This is the last post to be published at on the LGBTQ Families Speak Out website.  Starting in September, Tara will be launching a new website called Gender. Sexuality. School. which will serve as a curated information hub for current news, research, books, conferences, and publications about issues of gender, sexuality and school.

You can visit gendersexualityschool.ca beginning September 1, 2021, when Season 4 of Tara's podcast Gender. Sexuality. School. will be launched with an interview with Karleen Pendleton Jiménez, the author of the middle-grade book The Street Belongs to Us (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021).

The last set of presentations at QSEC all looked at gender and sexuality through auto-ethnographic and life history research approaches

LGBTQ youth and gender/sexual hegemony in Vietnam: Familial shame
and possibilities for porous gender and sexual identities
LE NGUYEN GIANG (Brock), FIONA BLAIKIE (BROCK)
 
Giang spoke about the connections of the Confucian principle of shame, being a first-born Vietnamese son who identifies as gay.
            Shame to your family (picking marriage to not bring shame to your family)

 
Contemporary pedagogical perspectives on the treatment of gender and
sexuality: Considering the past, present and future (in Jamaica)
George McCaulsky (University of the West Indies, Mona)
 
George looked at issues gender, sexuality and schooling through the frameworks of:
 
Hierarchical plantation economy (hope 2001)
Colonial consciousness (Martin-Keer 2019)
 
 Queering Masculine Capital-On the Performativity of Complicity
Qingyan Sun (Alberta)
 
Qingyan completed an auto-ethnographic study of his complicity in reproducing hegemonic masculinity that shores up heteropatriarchy
 
Facing Discomfort with Gender Transition: Looking Within and Without for
Perspective and Moralistic Transformation
Elizabeth McNeilly (Calgary)
 
Elizabeth used the frameworks of transformative learning theory and life history methodology to discuss different kinds of approaches to gender transition parents and teachers take.

Congratulations to all of the QSEC presenters at CSSE and Congress this year!  We had a terrific conference.
   

​Yesterday, June 2, 2021, QSEC hosted two more panels at its four-day conference. 

Panel 3 Interrogating Gender in Educational Spaces

GSAs in Alberta: Supporting the Well-Being of Our Youth 
Maria Di Stasio (MacEwan), Lauren Alston (Alberta), Jason Harley (McGill),
Chiaki Konishi (McGill)
 
Maria Di Stasio and Lauren Alston discussed three components of self-determination  - autonomy, competency, relatedness - as they emerged in the lives of LGBTQ students in Alberta high schools.  The findings of their survey research showed that in comparison to heterosexual students, LGBTQ students felt less autonomy, competency, relatedness generally and with teachers.  

Teachers and principals still have a lot of work to do in order to create classrooms and schools that expect and welcome and LGBTQ students and families.

LGBTQ+ ally training programs in U.S. & Canadian higher education:
possibilities and challenges
Jeremiah Wintringer (Victoria), Tatiana Gounko (Victoria)
 
Jeremiah Wintringer presented a robust literature review of LGBTQ+ ally training programs (ATPs) and focused his discussion on critiques of ATPs which argues that they focus primarily on empathy vs action and that ATPs need to more to promote advocacy and activism.
 
The finding that ATPS should do more to promote advocacy and activism reflects the talk that Andrew Campbell gave at QSEC's AGM on Monday May 31, 2021.

A good book to read on allyship is Anne Bishop's Becoming an Ally which is now in its third edition with Fernwood.
https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/becoming-an-ally
 
Toward proactive support for transgender and/or gender non-conforming
teacher candidates: Initial findings of an action research study
Lee Airton (Queen's), Michelle Searle (Queen's), Kel Martin (Queen's), Sofia
Melendez (Queen's), Natalie Lefebvre (Queen's), Tristan Lewis
 
Lee Airton and their team presented their team's findings on a barrier mapping exercise of the experience of Sunny, a (fictional) trans teacher candidate in Queen's teacher education program which produced a robust set of recommendations for change.
           
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Panel 4. Pedagogy and Praxis
Dreaming from the margins: Decolonizing, unwhitening, Indigenizing and
endarkening queer and trans educational scholarship
Lindsay Cavanaugh (OISE-UT), Bishop Owis (OISE-UT)
 
Lindsay Cavanaugh and Bishop Owis shared their own robust literature review on queer and trans educational scholarship and found there are limited BIPOC and limited anti-colonial and anti-racist perspectives in queer scholarship

Lindsay and Bishop then presented a powerful analogy for thinking about moving beyond these limitations:  Future research and teaching projects can be theorized as "following water" through different new entry points -- such as endarkening, browning, and Two-Sprit critique -- to a shared destination of creating anti-colonial and anti-racist perspectives in queer and trans educational scholarship.
 
 To support queer and trans scholars in this effort, Lindsay and Bishop gave us a set of questions we can ask ourselves:
          

• What “bodies of water” does your research or teaching engage with?
• What “bodies of water” does my paradigm (ways of knowing, being and valuing) align with?  What ways of knowing, being and valuing might be missed within my personal lens?
• What are my own social locations? (Am I queer, trans, non-binary, bi, ace etc.? Am I white, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian etc.? Is my racial identity legible by others? Am I disabled or able-bodied? Do I come from an upper, middle or low class context? What best reflects my financial situation currently? Am I thin, midsized, fat? How am I perceived by others? )
• What “bodies of water” do I feel comfortable engaging with?
• Am I worried or afraid of engaging with other “bodies of water”?
• What “bodies of water” do I feel comfortable engaging with? Am I worried or afraid of engaging with other “bodies of water”?

