By Steven Yang
Queerness as/is Action
“Queerness” is a term that encompasses a plethora of identities and concepts. It is a term that actively critiques and challenges power, rather than being merely a description of a person’s sexual disposition. Queer theorist Jose Esteban Munoz says, “Queerness is also a performative because it is not simply a being but a doing for and toward the future,” (Munoz, 2009). I find being queer to represent an insurrection; it is a rebellion against expectations, rigid practices, traditions, patriarchy – and society as we know it. In the face of such norms, queerness is to be free, uninhibited, liberated.
Our HMoob American College Paj Ntaub is a longitudinal mixed-methods project seeking to interrogate social and institutional barriers that affect HMoob American college students. Our study’s LGBTQ+-identified and genderqueer participants shared thoughtful insights into how their multiple identities affect how students navigate college.
Our research team understands that our participants’ multiple identities and experiences influence how they interact with other students, the institution, and their future. Queerness (which I use as an umbrella term), as a shifting concept, has been reclaimed by the LGBTQ+ community. What I mean by shifting is that it is strategically deployable at times, meaning different things to different people. But what I hope to assert is that queerness tells a story. And these stories are important.
Our Queer Participants’ Stories
College is often an exploratory time for students. These years are constructive and formative. It’s within these systems that students are able to cultivate and nurture some of their strongest identities, fiercest passions, and newfound relationships. For me, college was a time to broaden my views and engagements. This gave me the necessary space and tools to articulate my own non-binary identity. As our Paj Ntaub research team enters T2 data analysis, we observed that queer HMoob college students shared some of these deliberations, and their interview testimony elucidate some of the ways they are working through their identities and belonging. The following quotes are from two different students who have been deliberating their gender and sexual identities in the context of college.
Participant 1: “Yeah, so, I guess now, in the past couple of months, I’ve sort of been questioning my gender… So I definitely do think it affects everything in my life. I think that the intersections of being, you know, a racial and ethnic minority, but also having like your sexual orientation, be like something that puts you at risk every day, something that affects the way that you walk through life every day, having to switch- you know, code-switch, having to find friends that you relate to. Yeah, I’d say everything. Gender and sexuality affects everything that I do every day.”
Participant 2: Participant 2: “It’s a little bit strange, just because it wasn’t really until I came to college that I really adopted the title, or like the status as non-binary. It was… it was weird at first, just because for me, it was a new thing that I had never really taken the chance to explore while I was in high school. But like, I always knew that it was something that I wanted to do, and like, take up. I think, especially lately, I’ve been exploring why I identify as non-binary. Because very recently, I’ve been having thoughts in my head where I’m like, am I choosing to be non-binary because I genuinely feel that way, or do I choose to be non-binary because I’m scared of being female? Because, as a Hmong person, as Hmong women, and just like a woman in general, there’s so much pressure held against us against women, and like just what they need to be, and what they need to do.”
College may foster a space to develop gender and sexual identities, and this phenomenon is certainly true for both queer and non-queer individuals alike. These two participants explained college as a space for exploration- but it also sparks a critical analysis of other identities they inhabit. Participant 1 recognized how gender and ethnicity are characteristic factors that may elicit external risk. For participant 2, their gender exploration has serious considerations that stem from cultural-related challenges.
Our limited participant data indicate that queer HMoob college students are still navigating complex cultural, gender, and or sexual identities.
Participant 3: “…When I kinda dropped it to my Hmong friends in [redacted], they were pretty accepting. How do I put it? Like I still love and care for them, it’s just that I can’t talk to them about anything LGBTQ-related cause I know they’ll listen. But it just… there’s not really a connection there, or understanding there that I would have liked. And then, I know with my family, my parents, I don’t know how my dad will react. I just don’t talk to him about it. I kinda have tried to hint at my mom, at least, with like my sexuality of like, Oh, what if maybe girls? And then, she kind of brushes it off in a joking way.”
Participant 3 expresses a typical intersectional dilemma, struggling to establish connections with peers related to queer experiences. Navigating friendships through the lens of multiple identities is an ongoing point of negotiation for people living at the intersection of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality.
Alhough these recurring challenges illuminate the importance of queer struggles, our queer HMoob participants are also persistently and insistently queering the spaces they inhabit. They are paving a way for other queer people to also express gender and sexuality boundlessly. For example, participant 4’s connection to the LGBTQ+ community has inspired them to learn about Hmong history in relation to Gender and Women’s studies.
