Timothy Gitzen, "Unscripting the Present" (SUNY Press, 2025)

Summary

Podcast Summary: “Unscripting the Present” with Timothy Gibson

Podcast: New Books Network – New Books in Popular Culture
Host: Rebecca Buchanan
Guest: Timothy Gibson, author of Unscripting the Security Panic of Queer Youth Sexuality (SUNY Press, 2025)
Release Date: December 9, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode features an interview with anthropologist Timothy Gibson about his new book, Unscripting the Security Panic of Queer Youth Sexuality. The conversation explores how current political and cultural panics about queer youth, especially in the U.S., shape both legislation and popular culture narratives. Gibson discusses how shows and films reflect or challenge these anxieties, the roles of futurity and the present in queer representation, and the necessity of centering queer youth perspectives—particularly their relationships and pleasures—in discussions about sexuality, identity, and security.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins and Purpose of the Book

[01:23–04:28]

• Inspired by experiences during COVID-19 and research in Hong Kong, Gibson turned to media and popular culture for insights on queer youth, as fieldwork was curtailed.
• The resurgence of U.S. “Don’t Say Gay” laws, especially in Florida, mirrored older “no promo homo” laws from the ‘90s, signaling a cycle in legislative responses to queer topics.
• Gibson identifies an adult-driven “security panic” about queer youth, reviving old anxieties in new forms.
• He frames his central project: “thinking about a queer theory of queer youth sexuality from the perspective of queer youth.”
  Notable Quote:
  • “What would it mean to think differently about queer youth sexuality amid this growing insecurity, this growing precarity...?” – Timothy Gibson [03:34]

2. Securitization and Adult Panic

[04:28–06:22]

• Adults’ anxieties manifest as efforts to “securitize” youth sexuality, focusing on controlling possible futures instead of addressing present realities.
• Young people’s self-discovery is often displaced by adult fears about who they might become.
  • “The future started to become a concern of the present … marshaling of resources, sentiment, affect around these future concerns acted upon in the present, and then displacing present issues.” – Timothy Gibson [05:12]

3. Selection of Pop Culture Texts

[06:22–08:18]

• Gibson examines primarily mainstream, popular media featuring queer male protagonists—such as Love, Simon, Love, Victor, Heartstopper, and the Norwegian series Skam—due to their prevalence and cultural reach.
• These texts frequently depict queer youth navigating insecurity, family, religion, and social anxieties.

4. Case Study: Skam and Radical Presentism

[08:18–15:48]

• Skam (Norway) serves as a model for centering queer youth experience and “radical presentism”—focusing on relationships and well-being in the moment, rather than deferring to a hopeful future.
• The show's unique development included social scientific research with actual teens; its release structure (“minute by minute” storytelling) emphasized present-tense storytelling.
  Notable Quote:
  • “They focused holistically, wholly on the present moment, what I call radical presentism.” – Timothy Gibson [11:24]
  • “Maybe the people that they have can be educated to be their people, right?” – Timothy Gibson [13:44]
• In contrast to the “It Gets Better” campaign, which offers hope for a better future, Skam demonstrates how immediate peer communities can be reshaped and supportive.

5. Individualism vs. Relationality in Queer Narratives

[15:50–20:25]

• U.S. media foregrounds individual coming-out narratives (“the contractual self”), emphasizing self-revelation and autonomy—heavily influenced by neoliberalism.
  • In Love, Simon, the protagonist bears sole responsibility for telling family and friends about his identity.
• European texts (Skam, Heartstopper) put relationships at the center; identities are revealed through connections, not declarations.
  • “Isak really never comes out as gay. He never says, 'I’m gay.' He comes out by saying that he has a thing with Evan…the relationship comes first.” – Timothy Gibson [18:22]
  • In Heartstopper, Nick first tells his mom “Charlie’s my boyfriend”—the relationship, not just the label.

6. Radical Listening & Family Responses

[22:19–23:32]

• European narratives often depict adults practicing “radical listening”—supportive, receptive, and less concerned with rigid labels, as seen in Being 17 and Heartstopper's coming out scenes.

