Jen Gilbert

What will have been said about gayness in teacher education

This article explores a theory of narrative that can account for its underlying structures and can critique a paradox of consciousness‐raising: that the more that narratives are privileged in teacher education, the less we know about how this narrative affects what will come to be said about teacher educations reliance upon stories of experience and identity. We bring this paradox to narratives of gayness in teacher education, suggesting three dominant orientations: narratives of difficulty, narratives of relationships and narratives of hospitality. Our resources for thinking about gayness are tied to archives of discrimination and freedom, themselves now affected by the pandemic known as AIDS. Each narrative, we argue, frames what can be said, what will have been said and what remains to be said. This way of analyzing the history of our present and what can count as a problem today, takes inspiration from an eighteenth‐century debate that focused on the question “What is enlightenment?” We argue that this debate allows for new conceptualizations of gayness in teacher education and that new conceptualizations of teacher education can emerge from an encounter with discussions of gayness.

Risking a relation: sex education and adolescent development

This paper considers how issues of adolescent development might be brought into conversation with dilemmas in sex education. Here, sex education is larger than information, affirmation or prohibition. In its address to the most intimate aspects of life—love, loss, vulnerability, power, friendship, aggression—sex education is necessarily entangled in the adolescents efforts to construct a self, find love outside the family, enjoy ones newly adult body; in short, various relationships that might cautiously be called developmental. Drawing on the work of psychoanalysts Winnicott and Sandler, I argue that, to imagine adolescents as sexual subjects, we need to have a theory of adolescent sexuality, how it differs from and is similar to adult sexuality; and, furthermore, we need to have a patience and curiosity about the ways adult sexuality is inhabited by the memories, fantasies and experiences of adolescence. That is, how can sex education make room for a theory of adolescent development without casting the adolescent in the risky role of not yet adult?

Ambivalence only? Sex education in the age of abstinence

What if sex education began with the enigmatic question: what is sexuality? What new conversations, policies, curricula, and controversies would be possible if sex education became less about sex and more about sexuality? To begin with, those of us who work and think in sex education would have to confront the sheer complexity of the concept of ‘sexuality’. If, in the post-AIDS era, we have transformed ‘sex’ into a discrete experience such that most sex education, of all political stripes, coheres around the questions ‘what is/isn’t sex?’ and ‘who should/shouldn’t have sex?’, sexuality refuses to be pinned down. It can embrace the conventionally sexual, wrapping itself around bodies, practices, and relations, but it can also move out to touch experiences that might not count as sex but still feel sexual. A theory of sexuality in sex education needs to begin with this expansiveness. But, more difficult, a theory of sexuality in sex education must also consider the aims of sexuality and wrestle with the question: what is sexuality for? The answer is complex: sexuality has the capacity to both tie us to the social, make us feel part of something larger than ourselves, and become the grounds of a politics, identity, or relationship. But sexuality also has the capacity to unbind, shatter social ties, produce feelings of loss, disappointment or ecstatic loneliness, and undo illusions of identity, politics and relationality. And both these possibilities can be a source of pleasure or non-pleasure. This ambivalence – that sexuality is made from love and hate, often for the same object – is a feature of sex education. Debates about abstinence within sex education are mired in these complexities. In the various iterations of abstinence in sex education, sexuality is understood as having the capacity to undo a whole host of social good: moral precepts; social convention; physical, emotional and spiritual health; ideals of chastity, marriage, and heterosexuality; and claims to innocence and even childhood itself, for instance, can be ruined by sexuality. In these scenarios, sexuality arrives like an unwelcome and disruptive guest; it stands in for what is most foreign in the self, and it must be tamed and assimilated if it is not to wreck the self and the social order. In the effort to stave off the incursions of abstinence into sex education, we have, in comprehensive sex education, made sex a problem of and for ‘health’. Here, ‘health’ stands in for the adhesive and pro-social qualities of sexuality. ‘Healthy sexuality’, ‘healthy relationships’, ‘healthy body image’, ‘healthy self-esteem’: youth drown in admonitions that they should feel positive about any and all aspects of their bodies, selves, and identities. In comprehensive sex education, a proper, ‘healthy’ sexuality leads to relationships, intimacy, maturity, and pleasure. However, neither abstinence-only nor ‘health-only’ sex education can tolerate the contradictions of an ambivalent sexuality – that sexuality has binding and unbinding qualities – and so, in an odd twist, sexuality can come to feel like a threat to sex education.

