“We just can’t afford to be separated on that” – affective solidarities among university-based lesbian, gay, bi and trans volunteers

Purpose In this paper, I analyse how lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT+) voluntary workers within English Higher Education discuss their experiences of encountering and combating trans-exclusion within their universities. Looking through the lens of the emotional politics of comfort and discomfort (Ahmed, 2006), I argue that the discomfort that LGBT+ volunteers feel at both latent and overt organisational exclusion of trans people can be a primer for “affective solidarity’ (Hemmings, 2012) that questions the exclusionary dynamics created and maintained by the Higher Education sector more broadly. Design/methodology/approach In total, 19 one-to-one semi-structured interviews and 3 focus group interviews were conducted with university-based LGBT+ volunteers. Interview and focus group data were analysed in NVivo using Thematic Analysis. A post-structural approach to language, signification and group formation allowed for a critical investigation into how and when LGBT+ volunteers characterised and questioned organisational power imbalances. Findings LGBT+ volunteers’ experiences of trans-exclusion within their universities, worked as a primer to engender a scepticism with the structural functionings of Higher Education more broadly. Originality/value This paper contributes to LGBT+ educational scholarship by considering both how LGBT+ communities may identify trans-exclusion from Higher Education, as well as what this exclusion says about the functions of Higher Education altogether. Furthermore, this paper provides a timely counterpoint to trans-exclusionary discourses that construct trans people’s presence in universities as inherently threatening to academic freedom, freedom of speech or LGB well-being in the university.