ABSTRACT

This article explores the schooling experiences of 12 fa’afāfine and fakaleiti who attended an all-boys faith-based secondary school in Aotearoa-New Zealand. Fa’afāfine are Samoan, and fakaleiti Tongans who are assigned male at birth, but enact varying degrees and types of behaviour deemed as feminine. There are currently no in-depth qualitative studies that examine the schooling experiences of these young people. Within the existing literature the experiences of fa’afāfine and fakaleiti are typically subsumed under the umbrella of transgender and/or non-binary students. This study examines participants’ recollections of daily experiences of being fa’afāfine and fakaleiti at an all-boys school where any expression of femininity was frequently disallowed and denigrated. In this highly masculinised environment, participants describe the struggle to be ‘like-women’ and the cisgender discrimination they faced. Incidents of bullying, physical assault and marginalisation from teachers and students along with the pathologisation and erasure of their identities within school curricula and practices were daily occurrences. These accounts contribute to an emerging and broader picture of schools as cisgender spaces, in which educational structures and processes reinforce the idea there are only two genders, and that gender is based on sex assigned at birth.

摘要

本文探讨了 12 名 fa'afāfine 和 fakaleiti 的求学经历，他们在新西兰 Aotearoa 的一所全男子信仰中学就读。Fa'afāfine 是萨摩亚人和 fakaleiti 汤加人，他们在出生时被指定为男性，但制定了不同程度和类型的被视为女性的行为。目前还没有深入的定性研究来检验这些年轻人的教育经历。在现有文献中，fa'afāfine 和 fakaleiti 的经历通常被归入跨性别和/或非二元学生的保护伞之下。这项研究调查了参与者对在一所男子学校里成为 fa'afāfine 和 fakaleiti 的日常经历的回忆，在那里任何女性气质的表达都经常被禁止和诋毁。在这个高度男性化的环境中，参与者描述了成为“像女性”的斗争以及他们面临的顺性别歧视。来自教师和学生的欺凌、人身攻击和边缘化事件，以及他们在学校课程和实践中的病态化和身份消失，每天都在发生。这些描述有助于将学校视为顺性别空间的新兴和更广泛的图景，其中教育结构和过程强化了只有两种性别的想法，而性别是基于出生时分配的性别。