Introduction
This paper explores the multiplicity of ways in which lesbian physical education students and teachers construct and manage their respective identities within higher education and the schooling system in England. In so doing the life stories of lesbian physical education students and teachers are utilised to illustrate not only how difference is disguised by the ability to 'pass' the heterosexual presumption but also to demonstrate how their stories are about resisting the hegemony of heterosexual lifestyles. Narratives from interviews with white secondary students and teachers are interpreted to reveal how these women may appear at times to be complicit in and colluding with heterosexual discourses whilst at the same time resisting and challenging both from within and without. Further to this through an analysis of the contemporary socio-political and cultural context and in particular Section 28 of The Local Government Act 1988 it will be claimed that heterosexual regulation and domination is never entirely successful and that wherever there is power there is resistance. Finally, it will be argued that our task is not only to listen to the voices from the margins but to recognise that difference is a civil rights issues, which requires a change in laws to reflect and acknowledge all our realities. As such we need to pursue the goal of social and sexual justice, thereby eliminating the privileging of heterosexual identities and creating a social landscape that allows us all to define our lives.
Sexuality And Surveillance Of The Self
In order to understand how these lesbian students and teachers live out their lives in schools and why they feel the need to conceal their sexual identities it is necessary to locate them within the wider socio-political and cultural context. Analysis of the circumstances leading up to the passing of Section 28 reveals much about the power of the new moral right and about attitudes towards lesbians and gay men. Attitudes and resultant discourses that I will argue remain exceedingly powerful and especially so within the conservative world of education and more specifically that of physical education.
During Margaret Thatcher's premiership the 'campaign for family values' was pursued with much vigour, moreover, concerns were expressed about the sanctity and well-being of the institution of the family. This traditional patriarchal institution was seen as being under attack particularly from homosexuals whom it was believed 'could undermine the basis of our society' (Boyson, 1987:1002/3). These fears were to lead, in part, to an increase in state involvement and to a greater regulation of sexuality. Alongside these concerns must also be seen central Government's alarm over the growing power and autonomy of some local authorities and, in particular, the activities of some Labour local councils - the so called 'loony left'. Haringey in north London was seen as one such example; their policy of 'positive images' of homosexuality led to clashes between parents and gay rights supporters. Dame Jill Knight (1987:1000) speaking in the House of Commons commented: 'Hundreds of thousands of pounds are being spent by some councils in promoting sexuality in our schools. All of that money could be far better spent.' In the same debate Dr. Rhodes Boyson (The Minister for Local Government) stated:
The Government share the view that a society is defined by its shared beliefs and habits. There are some kinds of behaviour that Christian charity may lead us to tolerate, but there is no reason why public funds should be spent on promoting that behaviour and no reason why we should tolerate those who spend public funds in this way. Undermining the common standards of society, flaunting behaviour that the overwhelming majority of those brought up in this country and its traditions find revolting, unsettling the minds of the coming generation is one way -a subtle way- of changing the society in which we live. (1987:1002)
It was against this political landscape that the supporters of Section 28 were able to mount a passionate and vociferous campaign against homosexuals who were depicted as sick, sinful, predatory individuals who were a threat to children and the continuance of society. The Earl of Halsbury (1986:310) spoke of how he had been 'warned that the loony left is hardening up the lesbian camp and that they are becoming increasingly aggressive.' In support of the Local Government Act (Amendment) Bill [H.L.] 1986 Lady Saltoun of Abernethy (1986:317) summed up the views of many of those in the House of Lords by stating: 'This is a small Bill - a David of a Bill that sets out to kill a Goliath of an evil.' Thus the Conservative moral crusade was mobilised and orchestrated around the twin threats of local government autonomy and homosexuality, each in their own way viewed as a potential threat to public safety and the security of the state. Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 was therefore an attempt to fuse the two 'evils'. It stated:
(1) A local authority shall not -
(a) intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality;
(b) promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.(2) Nothing in subsection (1) above shall be taken to prohibit the doing of anything for the purpose of treating or preventing the spread of disease (Smith, 1994:183).
