From Anti-Bullying Laws and Gay Marriages toQueer Worlds and Just FuturesTherese Quinn and Erica R. Meiners1

ABSTRACT

Recent attention to youth suicides and violence framed as “bullying” has triggered arange of responses by schools and the state. In this article we locate and analyze the “gaywins” most noted in education, including the recent moves to establish gay-inclusiveanti-bullying laws and policies, within a larger social justice framework to mapcontradictions. In particular, we question the efficacy of anti-bullying laws and ask howthis initiative can mask the sources of punishing heteronormativity in schools andcommunities and potentially distract educators and others from identifying andaddressing structural conditions that foster interpersonal forms of violence. We close bysuggesting how and why a “queer” vision pushes those invested in LGBT lives to movebeyond “equality” (or assimilation) as a goal for social justice struggles.

) ) ) Introduction

In , a -year-old boy named Lawrence (“Larry”) King was shot in the headand killed in his middle school computer lab by a classmate, Brandon McIner-ney, aged . Larry attended a weekly group for gay teens and enjoyed wearingmakeup and high heels; Brandon was one of many youth and adults at Larry’sschool who responded to his gender-play with aggression. Larry defended him-self by asserting his rights, and with an edgy humor: He flirted with the boys whoinsulted him—“It’s fun to see them squirm”—and invited Brandon to be hisValentine. A couple of days later Brandon brought a gun to school, and used it.

King’s murder was followed, in , by a concentrated and well-publicizedwave of suicides by gay youth, including Tyler Clementi, Seth Walsh, Asher

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Brown, and Billy Lucas. These suicides, like Larry’s murder, were preceded byintense sexuality- and gender-policing interpersonal violence, and triggered aseries of anti-bullying initiatives. “In response to a number of [lesbian, gay,bisexual and transgender] students taking their own lives after being bullied inschool,” in late the writer Dan Savage started an online video campaign, theIt Gets Better Project, which now has over , contributions. This highlyvisible platform, with statements from President Barak Obama, Secretary ofState Hillary Clinton, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and a host of other politiciansand celebrities, spotlighted anti-gay violence across the nation.

The high-profile media attention that focused on select (often White andmale) examples of anti-gay bullying also spurred state legislatures to act. Statesthat already had school anti-bullying programs, including character education orlegislation, broadened them. For example, in , Georgia was the first state topass an anti-bullying law; in , the state added a provision to its law thatwould allow “bullies” to be removed from schools. Also in , New Jerseyimplemented what has been described as “the strongest anti-bullying legislationin the country” after Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi’s suicide.

Called the “Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights,” the law requires teachers to reportbullying to administrators, and school superintendents to report bullying to theState Board of Education, and allows the suspension or expulsion of studentsaccused of bullying. In , a law criminalizing cyberbullying that specificallytargets school personnel passed in North Carolina. In an effort to protect schoolemployees this law makes it a crime for any student to post real images or makeany statement online—even if it’s true—that provokes harassment. Otherprohibited acts by students are signing teachers up to receive junk mail, postingpictures of teachers online, and making “fake” Web sites. In North Carolina,those who are are treated as adults under state law and therefore if convicted,a student could face days in jail or a $, fine. As we write in early ,

states (excluding only Montana) have anti-bullying laws on the books, accordingto the self-proclaimed watch-dog organization Bully Police USA, which definesschool bullies as “small scale Terrorist[s].”

Meanwhile, despite the increased media focus on particular kinds of youthviolence and focused support for anti-bullying legislation, in the last year nongender-conforming and nonheterosexual young people continued to harm and be harmed inclassrooms, on playgrounds, and online. A New York -year-old, Jamey Rodemeyer,contributed a video statement to the It Gets Better archive in May and, afterexperiencing physical, verbal, and online harassment about his perceived sexuality,hanged himself in September . Also in , the beating of an Ohio gay teenin his classroom was captured as cellphone video footage, later uploaded to

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YouTube, and Tennessee teen Jacob Rogers, who was creative, loved Lady Gaga,and swapped clothes with girls, dropped out of school and killed himself afterenduring years of anti-gay insults. On June , , Kardin Ulysse, a New YorkCity middle-school student, was blinded in one eye after being assaulted by agroup of boys shouting anti-gay taunts in the cafeteria of Roy Mann Junior HighSchool. In , Pine Lake Elementary School (NJ) student C.O. routinelyreturned from school “bruised, crying, and depressed” from being verbally andphysically harassed about his perceived sexual orientation. His parents asked theschool to intervene in a culture of pervasive homophobia that included class-mates yelling homophobic slurs at C.O. from his own front lawn, and beingcalled, “gay,” “fag,” and “girl” every day at school. C.O.’s parents were told thathe “should attempt to ‘make new friends.’” When C.O. was assaulted on a schoolbus with a metal seat belt, and the school and the district still refused to intervene,the family moved and C.O. transferred to a different school. Although most ofthe attacks that become high-profile or receive media or other attention targetgay boys, others, including trans youth in particular, are certainly not exemptfrom violence. In early , the parents of a transgender -year-old student atEagleside Elementary School in Fountain, Colorado, Coy Mathias, filed acomplaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Division because the school prohib-ited the first-grader from using the girls’ restroom.

These acts of interpersonal and structural heteronormativity or transphobiaare neither new nor surprising. Just as misogyny and White supremacy shape theinstitution of schooling, heteronormativity, the structures and systems “thatlegitimize and privilege heterosexuality and heterosexual relationships as funda-mental and ‘natural’ within society,” is pervasive in most institutions, includingschools. Fear of the queer, or all the meanings and associations attached tononheteronormativity, leads schools to suppress teachers and creates culturesthat facilitate harm toward gender nonconforming and nonheteronomativeyouth. Trans- and homophobic cultures are persistent, and largely still normal-ized. The presidential aspirations of Mitt Romney were not dinted by therevelation that he, as a high school “prankster,” harassed a “soft spoken” gendernonconforming peer named John Lauber. Or, more specifically, Romney’saction, which he acknowledged and apologized for decades later and only after anexposé in the Washington Post, was that because he was disgusted by Lauber—“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!”—he pinned Lauberdown and forcibly cut his hair. Gendered anxieties such as those that fueledRomney’s violence expand beyond classroom walls and take shape in attempts topass anti-gay educational policies and support school cultures where heteronor-mativity and gender policing are naturalized and embedded into playgrounds

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and staff rooms. Across the United States, schools are set up for social reproduc-tion purposes; however, by definition, queers disrupt the assumption of valuescongruence when they are known or “out.” And even when unknown andunlabeled in schools, queers can trigger a “moral” or “sex panic.”

Gender nonconforming and nonheterosexual youth are harmed in our com-munities and in our schools. This harm is substantial and has lasting significance,and as we have briefly indicated here, select representations of the damage doneto these young people have mobilized a national discussion on bullying thattentatively includes sexual orientation and occasionally gender identity, yetleaves largely unmentioned other forms of structural violence. In this article welocate and analyze the “gay wins” most noted in education, including the recentmoves to establish gay-inclusive anti-bullying laws and policies, within a largersocial justice framework to map contradictions. In particular, we question theefficacy of anti-bullying laws and ask how this state initiative works to mask thesources of punishing heteronormativity in schools and communities, and todistract educators and others from identifying and addressing structural condi-tions that foster interpersonal forms of violence.

We close by suggesting how and why a “queer” vision pushes those invested inLGBT lives to move beyond “equality” (or assimilation) as a goal for social justicestruggles and to choose and build intra-movement organizing over single issuestrategies. Queerness, as Cohen and others have articulated, is anchored by apolitics of radical social transformation and responds to assessments of the“identitarian gay rights movement” with its “privatize[d] notions of identitybased in the homo/hetero language of sexual orientation.” Pushing back onequality as a goal of our movements, this article argues that a queer futuredemands that the public, and queer critiques of the private, have the potential tochallenge neoliberal agendas while also imagining and building a future in whichyouth are not harmed for difference.

