Curriculum: Disrupting sexuality norms in a Law module - Sex(uality), Gender and the Law
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Case Study
Background
This final year Law module aims to develop students’ understanding of inclusion, exclusion, and the situated-ness of knowledge. Whilst gender and sexual diversity (being LGBTQ+) is more accepted than in the past, there remain legal and social differences. In order for the students to really notice and effectively critique these differences, which will seem to many people to be the way the world naturally is, I knew I needed to foreground the prejudices and assumptions we have grown up with about what is normal and therefore ‘proper’. I also wanted to create a safe space in the module for gender and sexual minority students.
This example focusses on sexuality (LGBQ) specifically.
Activity
In the first seminar, after agreeing confidentiality ground rules, I ask students to set out their understandings of different sexualities, and to notice their attitudes towards them. Most students report being completely accepting of LGBQ people; some students are unsure what LGBQ means.
In the second seminar, I set Martin Rochlin’s Heterosexuality Questionnaire (available at: http://www.pinkpractice.co.uk/quaire.htm ) as compulsory reading. The questionnaire asks the reader a series of baffling and rather insulting questions about their heterosexuality (e.g. When did you decide you were heterosexual? Why do you have to make a spectacle of it? Would you want to have heterosexual children, knowing the problems they would face?). For the straight students, this is the first time their sexuality has been presumed to be a problem, and it is disorienting.
I invite them to identify the most uncomfortable questions for them, and to tell the group how they feel. They eventually realise that these sorts of questions are still routinely posed to LGBQ people, and usually recognise that they themselves have asked some of these questions.
I also ask the students to notice how it feels to be in a marginalised group, and consider the everyday experience of LGB(T)Q+ people in our society. This seems to lead to a real shift in straight/cis students’ understandings.
LGBTQ+ students are appreciative of this process and often share stories of their experience, to underline the microaggressions still prevalent in our ‘tolerant’ society.
This recognition of sexual marginalisation – and that we ourselves marginalise others – opens the door to discussions of other types of marginalisation such as racism, ablism, etc. I aim to encourage an inclusive approach in general, beyond the sexuality and gender focus of the module.
Impact
Internal Review described my module as ‘an example… performing exceptionally well’; the external examiners have been consistently approving. Students say:
"Rob is very supportive and made sure any topics that could cause upset to anybody were taught in a way that it did not upset and always made the seminars lively and fun, whatever the topic being discussed."
"It is an eye-opening module…"
"[The module] made me think about things I never would have chosen to look at in a different way, and it definitely gave me a different side of opinion"