The discourses of Section 28 were an attempt by its supporters to restore the family to its rightful, 'natural' place at the heart of British life, and to protect it from attack by lesbians and gay men. The intention was also to reassert the 'moral' high ground in schools and to maintain cultural conformity and the omnipotence of heterosexual identities, values and institutions, whilst at the same time defining, regulating, policing, and enforcing sexual boundaries. In order to do this not only were local authorities targeted as potential purveyors of homosexual propaganda but so too were teachers, both it was argued could use their influence to threaten the authority of the state and the sanctity of the family (see Evans, 1989/90). This repressive legislation exemplified not only legal disapproval of lesbian and gay lifestyles but it also illustrated the power of the Conservative New Right to dictate what constituted 'acceptable/normal' sexual identity and despite large scale protests it passed into the legal statute books in May 1988. Although this law has been summarily dismissed as ambiguously worded, what for instance does 'promote homosexuality' and 'pretended family relationship' mean? It continues to be dangerously open to misinterpretation, and as such its implications are potentially far-reaching (see Colvin and Hawksley, 1989). Despite these legal paradoxes and the fact that its provisions have yet to be interpreted by the courts (see OutRage! and Stonewall, 1994) it still carries powerful and prejudiced messages about homosexuality, serving as it does to legitimise hegemonic discourses of heterosexuality. Undoubtedly, the passing of Section 28 has had a marked effect on the teaching of lesbian and gay issues in many schools2 as well as creating a climate of fear and self censorship amongst lesbian, gay and bisexual teachers (see Clarke, 1996; Squires and Sparkes, 1996). The newly elected Labour Government before the election promised to repeal Section 28, - as yet there has been no indication about how or when this will happen (see Stonewall: Equality 2000, p4).
Whilst Section 28 may only be of symbolic power and significance, it has nevertheless had a major impact on the lives of lesbian and gay teachers causing many of them to fear for the continuation of their employment should their sexuality be revealed. As we shall see invisibility for these lesbian students and teachers in schools becomes a measure of their survival. The task then is to make these largely invisible lives visible, and in doing so I draw on the voices and storied lives of the marginalised as a means of challenging and exposing sexual oppression and domination.
Locating Lesbian Lives
The life stories which frame this paper are drawn from personal correspondence and in-depth interviews conducted with eighteen lesbian physical education teachers during 1993/5 and with nine students during 1994. The interviews with the teachers focused on: lesbian identity, activities of teaching, and relationships with teaching colleagues and pupils, and the interviews with students on: lesbian identity, life in college and teaching practice experiences. These discussion areas arose from my reading of other researchers' work on lesbian teachers, (Griffin, 1991; Khayatt, 1992) together with my own experiences of teaching physical education for seven years in secondary schools.
In order to preserve their anonymity all the women were from the outset given a pseudonym, they were also informed, in writing, of the procedures that would be adopted to maintain this confidentiality. The interviews were tape recorded, transcribed and returned to the women for comments, corrections, deletions and so on. I have also sent them copies of some of the papers that I have written about their lives for comment, though it would be naïve and simplistic to think that these small and partially collaborative actions have solved the problems of representation, power and exploitation.
The teachers were able bodied and aged between twenty three and forty seven. Some were single, some had been married (all retained their 'Mrs' title), some were currently in long-standing lesbian relationships, none had children, they came from a variety of working and middle class backgrounds. The length of time they had taught for varied between just over a year to twenty five years, all worked with pupils aged between eleven and eighteen. At the time of the research they were teaching in a variety of establishments from: mixed comprehensive schools, girls' schools, church schools to independent schools. These were located variously in inner cities, urban and/or rural areas.
The students involved in the research were aged between nineteen and twenty six, they came from three different Colleges/Universities. Three were in their 2nd and six were in their 4th and final year of teacher training courses. They too came from a variety of working and middle class backgrounds.
