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Recent research finds that youth who identify as transgender or gender-expansive are disproportionately incarcerated in juvenile justice systems and are treated differently from their non-trans peers (Himmelstein and Brückner, 2011; Hunt and Moodie-Mills, 2012; Irvine, 2010; Mitchum and Moodie-Mills, 2014). Juvenile justice systems have paid little attention to this group of young people in terms of their unique service needs and risk factors. Using qualitative methods, the researchers analyze in-depth interviews and focus group findings from formerly incarcerated trans youth in juvenile justice settings to better understand their experiences. This paper aims to examine the challenges for young people, and, as well as considered recommendations for juvenile justice professionals to study toward making changes in policies, practices and programs that are needed to support young people who are transgender or gender expansive.

Using qualitative, case examples and descriptive analysis, this paper describes the experiences of trans youth in juvenile justice settings and studies toward developing models of promoting trans-affirming approaches to enhance juvenile justice institutions for trans and gender-expansive youth placed in them. The paper describes the evolution of an approach used by the authors, in New York state juvenile justice settings to increase a trans-affirming perspective as a central role in the organization’s strategy and design, and the methods it is using to institutionalize this critical change. Findings culled from the focus groups and in-depth interviews with 15 former residents of juvenile justice settings and several (3) key staff members from the juvenile justice system, focusing on policies, practices and training models are useful tools for assessing progress and recommending actions to increase the affirming nature of such systems. At its conclusion, this chapter will provide clear outcomes and implications for the development of policies, practices and programs with trans and gender expansive youth in juvenile justice systems.

Finding are conceptualized in six thematic categories, namely, privacy, access to health and mental health care, the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity, name and pronoun use, clothing, appearance and mannerism, and housing issues.

This study is limited as it focuses on formerly incarcerated youth in the New York City area.

The following implications for practice stemming from this study are as follows: juvenile justice professionals (including judges, defense attorneys, prosecutors, probation officers and detention staff) must treat – and ensure others treat – all trans and gender-expansive youth with fairness, dignity and respect, including prohibiting any attempts to ridicule or change a youth’s gender identity or expression. Having written nondiscrimination and anti-harassment policy is also essential. These policies can address issues such as prohibiting harassment of youth or staff who are trans or gender expansive, requiring the use of respectful and inclusive language and determining how gender rules (e.g. usage of “male or “female” bathrooms, gender-based room assignments) will be addressed for transgender and gender-nonconforming youth. Programs should also provide clients and staff with training and helpful written materials. Juvenile justice professionals must promote the well-being of transgender youth by allowing them to express their gender identity through choice of clothing, name, hair-style and other means of expression and by ensuring that they have access to appropriate medical care if necessary. Juvenile justice professionals must receive training and resources regarding the unique societal, familial and developmental challenges confronting trans youth and the relevance of these issues to court proceedings. Training must be designed to address the specific professional responsibilities of the audience (i.e. judges, defense attorneys, prosecutors, probation officers and detention staff). Juvenile justice professionals must develop individualized, developmentally appropriate responses to the behavior of each trans youth, tailored to address the specific circumstances of his or her or their life.

Providing trans-affirming services to youth in juvenile justice settings is a matter of equity and should be the goal strived for by all systems that care for these young people. Helping trans and gender-expansive youth reenter and reintegrate into society should be a primary goal. There are many organizations and systems that stand ready to assist juvenile justice systems and facilities in supporting trans and gender expansive youth in their custody and helping them to rehabilitate, heal and reenter a society that welcomes their participation and where they can thrive and not just survive.

The paper is original in that it examines the lived experiences of trans and gender-expansive youth in juvenile justice systems. An area, which has not been fully explored in the professional literature.

The emergence of gender-nonconforming behavior in a child presents an opportunity and, often, significant pressure for parents to question the gender beliefs they have taken for granted. The purpose of this research is to examine how parents of gender-diverse youth respond to such pressures and ultimately come to understand and support their children’s gender identity.

This research is guided by Ridgeway’s theoretical concept of gender as a primary frame for coordinating social life. Using in-depth interviews with 36 supportive parents of gender-diverse children, the author details the process by which parents developed a critical consciousness of gender and subsequently adopted trans-affirming beliefs in response to their children’s gender-nonconformity.

Findings illustrate the power of gender as a primary frame for organizing life within the family as well as the circumstances under which hegemonic gender beliefs can be disrupted and alternative beliefs can be formed. The analysis shows that the process of making space for gender diversity within the home, which is taken on almost exclusively by mothers, invokes competing maternal mandates of raising “proper” children versus modeling selfless devotion to children’s happiness and well-being. As mothers navigate these conflicting requirements to create greater gender freedom for their children, they reinforce and perpetuate gender stereotypes that cast women as natural caregivers. Ironically, the work of intensive mothering is also the mechanism through which women come to develop alternative gender beliefs that they then use to expand gender possibilities for their children.

