‘They're just not mature right now’: teachers' complicated perceptions of gender and anti-queer bullying

Abstract

Sexuality education teachers in the USA are often the only officially sanctioned voice in schools charged with teaching students about sexuality and gender. This paper considers the ways in which sexuality education teachers conceptualise gender and anti-queer bullying in order to explore the ways in which teachers understand their own role in the systems of power that lead to gender policing and anti-queer bullying. The study finds that teachers' notions of gender are often linked to essentialist and stereotypical notions of sex and that their beliefs about anti-queer bullying reinforce problematic discourses that dismiss bullying as immature and silence queer potentials for young people.

Keywords:

• LGBTQ students
• bullying
• sexuality education teachers
• gender
• heteronormativity

In the USA, 22 states and the District of Columbia mandate that sexuality education be offered in public schools (National Conference on State Legislatures 2014). Despite these governmental mandates, there exists very little consistency, training or guidance offered to public school sexuality education teachers (Eisenberg et al. 2010). In a political climate that seeks to regulate young people's sexuality to conform to nationalistic ideologies about the superiority of the hegemonic family ideal, and with a growing concern over issues of peer aggression and bullying, sexuality education exists at the centre of both controversy and opportunity to engage in creating systemic and ideological change. This paper explores how teachers, specifically sexuality education teachers in public schools, conceptualise and respond to bullying and stigma surrounding lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) students and community members.

Sexuality education teachers take on the responsibility of providing information, education and resources to young people about healthy sexuality and sex (Walters and Hayes 2007). Their job often involves negotiating between regulations set forth by school districts, states and society that define what can and should be taught to young people. This places teachers at the nexus of a complex system of power wherein they reinforce systems that work to stigmatise non-normative identities and behaviours and potentially challenge normative conceptualisations of gender and sexuality. Exploring how sexuality education teachers conceptualise and respond to LGBTQ students and bullying is useful because sexuality and gender are so often conflated in Western culture (Pryzgoda and Chrisler 2000). The regulation of gender and sexuality organises daily life and is often used by adolescents and adults to regulate and determine normative and ‘deviant’ behaviours (Rubin 1999). Students themselves use heteronormative discourses about sexuality to regulate each other's behaviour (Epstein, O'Flynn, and Telford 2003; Froyum 2007; Martino 2000a, 2000b; Renold 2003; Woody 2003). Peer regulation often leads to victimisation, bullying, and harassment of children and youth whom their peers perceive as non-normative, particularly LGBTQ-identified students (Froyum 2007; Woody 2003). It also reinforces heteronormative ideologies and contributes to poor outcomes for LGBTQ-identified students (California Safe Schools Coalition 2004; Harris Interactive 2001). This study seeks to explore the ways that sexuality education teachers conceptualise LGBTQ students and think about anti-queer bullying in their classrooms in order to highlight the ways that they influence systems of power around sexuality and gender.

Background and significance

Developmental theory suggests that it is normative for adolescents to begin to explore their sexual identities despite the fact that dominant discourses about sexuality continue to reinforce the idea that young people should not be sexual, claim a sexual identity, or engage in sexual behaviours (Epstein, O'Flynn, and Telford 2003). This creates a discord between social, emotional and physical development and cultural expectations or norms for adolescent sexuality. In their role as providers of knowledge, teachers are poised to engage with both the social and emotional needs of youth, as well as the various cultural understandings and ideologies that surround young people's sexuality (Fields 2008).

