Bisexuality in Education

Erasure, Exclusion and the Absence of Intersectionality

Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317417378
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Although many schools and educational systems, from elementary to tertiary level, state that they endorse anti-homophobic policies, pedagogies and programs, there appears to be an absence of education about, and affirmation of, bisexuality and minimal specific attention paid to bi-phobia. Bisexuality appears to be falling into the gap between the binary of heterosexuality and homosexuality that informs anti-homophobic policies, programs, and practices in schools initiatives such as health education, sexuality education, and student welfare. These erasures and exclusions leave bisexual students, family members and educators feeling silenced and invisibilized within school communities. Also absent is attention to intersectionality, or how indigeneity, gender, class, ethnicity, rurality and age interweave with bisexuality. Indeed, as much research has shown, erasure, exclusion, and the absence of intersectionality have been considered major factors in bisexual young people, family members and educators in school communities experiencing worse mental, emotional, sexual and social health than their homosexual or heterosexual counterparts.

This book is the first of its kind, providing an international collection of empirical research, theory and critical analysis of existing educational resources relating to bisexuality in education. Each chapter addresses three significant issues in relation to bisexuality and schooling: erasure, exclusion, and the absence of intersectionality. From indigenous to rural schools, from tertiary campuses to elementary schools, from films to picture books as curriculum resources, from educational theory to the health and wellbeing of bisexual students, this book's contributors share their experiences, expertise and ongoing questions.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Bisexuality.

Erasure, Exclusion by Inclusion, and the Absence of Intersectionality: Introduction and Acknowledgements

MARIA PALLOTTA-CHIAROLLI

School of Health and Social Development, Deakin University, Burwood, Australia

Now that the Journal is entering its second decade of life, we propose that future contributors continue to address the issues we have struggled with throughout our careers, such as developing more effective educational strategies to reduce biphobia and dispel the negative stereotypes about people who resist easy classifications. (Eliason & Elia, 2011, p. 417)

It was the above passage in the 10-Year Anniversary Issue of the Journal of Bisexuality (to which I was invited to contribute: Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2011) that inspired me to contact the editors, Regina Reinhardt and Jonathan Alexander, and propose a special issue on “Bisexuality in Education.” After more than 2 years of calling for submissions and actively seeking them—a process that demonstrated the scarcity of educational research, policy development, pedagogical practices, and student welfare when addressing bisexuality in students, staff, and parents—we offer this pivotal collection of research, theory, and implementation strategies from scholars around the world.

It has been an absolute pleasure and honor to work with them. In particular, Mickey Eliason and John P. Elia—and especially Elia’s 2010 article—highlighted the three major concerns with the place and space of bisexuality in education that have been ongoing disquiets in my own research and activism, and indeed in the work of the contributors to this special issue. Those three concerns are erasure, exclusion by inclusion, and the absence of intersectionality (Martin & Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2009; Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2005a, 2005b, 2006; Pallotta-Chiarolli & Martin, 2009). Thus, I was very humbled and honored when John agreed not only to be a discussant and peer reviewer for the articles, but also submitted a new article himself. His passionate engagement and collegiality throughout the development of this issue have continued to inspire and encourage me.

I was also very humbled and honored when a very significant mentor and pioneer in queer educational research and activism, James T. Sears, agreed to write the Foreword to this special issue. From the time when I wrote a chapter for his pioneering text about queering elementary education (Sears & Letts, 1999) to his unfaltering encouragement of my research and subsequent publication about bisexual students and polyamorous families as part of his Curriculum, Cultures, and (Homo)Sexualities Series (Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2010a), James has been fundamental to my academic/activist development. As his Foreword continues to attest, James remains a visionary, thinking beyond the now—where we are still encumbered with the “crutches of categories.”

Another honor was to have Sheela Lambert, founder of the Bi Writers Association, and another generous and insightful mentor in my journey as a writer, agree to prepare a review of bisexual books for use in senior secondary schools and universities. Amid an extremely busy schedule as a writer, community leader, and activist, Sheela somehow found the time to prepare an incredibly thorough collection of texts for this issue.

It is also sheer delight to be producing this special issue with managing editor Regina Reinhardt and Editor-in-Chief Jim Weinrich. Their patience and good humor have accompanied me. From Australia, I would often go to sleep after reading their e-mails, and wake up to their e-mails: pleasant markers of my day. As I wrote in the 10-Year Anniversary Issue, the Journal has been a key site for me to be inspired by, learn from, and contribute to a community of researchers and activists such as Fritz Klein, Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, and Ron Fox. It is where theoretical debates, empirical explorations, and personal journeys on the borders of the hetero–homo hierarchical dichotomy have been shared.

