Marxism and Education beyond Identity: Sexuality and Schooling

266 Pages·2010·3.011 MB·English

by  Faith Agostinone-Wilson (auth.)

MARXISM AND EDUCATION BEYOND IDENTITY
MARXISM AND EDUCATION
This series assumes the ongoing relevance of Marx’s contributions to critical
social analysis and aims to encourage continuation of the development of the
legacy of Marxist traditions in and for education. The remit for the substan-
tive focus of scholarship and analysis appearing in the series extends from the
global to the local in relation to dynamics of capitalism and encompasses his-
torical and contemporary developments in political economy of education as
well as forms of critique and resistances to capitalist social relations. The series
announces a new beginning and proceeds in a spirit of openness and dialogue
within and between Marxism and education, and between Marxism and its
various critics. The essential feature of the work of the series is that Marxism
and Marxist frameworks are to be taken seriously, not as formulaic knowl-
edge and unassailable methodology but critically as inspirational resources
for renewal of research and understanding, and as support for action in and
upon structures and processes of education and their relations to society. The
series is dedicated to the realization of positive human potentialities as educa-
tion and thus, with Marx, to our education as educators.
Renewing Dialogues in Marxism and Education: Openings
Edited by Anthony Green, Glenn Rikowski, and Helen Raduntz
Critical Race Theory and Education: A Marxist Response
Mike Cole
Revolutionizing Pedagogy: Education for Social Justice Within and Beyond
Global Neo-Liberalism
Edited by Sheila Macrine, Peter McLaren, and Dave Hill
Marxism and Education beyond Identity: Sexuality and Schooling
Faith Agostinone-Wilson
Marxism and Education beyond
Identity
Sexuality and Schooling
Faith Agostinone-Wilson
MARXISM AND EDUCATION BEYOND IDENTITY
Copyright © Faith Agostinone-Wilson, 2010.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-61608-0
All rights reserved.
First published in 2010 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
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this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
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Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-37976-7 ISBN 978-0-230-11355-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230113558
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Agostinone-Wilson, Faith.
Marxism and education beyond identity : sexuality and schooling / Faith
Agostinone-Wilson.
p. cm.—(Marxism and education)
1. Sex—Social aspects—United States. 2. Homosexuality and
education—United States. 3. Marxian school of sociology—United
States. 4. Families—United States. I. Title.
HQ23.A36 2010
306.70973—dc22 2010001972
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: October 2010
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter One
The Existing Climate of K–12 Classrooms 7
Chapter Two
Sources of Opposition to Sexuality and LGBTQ
Rights in the Schools 49
Chapter Three
The Family: Conservative, Psychoanalytical, Anarchist,
and Materialist Readings 79
Chapter Four
Identity Politics: Limits of Postmodernism and Queer Theory 119
Chapter Five
The Socialist Feminist Message: Sexuality, Work, and
Liberation 151
Chapter Six
Building Effective Educational and Resistance
Movements in K–12 Classrooms 189
Conclusion 223
References 225
Index 243
Introduction
O
ver the past two years, intersecting ideologies of family, sexuality, pub-
lic policy, and capitalism were evident in a series of news events great and
small. In 2008, on a hot July day in Knoxville, Jim D. Adkisson walked into
Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church with a rifle and an intent to
kill liberals. According to his manifesto found shortly after the attack, these
liberals “are a pest, like termites, millions of them . . . the only way we can rid
ourselves of this evil is to kill them in the street where they gather” (Adkisson
2008). Adkisson selected a Unitarian church precisely because of their publi-
cized support for LGBTQ rights, along with their antiwar and multicultural
platforms.
Adkisson’s recommendation for right wing foot soldiers to confront the
leftists where they spent a majority of their time was misguided as few liberals
seemed inclined to gather in large enough groups these days. For example,
United for Peace and Justice is the most powerful anti-war coalition in the
United States. But the most “street action” they could muster for their annual
assembly in 2008 was 248 attendees. And most of these people were uncer-
tain about challenging newly elected president Barack Obama’s position on
escalating military action in Afghanistan (Suber 2009).
