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

who comes bouncing up! And said you didn’t expect to see me here and I thought oh yes
I did!
AM: (laughs)
SS: So that whole internalised homophobia that whole processes of trying to decide you
know where you are, plus the testing process [//] I don’t think is understood. And why
would it be understood by heterosexuals unless they are trained and are able to
understand that stuff.
AM: Definitely.
SS: And who is doing that training, no one…
AM {yeah}
SS: …so there’s that then there’s the complete denial, so there’s teachers who say oh
don’t be ridiculous when they use the word gay they don’t mean it that way it has now
come to mean, then they use the word lame so then they are being disablist as well as you
know.
AM: Yep.
SS: Um, so there’s the denial, you know the words changed and you know isn’t that
interesting that the words changed you know it hasn’t changed to black, it hasn’t changed
to Paki, it hasn’t changed to Irish, it’s gay. You know if it had been any of the others, oh
well yes maybe you have a point, but it is getting there. So there’s all that stuff…
AM: {yeah}
SS: …that has to be unpicked.
AM: So it’s whether the use by a child of the term gay whether they are actually meaning
homosexual, whether they are meaning it as a derogatory term…
SS: {yeah}
AM: …and do you think is very important as well, I think it relates to a question I’ve got
later on which we can cover now is I wondered what you think the significance of the use
of terms such as that in a derogatory way are? So if I were a student in as school and I
was to say things like that’s so gay as a derogatory or you know poof, tranny, these types
of words as singular put downs, do you think that constitutes homo/trans bully…
SS: {absolutely, totally, absolutely, no two ways about it.
AM: I agree.