ERIC Number: EJ1024599
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2013
Pages: 23
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1936-1653
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Available Date: N/A
Conditions of Living: Queer Youth Suicide, Homonormative Tolerance, and Relative Misery
Cover, Rob
Journal of LGBT Youth, v10 n4 p328-350 2013
Despite the increasing social tolerance accorded nonheterosexual persons in many Western countries, queer youth suicide rates remain high. This opens the need to question not only how broad social conditions continue to make lives unlivable for many queer youth but whether queer community formations and representations that emerge within a tolerance framework provide supportive environments for fostering youth resilience. This article presents a theoretical approach to understanding the continuity of youth suicide by considering how queer community formations built on tolerance create new exclusions for some queer youth that can make a life unlivable in relation to peers. The article articulates the tolerance framework through a return to Dennis Altman's 40-year-old "Homosexual Oppression and Liberation" and the more recent "homonormativity" critique of queer politics. It examines how tolerance and homonormativity are implicated in exclusions and suicidality through the "relative misery" suicide thesis and the concept of frustrated aspiration.
Descriptors: Homosexuality, Sexual Orientation, Social Bias, Social Attitudes, At Risk Persons, Youth, Suicide, Social Support Groups, Resilience (Psychology), Social Justice, Political Issues, Activism, Civil Rights, Neoliberalism, Gender Issues, Social Influences, Rejection (Psychology), Psychological Characteristics
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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