) ) ) Our Queer Political Moment

Our analysis is shaped by Palestinian and queer activists who coined the term“pinkwashing” to refer to Israel’s attempts to brand itself a queer-friendly nationand tourist destination. Sarah Schulman, in a Op-Ed piece in the New YorkTimes, offers this definition: “The growing global gay movement against theIsraeli occupation has named these tactics ‘pinkwashing’: a deliberate strategy toconceal the continuing violations of Palestinians’ human rights behind an imageof modernity signified by Israeli gay life.” As Israel advances its occupation of

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Palestine, the shift to present Israel as a model of modernity and a haven for gaylives is contrasted with what are positioned as uncivilized and homophobicMuslim neighboring communities. Israel is promoted globally as a queer touristdestination because of the nation’s gay rights, including full participation in themilitary and marriage. Gay rights, in this framework, functions as a shield and aform of legitimation. Pro-gay policies are used to distract audiences fromidentifying human rights violations, to signify a state as cosmopolitan and liberal,and as circulated by Israel, this strategy also works to suggest that Palestine andother neighboring states are uncivilized, backward, and not worthy of sover-eignty or international support.

Although this could be a potentially challenging parallel for some audiences, weargue that current circulations of gay rights in educational discourses follow similarpathways. Although uneven, the last decade has seen a number of rapid changessurrounding lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and queer (LGBTQ) lives inschools including anti-bullying policies; an increase in school-based Gay-StraightAlliances (GSAs); pro-queer uses of social media, including the It Gets Better Projectand archive; policies supporting “out” LGBT teachers; LGBT-inclusive curriculums;and trans-supportive policies and practices, such as the establishment of gender-neutral bathrooms. By no means are these changes widespread or uncontested. Yet,the gains of the LGBT movements in education—including visibility, policy, cur-riculum, and climate—were almost unimaginable a decade ago.

Absolutely, considered through one frame these gains are successes. However,when these shifts are viewed through a wider landscape—specifically, the increasedprivatization and the criminalization of schools and communities—these “gay edu-cational wins” seem less clear-cut. As this article will chart, although more LGBTteachers are supported through local and state laws to be “out at work,” a broadercontext of school privatization and attacks on labor that have reduced thenumber of unionized teaching positions and eroded workplace rights prompt usto ask: What good are “gay educational wins” to our nation’s increasing numbersof at-will, temporary, and precarious school employees? And, what does a focuson narrowly defined gay successes obscure?

Pinkwashing and precarious work—“part-time employment, self-employment,fixed-term work, temporary work, on-call work, homeworkers, and telecommut-ing”—are contemporary phenomena that are both possible through a constel-lation of social, political, and economic shifts. Central to the last three decades ofeconomic and political restructuring, often referred to as neoliberalism, has beenthe demonization of public institutions, the push to “downsize” “big govern-ment” and, somewhat contradictorily, the buildup of a carceral state. SinceRonald Reagan’s presidency, there has been a bipartisan sentiment to reduce the

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financial burden of government, to have “smarter” government, to try, para-phrasing Reagan, to “get big government off the backs of the working people.”Yet, when some politicians and their supporters describe shrinking “big govern-ment,” they mean cutting specific components of government, typically socialservices for the poor and people of color, while drastically inflating spending inother areas. Indeed, in their discussion of the reframing of the welfare state intoa neoliberal state, Rebecca Bohrman and Naomi Murakawa outline the inter-connectedness of these seemingly divergent frameworks. “[W]elfare retrench-ment and punishment expansion represent opposite trends in state spending, butthey rely on the same ideology. This ideology holds that the liberal welfare statecorrodes personal responsibility, divorces work from reward, and lets crime gowithout punishment; consequently, the lenient welfare regime attracts opportu-nistic immigrants and cultivates criminal values.” To be anti-big governmentin this climate is to oppose offering welfare benefits to those with drug felonyconvictions, but not to oppose the establishment of the Department of Home-land Security; it means blocking spending tax dollars on public schools thateducate the poor and children of color, but not on the prisons that will house thechildren failed by our educational system. These shifts are not coincidental orarbitrary; rather, they are the hallmarks of neoliberalism, which pursues thewholesale remaking of nation-states and economies through the intertwinedpractices of deregulation and privatization, thus, supposedly fueling the rise of anow unencumbered free market—which, of course, leads to the decimation ofthe public sphere. In this sense, neoliberalism in the United States has beenforged not through coups or military might, but, as David Harvey states, throughthe “long march” of corporations, media, think tanks, and other powerful forcesthat have sought not only to change economic and political policies but thecultural understandings that ground our relationship to democracy and everydaylife itself. Indeed, from pursuing deregulation and privatization to engaging in apermanent war economy to building a prison nation, these changes in economicand political spheres have prompted transformations in the “private” sphere aswell, including how we understand our identities, families, emotions, andrelations to the state.

Neoliberalism, in other words, is the context for this queer political moment, inwhich rights and resources are selectively offered, and identity discourses are used tolegitimate the dehumanization and punishment of others. These frameworks ofneoliberalism and pinkwashing are the larger ideological structures that shape queerlives within schools. Just as activists and scholars track the use of gay rights discoursesin Israel that shield broader human rights violations from view, we argue that it iscritical to examine what other economic, political, and social practices are rendered

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less visible through the state’s focus on attacking bullying in schools. And, centrally,it is vital to ask whether these state responses that criminalize bullying actually makea material difference in the lives of young people in schools and communities, or ifthey increase communities’ vulnerability?

) ) ) Inefficacy of Legislation and the Erasure ofComplex Roots of Harm

As highlighted at the start of this article, LGBTQ young people experiencepersistent aggressive violence in schools, with numerous reports also highlightingthe interpersonal violence that nongender-conforming and nonheteronormativestudents experience in schools, perpetrated by peers, teachers, and other mem-bers of staff. As another snapshot of this violence we offer just a tiny representa-tion from one of the many groundbreaking and comprehensive reports authoredby the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). According tothe national School Climate Survey conducted by GLSEN,

● . percent of LGBT students reported being verbally harassed, . percentreported being physically harassed, and . percent reported being physicallyassaulted at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation;

● . percent of LGBT students reported being verbally harassed, . percentreported being physically harassed, and . percent reported being physicallyassaulted at school in the past year because of their gender expression;

● Nearly two-thirds (. percent) of students reported that they felt unsafe inschool because of their sexual orientation, and more than a third (. percent)felt unsafe because of their gender expression.

These findings are supported at the local level through numerous smaller-scalesurveys and ethnographic research.

Further, these high rates of interpersonal violence are precipitated and shapedby forms of structural or state violence. A national study of LGBT studentsof color, Shared Differences: The Experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, andTransgender Students of Color in Our Nation’s Schools, also developed and sup-ported by GLSEN, identified how erasure and marginalization of LGBTQ youthof color is built into schooling:

Few LGBT students of color had access to LGBT-inclusive curricular resourcesin school. Less than a fifth of students had been taught about LGBT-relatedpeople, history, or events in their classes, or had such information available in

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their textbooks (% each). Furthermore, only % reported that they couldaccess LGBT-related resources in their school library. Less than a fifth of allLGBT students of color (%) reported that their school had a comprehensivepolicy to address in-school harassment and assault, which provided specificprotections based on sexual orientation and gender identity/expression.

