Daniel King’s Journey

By Joshua A. Boschee
Staff Writer

Daniel King is on a cross-country trek to give young people a voice. As a journalist and author, Daniel is interested in learning more about what American teenagers of all identities, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender think about sexuality and gender identity, in their own words.

Investing his own time and money into the project, Daniel landed in Fargo-Moorhead this past week to visit with teens of same-sex parents. North Dakota is the eighth state on his journey that began in California where he was recently a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle, focusing on news related to the arts, culture and social justice.

While in the area, I had the opportunity to connect with Daniel and visit about his project.
Daniel explained that most of the information out there related to teens’ understanding of sexuality and gender identity is academic in nature or in the form of a are parental guide to talking to teens about the two subjects.

Little has been done to directly hear from LGBT teens and share their personal experiences and perspective of their own sexuality and gender identity. He shared two statistics with me that guide some of his work. “More than 80% of gay and transgender middle schoolers report having been bullied in school because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity” and “the United States has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the developed world”. Pretty powerful when you think about the fact that our government endorses an abstinence only sex education curriculum and there are no protections for teens when it comes to bullying in our schools.

It is important that the work he is doing isn’t driven by policymaking, but rather for us to be able to hear from the most high-tech generation to date, who are controversially sexualized through the technology that they are so adept at using. The internet, social media, cell phones, web cams, texting all keep us more connected, but also increases the sexualization of this generation as the interconnection is less filtered than through previous forms of communication.

When discussing his influences, Daniel references the work of the late Studs Terkel, who devoted his life to listening to people tell their stories and then transcribing the stories in a variety of oral history texts that disseminated the stories of working class people, race relations, faith, war and peace, and many other topics. Dr. Mary Gray’s more recently completed and ethnographical study of rural queer youth as shared in her recently published book, “Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America,” also encouraged Daniel to traverse the country looking for all types of different stories.

He is focusing on finding teens who are willing to visit about being teen parents, middle and high school transgender activists, online sex-workers, survivors of priest abuse, military teens, teens of same-sex parents and teens who have chosen to remain abstinent, and many others. His immersive style of journalism not only gives teens a platform to speak, but also opens our society’s eyes to the reality of teen sexuality and gender identity first hand.

King’s main audience for the project is teens themselves. He shares that he “believes that they (teens) deserve a chance to hear their generation’s stories, which have a chance to transcend to other populations.”

We also talked about how he hopes the project helps break down the isolation that so many teens feel when it comes to their sexuality and gender identity. Although Daniel is just beginning his project, a number of themes are coming through as he visits with teens. Two are that modern technology has an influence on teen sexuality and gender identity and that there is a lack of resources for teens to report hate or bias motivated harassment and violence. He is also hearing about the role that formal religion and families plays in a teen’s ability to come to terms with her or his sexuality or gender identity. Many teens are open about their first sexual experiences and others share candidly about self-punishment (cutting, self-mutilation, suicide ideation and attempts) related to their sexuality or gender identity.

Daniel is currently working with an agent out of New York. His goal is to have the project wrapped up and published next year. In the meantime, a website is being finalized to promote the project, as well as allow teens to share their stories to increase the number of voices involved with the project.

I asked Daniel what he hoped the project would accomplish and this is what he said, “I hope that the project challenges modern idea of sexuality and gender identity. Teens are much more multi-dimensional and thoughtful than headlines give them credit for. In the end, I hope that when teenagers pick up the book, they read something that positively reinforces how they
feel about themselves and empowers them to change what they’d like to change.”

You can contact Daniel at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or through his website, which is currently not live, at http://www.teen-voices.com.

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