‘The Word Gay has been Banned but People use it in the Boys’ Toilets whenever you go in’: spatialising children’s subjectivities in response to gender and sexualities education in English primary schools

This paper critically analyses children’s (6–11 year olds) contradictory, socio-spatial responses to ‘gender and sexualities education’ in English primary schools. Drawing on ethnographic, interview and focus group data from an 18-month study, the paper foregrounds ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ spaces of learning in order to illustrate how children’s gendered and sexualised subjectivities are both constituted within – and constitutive of – the spatialities of schooling. Utilising subjectivity and performativity theory after Butler, a ‘good student’ that performs ‘acceptance’ of liberal discourses of gender and sexual diversity in classrooms is distinguished from a ‘good peer’ that is simultaneously compelled to reinstate (hetero)gender/sexuality in the playground, toilets and corridors. These contradictory sociospatial stances, which came to the fore in focus groups that defy ‘formal’ or ‘informal’ categorisation challenge gender and sexualities education centred on equalities and anti-bullying. Findings from this study point to the urgent need to acknowledge and counter the dominance of wider heteronormative ideals.