“You’re a kid, you don’t know where you are”: the voiced experiences of nonbinary youth navigating discursive realms of legitimacy

Abstract

Nonbinary youth’s gender identities are often dismissed and continue to be marginalised due to growing transphobic discourse. This article explores how youth navigate these developmental and gendered positionings. A qualitative methodology and individual interviews were used with 10 nonbinary youth aged 16-21 years old, living in the United Kingdom. Participants had a range of ethnicities, sexualities, and disabilities. We used Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis to combine discourse analysis and I poems. In the discursive formation ‘legitimacy’, we consider how participants described feeling required to prove themselves as legitimately nonbinary, whilst also feeling undermined by other aspects of their identity and how they drew on a sense of a collective voice to resist this construction of their gender as a phase. The I poems show a sense of struggle, exhaustion, and vulnerability within this discourse. The findings have implications for professionals working with nonbinary youth and contribute to nonbinary and trans-theory.