Disrupting the conservative parent discourse: parents’ considerations of school-based bullying of gender and sexuality diverse students

Research with gender and sexuality diverse (GSD) school students overwhelmingly highlights their experiences of harassment and social marginalisation, often alongside data on the invisibility or purposive silencing of gender and sexuality diversity in school curriculum. This multi-year, mixed methods national study explored Australian parents’ views on GSD-inclusive curriculum, with a further focus on the experiences of parents of GSD students across primary and secondary schools. Nationally, parents were in near-universal agreement that students should learn about the negative impacts of discrimination and bullying for GSD individuals; however, parents of GSD children described environments where such behaviours were met with highly reductive responses. From victim-blaming and isolation of GSD students to euphemistic, or otherwise insufficient, approaches to discussing gender and sexuality diversity, many parents’ narratives spoke to the failures of a generic anti-bullying strategy, particularly where classroom conversations failed to acknowledge and affirm GSD identities. Findings from these explorations echo previous work from the field and support the need for more sophisticated training for educators and administrators on school social cultures and GSD bias-based harassment.