Before ‘gender whisperers’
Morality, teacher employment and LGBTIQ+ futures
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19515422 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jessica Gerrard (0000-0001-9011-6055, The University of Melbourne, corresponding author), Archie Thomas (0000-0002-5460-5641, University of Technology Sydney) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 107-121 |
| Publication date | 2026-01-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Sex Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1468-1811 • E-ISSN: 1472-0825 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14681811.2024.2425412 |
| OpenAlex | W4404543220 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 32 |
This paper responds to the contemporary backlash to LGBTIQ+ rights and its focus on queer and transgender children and teachers in schools, by returning to campaigns to exclude gay and lesbian teachers in the 1970s. It brings renewed historical context to debates surrounding teacher employment and teachers’ moral status as harbingers of the future nation state. We focus on one Australian case, when in 1976 the Queensland government refused to employ a gay teacher, Greg Weir. Drawing on archival sources including campaign newsletters, activist material, and oral histories, we show how this was a formative moment in broader teacher employment relations and the contest between queer denial and queer possibility in schooling, contoured by two enduring disputes over: the first, the control and protection of children; and the second, the moral character of teachers and their role in shaping the future of a settler nation through schooling
Economics · Futures contract · Human sexuality · Morality · Political science · Sociology · Gender Politics and Representation · Gender Roles and Identity Studies · Gender Studies · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Psychology · Social Psychology
Learning Whiteness
Gender and Sexuality Diversity in a Culture of Limitation
Histories of the Transgender Child
Activist women, schooling and the rise of grassroots Christian conservatism
Settler Common Sense
Childhood Citizenship, Governance and Policy
Feminism and the Making of a Child Rights Revolution
Predatory schools and student non-lives
Marriage Equality Time
Australian LGBTQ teachers, exclusionary spaces and points of interruption
‘In this house we believe in fairness and kindness’
The Colonial Project of Gender (and Everything Else)
Against “Progressivism”
Homophobia
Agency and abjection in the closet
Surviving in the trenches
School choice to religiously discriminate
Homophobia as Party Politics
No Future
Child Politics, Feminist Analyses
Boys in Dresses
The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century
Sex wars and (trans) gender panics
Proud and Employed
In a Queer Time and Place
Drugs and Domesticity
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |