bullying presentation

‘They’re just not mature right now’: teachers’ complicated perceptions of gender and anti-queer bullying

Marilyn J. Preston*

Liberal Studies Department, Grand Valley State University, Grand Rapids, MI, USA

(Received 30 May 2014; accepted 9 February 2015)

Sexuality education teachers in the USA are often the only officially sanctioned voice in schools charged with teaching students about sexuality and gender. This paper considers the ways in which sexuality education teachers conceptualise gender and anti-queer bullying in order to explore the ways in which teachers understand their own role in the systems of power that lead to gender policing and anti-queer bullying. The study finds that teachers’ notions of gender are often linked to essentialist and stereotypical notions of sex and that their beliefs about anti-queer bullying reinforce problematic discourses that dismiss bullying as immature and silence queer potentials for young people.

Keywords: LGBTQ students; bullying; sexuality education teachers; gender; heteronormativity

In the USA, 22 states and the District of Columbia mandate that sexuality education be

offered in public schools (National Conference on State Legislatures 2014). Despite these

governmental mandates, there exists very little consistency, training or guidance offered to

public school sexuality education teachers (Eisenberg et al. 2010). In a political climate

that seeks to regulate young people’s sexuality to conform to nationalistic ideologies about

the superiority of the hegemonic family ideal, and with a growing concern over issues of

peer aggression and bullying, sexuality education exists at the centre of both controversy

and opportunity to engage in creating systemic and ideological change. This paper

explores how teachers, specifically sexuality education teachers in public schools,

conceptualise and respond to bullying and stigma surrounding lesbian, gay, bisexual,

transgender and queer (LGBTQ) students and community members.

Sexuality education teachers take on the responsibility of providing information,

education and resources to young people about healthy sexuality and sex (Walters and

Hayes 2007). Their job often involves negotiating between regulations set forth by school

districts, states and society that define what can and should be taught to young people. This

places teachers at the nexus of a complex system of power wherein they reinforce systems

that work to stigmatise non-normative identities and behaviours and potentially challenge

normative conceptualisations of gender and sexuality. Exploring how sexuality education

teachers conceptualise and respond to LGBTQ students and bullying is useful because

sexuality and gender are so often conflated in Western culture (Pryzgoda and Chrisler

2000). The regulation of gender and sexuality organises daily life and is often used by

adolescents and adults to regulate and determine normative and ‘deviant’ behaviours

q 2015 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives

License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduc-

tion in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

*Email: [email protected]

Sex Education, 2016

Vol. 16, No. 1, 22–34, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2015.1019665

(Rubin 1999). Students themselves use heteronormative discourses about sexuality to

regulate each other’s behaviour (Epstein, O’Flynn, and Telford 2003; Froyum 2007;

Martino 2000a, 2000b; Renold 2003; Woody 2003). Peer regulation often leads to

victimisation, bullying, and harassment of children and youth whom their peers perceive

as non-normative, particularly LGBTQ-identified students (Froyum 2007; Woody 2003).

It also reinforces heteronormative ideologies and contributes to poor outcomes for

LGBTQ-identified students (California Safe Schools Coalition 2004; Harris Interactive

2001). This study seeks to explore the ways that sexuality education teachers

conceptualise LGBTQ students and think about anti-queer bullying in their classrooms

in order to highlight the ways that they influence systems of power around sexuality and

gender.

Background and significance

Developmental theory suggests that it is normative for adolescents to begin to explore

their sexual identities despite the fact that dominant discourses about sexuality continue to

reinforce the idea that young people should not be sexual, claim a sexual identity, or engage

in sexual behaviours (Epstein, O’Flynn, and Telford 2003). This creates a discord between

social, emotional and physical development and cultural expectations or norms for

adolescent sexuality. In their role as providers of knowledge, teachers are poised to engage

with both the social and emotional needs of youth, as well as the various cultural

understandings and ideologies that surround young people’s sexuality (Fields 2008).

