The Policing of Gender in Middle School (original) (raw)
Related papers
Resisting regulation: LGBTQ teens and discourses of sexuality and gender in high schools
2009
This dissertation documents a participatory action research project designed to understand discourses of sexuality and gender in New York City high schools. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual high school students participated as co-researchers in documenting discourses in popular culture, news reports, youth development reports, and through writing exercises about their own experiences. Together researchers created a modified Q sort (the Queer Q Sort) and surveyed a snowball sample of 21 lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and questioning (LGBTQ) high school students about the discourses of sexuality and gender they encounter in their schools and the ways that they accept or reject discourses as they form their identities. In order to imagine other frameworks for understanding sexuality and gender beyond the discourses of safety, victimization, disease and raging hormones, researchers wrote counter-narratives of their experiences that challenge discourses that reference mental health, physical health, pedagogy and morality. Youth researchers created spatial representations of the ways discourses work I the spaces of their schools by drawing maps showing how the movement and behaviors of bodies are regulated. My analysis triangulates the findings of the Queer Q Sorts, the maps and the discussions and writings of the youth researchers to show that young people create alternatives to the official discourses of sex education materials and much of the media coverage of young people and sexuality. I show that young people make ethical decisions about becoming sexual and fashioning their bodies in certain ways to reflect the iv gender identity and sexual subjectivity they wish to inhabit. Students advocate for queering schools by creating curriculum and pedagogical practices that allow critical analyses of gender and heteronormativity with the goal of helping their peers understand that binary categories are not givens, but rather social constructions we are often forced to perform. Using Foucault's theory and methods, the researchers challenged assumptions about teens as victimized, rebellious, promiscuous or innocent in conversations about sexuality and gender in schools. v vi Table of Contents List of Figures .
Journal of Adolescent Research, 2021
The objective of this study is to explore the inclusiveness of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) adolescents in junior high school from the perspective of LGBTQ adolescents in Sweden. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 10 GBTQ adolescents, aged 16 to 19. The study was approved by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority (Dnr: 2019-03816). A Braun and Clark inspired thematic analysis was performed through a theoretical lens inspired by Berger and Luckmann. The analysis resulted in three themes: (a) a navigator among peers as friends and bullies, (b) adults in school supported inclusion in and exclusion from the group of peers, and (c) non-heterosexuality and non-binary gender understanding as teaching projects in junior high school. In summary the LGBTQ adolescents face multiple challenges related to identity development in hetero-and
Multicultural Learning and Teaching
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and questioning students are commonly thought of as vulnerable to bullying and harassment in US schools, although there is hope that school climates are improving for LGBTQQ youth with the implementation of anti-bullying legislation and policies in almost every state. Although these policies address most overt and physical forms of bullying, other insults, assaults and invalidations may continue undetected. These sexual orientation and gender identity microaggressions, identified in counseling literature, can help teacher educators, teachers and school administrators better understand the psychological, academic and health effects of negative stereotypes and perceptions of LGBTQQ youth that are unaddressed in schools. This paper analyzes prevalent discourses about LGBTQQ youth in schools for evidence of the microaggressions identified in the literature. Microaggressions are discussed and the effects of harassment and stereotyping on school belong...
2009
In this commentary, the author reviews methodological and conceptual shortcomings of recent articles by K. D. Drummond, S. J. Bradley, M. Peterson-Badali, and K. J. Zucker (2008) as well as G. Rieger, J. A. W. Linsenmeier, L. Gygax, and J. M. Bailey (2008), which sought to predict adult sexual identity from childhood gender identity. The author argues that such research needs to incorporate a greater awareness of how stigmatization affects identity processes. Multidimensional models of gender identity that describe variation in children’s responses to pressure to conform to gender norms are particularly useful in this regard (S. K. Egan & D. G. Perry, 2001). Experiments on the interpretation of developmental data are reviewed to evidence how cultural assumptions about sexuality can impact theories of sexual identity development in unintended ways. The author concludes that understanding the development of children presumed most likely to grow up with sexual minority identities requires a consideration of the cultural contexts in which identities develop and in which psychologists theorize
In: Power and Aggression Among Adolescents: Toward a Sociology of Bullying. NYU Press. Anticipated publication 2021. Introduction For ten years, the co-authors of this chapter have been entangled in ideological battles about bullying. Mainstream conversations about bullying (the dominant bullying discourse) have been shaped by psychologized, individualized assumptions and belief systems related to youth, peer relations, and the causes of aggression. The questions most commonly asked about bullying include: What is the definition? What "counts" as bullying, and what does not? Who are the victims and why? Who are the aggressors and why? How can aggressors be motivated to change their behavior? What are best practices for interrupting and changing anti-social behavior? We have argued that these questions are behavior management questions, and what is needed instead are questions about the ideological roots of persistent, predictable patterns of peer targeting and violence. In other words, how do the mainstream value systems that shape life in institutions like schools normalize and perpetuate various forms of youth aggression-from teasing to peer group exclusion to verbal taunts to harassment to physical assault? In the context of our scholarship on
A Sociological Critique of Youth Strategies and Educational Policies that Address LGBTQ Youth Issues
International Journal of Bullying Prevention
This paper adopts sociological and "after-queer" lenses in order to problematise anti-bullying approaches that are justified on the basis of the apparent "vulnerability" of LGBTQ youth to a range of negative mental health outcomes, including self-harm and suicidality. Subjecting recent youth strategies, educational policies and instructional resources to critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 2003), it identifies the discourse of risk/vulnerability as a dominant or "nodal" discourse around which other subdiscourses-including the discourses of homophobic bullying, isolation, suicidality, self-harm and resilience-cluster. It considers the discursive effects of this configuration of discourses which foreground or include certain aspects or experiences of being LGBTQ to the exclusion of others, resulting in a "selective representation," "simplification" and "condensation" of a much more complex social and cultural reality (Fairclough 2005). It argues that the singling out of LGBTQ youth as being "at risk" of homophobic bullying and mental health difficulties has a range of abnormalising, othering, re-stigmatising and heteronormativity-bolstering effects that obfuscate the role that schools themselves play in creating and sustaining the conditions that produce bullying. Rather than positioning LGBTQ youth as victims, and specifically targeting those who identify as LGBTQ as the beneficiaries of anti-homophobic bullying initiatives, it advocates a range of alternative frameworks that privilege the conditions and effects of gender regulation and normativity to which all children and youth are routinely subjected. The paper concludes by highlighting the need to address school-based organisational and cultural practices in order to reduce the incidence of gender and sexuality-based bullying in schools.
Heterosexism in High School and Victimization Among Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Questioning Students
Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 2008
This study examined relationships between perceived heterosexism in high school policies and programs, social environments, and victimization rates among lesbian, gay, bisexual and questioning (LGBQ) students. Secondary analyses of Internet survey data from a large cohort of LGBQ students (N = 2037; 76% male, 82% White; mean age = 16.07; 56% gay or lesbian; 28% bisexual; 16% questioning) yielded moderate correlations between perceptions of non-discrimination and harassment policies, inclusive programs, and the prevalence and tolerance of anti-LGBQ harassment. The perceived availability of inclusive programs was more closely associated with perceptions of the prevalence and tolerance of harassment in schools than were perceived policies. Victimization was related to perceived policies, programs, and harassment. Perceived harassment partially mediated effects of programs on victimization, but perceived programs also predicted victimization even after controlling for perceived harassment. Moderating effects of demographic characteristics (e.g., gender, race, sexual orientation, and outness) were explored.