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

described a number of problems faced at school due to their actual or perceived
sexuality 27 , responses to these problems and effects. Silver described how his high school
was ‘predominantly full of homophobia and bullying’ (Transcript 2: 2). He was bullied
for being gay, of a minority race and religion and for being the ‘geek’, as he says he ‘had
it rough’ (Transcript 2: 2). Von experienced explicit bullying by her classmates who put
up posters:
…in the toilets saying look at [who] the new found dyke is and they just got took down, nothing
was said, even though people admitted and went up to them and told them who it was, they didn’t
do anything because it was easier not to.
(Von, Transcript 1: 3)
Von experienced the initial queerphobia from peers but she felt this was reinforced by the
teachers’ failure to act, who she says ‘did Jack [//] basically’ (Transcript 1: 3). Helen
found herself being constantly bullied from the age of ten after she was ‘outed’ because
she kissed a girl in her class on a school trip. This example is particularly interesting
because only Helen was persecuted after the two girls mutually kissed, which may
indicate other factors at play in combination with queerphobia when being bullied and
that multiple discrimination is a significant problem. After they kissed Helen received
abusive phone calls and she describes how:
No-one would go near me…but I couldn’t tell anyone cos [//] well I was ten…she [the other girl]
just made up loads of lies, cos, like, we were like, in a room with loads of people, so everyone saw
it but, like, everyone backed her up, so I was just like the dirty lesbian…
27 Note, none of my respondents identified as transgender, therefore when I exclude ‘T’ from the acronym
during this discussion it is because the comments being made refer only to LGB identities only, although
there may of course be similarities, this would only be conjecture.