Sex Education as Neoliberal Inclusion: Hetero-cis-ableism in Ontario’s 2015 Health and Physical Education Curriculum

Abstract

In this thesis, I investigate how hetero-cis-ableism and neoliberalism are tied to the production of “good” LGBT2SQ and disabled people and the expulsion of “bad” queers and crips within Ontario’s 2015 Health and Physical Education Curriculum. I argue that the move towards explicit or social justice education and the implementation of LGBT2SQ dialogue is not (simply) a way to represent equality, but a way of insuring the production of a specific type of person. Analysing the curriculum through Foucauldian and poststructuralist discourse analysis, I examined how the new content is being used to illicit hetero and cis-normative identities onto those that have otherwise been see as “less desirable.” Through a pedagogical mix of Queer and Crip Theory, this paper points to inconsistencies and flaws that are inherent within curriculum design itself, and how, regardless of intent, anything created for or within a neoliberal institution can never be fully inclusive.