I make no claim that these women are necessarily representative, indeed I believe there is no generic lesbian women, nor am I arguing for any false universalism of their experiences. As Harding (1991:266) notes even the term '..."lesbian lives" is a cultural abstraction; race, class, sexuality, culture, and history construct different patterns of daily activity for lesbians as they do for the lives of others.'
Performing Heterosexuality - Just A Passing Phase?
None of the teachers were completely open in their schools about being lesbian, for some their sexual identity was known only to a small number of colleagues, but for most their identity was a closely protected secret. Furthermore for the students when they were in schools on teaching practice they did not want to do anything that might jeopardise the successful completion of their practice. Adele stated: 'you don't want to rock the boat in anyway, you are under so much stress to get everything up to scratch you don't want to rock the boat in anyway so ... the fact (is) that you want to pass your teaching practice...'.
As I have already claimed Section 28 has done much to keep these teachers locked within the (heterosexual) closet of the 'classroom', indeed Ivy3 when asked what Section 28 meant to her stated: 'It means that a lot of people are frightened about those of us on the edge, who rock the boat and challenge the status quo. It means a lack of freedom to be who I am.' This lack of freedom is compounded by the fact that education is by nature and tradition a conservative profession. It is a profession that is seen to be entrusted with the education of young and potentially vulnerable minds, and as such, the profession has always had a moral responsibility to uphold high standards of behaviour and conduct in order to fulfil one of its functions, that of being role models for young people. Physical education has a specific tradition of its own, again not only markedly conservative but also highly gender differentiated, since historically the subject has developed around two distinct and separate male and female sporting cultures built around particularly narrow ideologies and stereotyped visions of heterosexual masculinity and femininity (see Fletcher 1984; Scraton 1992). Thus within the male domain of sport and physical education the heterosexuality of women participants has often been open to question. Indeed, research by Harris and Griffin (1997:49) sought to assess the cultural stereotypes and personal beliefs held about women physical education teachers. Their findings indicated that their 'Respondents felt that most Americans stereotyped women physical educators as masculine, aggressive, athletic, lesbian and unintellectual.' From my own experiences in physical education and sport I would suggest that similar beliefs would not be uncommon in England. To participate in the physical education and sporting arena openly as a lesbian is to run the risk of harassment and intimidation (see Clarke, 1995; Lenskyj, 1991). What it is also pertinent to this discussion is that the very subject matter of physical education, that is the centrality and the physicality of the body, creates additional anxieties, fears and pressures for lesbian students and teachers. As Fay stated:
it is different for PE teachers because you are involved with the physical side of things. It has got to be worse ... there has got to be a different stigma attached to it and everything else that goes with it, and I think that is what people are frightened of. Ginny often says if I taught something else it wouldn't matter, but because you teach PE it is different, and I think it frightens a lot of people that if that was found out they would think you were molesting or you were some kind of pervert. You know the only reason you are teaching PE is because you can see all the kids undress. I used to go through all sorts of strategies in the changing rooms so that I was never near the kids when they showered. When I taught with somebody else I always left it up to them, and I would kind of be in the background.
The students were also exceedingly wary if they had to supervise girls showering, Christine for example commented how she:
had no desire for any of the kids, nothing like that, but if people knew you were gay, you know watching young girls through the showers you could cause yourself so much hassle. ... You have got a lost cause if people know you are gay, you are as good as guilty before you've done anything ... I thought if people knew ... they would be saying 'I wouldn't let her in those shower rooms.'
Gabby who had been teaching for over five years also felt that physical education teachers were targets for homophobic suspicions and accusations, she said: 'the impression I get is that if I was a history teacher it would matter less, but because I am dealing with young girls getting changed, then I'm immediately a paedophile.'
Whilst I acknowledge that teachers and students of other subjects may be forced to deny their sexual identities what I am arguing for here is a recognition that the gendered bodily culture of physical education and sport creates a unique context for denial that might not be experienced within other subject disciplines. Sullivan (1993:99) in writing about her own experiences of oppression as a lesbian teacher in an inner city comprehensive school in the United Kingdom wonders:
How lesbians who teach girls' physical education cope I don't know. I would be paranoid that my sexuality would be discovered and that the tabloid press would have a field day fabricating salacious headlines.
