The research follows instrumental case study design employing qualitative methods of interviewing and visual methodology to suit the theoretical focus of examining space in the production of gendered subjectivities. The activist and collaborative elements of
deploying student voice and inviting mappings of school space, hinge on the notion that subjectivities are ongoing. Design suits the purpose(s) both theoretically (through Foucauldian subjectivation and Butler’s performed subjectivities) and empirically (through a consideration of improving student experiences of their school space).
The instrumental case studies: Best Secondary School and Corey Heights Secondary School.
The data can be divided into two instrumental case studies (and then a further sub-case within the first) where each comprises a series of semi-guided interviews, visual methodology in the form of photo elicitation and techniques of photovoice (which is somewhat linked to participatory action research, although is not my focus, it is in line with such activist methods). I accessed two secondary schools in Ontario to conduct a case study within each. I have entitled each under the following pseudonyms: Best Secondary School and Corey Heights Secondary School. Although I outline the specific demographic data that were available to me within each case study chapter, overall, in each school, only a minority of students were from low-income housing and fewer than the provincial average were ESL or EALix students. Higher than the provincial average for both schools were the percentages both for students identified as gifted and students whose parents had some university education. Despite the numbers I read, the feeder neighborhoods closest to each school are working class and/or lower-middle to middle class SES (socioeconomic status) households. Unique to Best Secondary School is that the SES extremes are more apparent: located close to a government-subsidized housing neighborhood, which contains “the most vulnerable learners”, according to its principal, Best S.S.’s boundaries also include rural addresses and university housing, as well as “a very affluent community”, thereby housing “an enormously diverse population”. As well, Corey Heights’ boundaries stay within the city limits and include more middle to upper-middle class SES neighborhoods. In terms of race, ethnicity, or other markers of identity within the student populations, I did not have access to the data. Middle Eastern families are growing in number in the neighborhoods that feed into Best S.S. More detailed descriptions of each school continue in the analysis chapters. Despite the lack of class and ethnic and racial diversity, especially in my samples (which I discuss below), I
was limited by the kinds of access I was permitted from the school board to certain schools. These schools are not meant to be comparative or representational of the school system in general but to provide a richer pool of participants.
Participants: Recruitment and selection processes.
From each school I had hoped to find ten to 15 students, of as equal a mix of boys and girls as possible, and from different ethnic and racial backgrounds but also from various gendered and sexual identities to achieve a purposive sampling (Stake, 2005, p. 451). However, asking students to identify in terms of their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity and expression is ethically compromising. Instead, I focused on the grade level, and depended on my teacher contacts to recruit interested students for me. Specifically, the teacher contact at Best S.S. was the Art teacher in whose capacity allowed me access to her classroom of Art students already sympathetic and acclimatized to visual expression. The teacher contact at Corey Heights was the department head of Social Sciences and Humanities and the Work Internship Program Coordinator and could access students interested in social work, psychology, or social justice projects.
In terms of accessing a rich or diverse sample of students racially or ethnically, again I was subject to the voluntarism of the students. Interestingly (or not, given I am a white female) the majority of my student participants were white females. Indeed, more probably, this was an act of ethnocentrism, if not indirectly mine; in this way, the lack of racial diversity in my sample is a limitation in this study. Of the 24 student participants I had secured, only a few were not white and of the nine students I feature prominently in the analysis chapters of this dissertation, only two were non-white: Tammy, at Best S.S., was Latina from Colombia; and, Trina, from Corey Heights, was Middle Eastern.