This research highlights the role that the state plays to create conditions thatexacerbate the potential for interpersonal violence. For example, lack of access toLGBTQ adults, teachers, and administrators who have been educated aboutLGBTQ rights and lives, LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum and other resources createenvironments in which interpersonal acts of homophobia or transphobia are rife.These linkages between structural and interpersonal violence are almost alwaysabsent from media representations of anti-gay bullying and rarely present in thelegislative responses. In fact, wider community and social practices and norms,although tough to legislate, are rarely addressed in the media coverage (or theresulting legislation) focusing on gender or sexuality motivated bullying. Instead, theschool, the teacher, and the students become the units of analysis and intervention.

As is clear from the snapshots of research and media coverage we present,violence is a problem and queer youth are targeted, and yet the question is framednarrowly: If not anti-bullying laws, then what? We suggest that the state’scriminalizing responses mask the complex roots of queer violence and distractaudiences from understanding the importance of structural factors that facilitateand naturalize violence targeted at queers. These anti-bullying laws overwhelm-ingly work to transfer structural factors that perpetuate and reward heteronor-mativity into individual pathologies and also suggest that the way to addresshomophobia is to punish individual perpetrators. The majority of responses toharm in school do not make connections between forms of structural violence—including the lack of LGBT teachers and curricula—and forms of interpersonalviolence.

In a related area, a number of scholar activists have come out in opposition tohate crimes legislation arguing that not only is there no evidence that theexistence of hate crimes legislation functions as a deterrent to reduce biased actsof violence, but that hate crimes legislation supports a culture of punishment thatdistracts us from understanding how LGBTQ and other folks have foundthemselves punished through hate crimes legislation. The Sylvia Rivera LawProject, a national organization that works to ensure that all people are free toself-determine gender identity and expression, in a statement opposing hatecrimes legislation, states:

The evidence . . . shows that hate crime laws and other “get tough on crime”measures do not deter or prevent violence. Increased incarceration does not deter

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others from committing violent acts motivated by hate, does not rehabilitatethose who have committed past acts of hate, and does not make anyone safer. Aswe see trans people profiled by police, disproportionately arrested and detained,caught in systems of poverty and detention, and facing extreme violence inprisons, jails and detention centers, we believe that this system itself is a mainperpetrator of violence against our communities.

In a culture of pervasive homo- and transphobia, hate crimes laws, like anti-bullyinglaws, are seductive with their promise to punish perpetrators and distract us from anexamination of the complex roots of harm. Activist and journalist Liliana Seguraargues that politicians who voted in favor of the Matthew Shepard Act, the

legislation that amended the Hate Crimes Act to include sexual orientation andgender identity, many of whom also voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, used theirvote as an opportunity to “appear tough on crime while also appearing to support gayrights.” Further, as social justice lawyer Andrea Ritchie has identified, anti-bullying laws are “mini hate crimes laws” likely to both reflect and reinforcedominant sets of power arrangements.

In fact, recent research highlights that queer youth, the targets of hetero-“norming” violence in schools, are also more severely punished in other institu-tional settings. Angela Irvine’s research with the National Council on Crimeand Delinquency demonstrates that queer youth are disproportionately repre-sented in juvenile justice systems:

At least percent of the population in juvenile detention is LGBT. Dice thenumbers according to gender and the statistics get worse: percent of girls bookedinto detention sites across the country disclosed lesbian or bisexual sexual orientationsor otherwise failed to conform to expectations of how girls should behave. Like kidsof color, LGBT youth are punished more often than their straight peers.

Not only are LGBT youth overrepresented in justice systems, Irvine’s multistateresearch shows that LGBT youth are targeted for harsher sanctions at every levelof the system:

[LGB] and gender non-conforming youth in juvenile detention were twice as likelyto have a history of home removal by a social worker, placement in a group or fosterhome, or homelessness when compared with their straight peers. They’re also twice aslikely to face detention in the juvenile justice system for running away, prostitution,sex with someone of the same gender, and minor offenses like loitering and truancy.Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (but not gender non-conforming) youth are also morelikely than their straight peers to face detention for a violent offense. The harshestdisparities show up in punishments for running away: percent of gay and bisexualboys are detained for running away compared with percent of straight boys, and

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percent of lesbian and bisexual girls are detained for running away compared with

percent of straight girls.

Not only is there no evidence that anti-gay bullying laws, like other forms of hatecrimes legislation, will act as a deterrent toward bias-related harm, this criminalizingresponse circulates in a landscape where LGBT youth are already disproportionatelypunished by state entities tasked with ensuring our collective safety and security.

) ) ) Strengthening a Punitive and Racialized Regime

Another “gay win” frequently identified is the increase in both the focus onbullying in schools and the resulting attempts by schools to institute anti-bullying regulations. The rationale for anti-bullying laws, often presented asnecessary to protect children, is seemingly hard to contest. Yet, as previouslynoted, instead of excavating the heteronormativity, trans- and homophobia inschools and communities, state responses to bullying define the problem nar-rowly and posit punishment and criminalization as the response. Anti-bullyinglaws suggest that if we removed the few bad kids that are causing problems,schools would be safer for queers. However, these initiatives are not capable ofidentifying and addressing social inequality. For example, a Gallup surveyshowed that percent of those polled are not supportive of adoptive rights forgays and lesbians, and polls showed that percent of Americans opposemarriage for gay people. Attitudes like these indicate the prevalence of socialanxieties about queer people. In particular, nonnormative forms of genderidentity and expression continue to receive punishment.

Without acknowledgement of the structural and institutional context—formsof state violence—the individuated anti-bullying laws and other punitive sanc-tions operating in schools will target those who are already suspect withinnational logics of race, class, gender, and other marginalizing categories. Forexample, school suspension rates for African Americans, and in particular forAfrican American boys, are significantly higher than for their White counter-parts. As summarized in a article in an Educational Researcher article thatsurveyed all available national research on disciplinary sanctions,

Males of all racial and ethnic groups are more likely than females to receivedisciplinary sanctions. In , only % of Asian Pacific Islander females weresuspended, compared with % of Asian Pacific Islander males. Expulsion datafrom that same year showed that White females were half as likely to be expelledas White males (p � .), and similarly, Black females were half as likely to be

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expelled as Black males (p � .). Black males are especially at risk for receivingdiscipline sanctions, with one study showing that Black males were times aslikely as White females to be suspended.

These gendered and racialized practices of removing students from their educationalsettings—the most dramatic educational sanction available—start in preschools, asindicated in a survey of states’ prekindergarten programs.,

It is important to note that available data on school suspensions and expul-sions shows that these practices do not improve youth academic or behavioralperformance, and suspensions are not reserved for acts of violence or actions thatmight be perceived as dangerous. In their review of the research on the reasons forsuspensions, Losen and Skiba found wide variations among the reasons stu-dents were suspended nationwide and identified that suspensions were not theresult of violent and “serious” behavior. In one state-wide study, “only % of allout-of-school suspensions were issued for disciplinary incidents that are typicallyconsidered serious or dangerous, such as possession of weapons or drugs. Theremaining % of suspensions fell into two categories: disruptive behavior andother.” Excessively punitive school disciplinary measures that disproportion-ately target the most marginalized in school contexts made national headlines in, highlighting the educational cost to young people when they are pushed outof school. Within this landscape, it is not a stretch to predict that anti-bullyinglaws will be unevenly implemented and that certain students will continue to bedisproportionately targeted and punished.

