Constructions of "Fault" and Reductive Approaches: Parents' Considerations of Bullying of Gender and Sexuality–Diverse Students

• In Event: Queer Kids, School Violence, and the Limits of "Bullying"

Abstract

Purpose: School-based harassment of gender and sexuality diverse (GSD) students remains a significant problem in Australia (Ullman, 2021). School cultures which license such behaviours are cultivated by a combination of factors, including a lack of policy/curricular guidance available to educators which articulates GSD identities. Simultaneously, moral panics around educators’ inclusion of GSD content have dominated the conservative media landscape (Law, 2017). These have capitalised on discourses of parental opposition to GSD content, gaining traction in the absence of representative research data on parents’ perspectives (Ferfolja & Ullman, 2020).
Theoretical Framework: Australian schools are situated within a ‘culture of limitation’ (Ferfolja & Ullman, 2020) which constrains educators’ efforts to address the discriminatory bullying of GSD students. Australia’s culture of limitation is perpetuated by a range of intersecting discourses including an entitled masculinity arising from the nation’s heteropatriarchal/colonialist beginnings (Gray & Nicholas, 2019), neoliberalism and neoconservativism, fundamentalist religion, and nationalism (Browne and Nash, 2017), homophobia and cisgenderism. These forces, in concert with a reductive bully framework (Ullman, 2018) centred on bully-victim dyads and a simplistic identification of ‘fault’, block the cultivation of equitable education systems and make educators fearful to directly address homophobic/transphobic discrimination.
Methods and Participants: To better understand Australian parents’ views on GSD-inclusive curriculum, a national, mixed method approach was taken. This included a nationally-representative online survey of parents (N = 2093), alongside qualitative data collection with parents of GSD identifying children (N = 28) attending government/public school. Qualitative data collection took the form of interviews as well as participation in an online forum.
While both the survey and the qualitative enquiry included multiple focus areas such as parents’ sense of the purpose of relationships/sexuality education, content and stages for GSD-inclusive topics, and recommendations for content and practices, this paper highlights the elements focused on marginalisation and bullying of GSD students.
Findings: Surveyed parents were overwhelmingly supportive of GSD-inclusive curriculum and were primarily motivated by concerns for GSD students’ wellbeing and a recognition that inclusive curriculum could lower this form of bias-based harassment. Of survey participants whose child/ren were GSD, nearly half either had confirmation or suspicions that their child had been bullied at school. Interview and forum data from parents of GSD children detailed schooling environments where bullying was positioned and addressed in reductive ways that often rendered the target as an ‘outsider’ and placed the fault for marginalisation/harassment at the feet of the GSD child. School responses reported by parents of GSD students in our research were primarily reductive and, at worst, additionally punitive.
Significance: In contrast with assumptions perpetuated through a culture of limitation (Ferfolja and Ullman 2020) sit the attitudes and experiences of Australia’s parents, who are aware that directives to ‘stop bullying’ are insufficient when working to reduce the social marginalisation of GSD students. As illustrated by parents of GSD students, it is imperative that teachers and administrators receive the institutional resources and professional development required to meaningfully address this form of bias-based discrimination at all levels of schooling.

Authors

• Jacqueline Ullman, Western Sydney University, Sydney (Australia)

• Tania Ferfolja, University of Western Sydney