Sex is a funny word

between experts (178). By contrast, Bennett (chapter 7) states that being culturally appropriate can legitimate not challenging dominant ideology, downplaying concern for the needs and rights of patients in biomedical infertility studies, for example. another example is given by Beazley (chapter 9) who argues it is time for international child welfare agencies, development organisations, donors and policy-makers to challenge adultist, universalistic and moralistic views which encourage child sex workers to be seen as ‘victims’ lacking in sexual agency and desire. (183). now is the time to start using a ‘rights-based participatory research approach with children and young people who work in the sex industry’ (original emphasis, 198). the study by idrus and Hardon (chapter 6) on chemical use in the everyday lives of sex workers in Makassar, South Sulawesi is important as it offers a new take on harm reduction which, to date, has focused largely on narcotics. the use of medications such as Somadril (a muscle relaxant) and whitening cosmetics is dangerous, because high dosage leads to dependency and traps sex workers with mounting debts (144). clearly, the rich diversity of issues relevant to sex and sexuality in indonesia means that some topics are absent from this book. it is unfortunate, for example, that there is a lack of discussion of waria (indonesian male to female transgender) subculture. in addition, the relation between sexuality and migration (seasonal migration, domestic migration and international migration) is also not as fully explored as it might have been. Butt’s chapter (chapter 5) makes a start in this respect through its focus on mobile women in indonesian Papua, and Mcnally, Grierson and Hidayana (chapter 10) engage tangentially with such concerns, but what of the ‘mobility’ that is created when space and place are mediated by technology? in their epilogue, oetomo and Boellstorff stress the importance of future research on national belonging in relation to sexuality, not only with respect to subjectivity, but also as it connects to inclusion, rights and social justice (313). But national belonging in indonesia cannot easily be separated from islam, which still offers a major source of moral guidance for most people. these and related issues warrant more detailed examination by future work. overall, this book presents a number of important new ideas on sex and sexuality in modern-day indonesia. it is a ’must read’ for anyone studying issues of sexuality in indonesia, focusing on topics that are poorly explored and often misunderstood.

Sexuality and Education: Toward the Promise of Ambiguity

Beginning with a brief history of sexuality education in the United States, this chapter argues for an expansive definition of sexuality education that includes both the formal school curriculum and the informal lessons on gender and sexuality young people receive in and out of schools school. We explore the legacy of the debates between abstinence-only-until-marriage and comprehensive models of sexuality education for sexuality education policy and practice, note the turn to the rationality and neutrality of science among comprehensive sexuality education researchers, and then conclude by advocating for the centrality of uncertainty and ambiguity in sexuality education.

