Safe Is Not Enough: Better Schools for LGBTQ Students

Abstract

The preponderance of literature related to LGBTQ youth prior to the mid-2000s tended to focus on the ways in which claiming a minority sexual or gender identity led to persistent disadvantage in American society. Schools in particular were found to be spaces where homophobia and transphobia were omnipresent, leaving queer young people with low self-esteem, high levels of fear, and numerous reports of vicitimization (D’Augelli et al. 2001; van Wormer and McKinney 2003). Since the mid-2000s, though, a new stream of literature has begun to explore the ways in which LGBTQ youth are resilient and in what contexts they thrive (McCormack 2012; Savin-Williams 2005). Michael Sadowski’s book Safe Is Not Enough: Better Schools for LGBTQ Students is an important contribution to the latter tradition.