Cishetero Sucker Punches: Analysis of a Trans Youth’s Experience of Schooling in a Conservative Area of the United States

Foregrounding the narrative of a trans youth in a conservative area of the United States, this article explores how the theoretical and practical implications enmeshed in sonic ethnographic work and curriculum theorizing are in relation to what the author calls critical consent curricula. The author argues that these curricula should be embedded across systems of schooling and are but one way to interrupt educational necropolitics that pervade every aspect of young people’s experiences in schools. Violence that emerges from necropolitical norms often results in daily sucker punches that resonate across and against minoritized youth’s ways of being, knowing, and doing. By listening deeply to Ray’s narrative, this paper is a call to find ways to resist and refuse violence through consent curricula so that queer futurities become the sonic grounds that undergird everyday experiences in school.