Queer and Trans Ethics of Care

My upcoming book “Towards a Queer and Trans Ethics of Care: Beyond the Limitations of White, Cisheteropatriarchal, Colonial Care” documents the major findings of the research I did during my doctoral study. The questions that guided that work were: how do QTBIPOC educators understand and practice a queer and trans ethic of care? These research questions revealed that the philosophy of a queer and trans ethic of care is underpinned by the values, realities and knowledge of disabled, neurodivergent, QTBIPOC. The intersection at which these values exist is informed by queered, trans-feminist, anti-racist, anti-colonial, disabled onto-epistemological narratives.

The stories and creative-responses shared throughout this book revealed that a queer and trans ethic of care is one that is nuanced, expansive, disruptive and transgressive in nature. It is also an orientation towards community, as it recognizes the need for individual, tailored care that takes place within a network of other communities, called a care web (Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2018).

The need for taking on this philosophy emerges from the realities of the white, colonial and violent educational system in which myself and other QTBIPOC educators find themselves. In educational systems with these shared histories and values, care aligns neatly with the goals of neoliberalism, white supremacy and settler-colonialism.

Through these systems, care is often practiced in K-12 schools as a transaction between teachers and students, it is hierarchical in nature, motivated by the promise of future independence and often assumes sameness across groups of people. This work reveals the extent to which educational systems with historical and ongoing roots in Christian, white, colonial values, have caused psychic damage to multiple, intersecting communities of systemically oppressed peoples. We find this across geographies, as countries with similar colonial histories to Canada are forced to grapple with their violent connection to colonization.

As a way to remedy the realities in which QTBIPOC educators find themselves, they engage in disruptive and transgressive care practices which help them put into practice a queer and trans ethic of care. By approaching their work as educators through nuanced dialectics, centering justice and working towards community healing and thriving futures, QTBIPOC educators embody a queer and trans ethic of care.