7. Sex Panics and Queer Participation

[24:22–25:21]

• Gibson describes how both heteronormative and queer communities can be complicit in “sex panics” and security regimes, due in part to the cultural weight of “security.”
  • “Sex panics can also be things that queer people are proponents of … especially when security starts to—its tentacles in on it.” – Timothy Gibson [24:22]

8. Queer Youth Pleasure and Sex Education

[25:46–31:36]

• U.S. culture (and sex education) frames youth sexuality—particularly queer youth sexuality—as inherently dangerous or pathological, ignoring pleasure.
• Gibson highlights emerging media scenes (e.g., in Love, Victor) that acknowledge queer pleasure, even if such moments are interrupted or problematized.
• Re-centering pleasure shifts focus to immediate experience and counters dominant narratives of fear or deferred happiness.
  • “Multiple sexual projects, right? Multiple reasons people have sex...one of those reasons is sheer pleasure.” – Timothy Gibson [31:04]

9. Security Apparatus and Everyday Life

[31:36–35:34]

• Explores how queer youth participate in their own “securitization” due to the normalization of surveillance and protection (e.g., school lockdowns, security measures).
• Scenes in Shameless and Generation illustrate the mundane, often contradictory, embedding of security in daily queer youth life.

10. Hope, Happy Endings, and Queer Joy

[35:34–39:02]

• Gibson advocates for more narratives of “queer joy,” happy endings, and everydayness, not just trauma or victimization.
  • “More variability instead of queer death, right? This is such an overused trope… Heartstopper…just how bubbly, how uplifting… teens flocked to it.” – Timothy Gibson [36:28, 37:13]
• Shows like Skam and Heartstopper model this, focusing on ordinary experiences and affirming communities.

11. Future Work: Queer Theory & The End of the World

[39:10–41:07]

• Gibson’s next project examines “queer theory at the end of the world”—exploring how queer communities have long coped with existential threats, and how abolitionist movements (e.g., prison abolition) might model ways to build just, equitable futures.
  • “The end of the world, that’s old hat… maybe the only way to survive is to get past it.” – Timothy Gibson [40:26]

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Notable Quotes

• On presentism:
  “What if all that one has the capacity to focus on, given one’s circumstances, is right now?” – Timothy Gibson [11:41]

• On coming out narratives:
  “To come out for a queer youth is an obligation that they must come out… the self contains everything to know about the self, and therefore needs to be verbalized.” – Timothy Gibson [17:30]

• On pleasure:
  “What happens when we focus on pleasure as the chief concern for queer youth is that we’re no longer orienting ourselves towards a future… but instead thinking about sex in the now.” – Timothy Gibson [28:06]

• On the need for everyday stories:
  “It was just daily life, and teens flock to it. And so I think something similar, that daily lifeness would be quite powerful.” – Timothy Gibson [38:22]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Book Origins & Legislative Context: [01:23–04:28]
• Securitization & Sex Panics: [04:28–06:22]
• Media Selection Rationale: [06:22–08:18]
• Case Study: Skam & Radical Presentism: [08:18–15:48]
• Individualism vs. Relationality in US/EU Narratives: [15:50–20:25]
• Radical Listening: [22:19–23:32]
• Queer Participation in Panics: [24:22–25:21]
• Queer Youth Pleasure & Sex Ed: [25:46–31:36]
• Security Apparatus: [31:36–35:34]
• Queer Joy & Hopeful Narratives: [35:34–39:02]
• Future Directions—Queer End of the World: [39:10–41:07]

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Memorable Moments

• The insight that security panics about queer youth are not new, but resurface with “new tricks.” [03:12]
• Skam’s “minute by minute” focus as a metaphor for living in the queer present. [11:41]
• The contrast between coming out as claiming a label (“I am gay”) versus claiming a relationship (“Charlie’s my boyfriend”). [18:22]
• Gibson’s advocacy for more everyday, joyful queer media as essential counter-narratives. [37:13]
• Anecdotes around sex education’s failure to name pleasure, with playful personal examples. [29:55–30:52]

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Tone and Language

The conversation is warm, conversational, and insightful, blending accessible theoretical reflection with humor, anecdotes, and clear examples from popular media. Both host and guest engage in passionate, reflective consideration of what queer youth need and deserve from culture—and how adults can do better.

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This summary offers a comprehensive guide to the episode’s thoughtful examination of queer youth, panic, pleasure, and possibility, as well as Gibson’s ongoing scholarly journey.

Transcript

[Marshall Poe]

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[Rebecca Buchanan]

Hi, this is Rebecca Buchanan, host of New Books Network, New Books and Popular Culture. And today I'm here with Timothy Gitson, who's the author of Unscripting the the Security Panic of Queer Youth Sexuality. Timothy, thanks for being here with me today.

[Timothy Gibson]

Thank you for having me.

