School Spaces of Dissensus: Protecting Sexualities Education in Anti-Gender, Anti-Muslim and De-Democratising Times
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| Title: | School Spaces of Dissensus: Protecting Sexualities Education in Anti-Gender, Anti-Muslim and De-Democratising Times |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | James Sutton (ORCID |
| Source: | Curriculum Journal. 2026 37(1):107-123. |
| Availability: | Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 17 |
| Publication Date: | 2026 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Evaluative |
| Descriptors: | Sex Education, Gender Bias, Muslims, Politics of Education, Inclusion, Political Attitudes, Conflict, Democracy, Foreign Countries |
| Geographic Terms: | United Kingdom (Birmingham) |
| DOI: | 10.1002/curj.334 |
| ISSN: | 0958-5176 1469-3704 |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the intensified conflict over sexualities education curricula brought about by anti-(trans)gender and anti-Muslim policy and political discourse transnationally. Backlash against inclusive sexualities education has taken shape across several policy territories, driven in part by de-democratising right-wing populist governments advancing the neoliberal neglect of public education. At the same time, the Islamophobic underpinnings of certain 'inclusive' sexuality education policies have been problematised by anti-racist scholars and communities transnationally. The concept of agonistic pluralism has been used to highlight the inevitability and potential productivity of conflict in diverse school contexts, and to address the limits of a liberal pluralist approach to democratic school relations. Yet there has been little direct empirical analysis of how agonistic pluralism can be used to think through local views on sexualities education, and to support school communities in such de-democratising times. This paper presents such an analysis, using a deconstructive approach to interviews with parents and staff at a state school in working class, majority Muslim area of Birmingham, UK. Through analysis of extended interview extracts, we illustrate the bind that participants face by the convergence of anti-gender and anti-Muslim discourses, amidst ongoing crises facing public services. We present some key guiding questions around protecting public sexualities education in these times that engages diverse youth needs, and moves past 'civilising' curriculum orientations. Schools and educators can consider the potential to engage in dialogue with communities in which dissensus is anticipated and accepted, and which allows the Other to live. |
| Abstractor: | As Provided |
| Entry Date: | 2026 |
| Accession Number: | EJ1493599 |
| Database: | ERIC |
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| FullText | Links: – Type: pdflink Url: https://content.ebscohost.com/cds/retrieve?content=AQICAHj0k_4E0hTGH8RJwT4gCJyBsGNe_WN95AvKlDbXJGqwxwG0eGk50Q6sCD51K2afIyzwAAAA4zCB4AYJKoZIhvcNAQcGoIHSMIHPAgEAMIHJBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwHgYJYIZIAWUDBAEuMBEEDGpXOJX4UYQMuzQFwAIBEICBm2b_U9xvsTN62o7cqQ1MpDQxOwu_CYBdGCP52glq7kQtBkhAoFnpydSjxA7eYU6nPnoRs5SbVa6Jc6ngeVA-1DdHWLDzGdDVw1md9UTssloLJrNMpyAOKs1DBfFv90e2RZO7B6oFHIYoVQwrcNWUyPKf0qmle7AXULmF2tINxmg-pBgwXfGLQfngLbMCC55IUdcLuMIFoOR_XcN5 Text: Availability: 1 Value: <anid>AN0190860290;5az01mar.26;2026Jan16.04:03;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0190860290-1">School spaces of dissensus: Protecting sexualities education in anti‐gender, anti‐Muslim and de‐democratising times </title> <p>This paper examines the intensified conflict over sexualities education curricula brought about by anti‐(trans)gender and anti‐Muslim policy and political discourse transnationally. Backlash against inclusive sexualities education has taken shape across several policy territories, driven in part by de‐democratising right‐wing populist governments advancing the neoliberal neglect of public education. At the same time, the Islamophobic underpinnings of certain 'inclusive' sexuality education policies have been problematised by anti‐racist scholars and communities transnationally. The concept of agonistic pluralism has been used to highlight the inevitability and potential productivity of conflict in diverse school contexts, and to address the limits of a liberal pluralist approach to democratic school relations. Yet there has been little direct empirical analysis of how agonistic pluralism can be used to think through local views on sexualities education, and to support school communities in such de‐democratising times. This paper presents such an analysis, using a deconstructive approach to interviews with parents and staff at a state school in working class, majority Muslim area of Birmingham, UK. Through analysis of extended interview extracts, we illustrate the bind that participants face by the convergence of anti‐gender and anti‐Muslim discourses, amidst ongoing crises facing public services. We present some key guiding questions around protecting public sexualities education in these times that engages diverse youth needs, and moves past 'civilising' curriculum orientations. Schools and educators can consider the potential to engage in dialogue with communities in which dissensus is anticipated and accepted, and which allows the Other to live.</p> <p>Keywords: agonistic pluralism; anti‐gender; democracy; Islamophobia; sexuality education</p> <hd id="AN0190860290-2">INTRODUCTION</hd> <p>Hell is other people, if you're lucky (Berlant, [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref1">3</reflink>], p. 1).</p> <p>The opening line to Berlant's <emph>On the Inconvenience of Other People</emph> will strike a chord for those lucky enough to spend time in schools. School communities—subsuming relationships both inside and outside school—are spaces of unavoidable, repeated friction and inconvenience. By design in diverse school contexts, we regularly come across unfamiliar ideas and beliefs which unsettle our sense of ourselves, the world and others. For Berlant, the 'inconvenience' that comes with these aspects of life is the affective sense of being in relation, a repeated reminder that we cannot just do things 'our way'. Whether it be the school bell, being wedged thigh‐to‐thigh at a desk, or investments in different beliefs from our classmates, repeated inconveniences demand an openness to others, the inconvenience of whom not only makes us shift while processing the world, but reminds us that we are implicated in 'the pressures of coexistence' (Berlant, [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref2">3</reflink>], p. 3) as well as its pleasures.</p> <p>We begin this article with Berlant's provocation in order to think about the inevitability and multitude of frictions in school spaces, the intensity and/or ambivalence of their affects, and to ask: <emph>how have some aspects of schooling become not (just) everyday inconveniences</emph>, <emph>but issues for public contestation?</emph> Specifically, we focus on the ways dissensus related to 'comprehensive' (see below), Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer, Intersex and Asexual (LGBTQIA)‐inclusive sexualities education curricula is produced and can be addressed in school communities. While debates about sexualities education are many decades old (Zimmerman, [<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref3">53</reflink>]), we address the contemporary politicisation of this curricular area by anti‐(trans)gender and anti‐Muslim social movements, and de‐democratising, right‐wing populist government discourse.</p> <p>The influence of anti‐gender movements has been studied in relation to sexualities education (Nash &amp; Browne, [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref4">35</reflink>]) as well as in relation to schooling more broadly (Mayo, [<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref5">29</reflink>]). Similarly, studies of the influence of anti‐Muslim sentiment on allegedly 'inclusive' sexualities education public and policy discourse have emerged in recent years (Bialystok &amp; Wright, [<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref6">5</reflink>]; Kitching, [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref7">25</reflink>]). Chantal Mouffe's concept of agonistic pluralism has been put forward as a framework for democratising responses to various forms of inequity and conflict in schools (Ruitenberg, [<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref8">40</reflink>]; Todd, [<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref9">47</reflink>]; Youdell, [<reflink idref="bib52" id="ref10">52</reflink>]), and in relation to legal conflict over LGBTQIA+ inclusive schooling (Vincent, [<reflink idref="bib49" id="ref11">49</reflink>]). However, we can identify little direct empirical work with schools that has thought through how agonistic pluralism can be used to address local passionate claims and dissensus over public sexualities education in de‐democratising times.