Abstract
This chapter examines the oppositional pairing of religion and sexual diversity in Dutch sexual diversity education. As education co-constructs the meaning of the “nation,” the state’susage of teaching programs to advance the well-being of LGBTQ+ citizens causes citizenship development and sexual emancipation to converge in education. Using a critical discourse analytical approach, this chapter analyzes how six sources offering teaching methods and policy guidance on sexual diversity education frame sexuality in relation to religion, culture, and citizenship. We demonstrate that these sources include particular understandings of sexuality, dissociate sexuality from religious experience and race, and treat the presence of religious or so-called “immigrant” students as a threat to LGBTQ+ students. This chapter foregrounds how sexual diversity education reinstates culturalist understandings of the nation and of sexual diversity and recommends teaching methods and practices to engage with other forms of difference and experiences of oppression.
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Notes
- 1.
We use LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer people and members of these communities) throughout the chapter, unless we directly quote from a source, in which case we use the exact terminology of the quoted source.
- 2.
Notably the Safety in Schools Act of 2015, under which primary and secondary schools are obliged to protect LGBTQ+ students against discrimination and violence.
- 3.
Predominantly the Gay&School program by the School and Safety Foundation and courses offered by the national LGBTQ+ organization COC Netherlands.
- 4.
The Netherlands Institute for Social Research conducts independent research to advise parliament and the government and falls under the Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Sport.
- 5.
The phrase gewoon doen (just do it) has a second meaning, which is acting or behaving normal, which alludes to the pervasive call in sexual diversity education for the normalization of sexual diversity in schools, which is further discussed below.
- 6.
Tijn encounters the following when he tries to enter the changing room before sports class: “[h]ey faggot! Can’t you read? This is the guys’ changing room! You don’t belong here!” Godelinde, a student identified as female and a friend of Tijn, rebukes the comment in defense of Tijn, “Listen Harry! We will not stand for this kind of behavior at this school! Tell Tijn you’re sorry!” She considers herself victorious as Harry apologizes to Tijn, and in the next scene, we see Tijn thinking to himself, “wow, this GSA thing is already paying off!” Harry, who takes off his t-shirt to get dressed for class, tells Tijn to look away in fear of the supposedly sexualizing gaze of Tijn. In the girls’ changing room, Godelinde tells a peer: “OMG, we almost had a guy in our changing room!” The fellow student responds by saying: “Eeeeeww! Well done, Godelinde!”
- 7.
Although the GSA Teacher Manual briefly mentions that the discrimination of gay and Muslim students often coexists, final recommendations to teachers do not consider this (GSA Network 2015b, 16).
- 8.
The report mentions students of ‘Turkish, Moroccan, Surinam or Antillean backgrounds’, whose ancestors are most likely to have immigrated to the Netherlands and gained citizenship during the period of decolonization after the Second World War, and the economic boom and resulting labor shortages of the 1960s.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Dr. Ann Wilson and Dr. Anna Tijsseling for their intellectual encouragement, and their friendships.
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Rutten, K., Theewis, D. (2020). Sexuality, Religion, and Education: (Re)Production of Culturalist Discourse in Sexual Diversity Education in the Netherlands. In: Derks, M., van den Berg, M. (eds) Public Discourses About Homosexuality and Religion in Europe and Beyond. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56326-4_3
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