New trans* visibilities: working the limits and possibilities of gender at school

Abstract

In many contexts, there has been a rapid increase in the visibility of trans* lives in the public sphere. Much educational research has focused on how to make life better for trans* children and young people in schools. This paper moves sideways from this concern to explore how public discourses around trans* lives and the individual labour of bodies are changing the shape of gender in schools and society. Ireland offers an insightful site for this inquiry because, following the Gender Recognition Act (2015) and the Marriage Equality Act (2015), trans* lives have become more visible in the public sphere and there has been a heightened concern for trans* children and young people in schools. This paper draws on an analysis of how trans* people are represented in the media as well as in a selection of accounts from the primary school community of a trans* child. Framed by debates about gender intelligibility, normativity and transgression, the paper elucidates how, as trans* visibility increases, the disciplinary terms of gender are reproduced with ambivalent effects. It argues against individualised and simplistic approaches to trans* identities in schools and raises questions about new gender possibilities in schooling contexts.

Keywords:

• Transgender
• trans*
• gender identity
• primary school
• cisnormativity

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the 46 participants in the study from which this paper draws.

Notes

1. Since the 1990s, transgender has entered widespread use ‘as an umbrella term for describing a range of gender-variant identities and communities’ (Williams 2014, 232). Throughout this paper, following Halberstam, I use the term trans* as a reminder of the myriad of gender and non-gendered identifications that are often subsumed under the transgender umbrella.

2. This article refers to the US context and the authors use the term bathroom.

3. Influenced by the work of theorists such as Judith Butler and a body of work that has been categorised as ‘queer theory’, I use the term queer in this paper, not as an identity term but as a reference to an anti-assimilationist stance that is ‘at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant’ (Halperin 1995).

4. I use the term trans* in its broadest sense to refer to the child in the school upon which this study draws. The parent used the term ‘non-gender conforming’ when referring to her child.