“Everyone Knows Me as the Weird Kid”: Being Bisexual,Genderfluid,and Fifteen

Abstract

Everyone Knows Me as the Weird Kid is a performance text created from collaborative narrative interviews between the first author and a 15-year-old participant named Max who identifies as bisexual and genderfluid. The performance explores how Max negotiates a range of challenges—including homophobia, transphobia, bullying, and harassment—on a day-to-day basis. It offers evocative insights into life as a young person with an intersecting identity across school, community, online, and family contexts. By choosing to represent Max’s experiences as a performance text, we offer a living, breathing resource that can be performed in educational settings not only to young people but also by young people. We share Everybody Knows Me as the Weird Kid as a resource to help others respond to sexual and gender-related bullying and discrimination in their own lives.

Keywords

bullying collaborative research genderfluidity LGBT experience performance text physical education

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Carless

Douglas

(2010). Performance ethnography as an approach to health-related education. Educational Action Research, 18, 373-388.

Carless

Douglas

(2017). When two worlds collide: A story about collaboration, witnessing, and life story research with soldiers returning from war. Qualitative Inquiry, 23, 375-383.

Douglas

Carless

(2015). Finding a counter story at an inclusive, adapted, sport and adventurous training course for injured, sick and wounded soldiers: Drawn in-drawn out. Qualitative Inquiry, 21, 454-466.

Douglas

Carless

(2017a). Whirlpool. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/FTb2UL5Jbgc

Douglas

Carless

(2017b). Reverberations. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/Ee24a4aARLA

Douglas

Carless

(2019). Under one roof: Living together and apart in an urban supported housing scheme. Departures in Critical Qualitative Research.

Douglas

Carless

Milnes

Turner-Moore

Tan

Laredo

(2019). Autoethnographies and new technologies of representation: An example from facilitating conversations on sexual topics in education. Qualitative Inquiry, 25, 535-538.

Frank

A. W.

(2010). Letting stories breathe: A socio-narratology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Grossman

A. H.

Haney

A. P.

Edwards

Alessi

E. J.

Ardon

Howell

(2009). Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth talk about experiencing and coping with school violence: A qualitative study. Journal of LGBT Youth, 6, 24-46.

10.

Johnson

C. W.

Singh

A. A.

Gonzalez

(2014). “It’s complicated”: Collective memories of transgender, queer, and questioning youth in high school. Journal of Homosexuality, 61, 419-434.

11.

McNamee

Lloyd

Schubotz

(2008). Same sex attraction, homophobic bullying and mental health of young people in Northern Ireland. Journal of Youth Studies, 11, 33-46.

12.

Nodin

Peel

Tyler

Rivers

(2015). The RARE research report LGB&T mental health—Risk and resilience explored. London, England: RARE.

13.

Whigmore

Sherriff

Bogen-Johnson

(2009). The Sussex U training and development research partnership: Final report. Brighton, UK: University of Brighton.

14.

Zeeman

Aranda

Sherriff

Cocking

(2017). Promoting resilience and emotional well-being of transgender young people: Research at the intersections of gender and sexuality. Journal of Youth Studies, 20, 382-397.