‘When You Don’t See Yourself on the Page, it’s Harder to Imagine Yourself as a Person’ - Gender and Sexuality in ELT

抄録

Despite decades of progressive social reform with regard to LGBTQ protection in many countries around the world, demands that the ELT curriculum addresses queer absence, or LGBTQ erasure, have fallen largely on deaf ears. In this paper I address key issues surrounding representation, identification and erasure, and I explore some of the reasons for the systematic editing out of non-normative genders and sexualities from English language teaching. My contention is that LGBTQ erasure is a double injustice—on the one hand an injustice against LGBTQ people who are denied recognition in the curriculum and on the other an injustice against those who are not LGBTQ and who are denied the opportunity to see the world through different eyes. I conclude by offering some suggestions as to how we might redress this situation.