Informal and unofficial curriculum utilises sexuality in order to regulate student

behaviour and to teach students particular ways of existing in the world (Epstein, O’Flynn,

and Telford 2003). Sexuality educators have a long history of invoking particular

ideologies related to morality, identity and the assumptions of childhood innocence in

order to promote the provision of sex education (Moran 2000). Within sexuality education

classrooms, various understandings and ideologies related to gender, race and class

intersect in ways that support the systematic inequality that students who sit outside of the

normative framework might experience (Epstein, O’Flynn, and Telford 2003; Preston

2013a, 2013b). Sexuality education teachers are positioned to help direct and engage with

the discourses and systems of power in order to educate their students. Their unique place

in the lives of young people enroled in these classes, as the provider of information and

resources, as well as the guide to the world of sexuality as proscribed by the culture of

schools and communities, gives the role of teacher incredible salience in not only the

everyday manifestation of these discourses, but the ways in which they are articulated in

the everyday spaces of schooling.

Sexuality in schools

Developmental researchers have suggested that schools and the practices of teachers,

students, administrators and others who interact within the school, influence the ways in

which young people come to consider their sexual and gender identity (Kroger 2007).

Government and educational institutions have long had a vested interest in proscribing

particular forms of sexuality for young people out of concerns for morality, avoidance of

risk behaviours and protection (Brooks-Gunn and Graber 1999).

Sexuality and gender permeate schools from primary grades through higher education

(Thorne 1993; Payne and Smith 2013; Youdell 2005). Sexuality has been used by students,

teachers and administrators as a normalising discourse to regulate the social behaviours of

2 23Sex Education

youth (Chambers, Tincknell, and Van Loon 2004; Epstein, O’Flynn, and Telford 2003;

Froyum 2007; Martino 2000a, 2000b; Renold 2000, 2003; Woody 2003). Young people

use homophobic and heterosexist discourses to police gender and sexual identities

(Chambers, Tincknell, and Van Loon 2004; Froyum 2007; Martino 2000a, 2000b; Woody

2003). Demonstrating that the conflation of the two identities happens quite often in

adolescence, young people tend to use homophobic discourses against peers who defy

gender norms as well as, if not more so than, peers who defy sexual identity norms

(Froyum 2007; Horn 2007; Woody 2003).

Young people may utilise explicit verbal, sexual and physical bullying in order to

police gender and sexual identity among peers (Chambers, Tincknell, and Van Loon

2004), and rely on hegemonic discourses to regulate their peers’ expressions of gender and

sexual identities. Adolescents use homophobic discourses, identifying peers as gay or

lesbian, in order to control both sexual and gender identity performances through insults

and abuse (Froyum 2007; Martino 2000a, 2000b; Woody 2003). For example, Pascoe

(2007) has shown how the use of a ‘fag discourse’ by young people demarcates power and

regulates both sexual and gender identities in adolescence.

Young people who identify as LGBTQ may face significant difficulties in schools

(Kosciw et al. 2011; McGuire et al. 2010). Research from the USA shows that LGBTQ-

identified youth face both physical and verbal harassment that went unchecked by school

teachers and administrators (Payne 2007; Wyss 2004).

Clearly, adolescents utilise conceptions of gender that are attached to hegemonic

ideals. In this sense, gender becomes instrumental in the ways in which young people

interact and experience school-life. Gender policing is used to assign or gain power and

privilege, to regulate behaviour, to punish those who do not ‘fit’ within the norms. Gender

performance is also used to make sexual identity claims, particularly heterosexuality,

which students utilise to demonstrate who they are in relation to their peers and who they

could become.

The discursive practices that exist within schools often work to sustain systems of

power and oppression that reflect the larger culture’s historically and culturally situated

understandings of normative, heterosexual and hegemonic portrayals of sexual identity.

In the social world of schools, a heterosexual ideology can lead to the punishment and

sanctioning of non-normative femininity or the display of ‘queerness’ (Martino 2000a,

2000b; Pascoe 2007). Anti-bullying discourses have however traditionally focused on an

aggressor–victim binary that ignored the ways in which gender policing and

heteronormativity underlie peer-to-peer interactions (Payne and Smith 2013). Research

suggests that schools might usefully reframe bullying through the lens of gender policing

in order to create more useful interventions. Teachers have power in shaping that narrative

and practice, thus exploring their own understandings of their role within that system will

allow researchers, teachers and communities to make visible new ways of supporting

students and bringing about social change.

