Problem representations and the gender phantasm in Australian and Canadian school sport and physical education policies for trans and gender diverse inclusion

This paper offers a critical policy analysis of school sport and PE policies in Canada and Australia that aim to address trans and gender diverse (TGD) inclusion. Using Carol Bacchi’s WPR framework and drawing on Butler’s notion of the gender phantasm, we analyse three interconnected problem representations across 28 policies and documents. We argue that inclusion in school sport and PE is constructed through individualising discourses where a burden is placed on TGD students to evidence experiences of exclusion, often requiring them to disclose their identities. We also argue that broader anti-LGBTQ + movements have influenced school sport policies in some jurisdictions. Ideas about fairness, safety and parental authority are mobilised to incite fear and anxiety about transgender children and young people and their participation in sport. Although the discursive framings vary widely across the policies examined, in all cases the gender binaries that organise sport and schooling remain largely unquestioned, and there is a failure to recognise the cisnormativity embedded in both social domains.