Being left out

This chapter presents the experience of being left out and not fitting in from a variety of perspectives and draws on the thinking of Audre Lorde and subsequent queer theory to reframe difference as a resource. Ranging from the ways in which children and young people are horrid to one another to the ways in which adults maintain control of groups by harnessing the power of exclusion, it focuses on the micopolitics of exclusion and control. Even when norms seem to have shifted to a greater inclusivity and acceptance of ‘difference’ the experience of being ‘the only one’ in a group is still a lonely one and can be made more so when it is mobilised by others in the interests of retaining power and control. Examples here are of young people exploring non-normative gender and sexuality; of autism; and of young people being cold-shouldered without knowing why.