Populated by lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, queer (LGBTQ) and allied youth, school-based gay straight alliances (GSAs) offer a unique opportunity to re-imagine or redefine youth subjectivity, especially with regards to the intersections of sexual orientation, gender identity, and civic rights. Tracing the evolution of youth subjectivity from the emergence of Canadian schooling in the 1860s, I turn to Ontario’s Bill 13 as a recent example of how GSAs are subverting, or resisting these norms, and in so doing, operate (...) as a kind of counter-public. Drawing from Jenks’ (2005) archetypes of the Dionysian and Apollonian child, I assert that GSAs can embody a third type of child subjectivity, the Athenian child (Smith, 2011; 2014) and, in so doing, provide theoretical space to reconstitute subjectivity for all youth. (shrink)

This study examines what Social Studies teachers can learn from Gay-Straight Alliances (GSA) in terms of the content that club members examine and the queer pedagogical approaches they employ. Find...

Originating in the United States, a Gay/Straight Alliance (GSA) is an in-school student club whose focus is on making the school a safe space for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer students and their straight allies by raising awareness about, and hopefully reducing, school-based homophobia. The ongoing struggle for GSAs in Canadian Catholic schools is one example of how clashes continue to be played out between Catholic canonical law and Canadian common law regarding sexual minorities. This paper draws (...) upon Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, and The History of Sexuality Vol. 1: An Introduction to analyze one particularly influential curricular and policy document entitled Pastoral Guidelines to Assist Students of Same-Sex Orientation from the Ontario Conference of Catholic Bishops. This paper posits that Catholic doctrine about non-heterosexuality functions as a Foucaultian Panopticon enabling Catholic education leaders to observe and correct the behaviour of non-heterosexual teachers and students that they deem runs counter to the values of the Vatican. This paper argues that successful resistance to the powerful disciplining regime of the Catholic school is possible. (shrink)

Just a decade ago, requests by students to establish groups to support gay and lesbian students were rare and generally met with shock and confusion by school administrators and local communities. Today there are more than 1600 gay straight alliances across the country._ Standing Out, Standing Together _documents the emergence of gay straight alliances in public schools across America - from factors that have contributed to the relatively rapid spread of GSA to those that stirred controversy (...) and posed roadblocks. Using over 10 years of interviews with students, teachers, administrators and political activists; case studies; and local and national media reports, Miceli explores the personal and political stakes involved in the battles over GSAs. Although the book acknowledges and documents the harassment, abuse and problems suffered by many gay, lesbian, transgendered, and bisexual students, its primary focus is on these students as political activists, rather than as passive victims, making it a unique contribution to sociologists, educators, political activists and LGBTreaders alike. (shrink)

Educational leaders in Ontario’s publicly-funded Catholic schools typically resist establishing Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) on grounds that they contradict Catholic moral teaching and so cause scandal in the school. While the protection of GSAs in these schools is derived from recent provincial legislation, the government intervention has the potential to exacerbate religious-secular tensions in the school and society. This paper assumes that, in the Catholic Church’s current political climate, the only justifications for GSAs that will gain genuine traction and (...) possibly deflate this tension descend from within Catholicism’s own tradition of thought and educational practice. The first part of the argument critiques the Catholic hierarchy’s traditional, narrow conception of scandal, and replaces it with a revised, broader conception from within Catholic theology in which the traditional marginalization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) students is the true scandal. These two frameworks are used to analyze inconsistencies between the resistance Catholic schools show toward LGBTQ students wanting to establish GSAs, and the welcoming attitude they display toward pregnant and parenting students. The second part of the argument reveals that the main reason for this difference is that Church officials perceive all LGBTQ organizations as threats to their authority, and this perception is extended to GSAs. This internal critique provides sufficient reason to reverse the current negative Catholic evaluations of GSAs. (shrink)

The vast majority of schools in Canada are dominated by unsafe spaces and experiences for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth 1 who continue to experience higher rates of suicide, depression, isolation, harassment/bullying, and self-harm compared to their straight peers2. Gay/Straight Alliances (GSAs) and other LGBTQ-inclusive groups exist in schools with the goal of mitigating and working against homophobia. Most often in Ontario (Canada), straight teachers lead these groups3. Because of the pervasive role (...) class='Hi'>straight teachers play in GSAs and other anti-homophobia initiatives in schools, there is a practical need to analyze the role and experiences of straight teacher ally activists working with LGBTQ students and the overall effectiveness of anti-homophobia efforts under their purview. Here, I explore the efficacy of straight teacher allies, the importance of understanding straight privilege, and the significance of radical heterosexuality for straight people doing LGBTQ activism. Relying on queer theory and decolonizing/Indigenous queer theory, I argue that it is necessary for straight teachers to acknowledge their straight privilege in order to challenge homophobia’s companions: heterosexism and heteronormativity. In addressing the latter two covert forms of oppression in schools, teachers and students could shift into deeper, more effective resistance measures. (shrink)

This paper explores the connections between two common circulating discourses about queer youth and the ways that these discourses are wielded in the name of creating safe spaces for queer youth. First, the discourse of innocence is still applied to queer youth, however, the application has shifted to focus largely on the ways that queer youth are innocent victims in a society structured around heteronormativity. Second, a common response to this innocent victim discourse has been to position queer youth within (...) a discourse of activist educators. “Discourses not only represent the world as it is, they are also projective, imaginaries, representing possible worlds which are different from the actual world, and tied into projects to change the world in particular directions”. Gay Straight Alliances are one example; GSAs have sprung up across the country because adults, queer adults and allies in particular, have employed both of these discourses in policy decisions and discussions regarding queer students. This paper will highlight some of the ways the discourses of innocent victims and activist educators have been used in the GSA movement. The paper will apply a queer theory lens to the relationship between these discourses and the GSAs to tease out the ways that they work to simultaneously support queer students and serve to limit how queer students and their schools are imagined. The paper will conclude with a discussion of some possibilities for reworking, rupturing, or transforming these discourses so that schools, as well as the queer students and teachers within them, might be better served. (shrink)

In 2012, a provincial bill amended the Ontario Education Act to provide more focused measures to eliminate bullying on the basis of sexual orientation. Bill 13 specifically requires that students be allowed to establish gay-straight alliances (GSAs), including in the publicly-funded Catholic school system. The Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association responded by proposing an alternative policy, called “Respecting Difference,” on the grounds that GSAs run contrary to Catholic teaching. Respect is a complex ethical notion with a long philosophical (...) history. Through an overview of what philosophers from different traditions (including Kant, Buber, Levinas, Hegel, and Rawls) have said about respect, it becomes apparent that the kind of respect that is due to all persons requires recognition, or a willingness to accept the other as a self-identifying subject who is irreducible to my experience. In its discussion of LGBT students, the OCSTA fails to accord them such recognition, even while it emphasizes the meaning of difference. Consequently, there is reason to conclude that it does not truly respect sexual minority students and that it is not fully committed to eradicating homophobia-based bullying in the Catholic school system. “Respecting Difference” declines to heed best evidence about the factors that actually protect LGBT students from bullying, and uses the guidelines for “Respecting Difference” groups as an opportunity to reinforce its pathologization of LGBT identity itself. (shrink)