Parent perceptions of GSD-related content inclusions in school education : voices from Australia

Despite the growing visibility and voice of GSD (gender and sexuality diverse) people in the broader public socio-cultural and political milieu, as discussed in the introduction to this compilation, silences in relation to GSD inclusions prevail in school education. Many factors contribute to this critical absence. These include a dearth of curriculum direction and leadership, confl icting discourse in policy, histories of public moral panic, and hysterical debate about GSD inclusions, written about extensively elsewhere ( Ferfolja, 2013 ; Ferfolja & Ullman, 2014a ; Law, 2017 ; Robinson & Davies, 2018 ; Ullman & Ferfolja, 2015 , 2016 ; Thompson, 2018 ). Because of these factors, teachers do not trust that parents 3 would approve of GSD-content-related curriculum inclusions and fear community backlash if such issues were broached in the classroom. Parent perception, thus, is what this chapter in essence will speak to, by drawing on the analysis of group interviews conducted with parents in the state of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. First, however, it is necessary to explore the conditions of im/possibility surrounding GSD visibility in K–12 4 school settings.