Samara was Swedish, but her mother was Iranian. In terms of sexual or gender diversity, only Shelly identified herself as a lesbian, and another student whom I do not feature here, Kevin, was Asian and identified as a “feminine boy”. I did not ask the student participants to identify themselves at all, either in terms of their gendered or sexual identities or their racialized or ethnic identities because I did not want to intimidate them or make them feel this was how their contributions would be classified. All information I
have about them is what they offered to tell me through answers to other kinds of questions. I am conscious of the reading that I am simply perpetuating an ethnocentric analysis of these gendered discourses, or that I am not engaging enough into “how as researchers we are always already shaping those ‘exact words’ through the unequal power relationships present and by our own exploitative research agendas and timelines”, according to Mazzei and Jackson (2009, p. 3). Although I did not set out to include an intersectional analysis, or one that considers “interlocking systems of oppression” (Collins, 1990, p. 222), the erasure of race in transgender and queer studies is a
commonplace practice, where “perspectives of whiteness continue to resonate, largely unacknowledged” (see Roen, 2001, p. 253). Roen’s (2001) paper examines the
perspectives of gender liminal (a term she prefers over “transgender”) indigenous people in New Zealand for the purpose of foregrounding “cultural identity rather than gender identity” (p. 253). Her view is that “perspectives of whiteness echo, largely
unacknowledged, through transgender (and queer) theorizing and to thus inspire more critical thinking about the racialised aspects of transgender bodies and gender liminal ways of being” (Roen, 2001, p. 262) scholars must take up an intersectional, post-
colonial lens. To become more critical and aware of my “own racialised politics in a way that is productive for those who place race first and gender second” (p. 262), to be
conscious of white privilege (see McIntosh, 1988), these are tasks that intersectionality and post-colonial theory, if not critical race studies, can help untangle, but they are no easy ones at that. McCready’s (2013) specific concern is “to develop multidimensional frameworks that take into account the complex ways race, class, gender, and sexuality contribute to the marginalization of Black gay and gender nonconforming students and, more generally, all queer students” (p. 141). Roen’s hope is that through a theorizing of transgender that also addresses race, class, “indigenousness and colonization [it] might provide more discursive pathways for indigenous people struggling to live in gender liminal ways” (p. 260). Furthermore, an intersectional approach complicates, or “fractures” (Broad, 2002) the essentialist, homogenous identity of transgender, a move that is necessary for political action and activism, according to Broad. Broad’s (2002) chapter looks at transactivism in the mid-1990’s to consider how sexuality and notions of queer, race, and class have the potential to fracture or deconstruct the otherwise
homogenizing identity of transgender that “has been assumed to be predominantly white and middle class” (p. 253). Through interviews with “trannies of color”, Broad
determined that “whether challenging the assumption of a universal white transgender experience or asserting that destabilizing categories of gender also challenged
dichotomous racial categories, trans voices of color insisted that contestations over a transgender collective identity were fractured by race” (p. 253). In terms of the bathroom structure itself and its potential to be theorized through race, Cavanagh’s (2010) study on queering bathrooms considers the “white hygienic superego” (p. 6) as seen in the white porcelain toilets and sinks in public bathrooms in North America as representing, if not producing, for gender nonconforming people of colour, “angst about a racialized and class-specific gender purity” (p. 7). I briefly consider more of this view of whitewashing the bathroom space and its implications for gendered and raced subjectivities in the analysis of the case studies. As for my own reflexivity around race and the potential interpretation of the erasure of racialized differences (as well as differences of ethnicity, class, ability, etc.) throughout my project, I assert that I needed to think about a focused, in-depth analysis of gendered subjectivation through Foucauldian and Butlerian thought which may have consequences of which I can only be aware. Of course, I do not want to erase race or reproduce a white reading of transgender, genderqueer, queer, or
nonconforming gender epistemologies, but neither can I do justice to my own research tasks if I broaden my focus beyond the lenses I set out to deploy. I hope that I am at least “mak[ing] transparent” (Mazzei & Jackson, 2009, p. 2) how I made my decisions to “give voice” and to whom.
In an effort to “make transparent” (Mazzei & Jackson, 2009, p. 2) these decisions of voice, I should note the process for selection of participants for featured analysis in this dissertation. Due to the fruits of the visual methodology, I framed the bulk of the analysis around the visual products from the students, grouping them according to how they linked thematically with either each other or with the gendered discourses I observed within their respective schools. In the case of Best S.S., I determined six students
contributed rich visual work but that they could not be examined in one chapter or under one theme alone, thus, I sub-divided the case of Best S.S. into those students who
actively resisted participation. For the students at Corey Heights, I selected only three students based on the kind of photography they presented to me, as well as the potential for framing these photographs analytically as cartographic products (which I outline and elaborate upon in Chapter Six).
To triangulate/crystallize (Ellingson, 2009) the data, I also interviewed the vice principal at each school and the principal at Best S.S. as well as one school custodian at each school who was appointed by the principal and/or vice principal as having
knowledge of the washroom space and the time to speak with me. Students enrolled in Grade 11 suited my intentions because they would presumably have spent a couple of years already at the school (although this was not a requirement) or at least have spent two years in a secondary school program; further, they would not be graduating
immediately which would perhaps do two things: one, allow them further time, after the study, to think about or implement some changes in their own personal practice or their school environment regarding school toilet use; and two, allow me time, as a researcher, to contact them for follow-up with data verification and clarification. However, upon recruitment and through the advice of teacher contacts, my participant pool included students from Grade 10 through to Grade 12. In the end, I was content to secure any student as a participant who was interested in the topic and willing to talk with me.
