Brushed behind the bike shed: working-class lesbians' experiences of school

This article aims to address concerns about schools as locations where students grapple, materially and subjectively, with class-based notions of femininity, the promotion of heterosexuality and the support of hetero-normative, middle-class families against, and in contrast with, their own working-class families, identities and experiences. Two interconnecting but relatively neglected issues in education, those of sexuality and class, are addressed in order to highlight the interconnections in living out these often analytically separated categories. While the classed, gendered and sexualised aspects of schooling have been explored by several commentators, often these do not combine in such a way to cast light upon the interconnecting inequalities faced by working-class lesbians, or the outcomes of these. This piece draws upon the findings of an empirical ESRC-funded project 'Working-class lesbians: classed in a classless climate'.