Queer Adolescence

August 24, 2020
Librarian McNabb (Nonbinary Gender Identities) delivers a useful clinical guide to interacting with and understanding queer youth based on a survey of more than 150 mostly white, mostly young LGBTQ Americans. McNabb reports on respondents’ experiences of sex education in schools (largely abstinence-only), gender dysphoria, coming out, transitioning, depression, and increased sexual health risks, as well as relationships with families, friends, and peers. Most of McNabb’s subjects cite the internet as their primary source of information about sex and gender; in school, one participant notes, “Everything that I learned was in the context of heterosexual relationships.” Responses to the survey question, “What do you wish had been different?” overwhelmingly speak to the desire for acceptance, which is the guiding principle of McNabb’s advice for parents, teachers, and health care workers. Though the survey answers submitted by participants are often intriguing, McNabb’s statistical model somewhat flattens the range of their experiences by using such binaries as “supportive” and “unsupportive” (to gauge community reactions to coming out, transitioning, etc. ). Still, school administrators and clinicians interested in improving their outreach to queer youth will benefit from this evidence-based study.