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ABSTRACT: Schools are highly gendered cultural sites that leave little room for gender transgressions, let alone the comfortable presence of a transgender child. This paper examines how U.S. educators make meaning of teaching transgender students after attending professional development about transgender identity. The professional development workshop covered differences between sex, gender, and sexuality; research on elementary schools as gendered spaces; limitations of the gender binary for all children; recommendations for inclusive practices for transgender students; and guidelines for changing curriculum and pedagogy to challenge the cultural norms limiting children to binary gender performances. Twelve educators participated in semi-structured interviews focused on personal experiences with transgender children, perceptions of their school’s success in supporting transgender students, ideas about resources schools need to support these students, and responses to the training. This paper explores participants’ responses to the professional development content addressing non-normative gender identities and expressions and the systemic marginalization of queer people. Participants resisted recommendations to challenge strict gender norms through gender-affirming curriculum and pedagogy. Instead, educators remained fixated on preventing the bullying of the transgender child and procedural issues such as bathrooms, using correct pronouns, and maintaining confidentiality around the child’s gender identity. It will be argued that this interpretation of educator responsibility is indicative of a broader problem preventing the creation of inclusive schools for LGBTQ students: educators and policy makers’ fixation on fitting queer students into normative structures and failure to make structural changes that have potential to disrupt the cultural privileging of gender conformity.
ABSTRACT: Current research and policy conversations on school climate and bullying predominantly focus on student victimization; correlations between victimization and negative psychological, social, and educational outcomes; and schools’ responsibility to protect vulnerable students. These conversations reduce complexities of peer-to-peer aggression to “anti- social behaviour where one student wields power over [a victim]” (Walton, 2011, p.131). In this symposium we argue overt violence termed “bullying” is the surface-level effect of heteronormative cultures that provide social benefits for policing non-normative sexualities and gender expressions (Payne, 2007). Targeting others for their failure to “do” gender and (hetero)sexuality “right” is a learned mechanism for improving or affirming one’s own social status as well as re-affirming the “rightness” and “naturalness” of the gender “rules”. Those outside the hegemonic norm are “policed by their peers and denied access to social power and popularity, while those who do conform are ‘celebrated’” (Payne & Smith, 2012, p.188; Ngo, 2010). Papers in this symposium seek to contribute to these debates by exploring different approaches to understanding the ways in which heteronormative expectations for gender compliance circulate through school spaces across international contexts of USA, UK and Australia.
Smith, M. Quiet Girls and Active Boys: Heteronormative Gender Roles in Teacher Allies’ Classrooms (research conducted in USA).
ABSTRACT: Rigid gender norms are cultural foundations of gender-based and sexual harassment (Pascoe, 2013; Ringrose & Renold, 2010), and gender-based assumptions embedded in teachers’ pedagogy are crucial to questions about inclusive schools for LGBTQ youth. This paper will examine how binary gender categories shape the pedagogical practices of teachers who self-identity as LGBTQ Allies. Participants’ interactions with students and interpretations of students’ identities and educational needs were often reliant on assumptions about “natural” differences between boys and girls. These gendered differences were presented as common sense, and they reproduced stereotypical ideas about girls being more emotionally vulnerable and boys being physically active, unfocused, and difficult to control. It will be argued that the normalization of binary gender roles in teacher allies’ classrooms limit the possibilities for non-normative gender and sexual identities to be present, visible, and affirmed in classrooms that, according to participating teachers, were safe and comfortable for LGBTQ youth.
Payne, E. Transgender kiss and the specter of sexual predation: Elementary educators’ talk about a MTF transgender child’s romantic awakenings (research conducted in USA).
ABSTRACT: Elementary educational spaces are considered islands of “innocence and safety.” “Innocence” concerns the absence of sex, sexuality, and sexual knowledge. If the “normal” child is positioned as asexual, then “children who are perceived as sexually aware” are “other,” “unnatural children” with “unnatural knowledge”(Robinson, in Surtees, 2005, p. 25). Transgender children are seen as “unnatural” children, creating “disequilibrium” in the gender binary and thus discomfort (Poe & Garcia, 2009, p. 205). Innocence “has implicit within it the potential “risk of corruption” (Youdell, 2009, p. 44) by exposure to “sexual” content. Transgender children are thus perceived to present “risk” to the innocence of children around them. This paper utilizes a subset of data from a larger study on elementary educator responses to enrollment of a MTF transgender child. Findings indicate that emergence of romantic inclinations in the child (4th grade) was treated as unnatural – creating “panic” and fear for the other children.
Session Title: Policing and performing gender binaries: Teachers and students negotiating heteronormative ‘bullying’ discourses in US, UK, and Australian secondary schools. Convener: Elizabethe Payne, Hunter College, CUNY.
Smith, M. Quiet Girls and Active Boys: Heteronormative Gender Roles in Teacher Allies’ Classrooms.
Payne, E. Transgender kiss and the specter of sexual predation: Elementary educators’ talk about a MTF transgender child’s romantic awakenings.
Payne, E. LGBTQ “Safe Spaces” and “Tolerance”: Limits of Rescuing Discourses for Creating Effective School Policy.
Payne, E. Safety, Celebration, and Risk: The Limits of “Safe Space” Strategies for Reducing LGBTQ Student Experiences of School Violence.