Coping for these teachers and students is the daily reality of their lives in schools and college/university, clearly, this is not without its personal costs, for them it means that if their lesbian identity is to survive then they must engage in a variety of camouflage strategies so as to pass convincingly as heterosexual. Fay described how:
When you go into school you know it is different ... I find it very difficult to cope with because you know my sexuality to me is a very important part of me and then all of a sudden you are faced with here we go, back again to the conservatism of it all and we are covering our tracks by not saying who we live with, who we go out with, what we do at weekends. You are only choosing to tell the bits that aren't going to tell a story.
The students also found school different, insofar as it contrasted sharply with the 'freer' atmosphere of college, Dee revealed how in college:
you don't have to bother about what you say or how you act really. There are obvious limits but you don't have to be worried about being seen with somebody all the time. It is much easier, it is teaching practice that hammers it into you, when you are out in schools you think this is what it is going to be like ... it's scary.
It is clear that these students soon learned that to survive in schools as pseudo-heterosexual they have to 'cover their tracks'. The teachers developed a myriad of strategies to disguise the reality of their home lives, for Caroline it meant that when other staff were talking 'about their husbands or children or whatever' she would also 'get this urge to talk incessantly about my homelife' (but it was) 'something that I really do have to suppress, and if I'm feeling that way it can really get me down.' Conversations in staffrooms that revolved around personal relationships were regarded with some unease since they could potentially be sites where their heterosexual cover might be blown. Hence most of these teachers either felt the need to censor what they said or to steer the conversations to safer topics, however in some cases it was felt that it was simply easier to avoid them. Other topics of conversation that were viewed as 'risky' were those that revolved around homosexuality, here the fear was the belief that by engaging in debates too vociferously around issues like the lowering of the age of consent for gay men then attention would be drawn to them with the result that questions might be asked about their sexuality. The students' experiences were not so dissimilar, Dee described how even though she found it hard she had to join in and laugh at jokes made about homosexuals. Christine recounted how she had felt obliged to listen to negative and prejudiced comments about her college teaching practice supervisor:
oh, we know her, she's gay, ... they made a big deal (of it), they were saying 'Oh the poof is coming today', and you laugh and joke with people don't you and you don't say that 'you can't say that about somebody', ... sometimes it is easier ... just to let them say what they want because you don't want to upset them ... I tend to let people continue because it is more hassle than it's worth.
Not all the women felt so disempowered, Ivy felt more able to enter into debates and to challenge homophobic jokes, but this she said was because she was the Equal Opportunities Officer for her school, this she reasoned afforded her a kind of legitimacy and protection. Other strategies that were employed to disguise the self were revealed by Gabby when she disclosed how she protected her sexual identity 'by not getting involved in anything socially at school where staff would be taking their partners'. Students also had to deal with the pressures created by attendance at staff socials. Christine remembered how she had been due to go out with the department at the end of her teaching practice and the female Head of Department (HOD) asked if she was going to bring anyone, she recalled that she said 'Oh no' and the HOD then asked 'Haven't you got a boyfriend then?' And I said 'no', and she said 'well don't bring a woman' And I went 'I am not going to bring a woman', and she said 'well I am just telling you don't' ... a week later she said 'bring yourself a man.' She had a hang up about me bringing a woman.
Compulsory heterosexuality remains the order of the day, and as these lesbian women's partners were not of the 'right' and publicly sanctioned sex when asked by pupils whether they had boyfriends they felt pressurized into inventing mythical male figures in order to deflect suspicion. Thus these mythical males were also dropped into conversations so that these lesbian teachers appeared 'normal', that is heterosexual. Harriet described how she 'openly lied' to pupils, she said: 'I felt terrible about it ... but I do really feel put on the spot.' Pressure also came from some colleagues who were often urging them to find a man, for as far as these colleagues were concerned they did not have any sort of visible partner. Caroline revealed how she responded to questions about whether she had 'a fella',
I lie through my teeth quite frankly, I much prefer them (the pupils) to think that I might have a fella, or even that I might have a fella and wasn't saying, than they think that I didn't. ... I try to be secretive and mysterious but make it clear that there is somebody.
