“Racism just isn't an issue anymore”: Preservice teachers' resistances to the intersections of sexuality and race

Through year-long focus group interviews with members of a secondary English Education cohort this paper considers both 1) participants' understandings of sexuality and race and 2) how participants' understandings of sexuality and race shaped their interactions with one another. Themes established through data analysis suggested that 1) participants maintained positioned racism as an historical issue that contrasted with the contemporaneity of LGBTQ issues; 2) participants resisted intersecting race and sexuality; 3) participants silenced Andy, the only queer student of color, when she argued for the intersectionality of race and sexuality.     

Centralising space: the physical education and physical activity experiences of South Asian,Muslim girls

This paper explores the physical education (PE) and physical activity experiences of a group of South Asian, Muslim girls, a group typically marginalised in PE and physical activity research. The study responds to ongoing calls for research to explore across different spaces in young people's lives. Specifically, I draw on a ‘middle-ground’ approach, using Hill Collins' matrix of domination and the notion of intersectionality. These concepts offer the possibility to explore the kinds of settings (physical, social and cultural) in which girls undertake PE and physical activity, how these spaces influence experience and how the girls navigate these spaces. The study is based in a large, urban, co-educational, secondary school in Yorkshire, England (95% of the students are from minority ethnic communities, 91% are Muslim and 63% live in the top 10% most deprived neighbourhoods in the country). Data generation involved three phases: observations, creating research artefacts in focus groups and in-depth interviews. The findings reveal the diverse ways the girls are physically active. They also demonstrate a complexity to their involvement which is contingent upon space, discourses and people. For example, discourses of competition, ability and peers are more significant within PE; whilst family, religion and culture feature beyond this context. The paper concludes by acknowledging the girls' heterogeneity and agency in the ways they strategically navigate spaces in their quest to be physically active on their terms.     

Intersectional agencies: Navigating predominantly White institutions as an administrator of color

Administrators of color in predominantly White institutions (PWI) navigate from dual positions of privilege and marginalization. Within PWIs, administrators of color experience marginalization in terms of their racial/ethnic makeup. Specifically focusing on the administrative level, 95.8% of executive provosts and 86.2% of deans of academic colleges are White. At the faculty level, nearly 10% of full professors are people of color. However, even with such exclusionary practices, 87.7% of chief diversity officers are racial minorities. The current study seeks to understand how highly educated administrators of color work for diversity, inclusion, and equity initiatives while navigating from their dual positions of marginalization and privilege. Using the theoretical lenses of co-cultural theory, dominant group theory, and intersectionality, the study seeks to understand how privilege and marginalization ebbs and flows depending on particular contexts. Findings indicate that optimizing privilege through co-cultural praxis and impeding through mentoring are two common strategies used by administrators of color.     

Playing the ‘Race’ card? Black and minority ethnic students' experiences of physical education teacher education

This paper reports on a study that explored black and minority ethnic (BME) students' experiences of physical education teacher education (PETE) in England. Widening the ethnic diversity of those choosing to enter the teaching profession has been a key policy objective of the Training and Development Agency—the government agency responsible for teacher education—for some years. However PETE programmes, designed to produce specialist physical education (PE) teachers to work with secondary age (11–18 years) pupils, reveal significant and enduring levels of under-representation of BME candidates, compared to other subject specialisms. The study reported here used semi-structured interviews and questionnaires with 25 BME participants from five universities involved in PETE in England. The findings show that BME PETE students share many of the characteristics with their White counterparts, being young, sporty and with a desire to improve PE experiences for future generations. However, in other ways, their experiences reveal the significance of ‘race’ ethnicity, and religion and how these are interwoven with gender to position them as ‘other’ in PETE spaces and within schools. Skin colour and religious dress were significant to stereotyping and everyday interactions that served to position them as ‘out of place’, particularly evident in practical activity sessions and on teaching placements. ‘Race’ and ethnicity as part of their professional education was at best a marginalised discourse, at worse, reproduced a deficit perspective of BME pupils’ and their schooling. The paper concludes by arguing for a critical analysis of the construction of Whiteness through PETE.     

