Mapping transgender policyscapes: a policy analysis of transgender inclusivity in the education system in Ontario^*

* This manuscript is based on analysis and research supported by the SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) [Supporting transgender and gender minority youth in the school system: Investigating policy and practice, 435-2015-0077], Principal Investigator, Wayne Martino and Collaborator, Wendy Cumming-Potvin. It also draws on the doctoral research of Diana Kuhl [Death of the Clinic: Trans-informing the clinical gaze to counter epistemic violence]. A version of the manuscript was also presented at the AERA conference in San Antonio, Texas, April 27-May 1, 2017.

Abstract

In this paper we draw on Mettler’s concept of the policyscape and apply it to an examination of policy-making processes and events as they pertain specifically to an analysis of transgender inclusivity and gender diversity in the Ontario context. We employ Ball’s focus on policy as text and policy ensembles alongside Bailey’s employment of policy dispositifs to map key events that characterize important legislative developments that define the Ontario education policy landscape with regards to addressing gender identity and gender expression as a basis for anti-discrimination. We situate particular events such as the GSA (Gay Straight Alliance or Gender and Sexuality Alliance) and sex education controversies within a broader context of trans activism, which we identify as pointing to quite specific contingencies that characterize the Ontario policyscape. Overall, the paper extends a consideration of the specificities of the Ontario case in Canada to a broader reflection on the utility of the policyscape as a crucial concept for making sense of the relevance of more general characteristics of a spatially-focused trans informed policy analysis.

Keywords:

• Policyscape
• policy dispositif
• transgender inclusivity
• gender diversity

Notes

* This manuscript is based on analysis and research supported by the SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) [Supporting transgender and gender minority youth in the school system: Investigating policy and practice, 435-2015-0077], Principal Investigator, Wayne Martino and Collaborator, Wendy Cumming-Potvin. It also draws on the doctoral research of Diana Kuhl [Death of the Clinic: Trans-informing the clinical gaze to counter epistemic violence]. A version of the manuscript was also presented at the AERA conference in San Antonio, Texas, April 27-May 1, 2017.

1. It is important to point out that, while we acknowledge that Mettler’s (2016) conceptualization of policy-making and policy trajectories tends to be more structuralist in its articulation and epistemological basis, we still find this analytic construct of the policyscape to be useful and illuminating alongside employing Ball’s (1994) and Bailey’s (2013) Foucauldian analytic framework, which attends to the messiness of policy enactment. While Ball (1994) has drawn on Foucault in the policy sociology field in ways that have been defined as poststructuralist, his approach to policy analysis is one that attends to the materialist and structuralist elements of policy-making and formulation through a lens that illuminates the micro, meso and macro analytics of power in terms of how policy texts are mediated and enacted in their historically specific and contingent specificity. We thus employ Mettler (2016) alongside critical policy sociology scholars such as Ball and Bailey in ways that speak to Foucault’s own pragmatic approach to the development of theory which led him, as Garland (2014) points out, to regard theory “as a toolbox of more or less useful instruments,[with] each concpetual tool designed as a means of working on specific problems and furthering certain inquires, rather than an intellectual end in itself or as a building block for a grand theoretical edifice” (366; see also Powell 2015). In this respect, we find Mettler’s (2016) notion of policyscape useful conceptually in that it speaks to the Ontario geo-spatial specific policy context of transgender inclusivity and equality with its history of activism in an illuminating way, but one which is further enriched and enhanced by drawing heavily on Ball’s and Bailey’s Foucualdian interpretive analytic framework. This interdisciplinary focus is consistent with our understanding of trans scholarship and activism more broadly, which transcends rigid epistemological frameworks and challenges notions of incommensurability by illuminating the ways in which trans lives have been pathologized, erased, and affirmed (Namaste 2000; Stryker 2006).

2. NDP stands for the New Democratic Party of Ontario. Cheri Di Novo was a Municipal Member of Parliament (MMP) representing this party and, historically, has been known for its left of centre politics. She retired from politics in December of 2017.

3. It has been reported that Peterson’s supporters tend to be largely white, young and male (Bartlett 2018) with links to a nascent men’s rights movement as well as to the Conservative Party and Rebel (Selley 2017). In fact, Lynskey (2018) claims that ‘Peterson’s constellation of beliefs attracts a heterogeneous audience that includes Christian conservatives, atheist libertarians, centrist pundits and neo-Nazis’ (n.p., added emphasis). However, Peterson (2017) himself refutes any connections drawn between himself and far-right groups.