A queer circle of friends, indeed! The school social as intervention or as movement

Abstract

The purpose of this paper to present two approaches intended to support the social lives of those typically on the borders of school life. Circles of friends (CoFs) was designed to assist students labelled with disabilities, while Gay-straight alliances (GSAs) addresses needs of supporting students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, two-spirited (gay/lesbian/bisexual First Nations people), queer and/or those questioning their sexual identity (LGBTTQQ). In laying out these approaches side by side, I argue that CoFs constitute a dis/abling pedagogy breed acquiescence, further pathologise students and create essentialised identification for all students. GSAs, in contrast, are constitutive of a queer pedagogy and promote active, agentive, healthy more complex identities. In short, CoFs are critiqued through GSAs and implications for inclusive schooling are explored.

Keywords:

• Circles of Friends
• gay–straight alliances
• dis/abling pedagogy
• queer pedagogy

Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge funding received from SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Grant Number 410-2008-2712). This paper emanated from the thinking and analyses involved in the project ‘Disabling Teacher Education from the Ground Up’.

Notes

A version of this paper was presented at an invited address at The Ohio State University, Columbus Ohio on 4 February 2009, as part of the Interdisciplinary Program in Disability Studies and Sexuality series of workshops. Another version was presented at the Queer Culture in Education Conference in Montreal, Canada, as pert of the Congress of the Social Sciences and Education, 31 May 2010.

Queer may seem an unusual term but it is used here in two specific ways; firstly, for simplicity and clarity when referring to sexual minority students. So, queer or queer students will be used instead of the cumbersome acronym LGBTTQQ. Secondly, queer in the context of pedagogy implies a political sensibility, as will become clear in subsequent sections.

Although starting a GSA almost always comes from students, as pointed out by Wells (2010) the very first GSAs were begun by educators.

Warner in ‘Fear of a Queer Planet’ (1993) coined the term hetero-normativity to underscore the implicatedness of heterosexual in the normal – that is when we think of normal, heterosexuality is already invoked. Able-normativity is meant to be understood somewhat analogously; that is when normal is invoked so too is the able body.

Although it should be noted that in 1982 Bogdan and Taylor challenged many assumptions about developmental and intellectual disabilities in the book Inside Out.