Renée DePalma

Sex/gender identity: Moving beyond fixed and ‘natural’ categories

Despite feminist understandings of the socially constructed nature of sex and gender and anthropological studies of alternative constructions, western societies tend to understand sex and gender in terms of mutually-exclusive hierarchical categories. We analyze the process by which a heteronormative sex-gender-sexuality system is constructed and legitimized to the exclusion of those whose physiology and/or behaviors do not conform to it. We provide some insights into ways in which the extraordinary diversity of sex-gender can be recognized and valued on various social planes, through activism, the production and critique of popular culture, and education.

Choosing to Lose our Gender Expertise: Queering Sex/Gender in School Settings.

Most people, school teachers and children included, are altogether too sure about what gender is: there are two ‘opposite’ sexes, man and woman, and gender is the inevitable categorical expression of natural sex. Like all commonsense views, however, the gender binary has been socially constructed through normalising discourses that frame certain ways of thinking and doing as ‘commonsense’ and thus unassailable. As Judith Butler points out, resisting these constructed norms requires a conscious effort to deconstruct our understandings, to ‘lose our expertise’. Drawing upon data collected as part of a broader study addressing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equalities in English primary schools, this analysis involves a deep interrogation of sex and gender with the aim to help teachers and children understand how sex/gender categories are policed and to recognise and question our complicity in maintaining commonsense understandings of sex and gender.

Teacher Perspectives on Abstinence and Safe Sex Education in South Africa.

The stakes are high for sex education in South Africa: it has been estimated that 8.7% of young people live with HIV. Within primarily US and UK contexts, there has been much debate over the relative merits of abstinence-only and comprehensive sexual education programmes. These perspectives have largely been presented as irreconcilable, but in-depth interviews with 25 life orientation teachers across the Free State Province of South Africa reveal that teachers may attempt to reconcile aspects of the two into a hybridised perspective. They promote abstinence as the only appropriate choice for young people while recognising the value of some of the broader issues of comprehensive sexuality such as relationships and safe sex. We attempt to make meaning of this hybridisation and present two arguments: that the specific South African context challenges the idea that these two contradictory positions cannot be mixed and that they might be strategically combined to promote a comprehensive sexuality education that builds a sense of agency and responsibility without alienating young people through moralism. We conclude with a brief description of future directions that classroom practice and teacher preparation might take.

South African Life Orientation Teachers: (Not) Teaching About Sexuality Diversity

Although South Africa is one of the most progressive countries in the world in terms of constitutional and legislative rights for LGBT individuals, education is one of many social arenas where these ideals are not carried out. Interviews with 25 practicing teachers revealed very little description of practice, but widely divergent understandings around sexual diversity that drew on various authoritative discourses, including religious teachings, educational policy, science, and the powerful human rights framework of the South African constitution. Implications for teacher education include directly engaging with these discourses and providing training, teaching materials, and practical guidelines based on existing policy.

Silence, nostalgia, violence, poverty … : What does ‘culture’ mean for South African sexuality educators?

In in-depth interviews with 25 Life Orientation teachers in South Africa, we found that teachers spontaneously drew upon notions of culture to explain and justify peoples sexual beliefs and behaviours and their own role as educators. Drawing upon a Bakhtinian understanding of discourse, we apply critical semantic analysis to explore how culture is deployed as a discursive strategy. Teachers draw upon particular understandings of culture available to them in their social contexts. Furthermore, the substitution of the word ‘culture’ for a series of other phenomena (silence, violence and poverty) affords these phenomena a certain authority that they would otherwise not wield. We argue, first, that systems teacher education and training needs to (re)define culture as dynamic, interactive and responding to, but not determined by, socio-historical realities. Beyond this, teachers need to learn how to critically engage with cultural practices and perceptions and to be provided with some basic tools to do so, including more sophisticated understandings of cultural and training in dialogic methodologies. Teaching sexuality education in multicultural societies such as South Africa will require meaningful engagement in intercultural dialogues that may need to include voices that have traditionally been excluded from school spaces.

Gay penguins, sissy ducklings … and beyond? Exploring gender and sexuality diversity through children's literature

ABSTRACT From 2006 to 2008 UK-based primary school teachers in the No Outsiders project explored possibilities for addressing sexualities equality in their classrooms. What all teachers had in common was a resource pack that included 27 childrens books exploring themes of gender and sexuality diversity either directly or indirectly (i.e. by the presence of same-sex parents or gender non-normative characters). While such books have the potential to productively trouble the heteronormative spaces of schools by the mere presence of characters who do not conform to sex/gender/sexuality expectations, some of them have also been criticized for reproducing heteronormative family structures and implicit values and failing to go beyond ‘vanilla strategies’ that feel safe in primary school settings. The experiences and reflections of the No Outsiders project members can help educators plan not only which kinds of literature to use but also how to incorporate such texts into the curriculum.

