Non-Normative Gender and Sexual Identities in Schools: - Schools Out

need to deconstruct hierarchies of identity and question boundaries and borders. Butler
(1993; 2004; 2006) and Sedgwick’s (2008) work are essential to such an approach, where
norms and binaries are seen as problematic and ‘queer’ as counter-normative. I propose
however, that these concepts can be broken down and that the school is a central site
from which to do this, as it is a site where many of these norms get installed. This
framework is further developed in the Chapter Two.
School systems are significant cultural sites, actively producing hierarchically ordered
masculinities and femininities (Mac an Ghaill, 1994b) and from early practices of preschool
onwards our bodies ‘become’ gendered (Martin, 2003), with anything deviating
from this being questioned. This gendering of bodies is crucial as it sets up difference and
contributes to the ‘Heterosexual Matrix’ whereby femininity and masculinity are set up as
sexually oppositional (Butler, 2006). And when masculinity and femininity are
constructed as oppositional in relation to sexuality, this can affect how young people
understand sexuality. This, alongside others’ questioning of LGBT identities, can make
life for young people who feel they may not fit gender and sexuality norms extremely
problematic; particularly when they hit adolescence, a time when one often desires to be
aligned with their peers and to fit presented notions of ‘normalcy’ (Forrest, 2006). It is
through such discourses that male and female binaries are normalised and through which
heterosexuality is privileged (see Foucault, 1990). And given that schools ‘…make a
significant contribution to the development of values and attitudes in young children that
are likely to be highly resistant to change in later life’ (Jennet, 2004: 4), this is crucial to
the gender and sexual identity negotiations of young people.