welcome to the queer joy! Project
queer joy is everywhere
Dr. JJ Wright (she/they) is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at MacEwan University in ᐊᒥᐢᑿᒌᐚᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ (Amiskwacîwâskahikan) in Edmonton, Treaty 6 territory and Treaty 4 Métis territory.
Dr. Wright has a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, and she held a postdoctoral fellowship at McGill University before taking up her current role at MacEwan University in 2022.
As a community-engaged scholar, Dr. Wright engages with regional, provincial, and inter/national organizations on projects to advance gender justice. Her work is particularly focused on preventing gender-based violence and anti-2SLGBTQ+ hate, which overlaps with efforts to dismantle settler colonialism, racism, and ableism. Through a research-for-social-change framework, they develop anti-oppressive, trauma-informed, and community-responsive education and policy.
Dr. Wright is the Director of the Queer Joy Research Lab. Connect with us on Instagram @queerjoyresearch
Dominant narratives about 2SLGBTQ+ communities focus on how our lives are marked by despair and tragedy.
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While there are serious struggles in 2SLGBTQ+ communities due to ongoing homophobia, transphobia, racism, sexism, ableism, and classism, many of us have found immense joy in relationships with other 2SLGBTQ+ people, not to mention refuge from cis-heteronormativity (and its gendered, racialized, and ableist violence). In this way, experiences of queer joy act as moments of resistance and worldbuilding. Through queer joy we reclaim space for our joyful existence and open up possibilities for imagining more just, caring, and sustainable futures.
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In recent years, across North America (and elsewhere), anti-queer and anti-trans policies have been introduced at extremely alarming rates. In Canada, where the Queer Joy! Project is situated, draconian anti-2SLGBTQ+ policies—especially in the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and New Brunswick—have endangered the wellbeing of Two Spirit, queer, and trans young people.
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In Alberta, where the project is currently focused, these policies seek to make comprehensive sex education inaccessible by making all lessons– including on consent, basic anatomy, and healthy relationships–”opt in” by parents/caregivers. They also seek to severely limit access to gender-affirming care, which is life-saving medicine. Additionally, these policies are limiting the ways that children and youth can explore their development related to their gender by instituting policy in schools to forcibly out a student to their (potentially homo- and transphobic) parents/caregivers if the student wishes to use a different name or pronouns. Lastly, these policies are rejecting evidence-based research by banning trans girls and women’s participation insingle-gendered sport.