Informal and unofficial curriculum utilises sexuality in order to regulate student behaviour and to teach students particular ways of existing in the world (Epstein, O'Flynn, and Telford 2003). Sexuality educators have a long history of invoking particular ideologies related to morality, identity and the assumptions of childhood innocence in order to promote the provision of sex education (Moran 2000). Within sexuality education classrooms, various understandings and ideologies related to gender, race and class intersect in ways that support the systematic inequality that students who sit outside of the normative framework might experience (Epstein, O'Flynn, and Telford 2003; Preston 2013a, 2013b). Sexuality education teachers are positioned to help direct and engage with the discourses and systems of power in order to educate their students. Their unique place in the lives of young people enroled in these classes, as the provider of information and resources, as well as the guide to the world of sexuality as proscribed by the culture of schools and communities, gives the role of teacher incredible salience in not only the everyday manifestation of these discourses, but the ways in which they are articulated in the everyday spaces of schooling.

Sexuality in schools

Developmental researchers have suggested that schools and the practices of teachers, students, administrators and others who interact within the school, influence the ways in which young people come to consider their sexual and gender identity (Kroger 2007). Government and educational institutions have long had a vested interest in proscribing particular forms of sexuality for young people out of concerns for morality, avoidance of risk behaviours and protection (Brooks-Gunn and Graber 1999).

Sexuality and gender permeate schools from primary grades through higher education (Thorne 1993; Payne and Smith 2013; Youdell 2005). Sexuality has been used by students, teachers and administrators as a normalising discourse to regulate the social behaviours of youth (Chambers, Tincknell, and Van Loon 2004; Epstein, O'Flynn, and Telford 2003; Froyum 2007; Martino 2000a, 2000b; Renold 2000, 2003; Woody 2003). Young people use homophobic and heterosexist discourses to police gender and sexual identities (Chambers, Tincknell, and Van Loon 2004; Froyum 2007; Martino 2000a, 2000b; Woody 2003). Demonstrating that the conflation of the two identities happens quite often in adolescence, young people tend to use homophobic discourses against peers who defy gender norms as well as, if not more so than, peers who defy sexual identity norms (Froyum 2007; Horn 2007; Woody 2003).

Young people may utilise explicit verbal, sexual and physical bullying in order to police gender and sexual identity among peers (Chambers, Tincknell, and Van Loon 2004), and rely on hegemonic discourses to regulate their peers' expressions of gender and sexual identities. Adolescents use homophobic discourses, identifying peers as gay or lesbian, in order to control both sexual and gender identity performances through insults and abuse (Froyum 2007; Martino 2000a, 2000b; Woody 2003). For example, Pascoe (2007) has shown how the use of a ‘fag discourse’ by young people demarcates power and regulates both sexual and gender identities in adolescence.

Young people who identify as LGBTQ may face significant difficulties in schools (Kosciw et al. 2011; McGuire et al. 2010). Research from the USA shows that LGBTQ-identified youth face both physical and verbal harassment that went unchecked by school teachers and administrators (Payne 2007; Wyss 2004).

Clearly, adolescents utilise conceptions of gender that are attached to hegemonic ideals. In this sense, gender becomes instrumental in the ways in which young people interact and experience school-life. Gender policing is used to assign or gain power and privilege, to regulate behaviour, to punish those who do not ‘fit’ within the norms. Gender performance is also used to make sexual identity claims, particularly heterosexuality, which students utilise to demonstrate who they are in relation to their peers and who they could become.

The discursive practices that exist within schools often work to sustain systems of power and oppression that reflect the larger culture's historically and culturally situated understandings of normative, heterosexual and hegemonic portrayals of sexual identity. In the social world of schools, a heterosexual ideology can lead to the punishment and sanctioning of non-normative femininity or the display of ‘queerness’ (Martino 2000a, 2000b; Pascoe 2007). Anti-bullying discourses have however traditionally focused on an aggressor–victim binary that ignored the ways in which gender policing and heteronormativity underlie peer-to-peer interactions (Payne and Smith 2013). Research suggests that schools might usefully reframe bullying through the lens of gender policing in order to create more useful interventions. Teachers have power in shaping that narrative and practice, thus exploring their own understandings of their role within that system will allow researchers, teachers and communities to make visible new ways of supporting students and bringing about social change.