Police later found books in Adkisson’s house by Bill O’Reilly, Michael
Savage, and Sean Hannity, premiere hate talkers in the culture wars
(Havenworks n.d.). The irony of Adkisson—whose food stamps were being
cut—consequently blaming liberals, the very people who support funding the
very assistance programs conservatives were cutting—appeared lost on the
major cable news networks. The killing of three police officers in Pittsburgh
has also been attributed to the ideological anti-government promptings of
talk show hosts Glenn Beck and Alex Jones. In April 2009, Richard Poplawski
opened fire on the police because he feared a socialist new world order ush-
ered in by the Obama administration (Blumenthal 2009).
While instances of violence make a dramatic and often immediate impact
in the media, the long-standing deterioration of the nuclear family under
economic pressures loom large. Recent issues stemming from Nebraska’s
Safe Harbor laws exemplify the privatization of the nuclear family and its
2 MARXISM AND EDUCATION BEYOND IDENTITY
inability to sustain itself once work disappears. In 2008, a desperate wid-
ower of ten children took advantage of a state Safe Harbor law that allows
a parent to drop off a child at designated sites with no questions asked. He
left nine children—ranging in ages from 1 to 17—at a local hospital, stat-
ing, “I couldn’t do it anymore” (Ross 2008). His wife had died in the past
year, and he was unemployed. Redmond and Colson (2008) report at least
six other cases in which parents from other states drove to Nebraska to take
advantage of the law’s lack of upper age limits of children eligible for Safe
Harbor.
One of the other parents had dropped off her eleven-year-old son who had
bipolar disorder and uncontrollable outbursts. When her health insurance
turned down coverage for her son’s mental health, the Safe Harbor law was
the only option:
The lawmakers’ amendment was accompanied by a blame the victim men-
tality among politicians and the media that smeared parents who surren-
dered their children as lazy or irresponsible . . . insurers discriminate against
both adults and children with mental illness and find ways to avoid cover-
ing them. When they do provide coverage, care is restricted. It’s simply not
profitable for insurers to treat chronic mental illnesses that aren’t curable.
And for the estimated 47 million Americans who are uninsured, it’s almost
impossible to get ongoing care for mental illness. (Redmond and Colson
2008, par. 18–23)
Instead of viewing these situations as an indication that urgent help is
needed for struggling families, the Nebraska legislature spent a total of
$80,000 to hold a special session to quickly amend the age limits. Now
infants no older than 30 days can be left at designated sites.
Amidst a backdrop of ideological violence and the abandonment of fami-
lies in a collapsing capitalist economy, in August 2008, Republican presiden-
tial candidate John McCain selected an unknown Governor from Alaska as
his vice presidential candidate. It didn’t take long for the media to discover
that Sarah Palin—a vocal supporter of abstinence-only education and a con-
traception opponent—had a 17-year-old daughter who was five months preg-
nant and unmarried. The impromptu shotgun engagement was announced
on television at the conclusion of the Republican National Convention. As
the camera zoomed in on the bewildered groom, viewers were unaware that
just weeks before, on his MySpace profile, Levi Johnston had put “children:
don’t want any.” The Palin family spectacle revealed how conservative ideolo-
gies about the family and sexuality could often seem contradictory, yet very
powerful in their persistence. Larger initiatives such as federal funding for
abstinence programs in schools while limiting access to contraception and
abortion illustrate how sexuality impacts public policy while being marketed
as something to be handled privately.
INTRODUCTION 3
Louisiana State Representative John LaBruzzo proposed a “solution” to
the problem of poor people reproducing: pay low-income women a $1,000
incentive to get sterilized (Waller 2008). A few months into 2009, just as
unemployment applications were skyrocketing, proposals were presented,
requiring welfare, food stamp, and unemployment recipients to submit to
random drug testing in order to obtain aid. Citing the common reactionary
canard that no one is forced to use these benefits, supporters of the testing
claim to be “motivated out of a concern for their constituent’s health and
ability to put themselves on more solid financial footing once the economy
rebounds” (par. 4). As Warren Buffett famously said, “There’s class warfare, all
right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning”
(Stein 2006 par. 6)
As the legalization of same-sex marriages gained momentum in
Washington, D.C., the Catholic Church responded by threatening to with-
draw all of its social services (Craig and Boorstein 2009). While the Church
isn’t the only provider of any specific services, it does supplement the strug-
gling city’s budget by $10 million. One of the council members, a Democrat,
equated denial of marriage rights with the right of a Christian caterer to not
have to bake a cake with “two grooms on top” (par. 14). This ignored the
larger implications of the church’s threat—denying food and health care to
the poorest in the city.
