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

experiences not being dealt with in appropriate ways and they were aware of hierarchy of
bullying, where, for example, racism was always addressed, but queerphobia was not.
This was in stark contrast to what Sandra described as happening in her school, where all
bullying is met with the same response and punishment. This shows that it is possible for
schools to deal with queerphobic bullying in exactly the same way as all other types, yet
clearly it is frequently not.
In terms of the young people’s personal reactions to their experiences, these too were
varied. Helen was clearly only just beginning to come to terms with the damage that had
been done by years of queerphobic bullying and came across as frightened and
vulnerable; and Tanya seemed extremely confident that she did not care what people
thought, said or did, however during the session Tanya’s guard seem to drop and I saw a
confused, angry and upset young woman; Von seemed very positive about turning her
negative experiences around. She responded by working really hard to prove teachers
wrong when they repeatedly said she was going to fail. She says:
… I basically kicked my arse into gear, um, I got sent home, they said well, there’s no point in you
staying in school, you’re never here, go home do your own revision at home which made me, they
made me feel worse, they don’t want me there, they think I’m gonna fail, so I basically just revised
and I came out with …1,2,3,4,5,6, seven C’s, the lowest grade I got was a d… and then the highest
was an A* which was in me Arts and they were like, they were, the teachers were like well we’re
surprised, but we’re not going to congratulate you.
(Von, Transcript 1: 19)
Von’s determination to prove to those who doubted her wrong is a common response to
queerphobia in schools. However, although it seems positive, it has been shown that this
can lead to psychological problems later in life (see Rivers, 2004). As such I think there