Queer and Trans Joy as Disruption to Rape Culture


JJ Wright, MacEwan University

2SLGBTQ+ young people are facing a climate of rising homophobia and transphobia, which has resulted in increased rates of gender-based violence (Goetsch, 2023). Queer and trans youth already experience disproportionately high rates of gender-based violence compared to their cisgender heterosexual peers (Jaffray, 2020). Sociological scholars have predominantly responded to this violence by reporting on victimization, which is understandable given that sociology is a study of social inequities, however, the focus on victimization has had the effect of homogenizing queer and trans life as misery. To avoid reproducing this joy-deficit (Shuster and Westbrook, 2022), I propose a novel approach that centers queer and trans joy in gender-based violence prevention education. As rape culture is symptomatic of cisheteronormativity, queer and trans sexual joy offer a useful analytic with which to subvert gender-based violence. In this paper presentation, I examine how queer and trans sexual joy represents a disruption to rape culture and offers lessons for a transformative framework for gender-based violence prevention education, particularly sexual consent education. Drawing on findings from The Queer Sexual Joy Project, a mixed-methods study involving 100 2SLGBTQ+ young adults aged 18-35 from Canada and the US, I will argue that queer and trans sexual joy disrupts rape culture and that these ruptures to the white nationalist, able-bodied, able-minded, cisheteronormative status quo can inform transformative, liberatory gender-based violence education and particularly sexual consent education. The Queer Sexual Joy project involved two focus groups, one-one-one interviews, participatory visual arts-based workshops (cellphilming (or short films created on phones) workshops, and two surveys. Analysis was completed using a grounded theory approach. A code set was developed iteratively, and the data set was re-coded as needed on Dedoose. Highlighting participant voices, this paper presentation will first examine what queer and trans sexual joy is, articulating the importance of the themes of safety, play, authenticity, and “intercreativity.” I will also discuss the barriers that participants encountered to queer and trans sexual joy and how they found their way to these experiences of embodied joy despite these barriers. I also explore how participant’s experiences of queer and trans sexual joy were healing. 75% of survey respondents identified as sexual violence survivors, and almost all other participants discussed surviving gender-based violence. Survivors in the study who had had sex with other 2SLGBTQ+ survivors articulated how they were much more supported by these partners and experienced much more embodied pleasure during sex compared to sex with partners who were cisgender heterosexual men. Queer and trans sexual joy offers many lessons for creating sexual cultures that reject the cisheteronormativity underlying rape culture and cultivate more just, mutually pleasurable sexual cultures. During the presentation, I will also touch on how the lessons from The Queer Sexual Joy Project may be practically implemented into gender-based violence prevention education.

This paper will be presented at the following session: