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

Experiences of young people at school heavily influence their perceptions of self and thus
their negotiations of their sexual and/or gender identity, particularly if they are beginning
to identify as non-normative. Rivers (2000) for example, found that common effects of
discrimination of LGBT youth at school were abstention, self harm and suicide. He
revisited these issues four years later and found that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and
depression were significantly higher in those LGBT adults who had been bullied at
school (Rivers, 2004). This is a bleak outlook for the mental health of LGBT people, and
given that lesbian and gay youth have been found to be ‘victimized “kind of everywhere”
by peers and adults’ (Mishna et al., 2007: 5), specific queerphobia at school can only
compound an already difficult time for LGBT young people. Indeed, LGB 7 people
reported ‘varied psychological, academic and social effects of homophobic bullying’
(Mishna et al., 2007: 7) and these effects were not just the result of isolated homophobic
incidents, but of years of ‘internalized homophobia’ and continual comments such as
‘That’s so gay’ (Mishna et al., 2007: 8).
These studies are just a few of the many in recent years, (see also Kehily, 2001; Ellis and
High, 2004; Biddulph, 2006 for example), that show how, in comparison ‘to young
people in general, young lesbians and gay men can face specific challenges to their
physical and emotional well-being’ (Warwick et al., 2001: 129). They demonstrate that
life within schools is not easy for young LGBT people and that the discrimination faced
due to their actual or perceived gender and/or sexual identity can cause devastating short
and long term effects. This situation is compounded by heteronormative environments,
7 T excluded here as Mishna et al.’s study only addressed LGB.