Abstract
Teaching about sexuality can be messy. What does it mean to incite queer joy as an educational language in sex education? In this article, we explore how queer joy can be used by teachers as a language to confront this messy work of sex education and teach in more pleasurable, joyful, and inclusive ways. In our analysis, we draw upon the conversations and visual data we created alongside 43 teacher-participants from New Brunswick, Canada in a series of participatory media-making workshops and describe how queer joy informs the artful praxis that transpired in these spaces. In these workshops, we observed teachers grappling with conservative community norms, vague curricular standards, and the absenting of pleasure and queerness in their practice. Our sense is that a shift in approach—where educators employ queer joy as a language to talk and think about sexuality education amid rising political violence against 2SLGBTQI+ communities—creates new possibilities and problematics for encountering youth sexualities in North American schools.
Methodological Approach
Qualitative
DOI
https://doi.org/10.60808/nfr3-0473
Recommended Citation
Burkholder, C., & Keehn, M. (2024). "In Some Ways They’re the People Who Need it the Most": Mobilizing Queer Joy with Sex Ed Teachers in New Brunswick, Canada. Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education, 1(2). https://doi.org/10.60808/nfr3-0473
Included in
Education Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons
