Helpful information to whom? An intersectional critique of the ‘it gets better project

Hawkins, Blake; Andalibi, Nazanin; Haimson, Oliver L.

doi:10.1002/pra2.2018.14505501133

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Others highlighted IGB’s lack of practical tools or means of helping with suicidality in LGBTQ youth populations (Craig et al, 2014). Critiques have also discussed how IGB centers neoliberal ideals and homonormative 3 lifestyles which can serve to exclude or further marginalize LGBTQ youth who do not seek these futures (Grzanka & Mann, 2014; Hawkins et al, 2018; Johnson, 2014).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenging “Getting Better” Social Media Narratives With Intersectional Transgender Lived Experiences

Haimson

2020

Social Media + Society

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A dominant media narrative of “getting better” over time is often projected onto LGBTQ people’s personal life experiences. In this research study, I examine this narrative’s role in transgender people’s emotional well-being throughout transition. A “getting better” narrative was pervasive in my qualitative analysis of 240 Tumblr transition blogs and 20 interviews with bloggers, signaling that it impacted people’s self-concept both as presented on social media and when talking about their experiences. This narrative causes undue emotional harm given contrast between one’s post-transition reality, which may involve distress (despite greater congruence between one’s body and identity), and a dominant cultural expectation of happiness. I argue that an intersectional approach to understanding trans people’s emotional well-being—by considering multiple salient identity facets and life transitions—makes trans lives more livable by complicating the cultural imperative to feel better, and to present a unilaterally positive self-image online, post-transition. Even though trans people on average feel better after gender transition, everyday realities are often in contrast to the dominant narrative’s positioning of gender transition as a process with a single, simple goal of feeling better. Challenging the “getting better” narrative gives trans people the freedom to live and exist in their post-transition identities, whether or not they feel “better.”

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenging “Getting Better” Social Media Narratives With Intersectional Transgender Lived Experiences

Haimson

2020

Social Media + Society

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“…LGBTQ+ youth (Michaelsen 2017) and it may associate "better" life primarily with a very narrow kind of white, middle-class, nuclear family-like life, sometimes called a "homonormative" approach to life, which is unappealing to many LGBTQ+ youth (Hawkins, Andalibi, & Haimson 2018). Further, it may be inaccessible to many: not every queer person on the planet has the resources to access all the videos, or the access to money or social status necessary to attain the kind of homonormative life which gets emphasised.…”

Section: 1: the Evidential Concernmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spinoza and Self-Destruction: Oppression and Suicide

MacLean-Evans¹

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This thesis project argues that Spinozism provides a useful framework for contemporary suicide studies. In Chapter 1, I provide an overview of the project and make some important preliminary notes. In Chapter 2, I develop a reading of Spinoza's philosophy of suicide which holds both that suicides are externally caused and that suicide may sometimes be rational, based on the very important discussion that Spinoza gives of Seneca's death. In Chapter 3, I explore the Spinozist implications of this view, showing that Spinozism demands that we make it so that suicide is never forced to be rational, and that this demands abolishing oppression. Though Spinoza is certainly not an oppression theorist in the contemporary sense of the concept, his discussion of a particular case of political repression lets us move to a view of oppression (contemporarily understood) as suicide inducing and thus in need of elimination. In Chapter 4, I explain two risks present in the three main models of contemporary suicidology. In Chapter 5, I illustrate the Spinozist framework's viability as an interpretive tool for suicide studies, with reference to three suicide notes, and explain how the Spinozist framework avoids the issues discussed in Chapter 4. In Chapter 5's conclusion, I emphasize on Spinozist grounds the need to abolish oppression and provide evidence to people that good living is possible."one who loves necessarily strives to have present and preserve the thing he loves" (E3p13s).

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Whose Better? (Re)Orientating a Queer Ecopedagogy (Again)

Russell

2021

Queer Ecopedagogies

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Helpful information to whom? An intersectional critique of the ‘it gets better project

Cited by 3 publications

References 13 publications

Challenging “Getting Better” Social Media Narratives With Intersectional Transgender Lived Experiences

Challenging “Getting Better” Social Media Narratives With Intersectional Transgender Lived Experiences

Spinoza and Self-Destruction: Oppression and Suicide

Whose Better? (Re)Orientating a Queer Ecopedagogy (Again)

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