The scholarship on anti-queer bullying suggests that it is deeply prevalent in schools,

teachers and students both engage in it (Kosciw et al. 2011), and teachers feel that they

face significant barriers in addressing homophobic or heterosexist bullying (Meyer 2008).

This writing does not fully explore the ways in which teachers recognise anti-queer

bullying in their classrooms and the ways that their responses to bullying might reinforce

hegemonic power structures. The present study attempts to fill that gap by exploring how

sexuality education teachers respond to and conceptualise LGBTQ students and anti-queer

bullying in order to explore how they participate in the systems that regulate sexuality and

gender.

324 M.J. Preston

Methods

This study is part of a larger project exploring how sexuality education teachers’

conceptualisations of their roles and students challenge or reinforce hegemonic discourses

around adolescence, sexuality, race, class and gender. Grounded theory methodology

(Corbin and Strauss 2008) was used to explore the ways participants defined and

conceptualised their roles as teachers and their students’ experiences in relation to anti-

queer bullying and LGBTQ students.

Participants

Initial recruitment involved posts on listservs and social networking sites devoted to

sexuality education including the American Association of Family & Consumer Sciences,

Advocates for Youth and state-wide listservs for health teachers. As the study progressed,

snowball and theoretical sampling led to a more diverse sample. Data were collected via

semi-structured interviews with 15 teachers who taught sexuality education to middle and

high school aged youth in the USA. Of these, 11 were current public high school teachers,

1 was a private school sexuality teacher, 1 was a health educator in a public high school

through an in-school clinic, 1 was a former teacher who was employed as a state-level

trainer for health education curriculum and 1 participant was a county health educator who

offered sexuality curricula in the public schools. The majority of participants were female

(n ¼ 12). Participants ranged in age from 28 to 62 years old. The majority of the sample identified as white (n ¼ 13), and heterosexual (n ¼ 12). Teaching experience ranged from 4 to 37 years (M ¼ 12.86 years). Seven participants described their schools as being in suburban areas, three as in urban areas, three described their schools as in rural areas, and

one participant said she taught in an area that was both suburban and urban. The participants

came from six different states; eight participants taught in states that are politically liberal

and seven in states that are politically conservative.

Teachers who were willing and fit the criteria for inclusion for this study were

scheduled for interviews lasting from 30 to 90 minutes. Because of distance and in order to

protect participants’ identity, all interviews were conducted over the phone by the study’s

author. After verbal informed consent was obtained, participants were asked to respond to

a demographic survey regarding their identity, experiences and the courses that they

taught. Interview questions focused on three main areas: personal story and experiences

related to teaching sexuality education, conceptualisation of the roles of teachers in

sexuality education, and perceptions of student and community reactions to sexuality

education. Of the 15 participants, 12 were interviewed once, 3 were interviewed twice and

2 were contacted via email for follow-up questions. Participants were interviewed and re-

interviewed until theoretical saturation was obtained. Theoretical saturation refers to the

point at which no new concepts or themes can be found in the data (Corbin and Strauss

2008).

Analysis

Data were analysed through several iterative steps; the first step was initial coding. Initial

coding is the process of breaking down the raw data into small and discrete units, or codes

(Corbin and Strauss 2008). Coding continued line by line in order to deconstruct the data

and identify and record incidents. After initial codes were identified, secondary coding

was used to recognise concepts. Secondary coding is a higher level of abstraction than

initial coding, and involves the re-construction of data in order to determine how the

4 25Sex Education

concepts identified in the initial coding are linked or related. In secondary coding,

concepts are re-examined and grouped into larger categories or themes.

After secondary coding, selective coding was used to explore the ways that the

individual processes and stories in the data connected to discourses present in the larger

social context of sexuality education and adolescent sexuality. This step relies on what

Corbin and Strauss (2008) called the conditional/consequential matrix. By using the

themes emerging out of secondary coding, and examining how they were connected

to the particulars of the situation (e.g. school districts’ policies, teacher’s past

experiences), the data were examined for ways in which the categories theoretically

connected to the context from which the participants were speaking. This step allowed for

the exploration of whether the teachers’ experiences reflected the larger socio-political

context of sexuality education.