[Rebecca Buchanan]

Could you start out by just sort of giving an overview of the book, how it came to be, why you decided to write about this?

[Timothy Gibson]

Sure. So the book started in parts, during COVID I was in Hong Kong doing a postdoc and had a lot of time on my hands. I'm an anthropologist by training, but if I can't go out and do field work, I sort of have to find new ways to do research. And so I started doing media research, popular culture research, and, you know, started thinking about queer youth sexuality, something that had been on my mind for quite some time. But around 2022 20, Florida's don't say gay law started to come into fruition from Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis. Being from Florida myself, I felt particularly attacked and particularly concerned about what was coming out of Florida. And then when I started digging deeper, I saw similar laws being passed throughout the United States. But what was interesting is that these laws were in many ways not new. There were older laws from the 90s called no promo homo laws that sort of did something very similar that disallowed the discussion of queerness, queer sexuality, non normative genders and sexuality in the classroom. And so what we are seeing coming out of Florida and the like were rehashing old laws, but sort of like with new tricks. And so I started thinking about what would it mean to think differently about queer youth sexuality amidst this, you know, know, growing insecurity, this growing precarity around queerness, around sexuality and gender creativity, and started thinking about a queer theory of queer youth sexuality from the perspective of queer youth. Now, again, as an anthropologist, you know, I would, would have loved to have interviewed a bunch of, you know, queer youth to, to do this research. But what I started finding in popular culture was a story of queer youth being told as if it were from their perspective. And so I started doing this analysis of popular culture, queer popular culture that focused on queer youth and started seeing interesting ways in which queer youth were being represented as not necessarily focused on the precarity or the insecurity of what may come, but instead focused on relationships that they were forming in the here now. And so not just from the United States, but from European culture texts as well. I was seeing these new narratives of queer youth sexuality that sort of pushed against this panic that was being, that was being produced, you know, in many state legislations and many, you know, even national pushes towards things like book bans and you know, don't say gay laws and the likes of. So that's sort of how the book came, came to be.

[Rebecca Buchanan]

Yeah, I thought it was really interesting as you're talking now, but within your book, as looking at the ways in which adults are trying to. Or fearful. Right. The panic that adults kind of create around youth and youth culture, especially queer youth culture. And so I'm wondering if you can kind of talk a little bit more about that sort of how you.

Sort of looked at how you call it securitizing sex. Right. And that first chapter and that. Can you talk a little bit about that and sort of the ways in which adults are, are trying to stop youth may, I don't know, stop youth is the right word, but stop youth, I'm going to say from becoming sexual beings.

[Timothy Gibson]

Yeah, that's a great question. So what I was noticing was the ways in which the future started to become a concern of the present. Now we worry about the future all the time. We worry about things that are uncertain, things that are precarious, things that are insecure. But what happens when securitization takes hold is you start to see the marshaling of resources, the marshaling of sentiment and affect around these future concerns acted upon in the present, and then displacing present issues. Right. And so rather than allow, for example, a queer child or queer youth to figure themselves out, to figure out what their sexuality or their gender identity may be, you're seeing that sort of push to the wayside in favor of.

A claim that being gay isn't good. But being gay in the future, being actualized in the present, is really what's the concern here. Right. Is that the child will grow up, but how will the child grow up? Becomes the concern.

[Rebecca Buchanan]

Yeah. So you decided to look at a number of different, well, films and television series, like you said, in the US and abroad. And I wonder, before we kind of jump into some of the things that you found, if you want to talk about your choices for, like, the shows and the films you chose, you have some reasons why you chose the ones you did. So can you talk a little bit about the texts you chose and why?

[Timothy Gibson]

Yeah, definitely.

[Rebecca Buchanan]

So.

[Timothy Gibson]

The text that I focused on mostly feature a protagonist who is a queer man. And realizing the limitations of focusing on texts like this, I make clear in the book. But part of the reason I do this is, one, because they're the most prevalent, but two, because I was also looking at texts that sort of had some sort of popularity behind it. So rather than focusing on indie text, I was really focusing on these popular culture texts. Right. TV shows and films being released on platforms like Netflix and Hulu, hbo, hbo, Max, in addition to films that were released in theater to hit acclaim. Films like Love Simon, shows like Love Victor, Heartstopper. And what I wanted to focus on in choosing these texts was the way in which the protagonist, as a queer youth, were trying to navigate sexuality in a time when things were precarious, in a time when things were insecure. And so things, you know, things like panic over religion or panic over what a family member may think of their sexuality comes to the fore in these. In these texts. And the youth themselves are trying to navigate that. And so those were the types of texts that I was. That I was looking at.

