Book Review: Silenced Sexualities in Schools and Universities 

In Silenced Sexualities in Schools and Universities, Debbie Epstein, Sarah O’Flynn and David Telford detail the ways that school legislation, school boards, teachers and students in schools, from kindergarten through university, normalize heterosexuality. This normalization of heterosexuality results in a stigmatization of all forms of queer sexuality, including non-normative heterosexual relationships. The authors co-wrote the introduction and conclusion, and each authored two of the other six chapters. Hence, the book reads like something between an edited journal and a collaborative work. Each of the authors’ two chapters relies on their individual or collective research and relates their research to the normalization of heterosexuality in schools and universities. Their research took place in England, but many of the findings correspond with findings in U.S. schools and universities.

Debbie Epstein

Debbie Epstein focuses her work on primary school and explores the belief that children are or should be innocent or ignorant of sexuality. She looks at the different ways that these beliefs about innocence can harm children, leaving them powerless to make their own decisions while, at the same time, eroticizing innocence. Epstein goes on to illustrate how heterosexuality pervades the lives of schoolchildren in games of house, in boyfriend/girlfriend relationships with their peers, and in playground enforcement of normative gender expression. Boys’ intense personal relationships with other boys sometimes relied on the objectification of girls and misogynist language, such as referring to their female classmates as rubbish.

Her second chapter is an analysis of the ways that sexuality education guidelines—which focus on marriage promotion, health and morality—combined with fear of parental response can effectively paralyze sexuality education teachers. In one case this paralysis led a sex education teacher to completely disregard a heart wrenching story of rape, domestic violence and abandonment told by a young woman who recently transferred to the school and was living in a group home.

Sarah O’Flynn

Sarah O’Flynn’s research centers on secondary school. In her first chapter, she reviews the literature about the silencing of queer sexualities in sexuality education classrooms, noting that male students often make homophobic comments in class to demonstrate their masculinity and heterosexuality. She argues that sexuality education should be taught like other subjects and include the wide variety of available sociological and theoretical writings about sexuality.

O’Flynn’s second piece takes up the issue of racial and cultural differences in the family structures of refugee Somali students. She explores the ways that Somali students, in discussions of home lives with teachers and classmates, present their usually polygamous families as though they were nuclear heterosexual families. Additionally, O’Flynn looks at female Somali students’ strategies to avoid what they consider the pitfalls of early heterosexual activity, namely the potential that such sexual activity might conflict with their ability to finish school and pursue careers. The young women’s knowledge that they are culturally expected to obey their future husbands further complicates their experiences of heterosexuality and calls into question their ability to pursue careers even if they do finish their education.

David Telford

David Telford writes about his research with young gay men who have just entered university. He points out that while universities are often places where young people experience some freedom to explore their sexual identities, policies meant to protect students from homophobic harassment often fail to translate into practices. The push towards heterosexuality happens at an interpersonal and intuitional level. Teachers describe being counseled to avoid sexuality research for fear of being passed over for promotion and publishing while students fear that coming out will mean a loss of friends and familial financial and emotional support. Additionally, university courses in psychology and medicine, which might include discussions of mental and physical health for queers, often relegate these discussions to a few minutes or hours and almost never question the normalcy of heterosexuality.

The scope of Epstein’s, O’Flynn’s, and Telford’s work is vast—demonstrating how young people confront assumptions about heterosexuality in school. The authors each contribute to this task with their own field research, grounded in strong theoretical background. All of their projects point to further opportunities for research.

For example, we are only beginning to understand how enforced silence around certain sexual identities and practices, combined with a focus on abstinence, are affecting teacher’s comfort in talking openly with students about the issues that are vital to their having satisfying and safe sexual lives. Additionally, the enforcement of gender normative behaviors through the bullying of effeminate boys—whether or not they are gay—and the devaluing of stereotypically feminine behaviors and traits undoubtedly reinforce homophobia and sexism. Researchers need to consider further how to effectively challenge these behaviors in every educational environment.

* Celeste Hirschman is an M.A. candidate in Human Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University. She is currently researching peer sexuality education and its relationship to citizenship.