Being out of Time:

Life Narratives by and about Queer Youth

Abstract

This paper examines the life narratives by and about queer youth in Sweden and Switzerland through the lens of scholarship on queer temporality. The analysis focuses on two questions: Firstly, how do queer youth narrate their childhood (past) and adolescence (present), and how do they imagine their adulthood (future)? Secondly, how do these narratives stick to or challenge heteronormative modes of narration such as progress, linearity, and teleology? We therefore analyzed interviews with queer youth in Sweden (N = 27), conducted between 2022 and 2023, and texts from the queer youth magazine Milchbüechli (N = 22) in Switzerland, published between 2017 and 2023. The results from the analysis of the queer youth magazine Milchbüechli reveal that queer youth subcultures use their own shared tropes and stages to construct life narratives from childhood to adolescence. These queer life narratives begin with the experience of being “out of time,” and are followed by a turning point that leads to the “death of the straight life” and end in pride. The coming-out narratives from the interviews suggest greater complexity than the linear trajectory from repression to pride found in issues of the magazine Milchbüechli: Coming-out is narrated as a lifelong process, as unnecessary, or as impossible. The visions of the future articulated in the interviews often stick to the “straight line” (marriage, a stable job, a family). However, given contemporary anti-gender backlash, “heteronormative” futures can also be understood as a radical act, while linear narratives that end in pride may encourage queer youth to change their futures in the present. Nevertheless, we argue for the necessity of queer life narratives that imagine new and different futures beyond the straight line.