The scholarship on anti-queer bullying suggests that it is deeply prevalent in schools, teachers and students both engage in it (Kosciw et al. 2011), and teachers feel that they face significant barriers in addressing homophobic or heterosexist bullying (Meyer 2008). This writing does not fully explore the ways in which teachers recognise anti-queer bullying in their classrooms and the ways that their responses to bullying might reinforce hegemonic power structures. The present study attempts to fill that gap by exploring how sexuality education teachers respond to and conceptualise LGBTQ students and anti-queer bullying in order to explore how they participate in the systems that regulate sexuality and gender.

Methods

This study is part of a larger project exploring how sexuality education teachers' conceptualisations of their roles and students challenge or reinforce hegemonic discourses around adolescence, sexuality, race, class and gender. Grounded theory methodology (Corbin and Strauss 2008) was used to explore the ways participants defined and conceptualised their roles as teachers and their students' experiences in relation to anti-queer bullying and LGBTQ students.

Participants

Initial recruitment involved posts on listservs and social networking sites devoted to sexuality education including the American Association of Family & Consumer Sciences, Advocates for Youth and state-wide listservs for health teachers. As the study progressed, snowball and theoretical sampling led to a more diverse sample. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews with 15 teachers who taught sexuality education to middle and high school aged youth in the USA. Of these, 11 were current public high school teachers, 1 was a private school sexuality teacher, 1 was a health educator in a public high school through an in-school clinic, 1 was a former teacher who was employed as a state-level trainer for health education curriculum and 1 participant was a county health educator who offered sexuality curricula in the public schools. The majority of participants were female (n = 12). Participants ranged in age from 28 to 62 years old. The majority of the sample identified as white (n = 13), and heterosexual (n = 12). Teaching experience ranged from 4 to 37 years (M = 12.86 years). Seven participants described their schools as being in suburban areas, three as in urban areas, three described their schools as in rural areas, and one participant said she taught in an area that was both suburban and urban. The participants came from six different states; eight participants taught in states that are politically liberal and seven in states that are politically conservative.

Teachers who were willing and fit the criteria for inclusion for this study were scheduled for interviews lasting from 30 to 90 minutes. Because of distance and in order to protect participants' identity, all interviews were conducted over the phone by the study's author. After verbal informed consent was obtained, participants were asked to respond to a demographic survey regarding their identity, experiences and the courses that they taught. Interview questions focused on three main areas: personal story and experiences related to teaching sexuality education, conceptualisation of the roles of teachers in sexuality education, and perceptions of student and community reactions to sexuality education. Of the 15 participants, 12 were interviewed once, 3 were interviewed twice and 2 were contacted via email for follow-up questions. Participants were interviewed and re-interviewed until theoretical saturation was obtained. Theoretical saturation refers to the point at which no new concepts or themes can be found in the data (Corbin and Strauss 2008).

Analysis

Data were analysed through several iterative steps; the first step was initial coding. Initial coding is the process of breaking down the raw data into small and discrete units, or codes (Corbin and Strauss 2008). Coding continued line by line in order to deconstruct the data and identify and record incidents. After initial codes were identified, secondary coding was used to recognise concepts. Secondary coding is a higher level of abstraction than initial coding, and involves the re-construction of data in order to determine how the concepts identified in the initial coding are linked or related. In secondary coding, concepts are re-examined and grouped into larger categories or themes.

After secondary coding, selective coding was used to explore the ways that the individual processes and stories in the data connected to discourses present in the larger social context of sexuality education and adolescent sexuality. This step relies on what Corbin and Strauss (2008) called the conditional/consequential matrix. By using the themes emerging out of secondary coding, and examining how they were connected to the particulars of the situation (e.g. school districts' policies, teacher's past experiences), the data were examined for ways in which the categories theoretically connected to the context from which the participants were speaking. This step allowed for the exploration of whether the teachers' experiences reflected the larger socio-political context of sexuality education.