</p> <p>This paper analyses extracts from interviews with staff and parents in a secondary school in Birmingham, England on Relationships and Sex Education (RSE), a curricular area that has been the focus of recent contestation in the city (Khan, [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref12">24</reflink>]; Kitching, [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref13">25</reflink>]; Vincent, [<reflink idref="bib49" id="ref14">49</reflink>]). We find that, in part due to right‐wing anti‐gender politics and the linking of RSE to notions of modern Britishness, conservative Muslim parents at times feel goaded into challenging sexualities education. In turn, the school leaders we spoke with take up singularising views of communities who express concerns about gender and RSE, in the name of the promotion and protection of Fundamental British Values Department for Education (DfE, [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref15">16</reflink>]).</p> <p>We engage agonistic pluralism to think about everyday local issues of dissensus and inequality, and draw upon Judith Butler's work on subjectivation and, in particular, on letting 'the Other live' (Butler, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref16">10</reflink>]) to outline the basis on which democratisation of sexualities education needs to take place. We argue that, as anti‐gender and anti‐Muslim politics are replicated across education jurisdictions, and multiple crises face school communities in the context of neoliberal responsibilisation and neglect, schools need to avoid essentialising, reactionary accounts of the religious and sexual other, avoid a rush to resolution, and develop situational understandings of how local identities and claims are shaped by—and are much more than—passionate calls for and against sexualities education. Following from this, we call for a re‐imagining of sexualities education informed by an appreciation and enactment of agonistic pluralism which lets the Other live, including in the right to remain outside the sexualities education classroom.</p> <hd id="AN0190860290-3">SEXUALITIES EDUCATION POLICY, ANTI‐GENDER BACKLASH AND ANTI‐MUSLIM SCAPEGOATING</hd> <p>The development of LGBTQIA+ inclusive sexualities education across policy territories globally has faced backlash and critique from a variety of movements. These movements differ in scale and location, and are not always easily defined as progressive and secular, or conservative and religious. In this section, we unpack how right‐wing populist anti‐(trans)gender movements have attacked the existence of sexuality education, and how minority religious and anti‐racist movements in some contexts have critiqued sexuality policy framings of religious (and in particular Muslim) commitments as a threat. UNESCO ([<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref17">48</reflink>]) is a key global driver for 'good quality' comprehensive sexuality education, which it defines as education that is scientifically accurate, incremental, age‐appropriate, curriculum‐based, based on a human rights approach and gender equality, culturally relevant and context appropriate, transformative, and supporting life skills for healthy choices. The teaching of gender identity and sexual orientation varies considerably across the globe. Regions such as Catalonia (Spain), certain states in Australia, Canada and the United States, and countries such as England, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Wales require teaching about gender identity and sexual orientation as part of their comprehensive sexuality education. UNESCO ([<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref18">48</reflink>]) reports that amongst 60 countries across Asia‐Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean and sub‐Saharan Africa, 35% 'extensively' address gender identity and sexual orientation in secondary education. In many cases, these policy developments incorporate efforts to recognise the rights of minoritised groups, including those who experience inequality and erasure on the basis of race and religion.</p> <p>However, recent years have seen intensified, successful attempts to pre‐empt or reverse the rise of LGBTQIA+ inclusive sexuality education. US President Trump announced that there'll be 'only two genders' in the US in his January 2025 Inauguration Speech (The White House, [<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref19">46</reflink>]), elevating to Federal level the sentiment of Florida's so‐called 'Don't Say Gay' and 'Don't Say They' laws passed in 2022 and 2023 respectively seek to censor discussion of diverse sexualities and genders (National Education Association, [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref20">36</reflink>]). Hungary and Poland banned teaching about gender identity and sexual orientation in 2021 and 2023 respectively (Szikra &amp; Szelewa, [<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref21">45</reflink>]). Together, these laws narrow the sexuality education curriculum to cis‐gender heterosexual experiences and place limits on teachers with respect to inclusive practices such as calling young people by their preferred pronouns. While much scholarly attention has been paid to the role of well‐funded US Christian Right groups in advancing such policies on gender and sexuality, the social locations of such activism are less predictable than this focus might suggest (Nash &amp; Browne, [<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref22">34</reflink>]). What Nash and Browne term 'heteroactivist' groups can involve grassroots activists organised around local issues as well as well‐funded, transnational organisations with strong socio‐political agendas (Nash &amp; Browne, [<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref23">34</reflink>], p. 22). The social, cultural and political characteristics of heteroactivists are similarly unpredictable: they have varied religious affiliations and none, can be 'left' or 'right' leaning politically, and have varied social class dynamics (Ibid., p. 13). What they do have in common is a focus on parental rights, and the safety of children, and position the cisheterosexual‐parent family as central to societal stability. Indeed, these movements arguably gain traction by offering an illusion of private familial control in the face of public neoliberal abandonment, characterised by the decimation of public services, and the precarity of work and housing (Butler, [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref24">11</reflink>]).</p> <p>Heteroactivist movements have also gained ground in states that offer, or attempt to offer comprehensive sexuality education, in part via electoral dynamics. In New Zealand in 2023, the newly elected, three‐party coalition government declared their intention to refocus the curriculum on academic achievement and not 'ideology', and as such announced the intention to remove and replace existing gender, sexuality and relationships‐based guidelines (New Zealand National Party and New Zealand First, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref25">37</reflink>]). In Australia, roughly 15% and 21% of students respectively attend private and Catholic schools, with public schools' share of students in decline (Independent Schools Australia, [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref26">23</reflink>]). While draft legislation to outlaw discrimination against LGBTQ+ teachers and students in these schools passed successfully in early 2024, the spectre of the next Federal election and the Labour government's appeal for cross‐party support for contentious policy appears to have derailed this. Work undertaken by Callaghan et al. ([<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref27">12</reflink>]) in Catholic schools in Australia and Canada has identified continuing discrimination against LGBTQIA+ youth on the basis of institutional stances on gender and sexual diversity even where legal protections exist.