In designing the research, I had failed to consider the implications of what I was asking and, equally important, of what I was failing to ask.

In short, the victim narrative cannot be the sole narrative, lest it become essentializing and domesticating, or even approach a defi cit model applied to LGBTQ youth

or example, do we include LGBTQ representations that challenge the privileging of White, middle-class, dyadic lifestyles? Are we willing to show poverty among LGBTQ people, despite prejudicial beliefs in U.S. culture that equate poverty with laziness and moral inferiority, or to show LGBTQ people as single or in nondyadic relationships, even if doing so undermines the doctrine that LGBTQ relationships warrant recognition in as much as they mirror non-LGBTQ rela-tionships? Do we include LGBTQ people in discussions about domestic violence, even if such discussions might undermine the narrative that LGBTQ relationships are idealized to be more egalitarian? Do we reveal racism and sexism within the LGBTQ community? Or rather, do we curate normalized, idealized, or limited curricular representations of LGBTQ lives to secure acceptance?

I knew my goal was to open a dialogue about healthy, diverse lives, and in so doing to validate the diverse lives that my students will encounter, expand who they accept, and broaden what options they themselves might seize in pursuit of their own happiness and freedoms. I wanted to acknowledge the diversity among LGBTQ relationships and promote its affi rmation. The student’s question provided the opportunity, but I had to decide if my treatment of the answer was going to veil or highlight how LGBTQ lives are often transgres-sive of norms. My answer could either reinforce conformity as the pathway to acceptance, or perhaps undermine acceptance for the sake of acknowledging greater diversity.

None of these examples requires future educators or their faculty to wrestle with how our treatment of sexuality and gender manifests in school inequities or how LGBTQ lives may challenge existing social structures rooted in and refl ective of traditional and conservative norms. As mentioned previously, by privileging LGBTQ assimilationists, we may heighten intolerance for those who do not assimilate, contributing further to hostile school environments for many LGBTQ youth.

What do educators need to know about sexuality and gender identity or expression? One common answer seems to be as little as it takes to get by. This answer, though, would not gain traction if applied to other aspects of educator work.

For example, talking about LGBTQ parents and gender-neutral marriage is, I would argue, mandatory. But if these conversations fail to engage questions of race by ignoring that marriage is historically rooted in heteronormativity, patriarchy, a gender binary, and the policing of Black bodies and relationships, then the curriculum has essentialized these parents as only LGBTQ and detached these marriages from their raced, classed, and gendered meanings

The purpose of these edited representations is to promote acceptance by highlighting those within the LGBTQ population who more closely con-form to dominant notions of normalcy and respectability. The rationale is that minimally transgressive members of the LGBTQ population will likely gain acceptance among the dominant-group audience, while more transgressive members may undermine acceptance. In short, assimilationists (those who conform) become the representatives for all LGBTQ people—appealing to homogeneity rather than diversity—even if such representations only narrowly represent LGBTQ lives.

452 • The Educational Forum • Volume 79 • 2015Jenningsquestion teacher educators’ use of assimilationist or conformist representatives of LGBTQ people in their classrooms. A second goal is to suggest that exposure to broader represen-tations of LGBTQ people, even transgressive ones, may better prepare future educators to create more inclusive schools.

(i) children's exploration of identities and (2) child-driven activism.

teaching towards a gender binary can fail to recognize the individual experiences behind gendered behaviour. Further to these complications, there is the fact that attempts to educate against the norm may inadvertently reinforce hierarchies. For example, queerness was labelled as "different," and this difference was automatically paired with fear and the threat of violence. Such a trend can frame and normalize departing from gender and sexuality norms as a painful and isolating experience. The vignettes I relate offer alternate forms of engagement with "difference" - forms that are not based on offering - as well as examples of how children can demonstrate their agency and ability to work for change and how adults can support this change.

I could not help but ponder what such activism would look like in terms of genders and sexualities should these topics be removed from the realm of moral judgment and become part of everyday school life. In a classroom environment in which queer and transgender subjectivities were as commonplace and jubilantly expressed as Abigail's self-proclaimed identity as a dog-person, would there be young people who would be driven to activism after learning about cultural homophobia and transphobia? What changes would the replication of Caroline's and Margaret's models of valuing children's literacy, sense of justice, and creativity make possible?

In Aboriginal culture, um, the whole realm of two-spiritedness and connectedness with the two-spirits and two-spirited people has started to become accepted again cause this is a very ancient concept. So I've told, you know, his mum and the teacher that, this is where I'm coming from with it, so if it ends up being something to do with gender, I'm open and I'm okay and if he wants to talk to me or if I can lend any support that way ... I'm more than happy to.31 As part of this process, Margaret got information from Michelle about two-spiritedness.32 At the end of my fieldwork, she was still trying to make time for Michelle to speak with the class about Aboriginal culture (to this point, time constraints related to the underfunding of aew support had made this impossible).

