7 - LGBTQ+ young peoples’ sexuality and gender citizenship in digital spaces

Summary

In this chapter, we explore radical community development through detailing and analysing the explicit examples of sexual and gender citizenship as practised in the lives of LGBTQ+ young people. We are drawing on a combined 50 years of working as professional youth and community development workers in the UK, and further experience of our own participation in youth projects and activities, volunteering and study in the field. Since 2005, we have worked together across local authority, national and regional youth and community development work organisations, including: Halton Youth Service, Greater Merseyside Connexions Partnership, Brook, LGBT Youth North West, SAYiT, The Proud Trust, Pride Sports and the Empowerment People. In what follows we unpack the use of the LGBTQ+ acronym, before outlining the development of a lexicon of sexual identities and citizenship, which arises from the struggle for life and acceptance of LGBTQ+ communities. We argue that, historically, the development of this lexicon has supported the emergence of the LGBTQ+ communities and their community development organisations and networks. Such civic action is both of interest to, and facilitated by, the practices of radical community development.

These same processes of development remain at work today and are now made possible and enhanced by the digital world. The powerful process of movements in sexualities and gender identities raises critical questions for us as radical youth and community development practitioners, most notably questions about individualisation versus collective community; and the joy and tensions therein. In a final development of the argument, we bring together our decades of professional practice to suggest a model that has been developed over the past 30+ years, by the chapter's first author Sally Carr. Here this is briefly elaborated as a model of Therapeutic Youth and Community Work.

We are choosing to use the acronym LGBTQ+ standing for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer with the plus (+ ) symbol providing an acknowledgement to many other identities that are impacted by LGBTphobia within hetero and cis-normative environments. Some authors, activists and professional practitioners will use the longer acronym LGBTIQQAA (or variations on this), which actively acknowledges intersex, queer, questioning, allies and asexual identities. We prefer the utilisation of the plus symbol as a way of demarking both those identities currently included, and the possibility of yet more identity categories being included in this umbrella term.