</p> <p>Two recent iterations of Department for Education statutory guidance on Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) in England offer some insight into the interaction between countervailing international trends towards bans on teaching about gender identity and towards the introduction of compulsory RSE. Statutory RSE Guidance was published in 2019 by the UK Conservative government for implementation in 2020 (Department for Education (DfE), [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref28">13</reflink>]). For the first time, this required all schools to teach 'LGBT content' and puts the onus on schools to decide at which age teaching about 'LGBT' (sic) might be appropriate. It also requires that schools bear the religious nature of their community in mind when planning the RSE curriculum. However, by this point, an intensified right‐wing populist shift on immigration, transgender rights and the protection of women and children became central to UK Conservative government rhetoric via, amongst other things, Brexit, counter‐terror discourse, and attempted progressive reforms to the Gender Recognition Act. Revised draft RSE guidance was issued for consultation in May 2024 (Department for Education (DfE), [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref29">14</reflink>]), a week before the Prime Minister called a general election. The DfE media department signalled two major changes (Department for Education (DfE), [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref30">15</reflink>]). First, "we're introducing age limits, to ensure children aren't being taught about sensitive and complex subjects before they are ready to fully understand them"; and second, "we are also making clear that the concept of gender identity—the sense a person may have of their own gender, whether male, female or a number of other categories—is highly contested and should not be taught".</p> <p>The DfE review and subsequent draft revision of RSE guidance were prompted in large part by a report entitled <emph>Asleep at the Wheel: An Examination of Gender and Safeguarding in Schools</emph>, which was commissioned by Conservative MP Miriam Cates, produced by right‐wing think tank Policy Exchange, and published shortly before the review was announced in March 2023. Endorsed by Members of Parliament from both the main political parties, the report frames gender identity as a safeguarding issue for schools. In her endorsement of the report, Cates, a self‐described 'realist feminist' (Lloyd, [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref31">27</reflink>]) sought to justify this anti‐gender rhetoric through the claim that 'gender ideology' is a threat to children, democracy and civilisation itself (Moore, [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref32">31</reflink>], p. 6).</p> <p>Butler ([<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref33">11</reflink>]) highlights the irony of gender identity censorship in schools: the harm caused by censorship of 'gender ideology' is justified by the imagined harm it would do if allowed in schools. However, as Butler ([<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref34">11</reflink>], p. 102) points out, it is feminism that has persistently challenged rape and assault and restrictive accounts of naturalised femininity, and LGBTQIA+ movements that have challenged bullying and violence. Yet the phantasmic co‐option of gender would make it seem that educators drawing on these histories are the ones violating their principles by forcing their ideologies on children. In a further appropriation, while it is queer education research and activism that has argued the symbolic, discursive and affective inseparability of the biological body (sex), psycho‐socio‐cultural identification (gender) take‐up and desire (sexual orientation), and exposed the regulatory effects and immanent potentiality of this inseparability (cf Youdell, [<reflink idref="bib51" id="ref35">51</reflink>]), this is now being deployed in the anti‐gender elision of bodies, selves and ideas and the vilification of queer theory and LGBTQ+ activism.</p> <hd id="AN0190860290-4">Anti‐Muslim racism and the scapegoating of Muslim communities</hd> <p>This focus on the alleged dangers of gender 'ideology' in schools comes alongside continued anti‐Muslim rhetoric and policy‐making across the globe. Mondon and Winter ([<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref36">30</reflink>]) argue, drawing on examples from France and the US, that illiberal, explicitly racist Islamophobia shares fuzzy boundaries with 'pseudo‐progressive' liberal Islamophobia, the latter of which focuses on the alleged supremacy of the West's (or the Western nation's) rule of law based on liberal equality, freedom and rights. These fuzzy boundaries are evident in false representations of Muslims as homogenous, and inherently opposed to gender and sexual equality. Indeed, scholars have traced the functioning of liberal Islamophobia through 'homonationalist' (Puar, [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref37">38</reflink>]) public and policy discourse claiming to protect sexuality education on behalf of an enlightened nation which views itself as championing LGBTQIA+ rights.[<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref38">1</reflink>]</p> <p>For example, Bialystok and Wright ([<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref39">5</reflink>]) highlight a racialised 'multicultural panic' surrounding opposition to Ontario's 2015 Health and Physical Education curriculum which questioned the belonging of Muslim communities' in Canada. The duty to promote 'Fundamental British Values' (democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs) as part of UK counter‐terrorist duty in schools (DfE, [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref40">16</reflink>]) has been argued to be a key dimension of liberal Islamophobia framing public and policy responses to protests by Muslim activists and parents against LGBTQIA+ inclusive schooling in the UK (Khan, [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref41">24</reflink>]; Kitching, [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref42">25</reflink>]; Vincent, [<reflink idref="bib49" id="ref43">49</reflink>]). Public pro‐LGBTQIA+ responses to protests outside Birmingham schools focused on adherence to British equality law on gender and sexuality while neglecting race and religion, thereby feeding liberal Islamophobia. At the same time, Conservative government reluctance to engage in such 'local' school‐community matters demonstrated its willingness to allow conservative Muslims, and not the wider anti‐gender movements that Conservative politicians increasingly supported, to be the face of anti‐LGBTQIA+ backlash (Kitching, [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref44">25</reflink>]; Nash &amp; Browne, [<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref45">34</reflink>]).</p> <p>Overall, these dynamics highlight the precarious and ambivalent nature of progress around inclusive sexuality education, and raise questions about how well the struggles of excluded transgender communities, Muslim communities, and families living in poverty and precarity are incorporated into definitions of that progress. As discussed in the next section, these dynamics more fundamentally challenge us to understand and respond effectively to the deeply political, plural and often conflicting nature of claims encircling sexuality education.</p> <hd id="AN0190860290-5">INSTITUTIONALISED INEQUALITIES, PASSIONATE ATTACHMENTS, AND AGONISTIC PLURALISM</hd> <p>A liberal pluralist approach to equality underpins public discourse and legal instruments in most western democracies. In liberal pluralism the commitment to individual freedom, autonomy and liberty is tethered to the pluralist recognition of diverse, and theoretically equivalent worldviews. Liberal pluralism promises freedom for all and demands civility from all. This approach rhetorically underpins UK Fundamental British Values policy (DfE, [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref46">16</reflink>]). Yet the counter‐terrorism policy in which it is embedded has exacerbated anti‐Muslim racism and provided virtually no protection to transgender communities. Indeed, the promise of freedom and demand of civility belies liberal pluralism's in‐built and insurmountable problem. Liberal pluralism requires that compromises be made to soften—what it has already, paradoxically, essentialised as—differences in values. While this process of trading‐off values is framed as a balancing act (Berlin, [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref47">4</reflink>]), the example of the exclusion of minorities from the national imaginary demonstrates how one set of values, defined rhetorically as a legitimate difference, becomes "construed as negativity" (Laclau &amp; Mouffe, [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref48">26</reflink>], p. 176) and 'uncivilised'. Laclau and Mouffe ([<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref49">26</reflink>]) respond to this liberal paradox through a Left politics that foregrounds the plural nature of the antagonisms that counter‐hegemonic struggles (e.g. against transphobia or Islamophobia) address. They point out that the different needs and claims of different groups are not simply equivalent, not least because they have emerged as historically contingent, specific struggles.