Your Tax Dollars at Work: The State of Queer Youth Studies

On 12 October 2007, I received an email from the chief media officer at sshrc, which let me know that a reporter for the National Post was writing an article on my research. My response was “sounds great!” I was thrilled by the coverage, although a bit confused as to why a generally conservative periodical would be interested in profiling my work on lgbt youth cultures. Robert Fulford did attempt to contact me, but I wasn’t able to return his call until the deadline had already passed. When the article appeared, my reaction was, “Oh.” I got it. The article wasn’t about my research—it was about “people like me” (i.e., the oft-cited special interests groups) who suck money from the Canadian economy for “pointless” scholarship.

I am, indeed, part of a “special-interest” group. I am especially interested in the continued survival of lgbt youth around the globe who may feel invisible when they turn to popular culture for any sort of ethical representation of their lives. After Ricky Vasquez on My So-Called Life (1994), teen audiences had to wait seven years until the arrival of Marco Del Rossi on Degrassi: The Next Generation (2001) to see anything close to a “realistic” portrait of a gay teen. I am interested not simply in charting the development of literature and media aimed at gay teens, but in collecting and analyzing work written by gay teens. Scholastic has an imprint, Push, edited by David Levithan, which solely publishes teen novels and poetry. Why isn’t anyone else writing about this? Scholars will admit that the gay memoir—particularly of the Edmund White variety—“had its place” in the development of lgbt literature, but what about teens writing now about their experiences of homophobia versus their attempts at community building? Hundreds of teens write letters to publications like XY, which is then criticized because it includes sexy pictures of gay youth. Why are recollected sex-scenes by older gay men considered academically interesting, while teen participation in visual sexuality today is considered exploitative and scholarly vapid? Are teens too stupid to construct themselves as objects of discourse, or as cultural organizers? The growing emergence of gay-straight alliances in North America seems to suggest the opposite.

Academics are supposed to be ornery and polemical—we’re supposed to like arguing—but it’s not often that we get the chance to respond, in print, to an outright attack on our scholarly and cultural lives. So I’m going to use every bit of my one thousand word limit here to make a point. I am sick and tired of being called a pampered doll because I work in queer studies, as if lgbt research has become so mainstream that any attempt to address its marginalization is now pointless and reactionary. I completed six years of graduate work at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia—supposedly one of the most queer-friendly cities on the planet—and during that time I was one of only three openly gay students within my department. I was never given the chance to participate in or ta for an lgbt studies class, since none existed. I was consistently told that I should “broaden my focus” and “not just deal with queer issues.” I attempted to start an lgbt grad student network and was met with almost perfect apathy from the school’s graduate community. I watched numerous tenure-track positions appear, but none that focused on queer studies or, even, on sexuality in general. I received generous and unqualified support from my supervisor, but aside from that, I felt adrift.

I am tired of being told by colleagues, by publishers—and even by strangers—that queer studies are passé, that they’re already well funded, that they don’t require further attention, that I should just shut up. Every day I try my best to identify as a queer man who’s never entirely sure where his politics lie, who’s not completely certain what he wants to “do” with this cultural capital, but...