Gender and Sexualities in Education
A Reader
Series:
Edited By Elizabeth J. Meyer and Dennis Carlson
23. A Philosophy of Sexual Reciprocity for Secular Public Schools of Toronto
A Negative and Prohibitive Curriculum That Excludes
Extract
Chapter 23
A Philosophy of Sexual Reciprocity for Secular Public Schools of Toronto
Jair Matrim
In a brief analysis of surveys, census reports, policies, and curriculum, it will be first demonstrated that the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) policies for equitable, anti-heterosexist, and anti-homophobic curriculum become stymied because students and sex are routinely treated as subjects of moral control in schools. I use both an understanding of sex as a discourse, situated in the works of Michel Foucault (1978/1990), and the Deleuzian-Spinozist (Deleuze, 1988) distinction between morals and ethics to address how to substantively intervene in rigid patterns of heterosexist exclusion and negative discourses of sex at the TDSB. In particular, the distinction between morals and ethics provides a framework that can help explain how our power to act in our lives can become augmented and diminished in our social relations, and how different discourses of sex can work to persecute, enslave, or also empower students. As a result, comprehension of the distinction between morals and ethics is proposed to help increase the potential for school curriculum to reciprocate with students’ learning needs, support the free and autonomous organization of desire, and promote the possibility of a democratic, inclusive, pluralistic, and secular society.
In the year 2000, the TDSB adopted the Equity [Policy] Foundation Statement & Commitments to Equity Policy Implementation (TDSB, 2000). This policy sought to create anti-heterosexist, anti-homophobic, and social-equity policies that worked to include minoritized sex and gender identities...
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