</p> <p>Mouffe ([<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref50">33</reflink>], p. 755) calls for a distinction between "antagonism between enemies" and an agonism between "adversaries" with whom we share adhesion to democracy. Calling for agonistic pluralism, she argues the aim of democratic politics is not to eliminate passionate attachments, or to assume resolution can be reached through rational discussion, but to 'come to accept the position of the adversary', where compromises are 'temporary respites' (ibid.) With agonistic pluralism, we first recognise conflict is inevitable in democratic politics, and second accept the validity of various counter‐hegemonic struggles that are ultimately irreducible to each other. Third, we accept that we can continue to coexist and act collaboratively and democracy can thrive. Thus ongoing, open dialogue in which this agonism is aired, debated and ways forward are found must be an integral part of life.</p> <p>Mouffe ([<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref51">32</reflink>]) makes clear that an anti‐essentialist, plural concept of the subject, and thus of 'we' and 'them' is crucial for Left democratic politics. Identity categories such as 'working class', 'women' etc. are retained, but as Butler ([<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref52">10</reflink>]) argues, they cannot possibly capture our complexity—they do not describe something unitary or enduring. This poses a challenge to a sexualities education politics based on an a priori, fixed or certain sense of 'us' and 'them' which seeks state recognition, and/or seeks to deny the rights of others. Butler ([<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref53">10</reflink>]) argues an ethically responsive idea of identity recognition is likely to leave open the question of 'knowing' finally who 'I' am and who 'you' are, where we accept that we will never be satisfied by the answer to who the other 'is':</p> <p>If the identity we say we are cannot possibly capture us and marks immediately an excess and opacity that falls outside the categories of identity, then any effort "to give an account of oneself" will have to fail in order to approach being true. As we ask to know the other, or ask that the other say, finally or definitively, who he or she is, it will be important not to expect an answer that will ever satisfy. By not pursuing satisfaction and by letting the question remain open, even enduring, we let the other live, since life might be understood as precisely that which exceeds any account we may try to give of it. (Butler, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref54">10</reflink>], p. x)</p> <p>Of course, regardless of the limits of our capacity to capture life in the language of identity, we cannot simply 'throw off' the identities we have become (Butler, [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref55">9</reflink>], p. 29). The double bind of becoming knowable as a particular kind of subject (subjectivation) is that it <emph>both</emph> offers a form of recognition <emph>and de</emph>limits who we are, or even injures us. For Mouffe's ([<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref56">32</reflink>]) agonistic pluralism, the notion of a homogenous essence underpinning identity categories is discarded, and counter‐hegemonic politics is a question of how struggles are formed in specific material contexts, and of where common, specific points of articulation/collaboration can be found. For Butler ([<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref57">10</reflink>]), letting the other live is part of recognising each other's ultimate unknowability. Agonistic pluralism thus makes a double request: that groups to some degree let go of the primacy or infallibility of their identity‐based claims in public, and subjects let go of the abiding self.</p> <p>The gender and sexuality‐inclusive goals of comprehensive sexuality education, then, cannot be seen to be separate from anti‐racist goals of countering Islamophobia. As Higham ([<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref58">21</reflink>]) has demonstrated in the context of Australian schooling, attending to the frictions between the political claims of minoritised groups is important work if we are to avoid reproducing the slow violence associated with a failure to account for how 'becoming (a subject) is constrained in multiple ways' (Higham, [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref59">21</reflink>], p. 909). Agonistic pluralism indicates not only that it is important to acknowledge sexuality education is always political, but also that it may be important for schools and policy makers to abandon the myth of horizontal 'consultation' with communities, and to address instead plurality, hierarchy and conflict related to local decisions over curriculum. Yet given the problem of how ambivalently and diffusely processes of conflict (and alignment, rejection, concession and capitulation) operate amongst unequally positioned groups in institutions (August, [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref60">1</reflink>]), there remains the question of the usefulness of agonistic pluralism in the day‐to‐day life of schooling. As we explore below in one school context, the mainstreaming of right‐wing populist anti‐trans and Islamophobic rhetoric, the juridification of struggles over sexuality education (Vincent, [<reflink idref="bib49" id="ref61">49</reflink>]), and a sense of crisis in education and wider public services seen in lack of government support for headteachers, intense inspection‐related surveillance, and broader state under‐resourcing means that a 'rush to resolution' is likely to maintain a more powerful pull over school staff than sitting with dissensus. We argue that points of articulation/commonality for public sexualities education can be identified amidst this specific context of crisis and overwhelm, but that letting the Other live is a necessary part of finding compromise, however temporary and contingent it may be.</p> <hd id="AN0190860290-6">METHODS</hd> <p>We present a close analysis of excerpts of interview data from one school community in Birmingham, UK. Meadows Academy is one of three schools participating in a broader ESRC‐funded study on secondary school RSE, selected as part of a purposive sample of schools identified on the basis of their relevance to themes in existing literature (Bryman, [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref62">8</reflink>]). Specifically, given the anti‐(trans)gender and anti‐Muslim movements discussed above, we developed a sample which would allow us to focus on schools with heterogeneous racial and religious profiles, and which had experienced varying levels of contestation surrounding inclusive RSE. We selected schools in Birmingham because repeated intensive political, media and legal interest in schooling in the city suggests theoretical relevance, particularly in relation to RSE and the influence of Muslim communities on schooling (see e.g. Holmwood &amp; O'Toole, [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref63">22</reflink>], for analysis of the political interventions related to the Trojan Horse Affair[<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref64">2</reflink>]; and Kitching, [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref65">25</reflink>]; Vincent, [<reflink idref="bib49" id="ref66">49</reflink>], for analysis of media and legal responses to protests against RSE in primary schools). Despite this interest, there exists little empirical data from secondary schools in the city (cf. Diamond, [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref67">17</reflink>]).</p> <p>We have focused our analysis on one school in particular in order to develop a rich and sustained account of how relationships between school staff and parents and national and global dynamics play into RSE as a space of dissensus. Meadows Academy is a large state‐funded secondary school. 80% of residents in the school's local area are Muslim. 