“Secondary school is a horrible place to be a gay person”: Verbal discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community in the education system

This paper is concerned with Language, Gender and Sexuality. More specifically, it addresses discriminatory language used against the LGBTQ+ community and identifies whether there is a change in the volume of verbal discrimination from secondary school to university. This topic is becoming increasingly relevant within today’s climate and thus, it is hoped that raising awareness of verbal discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community within our education system will have some influence on its future management. The research I present here is based on interviews and surveys with seven participants who were studying or working in universities. The quantitative data I collected was in the form of a verbal interview with a LGBTQ+ member of staff, the remaining data I collected was qualitative. The rest of the data was collected from students from an online survey and social media conversation. The aim of this research was to investigate gender and sexuality bullying in education. The analytical framework employed in this investigation was Queer Theory (Jagose, 1996), as the educational system heavily relies on heterosexualism and marginalisation of any community who questions societal ‘norms’ and does not ‘conform’ (Sauntson, 2012: 168). The investigation initially uncovered varying types of verbal discrimination analysed in terms of Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough et al. 2011: 357-8), for instance, gendered and non-gendered language. These types were then broken down into categories of stereotyping (“butch lesbian”), health (“being diseased”) (Cole, 2012: 124), sexual activity (“fudge packet”) and archaic language (“poof”) (Cross, 2013: 19; Meyer, 2008). The next portion of the investigation considered contextual discrimination, for example, using homophobia in jest with friends (Cross, 2013: 20) and direct or passive discrimination in schools. The clear conclusion of this investigation is that verbal bullying is rife in secondary schools, as opposed to universities, which were identified as being more liberal and LGBTQ+ friendly, with limited cases of discrimination. The participants provided multiple reasons in support of this finding: firstly, teaching in schools about the LGBTQ+ community is limited and teachers do not have the correct tools to prevent bullying; secondly, schools are strictly gendered in terms of certain classes and facilities; and finally, the maturity of their peers had a clear impact on the extent of linguistic discrimination they received, from beginning school and then leaving. Cole, M. (2012) Education, equality and human rights: issues of gender, 'race', sexuality, disability and social class, Abingdon: Routledge Cross, W. (2013) Homophobic bullying in secondary schools: a cross age and gender analysis into young people’s views of name-calling, University of Birmingham Fairclough, N. Mulderring, J. Wodak, R. (2011) Critical Discourse Analysis, in Dijk, T. (2011) Discourse Studies. A multidisciplinary Introduction, 2nd ed. Los Angeles, Calif.; London: SAGE, p357-379 Jagose, A. (1996) Queer Theory: An Introduction, Melbourne University Press Meyer, E. (2008) Gender, Bullying and Harassment: Strategies to End Sexism and Homophobia in Schools, Teachers College Press: Columbia University Sauntson, H. (2012) Approaches to gender and spoken classroom discourse, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan