Against the Progress Narrative: Addressing the "Ambivalent Gift" of LGBT Legitimation

• In Event: Social Movements, Learning Sciences, and Possibilities for Transformation

Abstract

Purpose
Not everybody views 2015 as a year of uncomplicated progress for LGBT rights. Certainly, the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision (2015) that extended the right of marriage to gay couples changed the legal standing of many LGBT people; and the increased visibility of transgender people such as Caitlyn Jenner, Janet Mock, and Laverne Cox helped highlight issues of discrimination, violence, and a need for increased support for trans*-identified people (McDonough, 2015). However, some have wondered what these forms of legitimation have cost, and who is paying the price. Gay marriage came at the expense of a host of other battles, over—for example—housing and employment discrimination, support for homeless queer and transgender youth and adults, and HIV/AIDS research (Elliott, 2015; Long, 2015). Some have pointed out the racism and classism infusing the rhetoric around gay marriage (Bailey, Kandaswamy, & Richardson, 2008; Spade & Willse, 2013), and others have noted that the media’s focus on wealthier, gender-conforming transgender people have reinforced a public distaste for those who cannot, or who choose not to, “pass” as either fully female or fully male (Grinberg, 2015).

This poster takes the “ambivalent gift” (Butler, 2004) of LGBT legitimation as an important starting point for queer pedagogies, and views this as an important starting point for working with younger learners to develop strategies for problematizing dominant narratives about social justice movements. Drawing on a research design and data collected in a late elementary classroom, I offer principles for learning scientists interested in challenging progress-oriented narratives of LGBT issues.

Perspectives
This poster draws on the commitments of queer theory and, in particular, aspects of queer theory that offer tools for resisting narratives of cultural progress (e.g., Britzman, 1998; Britzman & Gilbert, 2004; Kumashiro, 2000) and for theorizing identities as flexible and shifting (Bornstein, 2013; Davis, 2009; McWilliams, 2015).

Methods and Data
Data were collected during the 2013-2014 academic year, in a mixed-grade (4th/5th) classroom in a public charter school in the Midwestern United States. Students participated in a 10-week “gender diversity” unit focusing on gender identity and gender variance. These data address the following questions:
• What pedagogical approaches can support engagement with the complicated issues of legitimation and identity?
• What design approaches can enable researchers to highlight complexities and contradictions in data and to resist the drive toward “progress narratives” in education?

Results
Drawing on the data collected during the “gender diversity” unit, I present the following principles:
• Pedagogical approaches: Create a culture of challenge, reject “normal,” find at least 3 sides to every story, make identities the subject of scrutiny
• Design approaches: reject a progress-oriented telos; design for contradiction and failure

I offer examples to illustrate how these principles supported engagement with issues of gender diversity and sexual identity.

Significance
This poster pushes conversations about LGBT issues in education forward, at a time when many educators, policymakers, funders, and other stakeholders may be tempted to believe there is a decreased need to focus on these concerns.

Author

• Jacob McWilliams, University of Colorado - Boulder