“The term “all genders” would be more appropriate”: Reflections on teaching trauma literature to a gender fluid youth

Abstract

This paper reflects on a qualitative case study where a trauma text was taught in high school English for the purposes of analyzing students’ written responses. One gender fluid participant provided particularly compelling ideas and impressions; as such, this project revisits this data. Because self-defined identities are important (Zamani-Gallaher, 2017) and there is a lack of understanding of LGBTQ school experiences (Ressler & Chase, 2009), this paper aims to address this gap. Using intersectional feminism and narrative inquiry, this study finds that the gender fluid participant positioned themselves as ‘the equity person’ (Ahmed, 2017) through ally and accomplice work.