The Changing Identities in Teen Youths - Essay Example

Youths struggle to define their sexuality in other aspects of their identities. One youth, for instance, talks about wishing that they could move past their identity as a queer individual, or even that their queerness was left out of their identities. One Christian student declared that she wishes people would see her as someone who “loves god” rather than someone who was gay – they could deal with their sexuality but did not want it to define who they were (Kramer, 2011). Reading these youths talk, in their own words, about the challenges in their life made me feel a combination of sadness and pride for the struggles that these youths had to overcome, but for their amazing ability to overcome them.

The youth’s changing attitudes about identity demonstrate something becoming increasingly apparent in the studies of queer youth – that their identities are shifting in new ways, and are becoming less defined by other sources. Though this trend continues, a recent article in The Journal of Youth and Adolescence, counters and argues that the vast majority of youths continue to define themselves by traditional monikers such as “gay, lesbian, and bi-sexual” (Stephen 2010). Though their argument is mostly valid, there remain several serious problems with the interpretation of their data.

The conclusion they reach is that the self-definitions of sexual identity that have been used for the past several decades remain useful to teens and that today’s teens are not, in fact, post-gay” (Russel 2010). They base this conclusion, however, on the evidence that seventy percent of teens continue to identify with the terms gay, lesbian,n, and bisexual, which stands to reason that thirty percent of teens identify with post-gay” and the term resonates and creates meaning in their lives. While “post-gay” is not a dominant term being used by queer youths they seem to be increasingly engaged in creating new terms (or ambiguities) for themselves and we can consider that post-gay” while not predominantly used is at least on the radar of many queer youths while defining themselves and their identities.

And the fact is that 71% of people identify with these older identifications, but that means that 39% of people do not, and instead identify with some other form of queer identity when describing sexuality (Russel). With this high of numbers, while the majority of people still use older identity definitions, a massive number are not, which means within the gay community a growing number of people would identify as post-gay, or at least have an understanding of post-gay ideas (Russel). Read More