Students’ Male Homosexual Identities During School Years
The school has a dominant place in children’s lives, as this is where they spend a lot of their everyday time, widening their horizons. However, it is quickly understood that school is not only a place of learning but also a locus of socialization, where subjects interact with one another, in the context of friendships and conflicts, discuss topics that are interesting to them, and they construct identities. The present work examines the reception of male homosexual identities by the student population and the teaching staff and how these two groups affect the aforementioned identities, what’s the position of these identities in Greek schools, and the role significant others (family and friends) play in the making of such identities by the children. Through the 8 interviews conducted, it becomes clear that there is not any equal to heterosexual identities position for homosexual identities, whose presence is mainly related to policing the male heteronormative identities. Furthermore, in school, children are seen as temporally asexual or/and heterosexual-in-progress, while any relation between child and homosexual identities is rejected. Meanwhile, teachers are presented as “neutral” or negative towards non-heteronormative identities and the classroom as a forum for many topics that are not included in the curriculum. Additionally, parents are described as highly negative towards these identities, while friends as crucial for combating stigma and adopting a homosexual identity.