Colors of Inquiry: Exploring Queer Arts-Based Research

Colors of Inquiry: Exploring Queer Arts-Based Research
 

View the lecture on YouTube here

Length: 40:29

Phillip Joy presents three arts-based research projects exploring queer health issues. The first project, "Transformative Compassion," uses comics to illustrate what compassion means for 2S/LGBTQ+ Canadians, including experiences with eating disorder treatment. The second, "Puppy Films," uses self-filming to explore body image among gay, bi, trans, and queer men in the pup community subculture. The third, "Wicked Bodies," is a documentary featuring diverse queer narratives about disordered eating. Joy emphasizes how arts-based methods honor queer history, lower barriers to participation, provide creative expression opportunities, and effectively translate research findings while challenging traditional academic approaches and heteronormative assumptions.

• Using art in research makes space for stories that may be left out of standard studies.
• Creative methods like comics and films help knowledge reach broader audiences, not just academics.
• Healthcare is not always compassionate or inclusive for queer people. Using arts-based methods can help map out what a world that is more socially just may look like.

Foundational Concepts

• Queer (reclaimed term): Term for sexual and gender identities outside straight and cisgender norms, encompassing gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, intersex identities and many others. Highlights fluidity and complexity while challenging binary classifications. Historically used as a derogatory term, now used as proud identifier
• Queer Theory: Interdisciplinary field encouraging new ways of thinking that dismantles heteronormative assumptions about gender and sexual identities, challenges traditional academic approaches, and fights social inequality. Can be applied beyond sexuality/gender to other topics (e.g., fat studies)
• Heteronormative: Traditional assumptions that position heterosexuality and binary gender as the default or "normal" state
• Post-structuralism: Theoretical approach examining how things are socially constructed and power relationships within society

Arts-Based Research Concepts

• Arts-Based Methodology: Research approach using various art forms (comics, films, drawings, poems, photography) to conduct, analyze, or present research findings
• Comics as Research Method: Using sequential art/graphic narratives to illustrate research findings. "Queerness of comics is inherent in its form"—deviates from literary convention, uses colour, layout, space (gutters between panels) to explore times, identities, and realities
• Self-Filming: Participants use their cell phones to create short films addressing research questions, allowing creative expression of experiences and identities
• Knowledge Translation: Using art to communicate research findings to broader audiences beyond academic publications

Body Image and Community Concepts

• Body Image: The way one views or feels about their body; socially constructed through various societal messages
• Disordered Eating in Queer Communities: Eating disorders affecting LGBTQ+ individuals, often overlooked because research/treatment models based primarily on cisgender white women
• Pup Play: Form of role play emerging from BDSM and leather communities where participants take on roles of "pups" or "handlers." Described as a lifestyle, community, and identity. Activities can be sexual or non-sexual
• Subcultures as Counter-spaces: Communities celebrating diverse bodies that can positively influence sense of self and well-being
• Community Connection as Health Intervention: Belonging to communities that celebrate diversity can positively influence health and well-being

Transformative Compassion

Goal: Understand what compassion means to 2SLGBTQ+ Canadians, especially in healthcare.

Method: 

• National project conducted during COVID using semi-structured interviews across Canada
• Discourse analysis on interview data to identify themes, topics, and quotes about compassion experiences and social construction
• Engaged queer artists to create 6-10 page comic stories illustrating research participants' experiences
• Each artist collaboration was different; worked together to translate interview data into visual narratives

Findings: Four themes emerged:

1. Experiences of otherness - Early awareness of being different
2. Compassion in eating disorder care - Acts like sharing meals between co-patients represented compassion and unity
3. Compassion within queer communities - Community members sharing information, resources, advice about recovery, gender-affirming surgery through social media
4. Community support as collective compassion - Communities coming together to help each other

Output: Illustrated comic book to be published Open Access by Lever Press

• Comics provide accessible knowledge translation beyond traditional academic publications
• Demonstrates power of visual storytelling to convey emotional experiences
• Project provides foundation for making nutrition/dietetics profession more compassionate toward queer clients

Puppy Films (Pup Play and Body Image)

Goal: Understand the connection between being a pup and body image, health, and well-being for LGBTQ+ men in Canada—first study of its kind examining this subculture. 

Method:

• Arts-based method using self-filming (participants create short films with cell phones addressing research question)
• Used a cohort approach : 3-5 participants grouped together to support each other
• Conducted three workshops:
  • Workshop 1: Project introduction, research question, self-filming basics, potential risks, initial brainstorming
  • Workshop 2: Discussion of film ideas, technical aspects (music copyright, lighting, camera positioning) Time between workshops for film creation
  • Workshop 3: Film screening and focus group discussion. Discourse analysis on Workshop 3 transcripts

Findings: Three competing/complementary themes emerged:

1. Pup community reinforces body standards - Similar to general queer community, muscular bodies more popular; expectations for lean, muscular physiques persist
2. Capacity for changing feelings about bodies - "Body image doesn't really matter in the pup community... you just be a puppy"; most inclusive space for different body presentations
3. Becoming a pup as transformation - Getting into "pup space" or "headspace" made body image less prominent

Outcomes:

• Demonstrates how subcultures can counter body image concerns through community belonging
• Provides insights for dietitians/healthcare providers: community connections may help people with body image issues (even if providers don't know clients' specific community memberships)
• Shows importance of understanding social/cultural relationships that foster body image
• Demonstrates successful use of arts-based methods with marginalized communities

Wicked Bodies

Goal: Create documentary holding space and bringing compassionate lens to disordered eating in queer community; feature narratives that stimulate conversation to challenge rigid body ideals and improve community health and well-being

Method: Partnered with professional filmmaking company (True Folk Films, Halifax-based) and national eating disorder and LGBT service organizations on a documentary-style filmmaking project. 

Findings: 

• Eating disorders in queer community don't fit stereotypes
• Challenges assumption that eating disorder research/treatment based on cisgender white women applies to everyone
• Creates awareness about need for queer-specific eating disorder understanding and treatment

Output: One 25-minute pilot episode completed, testing showed episode "struck a chord" with viewers who wanted more content

• Queering Nutrition and Dietetics
  • Edited by Philip Joy and Megan Aston
  • Includes poems, drawings, and research on LGBTQ+ nutrition.
• The Art of Activism: Your All-Purpose Guide to Making the Impossible Possible
  • By Stephen Duncombe and Steve Lambert
  • About creativity in social change.
• Queer people everywhere are responsible for queer people everywhere
  • By community-organizer Adam Eli
  • Contributions to a Medium series exploring LGBTQ+ works in the Jewish Museum collection
• ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) 
• Queer Compassion in 15 Comics
  • edited by Philip Joy, Andrew Thomas, and Megan Aston
  • Comics from an international cast of queer artists that respond to trauma with compassion

Phillip Joy is an Assistant Professor in the Applied Human Nutrition Department at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is a registered dietitian in Nova Scotia whose research focuses on LGBT communities, gender, and sexuality within health, particularly nutrition and dietetics. He uses queer theory and arts-based research methods in his work. Dr. Joy is the editor of "Queer Nutrition and Dietetics," a book featuring diverse arts-based contributions from the LGBTQ+ community.

Read more in Philip's bio.