‘Acceptance of diversity’…but not too much? (Restricted) pathways towards transgender and intersex inclusivity in sex education curriculum guidelines

Abstract

Positive representation of LGBTQIA+ perspectives in curriculum can help improve well‐being of transgender and intersex students. However, research on sex education curriculum indicates that the experiences of intersex and transgender students are largely absent in the respective curriculum or constructed as other, pathologized or stigmatized. These discourses of silence and stigmatization negatively affect transgender and intersex students and prevent all students from getting informed and affirmative sex education on gender and body diversity. This study explores how curriculum documents for sex education in Europe and Germany may be facilitating or limiting the (de‐hierarchized) inclusion of diversity regarding gender and sex/body characteristics. The study employs a structuring qualitative content analysis. Thematic summaries and analysis through the lens of heteronormativity are used to examine how diverse subjectivities are made (in)visible, normalized or othered through the lexical choices and the general framing of the curriculum documents, as well as how binary categorizations are deconstructed and power relations subverted. Key findings indicate that some curricula, while strongly promoting diversity or explicitly including intersex and transgender as topics, are worded in ways that contribute to the normalization of cisgender and endosex experiences, while transgender or intersex perspectives are either fully silenced or othered. The data also reveal power‐critical approaches, in which transgender and intersex are affirmatively included, cis‐ and endonormativity is disrupted and which encourage a critical engagement with societal power relations.