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

teachers in these examples reinforced queerphobic views by lack of action and, more
drastically, by excluding the LGB students from the class. At first I found it hard to
believe that teachers would take such action, but during my interview with Sandra, a
lesbian PE teacher, I realised that this was likely. I discovered that Sandra’s lesbian
sexuality and her presence in female PE changing rooms is a major source of contention -
this is explored later in the chapter.
There were clearly problems for LGB pupils in PE then, and I asked whether the young
people felt any other school subjects were particularly good or bad at incorporating samesex
issues. Good examples were isolated, demonstrating silences around sexualities in
education (see DePalma and Atkinson, 2006). Negative experiences on the other hand
were numerous. Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) was a subject with the
potential to explicitly address LGBT issues, but instead the young people felt this subject
was particularly discriminatory. I asked if PSHE lessons included any information about
same-sex relationships or gender variation, this was met with collective sarcastic laughs
by all and an instant loud exclamation of ‘No’ by Von (Transcript 1: 8).
Sex education, as part of PSHE was the first subject to come up when the young people
were asked if they found any elements of their learning experience to be heterosexually
focussed. Von exclaimed ‘sex education…seriously! It was crap’ (Transcript 1: 8). Von
says that everything in sex education was male and female focussed and when she asked
a question about same-sex sex she was ‘sent into the inclusion room for a week’
(Transcript 1: 8), because her teacher thought she was asking awkward questions to ‘get
the rest of the class rowdy…[and] to cause trouble for her’ (Transcript 1: 8).