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

very least, even if schools were not able or willing to fully address the unique issues
around queerphobic bullying and LGBT identities they could still deal with queerphobic
bullying in the same way that they dealt with all other types of bullying, not, as seemed to
be the case for the young people in Manchester, by not dealing with it at all because it
was queerphobic.
Whilst Sandra’s school in general seemed to be dealing with bullying positively, it is a
huge problem that materials to support teachers are often not getting through to staff.
Stonewall sent a copy of the School Report (Hunt and Jensen, 2007) and Spell it Out
(Stonewall, 2007) to every secondary school in England, yet Chris ‘speak[s] to so many
teachers who say I have never seen it in my school’ (Transcript 4: 7) and resources such
as Wakefield (2006) and Teachers TV (2005; 2008) are not widely known about and
Sandra had heard of neither. And even as a gay teacher who recognises how important
the problems of queerphobia in schools are, she said in response to this that:
…as teachers you get so much stuff anyway, that is absolutely, not that this isn’t essential, but
absolutely essential to be able to teach that, like, to have time to, for them to give us any other
stuff, I don’t know when they would.
(Sandra, Transcript 5: 14)
She also expressed concerns about when the time could be found to train staff on these
issues and policies.