According to Hammersley (1987, 67), qualitative research should seek to represent ‘accurately those features of the phenomena that it is intended to describe, explain or theorise’ if it is to be considered credible and trustworthy. In order to ensure credibility, I sustained prolonged engagement with participants by returning to interview again for clarification or if categories that emerged from the analysis required a new line of questions. Using their feedback, data were reexamined, and interview protocols and sampling method changed in order to explore potential counter-examples and alternative explanations. As analysis proceeded, emerging findings were presented to participants in order to get clarification or check their validity. Credibility of the analysis of the data involved returning to the participants, using reflexive memo-ing, and comparing new data to codes and concepts in order to refine the protocol and to determine when theoretical saturation was met.

Findings

As reported elsewhere (Preston 2013a, 2013b), teachers in this study articulated a responsibility and a sense of leadership in directing young people towards ‘healthy behaviour’ – they saw their roles as to provide one of the few spaces of ‘truth’ for students – and they spoke of explicit commitments to providing space for students to engage in discussion around sexuality and sex. Despite this, they also fell back upon problematic discourses of gendered stereotypes in order to both conceptualise and articulate their own ideas about their students' sexualities. This study extends that work and explores, specifically, the understandings of gender and sexual identity held by teachers.

Spaces of truth

All 15 teachers felt their role in the school was to create a space unique in that it allowed for open sexual discourse for students. They spoke of how this space was created through their rapport with students and their commitment to what they defined as ‘the truth’ about sexuality. They described being closer with students than other teachers, suggested that they were more comfortable with the subject of sexuality than other teachers or adults, and viewed themselves as the only adult whom students could turn to for quality sexuality education. For example, Tabitha, who taught at a suburban school in the Midwest USA,1 said:

I feel like you just have such a different role in the school than anybody else, I think it's a great role, I think that I can go home at night knowing that maybe I didn't get them to pass their math regent or whatever, but maybe I touched one kid's life to save their life, or stopped something from happening.

Teachers expressed their sense of uniqueness in how they discussed their role within the school. Many teachers shared Marissa's thoughts when she said, ‘If I don't talk about it no one else is gonna talk about it, no one else.’ Teachers described their level of comfort with sexuality as a core part of their unique ability to create safe spaces for young people. Nina, a veteran teacher with decades of experience, articulated, ‘I have to tell you, I can count on one finger, the number of people, teachers at my school district, who've been able to talk really comfortably about [sexuality].’ Likewise, Dana, who had been teaching in an urban school for under five years, suggested:

I guess I just always felt comfortable talking about and dealing with that area and I don't know why, I really don't. Every now and then I will take one of my coworkers to class with me and they just about die, they just can't even live through one class, and say ‘How can you do this?’

Teachers also spoke of how the space they created contained a responsibility to provide what they determined to be ‘honest’ information to young people. This responsibility incorporated the idea that sexuality education is imperative for young people – regardless of the actual content of the curriculum. Lacey, who taught in a southern state, said:

They need somebody who they feel as though they can talk, they can go to and get the truth from, I found that a lot of my students … don't want to ask for help, they don't … know where to go. I feel like to support is to provide them with the honest truth, you know the answers that are going to help them, not just scare them.

Overall, teachers conceptualised their role as creating a space that, in contrast to other spaces of schooling, was explicitly welcoming and safe for open discussions of sexuality. They viewed their classroom spaces as safe and truthful due, at least in part, to their unique abilities to build rapport with students and discuss sexuality in an open and affirming way. Their commitment to the truth often contained references to biological facts, emotional processes and tools to deflect media and cultural pressures regarding sex and ‘risk’ but their conceptualisations of gender and queer experiences often reproduced the dominant discourses of queer invisibility and deviance within this space they defined as containing ‘truth’.