According to Hammersley (1987, 67), qualitative research should seek to represent

‘accurately those features of the phenomena that it is intended to describe, explain or

theorise’ if it is to be considered credible and trustworthy. In order to ensure credibility,

I sustained prolonged engagement with participants by returning to interview again for

clarification or if categories that emerged from the analysis required a new line of

questions. Using their feedback, data were reexamined, and interview protocols and

sampling method changed in order to explore potential counter-examples and alternative

explanations. As analysis proceeded, emerging findings were presented to participants in

order to get clarification or check their validity. Credibility of the analysis of the data

involved returning to the participants, using reflexive memo-ing, and comparing new data

to codes and concepts in order to refine the protocol and to determine when theoretical

saturation was met.

Findings

As reported elsewhere (Preston 2013a, 2013b), teachers in this study articulated a

responsibility and a sense of leadership in directing young people towards ‘healthy

behaviour’ – they saw their roles as to provide one of the few spaces of ‘truth’ for students

– and they spoke of explicit commitments to providing space for students to engage in

discussion around sexuality and sex. Despite this, they also fell back upon problematic

discourses of gendered stereotypes in order to both conceptualise and articulate their own

ideas about their students’ sexualities. This study extends that work and explores,

specifically, the understandings of gender and sexual identity held by teachers.

Spaces of truth

All 15 teachers felt their role in the school was to create a space unique in that it allowed

for open sexual discourse for students. They spoke of how this space was created through

their rapport with students and their commitment to what they defined as ‘the truth’ about

sexuality. They described being closer with students than other teachers, suggested that

they were more comfortable with the subject of sexuality than other teachers or adults, and

viewed themselves as the only adult whom students could turn to for quality sexuality

education. For example, Tabitha, who taught at a suburban school in the Midwest USA, 1

said:

I feel like you just have such a different role in the school than anybody else, I think it’s a great role, I think that I can go home at night knowing that maybe I didn’t get them to pass their

526 M.J. Preston

math regent or whatever, but maybe I touched one kid’s life to save their life, or stopped something from happening.

Teachers expressed their sense of uniqueness in how they discussed their role within

the school. Many teachers shared Marissa’s thoughts when she said, ‘If I don’t talk about it

no one else is gonna talk about it, no one else.’ Teachers described their level of comfort

with sexuality as a core part of their unique ability to create safe spaces for young people.

Nina, a veteran teacher with decades of experience, articulated, ‘I have to tell you, I can

count on one finger, the number of people, teachers at my school district, who’ve been able

to talk really comfortably about [sexuality].’ Likewise, Dana, who had been teaching in an

urban school for under five years, suggested:

I guess I just always felt comfortable talking about and dealing with that area and I don’t know why, I really don’t. Every now and then I will take one of my coworkers to class with me and they just about die, they just can’t even live through one class, and say ‘How can you do this?’

Teachers also spoke of how the space they created contained a responsibility to

provide what they determined to be ‘honest’ information to young people. This

responsibility incorporated the idea that sexuality education is imperative for young

people – regardless of the actual content of the curriculum. Lacey, who taught in a

southern state, said:

They need somebody who they feel as though they can talk, they can go to and get the truth from, I found that a lot of my students . . . don’t want to ask for help, they don’t . . . know where to go. I feel like to support is to provide them with the honest truth, you know the answers that are going to help them, not just scare them.

Overall, teachers conceptualised their role as creating a space that, in contrast to other

spaces ofschooling, was explicitly welcoming and safe for open discussions ofsexuality. They

viewed their classroom spaces as safe and truthful due, at least in part, to their unique abilities

to build rapport with students and discuss sexuality in an open and affirming way. Their

commitment to the truth often contained references to biological facts, emotional processes

and tools to deflect media and cultural pressures regarding sex and ‘risk’ but their

conceptualisations of gender and queer experiences often reproduced the dominant discourses

of queer invisibility and deviance within this space they defined as containing ‘truth’.

Gender (in)visibility

Teachers demonstrated a reliance on problematic discourses of gender and sexuality when

discussing their role, their students, and their goals in the classroom. They described

students in ways that reaffirmed the discursive connection between desire and deviance, the

framing of sexuality as heteronormative and essentialising. Teachers all affirmed a desire to

support all students, regardless of gender, orientation, race or class. Their words, however,

worked to sustain the ideologies and discourses that had the potential to harm students. For

example, below, Tasha, who taught in a suburban public school district in the eastern USA,

inadvertently expressed an assumption about the gendered expectation of women:

I had a situation in my sexuality class of a girl who was a senior [who] . . . was able to share with the class that she was sorry in ninth grade she was such a slut, and that she didn’t feel good about herself and now she understands how she should be, and that it was a mistake and she wishes she could turn back the clock and not have people think about her the way they do. Which is great ’cause she is going off to college this year as a much better person.

Tasha’s own understandings of her role in the classroom and the ‘successes’ that she

experienced are clearly tied to particular hegemonic discourses surrounding gender.

6 27Sex Education

Underlying her language is an articulation that women’s role is to serve as sexual

gatekeepers, being responsible for both their own and others’ sexuality. This is consistent

with what Fields (2008) and Rahimi and Liston (2009) described in their research

examining teachers’ conceptualisations of young people’s sexuality.

Of the 15 teachers interviewed for this study, 11 responded that gender ‘did not

matter’ when it came to teaching sexuality education. The majority of participants

however conflated sex and gender. In their interpretations, gender typically became

synonymous with sex. Rather than considering gender as an analytical lens to explore

power and interactions around sexuality, the question of gender became a question as

to the effectiveness of single-sex education. They conceived of gender in terms of a

binary wherein male and female students might have different needs in regards

to education. For example, Mary, teaching in a public school in the western USA,

stated:

There are certain aspects of [sexuality] I think we need to talk to girls alone [about]. I think that women could be honest with young girls . . . like even talking about the first time they had intercourse and what their emotions were afterwards, not just the physical aspects, but the emotions, and how potentially they got hurt, or they were great. It can be shared . . . I believe we need to be more honest with young women, they are trying to follow in guys’ footsteps and they’re not guys.

Similarly, Lacey explained:

I think that responsibility and maturity-wise I think that boys might need a little bit extra, they’re so like too cool for this and too cool for that, where girls are so interested in everything and they can take on the role more I think, of being the responsible one.

Lacey and Mary reinforce traditional notions of gender and sexual behaviours when

discussing how gender influences their ideas about teaching. Lacey’s belief that women

are ‘trying to follow in guys’ footsteps’ reinforces notions that men lack attachment in

sexual interactions, as well as an essentialist understanding of men and women as naturally

different. Lacey’s words also support this particular discourse, in articulating that she

believes girls are naturally more mature and thus ‘can take on’ the role of responsibility.

This line of thinking echoes the societal stereotype of women as gatekeepers of sexuality

and as in charge of, or responsible for, the policing of men’s desires (Fine 1988; Tolman

1991).

Dana shared the thought, ‘Girls, unless they’re in a forced situation or a rape situation

or a sexual violence situation, they really have the last call on having sex.’ Dana’s

assumption, that women can enact sexual agency at all times, except in regards to rape,

also reinforced gendered understandings of the way in which power works in adolescent

relationships. As researchers such as Fields and Tolman (2006), and Holland,

Ramazanouglu, and Sharpe (2004) noted, hegemonic understandings of heterosexuality

as normative include articulations of power wherein women are situated in passive relation

to men’s desire. By declaring that only in cases of rape are women not the sexual decision

makers, she ignored the many ways in which power operates to silence girls’ agency

within sexual interactions.

Ten of the teachers in this study reaffirmed this notion, linking their understanding of

their female students as both responsible for sexuality, as well as marked by their

engagement with sexual behaviours. These teachers’ assumptions about their students and

the meanings behind their students’ words and actions fall in line with discourses about

adolescent sexuality that contribute to particularly damaging ideologies for adolescents

(Fine and McClelland 2006).

728 M.J. Preston

‘They don’t know what they’re saying’: teachers’ dismissal of anti-queer bullying and identities

All but three teachers downplayed the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender

students. Despite the fact that all of the teachers said that they took bullying seriously and

that they want to support all of their students regardless of sexual orientation, they often

denied any bullying around issues of sexual orientation or gender. For example, Dana said

that she perceived that ‘we don’t have a lot of people that would be out as far as

homosexuality’ in her community, but that students will ‘make comments or jokes’ about

gays or lesbians. However, she went on to say that there is ‘probably not any major issue

just right here in our community’ in regards to anti-queer bullying.

It is important to note that Dana taught in a state with no current chapters of the Gay,

Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), the most prominent organisation for

supporting LGBTQ youth in the USA, and where the state legislature recently voted down

a bill that proposed anti-bullying laws that included sexual orientation and gender identity.

Marissa, who taught in the same state, said:

I don’t think [bullying] is targeted towards any one group, you know? You always have your bullies in schools, but it’s not to the point where, they’re beating kids up just because of their sexual orientation, they’re not writing kids’ names on the wall.

Marissa also noted that the most pressing issue facing her students is ‘the idea of

homosexuality or bisexual’. And that her students would be ‘very ostracised if they do

come out of the closet per se, or even if they speak about being like that in high school’.

Teachers’ concern for their students’ safety and emotional health was evident, but it was

clear that they also fell back on discourses that silence LGBTQ individuals and downplay

the abuse or violence that LGBTQ students may experience in schools. This may signal a

discomfort around the topic of the connection between sexuality and bullying.

To illustrate, Tabitha acknowledged that anti-queer bullying occurred, but she

dismissed it as a problem:

I hear them use the word[s], like you’re gay, and calling each other fag a lot, but they’re just not mature right now. I don’t know that they necessarily mean it as someone who is gay. We do have a small percentage of gay population at the school and some of those kids like to kind of flaunt it a little. But it’s mostly girls, actually, and the kids are like ‘ew that’s gross’ but I don’t hear them calling each other names and those kids aren’t coming to school all beat up.

Tabitha’s description of gay students as ‘flaunting it’ falls in line with stereotypical

understandings and interpretations of homosexuality as something to be muted or hidden

and reinforces victim-blaming mentalities. She also stated that the students who rely on

this type of name-calling are ‘just not mature right now’, effectively dismissing the

bullying that she did witness. Similarly, Elle described how she had witnessed anti-queer

bullying, but went on to focus on the victim’s responsibility for the bullying, saying:

If a student is being bullied because of sexual orientation . . . a lot of how the bullies continue bullying depends on the response of that student. And this is probably true with any bullying, if the student being bullied presents themselves confidently in refusing to take it, the bullying tends to stop after a little while because they are not getting a response they want to get. But I have seen some students that were very distraught and they let it show, to the point where . . . the whole school knew how distraught they were. It wasn’t just isolated to a little group of bullies and they decided to bully this one child who they don’t agree with the sexual orientation, I mean the whole school knew about it, it was that out there.

Here, Elle not only dismisses anti-queer bullying as a unique problem amongst many

types of bullying, but also reframes the focus of bullying to explore how the behaviour of

8 29Sex Education

the victim makes them a target. This focuses blame on the victim, either for ‘flaunting it’

as Tabitha described, or by lacking confidence as Elle claimed.

Tabitha, who had both minimised occurrences of anti-queer bullying and articulated

that some children brought it on themselves, also discussed an occurrence that would meet

many official definitions of harassment:

I won’t say they [LGBTQ students] don’t get pestered. Now I also coach cheerleading and a few years ago I had a boy on the squad and he got harassed ’cause he’s a cheerleader and the kids are like, ‘oh you’re a fag and you’re gay’ but it was all verbal stuff. He did say that sometimes people would come to his house and leave a sign in the yard or . . . shaving cream on the sidewalk, but he, but he wasn’t gay. So there’s some, but I wouldn’t say it’s, you know, it’s not by any means a problem at our school.

Tabitha’s narrative suggests she dismisses the salience and seriousness of anti-queer

bullying, not only as potentially harmful in general, but in a particular case of harassment

she both relies on minimising the acts of harassment and dismisses the bullying outright

because she does not think the student who was victimised was gay. Her words demonstrate

the ways in which, despite acknowledging actual instances of anti-queer bullying, teachers

might unknowingly silence students whom they perceive as either deserving (because they

‘flaunt it’) or undeserving (because they are not LGBTQ-identified). This dismissal of

bullying works to reaffirm the systems of power that marginalise students, both those who

are perceived, and those who identify, with LGBTQ identities.

While some teachers indicated that they did not witness any anti-queer bullying, or that

the bullying they witnessed was innocent, other teachers expressed that they worked to

counter the verbal harassment that they overheard. Sam shared his strategy for dealing

with students who engaged in what Pascoe (2007) called the ‘fag discourse’:

We definitely have that one-on-one, sit-down talk about what it means. Do they know what it means? Do they have any idea what they’re saying? And they usually don’t. We don’t get into the fact of talking about alternative lifestyles but I tell them that an individual may take that personal and ‘how would you feel if somebody said that to your parent or to your siblings?’ – that usually gets the point across. But they know definitely that it’s not acceptable. We are not a zero tolerance school, but it is not acceptable whatsoever.

Sam, like the majority of the teachers in this study, found that students used epithets as

a way to police other students’ behaviours. Similar to Pascoe’s (2007) findings, teachers

understood that students used this discourse to police masculinity in general, and did not

connect it explicitly with gay or lesbian identities. Teachers found this language

unacceptable and often, as Sam’s words illustrate, took steps to curb it. In his response,

Sam did not challenge language itself, but rather asked students to consider their own

feelings if the epithets were directed at them or loved ones. This leaves the meaning of the

words unquestioned and silences the potential challenges to the power of language.

Similarly, many teachers described that they felt students did not understand the language

and, in their attempts to deal with it, did not work to challenge the ways in which

homophobia operated through language. Below, Ruth shared her experiences and ideas

about students engaging in fag discourse:

I really feel like the language kids [use] today is really hurtful. Like ‘that’s so gay’ . . . or ‘you’re like a fag’ or whatever. Their language more so than their feelings is hurtful. I don’t even know if they know what they’re saying, they just let it fly and their language is just really hurtful.

Ruth expressed displeasure at the language her students used to police each other, but

she also articulated a separation between what students meant and the words that they

used. For Ruth, her students did not harbour ‘hurtful’ feelings towards LGBTQ-identified

930 M.J. Preston

students; rather they engaged in the language without knowing how it was connected to

systems of power and oppression.

Not all teachers dismissed homophobia and anti-queer bullying as a problem; a small

number who had received specialised education in human sexuality and queer culture

spoke of ways in which homophobia was connected to other systems of power. For

example, Sonia, whose training involved several years of specialised education with queer

organisations, explained:

I always feel like the underlying problem with homophobia is sexism, so if you can try to understand sexism, if we didn’t have an idea that men are supposed to be this way and women are supposed to be this way, then we would probably have a lot less stuff around sexual orientation, because we would have a better understanding and a bigger range for what men can be and what women can be and about maleness and femaleness, that’s one piece of it.

Discussion

Sexuality education teachers in this study maintained a commitment to supporting

students through offering positive and healthy sexuality education. They viewed sexuality

education classrooms as spaces that were supportive and safe for frank discussions of

sexuality, and their role within those spaces as providing rapport and ‘truth’ about

sexualities. Despite this commitment, however, the majority of teachers viewed the

concept of gender through an essentialist lens; one that worked to conflate sex with gender

and to sustain notions that reinforce problematic hierarchies and stereotypes of both men

and women and preclude identities that sit outside of those categories. In addition,

the majority of teachers in this study expressed ambiguity around issues of peer

aggression and bullying of LGBTQ youth. Their narratives often contained the

contradiction that, while queerness was ‘an issue’ for students, there were no actual queer

students. They also dismissed the seriousness of bullying by labelling the practice as

immature and therefore insignificant even when it did occur. This contradiction could

potentially render queer experiences invisible, minimise the seriousness of anti-queer

bullying and silence the possibilities of queer existence for all students. It forecloses

potentials for grappling with the issues that queer youth bring with them – and reduces

instances of violence against queerness to immaturity and ignorance – reinforcing

heteronormative practices that punish and silence any young person whose gender or

sexuality is outside the norm.

