Mathematics as a Discursively Exclusionary Discipline to Queer Subjectivity: A Perspective Through Teaching Mathematics for Social Justice

Abstract

In this article, I explore the experiences of queer high school students in the context of Teaching Mathematics for Social Justice (TMSJ) regarding the injustices of bullying and harassment queer individuals go through in society. Specifically, I aim to investigate queer students’ perceptions of mathematics and their mathematical subjectivity in the context of TMSJ. Drawing on interviews with ten queer high school students, the interpretations of their experiences reveal that traditional mathematics instruction is often perceived as procedural and disconnected from real-world issues, contributing to queer students’ lack of interest in and sense of irrelevance regarding mathematics. However, TMSJ provided an opportunity for students to engage with mathematics through issues important to them, fostering positive discourses about their experiences in mathematics through TMSJ. Students highlighted the significance of connecting mathematics to their lived experiences and subjectivity, which enhanced their engagement and partially reshaped their mathematical subjectivity. In this paper, I underscore the importance of bringing arts, history, discussions, and non-European mathematics among other things to make mathematics a space of social relevance to queer subjectivity. In addition, I discuss the importance of bringing intersectional approaches that integrate queer perspectives into mathematics education to create inclusive learning environments. I end this article by calling for further research into how other aspects of identity, such as race, class, and ability, intersect with queer students’ experiences in mathematics. These interpretations contribute to the growing body of work advocating for transformative, equity-oriented mathematics education, especially concerning queer students.

1. Introduction

It is not new information that the inclusion of queerness1 in formal schooling discussion benefits the whole school community (Snapp et al., 2015). As discussed in Style (1996), queer discussions in schools function as mirrors and windows: mirrors because queer students have the opportunity to see themselves reflected in spaces where their identities have been historically oppressed and windows because those who are not queer are educated to understand that queerness should be considered normal in society.

In the current social context of the United States, the need for queer discussions in education is urgent since studies have shown that queer high school students have experienced hostile school environments due to queerphobia (Kosciw et al., 2018, 2020). In addition, the growing number of anti-LGBTQ+ policies is alarming and has real consequences for queer students’ experiences in schools as such political context creates discourses against queer subjectivity. In 2023, we saw a surge of anti-LBTQ+ bills, with at least 417 new anti-LGBTQ+ bills being introduced across the United States (Choi, 2024). This number continued to increase as we entered 2024, and currently, the American Civil Liberties Union (2024) estimates a total of 531 anti-LGBTQ+ rights bills across the United States. Amidst the effort to police and erase queer identities, mathematics education researchers must tirelessly continue to try to understand the role of mathematics education in queer students’ experience and ways to support this population of students through mathematics teaching, learning, and curricula (Ataide Pinheiro et al., 2024). In particular, much of mathematics education work that addresses the oppression of queer students comes from an old call for understanding the purpose of mathematical literacy as critical mathematics (Gutstein, 2006). Specifically, critical mathematics has the transformative goal to not only think of the ways mathematics can be used as a tool to achieve social justice and equity for all students but also to embrace the voices of those who have been historically oppressed from the conceptualizations of the goals for mathematical literacy. As Gutstein (2006) argued, we need to reconceptualize the purpose of mathematics away from economic competitiveness and towards transforming our society so that all students can have equitable and just participation in society, independently of the groups to which they belong (p. 11).

In the pursuit of understanding the reconceptualization of the purpose of mathematics teaching and learning, before conducting this study, I looked for research that axiologically aimed to support equitable and just experiences of queer students in mathematics education. Through a simple search of peer-reviewed articles in Google Scholar, I found very few studies that had empirically investigated the experiences of queer high school students in mathematics. In fact, besides my own work (Ataide Pinheiro, 2022, 2023; Ataide Pinheiro & Chávez, 2023; Cox & Ataide Pinheiro, 2024), only one other study recently has been published reporting on the experience of queer and trans (QT) high school students in mathematics (Suárez et al., 2024). The lack of available knowledge regarding queer high school students in mathematics inspired me to investigate the discourses produced by queer high school students regarding the relationship between being queer and mathematics in the context of teaching mathematics for social justice (TMSJ).

Although few studies in mathematics education have examined the experiences of queer students in high school mathematics, more research has been conducted in postsecondary mathematics. Recent research highlights that queer students often have particularly negative experiences in higher-education mathematics and STEM fields (Leyva, 2024; M. K. Voigt, 2020; M. Voigt, 2022). Many queer students, particularly in postsecondary education, perceive mathematics as an objective, desensitized, and disembodied field (Kersey & Voigt, 2021). Building on postsecondary research studies, this current paper focuses specifically on queer high school students to explore whether they also experience a sense of disconnection from mathematics, as observed in postsecondary student populations. By centering queer students in this research, I aim to better understand how their intersecting subjectivities uniquely interact with TMSJ, potentially shaping their mathematical experiences. In addition, by reporting on this study with queer students, this paper seeks to contribute to a deeper understanding of the specific challenges they may face in mathematics. Furthermore, examining the experiences of queer high school students can help inform the development of equitable interventions that go beyond generalized strategies for fostering mathematical engagement. These interventions could help dismantle systemic barriers that hinder queer students’ participation and access to mathematics, ultimately creating more inclusive and supportive learning environments. In this article, I aim to answer the following research question: how do queer high school students in a Midwestern U.S. state experience the teaching of mathematics for social justice, and how do these experiences relate to their queer and mathematical subjectivities?

In order to situate this study within the available literature, in the next two sections, I present current findings regarding queer students in education and in STEM. Following, I present a discussion of the theoretical perspectives taken into consideration in this article.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Queer Students in Education

We know very little about the experiences of queer students in compulsory K-12 education in general. Of the few studies conducted, three are relevant to this article. First, Snapp et al. (2015) conducted a study with 26 queer students from California where they found that most students who have experienced queer-related discussions in high school have experienced them in history, government, health, and English classes. They found that of the 26 students interviewed, none had encountered queer-related discussions in science or mathematics classes. Their study strongly pointed to the fact that most high school students interviewed saw opportunities missed by teachers to teach about queer history in history and health classes. In fact, queer students from their study reported that most teachers would only engage in the discussion of queerness when anti-queer harassment occurred, although most school officials ignored when this type of harassment took place. Their study also found that the inclusion of queer-related curricula in high schools positively impacted their participants. Queer students discussed feeling safer because queer-related curricula diminished bullying and being more optimist about their future because they were able to see representations of queer folks in places they thought queerness could not exist (e.g., official government positions).

White et al. (2018) investigated the positive, negative, social, and academic emotions of queer high school students in the United States. Positive emotions are associated with higher levels of student engagement and positive school functioning; social emotions are associated with engagement, motivation, and academic performance at school; and academic emotions with the overall academic achievement of students. Therefore, the study of queer high school students’ emotions is fundamental to better understanding these students’ experiences in schools. Unfortunately, their study found that queer high school students reported more frequent negative emotions and experiences of bullying when compared to their non-queer counterparts. Their findings also pointed to the fact that students with intersecting marginalized identities (both gender and sexual identities being part of queer groups) were associated with the least positive and most negative experiences at school. Knowing the association of emotions with academic performance, their study showed that queer students inequitably experience schooling when compared to their non-queer counterparts. And those who have intersecting marginalized gender and sexual identities go through even more severe inequitable experiences.

Finally, Fredman et al. (2015) investigated the challenges of addressing LGBTQ topics in public schools in the United States. Their research team interviewed 16 teachers in grades 6–12. Their findings revealed that discussions among teachers regarding implementing LGBTQ-related topics in schools are still influenced by heteronormativity. Unfortunately, LGBTQ discussions are considered controversial, supporting the researchers’ conclusion that schools adhere to heteronormative rules regarding discourses on LGBTQ-related issues. The teachers in their study indicated that the general practice is to avoid discussing these topics. However, if such discussions are to occur, teachers must seek approval from their school administration. Furthermore, teachers mentioned that LGBTQ discussions are rarely found in the curriculum. Consequently, if they attempt to introduce these discussions outside the curriculum, they become targets for retaliation as they are perceived to be “forcing” controversial discussions into their classrooms. Another significant finding from their research highlights how teachers are governed by fear and intimidation within the education system, discouraging them from discussing these issues due to the risk of losing their jobs. Fredman et al. (2015) emphasized the need for further research investigating LGBTQ students’ perceptions of and reactions to LGBTQ-related topics in schools.

