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

AM: Yeah, yeah.
SJ: Like there’s um, like I said there’s a gay member of staff in our school, a music
teacher, but he’s not openly gay with the pupils. Um but I think he’s told one or two
members of staff and then that has spread around the whole staff. So the staff generally
know, but I don’t know how much he knows the staff generally know. Um but the um the
kids will ask us as members of staff is Mr Barker gay, is he gay, is Mr Barker gay, is Mr
Barker gay over and over. Because they think he is and they think, when if I was to say to
them I don’t know I’ve got no idea, like whether he is or he isn’t he’s just a work
colleague they were saying he must be have you seen his hair. So his hair’s one thing,
because he’s got bleach blonde hair and it’s spiky.
AM: Right.
SJ: Trendy hair really, um really, but he’s very skinny which obviously makes him less
macho, I think that’s the way the kids sort of see it.
AM: So do you think the kids in a way associate femininities and masculinities with
homosexuality. So perhaps if there’s a feminine boy or male teacher oh he might be gay
or a masculine looking…
SJ: {I think to some extent yeah, to some extent. But having said that, there’s a boy in
one of my year 10 groups who is like, who is the campest person you have ever met in
the sense that like he is dead feminine like and he plays on it like he he squeals and he’s
like dead feminine, but no-body would ever say he was gay.
AM: Right.
SJ: Because, why I don’t know. The kids just don’t think he is gay. They would never
call him gay, but he’s very feminine in the way he acts, so.
AM: Has he got quite a strong personality? Is it perhaps that…
SJ: {yeah}
AM: …if people just wouldn’t bullying him anyway cos he’s that type of person that just
wouldn’t stand for it maybe.
SJ: Um, possibly, possibly, but I don’t even, they would even just light heartedly tease
him, I’ve never even heard a comment like you look so gay when you do that. I’ve never
even heard that sort of thing, it doesn’t even come to peoples minds it doesn’t seem.
When to me he’s extremely camp. Do you know what I mean like, but they just think,
where as with Mr Barker they do, they do see it in him and yet he’s not, I mean and he
dresses very nicely and all this stuff and so I don’t know he must be a combination of all
them things that make him look, make the kids think that he’s gay.
AM: OK right drawing to a close. Um the main purpose of my research is to try and find
out from the young people how all the experiences they’ve had whether it’s explicit