This Special Issue on Gender and Social Justice comes at a time when women and LGBTQ people across the world are facing many issues. Many of our own editorial board members have experienced social injustices related to gender, and have expressed frustration with what is happening around the world.

We see many struggling with social justice issues including:

• Discrimination
• Unequal pay
• Sexual violence
• Physical violence
• A lack of educational opportunities

This special issue attempts to address some of these complex issues.

Issues of diversity and social justice are slowly making their way into educational leadership programs, though scholars have argued that social justice is a responsibility of aspiring school leaders and educators. However, issues directly related to sexual orientation have been treated lightly and we question why this is the case. Given the changing social climate and attitudes towards the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) community, aspiring educational leaders should be prepared to address the issues in their schools. In this article, we provide an overview of some topics that may be addressed in an educational leadership preparation program and provide an example of what some of the reactions to these topics may look like. Here, we analyze reflections from 15 graduate students enrolled in a course focused on social justice during the final year of a principal preparation program. Three common themes emerged from the reflections: 1) limited experiences with LGBTQ people shapes or limits one’s beliefs and perceptions about LGBTQ people, 2) principal preparation students were able to accurately identify how expected (masculine) gender norms and heteronormative assumptions drive bullying and name-calling of students who fall outside these gender roles, and 3) a large number of principal preparation students expressed the belief that being gay is a choice and that this belief was related to their stance on LGBTQ issues. Discussion centers on the implications of these findings for addressing LGBTQ issues in educational leadership programs and how reflections are useful in understanding the student’s developmental stage in order to approach this topic most effectively

This is a book review of Colin Johnson's Just Queer Folks: Gender and Sexuality in Rural America.

Queering Center: A Critical Discourse Analysis of University LGBT Center Theoretical Foundations

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to examine the framing discourse of theorization and practice surrounding university-based Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) resource centers. Building on interdisciplinary work by critical feminist, race, and queer scholars in sociology, social work, education, and political science, this study proposed a vital shift from identity politics (Combahee River Collective, 1977) and multicultural (Jay, 1994; Ward, 2008) theorizing and practice frameworks to praxis grounded in intersectional understandings of identity and resistance to interlocking systems of oppression (Razack, 1999) which (re)produce logics of dominance such as racism, gender binaries, and sexism. Supporting this conclusion was my critical discourse analysis of three texts, considered by practitioners to be the “canon” of theorization and conceptualization of campus-based centers. The three unique texts, the only ones published prior to 2011, to prescriptively advise center development and programming, were discursively analyzed through a critical queer feminist lens critiquing the constructs of essentialized identity politics and multiculturalism. The textual analysis indicated that the three texts drew heavily upon the discourses of essentialized identity politics and multiculturalism, and in doing reified homonormative white regulating systems. While making no claims that the three manuscripts represented the entirety of theoretical discourse framing LGBT center development, sparse center scholarship and this study’s argument in combination with scholarly critiques of both identity political and multicultural frameworks, asserts a strong claim for reconceptualizing the project of campus centers through a critical, intersectional lens based in the dismantling of interconnected systems of oppression.

The following is an interview with C.J. Pascoe.