27 Oct Identity work on social media is perhaps especially relevant to Gen Z (those born after 1996, Parker & Igielnik, 2020)

Paraphrasing X Google Docs: X E Creating Gaps X comm 1000 e x Course: SOSC X /ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=938c33d6-fee0-4314-b3dc-713dcd3dd4e3%40redis&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGI2ZQ%3d%3d#… G Listen Since its inception, social media has been an important method of constructing and performing identity, including gender identity. Identity work on social media is perhaps especially relevant to Gen Z (those born after 1996, Parker & Igielnik, 2020), who are the first generation with access to it in early childhood. In this article, we explore how Gen Z constructs and performs gender identity and other facets of intersectional identity on popular video platform TikTok by analyzing selected content from three TikTokers through the lenses of performativity, intersectionality, and automediality. Keywords: Gen Z; social media, performativity Media platforms are transient, but educators who research LGBTQ+ communities may benefit from learning more about how Gen Z uses the widely popular video sharing app, TikTok, to construct their online identities – ways of being that inform everyday literacy practices. As a video platform, TikTok promotes a form of self-expression focused on appearances and vocals, and the relatively brief time-limit means ideas must be expressed concisely. Viewed within some contexts, performing one’s queerness is thought to reproduce marginality ([17]). In other contexts, it is deemed a powerful literacy practice. For instance, consider bell hooks’ ([18]) response to a question posed on why she supported maintaining one’s marginality: I was not speaking of a marginality one wishes to lose – to give up or surrender as part of moving into the center – but rather of a site one stays in.. because it…. offers the possibility of a radical perspective from which to see and create, to imagine alternatives, new worlds. (pp. 149-150) In this study we explore TikTok trends in exaggerated performances of gendered dress and mannerism, skits calling attention to the arbitrary and constructed nature of gender roles, and confessional-style narrations of personal experiences of sexuality, which may create more opportunities for expression.