ABSTRACT
Transgender and gender diverse (TGD) youth face an onslaught of victimization growing up, including stigmatizing language, discrimination, and physical and sexual assault. While research demonstrates the deleterious impact of victimization on TGD youth, we lack studies that illustrate TGD youth resilience and promote affective understandings of their victimization experiences. Queer scholars posit that creative research methods used in data collection, analysis, and/or dissemination, can challenge stigma and oppression and evoke an emotional response when used with Queer and TGD populations. In this chapter, we utilize research poems—a creative representation of TGD youths’ victimization experiences in the form and style of a poem—to capture their intimate, contextualized stories. Nineteen TGD youth were interviewed about their experiences growing up within their families, schools, and communities with a focus on external and internalized stigma, discrimination, and victimization, as well as resilience. During the analysis and dissemination phases, the research team, including Queer and TGD scholars, captured key phrases and quotes, then organized them into a series of poems that tell individual and collective stories of victimization and survival. Our chapter begins with an introduction to the literature on TGD youth victimization, the purpose of research poems in Queering and understanding TGD youth victimization, and a description of the study and youth participants. A series of four poems follow, emoting individual and collective stories of victimization and trauma, as well as resilience. We close with a brief discussion of the poems.
