Predatory schools and student non-lives: a discourse analysis of the Safe Schools Coalition Australia controversy

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the controversy surrounding the Safe Schools Coalition Australia. Certain politicians and media commentators have accused the initiative of harming the students it ostensibly aims to benefit. Those accusations have, in turn, been labelled ‘homophobic’ by supporters of the Coalition. This article suggests that the term homophobic does not adequately describe or explain the visceral hostility of anti-Safe Schools discourses. Drawing on discourse analysis, I demonstrate how Safe Schools has been represented by its critics as being a sexual predator, while students have been represented as innocent, asexual, and requiring protection by their parents. These parents are the ones who can and should regulate their child’s access to sexual knowledge – and who can and should oppose Safe Schools. I conclude by arguing that the Safe Schools controversy is useful in that it provides an opportunity to recognise gender and sexually diverse student lives as being ‘lives’; and to consider how programmes such as Safe Schools can help create safer educational environments for these and other disadvantaged students.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• sexuality
• school curricula
• Safe Schools Coalition Australia
• innocence
• vulnerability
• Australia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Law (2017) provides a useful overview of the SSCA controversy. This overview contains interviews with some of the key figures involved in the running of the SSCA.

2. It is important to note that not all Coalition senators have opposed the SSCA. Indeed, in the early days of the SSCA controversy, the then Minister for Education and Training, Simon Birmingham, publicly defended the initiative (Law 2017, 27).

3. It should be noted that the SSCA differs from some other sex education programs in that it does not provide instruction about issues such as sexual activity and reproduction; indeed, the SSCA does not provide a formal programme of study.

4. The campaign to legalise same-sex marriage in Australia began in 2004, after then-Prime Minister John Howard amended the Federal Marriage Act to ensure that marriage could only take place between a man and a woman (Baird 2012). In late 2017, a (voluntary) postal vote was held around this issue. In November 2017, it was announced that 61.6% of voters had voted in favour of legalising same-sex marriage (Karp 2017).

5. The term ‘homophobia’ has some other limitations, as Herek (2004) points out.

6. Benjamin Law claims that in the year following February 2016, The Australian ‘published nearly 200 stories’ about the SSCA (Law 2017, 40).

7. McNally’s (2015; 2016) emphasis on the harmfulness of gender roles owes much to radical feminist critiques of gender and sexuality (e.g. Jeffreys 2014). McNally’s concern that heterosexual children will be bullied, however, runs counter to radical feminism, which tends to see heterosexuality as being oppressive, and therefore unworthy of defence.

8. As Heywood (2013) demonstrates, notions of what constitutes ‘childhood’ have shifted considerably throughout history.

9. Social media platforms have, however, also provided an avenue for anti-SSCA critics to express their views. Examples include Facebook pages as ‘Stop Child Abuse! Stop Safe Schools Program!’ and ‘STOP SAFE Schools Coalition.’ (Facebook b. undated; Facebook c, undated).

10. It is important to emphasise that participants in the Growing Up Queer study were not recruited from secondary schools. The study’s findings were taken from a national survey, ‘as well as a focus group and interactive workshops’ (Robinson et al. 2014, vii).

11. https://ineedsafeschools.org.au/

12. Benjamin Law contrasts these images with a ‘2012 anti-homophobia campaign that ‘featured gloomy, moodily lit portraits asking the public to Imagine being made to feel crap for being left handed’ (Law 2017; 13; and see also Copland and Rasmussen 2017; 94).