Physical education is a profession where heterosexuality has historically been
regarded as normal, if not compulsory. The location of female physical education
(PE) teachers at the nexus of discourses about masculinist sport, women's physical
education and pedagogies of the body has exerted unique historical pressures on
their sexualities. In North America and Western Europe, female PE teachers have
frequently been suspected of being lesbian. This suspicion has enveloped lesbian
teachers in a shroud of oppressive silence, tolerated only as an 'open secret' (Cahn,
1994).
This study examined the life histories of six women from three generations
who had taught physical education in western Canada. Previous life history research
has focused exclusively on lesbian PE teachers (Clarke, 1996; Sparkes, 1992, 1994a,
1994b; Squires & Sparkes, 1996; Sparkes & Templin, 1992) which risks reinforcing a
hierarchical relationship between 'lesbian' and 'heterosexual'. Accordingly, three
women who identified as 'lesbian' and three as 'married' or 'heterosexual' were
involved in this study which incorporated poststructural, psychoanalytic and queer
theories about sexual subjectivity into a feminist approach to life history. The
notions of 'understanding' and 'overstanding' were used to analyze data which
meant interpreting not only had been said during the interviews but also what was
left unsaid.
The women's life histories revealed how lesbian sexualities have been
marginalized and silenced, especially within the physical education profession. A l l
the women grew up in families where heterosexuality was normalized, and all
except one experienced pressure to date boys during their high school education in
Canada. As teachers, identifying as a 'feminist' had a greater affect on their personal
politics and approaches to teaching than their sexual identities. The life histories
also provided limited support to the notion that PE teacher's participation in
various women's sports accentuated the suspicion of lesbianism. For two of the
'lesbian' women, team sports continued to provide valuable lesbian communities
from the 1950s to the present day. In contrast, one 'lesbian' women established her
lesbian social network through individual sports and urban feminist groups. The
'heterosexual' women had all participated in gender-neutral sports. Overall the
sporting backgrounds of these teachers did little to dispel the long-standing
association between women's sports and lesbianism which, in turn, has affected
female PE teachers.
Drawing on queer theory and the notion of 'overstanding' data,
deconstructive interpretations suggested how heterosexuality had been normalized
in several institutional discourses within women's physical education. These
interpretations undermined the boundaries of 'the closet', sought out an absent
lesbian gaze and suggested that homophobia has been, in part, rooted in the social
unconscious of the physical education profession.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/9611 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Sykes, Heather |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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