36% of adults do not have any formal qualifications, which is double the national rate. 31% of residents have never worked or are long‐term unemployed, compared with 8% nationally (Birmingham City Council, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref68">6</reflink>]). Five parents responded to a call for participants at the school. All five parents are working class, Muslim women. Three are British South Asian and two moved to the UK from North Africa. Their children are in Years 8 and 9 (ages 12–14). The head teacher, Max, is white British and is not religious. The RSE lead teacher, Aisha, is British South Asian and is Muslim. The first author carried out individual semi‐structured interviews of a little over an hour with Max and Aisha. The five parents took part in a semi‐structured group interview. The interviews included in this article were conducted in November and December 2023, six months before the publication of the draft revised RSE guidance, which recommended censoring discussion of 'gender identity'.</p> <p>The approach to data analysis is deconstructive. A deconstructive analysis, in contrast to the data‐aggregation techniques of qualitative coding (Fox &amp; Alldred, [<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref69">19</reflink>]), is a post‐structural analytic approach that "challenges the prevailing notion that language systems inherently establish coherence or unity" (Sediq, [<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref70">42</reflink>], p. 5). It examines the constitutive and constraining capacities of discourse and, in line with our theoretical frame, refuses a priori assumptions about identities (Youdell, [<reflink idref="bib51" id="ref71">51</reflink>]). We work in the vein of critical qualitative research which remains attentive to the 'unruliness of data' (Maclure, [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref72">28</reflink>]), allowing for irruptions that would seem to block clear and distinct accounts of identity or patterns in discourse. Close readings of extended extracts are presented and analysed to illustrate how, in de‐democratising times, the plurality of 'us' and 'them is denied, and to show how certain local passionate attachments to identities and ways of negotiating RSE operate and how they resonate with wider anti‐gender and anti‐Muslim discourses.</p> <p>We present three extracts in total. The first and the third analyse the ways in which some parents resist compulsory RSE, particularly where the curriculum and wider school policies are inclusive of LGBTQIA+ lives and identities. We explore how parents' attitudes are articulated in the language of—and with explicit reference to flashpoints in—the anti‐transgender rhetoric in current circulation and discussed above. The second outlines school leaders' frustrations that it has been left to them to manage the fallout caused by a polarised political landscape, and we analyse the ways in which leaders turn to 'Fundamental British Values' policy in trying to meet their responsibilities both to teach sexuality‐and‐gender‐inclusive RSE and to promote community cohesion. We argue that these responses to dissent neglect the pervasiveness of cis‐heteronormativity and Islamophobia throughout British society and singularise and intervene disproportionately upon Muslim communities.</p> <hd id="AN0190860290-7">POLITICIANS STOKING TRANS PANICS AND LEAVING SCHOOLS TO DEAL WITH THE FALLOUT</hd> <p>Parents articulated concerns about political leaders engineering multiple crises for which these same politicians appear ill‐equipped to resolve. Throughout the group interview, parents suggested that these crises threatened to enter into their children's schools and, as such, informed their opinions on RSE. In the example below, two participants, Yasmin and Farida, express concern about public institutions' increasingly permissive attitudes towards gender diversity.</p> <p>Group interview with parents, November 2023</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> Laila And now, what is happening, I've read an article saying the head teacher—I can't remember what school it was—saying they can't provide litter trays for the students because they've become... well what is this turning into?</item> <p></p> <item> Yasmin Can notprovide what?</item> <p></p> <item> Interviewer Oh, was it about a child identifying as a cat?</item> <p></p> <item> Laila Yes they identified themselves as cats, what is all this? [...]</item> <p></p> <item> Yasmin So what is the school going to be doing... you know, obviously when it comes to this transgender ideology ? Again, we understand that they are people who have got their choices, but at the same time, I wouldn't allow my daughter... I would rather she wet herself or soiled herself or whatever than her go into a toilet where there's another boy pretending to be a girl. Now, look at that example in Scotland where... that's where she [Nicola Sturgeon, former Scottish First Minister] got fired didn't she ? Where the man supposedly was a woman and he raped the inmates in there [prison]. But they knew that, and they put... they've opened up a can of worms and they don't know what to do with it. So they are just trying to push anything and everything.</item> <p></p> <item> Farida Luckily they have not done that in this school.</item> <p></p> <item> Yasmin And then the prime minister a couple of weeks back announced that, you know, you should be able to say a male is a male and a female is a female; you shouldn't be scared. Now, I agree with that but again it's the same government that's pushed the agenda in the first place.</item> <p></p> <item> Interviewer You feel like there are mixed messages?</item> <p></p> <item> Yasmin Yeah, if you look at the NHS, look at the roads, wherever you go it's everywhere. It's like, as I say, you're being bombarded with it and you can't get away from it. We haven't got an issue with whoever wants to have whatever relationship; that is their choice.</item> </ulist> <p>Laila and Yasmin describe a sense of being overwhelmed by gender, which they liken to 'opening a can of worms' and frame as 'transgender ideology' that has been both 'pushed' and resisted by the same Conservative government. It is important to note that the sense of overwhelm described is not produced by good faith discussion and representation of transgender lives and identities. Rather, it is produced by social media storms, news features, and the public interventions of political figures that rarely touch on those issues around which trans activists organise: housing insecurity, discrimination in the workplace, uneven access to adequate healthcare. More often, public discourse (and moral panic) centres questions about access to single‐sex spaces such as prisons and bathrooms, about 'fairness' in relation to trans women participating in women's categories in sports, the risk of emotional and physical harm for young people 'confused' about and by gender, and unfathomable ('what is all this?') non‐human identification. We might distinguish, as does trans activist and author Shon Faye ([<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref73">18</reflink>]), between transgender issues and 'the transgender issue', noting the relative pervasiveness of the latter and the sense of threat that it produces.</p> <p>Laila and Yasmin's feeling of being overwhelmed by gender also appears to sit within a more general malaise with the state of the nation, which reaches into all areas of life including 'the NHS, the roads, wherever you go'. Elsewhere in the interview, for example, Yasmin and Farida worry about a breakdown in law and order as the country moves to become an 'LGBT' country. Butler ([<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref74">11</reflink>]) argues that the specific sources of existential threats facing people—such as those of war, homelessness and environmental destruction which often threaten to affect working class, racialised people disproportionately—have been displaced and the cultural figure of gender has been produced as a focus for people's fears. The phantasm of gender is then seen as a source of this looming destruction and is itself identified as a phantasmic object to be destroyed. Drawing upon this phantasm, Laila and Yasmin deny the existence of trans young people and use this denial to call for the curbing of their freedom to self‐assign gender and for their exclusion from certain school spaces. In Mouffe's (Mouffe, [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref75">32</reflink>], p. 21) language, we might see these views as those of an 'enemy' in the way that the parents seek to remove rights and freedoms from others, thereby excluding themselves from the political community through a refusal to accept the democratic 'rules of the game'.