Educational experiences of queer religious youth Making Space for Queer Identifying Religious Youth (ESRC ) Yvette Taylor Ria Snowdon 1

Methodology ► Interviews - - the family, education, work, leisure, relationships and identity, religion, and the imagined future. ► Diaries ► Mind-maps 2

Diaries ‘I had a life with satisfactions at school, with my family and friends, responsibilities in my parish, respect of my community and so on…I was a good young person/student/Christian (well I guess I’m still these things!), but sexually I was…nothing. I knew in the deep of myself what I was and wanted, but just I was carrying on ignoring, denying that part of me, maybe because of being ashamed, or afraid of losing what I was, or to say it better, the image other people had of me.’ 3 Fred, 27, Newcastle

Mind-maps 4 Andrea, 24, Newcastle

Participants ► 38 participants (Newcastle, Manchester, London) ► years old (mean age 24) ► 19 participants identified as female, male (15), gender-queer (2), gender-queer and transgender (1), and transsexual female-to- male (1). ► 15 participants identified as gay, lesbian (13), bisexual (5), queer (4), and asexual (1). 5

Post-compulsory education ► 37/38 FE and HE (past and present) - Present 3 FE : 20 HE (23 total) - Past 6 FE : 8 HE (14 total) Not the privileged middle-class sample it at first appears… 6

Post-compulsory education ‘In my family you left school and got a job in a shop or factory or something, and you didn’t do anything else, you didn’t go to University, you didn’t do any of those kinds of jobs you needed training for, so nobody really talked about that at home, it was just, you did whatever job you got.’ (Kirsty, 30, Manchester) ‘The only person that has gone to university out of my family has been my dad’s half sister and she found her career as a paper scientist in her third year because someone just came up to her and offered her doughnut and said, ‘Do you want to come and listen to this talk?’ (Julian, 20, Newcastle) 7

Post-compulsory education ‘I definitely come from a working class background. I wouldn't say that it was that important; sometimes at university, a lot of the people I know are more middle class so I might not fit in, kind of, but I wouldn't say it was that important. I just have a stronger accent.’ (Lucy, 19, Newcastle) 8

Post-compulsory education ‘…but he [priest and placement mentor] said, “Well I don’t think I could support your way of life if you were to stay here with the youth Minister and I think it’s incompatible with what the Bible says.”’ (Kirsty, 30, Manchester) 9

Secondary school ‘A lot of people started sticking up for me, even though the bullying was not new, people perceived it as being homophobic and they were less okay with that, than it being about my social skills, which is strange.’ (Lesley, 21, London) 10

Secondary school ‘There was no homophobia, which was nice… Well, there’s always the kind of schoolyard immaturity but there was no full on discrimination, and that was good.’ (Isabelle, 18, Newcastle) 11

Secondary school ‘…they [teachers] put up Stonewall posters when I came out, which to be honest, wasn’t that helpful. (Laughter). Because everyone knew why they did it…’ (Tom, 20, Manchester) 12

Secondary school ‘”Well actually I am gay” in front of the whole class, I don’t know where that confidence came from and teacher’s face was negative in her response and stated she was sad I had made that decision because she envisions me being a lovely husband and father, which if that’s not bigotry then I don’t know what is.’ (Andrew, 24, Newcastle) 13

Secondary school ‘I came out at school first, to a teacher, and it was very hard at the time because of Section 28, which was an anti-gay law, so in that sense it was very hard for me. I wasn’t allowed to identify with being gay, or they weren’t allowed to identify me as being gay because of that law. I had nowhere to go because of the law. Rarely did young people come out at that time.’ (Adrian, 29, London) 14

Secondary school ‘… [Catholic school] never once did a pro view on it [homosexuality] and it’s actually the subtleties of it that make you… They didn’t preach in that class about gay being wrong but they didn’t even introduce the idea for a second that it might actually be just completely fine… And subtleties like that really got to me… I was like, “This is clearly what people think” because all my friends were in that class, mindlessly taking it in “This is what people think about gays”, all my friends were being indoctrinated… and then therefore all my friends, I sort of presumed, had got a high chance of potentially being homophobic because of the institutionalised way they’ve been taught and so it felt harder to tell them…’ (John, 21, Newcastle) 15

Secondary school ‘…there was one page in the book that we had that was about issues in the Religious Studies module and it was about homosexuality; it was half a page and I just remember reading it over and over and over and over again because it was literally the only thing I’d ever seen written down about it.’(Claire, 24, Newcastle) ‘You know, I had text books in RE and I’d always flick along to the pages about homosexuality.’ (Sandra, 24, Newcastle) 16

Making Space for Queer Identifying Religious Youth (ESRC ) Yvette Taylor Ria Snowdon 17