This article introduces a conceptual framework for thinking about the development of antihomophobia education in teacher education and schooling contexts. We bring the safe, positive, and queering moments framework to bear on three distinct anti-homophobia education practices: coming out stories, homophobic name-calling analysis, and Pride Week activities. Our analysis of these education practices through the lens of our conceptual framework illuminates its usefulness for thinking through both the intent and impact of anti-homophobia education within classrooms. Importantly, our analysis also reveals that within a classroom of students who are taking up antihomophobia education in different ways any one moment can be all three-safe, positive, and queering. We advocate an approach to anti-homophobia education that seeks change through the creation of all three moments, and that locates anti-homophobia strategies on points in a constellation of "safe moments", "positive moments", and "queering moments".
Although all teachers are expected to be "role models," discursive trajectories reaching back to the West's gay liberation pressure queer teachers to be role models in specific ways -by "coming out" and helping queer students out of their "time of difficulty." Paradoxically, discourses that construct children as innocent and queers-as-a-threat make it difficult for queer teachers not only to take up these positions as role models but to be visible in schools. In this article, I explore the discourses that shape queer teachers' understanding of touch, sexuality, confidentiality, the private versus public domain, and pedagogical responsibility within the schooling context. Informed by Foucault, I analyze the interview data of three Ontario queer teachers to investigate the ways in which queers-as-a-threat and teacher-as-role-model influence the negotiation of their ethical dilemmas regarding their student crushes.
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