[Rebecca Buchanan]

Yeah. So one thing you talk about, a show, a series that I think is fabulous, scom. Right. Or Shame, as we would say in English, that has many different iterations. And so can we talk a little bit? Can you maybe give an overview of Scom and then we can talk sort of about what you saw in that series?

[Timothy Gibson]

Sure. I'm so glad that you really like that. Show too. I love this show. And it was. This is the show that sort of got me into.

Looking at media from a different way. So Skam Shame is a Norwegian television show that ran from, I believe.

2016 onwards for four seasons. Each season focuses on a different protagonist in high school, in the same high school. And the third season focused on Isak.

Who is struggling with his sexuality and his relationship with a boy who's a year above him, Evan. And what's interesting about this show as a whole is the ways in which the producers and the creators of the show, prior to actually writing the script and filming it, did a lot of social scientific research into what teens in Norway were thinking, right? What did they want in a show? What sort of issues were they facing and how. How did they overcome these issues? Right? So they did this sort of social scientific research and analysis and then produced a show out of that. Knowing that their audience was going to be these sorts of teenagers, they wanted to produce a show and create a show that spoke to them. And so what you saw was you saw this multi. This multimodal format where rather than, you know, produce your typical 30 minute episode, you would see clips throughout the week, timestamped and released at that time on that day. And these clips were anywhere between three to five minutes, upwards to six minutes. And they would collect the clips at the end of the week and show it as a holistic episode. But the original clips were released throughout the week.

[Rebecca Buchanan]

Yeah. So I thought one thing that was really interesting is that you use this show to kind of one of the things you talk about is this idea of this concept that adults have, right? Especially adults, queer adults talking about it will be better, right? Things will get better in the future. This whole kind of in the future, things will be better. So just deal with the present and you look at how that's complicated in some of these series. So can you talk a little bit about that with Scom? With how you kind of. Yeah, sort of complicated those kinds of ideas there.

[Timothy Gibson]

So the It Gets Better campaign started by Dan Savage. Dan Savage and his partner, and I believe it was 2014. Um, the idea was commendable, right? It was trying to. Trying to combat youth suicide, right? Queer youth suicide in particular. Um, and so it featured folks at first, queer folks, queer famous folks in particular, talking about how difficult it was for them growing up, but how eventually, once they got older, things got better. Right. Um, and like you said, it's sort of this future orientation that right now may suck, but later will be better, right? Surely later. Will be better. But what if later's not better? What if later is worse, right? Or what if, you know, all that one has the capacity to focus on given one's circumstances, is right now. And so what Skam did so beautifully, I think, in this third season with Isaac and Evan was they focused holistically, wholly on the present moment, right? What I call radical presentism. And we see this in the show because Evan, we learn, is bipolar. And as a result of that, he himself doesn't like to plan too far in advance because he doesn't know how his mood may move with the ebb and flow of a particular moment, right? And so Isak, in response to that, comes up with this little game called Isaac and Evan minute by minute, right? Where they literally take it one minute at a time, right? Not worrying about, you know, the next hour, not worrying about tomorrow, not worrying about weeks in the future, but just worrying about the next minute, right? And I think that that slowing down of time sort of reorients us towards a particular. A particular sense of temporality that isn't future oriented, but focused on what queer youth in particular are concerned with in the here and now. The other thing I think a show like Scum does is it demonstrates that your current community, your current group of friends, can actually be your people, right? Part of what comes out of the It Gets Better campaign, in addition to a deferment towards the future, is this idea that you'll find your people later, right? That, you know, you haven't found your people yet. For some people, that may be true, right? For some people, they may not find their people until later. But for youth trying to navigate, you know, precarious present, maybe the people that they have are their people. Maybe the people that they have can be educated to be their people, right? And so that's sort of what Scam also also showed us was the ways in which Isak's friend group, though supportive, you know, could have. Could be educated as well with how Isak was navigating his sexuality with Evan's bipolar condition as well, to make that friend group his people, right? Because he didn't. He didn't necessarily want to, you know, go to gay clubs or he didn't necessarily want to, you know, find people elsewhere. There's a scene where he joins a gay dating app on his phone, and his phone blows up with a bunch of messages, basically looking for sex, and he immediately pushes that away. And so you have this moment where, you know, he is attempting to move in towards a community, but realizing that Maybe his people, his friend group is the group that he needs to stick with, you know, as he's moving throughout this precarious present.

