Troubling silences and taboo texts : constructing safer and more positive school climates for same-sex-attracted high-school students in Australia

A plethora of current research outlines the typical secondary school environment as hostile or, at the very least, unwelcoming and unfriendly to same-sex-attracted (SSA) and gender-atypical students (Hillier et al., 2010; Kosciw, Greytak, Bartkiewicz, Boesen, & Palmer, 2012; Robinson & Espelage, 2011; Ullman, 2012). This work is representative of an important and long-awaited shift, moving from an ‘at risk’ student discourse, to examining the ways in which the secondary school environment is ‘risky’ for SSA young people. This shift presents an opportunity to examine the ways that language shapes the school environment and (re)produces hierarchies of sexuality and sexual expression.