Browne and Nash’s (2010) call, offering ‘que(e)rying’ as a distinct model of research that integrates ethnographic methods with queer theory and feminist praxis. ‘Queering’ is positioned as an important goal of social science research, intervening in the normative structures, discourses, and practices that construct and police sexual and gendered subjects. At the same time, ‘que(e)rying’ can denote a particular methodology driving the overall research, encompassing theory, methods of data collection, analysis, and presentation (Macke, 2014). Here we witness the creative tension between what queer is and what queer does, whereby queering can be situated as a process of doing rather than being (Valocchi, 2005; Browne and Nash, 2010; Macke, 2014).

In this chapter, by focussing on the visual and textual data produced in participants’ and researchers’ mind-maps and diaries, I hope to chart some of their mutual and complex constructions, in mapping and ‘making space’ for sexuality and religion. Across the course of the project, a mix of qualitative techniques (interviews, maps, and diary exercises) allowed for rich insights into the everyday lives, practices, and identities of queer religious youth: these techniques ‘make space’ to account for young people’s experiences of being in – or absent from – religious and sexualised spaces. Yet methodological difficulties were encountered throughout, including in initially locating a sample, where some religious gatekeepers positioned potential participants as absent due to their identities not having been claimed, performed, or displayed. Visibly and publically making space for sexuality and religion through the project was also important for many respondents, seeking acknowledgement of identity rather than anonymity, and often disrupting research considerations of confidentiality and consent (see above image). This chapter considers the space of research-researcher-researched identities as in process, and both enabled and constrained by religious-sexual fields.

Diagramming, demographics, and decisions

Interviews (n = 38) lasted between one and two hours and were conducted between October 2011 and November 2012 in three UK locations: Newcastle, Manchester, and London, in participants’ homes, a church, a cathedral, a youth centre, universities, cafes, and through a Skype interview. Interviews were semi-structured and key themes explored included the location of religion in participants’ lives, changes in religiosity over time, management of religious and sexual identities, religious identities and family life, participation in ‘community’ spaces, and biographies, transitions and materialities.¹ All participation was anonymous and pseudonyms were used throughout.

The (in)visibility of queer religious identity posed many methodological problems. Gatekeepers to churches, university LGBT societies, LGBT youth groups, support services, and LGBT/religious publications could deny access based on assumed knowledge of their members’ religiosity and sexuality (Taylor, 2004, 2009; McDermott, 2010). As part of the recruitment drive, leaflets were distributed to congregations and groups, and links to our project website (http://queerreligiousyouth.wordpress.com/) and closed Facebook group, ‘Queer Religious Youth’, were disseminated through their mailing lists and posted to their websites and social media. This included postings to, and dialogues with, inclusive churches, university LGBT societies, LGBT youth groups, support services, and some snowballing through respondents. In response to an emailed request to circulate details of the project, the priest of an Anglican church insisted: ‘I can’t think of anyone in my congregations who is in that age group and would identify as LGBT’. Similarly, a leader of several LGBT youth groups stated that ‘[a]lthough some of the young people I was latterly involved with were Christians none of my current ones are so I am unable to help at the moment’. Where identity had not been publically claimed as ‘out’ or different, research requests could be considered as invalid or even disruptive and inappropriate, infringing on otherwise assumed-to-be cohesive and neutral space.

This sense of absence was further apparent in some participants’ perceptions of their own social circles, which also inhibited snowballing. In response to our call to spread word of the project throughout their networks, James (17) stated: ‘As you might expect, I know virtually no other LGBT religious youth, but if I can think of anyone who might be able to participate I’ll forward the information to them’. Whilst researchers of difficult-to-access and marginalised populations propose the use of snowballing (Fish, 2000) project respondents never had an extensive network of young LGBT Christians which researchers could access.