[Rebecca Buchanan]

Right. And I think one thing that was, to me really important.

Is in thinking about it this way, right. That you can educate those people, that you're kind of pushing against some of the dominant narratives. You're pushing against some of the ways in which we've systematically created these institutions that tell you, right. The don't say gay, all these kinds of things. So we're pushing against those kinds of things as opposed to just saying, well, when you get older, when you move somewhere more urban or hip, you'll figure it out. Right, Right.

[Timothy Gibson]

Get thee to a big city. Right. That idea.

[Rebecca Buchanan]

Yeah. And for me, living in a rural space right now, I think, like, really reimagining that is really important. Right. It can't just be. You are only going to find diversity in whatever form it is in this big urban space. Right. It needs to. How do you find that in the present? And how do you push against some of those narratives?

[Timothy Gibson]

Right, exactly.

[Rebecca Buchanan]

So you also talk about then this idea of relationship versus self and really look at what we in the United States, how we kind of approach this idea of self and exceptionalism versus what you saw in Europe and more in countries that are more focused on relationship. Maybe, or more focused on the good of the whole. Maybe that's the best way to say it. So can you talk a little bit about that, some of the shows you looked at and what you saw with that?

[Timothy Gibson]

Sure. So one of the things that I noticed in comparing US Popular culture text to European popular culture texts, like you said, was this focus in the US on individualism, right. The autonomous individual self, which I tie to a particular kind of neoliberalism in the United States.

And I look at it as a way to think also about processes like coming out, how do queer youth come out? And noticed a focus on what I call the contractual self, right. Where the individual is forming contracts, contractual obligations to the people in their circle, to the people around them, including their family members and their friends, where to come out for a queer youth is an obligation that they must come out. They must be the one who does this work, right. That it is on them to tell their parents, hey, Mom, Dad, I'm queer. To tell their friends that they're queer. Right. Even if I know in the book, even if there may be instances where a mom suspects something, right. The mom never brings it up. Right. It's always the queer youth who has to bring it up to her, right? And so one of the texts that I look at, Love Simon, has this exact sort of scene, right, where Simon is talking to his mom after he's come out on Christmas, no less.

He sits down with his mom and his mom says that she knew something was up, but she didn't want to pry, right? And that idea of not wanting to pry again, puts the onus on the queer youth to sort of say, this is me, this is my sexuality. I am an autonomous individual and I'm going to tell you about me, right? It's that. As if the. The self contains everything to know about the self, right? That it's all internalized and therefore needs to be verbalized, right? Where when compared to, you know, to European texts like Scam and its several iterations throughout Europe, you see a sort of different approach to the self and a different approach to things like coming out for queer youth, where it's not something that the individual themselves takes on wholly. It's sort of created in the relationships that they form with each other, right? And so what's interesting with Scam in particular is that Isak really never comes out as gay. He never says, I'm gay. That's not how he comes out. He comes out by saying that he has a thing with Evan, right? The relationship comes first. And I think that's really telling here because it's the relationship that sort of forms the bedrock of that sexuality as opposed to something that is inherent to Isaac, right? Where in the United States, the narrative is that you are asexuality, right? You are asexual identity. I, you know, I am gay, I am queer, right? That's the. That's the coming out. It's not that I am in this relationship with this person, right? It's I am this thing, right? But in shows like Skam or I also look at Heartstopper, for example. Heartstopper is really interesting because he also. Or, excuse me, Nick, who is one of the protagonists in the show in the first season, is coming to terms with his attraction towards Charlie, the other protagonist of the show, and his burgeoning bisexuality. And so he has a scene in the first season at the end where he comes out to his mom. But what's interesting is that the first words out of his mouth are not, I'm bisexual, it's that Charlie's my boyfriend, right? Again, that focusing on the relationship, right? The relationship is what, again, forms the bedrock of the sexuality as opposed to an essence, in a sense.

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[Rebecca Buchanan]

Yeah, and I think. I think it's a heart stopper where you talk about in this scene where the mom is listening, right? Like, people are so used to being talked at versus like actually being listened to. And this idea of kind of this radical listening. So I thought that was interesting too, where the mom is like, he's like, do you have any. Was it like, I don't know, you have anything to say or something like that? And she was kind of like, I'm just Listening to you, which we don't do really well in the US I.

[Timothy Gibson]

Think I would agree, I would agree. You know, and it's like, so I also, in, in that chapter talk about the French film being 17.

