Centering Resilience, Well-being, and Pleasure in Gender and Sexuality Science

The 70th Annual Nebraska Symposium on Motivation focused on understanding resiliency, joy, pleasure, and well-being in women, queer folks, and gender-diverse people. In bringing together a diverse interdisciplinary group of scholars and scientists, we created a space to explore joy, break with narratives of deficiency, and honor well-being with the same scientific vigor and rigor as we give to pain. The chapters of this volume represent this effort, all centered on the question: what would it look like if your field of study—the study of gender and sexuality—truly centered well-being and resilience as the foundation of theory and research? In this introduction, we describe common themes that emerged across speakers in how we think about eudemonic elements of gender and sexuality, including radical reconceptualizations of resilience, well-being, and pleasure in minoritized populations.