Gender (in)visibility

Teachers demonstrated a reliance on problematic discourses of gender and sexuality when discussing their role, their students, and their goals in the classroom. They described students in ways that reaffirmed the discursive connection between desire and deviance, the framing of sexuality as heteronormative and essentialising. Teachers all affirmed a desire to support all students, regardless of gender, orientation, race or class. Their words, however, worked to sustain the ideologies and discourses that had the potential to harm students. For example, below, Tasha, who taught in a suburban public school district in the eastern USA, inadvertently expressed an assumption about the gendered expectation of women:

I had a situation in my sexuality class of a girl who was a senior [who] … was able to share with the class that she was sorry in ninth grade she was such a slut, and that she didn't feel good about herself and now she understands how she should be, and that it was a mistake and she wishes she could turn back the clock and not have people think about her the way they do. Which is great 'cause she is going off to college this year as a much better person.

Tasha's own understandings of her role in the classroom and the ‘successes’ that she experienced are clearly tied to particular hegemonic discourses surrounding gender. Underlying her language is an articulation that women's role is to serve as sexual gatekeepers, being responsible for both their own and others' sexuality. This is consistent with what Fields (2008) and Rahimi and Liston (2009) described in their research examining teachers' conceptualisations of young people's sexuality.

Of the 15 teachers interviewed for this study, 11 responded that gender ‘did not matter’ when it came to teaching sexuality education. The majority of participants however conflated sex and gender. In their interpretations, gender typically became synonymous with sex. Rather than considering gender as an analytical lens to explore power and interactions around sexuality, the question of gender became a question as to the effectiveness of single-sex education. They conceived of gender in terms of a binary wherein male and female students might have different needs in regards to education. For example, Mary, teaching in a public school in the western USA, stated:

There are certain aspects of [sexuality] I think we need to talk to girls alone [about]. I think that women could be honest with young girls … like even talking about the first time they had intercourse and what their emotions were afterwards, not just the physical aspects, but the emotions, and how potentially they got hurt, or they were great. It can be shared … I believe we need to be more honest with young women, they are trying to follow in guys' footsteps and they're not guys.

Similarly, Lacey explained:

I think that responsibility and maturity-wise I think that boys might need a little bit extra, they're so like too cool for this and too cool for that, where girls are so interested in everything and they can take on the role more I think, of being the responsible one.

Lacey and Mary reinforce traditional notions of gender and sexual behaviours when discussing how gender influences their ideas about teaching. Lacey's belief that women are ‘trying to follow in guys' footsteps’ reinforces notions that men lack attachment in sexual interactions, as well as an essentialist understanding of men and women as naturally different. Lacey's words also support this particular discourse, in articulating that she believes girls are naturally more mature and thus ‘can take on’ the role of responsibility. This line of thinking echoes the societal stereotype of women as gatekeepers of sexuality and as in charge of, or responsible for, the policing of men's desires (Fine 1988; Tolman 1991).

Dana shared the thought, ‘Girls, unless they're in a forced situation or a rape situation or a sexual violence situation, they really have the last call on having sex.’ Dana's assumption, that women can enact sexual agency at all times, except in regards to rape, also reinforced gendered understandings of the way in which power works in adolescent relationships. As researchers such as Fields and Tolman (2006), and Holland, Ramazanouglu, and Sharpe (2004) noted, hegemonic understandings of heterosexuality as normative include articulations of power wherein women are situated in passive relation to men's desire. By declaring that only in cases of rape are women not the sexual decision makers, she ignored the many ways in which power operates to silence girls' agency within sexual interactions.

Ten of the teachers in this study reaffirmed this notion, linking their understanding of their female students as both responsible for sexuality, as well as marked by their engagement with sexual behaviours. These teachers' assumptions about their students and the meanings behind their students' words and actions fall in line with discourses about adolescent sexuality that contribute to particularly damaging ideologies for adolescents (Fine and McClelland 2006).

