ABSTRACT
This study investigated how three diverse Gen Zers used TikTok, a video-sharing app, to construct their gender and cultural identities as intersectional explorations with implications for literacy practice. Butler’s theory of performative gender, Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality, and Smith and Watson’s use of automediality as a methodological approach to analyzing digital media acts of self-construction guided this research. We documented how Gen Zers conceive of and express gender, especially where gender is considered with other facets of intersectional identity such as race, culture, and ethnicity. Participants included a female of mixed Indonesian-European descent; a nonbinary of Mexican descent; and a nonbinary transmasculine African American. Findings are noteworthy in that they describe how bodily and textual performances contributed to gender and cultural identities as did the TikTok platform itself. These two-way expressive acts, augmented by visual and vocal signifiers, enabled cultural trends consisting of rifts and invocations. Implications for literacy education and cross disciplinary fields are explored as a means for opening spaces that heretofore have privileged print-centric curricula.
