Teachers Entering Into Civil Partnership in Ireland: The Normalizing Project

• In Event: Queering Educational Subjectivities

Abstract

In 2010, the Civil Partnership (CP) and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Bill was signed into law in Ireland. Given that alternatives to heterosexuality have been largely invisible in Irish schools, the process of negotiating one’s teacher identity while entering into a CP presents itself as a complex one. This paper draws on qualitative research with 15 primary and second-level teachers. As a result of entering into CP, the teachers experienced feelings of legitimacy and confidence that positively shaped their negotiations of everyday school life. CP created a space where previously silenced lives had a ‘normalising’ mechanism of expression. However, discourses of hetero-normalisation and desexualisation emerged that are evidence of the forces of heteronormativity in operation in Irish schools.

Authors

• Aoife Neary, University of Limerick

• Breda Gray

• Mary O'Sullivan, University of limerick