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

AM: So do you feel by none of them knowing that you’re kind of not lying because every
body just thinks the same or doesn’t know anything.
SJ: Umm, (sigh) the only time I ever feel like I’m directly lying is if they ask me to do
something and I have to lie not to do it because I’m spending time with my girlfriend.
AM: OK.
SJ: that’s when I feel like I’m lying. The rest of the time I feel like I’m just not telling
them everything about myself, if you see what I mean.
AM: Yeah. Has there ever been occasions where you don’t lie, but say there’s some kind
of event going on at work where maybe partners are coming and obviously you’ve just
mentioned that you do have a partner where [//] people might take their opposite sex
partner but you sort of just turn up on your own, so maybe implicitly imply that you
haven’t got a partner.
SJ: Oh yeah, they think I’m single, yeah. They don’t think I’m with anybody, because I
cant because obviously we go on social all the time and there’s lots of different things in
a school environment where you could bring your partner to them. Um and obviously if I
was saying I was with somebody but wasn’t willing to say it was with a girl they’d
wonder why I didn’t bring that person, so I just, they just think I’m single.
AM: OK. [//] Right, OK moving on to the next thing, still talking about your own
sexuality at work, have there even been any time where you have felt unsafe in the
classroom because of your sexuality? Perhaps, homophobic comments being made and
pupils are unaware of your own sexuality or anything like that, where you’ve thought oh
if they knew that I was gay then I could be in trouble here.
SJ: Yeah, loads of times (laughs).
AM: OK.
SJ: Yeah just in the, well obviously the fact I’m a female PE teacher is one obviously
major issue in that obviously I’m in the girls changing rooms all the time and um that I’ve
always thought that that’s that is one the main reasons why I’ve not told anybody at
school and why I don’t want to kids to find out because of, I’m actually a PE teacher
rather than a maths or English teacher or whatever. Um so there’s always that issue that I
think about and is a concern to me. But there’s, I mean there’s one particular incident
when I was teaching a year 11 group of girls, all girls, and um it was rounder’s I think
and there is a girl in that class who um, I didn’t know at the time, who is bisexual, I think
she identifies as bisexual, am and she had written a letter to another girl in my class to let
her know that she fancied her basically, that she liked her and this girl had then shown the
rest, everybody else in my class this letter um and there was obviously a lot of issues and
arguments in that lesson then that had to be dealt with. Um and in the changing rooms
afterwards people calling this girl derogatory terms and um, this girl dealt with it really
well actually, she was very confident and stood up for herself, but obviously that put me