Bortom Könet
Om unga transpersoners villkor i skolan ur ett queerteoretiskt perspektiv
This essay discusses the students? thoughts about the teacher's response to their gender identity. The students discuss their right to have an intergender identity which means that they don?t identify themselves in the traditional sexes, man and woman, and the gender role each category has. They want to be called with a neutral pronoun and not be seen like boys or girls. To understand these students? point of view I used queer theory and discourse analysis to see the differences between sex and gender. Judith Butler the most famous philosopher in the field of queer theory emphasizes that there is no differences between sex and gender roles and explains that sex and gender roles are neither made by nature nor have mystery sources. Instead they are created by historical, social and cultural processes. She declares that language and the names we give each other affect what identities the society think are normal or not. There are many different identities that can?t be identified or categorized in the traditional gender roles. We have to think beyond these categories and not see people in only two sexes/genders, woman and man.The Swedish schools have many values to work with and in these values it?s written that the teachers have to treat every student with respect and encourage them to grow and evolve. I investigate how the teachers react to the students? transgender identities. The investigation is made with four different students who identify themselves as intergender. The study is based on interviews that took between forty and sixty minutes. The interviews were transcribed and written with spoken language. The main purpose of this essay is to investigate what the students thought about their teachers? reaction.The conclusion of this essay is that the students think that the teachers have insufficient knowledge about the transgender identities. The students want the teachers to have more knowledge about transgender identities. That will make the teachers more comfortable in their behavior against students who identify themselves between the traditional sexes.