Contested spaces: trans-inclusive school policies and parental sovereignty in Canada

Herriot, Lindsay; Burns, David P.; Yeung, Betty

doi:10.1080/09540253.2017.1396291

Cited by 15 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…While the reification of heterosexuality has long been considered a core institutional goal of public educational systems in Canada and the UK (e.g. DePalma and Atkinson, 2009a;Herriot et al, 2018;Renold, 2005), the legal and social transformations resulting from granting LGBT people particular forms of citizenship have substantially altered the educational terrain (DePalma and Atkinson, 2009b;Hall, 2020). We argue that resistances to LGBTsupportive educational initiatives mark a significant departure from previous oppositional strategies opposing LGBT rights claims.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…As Binnie (1997: 223) argues, spaces (including schools and classrooms) are not 'naturally or authentically "straight" but rather are actively produced and heterosexualised'. This 'straightness' is challenged by the implementation of LGBT equalities in everyday life through sex education policy and anti-homophobia, anti-bullying and safe spaces campaigns for LGBT students (Herriot et al, 2018). Nevertheless, LGBT youth continue to experience difficulties in school spaces given the embeddedness of heteronormativity (Herriot et al, 2018;Neary et al, 2017).…”

Section: Educational Setting: Local and Community-basedmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This 'straightness' is challenged by the implementation of LGBT equalities in everyday life through sex education policy and anti-homophobia, anti-bullying and safe spaces campaigns for LGBT students (Herriot et al, 2018). Nevertheless, LGBT youth continue to experience difficulties in school spaces given the embeddedness of heteronormativity (Herriot et al, 2018;Neary et al, 2017). Efforts to address this in both Canada and the UK have focused on teaching about oppression, inclusion and equality, including programs designed to address homo-and transphobia (Morrison et al, 2014;Neary et al, 2017;Niblett and Oraa, 2014;Rayside, 2014).…”

Section: Educational Setting: Local and Community-basedmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Canada, claims about parental rights and public education evolved across diverse geographies and histories and against a backdrop of English-French relations, religious diversity, multiculturalism, oppressions and marginalisations, and transformations in national values. Opposition to Ontario's HPE positions parental rights claims at the heart of the matter and asks whether the values of the classroom might unreasonably impinge on parents' cultural or religious values to the extent that some remedy might be required (Herriot et al, 2018).…”

Section: Rowe Family Casementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Currently, much of this scholarship focuses on LGBT inclusion through the implementation of anti-bullying policies and support for LGBT students (e.g. Herriot et al, 2018;Neary et al, 2017;Rayside, 2014), although there are critiques of this approach (see DePalma and Atkinson, 2009b;Hall, 2020). Here we take a different approach by considering the growing and increasingly well-organised opposition to the presence of multiple LGBT-positive discourses.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Resisting the mainstreaming of LGBT equalities in Canadian and British Schools: Sex education and trans school friends

Nash

Browne

2019

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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It is well established that schools are not neutral sites for gender and sexualities, shaping (often heteronormative) school spaces. This paper augments examinations of the implementation of inclusive school curricula by exploring heteroactivist opposition to lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) equalities in Canadian and British schools. It examines resistances to institution of a revised and updated Health and Physical Education curriculum in Ontario schools in Canada, and in the UK, the use of the Rowe family’s opposition to the presence of trans children in their own child’s classroom. This paper shows that once-invisible heternormativities are now being challenged through LGBT curricula and support for trans students. This creates classrooms as pivotal, geographical, social and political spaces that operate at the juncture of the public/private spaces of the home, public spaces of the neighbourhood and the imagined space of the nation and nation-building citizenship. Oppositional ideologies can no longer be understood through the labels of ‘anti-gay’, ‘homophobic’ or ‘transphobic’, and these oppositions go beyond ‘anti-gender’, such that the term heteroactivism names the activisms and ideologies that seeks to reassert the superiority of monogamous, binary cis-gendered, coupled marriages as best for children and for society. These ideologies are inherently geographical, drawing both on local and individual circumstances, but also transcending national boundaries. We highlight three dominant heteroactivist themes, namely, parental rights, interactions between state/schools/home and gender ideologies. This offers insights into how new sexual and gender rights are contested and resisted in new ways to consider the political, legal and social implications of heteroactivist strategies in schools.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 85%

Section: Educational Setting: Local and Community-basedmentioning

confidence: 99%