This Isn't Supposed to Be Funny: Irreverence in Gender and Sexuality Diversity Studies in Education

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 26
  In Roundtable Session: Queering Approaches to Curriculum and Pedagogy

Abstract

What happens when efforts to welcome gender and/or sexual diversity in schools are hilarious? A body of research substantiates how schools are harmful places for people who do not follow heteronormative and cisnormative paths, and has been leveraged to change some school structures and policies. That said, “are the wins worth the long-term costs of thinking of ourselves as damaged” (Tuck, 2009, p. 415)? Using affect and assemblage theories, this paper tracks some hidden costs to gender and sexual diversity studies in education exacted by the “damage stats” and their demand for solemnity. To do so, I re-visit an eruption of irreverent and irrepressible laughter about an irretrievably inaccurate – and hilarious – diagram while team-coding school board gender diversity policies.

Author

• Lee Airton, Queen's University