So what is the premise of this Bisexuality in Education special issue? Firstly, the term bisexual is used to define students, parents, and educators who are sexually attracted to males, females, and gender diverse persons; and/or identify as bisexual; and/or are sexually engaging with males, females, and gender-diverse persons; and/or identify themselves with broader and more inclusive terms such as “sexually fluid” and “sexually flexible” (Halperin, 2009). Even though many schools and educational systems, from elementary to tertiary, state that they endorse antihomophobic policies, pedagogies, and programs, there appears to be an absence of education about, and affirmation of, bisexuality, and minimal specific attention to bi-phobia in curriculum, policy, and student welfare (Elia, 2010; Kennedy & Fisher, 2010). Bisexuality continues to fall into the gap between the binary of heterosexuality and homosexuality across all educational sectors. These absences and erasures leave bisexual students, family members, and educators feeling silenced and invisibilized within school communities. Indeed, these absences and erasures have been considered a major factor in bisexual young people, family members, and educators in school communities experiencing worse mental, emotional, sexual, and social health than their homosexual or heterosexual counterparts (see Elia’s article in this issue). Also of interest is the persistence of bisexual erasure in adult-developed resources and programs, even though there is increasing evidence of sexual identities and practices in youth subcultures that are adopting shifting discursive and societal constructs of sexuality, characterized by notions of fluidity, ambisexuality, and a reluctance to label their sexuality according to the heterosexual/homosexual binary (Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2010a).

AN OVERVIEW OF THIS ISSUE

The articles in this issue profoundly engage with and problematize the three impediments to education systems when those systems engage with sexual diversity instead of sexual duality, namely, erasure, exclusion by inclusion into gay and lesbian categories, and the absence of intersectionality (wherein other facets of identity and experience that interweave with sexuality are not taken into account, such as class, gender, Indigeneity/Aboriginality, ethnicity, geographical location, and religion).

With respect to First Nations peoples, we begin with Margaret Robinson’s article on preventing bisexual erasure in Aboriginal schools in Canada and the United States, certainly an issue that still needs to be addressed for Aboriginal youth in Australia. Robinson delicately and deftly journeys between (on the one hand) the need to reclaim precolonial and pre-Christian constructions of gender and sexuality, such as “two-spiritedness,” which allows for much more fluidity and continuum than the colonizing and Christianizing system of rigid dichotomy, and (on the other) the need to also critique the two-spirited identity model if it “risks replicating the dichotomous constructions of sexuality” that were violently enforced on Aboriginal peoples. As Robinson argues, “two-spirited identity, traditional and contemporary, is at once artificial and strategically useful, offering a sense of culture and purpose for Aboriginal youth” (p. 29).

From the violence of colonialism on Aboriginal peoples to the violence of what can be called hetero-colonization on sexual minority students in schools, the second article, by John P. Elia, powerfully demonstrates the negative health impacts of bisexual erasure on bisexual youth: “Lives and welfare are at stake. It is unfair, unhealthy, and sometimes even deadly for the marginalized” (p. 50). John introduces two very useful models: a multidimensional model of health, and the social ecological model of health promotion. Schools can use these models to conduct an audit of the levels of bisexual erasure and their negative health impacts on all members of the school community, as well as to construct resources, programs, and other implementation strategies to address these negative health impacts.

The next three articles take us into specific research projects that have been undertaken into bisexuality in policy, practice, and student welfare. Tiffany Jones and Lynne Hillier, renowned Australian researchers of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (GLBTIQ) young people and homophobic bullying in schools, consider the extent to which bisexual subjectivity is reflected in “Australian education policies, sexuality education practices, and school provisions” (p. 58). They address the exclusion of bisexuality through its inclusion into gay and lesbian categories as part of the GLBTIQ acronym and broader antihomophobic policies and programs, with bisexual students in their research expressing both “a need and a desire to have their sexuality represented more explicitly in discussions, sex education efforts, and policy messages at school” (p. 69).

