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

She recognises that this shouldn’t be an issue, but she predicts that the girls would feel
uncomfortable if they knew she was gay, and given what the young people I spoke to said
about their experiences in PE, I fear her prediction may be correct.
Sue appreciates these difficulties for teachers and that their lives are made more difficult
because ‘we’ve still not got a DCSF that is [//] celebrating and acknowledging its LGBT
teachers, sufficiently’ (Transcript 4: 32), however she points out that there are now
processes to go through to challenge problems and we need LGBT teachers to stand up
and be counted. That may be true, but in reality the issues are extremely complex, more
so than has been explored above. Whilst I have suggested that it is desirable for LGBT
teachers to come out because their sexual and/or gender identity are central to who they
are and because, amongst other reasons, they can be role models for LGBT young people,
it is not a given that your gender and sexuality are central to who you are. This can be a
very personal negotiation and from a radical queer perspective one might suggest that
rather than encouraging LGBT people to be out we should be discouraging the
differentiation of identities and breaking down categories - interesting and important
debates unfortunately beyond the scope of this paper.
In Sandra’s school, although she was not aware of any specific policy related to
queerphobia, she was confident that all bullying was dealt with well and equally and from
the examples she gave, this did seem to be the case. However, she was aware that her
school had a particularly good record at dealing with bulling and that it was in an area
where bullying was generally lower than other parts of the country. Whilst this was at
odds with the young people’s experiences at their schools, it demonstrated that, at the