Being a trans youth in high school today can be a lot of work. Some of it can be seen, but much of it can’t.
And it’s this physical, mental and emotional labour that trans youth undertake each day at school in order to feel safe, to feel connected to their peers, and to comfortably and safely express who they are that fascinates LJ Slovin.
Slovin spent a year with a number of trans youth at a high school in western Canada to better understand this kind of labour, documented in their new to be published this August: Fierce, Fabulous, and Fluid: How Trans High School Students Work at Gender Nonconformity.
“As a trans non-binary person and a former youth worker, I’ve worked with a lot of trans youth,” says Slovin, a postdoctoral fellow with the Faculty of Arts & Science’s Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies.
“I was interested in the normative ideas that shape what we understand as trans in schools, and how those limited ideas create a context in which trans youth have to do a lot of labour.”
The book is filled with stories about the day-to-day experiences of six high school trans students ages 14-18 that Slovin worked alongside for a year.
For some, Slovin observed from a distance, sitting in the same classrooms but not together.
“Some other young folks wanted me to be with them all the time,” they say. “I went to their classes, we hung out at lunch. I went to all their performances in the evenings, we would leave school at the end of the day and get snacks.”
Slovin was also intrigued with how the participating school operated, observing how these youth navigated socially within it.
“That included looking at school policy and the school’s physical space, but it also included the relationships the trans youth had with teachers, with other classmates, looking at all of these elements of a school that a young person would interact with on a daily basis.”
To spend all of that time with the same people was a gift. I got a lot out of the time we spent together, a lot of joy, because for all the ways that we talked about trans folks dealing with intense things, it was just lovely to share that time and space with them.
Through their research Slovin identifies three different forms of labour that the students undertook.
The first is the labour of understanding and forgiveness — continually having to be patient and compassionate when others incorrectly identify you.
“I was in a progressive school, many of the adults had good intentions towards supporting trans folks,” says Slovin.
But Slovin noticed the teachers, though well-meaning, would make mistakes when identifying the students’ names, or gender or pronouns. Beyond misgendering, these adults wanted the students to extend empathy to them as they tried to be allies.
“That creates work for a young person to be like, ‘I understand this is a challenging thing for you to learn, and I forgive you for misgendering me.’”
Interactions like this, continually having to correct, explain and forgive can be emotionally taxing.
The second form is the labour of legibility – having to make distinct efforts to show that a student is trans to elicit a response. Not all students were interested or compelled in performing this labour, but students who wanted to be recognized as trans did this work on a regular basis.
“If they want to access accommodations, they have to be known as a transgender person, which means they have to do something to make themselves visible to adults. So they behave in a way that would be expected according to normative notions of trans identity,” says Slovin.
“These students are understanding adults’ ideas of what it means and looks like to be trans and then trying to enact that so that they can access the accommodations they need, so that they’re not misgendered all the time.”
But this can cause some inner conflict and frustration, with students conflicted about how to dress, speak and act in a way that follows limited ideas surrounding trans identity, instead of being genuine and authentic.
The third form of labour Slovin describes as “world building” — trans youth creating, maintaining and investing in safe spaces where they can be themselves with no expectations or demands.
“Safe spaces are tricky,” says Slovin. “People are creating them based on what they need to feel safer in a school. I was interested in the spaces they built away from all of the surveillance and observation where they could just live in relation to their gender in ways that weren't noticed in school.”
One such space was the school’s tech booth in the school’s theatre. Slovin recalls spending hours with two students there.
“When we were in the tech booth, everything was different,” says Slovin. “They didn't have to prove that they were trans to me or to each other, they didn't have to worry about having their pronouns respected, they didn't have to worry about dressing in a certain way that undercut their legitimacy as being who they are.
“They were able to dream about what it would be like when they were not in the school anymore, and they could live in a trans community and live more aligned with their desires.”
Through their book, Slovin hopes to provide educators with ideas about how to re-evaluate school environments.
“How do we shift the ways that we think about trans youth, and about gender nonconformity? What if we step back and ask, ‘What is happening in school environments that is creating hardship for young people?’
“Instead of adults being accommodating when a transgender person makes themselves known, what about creating environments that already invite the possibility of gender non-conformity?”
With the book’s Canadian release in August, Slovin is excited about the discussions it will generate.
“It was an amazing project,” says Slovin. “To spend all of that time with the same people was a gift. I got a lot out of the time we spent together, a lot of joy, because for all the ways that we talked about trans folks dealing with intense things, it was just lovely to share that time and space with them.”