Renewed commitments in a time of vigilance: sexuality education in the USA*

Over the past 20 years, the USA has seen more than its fair share of controversy with respect to education about sexuality, sex and intimate relationships. Attention has focused on content (abstinence-only vs. comprehensive instruction), delivery (by teachers, parents, health professionals or community educators) and context (within school and beyond). In recognition of this fact, Sex Education invited the development of a virtual special issue comprising a sample of its most impactful papers on these and related topics. The 2016 Presidential election results and recent legislative action in the USA point to the importance of thinking broadly about teaching and learning about sexuality inside and outside of schools and of considering sexuality as it intersects with categories of difference, privilege and penalty, including ability, age, immigration, race, gender and class. This paper, developed as an introduction to the virtual special issue, opens with a discussion of the journal’s contributions to the ongoing discussion of pleasure and desire in sexuality education. From there, we turn to the question of what is possible given the material and ideological conditions of schooling and then to opportunities for teachers and learners outside the conventional classroom. We follow with a discussion of the place of intersectional analyses in sexuality education research, and conclude with some thoughts on sexuality education research at this political moment.     

Gender constructions and negotiations in physical education: case studies

In Denmark as in other European countries, many girls, and especially Muslim girls, seem to lose interest in physical activities and sport with increasing age. However, in a Danish context, little is known about the reasons why girls drop out of sport and which role physical education (PE) plays in this process. In this article we present results of a qualitative study on gendered discourses and doing gender in a PE class at a Danish high school. Drawing on constructivist and post-structuralist approaches to gender and ethnicity, we explore the different opportunities of girls in PE based on in-depth interviews and video observations. Three case studies of three girls are the focus of this article: Nanna, the Danish ‘athletic girl’ who found a balance between (en)acting femininity and presenting herself as a competent athlete; Iram, the ‘Muslim girl’ whose position as a Muslim causes her to hide her sporting abilities and Ida, the Danish ‘normal girl’ who re-interprets PE and adapts it to her needs. These three girls act in and react to a discourse that emphasises competitive sport and is orientated towards male sport tastes and sport practices. The results of this study indicate that PE, with its focus on games and performances, meets the requirements and expectations of many boys but contributes to the decrease in sporting interests and activities among numerous girls.     

Intersectional rhetoric: Where intersectionality as analytic sensibility and embodied rhetorical praxis converge

Serious considerations of intersectionality are critical to the future and viability of feminist rhetorical scholarship and scholars have made impressive methodological shifts in response to this exigency. However, though feminist rhetorical scholarship has painted a rich picture of how intersectionality operates at the level of the critic, I suggest that there needs to be more critical investigation of how intersectionality functions at the level of discourse—how it is constituted by and through rhetoric. To this end, I develop a theory of intersectional rhetoric, which I argue emerges at the point where intersectionality as an analytic sensibility and embodied rhetorical praxis converge. I theorize the ways in which intersectional rhetoric manifests junctures between (1) theory and experience, (2) discourse and materiality, and (3) academic and activist intellectual spheres to develop more nuanced political arguments about structural oppression on multiple axes. I use the work of body positive activist Ashleigh Shackelford as a case study for examining how, through what techniques, and to what end rhetors craft these links in performances of intersectional rhetoric. I conclude by discussing the implications a theory of intersectional rhetoric has for rhetorical theory, rhetorical critics, and intersectional feminist activism.     

When love hurts: Assessing the intersectionality of ethnicity,socio-economic status,parental connectedness,child abuse,and gender attitudes in juvenile violent delinquency

Researchers have not yet reached agreement about the validity of several competing explanations that seek to explain ethnic differences in juvenile violent offending. Ethnicity cannot solely explain why boys with an ethnic minority background commit more (violent) crimes. By assessing the intersectionality of structural, cultural and individual considerations, both the independent effects as well as the interplay between different factors can be examined. This study shows that aforementioned factors cumulatively play a role in severe violent offending, with parental connectedness and child abuse having the strongest associations. However, since most variables interact and ethnicity is associated with those specific factors, a conclusion to be drawn is that ethnicity may be relevant as an additional variable predicting severe violent offending although indirectly.     

Ventriloqual voicings of parenthood in graduate school: an intersectionality analysis of work-life negotiations

Taking a ventriloqual approach to intersectionality analysis, this study investigates the communicative constitution of graduate student parenthood and their work-life negotiations. Analyzing 30 in-depth interviews, we found that figures – ideal graduate student worker norms, gender ideologies of work and family, and cultural values of family and child-rearing responsibilities – intersected with one another in shaping the experiences for graduate student parents. These intersectionalities belong to broader structures that constrain graduate students’ career and personal-life choices to fulfill/disrupt roles in navigating parenthood, yet the interplays of various aspects of intersectionality create space for transformation. The study contributes to an emergent grounded-in-action perspective of intersectionality to uncover systems of interlocking oppressions and lived tensions. The theoretical and practical implications of nonhuman agents acting to enable and constrain sustainable work-life communication are presented.