‘They don't know what they're saying’: teachers' dismissal of anti-queer bullying and identities

All but three teachers downplayed the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender students. Despite the fact that all of the teachers said that they took bullying seriously and that they want to support all of their students regardless of sexual orientation, they often denied any bullying around issues of sexual orientation or gender. For example, Dana said that she perceived that ‘we don't have a lot of people that would be out as far as homosexuality’ in her community, but that students will ‘make comments or jokes’ about gays or lesbians. However, she went on to say that there is ‘probably not any major issue just right here in our community’ in regards to anti-queer bullying.

It is important to note that Dana taught in a state with no current chapters of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), the most prominent organisation for supporting LGBTQ youth in the USA, and where the state legislature recently voted down a bill that proposed anti-bullying laws that included sexual orientation and gender identity. Marissa, who taught in the same state, said:

I don't think [bullying] is targeted towards any one group, you know? You always have your bullies in schools, but it's not to the point where, they're beating kids up just because of their sexual orientation, they're not writing kids' names on the wall.

Marissa also noted that the most pressing issue facing her students is ‘the idea of homosexuality or bisexual’. And that her students would be ‘very ostracised if they do come out of the closet per se, or even if they speak about being like that in high school’. Teachers' concern for their students' safety and emotional health was evident, but it was clear that they also fell back on discourses that silence LGBTQ individuals and downplay the abuse or violence that LGBTQ students may experience in schools. This may signal a discomfort around the topic of the connection between sexuality and bullying.

To illustrate, Tabitha acknowledged that anti-queer bullying occurred, but she dismissed it as a problem:

I hear them use the word[s], like you're gay, and calling each other fag a lot, but they're just not mature right now. I don't know that they necessarily mean it as someone who is gay. We do have a small percentage of gay population at the school and some of those kids like to kind of flaunt it a little. But it's mostly girls, actually, and the kids are like ‘ew that's gross’ but I don't hear them calling each other names and those kids aren't coming to school all beat up.

Tabitha's description of gay students as ‘flaunting it’ falls in line with stereotypical understandings and interpretations of homosexuality as something to be muted or hidden and reinforces victim-blaming mentalities. She also stated that the students who rely on this type of name-calling are ‘just not mature right now’, effectively dismissing the bullying that she did witness. Similarly, Elle described how she had witnessed anti-queer bullying, but went on to focus on the victim's responsibility for the bullying, saying:

If a student is being bullied because of sexual orientation … a lot of how the bullies continue bullying depends on the response of that student. And this is probably true with any bullying, if the student being bullied presents themselves confidently in refusing to take it, the bullying tends to stop after a little while because they are not getting a response they want to get. But I have seen some students that were very distraught and they let it show, to the point where … the whole school knew how distraught they were. It wasn't just isolated to a little group of bullies and they decided to bully this one child who they don't agree with the sexual orientation, I mean the whole school knew about it, it was that out there.

Here, Elle not only dismisses anti-queer bullying as a unique problem amongst many types of bullying, but also reframes the focus of bullying to explore how the behaviour of the victim makes them a target. This focuses blame on the victim, either for ‘flaunting it’ as Tabitha described, or by lacking confidence as Elle claimed.

Tabitha, who had both minimised occurrences of anti-queer bullying and articulated that some children brought it on themselves, also discussed an occurrence that would meet many official definitions of harassment:

I won't say they [LGBTQ students] don't get pestered. Now I also coach cheerleading and a few years ago I had a boy on the squad and he got harassed ’cause he's a cheerleader and the kids are like, ‘oh you're a fag and you're gay' but it was all verbal stuff. He did say that sometimes people would come to his house and leave a sign in the yard or…shaving cream on the sidewalk, but he, but he wasn't gay. So there's some, but I wouldn't say it's, you know, it's not by any means a problem at our school.

Tabitha's narrative suggests she dismisses the salience and seriousness of anti-queer bullying, not only as potentially harmful in general, but in a particular case of harassment she both relies on minimising the acts of harassment and dismisses the bullying outright because she does not think the student who was victimised was gay. Her words demonstrate the ways in which, despite acknowledging actual instances of anti-queer bullying, teachers might unknowingly silence students whom they perceive as either deserving (because they ‘flaunt it’) or undeserving (because they are not LGBTQ-identified). This dismissal of bullying works to reaffirm the systems of power that marginalise students, both those who are perceived, and those who identify, with LGBTQ identities.

While some teachers indicated that they did not witness any anti-queer bullying, or that the bullying they witnessed was innocent, other teachers expressed that they worked to counter the verbal harassment that they overheard. Sam shared his strategy for dealing with students who engaged in what Pascoe (2007) called the ‘fag discourse’:

We definitely have that one-on-one, sit-down talk about what it means. Do they know what it means? Do they have any idea what they're saying? And they usually don't. We don't get into the fact of talking about alternative lifestyles but I tell them that an individual may take that personal and ‘how would you feel if somebody said that to your parent or to your siblings?’ – that usually gets the point across. But they know definitely that it's not acceptable. We are not a zero tolerance school, but it is not acceptable whatsoever.

Sam, like the majority of the teachers in this study, found that students used epithets as a way to police other students' behaviours. Similar to Pascoe's (2007) findings, teachers understood that students used this discourse to police masculinity in general, and did not connect it explicitly with gay or lesbian identities. Teachers found this language unacceptable and often, as Sam's words illustrate, took steps to curb it. In his response, Sam did not challenge language itself, but rather asked students to consider their own feelings if the epithets were directed at them or loved ones. This leaves the meaning of the words unquestioned and silences the potential challenges to the power of language. Similarly, many teachers described that they felt students did not understand the language and, in their attempts to deal with it, did not work to challenge the ways in which homophobia operated through language. Below, Ruth shared her experiences and ideas about students engaging in fag discourse:

I really feel like the language kids [use] today is really hurtful. Like ‘that's so gay’ … or ‘you're like a fag’ or whatever. Their language more so than their feelings is hurtful. I don't even know if they know what they're saying, they just let it fly and their language is just really hurtful.

Ruth expressed displeasure at the language her students used to police each other, but she also articulated a separation between what students meant and the words that they used. For Ruth, her students did not harbour ‘hurtful’ feelings towards LGBTQ-identified students; rather they engaged in the language without knowing how it was connected to systems of power and oppression.

Not all teachers dismissed homophobia and anti-queer bullying as a problem; a small number who had received specialised education in human sexuality and queer culture spoke of ways in which homophobia was connected to other systems of power. For example, Sonia, whose training involved several years of specialised education with queer organisations, explained:

I always feel like the underlying problem with homophobia is sexism, so if you can try to understand sexism, if we didn't have an idea that men are supposed to be this way and women are supposed to be this way, then we would probably have a lot less stuff around sexual orientation, because we would have a better understanding and a bigger range for what men can be and what women can be and about maleness and femaleness, that's one piece of it.

Discussion

Sexuality education teachers in this study maintained a commitment to supporting students through offering positive and healthy sexuality education. They viewed sexuality education classrooms as spaces that were supportive and safe for frank discussions of sexuality, and their role within those spaces as providing rapport and ‘truth’ about sexualities. Despite this commitment, however, the majority of teachers viewed the concept of gender through an essentialist lens; one that worked to conflate sex with gender and to sustain notions that reinforce problematic hierarchies and stereotypes of both men and women and preclude identities that sit outside of those categories. In addition, the majority of teachers in this study expressed ambiguity around issues of peer aggression and bullying of LGBTQ youth. Their narratives often contained the contradiction that, while queerness was ‘an issue’ for students, there were no actual queer students. They also dismissed the seriousness of bullying by labelling the practice as immature and therefore insignificant even when it did occur. This contradiction could potentially render queer experiences invisible, minimise the seriousness of anti-queer bullying and silence the possibilities of queer existence for all students. It forecloses potentials for grappling with the issues that queer youth bring with them – and reduces instances of violence against queerness to immaturity and ignorance – reinforcing heteronormative practices that punish and silence any young person whose gender or sexuality is outside the norm.