This paper aims to explore a national anti-hate messaging project, #USvsHate, and its call to students to create public messages refusing “hate, bias, and injustice.” Participants indicated that #USvsHate’s invitation to publicly express students’ ideas about equal human value functioned as a next step in furthering youth voice and critical consciousness toward societal inclusion and justice.

Using grounded theory, analysis drew from teacher interviews (n = 45), student focus groups (n = 30), anonymous participant questionnaires and student-created messages and backstories (n = 250) gathered between 2017 and 2020.

Participants indicated #USvsHate’s call to amplify student voice offered a next step to act upon awareness of social issues by denouncing hate while promoting inclusivity. Four invitations related to the project’s “anti-hate message” call emerged as important to participants: the invitation to comment personally on improving society; the creative invitation to share perspectives in any media form; the invitation to speak to a promised public audience; and the invitation to join a collective “us” improving society.

Youth voice and critical consciousness scholarship show the importance of supporting K12 youth to develop abilities to speak about injustice while pursuing an inclusive democracy. Still, less research highlights youth who might enter a classroom with some level of such awareness. This research extends existing scholarship by examining a potential next step to inviting critical consciousness and youth voice in any classroom. It also explores the potential pitfalls of this open-ended approach.

Trans students at New College of Florida provide overwhelmingly positive assessments of their campus culture as related to issues of gender identity, a stark contrast to existing literature on gender-nonconforming collegians. This chapter examines the interactional processes that create a context supportive of all genders – the ways students are expected to act toward one another and how they hold each other accountable to these norms. I draw on interviews with 24 students with diverse identities to argue: (1) there is a trans-inclusive understanding of gender that is dominant on campus, (2) the students have norms that reflect the inclusive understanding and provide direction for when and how gender should enter interactions, and (3) swift responses to breaches of interactional norms serve to support gender-nonconforming students and affirm the identity of the community as unwilling to tolerate transphobia. This analysis demonstrates an alternative cultural context, one in which community members are held not to conventional expectations associated with assumed sex category, but to an understanding of gender that does not take identity for granted. In so doing, it highlights how shifts in shared understanding can create more inclusive interactional practices. Additionally, the focus on the meaning underlying social processes suggests that shifts in how people think about gender could similarly lead to alteration of organizational structures that would help trans students thrive.

This paper presents results from a participatory action research study with 46 LGBTQIA+ community leaders and 60 library workers who participated in four community forums at public libraries across the US. The forums identified barriers to LGBTQIA+ communities addressing their health questions and concerns and explored strategies for public libraries to tackle them.

Forums followed the World Café format to facilitate collaborative knowledge development and promote participant-led change. Data sources included collaborative notes taken by participants and observational researcher notes. Data analysis consisted of emic/etic qualitative coding.

Results revealed that barriers experienced by LGBTQIA+ communities are structurally and socially entrenched and require systematic changes. Public libraries must expand their strategies beyond collection development and one-off programming to meet these requirements. Suggested strategies include outreach and community engagement and mutual aid initiatives characterized by explicit advocacy for LGBTQIA+ communities and community organizing approaches.

Limitations include the sample's lack of racial diversity and the gap in the data collection period between forums due to COVID-19. Public libraries can readily adopt strategies overviewed in this paper for LGBTQIA+ health promotion.

This research used a unique methodology within the Library and Information Science (LIS) field to engage LGBTQIA+ community leaders and library workers in conversations about how public libraries can contribute to LGBTQIA+ health promotion. Prior research has often captured these perspectives separately. Uniting the groups facilitated understanding of each other's strengths and challenges, identifying strategies more relevant than asking either group alone.

This study explores the health-seeking process for queer and/or trans people, and factors involved in their healthcare negotiations and decisions to seek care. The data included 20 semi-structured interviews of people who identify as queer and/or trans in the southeastern United States. Qualitative analysis was conducted using constructivist grounded theory to inductively analyze accounts of healthcare events, behaviors, and experiences of queer and/or trans people. Participants’ ages ranged from 18 to 57, with a majority identifying as trans/gender nonconforming (65%) and those remaining identifying as queer, cisgender individuals (35%). Both queer and trans identities can overlap, therefore, I use the term “queer and/or trans.” Categories generated through the coding process were as follows: (1) mental health concerns, (2) negotiating gendered and heteronormative assumptions, and (3) significance of participants creating a bed of knowledge. My analysis asserts that these data indicate that queer and/or trans participants manage not just healthcare decisions, but the hopelessness attached to seeking this type of help.

