Beyond Rainbow Flags and Resilience

Abstract

Abstract There is palpable academic and sociocultural attention currently being directed towards the notion of diversity and inclusion. Contextualized by neoliberalism and other forces, these practices can operate as a thin façade, offering a promise of equality while offloading responsibility for change onto individuals to adapt, self-regulate, and develop resilience. Across a range of contexts with ‘vulnerable’ young people, music is identified as a potential site for building resilience. In music therapy, literature concerned with LGBTQIA+ practice has typically focused on constructing safe spaces for queer and gender-diverse clients rather than addressing larger systemic issues that necessitate the need for such refuge. This chapter examines the role of neoliberalism in placing responsibility on individuals to overcome adversity and where therapeutic intervention is posed as a solution to issues of social inequity. I write with an intention to journey beyond categorizing LGBTQIA+ people as a cohesive and distinct subject group, focusing instead on the gender binary and heteronormativity as ideologies under which we all exist, and their intersection with other systems of oppression. The latter part of the chapter elucidates some of these notions through a case study, drawn from my research with young people exploring gender in high school. I bring into focus the sociopolitical context of a school that used superficial notions of diversity to claim itself as progressive, highlighting the role of music in responding to these dynamics and building young people’s political agency.