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Accurate data collection from LGBTIQ+ communities is crucial for public health research and the provision of equitable services. Emergent fluid, multiple, trans and non-binary gender identities complicate data collection in ways that make an excellent case-study for rethinking the categorization of such data. In this article, we explore some of the obstacles to collecting data from trans, gender-diverse and non-binary (TGD) communities, and the difficulties in synthesizing meaning about fluid or multiple identity categories. We review a selection of international surveys from the last 10 years and then present a case-study of data collection in an Australian mixed-methods study of LGBTQ+ young people's uses of social media. In doing so we draw upon trans and gender diverse people's lived experiences to reinterpret our survey dataset in which responses that 'refused categorisation' were initially removed. We argue that theorizing the 'social life of data' – that is analysing the disciplinary orientation and purpose of research, while also acknowledging the moment and site of data collection, the methods used, and the mutable meanings in play – better accounts for the lived experiences of gender beyond binary and static identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysing survey data from 1,304 LGBTQ + young people in Australia collected in 2016, this paper considers key distinctions between the experiences of bisexual and pansexual participants, and lesbian and gay participants in relation to social media use and aspects of connection, harassment and mental health. Presenting quantitative data, illustrated by qualitative extracts, we found broad similarities in motivations for using social media and how participants connected to peers and communities. There were some statistically significant differences, however, in respondents' motivations for using social media and who they connected with on these platforms. Importantly, bisexual and pansexual participants reported more negative experiences of harassment and exclusion across all major social media platforms when compared to their lesbian and gay peers. Bisexual and pansexual respondents also reported poorer mental health experiences. These findings speak to the different impacts of discrimination and oppression that young people experience in everyday life. There is a need for focused attention on bisexual and pansexual young people in academic, policy and youth-work domains. Young people will benefit from more substantial school-based education on LGBTQ + identities - beyond the experiences of gay and lesbian people - to 'usualise' varieties of difference in gender and sexual identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses that Sociologists have always had rich and sometimes controversial material to explore within the ‘contentious epistemological space' of health and medicine, but the field of trans1 health has come to represent one of most highly contested of these domains. It mentions that it seems almost an understatement to suggest that these conflicts are intensifying, with ever more distressing and harmful effects for trans people around the world.

This article reflects on 14 Australian trans dating app users' accounts of feeling safer (and less safe) when using apps, as well as their experiences of sexual healthcare. We explore both app use and healthcare in the context of the interdisciplinary field of 'digital intimacies', considering the ways that digital technologies and cultures of technological use both shape and are shaped by broader professional and cultural norms relating to sexuality and gender. Drawing on Preciado's [(2013). Testo junkie: Sex, drugs and biopolitics in the pharmacopornographic era. The Feminist Press] framework of 'pharmacopornographisation', the analysis aims to contextualise participants' experiences of being 'seen' and 'known' by health professionals and other app users. Our findings indicate that both dating apps and sexual health services rely on reductive systems of sorting and categorisation that reinforce binary understandings of genders and sexualities in order to facilitate data management and information sharing practices. Yet these same sorting and filtering technologies can also help trans app users avoid harassment, form intimate connections and seek appropriate healthcare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite ubiquitous surveillance of identity and scrutiny of performances of binary gender, an increasingly large number of people are choosing to stake out public and private spaces that are inbetween, including 'non-binary' and 'gender-queer'. In this article I outline some of the ways in which gender is literally and metonymically monitored at boundary-crossings at national borders and bathroom thresholds, and in the certification of birth and citizenship. I think through why shifting perceptions of gender, and the ways that we categorise gender in different spaces, for different audiences, is an issue for queer ethics in practice. What is a 'safe space' for sharing stories of stigma and state-imposed identity categorisation? How can affirmed gender-diverse categories and spaces remain open to accommodate change, fluidity and multiplicity? I draw on auto-ethnographic experiences of self-surveillance and attempts to propagate and celebrate my own multiplicity as a non-binary person. I speculate on the ways that (un)gendered Selfies might constitute creative and imaginative practice that challenges hegemonic injunctions to perform gender in finite and rigid binary ways. Can this sharing of complex and multiple selves have implications for the ethics and politics of categorising gender in educational, health and social service contexts? What might 'queer ethics in practice' look like in workshops, at reception desks, at airports?. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and other non-heterosexual and gender diverse (LGBTIQ+) young people utilise a range of digital media platforms to explore identity, find support and manage boundaries. Less well understood, however, is how they navigate risk and rewards across the different social media platforms that are part of their everyday lives. In this study, we draw on the concept of affordances, as well as recent work on curation, to examine 23 in-depth interviews with LGBTIQ+ young people about their uses of social media. Our findings show how the affordances of platforms used by LGBTIQ+ young people, and the contexts of their engagement, situate and inform a typology of uses. These practices – focused on finding, building and fostering support – draw on young people's social media literacies, where their affective experiences range from feelings of safety, security and control, to fear, disappointment and anger. These practices also work to manage boundaries between what is 'for them' (family, work colleagues, friends) and 'not for them'. This work allowed our participants to mitigate risk, and circumnavigate normative platform policies and norms, contributing to queer-world building beyond the self. In doing so, we argue that young people's social media curation strategies contribute to their health and well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores LGBTIQ+ young people's use of Tumblr--a social media platform often associated with queer youth cultures. Drawing on data from surveys (N = 1,304) and interviews (N = 23) with LGBTIQ+ young people in Australia, we argue that existing notions of "queer community" through digital media participation do not neatly align with young people's Tumblr practices. Our participants use Tumblr for connecting with others, yet these connections can be indirect, short term, and anonymous. Connections are often felt and practiced without directly communicating with other users, and many participants described their connections to the Tumblr platform itself as intense, pivotal to learning about genders and sexualities, and sometimes "toxic." We suggest that Tumblr use intensities reflect many young people's (dis)connections to queer life. Participant accounts of Tumblr use for identity, well-being, and (dis)connection practices can usefully inform health, education, and community workers engaging with LGBTIQ+ young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on a methodologically interesting case study called 'Stories Beyond Gender', in which a small group of trans* people collaborates in social media storytelling. Building on the possibilities manifest in other more explicitly personal-as-political genres like digital storytelling, I explore the potential of this facilitated workshop practice to establish meaningful connections across difference, forging affinities that may continue to flourish online. Furthermore, I offer some specific examples of the ways in which my own networked story-sharing online, in a zine and in an exhibition affirmed emergent complexity. I address the theme of this Special Issue by examining the ways in which social media, despite paradoxical fragmentation, can be used creatively to mobilise interest in public aspects of gender expression. However, sharing stories, especially those linked to stigmatised identities, whether online or off, is not without its complications. In the face of highly valued privacy, a lack of familiarity with ever-changing privacy settings or the affordances of specific platforms can pose an obstacle to online self-representation that stands in the way of visible civic engagement. While acknowledging that the trans-phobic consequences of online misadventures continue to be dire, I address the self-protective skills and sophisticated ways in which gender-diverse people curate emergent and past selves across intersecting social networks both on and offline. I argue that, at the intersections of post-digital and post-gender ways of being, we can observe emergent acceptance of multiple selves that are capable of being inconsistent without being incoherent. These representations exist in stark opposition to pop psychology's premise of a singular authentic 'inner truth'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technologies of memory and affect are all around us. In this introduction to a special issue of Media International Australia on the theme of technologies of memory and affect, we report on the activities of year-long collaborative and interdisciplinary research programme funded by the Flinders Institute for Research in the Humanities. We offer insights into the research program, its structure and methodologies, from which some of these articles emerged, including brief description of collaborative processes and creative outputs. We include field note excerpts and selected images from the visual arts exhibition, part of the Adelaide Fringe Festival, in an effort to share the energies and embodied dynamics of the event. We summarise the six articles that form the collection and reflect upon their relationship to one another and our theme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While selfies of beautiful cisgender women are declaimed by mainstream media as narcissistic and facile, some body-positive feminists and queer theorists argue that selfies can be empowering. They claim self-representation by traditionally stigmatized people can challenge normative presentations of beauty and gender. This article problematizes “empowerment” as a definitive and/or productive frame and argues instead for observation and analysis of “privilege” in situated practice. In this article I combine analysis of a collection of online cultural artifacts (including nonbinary selfies on Tumblr) and interviews with a small group of trans* social media storytellers to explore theoretical tensions between gender fluidity and identity fragmentation across multiple social media sites and practices. Gender-diverse digital self-representation encompasses both “consistent” androgyny, nonbinary, agender, and so on, and “emergent” presentations-in-flux. I assert that the ongoing iteration of self across social media—implied by self (re)presentation—can have simultaneous and contradictory political significance. I conclude that networked interpersonal complications frame understandings of empowerment, as perhaps they always have done. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]