‘Who are you calling a problem?’: addressing transphobia and homophobia through school policy

Abstract

This article offers a detailed analysis of two school board-level policies in British Columbia, Canada that address the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and transgender, Two Spirit (LGBQ and TT) youth to demonstrate how the language of the policy holds meaning and re/produces particular knowledges. Rather than offer an analysis that sees ‘at-risk’ youth or LGBQ and TT issues ‘as a problem to be solved’, this article proposes reading of the policies and the youth who are the subjects of these policies as complex and exceeding the identities that the policy constructs for them. Drawing upon Bacchi, Foucault and Butler, this article frames an analysis of the value and limits of policy geared toward LGBQ and TT as problematization, where identities are explored as contradictory and produced through the manner in which the policies are constituted. The article suggests ways in which queer theory offers a questioning of normativities that is beneficial to policy analysis.

Keywords:

• bullying
• intersectionality
• gender identity
• homophobia
• school policy
• transphobia
• queer theory

Acknowledgements

I want to thank Sue Saltmarch for her insightful comments on the first version of this article and thank the two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions, particularly the reviewer who linked my analysis to the work of Carol Bacchi. I would also like to thank the editors for their patience and care and doctoral student Joanne Price for her assistance with gathering the policies and minutes.

Notes

1. I use genderqueer for those who identify outside a gender binary. Some use genderqueer, gender variant, gender nonconforming and/or gender creative. I want to acknowledge that this terminology is contested within and outside queer, transgender and genderqueer communities. When speaking from my perspective, I will use genderqueer, when discussing others terminology, I will utilize the language that the individual, research or policy employs.

2. In British Columbia, the term school board is used in the same manner as school district.

3. Two Spirit refers to First Nations individuals who identify as having both female and male spirits within one body, who may or may not identify as LGBQ. The term has varying meanings among different bands and tribes, nor is it employed by all bands.

4. A cisgender person is one who identifies as the sex they were assigned at birth.

5. Because all of the comments presented were in the public arena, behavioral ethics review was not required.

6. This is a reminder that LGBQT is the acronym used by the researchers in these studies.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lisa W. Loutzenheiser

Lisa W. Loutzenheiser is an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy at the University of British Columbia. Dr Loutzenheiser’s research interests are centered in youth studies, qualitative methodologies, sociology and anthropology of education, anti-oppressive and critical race theories, curriculum policy and gender and queer theories. Dr Loutzenheiser focuses on the educational experiences of marginalized youth and the teaching and learning directed for and about students labeled as such. Her current research involves an ethnography of a leadership camp for LGBQ and TT youth and their allies and a policy analysis of 35 school board-level policies geared toward LGBQ and T youth and faculty. She is also particularly interested in the ways theories of race, sexualities and gender are useful across research projects, methods and methodologies.