Challenging heteronormativity in suburban high schools through "surplus visibility": Gay-Straight Alliances in the Vancouver city-region

Over 30 years ago, the first Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) were formed to undermine the hegemonic heteronormativity of public educational institutions in North America. Despite the challenges that these student clubs pose to the heteronormativity of school spaces, the practices they employ have rare...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inGender, place and culture : a journal of feminist geography Vol. 27; no. 9; pp. 1223 - 1246
Main Authors Bain, Alison L., Podmore, Julie A.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Abingdon Routledge 01.09.2020
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Activism
Alliances
Bisexuality
Canada
Case studies
Clubs
Decoration
Gay-Straight Alliances
Geographers
Hegemony
Heteronormativity
Homosexuality
Interdisciplinary aspects
Lesbianism
LGBTQ people
LGBTQ2S
Participation
Public schools
Secondary schools
Sexuality
Sociability
Suburban areas
suburbs
surplus visibility
Two-Spirit
Urban schools
Visibility
youth
Canada
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Summary:Over 30 years ago, the first Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) were formed to undermine the hegemonic heteronormativity of public educational institutions in North America. Despite the challenges that these student clubs pose to the heteronormativity of school spaces, the practices they employ have rarely been examined by geographers. This paper, therefore, expands upon the interdisciplinary literature on GSAs from within education and a smaller geographical literature on education and sexuality by examining the practices of suburban public high school GSAs on the peripheries of the Vancouver city-region in British Columbia, Canada. It argues that GSAs in suburban secondary public schools play valuable social supporting and activist roles for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and two-spirit (LGBTQ2S) youth as spaces of "surplus visibility" - a means of challenging invisibility through the generation of excessive presence. Using empirical examples from two case study peripheral municipalities (Surrey and Burnaby) six dimensions of GSA actions are examined to illustrate how surplus visibility is produced (through administration, decoration, participation, sociability, reconnaissance, and activism) but also how its 'excesses' are regulated.
ISSN:0966-369X
1360-0524
DOI:10.1080/0966369X.2019.1618798