Being secretive or in some cases ambiguous was a way of conforming to the institutionalized discourses of compulsory heterosexuality. Deb remarked 'I don't deny anything, I am ambiguous in what I say to them, just because I don't want them knowing my lifestyle ...'. Knowing about their lesbian lifestyles was seen as being extremely threatening to the continuance of their teaching career, consequently it was felt by some of the women that it was necessary to publicly and openly portray to their colleagues and pupils that they were interested sexually in men. Harriet for instance acknowledged that she 'was overtly flirtatious with young male staff' in order to convince others of her heterosexuality, she also revealed how one of the male staff was 'very tactile' and always giving her a hug, she said:
even though I hate to admit it, it does my image good at school and it's just nice to have him as a friend and I think I'm pretty sure it would change things significantly if I told him. But I'd love to tell him so that he realised that we haven't got two heads.
Harriet was not alone in wanting to reveal her sexual identity to teaching colleagues, but this desire to tell was not felt to be worth the risk of 'losing friends and being exposed to people, ridiculed I suppose, it shouldn't matter if people are going to say things' (Annie). Clearly differences do matter but in these specific cases it seems that the risks - be they real or imagined -are just not worth taking.
Passing As An Act Of Resistance And Subversion
Passing as heterosexual in the workplace for these lesbian teachers and students is as we have seen manifest in a number of different ways including: the inventing of boyfriends, and being flirtatious with men in order to establish their heterosexual credentials. The main form that these strategies appear to take is through the censorship and removal of the self from potentially hazardous situations, i.e. non-attendance at staff socials, avoidance of certain conversations/debates in staffrooms. What is evident from these narratives is the way that work, that is teaching, shapes and constrains how lesbian lives are lived out in the environment of the school. These passing strategies often entail the performing of a particular part that is heterosexual. In conceptualising these 'acts' as performances I draw selectively on Butler's (1990, 1991, 1993) concept of gender performativity. This notion of performance provides a useful metaphor to play with since schools are rather like theatres where all sorts of performances are engaged in. Inasmuch as I am claiming that heterosexuality is being played at I would not want to dispute that these women are not 'really' lesbian or that being a lesbian is something that you slip into and out of like some sort of sexual tourist. Rather it is that the nature of schooling and the socio-political context requires that they perform their heterosexual parts convincingly so as to be able to deflect attention and/or scrutiny when necessary. Additionally, their scripts are severely constrained (even compulsory) if their performances are to be socially sanctioned and publicly approved. Whilst this notion of performance provides crucial insights into the public ways that lesbian lives are largely lived out in schools it would be a gross mistake to fail to recognise that for these teachers they have to perform in order to survive in a heterosexist and homophobic world, therefore these performances should not be trivialised. The costs for these teachers should they not play their part are all too real to be denied. Their lives are more than a game (Clarke, 1997). As Esterberg comments:
lesbian performances are serious play; that is, while there is an element of play, of fun, in the slippage of categories, this is serious play because it has to do with deeply important aspects of the self. Lesbian identity - and our playing out of it - matters. (1996:261)
Esterberg's claims are borne out by Harriet who saw her attempts at concealing her lesbian identity as a game, for her it was 'quite a nice game to play, it's about the only game that I can play that I know I'm going to win because I've got an ace under my sleeve. There's something they don't always know about me.' Several of the teachers also admitted that they 'like(d) part of the secretiveness, and the fact that going against the norm is quite thrilling in a way' (Deb). Barbara also described how she found 'it quite exciting in a way getting away with it, fibbing ... I just laugh to myself because they have no idea.' 'Getting away it' with becomes a means of resisting and challenging albeit in perhaps a rather hidden way, this too is another paradox of their identities. For some this 'getting away with it' has become an almost enjoyable pursuit, Deb disclosed how: 'In some ways it is game ... it is just a bit of fun ... let them wonder'. Jay also described how she let her male college peers wonder about her sexuality, she said '... if you ignore it then they never actually know ... I've just sort of said 'sod you, you don't deserve to know ...'. This refusal to reveal their sexual identity and the non challenging of comments is for these students and teachers a way of resisting. Consequently it is important that these silences are not misread as 'women's allegedly more passive, reticent and non-aggressive verbal and bodily habitus' (Luke, 1994:218), but rather as a conscious discursive strategy to contest the hegemony of heterosexuality.
