Search

Recent years have witnessed growing acceptance of gender and sexuality diversity in Australia; yet, its inclusion in the school curriculum remains contentious. Despite evidence to the contrary, there is a commonly held belief that parents consider the inclusion of such topics inappropriate. In the light of this, this paper focuses on an analysis of three qualitative items from an Australian national survey of parents of children attending government-funded schools. Informed by the responses to these questions, we sought to better understand the concept of age-appropriateness present in the discourses deployed by a (minority) number of Australian parents who did not support gender and sexuality diversity-inclusivity in the curriculum. Thematic data analysis identified three key themes used by parents to warrant gender and sexuality diversity curriculum exclusion based on age inappropriateness: namely, inclusion is 'confusing'; children are too 'immature'; and children are too 'easily influenced'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexual minority women are largely invisible in Australian HIV discourses, where their sexual identities are erased under heterosexist exposure categories. The dominance of these risk categories means there is no way of knowing how many sexual minority women are living with HIV in Australia. In this article, I draw on Carol Bacchi's "What is the Problem Represented to Be?" (WPR) methodological approach to explore how sexual minority women are (not) spoken to as particular kinds of subjects in 2014–2017 editions of Australia's largest LGBTQ women's magazine, Lesbians on the Loose. Through an analysis of both their explicit representation in the magazine and the silencing of their identities, practices, and desires, I suggest that sexual minority women emerge, first, as allies to sexual minority men and people living with HIV and, second, as "at-risk" of contracting HIV themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]