Participant 4: “And so, I’ve been exploring that and why I identify as I do. I think it’s cause like LGBT and all that- because of that, I’ve been like considering doing either a double major or minor in Women and Gender Studies. Because I feel like it’s a very important aspect that I would like to continue exploring, especially in the Hmong community, where, like, I think, these topics are widely overlooked.”
Participant 5: “From a Christian perspective, I think it’s still very traditional and hard to navigate, especially when you’re unsure of who you are and what you like. You always have that voice in the back of your head saying, “Well, my family doesn’t like this, or is this a bad decision because I’m Christian?” But as I get older, I realize that all the things I was taught as a child — like being a Christian means you can’t like girls, or that it’s wrong — none of that matters. I’m just going to do what I want because that’s part of becoming independent. That’s why I want to go into counseling, because it’s important for people to understand that they are so much more than what they were raised to be. Regardless of the culture you’re in, it’s important to break away from what you were told if it doesn’t resonate with you anymore.”
The act of queering space intersects with multiple frameworks, such as the gender binary, religious spaces, and cultural traditions. It is in that respect that participant 5 hopes to queer the multiple spaces they inhabit. As someone bearing religious, cultural, ethnic, and queer identities, they hoped to show that being your authentic self is important. To be queer, HMoob, and Christian is to queer multiple spaces at once. Participant 5 hoped to be a model for individuals who may be struggling through similar things.
Queer Thoughts
Queer Thoughts As I reflect on this preliminary analysis of the narratives of the queer HMoob participants in our research study, a feeling of determination continues to live inside me. It is reminiscent of a spark of activism you get when you know there’s work to be done, like a fuse ticking on a bomb and you’re just ready to burst into action. Except, over time, this spark has transformed into a warm, luminous candlelight. Instead of an explosion, a volatile or reactive emotion, it is instead a beacon, a bastion, a sanctuary. As the years go by, I certainly still feel a sense of steadfast activism, but I recognize that systems of oppression still plague our queer friends, families, and institutions. I hear these stories and find remnants of myself within them. I also find myself wanting to channel energy towards creating safe queer spaces rather than expending energy convincing the world that queer lives matter. There are so many beautiful aspects of queerness that go beyond deficit-based narratives about being HMoob or queer. For our queer HMoob youth, this means an opportunity to explore what HMoobness can be in the contemporary moment. As scholar Kong Pheng Pha states, “Notions of happiness are not enshrined in a particular locality or temporality as much as they are embedded in an ongoing re-creation of meanings in everyday life,” (Pha, 2016).
I feel a sense of responsibility to share and analyze these participants’ stories, as their experiences as queer HMoob students provide a more holistic understanding of HMoob UW students in general and HMoob UW students in STEM specifically. HMoob people have endured decades of erasure, historical persecution, government censorship, and invisibility. Queer HMoob continue to experience similar forms of invisibility as well. Yet, research and literature on queer HMoob Americans is slowly growing. Queer HMoob voices are sparse, but they are also powerful. This blog hopes to act as a pivotal benchmark for queer HMoob individuals, as well as a way to see the boundlesness of queerness.
Our queer HMoob participants shared thoughtful perspectives about how gender and sexuality impacted their college experiences. They also showed how and where queerness and HMoobness may productively interact and intersect. Social, cultural, political, and institutional challenges continue to hinder the full flourishing of people who embody intersectional identities, but the future is bright. Queerness is a rebellion; and it is a fight for a future where individuals may be free of gender and sexual oppression.
Works Cited
Crenshaw, K. (1998). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist politics. Feminism And Politics, 314–343. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198782063.003.0016
Friedensen, R. E., Kimball, E., Vaccaro, A., Miller, R. A., & Forester, R. (2021). Queer science: Temporality and Futurity for queer students in STEM. Time & Society, 30(3), 332–354. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463×211008138
Muñoz, J. E., Chambers-Letson, J. T., Ochieng’ Nyongó, T. A., & Pellegrini, A. (2019). Cruising utopia: The then and there of Queer Futurity. New York University Press.
Pha, K. P. (2016). “Finding Queer Hmong America: Gender, Culture, and Happiness Among Hmong LGBTQ.” In Claiming Place: On the Agency of Hmong Women, edited by Chia Youyee Vang, Faith Nibbs, and Ma Vang, 303-325. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Worthen, M. G. F. (2023). Queer identities in the 21st Century: Reclamation and stigma. Current Opinion in Psychology, 49, 101512. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101512