Allied with these strategies for resisting, performing a particular part can also be viewed as a subversive and resistant act, insofar as the performance is a way of throwing heterosexuality back in your face! Since where the part is successfully performed then the point is made (albeit largely privately) that heterosexuality can be copied, faked and bought without it being realised that it is merely an imitation. Furthermore this performing and passing as lesbian as Inness (1997:161) claims 'calls into question the distinction between heterosexual and homosexual', what this also demonstrates is that sexual boundaries are not as fixed as some might have us believe, rather they are social and cultural constructs that can be crossed.
Indeed Deb stated that she knew some women who were 'blatantly unhappy in a situation and you know why, (she believed they were lesbian) but they won't do anything about it, because they haven't got the courage' because she claimed 'going against the grain (that is being lesbian) is quite a hard thing to do'. Caroline also thought it was difficult for lesbian women, because as she said 'you don't have convention on your side .. and people don't think women ought to be together anyway'. Like Cheryl Clarke (1987:128) who writes about lesbian women in North American society I want to argue that just being:
a lesbian in a male-supremacist, capitalist, misogynist, racist, homophobic, imperialist culture, ... is an act of resistance. ... No matter how a woman lives out her lesbianism - in the closet, in the state legislature, in the bedroom - she has rebelled ...
These varied conceptions of resistance are important as they allow for the recognition that these women are not just passive, subjugated people but active agents engaged in struggles in different locales and at varying levels be they ideological or structural. Thus how their voices are (re)presented and interpreted is crucial if they are not simply to be portrayed and read as victims of a heterosexist and homophobic society. Joy makes the case that she does not want to be presented as 'bound down', she believes that:
it's quite important that we are not seen as victims, that people recognise that there are problems for other lesbians. To get it in perspective one of the worse things of our lives is the fear, quite often it's unfounded, ... the silences keep us oppressed, keep us down. The more of us that can do it (come out), the people you work with will have to realise we are just ordinary folks ...
Concluding Remarks
These narratives reveal the complex and multi-layered processes of identity formation and management that these lesbian physical education students and teachers engage in, in order to safely negotiate the conservative, heterosexist and homophobic world of education. It is a social world where the state has employed powerful interventionist strategies in an attempt to define and channel sexuality narrowly, and to repress and regulate desire through law. But as I have argued regulation is never entirely complete, and as we have seen where there is power there is also resistance. The space for these women to resist is restricted, for as has been illustrated the bodily nature and the gendered culture of physical education creates particular pressures for their survival. The marginal and 'invisible' existence of these lesbian physical education students and teachers denies them the potential power of a collective identity. Thus this is problematic for their working together to create social and political change. Nevertheless, it is important to recognise that resistance equals a space for opposition and that people may resist in diverse ways, and moreover their oppression will likely be experienced differently, thus they may not all be 'actively' resisting. How though do we 'measure' the success of the silent or 'passing body' or even other forms of resistance? Perhaps we need new visions and definitions of what it is to resist (and also what counts as resistance? See Gilroy, 1996) and what it is we are resisting? The lesbian teachers in this study resist by passing as heterosexual, - should we therefore deem this as an act of power or as an act of collaboration and collusion in their own victimisation and oppression? One of the ironies of successful passing is that connections to lesbian culture and experience may be sacrificed and or denied, indeed this may be particularly so in the case of senior teachers who may believe that they have more to loose than their younger colleagues. The whole notion of 'passing' (cf. to those people of colour who try to pass as white, see hooks 1984) is a complex process, open to contestation and debate, and in many ways it seems to be fraught with ambiguities and contradictions. But then are lives and living not full of contradictions. For as Weeks (1995:86) claims 'few identities are so paradoxical as sexual identities.' Arguably, and it too seems in some ways paradoxical to earlier claims such passing strategies do not thereby extend the parameters for resistance or transformation, insofar as it could be said that the status quo remains the same and is thus unchallenged.