Contestations over the meaning of ‘queer’, deployed variously as an (anti)identity category, exist, and this was also an issue in publicising the research title of ‘Making Space for Queer Identifying Religious Queer’, as some participants did not view themselves as ‘queer’, or indeed as ‘religious’, instead identifying more specifically rather than generally. ‘Queer’ has been used as an umbrella term to encompass and stretch ‘LGBT’, and to highlight non-normative spaces and subjects. Notably, literature has queried the centrality of visibility, naming and ‘coming out’, with research showing that visibility may be a privilege not readily available to, for example, working-class lesbian women (Taylor, 2007, 2009). As Kong, Mahoney and Plummer (2001: 96) write, ‘The very idea that various types of people named homosexuals ,gays, or lesbians can simply be called up for interviews becomes a key problem in itself’.

While aware of this key problem, it is nonetheless important to signal articulated identifications. In terms of sex and gender identity 19 participants identified as female, 15 as male, two as gender-queer, one as gender-queer and transgender, and one as a female-to-male transsexual. The sexual identity of participants can be broadly categorised as gay (15 respondents), lesbian (13), bisexual (5), queer (4), and asexual (1). Most of the participants considered themselves white British, with only a few identifying as white other such as Greek Cypriot (1 interviewee), Spanish (1), and Italian (1), and five participants had disabilities.

Some respondents wanted their queer religious identity to be publically visible through the project, seeking ‘acknowledgement’ of their participation rather than anonymity. At the end of Nicola’s (21) interview, she joked about the pseudonym given to her:

INTERVIEWER: So this is your opportunity, is there anything you’d like to add for the record?

INTERVIEWEE: That my name is not ‘Nicola’ (laughter). No, that’s everything.

TABLE 1.1 Gender identification

TABLE 1.2 Sexual identification

But this jocular conclusion to the interview was contradicted by a series of harrowing reflexive images in Nicola’s diary. The opening page reads ‘You have taken my identity. How does this make me feel?’ below a drawing of a distressed, blindfolded face. Another page has ‘Nicola’ written in the centre with the participant’s real name repeated (29 times) around it, above the caption: ‘Please don’t take my Identity’. Similarly, Nicola’s mind-map considers ‘Identity’ and is surrounded by personal nouns such as ‘Friend’, ‘DYKE!’, ‘partner’, ‘Girlfriend’, ‘Granddaughter’, as well as her ‘real’ name. The blanket application of anonymity was directly challenged by Norman (29) in an email exchange following his interview, highlighting that ‘many participants who give time/information would like to be acknowledged rather than anonymised’.

Similarly, despite discussions of anonymity, Tom (20) kept his diary as an online blog where his identity is public (rather than hidden) therefore rendering this project data ‘unusable’. In addition to Tom, at least two more project participants kept a blog that (publicly) explored their sexual and religious identities:

I have a blog on bisexuality ... and I talk about church as part of my life, as I would any other aspect of my life, in a very sort of definite way. Because they’re the parts of me that are a minority, they’re the parts that people might have a problem with, so I have to be them to the hilt ... I very much see myself as part of this new movement because I want to be proactive in promoting gay rights and gay Christians and things like that. (Gloria, 20)

The Internet can offer safe spaces, particularly for people with counter-normative sexualities, to construct identity, forge connections, and articulate voices otherwise subjugated in some offline spaces (Vicente and Reis, 2010). However, researchers were bound by institutional ethical guidelines with regards to the anonymity and confidentiality of project participation, and did not want to pose a risk to the anonymity of those discussed in the interviews who had not consented to taking part, thereby taking the issue of ethics beyond the individual researcher-researched. In addition, researchers have to bear responsibility for the longevity of the project data (as opposed to participants’ own online profiles) which resides in and becomes ‘public’, meaning the information is already ‘out there’ if participants changed their minds in the future.

TABLE 1.3 Denomination

The definition of ‘Christian’, and indeed ‘religious’, is contested – and often especially so for youth generally, and queer youth in particular (Yip and Page, 2011; Taylor and Snowdon, 2014). Various Christian denominations have articulated different perspectives that are enormously complicated and contrary (Gross and Yip, 2010) and the diversity within Christian organisations and practices as well as between Christian individuals has to be acknowledged. Most participants identified with the denomination of their church: Church of England (6 participants), Methodist (3), Catholic (2), Quaker (2), Charismatic (1), Ecumenical (1), and Evangelical (1). Two participants identified as Unitarian but with Pagan and Buddhist leanings. Where churches were non-denominational, like the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) (15 participants), some participants also identified with the denomination within which they had been brought up (Church of England, 3 participants; Catholic, 2; Greek Orthodox, 1; and Methodist, 1). Five other participants did not attend a church, attended a non-denominational church (other than MCC), did not know, or did not identify with, the denomination of their church.