Another really interesting, another really interesting instance of, you know, not really coming out as a sexuality, but coming out as an attraction. Right. That there's an attraction to people. And so it's not about naming, it's about that relationship. And there too you have the mom who, you know, is practicing that sort of radical listening. Right. And it's interesting because it becomes sort of, you know, a characteristic of the protagonist who talks too much. Right. He's. He's accused of talking too much multiple times.

[Rebecca Buchanan]

Yeah. And I think it's interesting, this idea of relationship then we see that play out all the time, especially in the United States. Like I think of people really want to define who you are before. Like, so even if you're in a relationship with, if you are queer and you're in a relationship with a man, then you have to be, you know, just, you have to be. If you're a man and a man, you have to be gay, you can't be anything else. Right. If you're with a woman, but you've been with a man before, then, you know, you have to be defined by who you are. And you can't sort of move back and forth through relationships. And we have this weird. Yes. And I think that goes back to your idea of sort of the, the sex panic that we have in the US or we continue to have, I guess, for sure.

[Timothy Gibson]

And I think what's also really telling about that is how sex panic. What's interesting about sex panics as security panics. And I talk about this, you know, in the last chapter of the book in particular, is the ways in which queer folks themselves can participate in sex panics. Right. That's something that we also have to sort of admit and, and wrap our heads around that sort of ickiness of it. Right. Is that, yeah. Sex panics can also be things that queer people are proponents of. Right. And especially when security starts to. Its tentacles in on it. Right. People are not going to necessarily push against justifications around security. Right. If it's a security issue, we tend to fall in line. And so I think what's interesting with something like, for example, it gets better is here you have this.

Good natured campaign trying to curb youth suicide, queer youth suicide. But it falls on the backs of, you know, people who either things didn't get better or for people who are really trying to just live in the now because now is precarious enough and they don't have the resources, capacity, ability to think outside of that. Right, right.

[Rebecca Buchanan]

So the other. Another thing that you talk about is queer pleasure, right? And queer youth pleasure, which is always, you know, youth. Well, nobody in the US but especially young people, cannot have sex for fun, right? Like, you're either gonna, like, die a horrible death or get yourself pregnant. And if you do anything else besides that. And there's issues with both of those things. But anyway, so can you talk about this idea of queer youth pleasure in what you looked at?

[Timothy Gibson]

Definitely. So I think part of, you know, part of a framing that I think with queer youth pleasure, not just with sex panics, but, you know, the panic over sex education. Right. Where, like you said, queer youth don't have pleasure as it's framed through sex education. It's something that can cause disease, it's something that it can cause death. Right. This is the framing. And so I've done some research into sex education in the United States and have seen this pop up over and over again. It's either abstinence only or it's abstinence plus. Right. Any sort of comprehensive sex education, you know, falls to the wayside. But what's interesting is that if we refocus the question onto pleasure, that sort of displaces issues of futurity, displaces issues of thinking about later, and again, refocuses our attention on the here now, on the contemporary moment. And what's interesting in some of the texts that I've. And that I analyzed in. In this chapter of the book where I talk about queer pleasure is that you have, you know, for the first time in a long time, I think you. You do have these moments of pleasure that sometimes are interrupted because things don't often go to plan. So I talk, for example, about a scene from Love Victor where at the tail end of one episode, Victor and Benji, his boyfriend, start having sex. And then in the start of the next episode, they're still having sex. And you see quite a lot in the scene until his mother. Till Victor's mother walks in on them having sex, and, you know, then all hell breaks loose. But what happens when we. When we focus on pleasure as sort of the.

Chief concern for queer youth is that we're no longer, again, orienting ourselves towards a future. Right? We're not orienting ourselves towards, you know, the implications of sex, but instead thinking about sex in the here, sex in the now. Right. And the other important aspect about sex in particular is again, the fact that it's formed between two or more people. Right? That it's a relationality, it's a relationship. In particular, in the text that I look at a relationship between two men that sort of forms in that moment. And I guess. And I think it's that, that relationship that also says something about, you know, this deferment of the future for. Or a focus on the present.

[Rebecca Buchanan]

And I do love that. I think your final section in that chapter is kind of basically like, it's just sex. Don't worry about it so much. Right? Because there is this again, it gets back to this, this panic and the security panic that.

Young people having sex is somehow the end of the world for everyone. Which is fascinating. Which is always fascinating to me.

