Gay Research

Gay research is a broad umbrella term within curriculum studies for multiple approaches to the study of sexuality issues. The term has its origins in the realm of psychology, particularly the psychology of sexual identity and practice. Researchers of the history of sexuality have illustrated, for example, that prior to the 20th century both heterosexual and homosexual desire were considered aberrant; only sex for procreation was acceptable. By the 1930s and 1940s, contemporary definitions for both sexual orientations came into existence, with heterosexual desire reaching the status of normal and homosexual desire taking on its current contested mode. By the late 1940s, Alfred Kinsey, sexologist, both complicated and reaffirmed this sexual binary, developing a rating scale with six degrees of heterosexualhomosexual behavior and emotion. His research was groundbreaking for suggesting that most individuals possessed an interplay of both heterosexuality and homosexuality. Yet he also affirmed sexual orientation as divided between the two. By the 1970s, Fritz Klein, also a sexologist, attempted to expand upon Kinsey's work by way of a grid that incorporated seven variable components of sexual orientation and three different points in time (past, present, and ideal). Whereas Kinsey raised to the surface that an individual can hold both heterosexual and homosexual tendencies at the same time, Klein asserted that sexual orientation is made up of a myriad of factors, from emotional and social preferences to lifestyle and self-identification, and that these variables can be different at different times.

Both Kinsey and Klein stressed that the division between homosexuality and heterosexuality is a product of culture and society, not nature. Their concern was that the naturalization of the social and historical division between gay and straight has had the larger effect of denigrating the former and elevating the latter. Even with their efforts, between the 1890s and 1960s, the terms homosexual and heterosexual made their way from the realm of psychology to mainstream culture, overtime making possible the construction of the sexually normal and abnormal citizen and the heterosexual majority and homosexual minority. The repercussions, researchers of gay and lesbian issues point out, has been the imposition of narrower possibilities for gender and sexual identity among citizens within modern societies. Therefore, the terms homosexual and heterosexual, or gay and straight, constructed new sex-differentiated ideals for inappropriate and appropriate desires, ones that were taken up and remade within the two communities in unique and often unforeseen ways, enabling and constraining forms of affection and identification.

Researchers of gay and lesbian issues in curriculum studies have worked out of this history to study sexuality and gender in relation to issues of teaching and learning. The remainder of this entry is focused upon how gay research has been taken up in ways that are unique to the field. These areas include curriculum development, agency among [Page 390]gays and lesbians, externally imposed forms of marginalization and neglect, issues of discourse and language, policy concerns, and narratives of experiences in educational settings.