SCHOOL DROPOUT AND GENDER IDENTITY: SCHOOL TRAJECTORIES OF TRANSVESTITES AND TRANSSEXUAL PEOPLE
This thesis comprises the relationships between school dropout, gender identity, and
the educational trajectories of transgender and transsexual people after experiencing
their gender identity transition during their schooling time. The question that this
research seeks to answer is how this non-adjustment into the normative gender
patters faced by transgender and transsexual people in the public educational
environments ignites the process of school dropout. Based on the narratives of
transsexual and transgender people who went through experiences of gender
violence in schools, the research sets the hypothesis that the school dropout problem
represents the effect of countless inequality mechanisms. Among them, it is
mandatory to consider the relationship between educational inequality and
mechanisms of abjection of bodies which do not fit into the binary gender normativity.
The general goal of this thesis is to focus on the impact related to school dropout and
gender identity of transgender and transsexual people, resulting in multiple forms of
exclusion, by being considered apart from the heterosexual matrix. The methodology
is anchored in participant observation and counted on data collected by the Center of
Protection and Diversity Brunna Valin (Centro de Defesa e da Diversidade Brunna
Valin), taking individual interviews with nine transgender and transsexual people,
prompted by the following research-problem: what was it like to experience the
process of transition amidst the school time and environment? The final conclusions
of this thesis consider that there is still a power struggle between the school and the
presence of transsexual and transgender students, which makes it necessary, for the
professional educators, to become more aware of the problem, in order to strengthen
public policies safeguarding the educational rights of these students.