Chapter 3: Queering Foundations: Queer and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Educational Research

Abstract

S ince the beginning of the modern homophile movement, gay people have made education of themselves and heterosexuals central to their political project. That dedication to education can be seen in the first lesbian periodical, The Ladder (October 1956-December 1966, which included in its frontispiece a series of statements of purpose, including Education of the variant, with particular emphasis on the psychological, physiological and sociological aspects, to enable her to understand herself and make her adjustment to society in all its social, civic and economic implications-this to be accomplished by establishing and maintaining as complete a library as possible of both fiction and non-fiction literature on the sex deviant theme; by sponsoring public discussions on pertinent subjects to be conducted by leading members of the legal, psychiatric, religious and other professions.For all its talk of adjustment, the authors in The Ladder also were deeply interested in creating what lesbians could be, questioning social norms, and debating critical features of gender and sexuality oppression. As much as it is now current practice to distinguish between the beginnings of the lesbian and gay movement as essentialist and our newer approaches as social constructionist (a parallel gesture also is made in writings about research in education on sexuality), this is often an oversimplification. Far from celebrating essential differences among genders and sexualities, early radical lesbian feminist writing underscored the provisional and political definition of sexual minority status. In the words of the Radicalesbians (1973), "lesbianism is the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion" (p. 240). Shifting ideas about sexuality from psychological identity to political statement, they began a move that was further complicated by attention to the intersections of identity. As the Black lesbian antiracist feminist group the Combahee River Collective (1984) put it, although their particular goal was "the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major

LGBT and Queer Research in Higher Education

“…Introduction of the concepts of deviant "female inversion" and lesbianism turned educators firmly against these relationships and led to removing young women from college if they demonstrated a tendency toward "unwise friendships" (MacKay, 1992). 3 Reviewing mainly K-12 education research, Mayo (2007) warned against relying on a false dichotomy of essentialism and constructionism in examining LGBT/queer movements and the short history of LGBT/ queer research in education. She proposed that women's groups-the Radicalesbians and the Black lesbian antiracist feminist group the Combahee River Collective among them-blurred boundaries of identities and politics in ways that poststructuralist queer theory attempts to in troubling ideas of "gender, sexuality, and transgression" (p. 79).…”

Equity and leadership: research-based strategies for school leaders

“…Students who wear symbols of minority religious affiliation, especially Muslim students, have been subjected to abuse and challenge (Shah, 2006;Zine, 2001). So too, with gay students or students perceived to be gay (Mayo, 2007;McGregor, 2008). Principals can contribute to equity by creating support networks for sexual minority students and create -safe spaces‖ in the school for students to explore issues of sexual identity (Mayberry, 2006).…”

Queer Pedagogy in Sex Education

“…Farrelly, O'Brien, and Prain (2007) suggest that "a discursive emphasis on prohibition and risk, or rational autonomous control and 'adult' management of sexuality, could be tempered by a focus on Canadian Journal of Education / Revue canadienne de l'éducation 38:2 2015www.cje-rce.ca emotional maturational issues and reflection on affective dimensions of this subject as lived and felt by learners" (p. 78). Talburt and Rasmussen (2010) write that " Mayo (2007) marks a movement from a focus in the 1990s on gender bias, gender roles, and heterosexism as they sustain homophobia to a focus in the 2000s on challenging tropes of wounded identities, or gay youth as victim, to underscore queer youth agency and creativity" (p. 4).…”