Speaking out: perspectives of gay and lesbian practitioners in outdoor education in the UK

Abstract

Outdoor education has been shaped historically and culturally by many influences. Physically challenging activities out of doors have been appropriated by a number of traditions. These include militaristic, educational and developmental ideologies. Arguably, central to these ideologies are heterosexual, white middle class values. While women have sought to challenge this and feminist and pro-feminist research is evident, very little research has been undertaken into sexuality in relation to teacher or practitioner perspective and experience. Consequently, gay and lesbian voices within outdoor education are all but silenced. This paper explores the perspectives of three lesbian and four gay men who work in the UK outdoor education ‘industry’.

In-depth interviews were held with the participants exploring a variety of issues relating to their life histories and their experiences of working in a predominantly heterosexist outdoor education culture. This paper focuses upon the ways in which the participants perceived the need to conceal their lesbian and gay identities and the consequential effects of managing their identities.

Keywords:

• Homoexuality
• Hetrosexuality
• Identity
• Homophobia

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all those who took part in the interviews and the anonymous reviewers of this paper.

Notes

1. Wagner (1993) refers to the collective ignorance in educational research making reference to ‘blank’ and ‘blind’ spots. Blank spots are known areas (theories, perspectives) which are seen to require further questioning, while blind spots are those which are not known or cared about and so are ignored. See also Gough (2002), who explores these in environmental education, and Zink and Burrows (2006) who explore a useful theoretical framework.

2. Clearly, as outdoor learning was their remit, the focused searches for the most part did not uncover the work published in non-outdoor-specific academic journals.

3. Examples of hegemonic and compulsory versions of heterosexual femininity include reference to newspapers emphasizing the ‘feminine’ attributes of the athletes and their heterosexual relationships rather than their skills as athletes (Wright & Clarke, 1999, pp. 236–238).

4. Discourse is taken to mean a set of understandings and beliefs which are reproduced by everyday practices and prevailing practices which construct a particular understanding of the world and reinforce particular ideologies, privileging the dominant world view (Weedon, 1997).

5. Richard was interviewed by Barbara. The other interviews were undertaken by Daniel for his final degree project which focused upon his interest in, and awareness of, sexuality issues in outdoor education (Barnfield, 2004).

6. Gough and Gough (2003) argue that environmental education research has largely been undertaken from the perspectives of white middle-class males and has been blind to other ways of seeing and knowing. They call for research that takes account of a diversity of perspectives, i.e. post-modern research (cf. Denzin, 1997; Humberstone, 2004).