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CONSTRUCTING
SEXUALITIES AND
GENDERED BODIES
IN SCHOOL SPACES
Nordic Insights on Queer
and Transgender Students
Jón Ingvar Kjaran
Series Editors
William F. Pinar
Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Nelson M. Rodriguez
Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
The College of New Jersey
Ewing, New Jersey, USA
Constructing
Sexualities and
Gendered Bodies in
School Spaces
Nordic Insights on Queer and Transgender
Students
Jón Ingvar Kjaran
School of Education
University of Iceland
Stakkahlíð
Reykjavík
105 Iceland
v
vi FOREWORD
Embodied in the voices of queer and trans youth that are represented in
the pages of this book are definite signs of such anticipatory hope and
possibility that speak to utopian possibilities of envisaging a queer and
trans livability and recognizability (Butler, 2004) in the education system,
one which has been built on a history of queer and trans activism but
which can never ever be fully determined or realized in advance (Stryker
& Silverman, 2005; Carter, 2010; Valentine, 2007). It is in this sense
that Kjaran’s book speaks to an ethical commitment to continue to docu-
ment the lived experiences of queer and trans youth in the school system,
with the view to a consideration of anticipatory possibilities for think-
ing beyond the horizon of heteronormative and cisnormative constraints
for envisaging an alternative social imaginary for living gender and sexual
diversity in all of its shifting and indeterminate temporality.
Wayne Martino Ph.D.
FOREWORD vii
References
Ball, S., Maguire, M., & Braun, A. (2012). How schools do policy: Policy
enactments in secondary schools. Abingdon: Routledge.
Butler, J. (2004). Undoing gender. New York: Routledge.
Carter, D. (2010). Stonewall: The riots that sparked the gay revolution.
New York: St Martin’s Press.
Muñoz, J. (2009). Cruising utopia: The then and there of queer futurity.
New York: New York University Press.
Rasmussen, M. (2006). Becoming subjects: Sexualities and secondary school-
ing. New York: Routledge.
Stryker, S. (2008). Transgender history. Berkley CA: Seal Press.
Stryker, S., & Silverman, V. (2005) Screaming queens: The riots at
Crompton’s cafeteria (Documentary) KQED/Independent Television
Productions.
Valentine, D. (2007). Imagining transgender: An ethnography of a cat-
egory. Durham: Duke University Press.
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my gratitude to the many people who saw me through
this book: to all those who provided support, talked things over, read, wrote,
offered comments, allowed me to quote their remarks and assisted in the edit-
ing, proofreading and design. I would especially like to thank Professor Wayne
Martino for encouraging me in writing this book and giving me constructive
comments and good feedback through the whole writing/production pro-
cess. Above all I want to thank my participants, who shared their experiences
and trusted me with their stories. I dedicate this book to them and indeed
queer youth globally, that still need to struggle with heterosexism and het-
eronormative culture in schools. I also wish to thank my publisher, Nelson
Rodriguez, for giving me the opportunity to publish this book within the
Queer Studies and Education Series. Moreover, I wish to personally thank the
following people for their contributions to my inspiration and knowledge and
other help in creating this book: Sólveig Friðriksdóttir for preparing the index
and reading through the bibliography and other references, Rafn Kjartansson
for proofreeding the book at different stages, my two former PhD supervisors,
Professor Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson and Guðrún Kristinsdóttir for their
constructive feedback and support, Professor Debbie Epstein for her sup-
port and encouragement during my Ph.D-studies, and Þorvaldur Kristinsson,
writer and independent researcher on queer lives and reality, for inspirational
and fruitful discussion in relation to queer issues in Iceland and worldwide. I
would also like to express my thanks to everyone that gave me their kind per-
mission to use or quote their material in this book. And last but not the least,
I express my gratitude to the students, staff members and administration of
the two high schools where I did my fieldwork when conducting the research
for this book.
