Beyond Heterosexuality in the Beyond Bullying Project: Meanings of Bisexuality in Girls' Narratives of Desire

• In Event: 31.024 - "Dear Darling, Stiiir It Up!" Youth Reprogramming the World Beyond General Education and Family Separations

Abstract

This paper explores narratives of bisexuality in the Beyond Bullying Project. Beyond Bullying invited students and teachers in three U.S. high schools to enter a booth and share stories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) sexuality and gender. Beyond Bullying aimed to identify the ordinary stories of LGBTQ sexuality and gender that circulate in schools and that an interventionist framing may obscure. After offering an overview of Beyond Bullying, this paper focuses on girls’ narratives of bisexuality. For a girl to name herself bisexual was to declare herself open to the surprise of desire; resist the disciplining expectations of white, middle-class, and heteronormative schooling; and point to curricular possibilities adjacent to those that currently prevail in U.S. schools.

Authors

• Jen Gilbert, York University

• Jessica Fields, San Francisco State University

• Laura Mamo

• Nancy L. Lesko, Teachers College, Columbia University