After Homosexual... came debates over "bullying victims" in education policy

Abstract

Gay liberationists have pushed for the development of education policies on gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (GLBTIQ) students. However, some Queer theorists can be suspicious of the value of anti-homophobic-bullying movements in schools, and the way these can be used to fit neo-liberal agendas which limit and de-radicalise GLBTIQ activism through shifting the focus from broader educational changes to individual complaints-handling processes. Australian education policies and their processes at the national and state government levels now feature several different constructions of GLBTIQ students. This paper engages with current debates around the usefulness of such policies, and particularly the argument about the value of their constructions of GLBTIQ students for both gay liberation and Queer utopics. It reports on a Critical Discourse Analysis which included textual policy analysis, interviews with key policy informants, and survey data from over 3,000 Australian GLBTIQ students. It argues that despite their function in protecting education departments from lawsuits and allowing Australian politicians to engage with gay agendas whilst "safely" side-stepping fraught topics, direct constructions of GLBTIQ students as bullying victims and potential complainants had specific usefulness (particularly when combined with other representations) in policy production and satisfying GLBTIQ students' need for representation.