Although these lesbian students' and teachers' experiences may not be representative they vividly illustrate how heterosexual work spaces have to be negotiated and successfully 'passed' through if harassment and abuse is to be avoided. Their experiences demonstrate that their sexual identity 'choices' are severely constrained by a complexity of forces that operate both within the wider social and political world and the microcosm of the school. Thus whilst they 'make their own identities, ... they do not make them just as they please' (Epstein, 1993/4:30). Inasmuch as I have employed Butler's notion of performance to convey how these lesbian teachers play a heterosexual part I do so with care. Since, I share Jeffreys' (1994a,b) concerns that Butler's work on performance is based largely on gay male practices and furthermore to view identity as simply a performance is dangerous as it could create a situation whereby the oppression of women by men is lost sight of. Additionally this concept of performance suggests that identity is freely chosen, but as we have seen there is nothing free or voluntary about the way that these teachers perform their heterosexual parts in the schooling context.
Whilst it is crucial to recognise that heterosexuality is experienced differently by women and mediated by a variety of social and cultural factors, just being heterosexual brings with it certain privileges and legal rights that are denied to lesbians, gay men or bisexuals, namely: employment and pension rights, marriage, tax allowances and access to other welfare benefits. The state and other institutions such as the church and education reward, subsidise and protect heterosexuality such that it becomes another 'regime of truth' (see Foucault 1978). The resultant hegemonic discourses by their very exclusions and silences continue to reinforce and legitimise a particular way of being, that is heterosexual, in so doing heterosexuality is not only legally sanctioned, but also normalised and socially approved.5 These omissions I would argue reinforce commonly held beliefs that homosexuals are not entitled to legal protection and full (sexual) citizenship, and contribute to a situation that Yeatman (1994:14) has described as 'a politics of contested absences'. The wholesale transformation of the socio-political landscape is long overdue. In order to attain full sexual citizenship in British law and policy the normalizing and privileging of heterosexuality over other sexualities must be recognised, contested and changed. Sexual and social justice requires therefore not only a recognition of the ways that institutions such as the state and the educative system legitimate and reinforce a particular form of sexuality, that is heterosexuality, but it also necessitates a change in laws. As Kaplan (1997:3) states 'the achievement of equality for lesbian and gay citizens is part of the unfinished business of modern democracy.' There is much still to be finished.
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1) This paper draws on Clarke (1996) and Clarke (forthcoming).
2) The discourse of Section 28 has impacted negatively on the content of school sex education programmes. The British Medical Association's (BMA) (1997) recent paper on 'School sex education' makes it clear that schools have a responsibility to teach about homosexuality if they are to meet the needs of all young people. Furthermore, the BMA is also calling for the repeal of Section 28.
3) Unless stated otherwise the women referred to and quoted from are teachers. It is specifically stated if they are students.
4) It is here that the various teaching unions could usefully form a location for collective resistance, the National Union of Teachers (NUT) has now taken such a stance and stated that it will support those members who choose to reveal their sexuality (see the Report from NUT conference, Cardiff, Easter 1996 and Clarke 1996).
5) These discourses have impacted on the content of school sex education programmes. The British Medical Association's (1997) recent paper on 'School sex education' makes it clear that schools have a responsibility to teach about homosexuality if they are to meet the needs of all young people.