Although all laws are intended to prevent future harm, the measures that aremost powerful generally have sanction and punishment components. For exam-ple, in California made bullying illegal with the passage of passed “Seth’sLaw,” yet the final version of the bill was stripped of all language mandatingcounseling or restorative justice practices. Rather than being proactive, the law isretroactively punitive, involving “spot checks” of schools to see if they are incompliance. New Jersey’s anti-bullying legislation tightened relationshipsbetween schools and local law enforcement, forcing schools and officials to reportincidences more quickly, to create school-based anti-bullying specialists, and toincrease penalties for bullying. It also provides for a Crimestoppers telephoneline, “to make reporting easier, but [which] also ups the ante by involving lawenforcement rather than resolving issues in the principal’s office.” Becauseschools are sites of surveillance that are neither race nor gender neutral, these lawsentrench extant relationships to law enforcement. Criminalization in andoutside of schools is a process of racialization, through which youth of color arenormalized as those who are “bad” and “in trouble.” These laws falsely assume

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that law enforcement is free of violence or bullying, yet police and other securityforces are often key perpetrators of sexual and other forms of violence. Finally,this turn to criminalization as a response to homophobia and punishing gendernormativity augments a carceral system that is deeply flawed, fundamentallyshaped by racism, and actively reproductive of heteronormativity and genderconformity. Thus, it is a “solution” that fails to effectively address the immediateproblem of anti-queer school-based violence, which we argue is exacerbated bynew forms of privatized schooling.

Many schools and communities across the United States are making tentativeturns towards approaches to harm in schools that do not reinforce a carceral orpunitive logic. In schools, these practices are often framed as restorative ortransformative justice practices and include peace circles, peer juries, motiva-tional interviewing, safety labs, and other forms of relationship and communitybuilding. Rather than punishment or isolation, the overarching goals for restor-ative justice practices are to try to heal the whole community from incidents inwhich people were harmed and, ideally, to help prevent the same sort of harmfrom happening again. These programs are underfunded and underresourced inschools, but are nevertheless emerging across the United States because parents,teachers, and young people know that punitive responses not only do not workto address harm, but actually harm young people and communities.

) ) ) Costs of Privatized Education for Queers

An often unexamined linkage is that between violence targeting LGBTQ youthand the shifting working conditions of public school personnel. Although publiceducation has always been more promise than practice, with access and resourcesrestricted and denied for many, today it is clear that the system itself is underassault. We have discussed how anti-bullying legislation, enacted to address thereal problem of violence against queer youth—and often claimed as a success inthe movement for LGBTQ rights—distracts attention from other structuralforms of violence. In this section, we explore the effects of public educationprivatization on queers, and specifically youth who experience anti-LGBTQharm in their public schools, using our home location, Chicago, as an example.

In , the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largestteachers union, reported that between and it lost over ,

members and predicted that by it will lose a total of , teachers andother workers. These numbers were released as the NEA held its annualmeeting in Washington, D.C., an event previously popular among Democratic

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politicians, but which President Obama decided to skip, prompting speculationabout the dwindling clout of organized education labor. Indeed, between– and – the number of largely nonunionized charter schoolsincreased from to percent of all public schools, and this growth continues

despite reports that suggest negligible gains, if any, by students enrolled in charterschools. Charter schools, initiated first in Minnesota in , were created topilot innovative educational reform in “high need” areas. Charters are publicschools that, depending on state legislation, have flexibility surrounding theschool calendar, curriculum, assessments, qualifications of teachers, compensa-tion for school personnel, and more. What is central to our point is that in moststates employees at charter schools, including teachers, are nonunion workersand are not protected through any form of collective bargaining. In the over

years that charter schools have existed in the United States, their presence hascreated parallel public school systems and the original goal of using theseschools to improve or “reform” traditional systems has been abandoned.

Chicago offers an example of the effects of the national trend of expandingcharters. The number of charter schools doubled in the city between and, and in , percent of Chicago schools were charters and contractschools, and there are plans to open more, all privately run, while closing publicschools with teachers who are able to become members of the Chicago TeachersUnion. Although there is an aggressive move by the American Federation ofTeachers to unionize workers at charter schools, the overwhelming majority ofteachers at charter schools locally and nationally are not unionized, and inChicago these teachers are prevented by law from joining the Chicago TeachersUnion. It is no surprise, then, that Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel, whoinaugurated his tenure in Chicago by privatizing the city’s garbage collectionservices, has now turned his attention to privatizing education by committing tothe expansion of charter schools. A nonunion workforce is flexible, docile, andcheaper.

The increase in charter schools started prior to the presidential election,but the Obama administration’s Race To The Top (RTTP) legislation of

supported and accelerated the development of privatized education settings andorganizations: RTTP linked state funding for education to the approval ofcharter schools. The backdrop for this funding scheme and the ongoing loss ofunions and unionized workers is globalized free enterprise that endorses theworldwide replacement of public systems with private sector solutions.

Privatizing public spaces and institutions has long required the production ofdisposable identities as targets for anger and disgust. In dismantling welfare andpublic education, the targeting and dehumanizing of benefit recipients calls the

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legitimacy of a public institution or program in question and asserts the impor-tance of market-driven regulation. In current education policy, the image ofthe lazy, negligent, unionized female teacher has emerged as a figure to despise.

Beyond the educational work site and the profession of teaching, theworkplace picture is grim. In January , the Bureau of Labor Statisticsreleased data on rates of unionization in the United States “falling to .percent of the American work force in .” As queer employment activistand lawyer Richard Blum notes, the current labor reality is anti-union andanti-worker.

Unions represent less than percent of private-sector workers and fewer andfewer public sector workers. The few unions that remain often find themselvesbargaining over how much will be cut. Where there are no unions, there is noone in the institutional role of shop floor watchdog, whether that “shop floor” isin a factory, an office, a restaurant or caterer, a school, a hospital or nursinghome, a theater, or anywhere else that workers work. Arbitrary and abusiveconduct, no matter how illegal, has no institutional check where there is nounion.

We’ve taken the time to present a snapshot of the employment context fortoday’s education workers as a reminder that schools are increasingly sites ofunprotected and temporary labor. Are teachers and other adults likely toadvocate for queer youth and take other, often related, unpopular positionswithout rights to due process? Our own research indicates that they may not,leaving schools without “out” LGBTQ teachers and staff, advocates for queeryouth, and facilitators for Gay Straight Alliances and other clubs supportiveof youth exploring gender and sexuality. For example, in one Chicago charterhigh school with many LGBTQ-identified staff and faculty members, afterthe Board of Directors instituted a policy that forbade employees fromtalking about their “personal lives” at school, the lesbian advisor to the GayStraight Alliance removed herself from that position. No other employeecould be found to take on the role, and the previously active student club wasdisbanded.

From our experiences working and teaching in urban public schools andlearning alongside both new and veteran teachers, we know that teachers are notlazy and incompetent workers who care little about children. What we observe isteachers negotiating the challenge of isolation in their profession, working hardto not let standardized tests dominate their curriculum, and struggling to supportstudents who are growing up in communities devastated by decades of poverty,policing, and disenfranchisement. Yet, even with these conditions, we recognize

( Therese Quinn and Erica R. Meiners

This work originally appeared in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Inaugural Issue, Fall 2013, published by Michigan State University Press.

that teachers are not unlike other workers. Employees in all sectors are oftenfearful of engagement beyond their daily tasks. Teachers, who already work longdays—research shows that Chicago’s teachers work nearly hours each week—are reluctant to take stands on potentially controversial issues, worried about notbeing hired or promoted if they are “out” or “too gay,” and concerned that theirprincipals might single them out for retribution; if they work at will, they willhave little or no right to due process in these cases.

Yet, employment protections do not guarantee that teachers will speak outagainst compulsory heteronormativity, or include LGBTQ curriculum incourses. In our work assessing teacher education and social work programs inIllinois for inclusion of LGBTQ lives in policies, in content in curricula andan LGBTQ presence on campus, we know that teacher educators feel poorlyprepared to address sexual orientation and gender identity, and that manyprograms include little or no information in these areas. In this context, itisn’t surprising that teachers may find addressing heteronormativity, homopho-bia, and related topics in their classrooms difficult. For us, this reinforces the factthat the employment protections offered by labor unions are crucial: they offer ameasure of protection and collective support that create working conditions thatwould increase the possibility that workers could support social justice.

