Fashioning sexual selves: Examining the care of the self in urban adolescent sexuality and gender discourses

This paper presents data from a qualitative study of urban high school students that asked students to reflect on the experiences of their lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, and questioning peers. The focus group participants wrote letters to an imaginary new student at their school, discussed what they see and hear in their schools, and kept journals recording a week's worth of observations. The writings and conversations are analyzed in this paper through the lens of Foucault's Care of the Self in order to understand how young people characterize their own and their peers' actions and words as ethical moves in the fashioning of themselves as sexual subjects.