[Timothy Gibson]

Right? I mean, so what's, what's interesting there too is that, you know, I teach a class, a first year seminar called Sex Panics with an exclamation point. And this is one of the topics that we talk about is children having sexuality. And what, what does that mean? Right? Because here I am talking to a bunch of first year students, you know, and they don't want to admit it, but they also all can understand the idea of being a teenager and having sex and having a sexuality. We don't even have to talk about it. Just the invocation of it makes them realize, oh yeah, okay, I can see where you're coming from.

[Rebecca Buchanan]

And we don't. Do I still my young. I remember when my youngest was in maybe 9th or 10th grade in sex ed, and he's like, I need to write down things that can happen when you have sex. And I said, an orgasm. And he's like, I have to write down things that are bad. And I was like, why? You know, like, he's like, I can't write that. And I mentioned it to my friend who had a child the same age and she's like, I said the same thing. And her daughter was like, I can't write that down. And it's like, so we, we train young people, even if they know this can be pleasurable, this can be fun, this can be something. We can do that if we both choose to do it or whoever we're with chooses how many we're with choose to do it. It can be a good experience. And we train them that it can't be. And so they don't even, yes, even talking about it or yes, like you say, even saying like, hey, I know we all know you have sex, right? Or Sexual beings is something we can't talk about.

[Timothy Gibson]

Right. And I think, you know, it can be good, it can be messy, it can be a hot mess, it could be any number of things. Right. It can be a mistake. Right. I think part of it is that acknowledging that there are multiple sexual projects, right? Multiple reasons people have sex, I think is really important. And one of those reasons is sheer pleasure, Right. Because they want to. It doesn't have to be this sort of forever future moment. It can just be spur of the moment sort of decision that they make. Right. Then. Right. And I think understanding that, realizing that, not denying that goes a lot farther than trying to cover it up.

[Rebecca Buchanan]

So you sort of, and your last chapter focuses on, and you mentioned this a little earlier, the American security apparatus, you call it. And so can you talk a little bit more about that maybe? And how you see this really after the work you did, kind of playing out especially for youth and queer youth in the media and in popular culture?

[Timothy Gibson]

Sure. So in that chapter, I was trying to again start to show how queer youth may actually participate in their own sort of securitization. Right. Again, going back to that idea that, you know, just because it's a sex panic doesn't mean that it doesn't have queer interlocutors as part of it. Right? And so securitization in particular, when we start securitizing, you know, everyday life, we're participating in that whether we acknowledge it or even know it or not. Right. Because security has become so mundane. Right. Think about going to the airport, for example. In this chapter in particular, I talk about a scene from the show Shameless, the Showtime show Shameless, where.

The gay foul mouthed Gallagher teen Ian is having sex at high school in his JROTC military uniform with another JROTC member in his military uniform behind the bleachers, right? And they're having sex and his partner says something quite offensive and pretty racist, right? And what's interesting is that in that moment, it's Ian who is like, you need to be quiet, you need to stop, you know, not only because you're talking too much and you're ruining the moment, but what you're saying is problematic. What makes it even more complicated is that his sexual partner is himself a racialized other. He's Asian American, right? And he's saying this sort of racialized slur in response to or in the moment, right. As they're having sex. And what I sort of am unpacking here is again, the messiness of security, how we think of it. Is this well oiled machine, right? But when security meets sex, things get messy, right? And in this scene in particular, you see that messiness, the layers of complication. But in the other scene then that I talk about, I talk from the HBO Max show generation where you see a school shooting or a lockdown, rather. Excuse me, a lockdown. There's no confirmation if there was a shooter on campus or not. But you see this lockdown procedure and how routine it has become for high schools in America to institute. Have. Institute lockdown procedures and how just second nature it becomes for folks to the point where at the end of the episode, as they're in lockdown, you have one of the characters playing a first person shooter game on their phone.

[Marshall Poe]

Right.

[Timothy Gibson]

Again, it's this participation in security that makes it mundane, right. We're doing it so often that it's just mundane. I think what's telling about both these scenes again is not only that queer youth are participating in their own securitization, but that they sometimes can see it. And sometimes just by seeing it is enough for them to recognize what's going on. Right? So, you know, cut them a bit of slack in a sense to see that, you know, yeah, they know what's going on. They're not, you know, it's not a benign incident. They know what's happening. But what, what options do they have in that moment?

[Rebecca Buchanan]

So do you have.

