Identity development negotiation and navigation for LGBTQ + individuals in the Deep South

Abstract

Queer individuals face a variety of complicated and fraught processes for coming to understand, navigate, and develop their gender and sexual identities. While many existing gender and sexual identity development models propose stages through which individuals might proceed in an orderly and predictable pattern, these models often fail to account for contextual factors and intersections with racism and racial identity development. In this study with LGBTQ + people in the Deep South region of the U.S., we document the ways that identity navigation processes were complicated, cyclical, and tenuous, as well as the ways that contextual factors variously constrained or facilitated identity processes. We also argue that racism and racial identity development intersected with gender and sexual identity development as well as interacting with contextual factors.

Keywords:

• Deep South
• Identity development
• intersectionality
• LGBTQ+
• qualitative analysis

Notes

1 Cisheterosexism refers to the ideological and systemic privileging of cisgender and heterosexual identities, which inherently oppresses queer and trans people. This term acknowledges the ways that cisgenderism, heterosexism, homophobia, and transphobia are all inseparable aspects of the same system and ideology (López Medina, 2022).

2 The age of consent in the state where the researchers were located was 19 at the time of the study.