Playing Recognition Politics: Queer Theoretical Reflections on Lesbian, Gay, and Queer Youth Social Policy in Australia in the 1980s and 1990s.

This article provides a queer theoretical reflection on the emergence of lesbian, gay, and queer (LGQ) youth as subjects of policy attention in Australia in the late twentieth century. In particular, it focuses on the ways in which specific forms of social, bureaucratic, and organizational recognition have given shape to LGQ youth as categorical policy objects. To this end, this article critically interrogates social policy related to the provision of funding for LGQ youth support during the 1980s and 1990s in two Australian states: New South Wales and Western Australia.

The myth of LGBTQ mobilities: framing the lives of gender- and sexually diverse Australians between regional and urban contexts.

Gender- and sexually diverse youth are often represented in popular discourses through concepts of movement and mobility. Conceptual stories of LGBTQ youth transitions to adulthood in particular are marked by narratives of movement from regional (rural and/or small towns) to major urban areas. Although not wholly outside lived experience, a cultural myth that portrays the experience of gender- and sexually diverse young people entering into 'adulthood' via such mobility continues to circulate in scholarship, popular media, personal accounts of coming out, support resources and self-help guidance documents.