Content warning: this blog post is about homophobia. You don’t have to read it, or read it all at once. Pause if you need to, and do something you enjoy!
This afternoon, I went to see the film Blue Jean about Section 28, a homophobic clause in British law brought in by Margaret Thatcher’s conservative government in 1988 (and supported by many, including Teresa May), later repealed in England and Wales in 2003, and Scotland in 2000. Section 28 stated:
Prohibition on promoting homosexuality by teaching or by publishing material
(1) A local authority shall not—
(a) intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality;
(b) promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.
(2) Nothing in subsection (1) above shall be taken to prohibit the doing of anything for the purpose of treating or preventing the spread of disease.
The film stars Rosy McEwen and Kerrie Hayes as a lesbian couple, PE teacher Jean and Viv, and Lucy Halliday as Jean’s queer student Lois. There is also a great and chilling performance by Lainey Shaw as a homophobic teacher. I highly recommend it.
Section 28 came into force when I was a toddler. I went to a state school, which like all ‘maintained schools’, was under the control of Section 28’s prohibition on positive representations of homosexuality. When Section 28 was repealed, it was not like a switch flicking off: it was not necessarily instantly repealed in our minds, or bodies.
I am interested in how Section 28 was experienced particularly by neurodivergent people. Here is a quotation, via the BBC, from the drag queen Divina De Campo about how being at school during Section 28 continues to affect her:
"I'm constantly worried that people don't like me or that they're making fun of me. And I always carry with me the idea that I'm not good enough, that there’s something wrong with me."
This honest idea resonates on a neurodivergent level and on a queer level. So many neurodivergent people, of course, are LGBTQ+. Being told that who we naturally are, what we’re naturally inclined to do, what we love, what we enjoy, is wrong is something queer and neurodivergent people both experience.
To mark 20 years since Section 28 was repealed in England and Wales, we are making a zine (original) to give out at Pride, and a series of blogs.
If anyone would like to add their story, write a blog, or get in touch about anything neurodivergence-and-section-28 related, please email neurodiverseox@st-annes.ox.ac.uk and/or laura.seymour@st-annes.ox.ac.uk. If you’re doing your own thing around LGBTQ+ and neurodivergence please tell us so we can help spread the word about it!
And do come and make your own zine too at our collaborative zine-making workshop on April 29th (details to come!)
Some prompts:
- Your experience of Section 28 as a neurodivergent person.
- How you survived this time.
- How you see present-day transphobia and homophobia in the context of the rhetoric of Section 28.
- What brought you joy during the era of Section 28?
- What it is like to work in a university having gone through the time of Section 28?
- What Oxford should do in the future for LGBTQ+ neurodivergent staff and students.