Although our discussion focuses on queer lives in schools, always throughan intersectional lens, good working conditions built through collectivebargaining have the potential to shape justice struggles and affect manycommunities. Although queer lives and views may be inflammatory inschools, there is an abundance of research showing that Black and Brownyouth, disabled and immigrant children, girls, and others who have beenrendered vulnerable socially suffer in educational, as well as other institu-tional settings and that they and queer youth are targeted for punishment andother abuses at rates disproportionate to their numbers. As we write thisarticle, a report issued jointly by the American Civil Liberties Union and theNAACP in January details the harsh punishment, from paddlings to arrests,meted out to African American students in Mississippi, with youth subjected topolice interventions for “offences” including peanut fights, flatulence, and dresscode violations. The research has not yet been completed that will show how“right to work” laws that make it difficult for labor to organize, and shape howeducation employees feel able (or not) to identify and amend unjust schoolconditions. Yet, it seems safe to claim, that students will benefit when schoolemployees have workplace protections that foster speech, independent thinking,and advocacy, not fear of job loss.

From Anti-Bullying Laws and Gay Marriages to Queer Worlds and Just Futures )

This work originally appeared in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Inaugural Issue, Fall 2013, published by Michigan State University Press.

) ) ) From Equality to Liberation

The increased legitimacy and limited success of LGBT rights-based movementsin the United States (and beyond) motivate us, and other allies, to step back andengage in a critical assessment of LGBT and other social justice organizing. Bylegitimacy, one example is Hillary Clinton’s contribution of a video statement tothe It Gets Better Project online archive, “Tomorrow will be better,” and herstatement in Geneva, in December , that “Gay rights are human rights, andhuman rights are gay rights,” at which time she announced a new $ million“global equality fund” for LGBT people worldwide. Just a few months later, inJune , Clinton made a special statement of support for gay people in honorof the LGBT Month that President Obama had just made official. By Decem-ber , blogs were buzzing that soon Clinton would also endorse gaymarriage.

Clinton’s statements and actions, through one framework, denote a gaysuccess. Lesbian and gay lives are on the agenda of the U.S. Secretary of State.But, simultaneously, these steps toward recognition and legitimacy are themoments when LGBTQ movements must step back and assess: what are ourgoals? Equality—or full participation in the status quo—or liberation andcollective transformation? We argue that over the last years the focus ofmainstream lesbian and gay organizations in the United States, although nevermonolithic, has been assimilation, characterized by a prioritization of issues suchas full and equal participation in the military and marriage. Along with manyother grassroots justice organizations across the United States, including Queersfor Economic Justice, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and Gender JUST, wequestion this focus. Although marriage brings with it a host of benefits, thisaccess is offered at a moment when fewer individuals receive any state support orprotection. Readers, we are sure, can name the markers of our crumbling publicsphere: Ongoing struggles to access quality and affordable health care; thedecimation of unions and concurrent explosion of contingent and “just in time”workers without any benefits; the eradication of public housing and challenges torent control; the continued denial of child care and parental leave benefits. Andwho can forget drone strikes? Beginning in , strikes by the driverless aerialvehicles initiated by the Obama administration and endorsed by the U.S.Secretary of State Clinton have killed thousands of civilians, including children,in Pakistan, Yemen, and other parts of the world, even as these attacks have beendescribed as a “mass torture” of residents of these and other countries. For us,the narrow goal of equality pursued by mainstream lesbian and gay organizationssignifies acceptance of an unequal and unjust world.

( Therese Quinn and Erica R. Meiners

This work originally appeared in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Inaugural Issue, Fall 2013, published by Michigan State University Press.

This trade-off, of goodies for some and crumbs for many (against the back-ground noise of drones), has never been more apparent than in schools. Withstalled and impoverished conversations of the state’s abandonment of any formof wealth redistribution for K– public education, frontal assaults on teacher’sunions, bipartisan support of the privatization of schools through charters,consistently “disproportionately” high suspension and expulsion rates for Blackand Latino/a students, LGBT educational justice movements are being officiallyinvited to partially participate, and to de facto legitimate this “new normal” ineducation. It is at these moments, when those outside the dominant paradigm arepromised access to power, that critical engagement and analysis are vital. AsAudre Lorde noted, “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because wedo not live single-issue lives.” Her statement and work remind us to link ourpermanent war economy to movements for queer rights and the emergent “progay” domestic policies to practices beyond our borders. In particular, as one ofour sites of organizing and research is the public school, we apply this lens topublic education. Gay equality might mean a network of strong and punitiveanti-bullying laws, but an agenda of queer liberation and transformation trans-lates into building up democratic and well-resourced public schools in flourish-ing communities that are invested in challenging heteronormativity and otherinjustices.

The importance of critical engagement and reflexivity is heightened as selectgay and lesbians are afforded political and economic privileges. As an example, opens with a report that David Blankenhorn, a conservative “traditional-marriage” activist who is a member of the Institute for American Values, isreorienting the work of his organization from opposition to “gay marriage” tobroad-based pro-marriage advocacy that “bring[s] together gays and lesbians whowant to strengthen marriage with heterosexuals who want to do the same.” Aplatform document issued by the Institute shifts attention from the immoralityof queers to the impoverished values of the poor, noting that, “marriage is rapidlydividing along class lines” and asking, “What economic policies strengthenmarriage?” and “What marriage policies create wealth?” Rich queers who wantto marry, this formulation implies, aren’t the problem they were previouslyidentified as; instead, the destroyers of “American values” are the economicallyunstable who increasingly choose not to marry. Again, assimilation is the goalfor organizations such as the Institute for American Values; gays who get with“traditional” programs of wealth accumulation and gay marriage are just fine.

Recent work in queer theory that locates sexuality in practices of citizenship,statehood, and nationalism points to the demand for assimilation as a retractionof rights and, more important, as an acquiescence to deeply problematic

From Anti-Bullying Laws and Gay Marriages to Queer Worlds and Just Futures )

This work originally appeared in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Inaugural Issue, Fall 2013, published by Michigan State University Press.

constructions of the state. “The collaboration between heteronormativity andpatriotism allows for certain forms of queerness (or sexual ‘deviance’) to beincorporated into the project of national reproduction while others are renderedcontinually abject, unworthy, or unable to be assimilated into either hetero- orhomonormative citizenship.” Following this logic, if you support the military,are prepared to “cover” and pass as if you do, or engage in marriage, homeownership, two-parent families, monogamy, and massive consumption, and inother “coverings” of difference or indicators of alignment with normative ways ofliving, you are worthy of incorporation into the state and might even be eligiblefor some social protections. If not? Oh, well, too bad—your family forms, livingarrangements, and more will now be disparaged and framed as unworthy ofsupport.

These trajectories towards state power and protection are not new andLGBTQ activists must continue to engage in a close examination of interrelatedsocial movements that have faced similar tensions. We can point to the domesticviolence movement as a telling example: Why—with thousands of shelters forwomen, training for police on how to recognize domestic violence, and eightprofessional journals that publish scholarship on violence against women—arewomen, particularly those of color, still harmed by men? Why are our prisonsand courts overflowing with poor people—including our Black, First Nations,Latino/a, noncitizen, and queer neighbors—and yet people do not feel any safer?And how is it that the multiple and overlapping forms of violence that affectmany marginalized women—particularly transwomen and Black, Latina, FirstNations, queer, and disabled women—do not count as an alarming nationalepidemic of violence and ongoing harm?

