The game of queer family life: Exploring 2SLGBTQI+ parents' experiences of cisheteronormativity, racism, and colonialism through digital storytelling in Ontario, Canada
Gruson-Wood J.F., Reid K., Rice C., Haines J., Chapman G.E., Gibson M.F. (2022). The game of queer family life: Exploring 2SLGBTQI+ parents' experiences of cisheteronormativity, racism, and colonialism through digital storytelling in Ontario, Canada. Journal of Homosexuality, 71(4): 887-915. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2022.2132581
In this article we describe and analyze five videos created through an arts-informed research project, Precarious Inclusion: Studying Ontarian 2SLGBTQI+ parents’ experiences childrearing in a post-legal parity framework. Precarious Inclusion used interviews and digital storytelling to investigate Ontario 2SLGBTQI+ parents’ current experiences of inclusion and exclusion when navigating institutional and social interactions in everyday life in a post-legal parity context. The study centrally explored how intersecting identities with regards to sexuality, gender, geography, disability, class, race, Indigeneity, and ethnicity intersect with structural forces to influence 2SLGBTQI+ parents’ inclusion and exclusion experiences. We examine research creation activities that supported 2SLGBTQI+ parents in making short videos about their experiences of parenting. Our analysis of the five videos created by Indigenous, racialized, trans, nonbinary, Two-Spirit, and disabled parents show how consistent experiences of exclusion mark 2SLGBTQI+ parents’ everyday lives. We deepen theorizations of the material and psychological impacts of exclusion for 2SLGBTQI+ families through foregrounding three themes: 1) the operations of racism, white supremacy, and colonialism in makers’ lives; 2) misrecognition and its psychic effects of bifurcation and disjuncture; and 3) love, joy, and multi-species kinship as powerful sites of healing and belonging. We further demonstrate how parents used their videos as self-advocacy for resisting precarious inclusion.