‘People need support and society needs change’: vulnerability and collective agency in queer youth organization

The present article draws on narrative interviews with 16 young queer people who are involved in organizing meeting places and activities for and with other queers. Here, I explore how queer youth describe their needs and motives for engaging in organizing, and how narratives of agency and vulnerability are expressed and intertwined. Drawing on Judith Butler (2016. ‘Rethinking vulnerability and resistance’, in J. Butler, Z. Gambetti, and L. Sabsay (Ed.), Vulnerability in Resistance. Duke University Press), I argue that vulnerability among LGBTQ + youth is not the opposite of resistance and that agency is not the opposite of exposedness. In this context, LGBTQ + youth’s own acknowledgement of and collective resistance to dominant sexuality and gender norms, which put them at risk for exclusion, offence and violence, constitute a mobilization of vulnerability. The motives for organizing are described as three narratives concerning social needs and how queer youth relate themselves to a collective. The first narrative recognizes the person’s need for other people, the second other people’s need for them, and the third concerns the need for a community. The results show how queer youth use collective agency to create their own spaces and communities as well as to formulate and practice resistance.