) ) ) Building Queer and Just Futures

Because the state offers limited support of select gay lives, it is vitally importantto examine what is masked or erased by moves toward assimilation and theaccrual of limited rights. Our previous examples highlight how increased em-ployment protections for gay teachers and anti-bullying policies are more com-plex and less clear as successes when these gains are analyzed in a wider landscape.We have argued in this article that we must acknowledge the ways that youth areharmed by anti-LGBTQ bullying, that they need assistance, including socialservices, in the immediate moment; and we must also link these painful anddamaging individual experiences to social structures, including heteronormativ-ity, misogyny, and transphobia, that foster violence. Further, we have used

( Therese Quinn and Erica R. Meiners

This work originally appeared in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Inaugural Issue, Fall 2013, published by Michigan State University Press.

intersectional framing to insist that anti-bullying legislation is not just ineffec-tive, it supports institutions that reflect and reproduce racism, gender confor-mity, and class oppression. Bullying is pervasive; it is rampant in our schools andon our streets, within our places of employment and throughout our legal andjudicial systems, and conveyed daily in our media and through corrosive dis-course that labels some young people, in the United States and across the globe,“terrorists,” and others “fags,” “dykes,” and “intrinsically disordered.” Theviolence is real and rife; addressing bullying demands immediate action, and alsosystemic analysis. Without this, our remedies are more likely to be flawed:Anti-bullying legislation advances criminalization as a response, but this neitheraddresses the root causes of harm nor creates safer schools for all, including queeryouth. Short-term solutions that mask the real damage and potentially expandthe problem are not solutions at all.

Because the stakes are so high, it is critical that we remember the strength ofcoalition politics, and of inter- and intra-movement organizing: Our strategiesare more powerful when we listen to and work with each other. LGBTQliberation work includes challenging what the state frames as a “gay” issue (e.g.,marriage or bullying), and insisting that good working conditions for teachers aregood learning environments for teachers, as the Chicago Teachers Union arguedas it built toward its successful strike, but also flourishing living conditionsfor queers. In other words, LGBTQ justice depends on justice for others; ouroppression and our freedom is linked.

Seneca Falls, Selma, Stonewall—these uprisings and affiliated justice move-ments, invoked by President Obama in his inaugural address, pushed backagainst the politics of patriarchy, White supremacy, and trans- and homophobiathat structure our everyday lives and institutions, from schools to courtrooms,and fought to see these systems dismantled. To continue this work today is to notsettle for the status quo or the crumbs offered but to put “our queer shoulders tothe wheel,” to quote Allen Ginsberg, exercising our radical imaginations andworking together to build the world we need.

In our schools, we might start by remembering and teaching the complexitiesof our radical queer history: The communist, pacifist strategist of the Civil RightsMovement, Bayard Rustin. The fabulous Harry Hay, who used skills he learnedthrough labor organizing and in the Communist Party USA to co-found theMattachine Society, the Gay Liberation Front, and the Radical Faeries. AndSylvia Rivera, the transgendered Latina sex worker involved in the Stonewalluprising who spoke powerfully against police repression and police brutality.And Adrienne Rich’s life of resistance, exemplified by her refusal to accept the National Book Award as an individual, instead claiming the award with her

From Anti-Bullying Laws and Gay Marriages to Queer Worlds and Just Futures )

This work originally appeared in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Inaugural Issue, Fall 2013, published by Michigan State University Press.

other fierce, queer artist, and activist nominees, Alice Walker and Audre Lorde.These people remind us of the power of community, and of the importance oflearning across locations of struggle.

Yet, our work extends beyond teaching about and learning from our queerelders and predecessors to include yet-to-be imagined tactics developed in themoment. We are enlivened by and try to see queer justice organizing in schoolingas a part of a contemporary flare up of radical anti-racist, feminist, anti-capitalistqueer scholarship produced by thinkers tied to racial, economic, and queerjustice organizations such as Communities United Against Violence in SanFrancisco or the Transformative Justice Law Project in Chicago, that interruptthe politically narrowing moves of mainstream gay and lesbian movements,including the march towards “gay marriage.” We are also energized by networksof youth, parents, and teachers from Los Angeles to Atlanta, who are speakingout and pushing back against punishing and undemocratic schools, communi-ties, and organizations. The work can seem daunting and the interconnectionsendless, but many of these groups—including the Caucus of Rank and FileEducators (CORE), the leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union that iscommitted to racial, gender, and economic justice, and democracy in action forits members; and New York’s Audre Lorde Project, organizing to make commu-nities safer and stronger for LGBTQ youth of color—offer rich, radical visionsand models that should inform our efforts to build queer and just futures.

We close with a caution and a return to the use of queer as a verb: The apparentclarity and unassailability of demands for equality in education and everywhereelse is an illusion. A queer vision must recognize the rightness of Audre Lorde’sreminder that humanness is never simple; we are linked to each other. Thisunderstanding pushes those invested in LGBTQ lives to move beyond equality,which is necessary, but never sufficient, as a goal for our social justice struggles.

N O T E S

Acknowledgement: We work alongside many, within and outside organizations, onlysome of which are referenced in this article. We are humbled and enlivened by thesecommunities, always generative, and look forward to continued pleasures, challenges,and labors.

. Our name order reflects a publishing rotation and not an authorship hierarchy;this is a cowritten article.

. Rebecca Cathcart, “Boy’s Killing, Labeled a Hate Crime, Stuns Town,” New YorkTimes, February , , http://www.nytimes.com////us/oxnard.html.

. Ramin Setoodeh, “Young, Gay and Murdered,” U.S. News, July , , http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek////young-gay-and-murdered.html.

( Therese Quinn and Erica R. Meiners

This work originally appeared in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Inaugural Issue, Fall 2013, published by Michigan State University Press.

. It Gets Better Project, “What is the It Gets Better Project?,” March , , http://www.itgetsbetter.org/pages/about-it-gets-better-project/.

. Bully Police USA, “What is a School Bully?,” March , , http://www.bullypolice.org/.. Education Law Center, “Bullying,” March , , http://www.edlawcenter.org/issues/

bullying. html.. Matt Friedman, “Senate Pass ‘Anti-bullying Bill of Rights’ in Wake of Tyler Clementi’s

Death,” New Jersey Assembly, November , , http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf///nj_assembly_ passes_anti-bullyi.html.

. Lisa Miller, “Cyberbullying Law Shields Teachers From Student Tormentors,”WBEZ: National Public Radio, February , , http://www.npr.org/////cyber-bulling-law-shields-teachers-from-student-tormentors.

. Bully Police USA, “Georgia,” March , , http://www.bullypolice.org/ga_law.html.. Dean Praetorious, “Jamey Rodemeyer, -year-old Boy, Commits Suicide After

Gay Bullying, Parents Carry on Message,” Huffington Post, September , ,http://www.huffingtonpost.com////jamey-rodemeyer-suicide-gay-bullying_n_.html.

. Tony Gonzalez, “Stunned Community Looks for Justice After Gay Teen’s Suicide,”Tennessean, December , , http://www.tennessean.com/article//NEWS//Stunned-community-looks-justice-after-gay-teen-s-suicide;Jason Shaw, “Ohio gay teen beaten in class,” October , : http://technorati.com/lifestyle/article/ohio-gay-teen-beaten-in-class/.

. Julie Cannold, “Teen Says Bullies Beat Him, Sues New York Schools,” CNNJustice, June , , http://www.cnn.com////justice/new-york-bullying-attack-blind.

. Cheryl Armstrong, “Heartbreaking School Bullying Complaint,” Courthouse NewsService, June , , http://www.courthousenews.com////.htm.

