Intersectional refrains of (un)safety as queer and diverse women teachers pursue a viable life and career

The safety of women teachers in the classroom is again under scrutiny. Much of contemporary research, however, has not explored diverse experiences. In a recent project 38 women shared testimonies of the success and hardships they faced and how their gender shaped these experiences. Amongst the participants, three women shared how their diverse identities impacted their safety in the classroom: a trans women, teaching at an all boys school, a teacher who identified as a woman of colour in an inner-city public school, and a queer woman teaching at a progressive co-education school. Each woman spoke of the ways their intersectional identities complicated their jobs. This paper draws on Butler’s heterosexual matrix to consider what inhibits these women from making a viable life and career. The poststructural feminist discourse analysis draws on Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the ‘refrain’, alongside Butler, to examine how these women make sense of their identities. While their individual experiences were different, looking across the refrains demonstrates that greater attention to intersectional experiences is vital to ensure the safety of teachers.