Sexuality and pedagogy in the accounts of lesbian, gay and bisexual teachers

ABSTRACT

This paper examines accounts from lesbian, gay and bisexual teachers, in autobiographical writing and qualitative studies. It uses these accounts to trace productive similarities between discourses relating to pedagogy and to sexuality in English-speaking countries from the 1970s onwards. Alongside these similarities runs a fundamental tension, between the disempowerment of LGB individuals and the traditional authority of the teacher. LGB teachers’ accounts, negotiating this tension, move as a result in opposed directions. While many accounts explore knowledge, authority and speech, they disagree as to their meaning and the implications or their teaching practice. This disagreement becomes particularly sharp in three areas: coming out in the classroom, claiming authority as a teacher (and as a lesbian, gay or bisexual individual), and handling homophobic and biphobic statements from students.

KEYWORDS:

• Lesbian
• gay
• bisexual
• teacher
• coming out
• homophobia
• pedagogy
• knowledge
• gay liberation
• student voice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I have drawn on accounts of teaching in compulsory schooling, further education, and higher education, and use the terms ‘teacher’ and ‘classroom’ rather than distinguishing different roles and spaces. This is a hazardous move, in that the age of learners and their level of education does change practice: it shapes how much agency is accorded to the learners, and changes teachers’ comfort with overt didacticism. In schools, the homophobic anxiety that LGB teachers will abuse or influence children intensifies all debates; King argues that gendered expectations and accusations of paedophilia renders male gay teachers for young children ‘impossible’ (2004). However, the accounts of teachers at different levels do contribute to a shared pattern.

2. I have not included trans teachers’ accounts in this study. There are shared life experience and politics between trans teachers and LGB cis teachers, and I believe that trans analysis and politics and those of sexual identity are intrinsically connected. For instance, transphobia is a component of the negative reactions of students, parents and colleagues to LGB cis teachers. However, trans teachers experience a far higher rate of exclusion and intolerance. The tabloid persecution of primary school teacher Lucy Meadows in the UK in 2013 is a striking example. The coming out story has also functioned differently for trans writers (Prosser 1998). LGB politics has at times attempted to advance by defining itself in opposition to trans identity and politics. For these combined reasons there has not been the same outpouring of critical autobiography from trans teachers, although some accounts have been published in the last six years (Berkely 2014; Harris and Jones 2014; Francis 2014; Doi 2017; Buterman 2015; Wells 2018; Beemyn 2019).