. Armstrong, “Heartbreaking School Bully.”. Colleen O’Connor, “Colorado Parents of Transgender st-grader File Complaint Over

Restroom Ban,” Denver Post, February , , http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_/transgender-fountain-st-grader-banned-from-girls-bathroom#ixzzMCIfuO.

. Cathy J. Cohen, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potentialof Queer Politics?” in Black Queer Studies. A Critical Anthology, ed. E. PatrickJohnson and Mae G. Henderson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, ), .

. Jason Horowitz, “Mitt Romney’s Prep School Classmates Recall Pranks, But AlsoTroubling Incidents,” Washington Post, May , , http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romneys-prep-school-classmates-recall-pranks-but-also-troubling-incidents////gIQAWOKFU_print.html.

. Horowitz, “Mitt Romney’s Prep School Classmates.”. Eric Rofes, A Radical Rethinking of Sexuality and Schooling: Status Quo or Status

Queer? (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Inc, ), .

From Anti-Bullying Laws and Gay Marriages to Queer Worlds and Just Futures )

This work originally appeared in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Inaugural Issue, Fall 2013, published by Michigan State University Press.

. We use “queer” in two ways—as an adjective and as a noun that can, and heredoes, refer to all sexualities and gender identities that are outside and challenging ofnormative, binary categories. We also invoke the radical form of queer that MaryBryson and Suzanne de Castell, Cohen, and others have urged, as a verb, or astance and tactic that assumes and honors human complexities and demands actiontoward ending oppressive social systems that limit our gendered, sexual, andcreative lives. Mary Bryson and Suzanne de Castell, “Queer Pedagogy: PraxisMakes Im/Perfect,” Canadian Journal of Education/Revue canadienne de l’éducation (): –; Cohen, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens.”

. Cathy J. Cohen, “Race and Queer Theory in the Age of Obama,” Lecture, ICIBerlin, June .

. Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books, ), .. Sarah Schulman, “Israel and ‘Pinkwashing,’” New York Times, November , ,

http://www.nytimes.com////opinion/pinkwashing-and-israels-use-of-gays-as-a-messaging-tool.html?_r�.

. Suzanne Eckes and Martha McCarthy, “Teachers’ Privacy Rights: A LegalMemorandum,” Quarterly Law Topics for School Leaders (): –.

. “At-will” is an employment status that means an employee can be terminatedwithout notice, at any time, for any nondiscriminatory reason. Further, employerscan change terms of employment at any time. National Conference of StateLegislatures, “The At-Will presumption and exceptions to the rule” (): para. –, http://www.ncsl.org/issues-research/labor/at-will-employment-overview.aspx.

. Judy Fudge and Rosemary Owens, “Precarious Work, Women, and the NewEconomy: The Challenge to Legal Norms,” in Precarious Work, Women, and theNew Economy, ed. Judy Fudge and Rosemary Owens (Oxford: Hart, ), –.

. Rebecca Bohrman and Naomi Murakawa, “Remaking Big Government: Immigrationand Crime Control in the United States,” in Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and thePrison-Industrial Complex Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and the Prison-industrialComplex, ed. Julia Sudbury (New York: Taylor and Francis, ), .

. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press), .

. Joseph G. Kosciw, Emily A. Greytak, Elizabeth M. Diaz, and Mark J. Bartkiewicz,“The National School Climate Survey: The Experience of Lesbian, Gay,Bisexual and Transgendered Students in Our Nation’s Schools,” GLSEN, http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/news/record/.html.

. Kosciw, Greytak, Diaz, and Bartkiewicz, “The National School ClimateSurvey.”

. C. J. Pascoe, Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School (Berkeleyand Los Angeles: University of California Press, ); Lance T. McCready,Making Space for Diverse Masculinities: Difference, Intersectionality, and Engagementin an Urban High School (New York: Peter Lang, ).

( Therese Quinn and Erica R. Meiners

This work originally appeared in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Inaugural Issue, Fall 2013, published by Michigan State University Press.

. Elizabeth M. Diaz and Joesph G. Kosciw, “Shared Differences: The Experience ofLesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Students of Color in Our Nation’sSchools,” GLSEN, January , : , http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/news/record/.html.

. Liliana Segura, “Do Hate Crimes Laws Do Any Good?” Alternet, August , ,http://www.alternet.org/story//do_hate_crime_laws_do_any_good/?page�entire; Dean Spade, “Keynote Address: Trans Law and Politics on a NeoliberalLandscape,” Temple Political and Civil Rights Law Review (): –.

. Sylvia Rivera Law Project, “SLRP on Hate Crime Laws,” (), http://srlp.org/our-strategy/policy-advocacy/hate-crimes/.

. Segura, “Do Hate Crimes.”. Andrea Ritchie, “Arrested Justice: A Conversation on Black Women, Violence, and

America’s Prison Nation,” Experimental Station, Chicago, IL, December , .. Kathryn E. W. Himmelstein and Hannah Bruckner, “Criminal-Justice and School

Sanctions against Nonheterosexual Youth: A National Longitudinal Study,”Pediatrics (): –; Angela Irvine, “LGBT kids in the prison pipeline,”May , , http://thepublicintellectual.org////lgbt-kids-in-the-school-to-prison-pipeline/.

. Irvine, “LGBT kids.”. Ibid.. Susan Page, “Poll: Attitudes towards gays changing fast,” USA Today, December ,

, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics////poll-from-gay-marriage-to-adoption-attitudes-changing-fast//.

. Rebecca L. Stotzer, “Violence against Transgender People: A Review of UnitedStates Data,” Aggression and Violent Behavior (): –; Shannon E. Wyss,“‘This Was My Hell’: The Violence Experienced by Gender Non-ConformingYouth in U.S. High Schools,” International Journal of Qualitative Studies inEducation (): –.

. Russell J. Skiba, Robert S. Michael, Abra Carroll Nardo, and Reece Peterson, “TheColor of Discipline: Sources of Racial and Gender Disproportionality in SchoolPunishment,” Urban Review (): –; U.S. Department of Education,“Elementary and secondary school survey ,” (); Skiba et al., “The Colorof Discipline.”

. Anne Gregory, Russell J. Skiba, and Pedro Noguera, “The Achievement Gap andthe Discipline Gap: Two Sides of the Same Coin?” Educational Researcher

(): .. In one study of states’ prekindergarten programs published in , boys were

expelled at a rate over more than . times that of girls. African Americansattending state-funded prekindergarten were about twice as likely to be expelled asLatino/a and Caucasian children, and more than five times as likely to be expelledas Asian-American children; William Gilliam, “Prekindergarteners Left Behind:

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Expulsion Rates in State PreKindergarten Programs,” FCD brief series No. , May:, http://www.fcd-us.org/PDFs/ExpulsionFinalProof.pdf.

. Gilliam, “Prekindergarteners Left Behind,” .. Daniel J. Losen, and Russell J. Skiba, “Discipline Policies, Successful Schools, and

Racial Justice,” The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA,National Education Policy Center, Boulder, CO, October, .

. Losen and Skiba, “Discipline Policies.”. Ibid., .. Losen and Skiba, “Discipline Policies”; Alan Schwarz, “School Discipline Study

Raises Questions,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com////education/discipline.html; Himmelstein and Bruckner, “Criminal Justice andSchool Sanctions.”

. Jens Erik Gould, “Seth’s Law: Can a Bullied Boy Leave California a LegalLegacy?,” Time, http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/,,,.html.

. Winnie Hu, “Bullying Law Puts New Jersey Schools on Spot,” New York Times,August , , http://www.nytimes.com////nyregion/bullying-law-puts-new-jersey-schools-on-spot.html?pagewanted�all.

