Why Be Euphorically Queer? An Ecological Model of Euphorias’ Influences & Impacts

Abstract

AbstractExpanding on psychological and individualist frames emphasising transgender and gender diverse (TGD) experiences; this chapter supplies a new ecological model of potential influences on the development of euphorias to assist in service applications, everyday lives, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ+) research. The model adds culturally embedded psycho-social accounts of affect and development from Bronfenbrenner, Erikson, Ahmed, and Butler. It shows euphorias as potentially influenced by what is privileged in individuals’ developmental stages and systems of social and institutional engagements, policy contexts, and cultural norms over time. The chapter argues for being euphorically queer—using erasure, overplay, and transference of happiness onto non-traditional identities and bodies, towards energising responsiveness to LGBTIQ+ and other othered groups’ needs, and against conforming contentedness which stagnates activisms.