Like, you talk about scom. You talk about some shows in Europe that are a bit, you know, different or do things sort of differently? Is there, are there shows or there are things you would love to see in shows? I'm thinking about in the us what kinds of things would work to challenge what you're talking about, right? Like, you know, like, so, like what, what, what do you hope for? And looking at this and see maybe that's the best way to ask it, like, what do you hope for, right? Like, not that you can have, like. Or is there a glimmer of hope and you, you know, I mean, ask me. Yeah, in a couple years we'll see.

[Timothy Gibson]

I know, right? I think one of the, you know, a very simple thing that I hope for is, and this may sound overly romantic, but more happy endings or more variability instead of queer death, right? This is such a, you know, a overused trope, Queer death, queer violence, queer, you know, victimization for, for good reason. But I think, you know, part of what happened when, for example, Heartstopper was released on Netflix is you saw this outpouring from queer youth and older queer people who are like, dear God, it was about time something like this came out. Right. Because of just how bubbly, how uplifting it. The issues, the panics that they face, you know, in the first season at least, are very mild. It eventually gets more serious, right. Because it comes. It follows a particular webcomic. And so it becomes more serious when dealing with Charlie's own mental health issues. But again, it's dealt with in such a way where, you know.

It'S very delicate, but also it's very. Just every day. Right. There's an everydayness associated with it where I have to deal with school, I have to deal with, you know, a test and taking tests. Right. But I'm also gay. Right. And so it's not. They're not mutually exclusive things that one has to deal with. So, you know, more, more shows that deal with that everydayness I think would go a long way, especially in the United States. And I think that's where a show like Scon was so powerful was because again, it was show about regular teenagers doing regular teenage things in school, dealing with something as common as shame in its multiple iterations. Right. And so it wasn't this, you know, grand narrative. It wasn't this over the top narrative. It was just daily life and, you know, teens flock to it. And so I think something similar, you know, that daily life ness, I think, you know, focusing on that, I think would be quite powerful.

[Rebecca Buchanan]

Yeah. I think I have many different. A variety of students who really love the Heartstopper comics especially. Right. And I think that's why. Right. It's that idea of it doesn't matter what your sexuality is. I get it. I, you know, I've had to like, suffer through X, Y and Z or like mental health. Mental illness comes in all ways, shapes and forms. So I think. But it. Yeah. And so, so that idea of having queer joy. Right. Is an important thing. Oh, yeah. So final question.

What either with this book or what you're working on next, like, what do you want to promote?

[Timothy Gibson]

Thanks for asking.

So one of the, so one of the projects that I'm working on right now that I've been thinking about for a while, which is gonna seem heavy and you know, we were talking about queer joy is the end of the world. And so I'm writing a book about queer theory at the end of the world, thinking about how the end of the world can be a generative space for queer theory. Right. But what's interesting and similar to, you know, to unscripting the present to this book, you know, this new book project tells two stories, right? It tells the story of the American zeitgeist in this fascination, near obsession with the end of the world. But it also tells the story of survivance or, you know, survival, resilience. Right. The. The ways in which queer folks in particular, you know, the end of the world, that old hat. Right. Like we've had to deal with it for, you know, for. For quite some time now. So what can we learn from that? Right? And what's interesting about this book project in particular, Queer theory at the end of the world, is how.

Maybe the end of the world, terrible.

Many people want to stop it. Sure. Maybe the only way to survive is to get past it. Right. And so it's this sort of abolitionist movement. Right. And so the book project looks at abolitionist movements, in particular prison abolition, and how that sort of theorization gets us past the end of the world to build up just equitable lives. Right. So if things are bad now, maybe the only way. The only way. The only way to get through it is through it. Right.

[Rebecca Buchanan]

A little more. Yeah. A little more of We Are the Ants then. And. Yeah, keep going.

[Timothy Gibson]

Yes.

[Marshall Poe]

Oh, yeah.

[Timothy Gibson]

Oh, for sure. Yes. Love that book.

[Rebecca Buchanan]

Yes. Shout out to. Yeah. Hutchinson, isn't it? Yeah.

[Timothy Gibson]

Yes.

[Rebecca Buchanan]

So wonderful. Thank you so much. Timothy Gibson, who is the author of Unscripting the the Security Panic of Queer Youth Sexuality. Thank you so much for talking with me on new books in popular culture.

[Timothy Gibson]

Thank you for having me.

[Marshall Poe]

Here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug Limu.

[Timothy Gibson]

Is that guy with the binoculars watching, watching us.

[Marshall Poe]

Cut the camera. They see us.

[Timothy Gibson]

Only pay for what you [e-mail].

Savings. Very underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.