Mary-Anne McAllum’s research with young bisexual women in secondary school in New Zealand provides further evidence of how many “endure a continued silence at school, underpinned by misrecognition of their sexual identity” (p. 87). The dismissive stance of some teachers, symbolic of the bi-denials and bi-erasures in the wider educational system, is summed up in a teacher’s words to a young bisexual woman: that her “question regarding the invisibility of bisexuality in her school sexuality education program” was “just semantics.” The need for more researchers to adopt Mary-Anne’s feminist qualitative methodology “as a means of giving women’s voices a chance for representation that was egalitarian and accurate, and that defied marginalization” (p. 78) is validated by listening to this young bisexual woman and others in research. Their insights and lived experiences undeniably exemplify the need for adult-centric educational policy, program, and practice development to listen and respond.

The third research article, by Jennifer Stroup, Jenny Glass, and Tracy J. Cohn, explores the similar and differing needs and experiences of bisexual, gay, and lesbian students attending rural colleges in the United States. Their sample showed that “a significant number of LGB students experienced discrimination for a variety of reasons, including sexual orientation, gender, religion, and personal appearance” (p. 106). Their research is another excellent example of how exclusion by inclusion needs to be identified by self-reflexive researchers to then extrapolate research findings according to the specific characteristics of sexual minority students. As Jennifer et al. state, “limited empirical attention has been devoted to [students who identify as bisexual], specifically in a university context” (p. 96). The need for an intersectional approach is also evidenced by this research, for it recognizes that another form of exclusion by inclusion has occurred whereby the “majority of research to date has studied LGB populations residing in metropolitan, urban, or suburban samples, overlooking the unique cultural experience of rural residents” (p. 97).

The next article takes us from the lived experience to the literary experience that, as B. J. Epstein strongly states, are intricately interwoven: “we might read books to see ourselves reflected (i.e., mirror books) and we might also read books to see other selves (i.e., window books)” (p. 111). As Russo (1981) wrote in relation to gay and lesbian representations in film and Bryant (1996, 2011) in relation to bisexual representations in film (and equally attributable to bisexuality in literature), the representations, misrepresentations, and under-representations mean that a “binary system in regard to sexuality” is still propagated, “and does not allow children to learn about other ways of living” (Epstein, this issue, p. 122). B. J. succinctly names this as “the case of the missing bisexuals” (p. 122). This calls to mind two theories conducive to analyzing the relationship between text and teaching, and certainly framed why I deliberately constructed positive bisexual and polyamorous characters in my novel (Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2008). First, cultivation theory (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, & Signorielli, 2002) states that exposure over a prolonged period of time to portrayals of reality as defined by the text will lead to perceptions of reality that are consistent with these portrayals. Thus, erasing or negatively representing bisexuality in literature leads to internalized bi-negativity in bisexual children and young people, and bi-phobia in nonbisexual young readers. Second, social cognitive theory (Bandura, 2002) states that individuals may observe textual portrayals for insight into how they themselves could behave—especially if the behaviors in question are performed by individuals perceived as attractive, powerful, and popular, and if the outcomes are viewed as appealing. So if an observed behavior of a bisexual young person or adult results in a desired outcome in the film, television program, or book, individuals will engage in similar behavior believing that in doing so they will gain the same benefits.

The final article in this momentous collection is by Daniel Marshall. It is a profound and progressive critique of the contemporary focus on “antihomophobia” and “safe schools” in educational policy, and a demand “to recall longstanding queer reservations about narrowing agendas in the cultural politics of sexuality” (p. 127). Daniel clearly argues that “the safety discourse has hardened around a reduc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword – Becoming and Being: Bisexuality and the Search for Self
• 1. Erasure, Exclusion by Inclusion, and the Absence of Intersectionality: Introduction and Acknowledgements
• 2. “A Hope to Lift Both My Spirits”: Preventing Bisexual Erasure in Aboriginal Schools
• 3. Bisexuality and Schooling: Erasure and Implications for Health
• 4. The Erasure of Bisexual Students in Australian Education Policy and Practice
• 5. “Bisexuality is Just Semantics …”: Young Bisexual Women’s Experiences in New Zealand Secondary Schools
• 6. The Adjustment to U.S. Rural College Campuses for Bisexual Students in Comparison to Gay and Lesbian Students: An Exploratory Study
• 7. “The Case of the Missing Bisexuals”: Bisexuality in Books for Young Readers
• 8. Queer Contingencies: Bifurcation and the Sexuality of Schooling
• 9. Bisexuality in Education: Exploring the Experiences, Resourcing, and Representations of Bisexual Students, Bisexual Parents, and Educators in Educational Systems—A Discussion
• 10. Some Thoughts on the Benefits and Limitations of Using Film in Bisexual Education
• 11. Bisexual Books Recommended and Critiqued for Use in Universities and Senior Secondary Schools
• Index