The Emotional Labor of LGBT-Q Teachers in Achieving an Appropriate Visibility in Irish Schools

• In Event: 33.068 - Narrating Queer Sexualities in Research and Education

Abstract

In Irish schools, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBT-Q) sexualities have been rendered invisible through silence, or made visible, as the targets of policies and approaches that seek to ‘include’. The Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Act was signed into law in Ireland in 2010 providing same-sex couples with many of the rights accorded to civil marriage. Drawing on interviews and written reflections with 15 LGBT-Q teachers over a one-year period, this paper provides unique insight into their emotional labour and the minutiae of how ‘appropriateness’ is constituted in school spaces. I argue that the emotional labour involved in claiming legitimacy is both conducted by and performative of heteronormative norms of appropriateness in school spaces.

Author

• Aoife Neary, University of Limerick