</p> <p>Crucially, the views expressed by parents in relation to 'transgender ideology' are not articulated in terms of religious worldviews or of cultural difference. Even if it is possible that the arguments made by Laila and Yasmin follow a heteroactivist tactic which dissimulates religious motivations and emphasises issues of children's safety and the pushing of 'ideology' (Nash &amp; Browne, [<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref76">34</reflink>]), the social influences on these objections are more varied than can be explained through a focus on ethno‐religious culture alone. The story about children demanding litter trays at school was triggered by rumours spread by podcast host Joe Rogan and repeated by Republican politicians in the US (BBC News, [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref77">2</reflink>]), while the account of the trans prisoner convicted of rape and remanded in a women's prison was covered widely in the UK media (Brooks &amp; Carrell, [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref78">7</reflink>]). The intensive media focus on these stories influences and is used to legitimise the anti‐transgender rhetoric from both government ministers and parents and yet, as we explore in the following section, the varied roots of this unease are rarely touched upon by school staff who tend to see the most pressing issue as that of one community failing to accept diverse genders and sexualities.</p> <hd id="AN0190860290-8">SCHOOL STAFF TAKING UP FUNDAMENTAL BRITISH VALUES AS THE REMEDY TO DISSENSUS</hd> <p>The school leaders involved in this study feel a distinct pressure to respond to pushback against the inclusion of sexual and gender diversity in RSE, and the unequivocal nature of schools' duty to promote Fundamental British Values strongly informs this response. The interview with Meadow Academy's head teacher, Max, concluded with a question about what he would change about RSE.</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> Max Well there is one thing I would share. I need the government to be a bit stronger... I need the DfE [Department for Education] to be very specific about what is mandatory to teach, what isn't mandatory, what is optional. And I need the DfE to absorb some of the weight of that. In much the way that they did with the British Values aspect. I found, personally as a professional, the push with British Values controversial. I understood where it came from and I understood why, and the only thing that I felt about that... that was launched really well... was that it became a non‐negotiable. That actually your child is going to come to this setting, they will be taught these principles of democracy, of rule of law. And absolutely on board with that, superb. I don't think with RSE that they have been as strong. I think they have put far too much into the school's hands to bring communities on board with what's being done and I think that's a real weakness on their part, if I'm honest. I really do. It's where we're craving for support...</item> </ulist> <p>Max suggests that the way in which Fundamental British Values (FBVs) policy was 'pushed' and made a 'non‐negotiable' by central government has made it easier for schools to promote FBVs than it is to address diverse genders and sexualities through RSE. Max appears to allude to concerns about the civilising and securitising nature of FBVs in his personal and professional feeling of them being controversial, and yet despite these reservations the lack of equivocation in the way schools are instructed to implement the policy is appealing. The move from Max's personal anxiety about FBVs to his call for a similarly non‐negotiable imposition of RSE content raises the question of the de‐professionalisation of teachers and school leaders as he begins to call for less room for him and colleagues to enter into conversation at the local level, despite the explicit instruction in the RSE Guidance for schools to take account of the religious character of their particular communities. In the context of increasingly polarised politics, narrower scope for professional judgement starts to become more appealing despite the de‐democratising effects.</p> <p>As well as appearing to serve as a model for clear and effective policy implementation, FBVs emerged as crucial in the school's response to concerns about intolerance, in a way consistent with the civilising (Vincent, [<reflink idref="bib49" id="ref79">49</reflink>]) and securitising (Winter &amp; Mills, [<reflink idref="bib50" id="ref80">50</reflink>]) nature of the FBVs aspect of Prevent policy. The lead teacher for RSE, Aisha, explains the importance of FBVs and sets them in contrast with certain young people's lives at home:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> Aisha My sort of main priority, when I talk about the different types of relationships, I always brought it back to British Values but I've also spoken to some of the classroom teachers, you can say that in Islam it is about accepting people. Whether you agree with it or not, you still treat people with the same respect and actually link it back to those British Values as well. You've got a lot of kids, especially in this school, who are amazing they're so amazing, they're curious, they want to know more but unfortunately you do have the ones where you can see it stems from home life as well where simply 'I don't want to hear it'. And that's going to be my biggest challenge next year (laughs) when I bring that topic back in. To move away from this whole thing of tolerance actually to more acceptance as well but I know that's going to be a bit of a journey for me especially at this school.</item> </ulist> <p>In the context of describing a particularly pressing need to foster tolerance and shift from 'tolerance' to 'acceptance', phrases such as 'especially in this school' and 'you can see it stems from home life' frame young people, their parents and other family members at home in deficit terms. Within this deficit framing, the reference to Islam ('You can say in Islam it is about accepting people'), suggests that the school's expropriation and mediation of Islam recruits it to play an important role in tackling perceived intolerance. The simultaneous take up and othering of Islam here is typical of a neo‐colonialist ambivalent orientation towards Islam whereby the white institution makes itself the arbiter of a schema in which moderate faith can be considered a force for discipling Muslim communities at the same time as 'fundamentalist' or 'extremist' faith is seen as the very source of those communities' intolerance (Gutkowski, [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref81">20</reflink>]; Mondon &amp; Winter, [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref82">30</reflink>]). In its supposedly neutral support of FBVs, the school body appears void of political motivation, while it is incumbent on Muslim communities to police more conservative beliefs and to promote aspects of their faith which fit most comfortably with 'British' values.</p> <p>It is important to note, however, that although the civilising and securitising discourses associated with FBVs are influential, they are not totalising. As well as citing the take up of Islam in corrective ways, Aisha explained that her faith has also been a way of building relationships with parents who have expressed concern about the curriculum, and one which has allowed the building of shared understanding. She also suggested that the commonsense understanding of Islam as restrictive and traditional should be countered, and expressed her hope that, through our research, we would also see the 'beautiful' aspects of Islamic teachings on sexuality.</p> <hd id="AN0190860290-9">MUSLIM PARENTS EXPERIENCING THESE INTERVENTIONS AS SINGULARISING AND FEELING COMPELLED TO RES...</hd> <p>Where schools do identify Muslim communities as in particular need of tolerance‐(or even acceptance‐) promoting intervention, Muslim parents can feel compelled to push back. In the group interview, two parents provided an example of one intervention focused specifically and publicly on Muslim homophobia:</p> <p>Group interview with parents, November 2023:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> Yasmin One of the things that we came across a few years back was posters up in this school for our Year 7 to see. I don't think the school handled it well. They were portraying a part of Islam that isn't true. Now, Islam forbids homosexuality but the posters that were put up were 'I'm Muslim and it's okay to be gay'. No, so what you're putting a stance on is, what you're teaching the children is, that 'you're Muslim and if you want to be gay you can', and you can't because Islam doesn't specify that. Now if you want to be gay, that's your choice. Whether you believe that you were born with it or it's a personal choice or whatever, you cannot specify and say it's Islam that is allowing that because this is where these mixed...