Leave "Those Kids" Alone: On the Conflation of School Homophobia and Suffering Queers

Autor/in	Airton, Lee
Titel	Leave "Those Kids" Alone: On the Conflation of School Homophobia and Suffering Queers
Quelle	In: Curriculum Inquiry, 43 (2013) 5, S.532-562 (31 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0362-6784
DOI	10.1111/curi.12031
Schlagwörter	Homosexuality; Social Bias; Student Needs; Gender Issues; Sexual Orientation; Sexual Identity; Educational Environment; Student Rights; Social Justice + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Homosexualität; Geschlechterfrage; Sexuelle Orientierung; Geschlechtsidentität; Sexuelle Identität; Lernumgebung; Pädagogische Umwelt; Schulumwelt; Soziale Gerechtigkeit
Abstract	In this article I make a conceptual intervention in the idea that queer children and youth have needs that differ from those of other children and youth on the basis of their gender or sexuality alone, and that doing well by them requires adults to act on the basis of this difference. Namely, I examine the conflation of "fighting school homophobia" and "helping young queers." I argue that making space for "queerness" in education is not the same as making space for queers, and that queer young people ought to be left alone. I offer two explanations for the conflation's persistence such that "leaving them alone" is generally unthinkable: one affective and one institutional. In the first instance, I read a short memoir through a recent queer theoretical account of childhood as queerness, and argue that the "queer child" is the vehicle of queer adult longing for origins. In the second instance, I show how in education the nebulous (queerness) tends to become concrete (homophobia) and therefore actionable (fight homophobia) because of the constraints of schooling as the singularity of education in the present. In the conclusion, I suggest that a twist on the liberal concept of individual rights may ironically provide a pragmatic means of moving beyond the flourishing of individual queers and toward the flourishing of queerness in schools, and offer some preliminary suggestions of what can be done if queerness was to become the beneficiary of anti-homophobia interventions in education. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10