In line with comparable youth studies (Kubicek et al., 2009; Yip, Keenan and Page, 2011), our first call for LGBT Christians to participate in the project defined ‘young’ adults as 16 to 24 years of age. However, ‘youth’ is a contested term and can signify a very wide age range, with the experiences and meanings associated with it being socially constituted and varying both cross-culturally and historically (see, for example, Khattab and Fenton, 2009; Leccardi and Ruspini, 2009). In an age of austerity it is common for young adults to have a protracted period of dependence on their parent(s), with record numbers not leaving the parental home until their early thirties. For the purposes of this project, young people were then broadly defined as under 35 years, with the youngest respondent being 17 and the oldest being 34 years old (the mean age of respondents was 24 years old).

The same slippages in defining young adults can be seen in youth studies: Valentine, Skelton, and Butler (2003: 481) recognise that even when young people leave the family home it ‘continues to be the site through which many of their individual biographies and expectations are routed’ (beyond the ‘tidy’ age of 24). Thus, by increasing the upper age range of our participants to 35 the complexity in defining ‘youth’ and the significance of this (expanding) point in the life-course was acknowledged.

The majority of respondents did not easily identify with to social class as a personal identification, but did use this as a classifying device to describe others, their families, backgrounds, and schooling experiences, whilst often remaining reluctant to attach this to themselves personally: ‘I don’t like to say “class”. I suppose other people would call me middle-class but I do not, I don’t judge people by their class and I don’t really approve of that’ (George, 23). Despite the fact that overt identification with class was not always decisive or desirable, a socio-economic cross-section was somewhat represented, though the overwhelming majority of respondents could be described as middle-class (for research on class and religiosity see, for example, Mellor, 2010; Dinham, 2012; Strhan, 2012). Lucy (19), for example, identified as coming from a working-class background: ‘I definitely come from a working class background. I wouldn’t say that it was that important; sometimes at university, a lot of the people I know are more middle class so I might not fit in, kind of, but I wouldn’t say it was that important. I just have a stronger accent’.

The project adopted a mixed-method qualitative research design, consisting of individual face-to-face interviews, diaries, and a mapping exercise. Many researchers (and respondents) were somewhat disillusioned with more ‘removed’ forms of data collection and the primacy of the spoken word, resting on an ability to speak, come-out, or tell a story (Taylor, 2005; McDermott, 2010). This mixed-methods design reflects our commitment to the study of meanings and lived experiences: ‘meaning is not a function of the type of data collected (i.e. quantitative vs. qualitative). Rather, meaning results from the interpretation of data, whether represented by numbers or by words’ (Onwuegbuzie and Leech, 2005: 379). Arguably ‘showing a world’ is more agentic than the more traditional format of ‘telling a world’ through interview, and so diaries and mind-maps were employed as participant-led methodologies, generating both textual and visual data to complement the oral accounts.

Since the ‘social identities mapping’ and diary exercises were intended to be participatory an overly prescriptive approach was avoided. The purpose was to offer insight into identities in an alternative format to the interviews and to represent different and intersecting components of lived lives. Each participant was invited to keep a diary for one month after th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction: Queer Religious Youth in Colliding Contexts
• 1  Contradictory Subjectivities? The Space of Research - Researcher-Researched Identities
• 2  Making Space at the (Queer) Academic Table?
• 3  Creative Scenes: Sounding Religious, Sounding Queer
• 4  Online Settings: Becoming and Believing
• 5  Making Space for Young Lesbians? Gendered Sites, Scripts and Sticking Points
• 6  Policy Spaces and Public Imaginations
• Bibliography
• Index