Ryan's Reading Notes 8: Queering Citizenship by Macintosh and Loutzenheiser

After reading the articles that were assigned for class 8 there was one that stood out to me. I really liked the way the authors looked at the idea of citizenship, and how the article was directly linked to the education field. That’s why I chose the article by Lori B. Macintosh and Lisa W. Loutzenheiser titled Queering Citizenship.

When looking at this article you can see that citizenship is at the center of it. The authors main argument is that “queer theories, and the queering of theory, offers educators and educational theorists sites of contestation that might open up pedagogical and curricular projects which unsettle heteronormativity in schooling”. The authors go on to discuss some things that aid in proving their argument.

First, they discuss their own idea of queer theory and how it is important when thinking bout schools or student bodies. They feel queer theory “takes as its premise an unsettling of identities. It aids in complicating an often overly simplified notion of the gay role model and the loose insertion of gay and lesbian issues in curricular materials”. They also say that it can be used as a tool and can offer a “panoramic lens” to better see the complications that go along with identity formation. The authors go on to push the importance of being seen and belonging and say that queers in school need to attain rights, or “a place at the table” so that they can address the concerns of queer youth.  They continue to say that if inclusivity comes from heteronormative places it means that “the resulting assimilationist decoupage simply covers over the ideological mechanisms of oppression”.  The authors continue to make an argument that norms are made from  heterosexual viewpoints, and they affect how gender is regulated. They say “construction of masculinity and femininity regulate how race is performed and perceived”. Macintosh and Loutzenheiser go on to reveal that they feel queer citizenship is not part of multicultural education in Canada because people do not see it as having a place in the multicultural topic. They argue that without this point of access to dialog, it may give queers a lack of voice, political presence even a lack of legitimate civic identity because their identity as citizens are compromised. In the end, they just want school to be seen as not only a civic space, but queered spaces. Wanting classrooms to invite different ways of “interpreting the queer body and all other bodies”.

I really felt this article had some good strengths. First, I really liked that it was directly related to education. Each paragraph was connecting it back to school somehow. I liked that the authors used headings to separate each part of the article, it allowed for better comprehension, and when looking to find points, they were a lot easier to find based on the paragraph titles. I also like that they did not only look at the topic from one angle. By having these different topics in one article it allowed for a more rounded view of the issue. As a weakness, I found the article did not really give any ideas of what teachers can do to be able to allow for everyone to feel included.

I do find this article would be useful for teachers. It not only talks about something that is not spoken about very often in education, but it allows teachers to see how important giving a voice to these students is. It allows teachers to maybe gain a new view on the topic, or even just take a step in the right direction of letting their students know they are there for them and can help them if they need to feel more included in school citizenship. The question that I got out of this article is, what can be done by educators, school staff, teachers, to invite different ways of interpreting the queer body, and all bodies in the classroom.