ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how QTPOC develop a critical decolonising consciousness while grappling with the complex histories of colonisation, immigration, assimilation, and the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. Participants shared experiences which helped them to understand heteronormativity as racialised, in which queerphobia and transphobia have differing and complex manifestations when understood in the context of these histories and the present of coloniality. This also shaped the ways in which participants made sense of their own subjectivities as queer and trans people of colour. I consider the decolonial potential for challenging hegemonic discourse and politics that continue to centre colonial constructions of Blackness as pathological; rejecting respectability politics; creating possibilities for centring those most minoritised; developing ‘erotic autonomy’ and building ‘counter-normative space’ expanding what and who is queer.
