Insights from an intersectional view of the self for non-heterosexual female youth workers

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the relevance of intersectional theory (Crenshaw, 1989; Winker and Degele, 2011) in understanding how youth workers name themselves in their everyday lives. An intersectional approach will assist youth workers in developing a clear understanding of their own self as they work with young people from diverse and challenging backgrounds. Design/methodology/approach This research takes a qualitative approach, using in-depth interviews with cisgendered, female lesbian, gay and bisexual respondents of different social class, religion, ethnicity and age about their everyday experiences. Findings Intracategorical and anticategorical intersectional approaches (McCall, 2005) were used to assist in understanding how these professionals chose to name themselves in their personal and working lives. Originality/value The youth work literature, although focussed on the importance of issues of diversity, has not engaged with the ideas of intersectionality. The focus on intersections of sexuality, as well as social class, religion, ethnicity and age, fills another gap in the literature where less attention has been paid to the “category” of sexuality (Richardson and Monro, 2012; Wright, 2016b). These findings will be useful for youth workers and for practitioners and their trainers from a range of professional backgrounds such as therapists, social workers, teachers and health care practitioners.

The use of self: the conscious or unconscious (sharing or) leaking of identity by LGBQ cisgender women youth workers in the North of England

“…It may be that LGBQ women from BAME heritages never fitted the butch/femme duality (Hutson, 2010). The possible marginalisation of BAME women within LGBQ circles (Mackay, 2021) was supported by this research which concluded that BAME women often found queer more useful than a lesbian label (Hatton and Monro, 2019). It is important to note that bisexual women are often invisible as they are not able to “play the pronoun game” (Hayfield et al ., 2013, p. 177) and there is little “evidence of a bisexual look” (Clarke and Turner, 2007, p. 272).…”