Intersex awareness and education: what part can health and physical education bodies of learning and teaching play?

ABSTRACT

It is well-documented that schools fail to adequately engage with contemporary content about intersex awareness and education or inclusion of people with intersex variations. Where sexuality and relationships education are the remit of Health and Physical Education (HPE) curriculum in countries such as Australia, the learning area shows little obligation/response-ability towards the needs of students with intersex variations. It also fails to pay nuanced attention to non-dominant issues, knowledge, or people with respect to sex, gender and sexuality. Similarly, the normative endosex nature/focus of HPE/PE/sport and related professional education bodies (e.g. in teaching and coaching) ignore the need for relevant and affirming content about intersex bodies. A recent project reported here, created a collective narrative addressing how such HPE bodies of learning and teaching can advocate for and enact approaches that are inclusive, affirming, visible, and supportive in promoting and upholding the human rights and health needs of students with intersex variations. The research question driving the project was: What part can HPE bodies of learning and teaching play concerning intersex awareness and education? This original empirical research draws on the methodology and theory of narrative inquiry. The narrative was created between artefacts from a cohort of second year Australian pre-service HPE teacher education students in dialogue with teacher/researcher/expert/author bodies. The paper employs a recently developed Strategic Framework for intersex inclusion that promotes a positive whole-school approach, for educational institutions to be more inclusive, humane, safe and educationally relevant for people with intersex variations. This framework assists critical reflection on project findings. We argue that such engagement, as illustrated in this project’s scope, promotes a positive and diverse understanding about intersex in educational spaces, curriculum and pedagogies, guidelines, and policies, and ultimately reflect Australian Human Rights Commission recommendations and Australian anti-discrimination legislation.

KEYWORDS:

• Intersex
• health & physical education
• inclusion
• wellbeing
• health
• health promotion
• body diversity
• bodily autonomy
• narrative inquiry
• teacher education

Acknowledgements

Thanks to participant students who agreed to their work being included in this study and to the reviewers and editors for their valuable feedback on this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 With further explanation in the Methodology section’s ‘Context and Participants’ the authors of this paper had multiple roles, as authors of the framework, as educators in the study, as activists, and some with lived intersex experience. We refer to them as ‘authors’ when all are included, bringing us together as authors/educators/ researchers/activists/lived experience bodies. When only some, and/or acting in more specific roles we specify those roles and author names.