ix
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Bibliography211
Index233
xi
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 The drawing, which I noticed on the wall in one of the
classrooms during my fieldwork, formulates a penis and
the text reads: “dogga mikið” which means “engage in
doggy-style sex”. This drawing and others alike confirm
further the (hetero)sexualized nature of school spaces,
particularly within the informal school culture, of which
this book will address further 2
Fig. 3.1 Attitudes toward homosexuality in Northern Europe in
2008 [European Values Survey (2008)] 70
Fig. 3.2 Education index from 1980 to 2013 in the Nordic countries
in a global comparison (perspective) 73
Fig. 4.1 Advertisement for sandwiches called Sómi (can also mean
decency in Icelandic) in the 2006 yearbook. The model is a
student at Hilly. The text accompanying the picture is playing
with words as it reads: “Don’t you have any decency.” The
text and the picture draw on the pornographic discourse,
frequently depicting women in degrading situations (e.g.,
having their faces covered with fluids) 118
Fig. 4.2 A picture from an interview with a male over-achiever at
Hilly in the 2010 yearbook 119
Fig. 4.3 A picture from an interview with a female over-achiever at
Hilly in the 2010 yearbook 120
Fig. 4.4 Advertisement for outdoor clothes in the 2010 yearbook.
The models are students from Hilly and the advertisement
is partly designed by them 121
Fig. 4.5 ‘Busaball Poster A’ 122
xiii
xiv List of Figures
xv
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Fig. 1.1 The drawing, which I noticed on the wall in one of the classrooms dur-
ing my fieldwork, formulates a penis and the text reads: “dogga mikið” which
means “engage in doggy-style sex”. This drawing and others alike confirm further
the (hetero)sexualized nature of school spaces, particularly within the informal
school culture, of which this book will address further
minorities with regard to schools and education, bringing the local knowl-
edge/perspective, into the global sphere, and thus contributing further to
the growing knowledge on these issues transnationally. Icelandic society
has, in line with other Nordic countries, changed radically during the past
three decades in respect to LGBTQ rights and societal attitudes toward
LGBTQ citizens. Today, LGBTQ citizens have the same legal rights to
partnership, adoption or artificial insemination as heterosexuals, taking
ninth place in European comparison of the legal environment in respect
to LGBTQ citizenship rights, according to a recent report of IGLO-
Europe.6 However, in respect to social attitudes toward LGBTQ people
Iceland scored the highest in the latest European value survey, indicating
their degree of acceptance for gender and sexual minorities.7 Being a fur-
ther indicator of positive public attitudes toward LGBTQ people is the
high attendance of Icelanders at the Gay pride celebration, being a family
festival and one of the largest outdoor festivals in Iceland.8 Furthermore,
spokespersons for an Icelandic travel agency for LGBTQ people have
reported their clients feeling safe and welcome in Iceland, enabling them
to be out irrespective of gender performances or sexuality.9 Thus, given
these changes, particularly those in respect to social attitudes, feeling safe
and the provision of welcoming social environments for LGBTQ people,
Iceland has sometimes been portrayed as a queer utopia, although some
commentators have criticized the queer utopian discourse.10 However, the
election of 2009 further entrenched the queer utopian image of Iceland,
particularly abroad, and was widely noticed in the media.11 After that elec-
tion the first openly lesbian/gay Prime Minister in a Western democratic
society led a central-left coalition government, an important marker of
acceptance of LGBTQ people in Iceland.
Iceland is also known for its progressive gender equity policies, being
in that respect in line with Sweden and Norway, which are considered to
be the most progressive Western societies in terms of their gender equity
policies.12 In fact progressive policies as well as civil rights and laws for
LGBTQ people have evolved gradually in all of the Nordic countries dur-
ing the past decades, giving the notion of the Nordic context as a utopia
in terms of gender equality and LGBTQ rights. However, in the book, I
question the discourse of the Nordic queer utopia and argue that there is
a gap between progressive civil society on the on the one hand and schools
and the education system on the other hand, particularly in terms of
implementation of policy and visibility of LGBTQ students. In fact, upon
entering the classroom, the visibility of LGBTQ people and d iscussion
4 J.I. KJARAN
Statement of Aims
The main objectives of the book are threefold: empirical, theoretical
and practical. The empirical objective is concerned to contribute further
to research on LGBTQ youth worldwide and extend the knowledge of
the situation of LGBTQ students within the educational system. More
significantly, it will further extend the literature on transgender and
transsexual students/youth, of which there are rather few studies world-
wide, and how they are disciplined by and navigate dominant hetero-
6 J.I. KJARAN
Notes
1. Allen, 2007, 2009; Epstein, 1997; Epstein and Johnsson, 1998;
Ingrey, 2012; Jones, 2011; Mirembe and Davies, 2001; Neary
et al., 2016; Rasmussen, 2006.
2. Allen, 2009, 2013; Ferfolja, 2007a, 2007b; Redman and Mag an
Ghaill, 1996; Sauntson, 2013.
