Gen Z GSAs: Trans-Affirming and Racially Inclusive Gender-Sexuality Alliances in Secondary Schools

Abstract

Background:

Within the context of high school student clubs, the acronym “GSA” originally stood for “Gay-Straight Alliance.” It described gay and straight youth working as allies to learn about themselves and each other’s lives and to navigate and address interpersonal and institutional anti-LGBTQ school policies and practices. Today, the acronym is commonly parsed by Gen Z members as “Gender-Sexuality Alliance” to better represent the presence and needs of transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming students, and their cisgender allies.

Purpose of Study:

We inquire how students learn about themselves and others—partially, unevenly, and, at times, uneasily—as they incorporate socially resistant gender and race identity work within their GSA school clubs.

Participants:

Participants were cisgender (n = 10) and transgender and nonbinary (n = 10), racially diverse high school students in GSAs between 14 and 18 years of age.

Research Design:

Our analysis is grounded in critical pragmatism, a methodological integration of critical theory and pragmatism, which stems from reflexive immersion in the research context and use of empirical inquiry as a tool to acknowledge and guide transformation of entrenched anti-trans oppression in schools, noting that racism, among other forms of structural inequality, is built into schools. We analyzed the interview component of a larger mixed-methods research study conducted by the GLSEN Research Institute, which was intended to generate insight about student and advisor experiences of GSAs.

Findings:

Our study reveals that while GSAs can be a space for marginalized LGBTQ students to create a collective empowering identity, they can also be a space where some differences may be flattened or left out. We explore how students make visible racial and gender identity groups during GSA activities that are often erased in secondary schools. This implicitly and explicitly entails deploying identity as a challenge to a school’s heteronormative, cisnormative, and white-dominant official curriculum, although the depth or complexity of a GSA’s visibility-based education and critique may be inadequate, given available resources. Our findings demonstrate how GSA students leverage their identity as a goal when mobilizing themselves and their peers to alter a school’s norms and practices.

Conclusions:

Gen Z GSA students have begun to reimagine their clubs as if they were built from the ground up, with the needs of transgender students and students of color placed at their center. GSAs remain a critical but underdeveloped resource for learning how to recognize and challenge intersectional forms of interpersonal and institutional marginalization.