The teachers understood their role within the larger systems of sexuality education,

and education in general, as providers of truth. They viewed their classrooms as safe

spaces for young people to discuss topics that were off-limits elsewhere. They

acknowledged the influence they had on students in terms of potential behaviours and self-

understanding, but their inability to consider both the presence of LGBTQ-identified

students, and the implications of anti-queer bullying translates into a curious and

problematic case of reinforcing hegemonic notions of gendered sexualities, as well as

silencing and making invisible the ways in which anti-queer bullying impacts young

people – both queer identified and not. Teachers dismissed the bullying they did witness

as both ‘immature’ and as baseless because they viewed victims as either ‘flaunting it’ and

therefore deserving of bullying, or as straight and therefore viewed bullying as having no

significant impact on the victim. This double-blindness creates a void wherein teachers do

not acknowledge the significance of anti-queer bullying for all students as a system of

subordination and control, and which works to reinforce notions that students who are

LGBTQ identified are unsympathetic victims.

10 31Sex Education

The results of this study suggest that teachers do not possess the training or tools to

effectively work against hegemonies of gender and sexuality that sustain heteronormative

and homophobic discourses. Teachers’ understanding of the role of gender in their

teaching was limited to essentialist notions of sex stereotypes and problematic discourses

that foreclose the exploration of ways in which gender works as a power in adolescent

relationships. This limits their ability to intervene or challenge the compulsory

heterosexuality and peer regulation of gender that exist in schools. It also serves to work

against the goal that the teachers maintain, of creating a space in schooling wherein

sexuality can be discussed explicitly and in an affirming way.

In addition, when teachers refuse to acknowledge both the presence of LGBTQ

students and the seriousness of anti-queer bullying, then queer students both cannot exist

and, when they do exist, they cannot complain or seek support for bullying. As Payne

and Smith (2013) note in their recent call to reframe bullying, current definitions often

focus on micro interactions that rely on individualised and psychological understandings

that posit that one can eliminate bullying by changing the aggressor. They suggest

reframing bullying to incorporate an understanding of the ways in which school culture

encompasses systemic modes of power and oppression, particularly gendered

hierarchies, that anti-queer bullying articulates and reproduces. Payne and Smith

(2013) argue that in changing the definition from one of the bully/victim binary to one

that understands gender policing and peer aggression as sustaining power imbalances we

can begin to challenge heterosexist and gendered oppressions. The findings of this study

support their conclusion, and demonstrate how teachers’ own notions of both bullying

and gender fail to realise the ways in which gender, sex and sexuality are co-constituted

(Butler 1999; Youdell 2005). The teachers interviewed here, often the only officially

sanctioned providers of sexuality-related knowledge in the school, are in a unique space

that potentially affords them opportunity to challenge the ways in which gender-sex-

sexuality is articulated and functions for young people. Perhaps if sexuality education

teachers themselves had the education and support to understand the ways in which

gender policing, sexuality and sexual stereotypes, and queerness are linked in society,

they could better articulate and promote school spaces that support all students in healthy

identity development.

Finally, teachers expressed a desire for more education around the teaching of

sexuality; Dana shared:

I’m one of these teachers who if you give me a good resource I’ll take it. It’s not that I don’t want to teach it . . . I’m there to be a teacher . . . So share [with] me some ways I could teach this, I would love to get out there and teach other teachers.

Her sentiments were echoed by every single participant: they were all willing and ready to

become more informed educators, but felt a lack of guidance and, for several participants,

a lack of institutional support. Ongoing educational programmes, institutionalised and

standardised curricula that supported healthy sexuality and explicitly defined gender as a

system of power linked to behaviour and regulation, programmes for teachers of all levels,

including pre-service to in-service teachers, and, perhaps most importantly, according to

the participants of this study, a legitimation of sexuality education as part of a national

curriculum, would all serve to support teachers in creating safe and affirming spaces for all

students.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

1132 M.J. Preston

Note

1. All names are pseudonyms used to protect the confidentiality of the participants.

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