Peer-Reviewed Journal Details
Mandatory Fields
Bryan, A.
2019
September
International Journal of Bullying Prevention
A Sociological Critique of Strategies and Educational Policies that Address LGBT Youth Issues
Published
()
Optional Fields
Critical discourse analysis; homophobic bullying; heteronormativity; suicidality; gendered sexual socialisation; gender policing; “after-queer” scholarship; youth strategy.
This paper adopts sociological and “after-queer” lenses in order to problematize antibullying approaches that are justified on the basis of the apparent “vulnerability” of LGBTQ youth to a range of negative mental health outcomes, including self-harm and suicidality. Subjecting recent youth strategies and educational policies and resources to critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2003), it identifies the discourse of risk/vulnerability as a dominant or “nodal” discourse around which other sub-discourses—including the discourses of homophobic bullying, isolation, suicidality, self-harm, resilience, etc—cluster. It considers the discursive effects of this configuration of discourses which foreground or include certain aspects or experiences of being LGBTQ to the exclusion of others, resulting in a “selective representation,”“simplification” and “condensation” of a much more complex social and cultural reality that contemporary queer youth experience (Fairclough, 2005). It argues that the singling out of LGBTQ youth as being “at risk” of homophobic bullying and mental health difficulties has a range of abnormalizing, Othering, re-stigmatizing and heteronormativity-bolstering effects that obfuscate the role that schools themselves play in creating and sustaining the conditions that produce bullying. Rather than positioning LGBTQ youth as victims, and specifically targeting those who identify as LGBT as the beneficiaries of anti-homophobic bullying initiatives, it advocates a range of alternative frameworks that privilege the conditions and effects of gender regulation and normativity to which all children and youth are routinely subjected. The paper concludes by highlighting the conditions, and school-based organisational and cultural practices that currently exist in most schools, that need to be addressed in order to reduce the incidence of gender and sexuality-based bullying in schools.
London
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42380-019-00047-1
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42380-019-00047-1
Grant Details