This study interrogates the meanings that gay youth attach to the future, using discussion, creative engagement, and embodied performance to explore the possibility of queer fantasy as a resistant and generative site of future making. The project explores the creative potentials of focus group research as a method for education, exploration, and collaborative generation. The research identifies a strong gender divide in the narratives gay men and lesbians create about the future. Gay men associate primarily negative and gloomy meanings to future, strongly influenced by cultural myths of “the miserable, bitter, old man.” Lesbian women associate more positive meanings to future, and their perceived future relies much more on heteronormative models of family and children. This article examines how access to heteronormative meanings of future affect overall perceptions of the future, problematizing an antinormative positioning of queer theory.
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