Initially, I hoped to look to two areas in the schools to recruit student participants: student leadership groups and the visual arts classes. Leadership groups, including GSAs and social justice groups, are already sensitized to certain issues, especially gender and sex (see Linville & Carlson, 2010). Although I attempted to make contact with Corey Heights’ social justice group through their teacher representative, I did not receive a response. Best S.S., because of the curricular project of the girls’ (and later boys’) bathroom art (which I will outline in detail in the analysis chapters), proved to provide a bounded grouping of students in the Visual Arts classes that required no further pursuit of other student groups. The partnership/collaboration with a teacher in the Visual Art classroom at Best S.S. allowed me to find students who were willing to engage in art- making activities (that constituted my visual methodology). As well, I was able to link the project with students’ curricular responsibilities. Instead of asking for a visual
response from the students at Best S.S., I entered a class that was already engaged in making art in the school washroom. I simply followed several students through their own art-making and discussed with them their artistic intentions and how these projects
informed their understanding of gender. Not only was this project a moment of
serendipity for me as a researcher wanting to link visual arts responses with washroom as gendered space, it also alleviated the obligations of participants to provide an extra visual response for the project; instead, I collected visual data or digital copies of the work they were already doing for their curriculum.
The teacher contacts in each school were from previous acquaintances in the school board. Due to the particular teacher contact I had secured in each school, the pool from which participants were sought actually came from whichever class that teacher suggested. As previously stated, in Best Secondary School, the teacher contact directed me to her Grade 12 Visual Arts class; in this school, I was also invited to speak to another Grade 12 Visual Arts class and a Grade 12 English class. I spoke to approximately eighty students in total and collected 23 email addresses of students who were interested. During my pitch presentation in each class, I briefly described the project, outlined the benefits of participating and the confidentiality they would be guaranteed and answered any questions. I invited students to give me their email address immediately, or simply to take the flyer I had prepared that outlined the study (followed by the information and consent letter) and provided my contact information. At Best S.S. I secured 12 student participants who worked with me; nine of these students sat for a second interview including photo elicitation and six sat for a third interview and/or provided a visual response. In Corey Heights Secondary School, the vice principal (who was my previous acquaintance) appointed the teacher contact. This teacher invited me to speak to her Grade 11 Parenting class. She also secured invitations for me to speak to her colleagues’ two senior Sociology classes (Grade 11, Introduction to Anthropology, Psychology, Sociology and Grade 12, Society, Challenge and Change). The procedure for recruiting students was much the same as I have outlined above for Best S.S., except that the first teacher had already collected five email addresses along with informed parental consent for me prior to my speaking in her class. Her colleague insisted the students who were interested in participating were to line up along the side of the class after I had finished
the pitch to give me their email addresses. At Corey Heights, I spoke to approximately eighty students, collected 25 email addresses of students who were interested but secured 12 students for the first interview, eight for the second interview, and four for the third and/or who provided me with a visual response. From the overall number of students (approximately 160) I spoke to in classrooms about the project to the actual number of consenting student participants (24), I retained 15% of participants for at least the first interview.
I attempted the snowball technique, especially to recruit more males, but this approach did not prove successful. One student, Trina, from Corey Heights, for instance, agreed to speak to some of her male friends, four of whom contacted me and gave me permission to contact them through email. However, not one of them was actually able to meet even for an initial interview. In a follow-up interview, she asked if I had met with her friends. When I told her no, she suggested my flier that had the word “queer” on it might have turned them away. She said they had initially verbally agreed to participate while in conversation with her, but only after they had perused the letter of
information/consent, and before she had flipped down the flier:
I think that freaked them out, cause like, the one kid, like he read it, because I like handed it to him, I had that pamphlet like flipped back and like when he flipped it, he was like, ah, I don’t think I want to do this anymore…I think he thought, I don’t know, maybe that freaked him out.
She postulated the word “queer” (which I had included as one of many buzz words hoping to pique interest) might have offended or at least decided for them that this was not a study in which they were willing to participate, especially considering the
regulation of homosexuality amongst male youth (Pascoe, 2007). Rosie, also from Corey Heights, told me one male friend might have been interested especially since she thought he was struggling with being open about his sexuality. However, even after he had agreed to meet with me, he later retracted his agreement claiming he was too busy.