This paper aims to consider the role of social media platforms as educational technologies given growing evidence of harms to democracy, society and individuals, particularly through logics of efficiency, racism, misogyny and surveillance inextricably designed into the architectural and algorithmic bones of social media. The paper aims to uncover downsides and drawbacks of for-profit social media, as well as consider the discriminatory design embedded within its blueprints.

The authors used a method of a technological audit, framed through the lenses of technoskepticism and discriminatory design, to consider the unintended downsides and consequences of Twitter and Instagram.

The authors provide evidence from a variety of sources to demonstrate that Instagram and Twitter’s intersection of technological design, systemic oppression, platform capitalism and algorithmic manipulation cause material harm to marginalized people and youth.

The authors contend that it is a conflict of professional ethics to treat social media as an educational technology that should be used by youth in educational settings. Thus, they suggest that future scholarship focus more on addressing methods of teaching about social media rather than teaching with social media.

The paper concludes with recommendations for educators who might work alongside young people to learn about social media while taking informed social actions for more just technological futures.

This paper fulfills an identified need to challenge the direction of the field of social media and education research. It is of use to education scholars, practitioners and policy makers.

People experiencing homelessness are uniquely vulnerable to the impacts of a pandemic, such as COVID-19. Therefore, governments across Canada have been implementing a patchwork of responses to address the needs of those who are homeless at this time. The purpose of this study is to both compile and assess the varying responses by exploring the breadth of actions presented in print and social media.

Rapid review methodology is a means of compiling a breadth of information to compare and contrast policy implementations. Herein, the authors provide a comprehensive rapid review of responses to homelessness considered through a health equity lens.

Based on policy implementations to date, the authors offer eight recommendations of potentially promising practices among these responses. Situated within a capabilities approach, the authors call upon governments to provide a full breadth of responses to ensure that both health and housing are better protected and obtained during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper presents the first comprehensive review of local government responses to homelessness in the context of COVID-19.

In this chapter, we draw on trans-informed theoretical frameworks to provide insights into gender justice and gender democratization in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). Our purpose is to illuminate the systemic impact of cisgenderist and cissexist beliefs which refer to the legitimation of birth-assigned gender identity and what this means for embracing a critical project of gender expansiveness in the ECEC classroom. More broadly, we explicate how our engagement with trans studies informs a critique of existing debates about masculinities, boys and male teachers in the early years. We draw on the work of trans scholars in the first part of this chapter to ground an epistemological basis for our understanding of gender expansiveness and masculinities that challenges a cisnormative framing of gender justice in ECEC. In the second part, we draw specifically on scholars in the field who have been pivotal in elaborating what we understand to be gender expansive identities and what this means for thinking about gender justice in the early childhood classroom. In the third part, we reflect on the pedagogical implications of boyhood sissiness through a trans-informed lens and explicate its implications for understanding boys and masculinities in the early years. Finally, we draw on transgender studies-informed perspectives on masculinity which call for ‘de-essentializ[ing] masculinity as grounded in a cis-male body’ (Gottzén & Straube, 2016, p. 217) and explore their implications for re-envisioning masculinities as a gender-transformative project in ECEC.

While transgender people have had some success in gaining recognition and human rights in the collection of nations known colloquially as ‘the West’, a well-financed reactionary movement is attempting to roll back these gains. A constellation of white supremacist, conservative, and heteropatriarchal organizations and movements are in collusion with so-called ‘gender critical feminists’ to resist feminist and gender-inclusive challenges to traditional gender and sexual hierarchies by targeting trans girls and women – more so than trans boys, trans men and non-binary people – for surveillance and exclusion (Sharrow, 2021a, 2021b). In the past several years, bills designed to delegitimize and exclude trans people in various ways have been introduced in many US state legislatures. Within this larger anti-trans campaign, bills designed specifically to block trans girls and women from participating in ‘female’ sport have been signed into law in 11 US states to date and proposed in many others. It is no accident that organized sport is a site for contesting the inclusion of transgender people and that transgender girls and women are the primary targets of these campaigns. Debates about criteria for female eligibility and a succession of pseudo-scientific forms of ‘sex testing’ in elite levels of sport highlight both the ideological nature of the two-sex system and the intense material and cultural investment in maintaining its façade. In this chapter, I mobilize moral panic theory to focus specifically on anti-trans campaigns in the United States aimed at preventing trans girls and women from participating in ‘female’ sport as evidence of a testosterone panic.