Inclusion and Diversity Beyond Cishet Normativity? Promises and Practices in Physical Culture

• In Event: 45.081 - Transforming Sport in Education: International Perspectives on LGBTQ Inclusion

Abstract

Objective

This paper examines the capacity of two physical cultural fields (sport and Health & Physical Education in schools) to provide inclusive spaces for people who identify as LGBTIQQA+*and enable them to foster positive health, wellbeing, social and educative outcomes.

Perspectives/ Theory

Fields of physical culture (including sport, leisure, Health & Physical Education, exercise, movement pursuits, games and play) are significant in providing positive health, wellbeing, social and educative outcomes for participants. Government strategic priorities and guidelines in Australia act as a context to current practices in schools (Health & Physical Education) and sport for inclusion and diversity. These include those by VicHealth to 'Encourage regular Physical Activity' and 'Improve Mental Wellbeing' and the Australian Sports Commission Trans and Intersex Guidelines for sport. In this paper, I draw on queer theory (Butler, 1990, 1993; Sedgwick, 1993), queering (Gowlett & Rasmussen, 2014), Bourdieu’s (1990) notions of field, habitus and logics of practice, and the concepts of abjection and alterity (Pérez-Samaniego et al., 2016) to address the practices of inclusion/exclusion and advocacy for/ marginalisation of LGBTIQQA+* individuals within contexts of physical culture. The practices are deemed important for social, pedagogical and health reasons but are arguably still within heteronormative and cisgender logics. Teachers, coaches, administrators and policy makers have been found to significantly influence contexts for student/player inclusion, their engagement and learning, and in delivering the promised outcomes used to justify schooling and sport, but have they yet gone beyond cishet normativity?

Methods, Data Sources, and Analysis:

Field texts (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) include official documents, case study practices, and outcomes of survey and narrative work. I queerly re-use inclusion differentiation (Hall, 2009; Nelson, 1977) and an identity scale (Cass, 1979) to create interim research texts (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) as a form of analysis.

Findings:

In the fields of Australasian sport and education, promises of inclusion and diversity are still largely oriented towards cisgender and heteronormative practices, these fields arguably in a state of bodily and institutional confusion. However, examples of practice are being established that might be considered further along the queered continuum, with a well-formed identity of inclusion and diversity. Based on the invitation to preservice teachers and coaches to ‘fold new bodies into the physical education assemblage (Landi, 2018) and imagine transgender, intersex and queer bodies in HPE and sport (Pérez-Samaniego et al., 2016), I conclude with a ‘point in time’ analysis of ‘where we are now’ along this continuum to enable future comparisons of evolution and understand what it might take to be able to say ‘yes’ to ‘are we there yet?’ I suggest substantial research, policy generation, institutional and grassroots practices are still required alongside asking different questions of HPE and sport.

Significance:

Significantly, this paper offers a way to monitor progress towards inclusion and diversity associated with sex, gender and sexuality for physical culture contexts, in particular HPE and sport.

Author

• . lisahunter