. Damon T. Hewitt, Catherine Y. Kim, and Daniel J. Losen, The School to PrisonPipeline: Structuring Legal Reform (New York: New York University Press, ).

. Amanda E. Lewis, Race in the Schoolyard: Negotiating the Colorline in Classroomsand Communities (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, ); AngelaDavis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (New York: Seven Stories Press, ); Ann ArnettFerguson, Bad Boys: Public Schools and the Making of Black Masculinity (Ann Arbor:University of Michigan Press, ).

. Beth Richie, Arrested Justice: Black Women, Male Violence and the Build-up of aPrison Nation (New York: New York University Press, ).

. Jane Hereth, Mariame Kaba, Erica R. Meiners, and Lewis Wallace, “RestorativeJustice Is Not Enough: School Based Interventions in the Carceral State,” inDisrupting the School-to-Prison Pipeline, ed. S. Bahena, P. Kuttner, and M. Ng(Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review, ).

. William H. Watkins, ed., The Assault on Public Education: Confronting the Politicsof Corporate School Reform (New York: Teachers College Press, ).

. Greg Toppo, “USA’s Top Teacher’s Union Losing Members,” USA Today, July ,, http://usatoday.usatoday.com/news/education/story/--/Teacher-unions-education//.

. Toppo, “USA’s Top Teacher’s Union.”. National Center for Education Statistics, “Fast facts: Charter schools,” The

Condition of Education 2012, http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id�.. Gary Miron and Brooks Applegate, “Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance in

States,” Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO), June, ,http://greatlakescenter.org/docs/Think_Twice/TT_Miron_CREDO.pdf.

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This work originally appeared in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Inaugural Issue, Fall 2013, published by Michigan State University Press.

. Pauline Lipman, “Neoliberal Urbanism, Race, and Urban School Reform,” in TheAssault on Public Education: Confronting the Politics of Corporate School Reform, ed.W. Watkins (New York: Teachers College Press, ), –; Diane Ravitch, TheDeath and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice areUndermining Education (New York: Basic Books, ), .

. Anistasia Ustinova, “Charter-School Growth Fuels Chicago Teacher Fears,”Bloomberg Business Week, September , , http://www.businessweek.com/news/--/charter-school-growth-fuels-chicago-teacher-fears.

. Becky Vevea, “The Proportion of Privately Run Chicago Public Schools toIncrease,” WBEZ, December , , http://www.wbez.org/news/proportion-privately-run-chicago-public-schools-increase-.

. Mike Klonsky, “We’re Public . . . No, We’re Private,” In These Times, July , ,http://www.inthesetimes.com/article//were_public_ . . . _no_were_private/.

. Linda Lutton, “ New Chicago Schools in Years . . . Again,” WBEZ, May ,, http://www.wbez.org/news/education/-new-chicago-schools--yearsagain-.

. U.S. Department of Education, “States Open to Charters Start Fast in ‘Race toTop,’” December , , http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases///a.html.

. Manfred B. Steger and Ravi K. Roy, Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction (NewYork: Oxford University, ).

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. Because percent of all teachers are women, we flag that not only is the attack onteachers an attempt to weaken or dismantle labor unions, it is also a genderedassault, as a editorial in Rethinking Schools highlighted: “The decimation ofteachers’ unions and tenure structures seems aimed at forcing K– teaching backto the era before teaching became a profession, when young women—barelytrained and constrained by regulations enforcing their clothing, living situations,and drinking—taught for a few years before they got married.” “RethinkingSchools Editors, The New Misogyny: What it Means for Teachers andClassrooms,” Rethinking Schools (Summer, ): para. , http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/_/edit.shtml.

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. Richard Blum, “Equality with Power: Fighting for Economic Justice at Work,” ANew Queer Agenda (): para. , http://sfonline.barnard.edu/a-new-queer-agenda/equality-with-power-fighting-for-economic-justice-at-work/.

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From Anti-Bullying Laws and Gay Marriages to Queer Worlds and Just Futures )

This work originally appeared in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Inaugural Issue, Fall 2013, published by Michigan State University Press.

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. Stacey S. Horn, Pamela Konkol, Kathleen McInerney, Erica R. Meiners, ConnieNorth, Isabel Nuñez, Therese Quinn, and Shannon Sullivan, “Visibility Matters:Policy Work as Activism in Teacher Education,” Issues in Teacher Education

(Fall ): –.. Himmelstein & Bruc̈kner, “Criminal Justice and School Sanctions”; Tamar Lewin,

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counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones/; Robert Greenwald, “U.S.Drone Strikes Are Causing Child Casualties: Report and Video,” HuffingtonPost, December , , http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-greenwald/us-drone-strikes-are-caus_b_.html; Ayobami Olugbemiga, “The MassTorture of Drone Strikes,” Washington Times, December , , http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/elections-fastbreak//dec//mass-torture-drone-strikes/; Adam Salazar, “Clinton Wants More Drone Surveillance Technology toFind Kony,” Info Wars, August , , http://www.infowars.com/clinton-wants-more-powerful-drone-surveillance-technology-to-find-kony/.

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( Therese Quinn and Erica R. Meiners

This work originally appeared in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Inaugural Issue, Fall 2013, published by Michigan State University Press.

. Mark Oppenheimer, “In shift, activist enlists same-sex couples in a pro-marriagecoalition,” New York Times, January , : para. .

. Oppenheimer, “In shift,” para. , .. Kathryn Edin, and Maria Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put

Motherhood Before Marriage (Berkeley: University of California Press, ).. Anna M. Agathangelou, Daniel M. Bassichis, and Tamara L. Spira, “Intimate

Investments: Homonormativity, Global Lockdown, and the Seductions ofEmpire,” Radical History Review (): –; Jasbir Puar, TerroristAssemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham, NC: Duke UniversityPress, ); Duggan, Twilight of Equality.

. Agathangelou, Bassichis, and Spira, “Intimate Investments,” .. Richie, Arrested Justice.. Will Saletan, “Gland inquisitor: Pope Benedict’s anti-gay tendencies,” Slate,

November , : para. , http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature///gland _inquisitor.html.

. Alan Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems (San Francisco: City Lights Book, ), .

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Therese Quinn is Associate Professor of Art History and director of the Museumand Exhibition Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She writesabout the arts and cultural institutions as sites for democratic engagement andjustice work; contributes a regular column to Yliopisto, the magazine of theUniversity of Helsinki; and is a founding member of Chicagoland Researchers andAdvocates for Transformative Education (CReATE, create.bogspot.com). Hermost recent books, all collaboratively written and edited, are Art and Social JusticeEducation: Culture as Commons (Routledge, ), Sexualities in Education: AReader (Peter Lang, ), and Teaching Toward Democracy (Paradigm, ).

Erica R. Meiners is Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Educationat Northeastern Illinois University. She is the author of several books abouteducational, queer and anti-prison justice struggles including Flaunt It! QueersOrganizing for Public Education and Justice (), Right to Be Hostile: Schools,Prisons and the Making of Public Enemies (), and articles in AREA Chicago,Meridians, Academe, Social Justice, Women’s Studies Quarterly and No MorePotlucks. Her work is supported by funds and awards from national and localorganizations such as the Illinois Humanities Council, Woodrow WilsonFoundation for Public Scholarship, Atlantic Philanthropies and the U.S.Department of Education. She is a member of her labor union, UniversityProfessionals of Illinois, and actively involved in a number of nontraditionaland popular education projects.

From Anti-Bullying Laws and Gay Marriages to Queer Worlds and Just Futures )

This work originally appeared in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Inaugural Issue, Fall 2013, published by Michigan State University Press.

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This work originally appeared in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Inaugural Issue, Fall 2013, published by Michigan State University Press.