Naming new realities: supporting trans youth in education

As we write this introduction, trans issues in education are never far from the headlines. In the USA, the Trump administration has revoked a number of policies meant to protect trans youth from discrimination in school; in Australia, debates about the Safe Schools Coalition, an LGBTQ resource for schools, have led to the cancellation of this programme at a national level because of media-fuelled trans and homophobia; and in school districts around the world, trans students and their allies are fighting for access to equal educational opportunities, including the right to access bathrooms (toilets) and changing room facilities, play on sports teams, and use their preferred pronouns. These conflicts and campaigns are happening, in part, because an increasing number of young people are coming out as trans and are transitioning in adolescence (Rider et al. 2018). In the midst of these changes, trans youth are going to school, growing up, making and losing friends, falling in and out of love, experimenting with and claiming multiple identities, and negotiating and challenging social norms. In response, teachers, administrators, and school authorities are being called upon to develop and implement policies, practices, and curricula that can support the social, emotional, and educational development of trans students. But as many of the articles in this special issue of Sex Education document, not only do schools sometimes fail to live up to the promise to educate all students, they often actively discriminate against trans students, sacrificing their best interests to concerns from conservative parents and politicians. Fights over allowing trans students access to appropriate toilets and changing room facilities in schools are the most obvious case of schools’ failure to support trans students. This special issue takes up questions about trans youth and education in these turbulent times. We are not the first to examine these concerns. Indeed, we are living at a moment when there has been a recent rise of emergent scholars, many trans or genderqueer themselves, who are putting these issues at the centre of educational research focused on equity (c.f. Airton 2013; Brockenbrough and Boatwright 2013; Frohard-Dourlent 2016; Keenan 2017; Meyer, Tilland-Stafford, and Airton 2016; Pyne 2017; Sinclair-Palm 2017; Slovin 2016). These scholars are centring the voices of trans youth, creating dialogue about how schools can better support the lives of trans students, and insisting on understanding trans experiences intersectionally.

Contesting Consent in Sex Education.

Abstract This paper explores discourses of affirmative consent in sex education curriculum and policy. It traces the ways in which discourses of consent have emerged in sex education debates, focusing first on the activism of two young women in Ontario, Canada who lobbied the provincial government to include discussions of consent in a new Health and Physical Education (HPE) curriculum. Their activism is instructive for the ways in which their lobbying was eventually subsumed into the logics of curriculum, with learning outcomes and lesson plans taming the passion of their protest. As others see in sex education the answer to sexual violence, we cannot forget that sex education is, in part, a defence against passion, and that consent – once swallowed up by HPE – might also work to tame the unruliness of sexuality. Turning to age of consent laws – another arena where discourses of consent discipline the sexuality of young people – I ask how our pedagogical and legal address to sexuality paradoxically refuses its force. This is the central argument of this article – namely, that the concept of consent brings with it, into education, a procedural logic that misrecognises sexuality as a transparent, communicative, and rational experience and mistakes compliance for learning.

Walking through the School: The Erotics of Research.

As university researchers, we face a significant obstacle when we study schools: our lives as researchers began in schools; a condition of our inquiry is that we were ourselves successful in school. Having never really left, when we return to schools, now as an object or site of our study, we therefore revisit the scenes of our own becoming. Britzman (2007), thinking about the implications of this history for practices of teacher education, describes the problem as follows:

Thinking in Sex Education: Reading Prohibition through the Film "Desire".

This paper argues that sex education must move beyond a focus on compliance so that we may risk the uncertain work of thinking. How might we understand the work of thinking in sex education if we begin from the assumptions that learning is conflicted, that sexuality resists being educated even as it inspires curiosity, and that the subject of sex education is herself divided and liable to act in her own worst interest? Drawing on theories of thinking in psychoanalysis, I consider this question through the status of prohibition in sex education and argue that prohibitions can function either as a way of shutting thinking down or as a tentative step towards thinking an intolerable thought. The documentary film Desire illustrates the potentially productive use of prohibitions and suggests some of the conditions necessary for developing the capacity for thoughtfulness in sex education.

Intimate Possibilities: The Beyond Bullying Project and Stories of LGBTQ Sexuality and Gender in US Schools

In this article, Jen Gilbert, Jessica Fields, Laura Mamo, and Nancy Lesko explore the Beyond Bullying Project, a multimedia, storytelling project that invited students, teachers, and community members in three US high schools to enter a private booth and share stories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) sexuality and gender. While recent policy making and educational research have focused on links between LGBTQ sexuality and gender, bullying, and other risks to educational and social achievement, Beyond Bullying aimed to identify the ordinary stories of LGBTQ sexuality and gender that circulate in schools and that an interventionist framing may obscure. After offering an overview of the method in Beyond Bullying, this article connects narratives of LGBTQ desire, family, and school life to the intimate possibilities—who students and teachers are, who they want to be, and the social worlds they want to build—available to them in schools.