Queering Institutions?: Sexual Identity in Public Education in a Canadian Context

Abstract

In April 2010, a series of proposed changes to the Ontario sex education curriculum for publicly-funded institutions within the province was announced. Within three days of that announcement, then premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty, put a hold on the proposed changes, stating that consideration of the multicultural and religiously diverse needs of the population was required before any changes were to go into effect (“McGuinty”). Since then, the Accepting Schools Act (regarding policies of nondiscrimination in publicly funded schools) has been introduced and hotly debated across the province, and a slightly revised curriculum was implemented in 2010 (to a lesser extent than originally proposed). I use the curriculum debate as an entryway to think about whether it is possible to queer public institutions, specifically asking whether we are capable of queering publicly funded education. Although much contemporary identity theory, and queer theory in particular, pushes boundaries of identity conformity and offers nuanced and complex pictures of the ways people live out their gendered and sexual identities, the gap between this cutting-edge research and the lived reality (here for youth) is demonstrated by ongoing negative responses to sexual or gender diversity. I argue that the consternation sexual and gender diversity elicits when introduced into sex education curriculum is a reflection of the resistance to destabilizing sexual identity within the institution of education. Incorporating Elizabeth Grosz’s theory of becoming and Brenda Cossman’s work on sexual citizenship, sexual identity destabilization within public education is critical because youth are in the process of becoming sexual citizens; and yet it is the space of becoming and of being in progress that elicits moral panic and resistance to this destabilization. Although identity theory and queer theory continue to push boundaries and ask challenging questions about what “normal” is and how “the normal” is continually redefined, there is still a large gap between these theoretical insights and the lived experience of identity difference. Surveys among youth in Canada, for example, regarding the experience of Queering Institutions?: Sexual Identity in Public Education in a Canadian Context