This short sampling of news events illustrates, in the words of D’Emilio
and Freedman (1997), that “sexuality has become central to our economy,
our psyches, and our politics . . . it is likely to be vulnerable to manipulation
as a symbol of social problems and the subject of efforts to maintain social
hierarchies” (p. 360). Much has been written about sexuality per se, but not
in the context of K-12 education. When sexuality is addressed in any set-
ting, it is from the standpoint of experience-based, identity-politics accounts
or presented as a postmodern romance with popular-media-as-liberation.
For example, the proliferation of gay- and lesbian-themed entertainment is
often used as evidence that society is now more open-minded, a notion that
Kotulski (2004) critiques:
The phenomena of straight folks enjoying Boy Meets Boy, Will and Grace,
and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, doesn’t mean LGBT people have arrived
any more than whites owning Sambo dolls and watching Amos and Andy
signaled equal rights for African-Americans. (p. 178)
Indeed, Cloud (2001) notes that homophobic rhetoric and actions have only
increased in the wake of changing state domestic partnership and marriage
laws. This is tied to the challenge of people not recognizing that their own
oppression is a result of false consciousness and interpellation, in which anti-
LGBTQ ideology is embraced by sections of the working class (Cole 2009;
Moeller 2002).
4 MARXISM AND EDUCATION BEYOND IDENTITY
While much of the anti-gay sentiment is couched in discussions of family
values, activist responses have been limited to queer theory, identity politics,
or consumerism as solutions, which enhance capitalism. When social class is
removed from sexuality as a central point of analysis, we are reduced to relying
only on accounts of experience. Nowlan (2001) outlines how a dependence on
identity politics sustains the fiction of the lone individual who has agency and
choice. This propagates ahistoric thinking, in which realities are presented as
malleable “texts” that can be changed at whim, including relations involving
exploitation such as the worker under capitalism (Cotter 2001). With no his-
tory in which to frame oppression, the transformation of society for the bet-
terment of everyone is jettisoned for more local, desire-based responses and
performances. Theory becomes “a means to justify one’s own legitimacy in
the marketplace without interrogating the structural exploitation upon which
this legitimacy and class privilege is founded” (p. 172).
Instead, what is required—and what is presented in this volume—is a revival
of dialectical materialist analysis applied to sexuality. As Hill, Sanders, and
Hankin (2002) urge, class is not a monolithic concept; it needs to be analyzed
in a multidimensional fashion. The postmodern equation should be inverted
where sexuality is shaped by class, not the other way around. Ebert’s red cul-
tural studies (2001) support this volume’s attempt to go beyond desire and
the body in order to effectively confront capitalism. This is done by addressing
oppression’s choke point: the relation of the worker to the means of production
which undergirds the functioning of capitalism, allowing it to shape all rela-
tions, including the family. Hickey (2006) explains that historical materialism
“was the first systematic attempt to indentify structures that constrain human
behavior” (p.187). It radically broke with traditional approaches to sexual-
ity, including philosophies of natural rights, human nature, empiricism, indi-
vidual will, romantic desire, and religious explanations. We are facing a world
in which concerns once viewed as “private,” such as the family, are now part
of public policy debates, which further exploits the working class (D’Emilio
2002).This has impacted both social conservatives and Marxists. By focusing
on dialectical materialist sexuality, we gain much in our efforts to understand
and change the world, both in K–12 settings and beyond.
Chapter 1, “The Existing Climate of K–12 Classrooms,” examines the
current situation regarding those who identify as LGBTQ. On a K–12 level,
this chapter addresses abstinence-only education, LGBTQ harassment in
schools, the significance of equal access, the safe schools movement, and cur-
ricular concerns. In addition, there is an examination of larger, related social
issues, including demographic portraits of LGBTQ people, LGBTQ families,
same-sex marriage, religion, military policies, and workplace discrimination.
Focus is placed on the significance of high-profile tragedies, such as Matthew
Shepard.
Chapter 2, “Sources of Opposition to Sexuality and LGBTQ Rights in the
Schools,” attempts to uncover the roots of homophobic ideologies. Going