3. Ferfolja, 2007b; Sauntson, 2013.
4. Christiansen and Markkola, 2005.
5. Brandal et al., 2013.
6. ILGA-Europe, 2014.
7. European Value Survey, 2008.
8. Björnsdóttir and Kjaran, 2011.
9. Personal communication with the manager of Pink Iceland
(http://www.pinkiceland.is/).
10. Ellenberger, 2013.
11. Ring, 2013.
12. World Economic Forum’s Global gender gap index from 2015.
13. Epstein, 1997; Martino, 1999, 2000; Lipkin, 2004; Pascoe, 2007;
Kjaran and Jóhannesson, 2013; Mayo, 2013.
14. Gordon et al., 2000; Kjaran and Jóhannesson, 2013.
15. Ferfolja, 2007a.
16. Ibid.
17. Rasmussen, 2006; Hansen, 2007; Concannon, 2008; LeFrancois,
2013.
18. Agamben, 1999.
19. See e.g., Binnie, 1997; Bell et al., 1994; Hubbard, 2001; Lefebvre,
1991; Oswin, 2008.
20. See e.g., Massey, 1994, 2005.
21. Foucault and Miskowiec, 1986; Ingrey, 2012.
22. In Iceland primary or compulsory school is from the age of 6 to
15. After that most students choose to attend upper secondary
schools (junior colleges), from the age of 16 to 20 (16 to 19 from
2015 after the law on the upper secondary school was changed).
Thus the Icelandic upper secondary school is equivalent to the last
two years in high school and the first two years in college. I,
10 J.I. KJARAN
t herefore, use the term “high school” throughout the book rather
than upper secondary school or junior college in order to attune
more to the global reader, as the term “high school” is better
known and used throughout the world.
23. Here curriculum refers to content of knowledge, planning of
teaching and learning, and pedagogy.
24. Gordon et al., 2000.
25. McCormack and Anderson, 2014; McCormack, 2012, 2014.
Bibliography
Agamben, G. (1999). Potentialities (D. Heller-Roazen, Trans.). Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
Allen, L. (2007). Denying the sexual subject: Schools’ regulation of student sexu-
ality. British Educational Research Journal, 33(2), 221–234.
Allen, L. (2009). ‘The 5 cm rule’: Biopower, sexuality and schooling. Discourse:
Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 33(4), 443–456.
Allen, L. (2013). Behind the bike sheds: Sexual geographies of schooling. British
Journal of Sociology of Education, 34(1), 56–75.
Bell, D., Binnie, J., Cream, J., & Valentine, G. (1994). All hyped up and no place
to go. Gender, Place and Culture, 1(1), 31–47.
Binnie, J. (1997). Coming out of geography: Towards a queer epistemology?
Environment and Planning A, 29(2), 237–248.
Björnsdóttir, K., & Kjaran, J. I. (2011). “Lokaskref að vera alveg sama.”
Margröddun í gleðigöngunni [“Final step of coming out”. Polyphonic voices
in the Icelandic gay pride]. In S. B. Ómarsdóttir (Eds.), Rannsóknir í félags-
vísindum XII. Félags- og mannvísindadeild (pp. 92–100). Reykjavík:
Félagsvísindastofnun Háskóla Íslands. Retrieved from http://skemman.is/
stream/get/1946/10251/25562/3/Rannsoknir_%C3%AD_felagsvisindum_
XII_Stjornmalafr%C3%A6dideild.pdf
Brandal, N., Bratberg, Ø., & Thorsen, D. E. (2013). The Nordic model of social
democracy. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Christiansen, N. F., & Markkola, P. (2005). Introduction. In N. F. Christiansen,
K. Petersen, N. Edling, & P. Haave (Eds.), The Nordic model of welfare. A his-
torical reappraisal (pp. 9–31). Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.
Concannon, L. (2008). Citizenship, sexual identity and social exclusion: Exploring
issues in British and American social policy. International Journal of Sociology
and Social Policy, 28, 326–339.
Ellenberger, Í. (2013). Iceland: Trouble in queer paradise. Retrieved from http://
gayiceland.is/2013/trouble-in-queer-paradise/
INTRODUCTION 11
in terms of sexuality and gender and how they have either been put under
the queer umbrella or conventionally depicted by using acronym of five
capital letters, LGBTQ,5 which in fact excludes at the same time it includes
different identities.
(CHERNETES, PSEUDOSCORPIONES.)