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

cultures of students, teachers and others connected with particular sites (for example,
Local Education Authorities and governing bodies in the UK…)’ (Epstein et al., 2002:
273) also present heterosexuality and the legitimate subject position. This ensures:
…the assumed dominance of a heterosexual order in societies plac[ing] heterosexual relationships
at the centre – as ‘normal’ and normalizing – and thereby indicat[ing] that all other forms of sexual
relationships remain ‘deviant’ and abnormal.
(Kehily, 2001: 118)
And with schools maintaining this wider societal view by their use of the ‘hidden
curriculum’ (Jackson, 1968), it is no wonder that young LGBT people find it difficult to
understand and express their genders and/or sexualities.
Within these heteronormative contexts, negotiations of femininities and masculinities are
central to young people and these too are subtly influenced from an early age in binary,
heterosexual ways. Mac an Ghaill, 1994a; Nayak and Kehily, 1996; Skelton, 2001; and
Arnot, 2002 all interrogate the construction of femininities and masculinities within
schools and how this is inextricably linked to queerphobia. The inescapability of these
presentations is demonstrated by the normative sexualisation of everyday products. Even
stationary, for example, can encourage heteronormativity. In 2005 Playboy
controversially introduced a range of stationary, which may be seen to encourage sexual
division because it presents a brand to a vulnerable group of people, which depicts
women as subordinate. Although Playboy insists that these products are aimed at adults,