The teachers understood their role within the larger systems of sexuality education, and education in general, as providers of truth. They viewed their classrooms as safe spaces for young people to discuss topics that were off-limits elsewhere. They acknowledged the influence they had on students in terms of potential behaviours and self-understanding, but their inability to consider both the presence of LGBTQ-identified students, and the implications of anti-queer bullying translates into a curious and problematic case of reinforcing hegemonic notions of gendered sexualities, as well as silencing and making invisible the ways in which anti-queer bullying impacts young people – both queer identified and not. Teachers dismissed the bullying they did witness as both ‘immature’ and as baseless because they viewed victims as either ‘flaunting it’ and therefore deserving of bullying, or as straight and therefore viewed bullying as having no significant impact on the victim. This double-blindness creates a void wherein teachers do not acknowledge the significance of anti-queer bullying for all students as a system of subordination and control, and which works to reinforce notions that students who are LGBTQ identified are unsympathetic victims.

The results of this study suggest that teachers do not possess the training or tools to effectively work against hegemonies of gender and sexuality that sustain heteronormative and homophobic discourses. Teachers' understanding of the role of gender in their teaching was limited to essentialist notions of sex stereotypes and problematic discourses that foreclose the exploration of ways in which gender works as a power in adolescent relationships. This limits their ability to intervene or challenge the compulsory heterosexuality and peer regulation of gender that exist in schools. It also serves to work against the goal that the teachers maintain, of creating a space in schooling wherein sexuality can be discussed explicitly and in an affirming way.

In addition, when teachers refuse to acknowledge both the presence of LGBTQ students and the seriousness of anti-queer bullying, then queer students both cannot exist and, when they do exist, they cannot complain or seek support for bullying. As Payne and Smith (2013) note in their recent call to reframe bullying, current definitions often focus on micro interactions that rely on individualised and psychological understandings that posit that one can eliminate bullying by changing the aggressor. They suggest reframing bullying to incorporate an understanding of the ways in which school culture encompasses systemic modes of power and oppression, particularly gendered hierarchies, that anti-queer bullying articulates and reproduces. Payne and Smith (2013) argue that in changing the definition from one of the bully/victim binary to one that understands gender policing and peer aggression as sustaining power imbalances we can begin to challenge heterosexist and gendered oppressions. The findings of this study support their conclusion, and demonstrate how teachers' own notions of both bullying and gender fail to realise the ways in which gender, sex and sexuality are co-constituted (Butler 1999; Youdell 2005). The teachers interviewed here, often the only officially sanctioned providers of sexuality-related knowledge in the school, are in a unique space that potentially affords them opportunity to challenge the ways in which gender-sex-sexuality is articulated and functions for young people. Perhaps if sexuality education teachers themselves had the education and support to understand the ways in which gender policing, sexuality and sexual stereotypes, and queerness are linked in society, they could better articulate and promote school spaces that support all students in healthy identity development.

Finally, teachers expressed a desire for more education around the teaching of sexuality; Dana shared:

I'm one of these teachers who if you give me a good resource I'll take it. It's not that I don't want to teach it … I'm there to be a teacher… So share [with] me some ways I could teach this, I would love to get out there and teach other teachers.

Her sentiments were echoed by every single participant: they were all willing and ready to become more informed educators, but felt a lack of guidance and, for several participants, a lack of institutional support. Ongoing educational programmes, institutionalised and standardised curricula that supported healthy sexuality and explicitly defined gender as a system of power linked to behaviour and regulation, programmes for teachers of all levels, including pre-service to in-service teachers, and, perhaps most importantly, according to the participants of this study, a legitimation of sexuality education as part of a national curriculum, would all serve to support teachers in creating safe and affirming spaces for all students.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. All names are pseudonyms used to protect the confidentiality of the participants.