Margaret's thoughtful grappling with how to make room for different learning styles and personalities within her classes enables her to challenge the notion that one must ascribe definitive, essentialist meanings to gendered trends in order to create room for a variety of learners. The implications of this are well illustrated in the case of the child who felt "like a girl inside"

Despite Margaret's insistence that gay is okay and that homophobia is not okay, the specialness of the topic and its segregation from everyday talk resulted in the students' conflating being gay with an insult. How would children who are aware of queer desires experience this message? Rather than being able to fit into everyday life, which is represented in a range of topics with a range of conversations and images, one's potential queer identity is marginalized as a special topic - it is a thing you could be bullied for even though you shouldn't be.

She then asked: "What does it mean Avhen people are afraid of people being different? Is it okay to bully them?" Again, the class repeated: "No." Thus, Avhile being gay was defined in positive terms, it was immediately positioned as "different," as other. The talk concluded Avith an explanation of Avhat it meant to have a line draAvn through the phrase "That's So Gay!" on the poster. Margaret stated: "In this classroom, this space, it is not okay to be homophobic."

While heterosexual couples were depicted in the classroom every day through talk about family life, play, and picture books, queerness was mentioned only once, in a lecture on homophobia. Before the lecture in question, the teacher sent home a notice informing students' parents that the topic of homophobia would be part of a school day focused on antibullying.

one of the obstacles to the implementation of anti-oppressive education is that both children and adults have a tendency to subsume information into their most familiar framework. He gives the example of how his teacher education students were much more ready to examine how gay and straight people are the same than they were to look at how routine discussion in the classroom was othering to those outside gender and sexuality norms.11 Similarly, in "Leave ?Those Kids' Alone," Lee Airton critiques mainstream approaches to anti-homophobia education, citing the ways in which they can reinforce the othering they purport to address.12 Airton's observations were confirmed in my fieldwork, which indicates that, when "gay" and "homophobia" are discussed simultaneously, gay identities end up being marked in stark contrast to the depictions of heterosexual relationships, which are ubiquitous in routine conversations and curriculum. Thus, while claiming to embrace queer identities, such mainstream approaches tend to construct queer individuals as others. Chandra Mohanty describes this type of approach as pedagogy designed to "manage diversity" while leaving the status quo intact.13

Moreover, "boys" are not a monolithic group. Blye Frank et al. contend that seeing "boys as a cohesive group enables a particular reading that highlights injustices assumed to impact on all boys, without acknowledging the privileged elements of masculinities that advantage some boys over other boys and over some girls."10

Notions of sexuality are deeply bound to binary gender norms. Scholars in transgender studies discuss how, when the gender binary is disrupted, sexuality can become more complex than categories of gay/straight/bi allow. Angie Fee points out that heterosexual discourse and the homophobia associated with it rest on "binary sex and gender" categories.5 She examines how normative ideas of sexuality and gender run as deep as familial names (e.g., wife, daughter, son). This illustrates the extent to which individuals may be othered in educational and familial life when they do not fit clearly into a gender binary. However, some schools of educational thought would entrench gender divisions in teaching rather than make any changes to the binary system.

The exchanges related above speak to the subtle ways gender norms can be enacted and challenged in elementary school, and it inspired the ethnographic study upon which this article is based.

After a few weeks, this student had identified me as an ally in resistance to "girl''-associated social play.

If there is to be an alternative, we must build it purposefully, brick by brick and byte by byte.

When a very efficient technology is deployed against a scorned out-group in the absence of strong human rights protections, there is enormous potential for atrocity.

totalitarians,

We will endure invasive and complicated procedures meant to divert us from public resources. Our worthiness, behavior, and social relations will be investigated, our missteps criminalized.

Though automated decision-making can streamline the governing process, and tracking program data can help identify patterns of biased decision-making, justice sometimes requires an ability to bend the rules.

In Los Angeles, a sorting survey to allocate housing for the homeless that started in a single neighborhood expanded to a countywide program in less than four years.

The state of Indiana denied more than a million public assistance applications in less than three years after switching to private call centers and automated document processing.

The new tools of poverty management hide economic inequality from the professional middle-class public and give the nation the ethical distance it needs to make inhuman choices about who gets food and who starves, who has housing and who remains homeless, whose family stays together and whose is broken up by the state.

But programs that serve the poor are as unpopular as they have ever been. This is not a coincidence: technologies of poverty management are not neutral. They are shaped by our nation’s fear of economic insecurity and hatred of the poor.

But the administration disclosed the data to suggest that TANF families were defrauding taxpayers by buying liquor, cigarettes, and lottery tickets.

It is a feedback loop of injustice.

With the notable exception of credit reporting, we have remarkably limited access to the equations, algorithms, and models that shape our life chances.

They are so deeply woven into the fabric of social life that, most of the time, we don’t even notice that we are being watched and analyzed.

but human discretion still prevailed.