Citation

Wozolek B, Wootton L, Demlow A. Cult. Stud. Crit. Methodol. 2017; 17(5): 392-398.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1532708616673659

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Written from the perspectives of a tenured high school teacher/researcher, an out bisexual sophomore, and a transgender senior, this article discusses the challenges of being and becoming an out lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning (LGBTQ) student in a large, Midwestern high school. Through counternarratives, the authors explore what they call the school-to-coffin pipeline, a system that (un)intentionally positions LGBTQ teens in what has become a horrific, yet normalized, epidemic of queer youth suicide. The authors use the framework of this pipeline to examine what it means to live with/in the in-between of school rhetoric and a dearth of enacted school policy that could literally be life-saving for queer youth. Through an examination of the everyday challenges queer youth encounter, the authors argue that all adults involved in schooling--including teachers, teacher educators, administrators, counselors, and school psychologist--are necessarily (un)knowing participants in the school-to-coffin pipeline, contributing to institutional homophobia and, by extension, LGBTQ youth suicide. The authors argue that by attending to the school-to-coffin pipeline, those who contribute to it can begin to interrupt the current, and possibly continuing, cycle of self-inflicted violence on queer youth bodies.

Language: en

Keywords

suicide; counternarratives; homophobia; queer youth; school-to-coffin pipeline