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Homophobia LGBTQ Approaches Annotated Bibliography

Heterosexism/Homophobia

In this essay Barnard offers seven suggestions for fostering an anti-homophobic pedagogy. Most of his recommendations are based on the notion that the teacher is a model for counter heterosexist thinking and practice. He states that the teacher should neither use heterosexist language nor “tokenize queer concerns in [the] syllabus” (section 3). He also asserts that while it is the responsibility of the professor to come out in her class, it is also her responsibility to “discourage straight students from ‘coming out’” via assertions of heterosexuality (section 6). In class discussions and interactions, he states that teachers should avoid open-ended questions or prompts, which can “invite homophobic responses” (section 5) and at the same time “ensure that your students have easy access to addressing queer issues” (section 4). Most importantly, Barnard asserts that teachers should not assume all “students are straight” (section 5)—doing so can further alienate and marginalize students.

Goldstein uses performed ethnography, “turning ethnographic data and texts into scripts and dramas that are either read aloud by a group of participants or performed before audiences” (1), in her classes to institute counter-heterosexist teacher education. In this essay, she details specific pedagogical practices that help create socially aware and responsive teaching professionals. She provides excerpts and analyses of one of her three ethnographic plays, Snakes and Ladders, which “is about the challenges of undertaking anti-homophobia education in a secular public high school, which serves a religiously diverse community” (2). She also provides a brief background on her study of ethnographic research and on why she decided to participate in and enact a performed ethnography centered pedagogy. She finalizes her essay with student commentary on Snakes and Ladders, which suggest further possibilities for counter-heterosexist teacher education: It “model[s] productive pedagogical approaches to anti-homophobia education in public schools” and it provides “a way to respond to the different and shifting equity positions evident in all teacher education classrooms” (20).

Loewen Walker’s essay provides a powerful examination of student agency, in particular queer agency, and how it has the potential and power to undermine systematic institutions of heterosexism in which education is based. Loewen Walker stresses the importance of examining the ideologies that create oppressive systems because this analysis can help students “develop forms of resistance” against institutionalized heteronormativity (1). She suggests that queer youth enact various strategies in their resistance. She discusses two of these strategies in this essay: one, “the use and analysis of the performed body—a two-edged sword in terms of the literal performance of dramatic productions which focus on queer issues, and the ontological performance of gender that queer youth perform every day” (2); and second, the growing amount of Gay/Straight Alliances (GSL) on campuses. In her analysis of these acts of resistance, Loewen Walker reveals queer student agency in enacting change in a heterosexist educational system.

Riggs suggest the that the foster care system in Australia, which now actively recruits gays and lesbians, does so only out of necessity and the system itself is still largely engrossed in heterosexist practices. In this essay, he critiques foster carer training as an impetus of heterosexism. He states that “whilst foster care training is primarily based on the principles of adult learning, the context of heterosexism prevents this from being a productive pedagogical method. Rather, it works to construct certain people’s experiences as being more valid than others’, thus typically excluding the experiences of gay and lesbian foster carers” (2). Riggs specifically examines heterosexist assumptions of the normative nuclear family and “the best interest of the child and how these are shaped through discourses of family” (2). He proposes that understanding and critiquing heterosexist practices in foster carer training will create space for further social action via queer discourse.

In his article, Rothgery asks, “Has contemporary theory, with its insights into the ‘situatedness’ of our existence and perspectives, left us any sense of valid—indeed, a necessary, ‘we-can-no-longer-go-back-to-that’—directionality by way of shared ideas?” (244). In attempts to deal with the difficult situation of responding to racist, sexist, or heterosexist student papers, Rothgery refutes the idea of anti-foundationalist situational truths and proposes necessary directionality. He states that there is a continuum that negates these Transcendent Truths and supports a need for directionality. He argues that “the groping between student and teacher may clash, but in the areas of racism, sexism, homophobia, the clash should be loud and morally meaningful in recognition that Necessary Directionality remains a valid concept” (247).

In his essay, Ruffolo discusses how queer theory can “queer (hetero)normative ‘identity’ practices in contemporary classrooms” (1). He asserts that disrupting the norm of isms—specifically heterosexism—alters our conception and notion of identity. Ruffolo “calls for all classroom participants, regardless of their positions as subjects, to embrace queer subjectivities that recognize and explore the mobility and fluidity of identifications—not fixed and stable identities—in order to stimulate social change and work towards a future that is equitable, not equal” (1). Through this challenge and disruption of the (hetero)normative students are able to reconceptualize “I” and their own fluid identities.