ABSTRACT

This paper tours the epistemological, ethical and methodological commitments of What’s Your Issue, a national participatory research project by and for LGBTQ/Gender Expansive youth, aged 14–24, reflecting in particular on the dilemmas of identity categories as “straight jackets” in times when it is so important to document the severe forms of racialized and gendered State and intimate violence that fall, predictably, along these (contested) identity axes. We speak to the joys and struggles of deep, critical participatory work, undertaken with a critical race, feminist and queer lens, across generations and geography, seeking to produce research for provocation, theoretical disruption, policy and organizing.