</item> <p></p> <item> Farida ... basically that agenda was pushed...</item> <p></p> <item> Yasmin ... without our consent.</item> </ulist> <p>In this case of the poster described by Yasmin, it appears that it is the bundling together of 'Muslim', 'gay' and 'okay' which causes particular concern and, ultimately, contestation from the parents involved. The idea that homosexuality is forbidden by Islam was shared by all five parents. Although there are varied interpretations of Islamic teaching, it is commonly accepted that the Quran and Hadith teach that same‐sex relationships violate appropriate Islamic ethical behaviour (Sanjakdar, [<reflink idref="bib41" id="ref83">41</reflink>]). And yet, the poster takes on a narrow and fixed sexual and religious identity in order to make a political and (as interpreted by Yasmin and Farida) theological statement to the contrary: I <emph>am</emph> Muslim, it is okay to <emph>be</emph> gay, and I can know exactly what it means to 'be' both those things.</p> <p>The decision by school staff to display the poster that Yasmin describes appears to fit with some of the goals of progressive politics. It may well be motivated in part by care for queer Muslim students who are likely to see it, drawing on a belief that the subject position of the 'gay Muslim' can be made more liveable with reassurance about its existence and its acceptability. It may also have been motivated by the related aim of deterring students—Muslim and non‐Muslim, gay and straight—who may otherwise oppress queer Muslim students on the basis of their religion, race and/or sexuality. Such moves could suggest an acknowledgement that racism, Islamophobia and homophobia run through schools and demand an intersectional understanding of—and response to—oppressions. And yet, if we return to Butler's ideas about the scene of address and the relationality of giving an account of oneself, we can begin to see that in giving an account of itself, the disembodied voice of the poster is speaking in response to – and constructing for the passer‐by – imagined Muslim subjects that will tell you it is not okay to be gay.</p> <p>While the poster may appear to take a progressive, intersectional approach to RSE, interventions which aim to promote tolerance through the construction of the homophobic Muslim feed into homonationalist imaginaries which position the West as uniquely sexually inclusive (despite the tenuous and incomplete nature of this inclusion) through the production of terrorist Orientalised (Khan, [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref84">24</reflink>]; Puar, [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref85">38</reflink>]). The making hypervisible of Muslim homophobia exemplifies the risk of liberal pluralist modes of RSE in the way that it positions the need to combat homophobia as more urgent than the need to counter homonationalist imaginaries which adversely affect racialised communities. Given the prioritisation of Prevent training in schools alongside the deprioritisation of anti‐racist training (Sian, [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref86">44</reflink>]; Show Racism the Red Card (SRtRC), [<reflink idref="bib43" id="ref87">43</reflink>]), this hierarchisation is likely to go unrecognised.</p> <p>Taking up an agonistic framing of dissensus, the parents' contestation in this context could be seen as that of a 'legitimate adversary' and feed into agonistic contestation. The complaint is focused on the framing of identities and the parents' sense that their community is being intervened upon unreasonably. Yasmin and Farida do not seek to undo sexual freedoms for others, and instead question the manner of the intervention and its civilising, orientalising intent. Nonetheless, they are included by school staff in that group of parents tied together as a community who 'doesn't want to hear it'—a community which is seen to have removed itself from the public sphere through an obstinate attachment to conservative religion.</p> <hd id="AN0190860290-10">CONCLUSION</hd> <p>The analysis presented in this paper demonstrates the bind that schools, educators, students, and parents are placed in over SRE by the convergences of prevailing anti‐(trans)gender and anti‐Muslim movements, liberal pluralism and homonationalism. Considering how these various constituencies might find ways out of these binds leads us to identify a series of key questions which may guide action as well as becoming the site of action itself.</p> <p>First, how can we protect sex and relationships education <emph>and</emph> anti‐racist and anti‐Islamophobic work in schools in ways that 'let the other live' in conditions where these are constituted and experienced as incommensurable? That is, what can people live with? A fundamental first principle here, we believe, is following young people's lead when planning and doing anti‐racist sex and relationships education in schools. In their everyday lives, young people have often already developed sophisticated ways of dealing with the contestation inherent in context where divergent worldviews and ways of life exist together. Young people have already found ways of living with these tensions in bottom‐up ways, not (solely) through demands for 'respect' and 'tolerance' as codified in law or government guidance. These perhaps unspoken but lived settlements between young people might be understood as states of agonistic pluralism already present in diverse schools; states of agonism that can be unsettled by demands for 'respect' and 'tolerance', particularly when framed through fitting into 'Modern Britain' (Kitching, [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref88">25</reflink>]; Vincent, [<reflink idref="bib49" id="ref89">49</reflink>]).</p> <p>Our analysis demonstrates that agonistic pluralism is only ever meaningful in practice—it is a way of describing a practical situation of disagreement and an orientation to the dissensus we see and feel in the world. Living with the agonism associated with sex education means people (teachers, students, parents) being able to live with sex education <emph>and</emph> being able to live with the irreconcilability of what is important to them and to others. This agonist orientation recognises that 'civilising' and 'corrective' orientations provide no justice in the sex education classroom and leads us to another key question: in protecting sexualities education, who and what is a corrective orientation to RSE protecting, and who is it injuring?</p> <p>Amid a negotiated curriculum that recognises and accommodates various vulnerabilities of minoritised groups, there is a possibility—which some may well see as a risk—that genuine exchange might create an openness to a softer, more conservative sex education and, therefore, a giving up of (hard‐won) ground. In navigating this possibility, and considering our responses to this as researchers and educators, we should foreground young people's agency and learn from the plural and divergent needs of young people. That is, we should ask: what do young people here and now want and need from teachers and from school? Foregrounding young people's diversity and agency means schools and educators ensuring young people are part of the discussion about sex education and about agonism.</p> <p>Our research underscores the usefulness of collaborating with schools and educators to envisage anti‐racist sex and relationships education in conditions of dissensus. Rather than attempting to provide a blueprint for agonistic pluralism, such collaborations can support schools to draw on dissensus and agonism as crucial tools for reviewing their goals, curriculum, and pedagogy, helping them to understand what <emph>not</emph> to do, envisage open‐ended conversations with their multiple constituencies, and turn away from the impossible project of attempting to negotiate a sexuality education curriculum that can satisfy all of these constituents.</p> <p>Through our analysis and conclusions, we are very deliberately <emph>not</emph> seeking a singular or final position. We are seeking an alternative to absolutist binaries of being for/against, not least because there is an element of performativity to such for/against demands—schools and communities being seen to do, rather than enacting a meaningful and contextually generated and sensitive SRE. We believe that there is a quietness and subtlety to agonistic pluralist work because it is fundamentally about shifting the mode of relationship. Obsessing over the curriculum content is likely to leave us without a curriculum that satisfies everyone <emph>and</emph> without engaging relationally. This raises the pressing question of how relational pedagogy can become a foundational part of the RSE work that teachers do when relationality has lost traction in policy conceptions of teachers' professionalism and expertise? Thinking about relationships for learning in the RSE classroom suggests moving away from RSE curricula bought through a package online, with limited time/space/vision for translational or context‐specific work, and moving towards listening, understanding minoritisation, jettisoning homogenised and essentialised ideas of others, and engaging with what young people learn about relationships through their lives in schools as institutions as well as their lives outside school.