Pathologizing gender identity: An analysis of Spanish law and the regulation of gender recognition

Despite recent worldwide legal advances in the protection of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) rights, legal systems continue to take the categories of ‘male’ and ‘female’ to be based on a fixed and permanent natural order. Taking the current Spanish law regulating changes in gender identity as an example, we analyze how this recent (2007) legal advance still imposes medical criteria that pathologize the trans person and reinforce sexist assumptions. Although it is no longer up to a judge to determine a persons legal gender, the criteria for modification of official documents still implicitly support inaccurate and oppressive understandings of sex/gender/sexuality by, for example, relying on diagnostic criteria that support the imposition of gendered stereotypes on children and traditional social roles on adolescents and adults. Only through reconceptualizing our very notion of sex and gender can the law be revised to protect the rights of everyone no matter what their lived sex/gender histories and experiences.

Language-learning holidays: what motivates people to learn a minority language?

ABSTRACT In this article, we examine the experiences of 18 Galician language learners who participated in what Garland [(2008). The minority language and the cosmopolitan speaker: Ideologies of Irish language learners (Unpublished PhD thesis). University of California, Santa Barbara] refers to as a ‘language-learning holiday’ in Galicia in north-western Spain. We examine what motivates these learners to travel abroad to study Galician and in some cases to become new speakers of this minoritised language. We explore the ideologies and practices of these students, who as edutourists [Yarymowich, (2005). ‘Language tourism’ in Canada. A mixed discourse. In F. Baider, M. Burger, & D. Goutsos (Eds.), La Communication touristique. Approches discursives de l’identité et de l’alterité (pp. 257-273). Paris: L’Harmattan], are the targets and potential consumers of cultural and linguistic commodification. We explore the ways in which students themselves commodify Galician culture and language, in their attempts to capture what they perceive as an authentic learning experience and as a means of accessing a minoritised linguistic and cultural group.

Postcolonial Perspective, Social Integration and Cultural Diversity vis-à-vis Neoliberal Policies and Practices in Galizan Schooling

The authors base this article on findings from two qualitative studies conducted in Galiza (northwest Spain), in the province of A Coruña: an action research project in an early childhood education classroom; and a composite of ethnographic enquiries focusing on secondary education and vocational training programmes. Both studies sought to contribute to a fundamental transformation of schooling toward a more just, integrative and democratic intercultural institution. This effort includes denouncing the processes of social exclusion operating in those contexts, which are closely related to (neo)colonial and neoliberal practices.

The Role of Early Childhood Education in Revitalizing a Minoritized Language in an Unsupportive Policy Context: The Galician Case

In the Northwestern region of Spain, Galician is recognized as a co-official language, alongside Spanish. The Galician Linguistic Normalization Law (Xunta de Galicia, Lei 3/1983, do 15 Xuno, de Normalizacion Linguistica, 1983) was designed to reverse a process of linguistic substitution in favor of Spanish that has threatened Galician, along with other minoritized languages in Spain, for generations. Nevertheless, the revitalization goal of Galician language legislation has not been adequately supported by school policy. In this chapter we first report the results of a survey of 3rd and 4th-year ECE majors at a Galician university (approximately 200 students), focusing on their self-perceptions of Galician competence and expectations for using the Galician language as an instructional medium in their future teaching. Then we will analyze examples of ECE Centers that are committed to using and promoting the Galician language, taking into account the particular challenges involved in promoting bilingualism in minoritized language contexts. These go beyond simple linguistic competencies to involve metalinguistic goals such as raising the social status of the language, reducing stereotypes, and creating new positive associations. We will analyze a variety of initiatives aimed at promoting and supporting the use of Galician in ECE contexts, including examples from a range of specific school settings (public and private, urban, peri-urban, and rural, etc.). In a minoritized language context where intergenerational transmission of Galician continues to diminish, these initiatives attempt to revitalize the language among the youngest generation though a range of practices, from the partial introduction of Galician as a medium of instruction to the incorporation of literature, performing arts, and other engaging activities that aim to present the minoritized language as both a modern living language and a common cultural heritage. Despite the disheartening trends concerning language competence and use, the work of these educators and other professionals demonstrate the transformative potential of effective school-based language planning, even in relatively unsupportive policy contexts.