Does Queer-Inclusive Education in Alberta Lead to Equity or Regulation?
Gillian Robinson (Alberta)

In her presentation Gillian Robinson raised important questions about the work on queer-inclusive education in Alberta:  Does it lead to equitable change or does it simple lead to regulation without any lasting change. 
 
Innocence, purity, and queerness in the Alberta education debate (around parent rights and children’s rights)
Bridget Stirling (Alberta)
 
Bridget Stirling's analysis of the ways themes of innocence, purity and queerness were raised in the Alberta education debate around parents rights and children's rights) led to a lively sharing of writing about childhood as innocent and pure:
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• Kerry Robinson’s 2013 book on sexual citizenship speaks directly to this
• Jessica Ringrose's writing on children’s “sexual innocence” that’s super relevant
• Smith's 2012 article "Producing governable subjects: Images of childhood old and new" in Childhood, 19(1), 24-37.

 
Participants also shared Jake Pyne's writing on trans identities and autism:

• "Autistic Disruptions, Trans Temporalities: A Narrative 'Trap Door' in Time" and
• "Arresting Ashley X: Trans youth, puberty blockers and the question of whether time is on your side"

​Day 2 of QSSEC brought us a second panel on policy implications for gender and sexuality in education.

Before the panel began, Chair Kate Reid provided us with a concrete action to show support for Indigenous communities mourning the deaths of 215 Indigenous children who died at residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia.

Kate provided us with the names of three organizations who are doing activist work to support Indigenous communities and asked us to send donations to one or all of them.
 
https://www.nibtrust.ca   
https://www.irsss.ca/home     
https://raventrust.com

Panel 2:  Policy Implications for Gender and Sexuality in Education
June 1, 2021

There were three different papers presented at the panel.
 
Sell it as a positive aspect of yourself': Non-binary educators' strategies for
finding school jobs
Lee Iskander (UBC)
 
Ripped from the headlines: Examining LGBTQ+ issues in Jamaican print
media and its impact on education
Andrew Campbell (OISE-UT), George McCaulsky (University of the West
Indies, Mona)

 
Toby goes to Catholic school: Ontario Catholic school boards and the
Toby's Act inclusion of gender expression and gender identity in provincial
human rights law
Jacob DesRochers (Queen's), Lee Airton (Queen's), Kyle Kirkup (Ottawa),
Linsday Herriot (Victoria)

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Later that afternoon, our colleague Lee Airton presented a keynote talk called The (re-)emergence of gender diversity and the challenge for teacher education in which they spoke about the challenges and violence trans and non-binary teacher candidates face when they are out on their practicum placements. 

Instead of trying to change associate teachers’ minds and views about gender identity and gender expression, and asking teacher candidates to become a “gender inclusive sacrificial lamb” Lee recommends teacher education programs:

• Abolish centralized practicum placement
• Design program so that school staff, faculty, TC are known to each other before practicum begins
• Stop talking about professionalism

 
Both Andrew Campbell and Lee Airton have been guests on Tara Goldstein's podcast Gender. Sexuality. School. and you can listen to them talk about their research and writing at ​www.lgbtqfamiliesspeakout.ca/podcast.html

Trent professor and one of our families to participate in the LGBTQ Families Speak Out project, Karleen Pendleton Jiménez has released a new book! Below you can read the description of the book, and register for the virtual launch TOMORROW with Another Story Bookshop. 
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A sweet middle-grade chapter book about two best friends who transform their torn-up street into a world where imaginations can run wild. 
In 1984 Los Angeles, Alex is a tomboy who would rather wear her hair short and her older brother's hand-me-downs, and Wolf is a troubled kid who's been wearing the same soldier's uniform ever since his mom died. They temporarily set their worries aside when their street is torn up by digging machines and transformed into a muddy wonderland with endless possibilities. To pass the hot summer days, the two best friends seize the opportunity to turn Muscatel Avenue into a battleground and launch a gleeful street war against the rival neighbourhood kids. 
But when Alex and Wolf make their headquarters inside a deep trench, Alex's grandmother warns them that some buried things want to be found and some want to stay hidden and forgotten. Although she has the wisdom of someone who has survived the Mexican Revolution, the Spanish Flu, and immigration to a new country, the kids ignore her warning, unearthing more than they bargained for. 
The exuberant and expressive line drawings by Gabriela Godoy perfectly capture the summers of youth, when anything feels possible and an adventure is always around the corner. Bursting with life and feeling, both the people and the land come alive in a tale interwoven with Mexican-American identity, experience, and history. The Street Belongs to Us is a story of family, friendship, and unconditional acceptance, even when it breaks your heart. 
REGISTER HERE 

Listen along to Scene 7: So Far, So Good from our audio play, Out at School. You can listen to the full podcast on all streaming platforms! https://kite.link/OAS-audioplay 

Thank you to everyone who came out to the launch of our audio play, Out at School! It was amazing to see some familiar and new faces there. You can now listen along on our website under the Out at School link on our website or on your favourite podcast app.  

Listen here: kite.link/OAS-audioplay 
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