</p> <p>Amid teacher shortages and other challenges, we recognise the enormity of calling on teachers to engage in these dialogues, to build and rebuild relational pedagogies, to listen to young people and enable them to exist in states of agonism, to create a sex education curriculum that diverse people can live with. These are moves that reassert teachers' professionalism and the fundamental importance in learning of recognition and relationships. Some teachers are doing this work anyway, in and out of formal sex education lessons.</p> <hd id="AN0190860290-11">FUNDING INFORMATION</hd> <p>This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant number ES/P000711/1).</p> <hd id="AN0190860290-12">CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT</hd> <p>The authors do not report any potential conflict of interest.</p> <hd id="AN0190860290-13">DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT</hd> <p>The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author, JS. The data are not publicly available due to their containing information that could compromise the privacy of research participants.</p> <hd id="AN0190860290-14">ETHICS STATEMENT</hd> <p>The authors confirm that the ethical policies of the journal have been adhered to and that the appropriate University of Birmingham ethical review committee approval has been received.</p> <ref id="AN0190860290-15"> <title> Footnotes </title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" idref="ref38" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext> This work is indebted to Rasmussen's ([39]) analysis of how notions of secular progressiveness in public sexuality education counterproductively can exclude conservative religiosity.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib2" idref="ref64" type="bt">2</bibl> <bibtext> An alleged attempt to 'Islamicize' secular state‐funded schools in Birmingham led to investigations by local and government departments as well as national media reporting, which contributed to a narrative of Muslim parents and staff failing to integrate into British society.</bibtext> </blist> </ref> <ref id="AN0190860290-16"> <title> REFERENCES </title> <blist> <bibtext> August, V. 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| Items | – Name: Title Label: Title Group: Ti Data: School Spaces of Dissensus: Protecting Sexualities Education in Anti-Gender, Anti-Muslim and De-Democratising Times – Name: Language Label: Language Group: Lang Data: English – Name: Author Label: Authors Group: Au Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22James+Sutton%22">James Sutton</searchLink> (ORCID <externalLink term="https://orcid.org/0009-0004-8147-591X">0009-0004-8147-591X</externalLink>)<br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Deborah+Youdell%22">Deborah Youdell</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Karl+Kitching%22">Karl Kitching</searchLink> (ORCID <externalLink term="https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7141-9333">0000-0001-7141-9333</externalLink>) – Name: TitleSource Label: Source Group: Src Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22Curriculum+Journal%22"><i>Curriculum Journal</i></searchLink>. 2026 37(1):107-123. – Name: Avail Label: Availability Group: Avail Data: Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us – Name: PeerReviewed Label: Peer Reviewed Group: SrcInfo Data: Y – Name: Pages Label: Page Count Group: Src Data: 17 – Name: DatePubCY Label: Publication Date Group: Date Data: 2026 – Name: TypeDocument Label: Document Type Group: TypDoc Data: Journal Articles<br />Reports - Evaluative – Name: Subject Label: Descriptors Group: Su Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Sex+Education%22">Sex Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Gender+Bias%22">Gender Bias</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Muslims%22">Muslims</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Politics+of+Education%22">Politics of Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Inclusion%22">Inclusion</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Political+Attitudes%22">Political Attitudes</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Conflict%22">Conflict</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Democracy%22">Democracy</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Foreign+Countries%22">Foreign Countries</searchLink> – Name: Subject Label: Geographic Terms Group: Su Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22United+Kingdom+%28Birmingham%29%22">United Kingdom (Birmingham)</searchLink> – Name: DOI Label: DOI Group: ID Data: 10.1002/curj.334 – Name: ISSN Label: ISSN Group: ISSN Data: 0958-5176<br />1469-3704 – Name: Abstract Label: Abstract Group: Ab Data: This paper examines the intensified conflict over sexualities education curricula brought about by anti-(trans)gender and anti-Muslim policy and political discourse transnationally. Backlash against inclusive sexualities education has taken shape across several policy territories, driven in part by de-democratising right-wing populist governments advancing the neoliberal neglect of public education. At the same time, the Islamophobic underpinnings of certain 'inclusive' sexuality education policies have been problematised by anti-racist scholars and communities transnationally. The concept of agonistic pluralism has been used to highlight the inevitability and potential productivity of conflict in diverse school contexts, and to address the limits of a liberal pluralist approach to democratic school relations. Yet there has been little direct empirical analysis of how agonistic pluralism can be used to think through local views on sexualities education, and to support school communities in such de-democratising times. This paper presents such an analysis, using a deconstructive approach to interviews with parents and staff at a state school in working class, majority Muslim area of Birmingham, UK. Through analysis of extended interview extracts, we illustrate the bind that participants face by the convergence of anti-gender and anti-Muslim discourses, amidst ongoing crises facing public services. We present some key guiding questions around protecting public sexualities education in these times that engages diverse youth needs, and moves past 'civilising' curriculum orientations. Schools and educators can consider the potential to engage in dialogue with communities in which dissensus is anticipated and accepted, and which allows the Other to live. – Name: AbstractInfo Label: Abstractor Group: Ab Data: As Provided – Name: DateEntry Label: Entry Date Group: Date Data: 2026 – Name: AN Label: Accession Number Group: ID Data: EJ1493599 |
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| RecordInfo | BibRecord: BibEntity: Identifiers: – Type: doi Value: 10.1002/curj.334 Languages: – Text: English PhysicalDescription: Pagination: PageCount: 17 StartPage: 107 Subjects: – SubjectFull: Sex Education Type: general – SubjectFull: Gender Bias Type: general – SubjectFull: Muslims Type: general – SubjectFull: Politics of Education Type: general – SubjectFull: Inclusion Type: general – SubjectFull: Political Attitudes Type: general – SubjectFull: Conflict Type: general – SubjectFull: Democracy Type: general – SubjectFull: Foreign Countries Type: general – SubjectFull: United Kingdom (Birmingham) Type: general Titles: – TitleFull: School Spaces of Dissensus: Protecting Sexualities Education in Anti-Gender, Anti-Muslim and De-Democratising Times Type: main BibRelationships: HasContributorRelationships: – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: James Sutton – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Deborah Youdell – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Karl Kitching IsPartOfRelationships: – BibEntity: Dates: – D: 01 M: 03 Type: published Y: 2026 Identifiers: – Type: issn-print Value: 0958-5176 – Type: issn-electronic Value: 1469-3704 Numbering: – Type: volume Value: 37 – Type: issue Value: 1 Titles: – TitleFull: Curriculum Journal Type: main |
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