From sexuality (gender) to gender (sexuality): the aims of anti-homophobia education

Abstract

The tradition of anti-homophobia education is often characterized by the conflation of gender and sexuality in which oppression arising from gender non-normativity is subsumed within the sexuality-based concepts of homophobia and heterosexism. This paper presents the view that oppression arising from stringent gender normativity should instead be attributed to a gender-based form of oppression: genderism. Through critically interrogating the envisioned aims of anti-homophobia and anti-genderism as gender-based educational projects, it is argued that – given the ways in which gender non-normativity is routinely read as non-heterosexuality – anti-genderism is a more transparent and broadly applicable platform on which to elaborate measures toward safeguarding of all students against hegemonic processes of sexuality and gender normalization, regardless of each student's sexual orientation or gender identity.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge Elizabeth Atkinson and Renée DePalma for their support, as well as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Notes

^1. For an extended discussion of the history of genderism as a concept, see Airton (2009).

^2. I use the term ‘platform’ in order to denote a distinction similar to inter alia liberal multiculturalism versus anti-racism as platforms undergirding efforts to address prejudice, discrimination and violence committed on racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, geographic or religious grounds. While sharing similar goals (i.e. changing the way in which these categories are experienced in educational contexts), the way in which projects rooted on either platform are articulated could not be more dissimilar. For more on multicultural versus anti-racist education, see May (1999).

^3. Here I must address the apparently visual character of aims-questioning as a device for assessing educational platforms. Aims-questioning as a process relies on the visual coding and decoding of identities according to the means we have at present to describe and, by extension, categorize others. The greatest pitfall of aims-questioning is most certainly ableism in that identities are lived and understood the world over without reference to visual signifiers by people who do not rely on sight to navigate their world. It is for this reason that I use the notion of ‘envisioning’ throughout instead of ‘visualizing’, as the connotation of the first is much more evocative and imaginative than the second, which largely connotes seeing with one's eyes. While this does not vanish the ableist implications of aims-questioning, I can only indicate my awareness of how my account could privilege the sighted and offer my humblest apology.

^4. For overviews of such projects in the United Kingdom and the United States, see Arnot (2006) and Weaver-Hightower (2003), respectively.

^5. An example of this is the GLSEN mission statement available online (http://www.glsen.org).

^6. My inclusion of gender here in no way amounts to an insistence that heterosexism is the normalizing oppression pertaining to gender. That one manifestation of gender-normativity is symptomatic of rigid heteronormativity is essential for anti-heterosexism to be named as a platform that addresses gender as a matter of course. I simply contend that (hetero)sexuality is by no means the only conduit for theorizing or acting on gender, not that gender is never co-normalized by sexuality.