2.2. Queer Students in STEM Education

Very little is known about queer students’ experiences in mathematics from literature published in English. From the little research that has been conducted, studies by Leyva (2022), Leyva et al. (2022), Kersey and Voigt (2021) [higher education focus], and Suárez et al. (2024) [high-school focus] are especially important to this review of the literature because they are empirical studies that investigated queer students’ experiences in the context of mathematics and other STEM disciplines. In a very recent publication, Suárez et al. (2024) quantitatively investigated the mathematical identity of QT high school students. Relevant findings from their study in relation to mathematics point to the fact that QT high school students have significantly lower scores regarding identifying as a math person, having interest in math courses, enjoying math courses, and the perception that math courses are not a waste of time.

Kersey and Voigt (2021) reported on the findings of their respective dissertation studies regarding the ways queer students in mathematics and other STEM fields find communities and overcome barriers in these fields. Knowing that historically, mathematics and the STEM fields have excluded non-normative identities, particularly those differing from cisgender, heterosexual (cishet) White men (Ataide Pinheiro et al., 2025c); their paper discusses the particular experience of transgender students who go through transitioning and experience different treatments in these fields. For example, a participant called Charles, a transgender man, shared that after transitioning, he started to notice people in engineering treating him with more respect in the context of being knowledgeable and present in STEM. Previously, Charles said, he had experienced oppression due to his identity as a woman in STEM. In contrast, participants Hannah and Amy started to experience decreased respect in the context of the STEM fields after their transitions. This shows the dimensions of how people are still discriminated against in STEM due to their gender and how the STEM fields accept men while disregarding women. Another important theme that emerged in Kersey and Voigt’s (2021) study concerns coming out in STEM. Particularly through this theme, we can continue to build understandings of what it means to be queer in STEM. In sharing about his experiences, Charles shared about the burdensomeness of coming out in the STEM fields, especially due to having to reveal parts of his identity that he did not always want to disclose. Due to having a leadership role in STEM, Charles had felt obligated to come out. Amber, another student in the study, discussed how anxious they always felt to present themselves as a gender-nonconforming student in the context of mathematics. They recalled an experience of wearing a wig in a math course and feeling extreme anxiety about it. Unfortunately, Amber left the STEM field in the pursuit of a field that was more accepting of their intersectional identities, which they felt was not the case in the STEM fields. Another student, Reed, shared that they would always debate if they would or would not reveal their identity in STEM because they knew that it is not a very accepting field and transphobia still shapes the discourse of acceptance of queer individuals. A great and unfortunate finding in Kersey and Voigt’s (2021) study was regarding the nature of the STEM fields and their relationship with queer identities. Kersey and Voigt (2021) found that students in their study described the STEM fields as objective, neutral, masculine, and conservative; therefore, STEM fields are detached and exclusive of non-normative identities. Experiences in the context of the STEM fields surround cishet White men, which creates an exclusionary space for queer individuals in STEM. Due to this exclusionary aspect, it was hard for queer students in their study to feel integrated as part of the STEM fields. Although many of the experiences students in their study shared were unfavorable to their existence in STEM, the students also shared the importance of finding their own community in STEM to support one another and succeed because many of them cared about the studies they were engaged in in their respective STEM fields.

Using critical and intersectional analyses, the work of Leyva (2022) and Leyva et al. (2022) allows us to understand the experiences of queer students of color in STEM. Their work shows that queer students of color face isolation and imposter syndrome due to the lack of gender and racial diversity in STEM. At the intersection of queerness and race, the students in their study pointed to the fact that the White and cisheteronormative culture of STEM led to discomfort and usually dissonance in these students’ academic experiences. As in Kersey and Voigt’s (2021) study, students from Leyva’s (2022) and Leyva et al.’s (2022) studies also discussed the importance of finding community to support them in resisting dissonance and being part of and successful in STEM. Importantly, Leyva’s work has provided us with a framework to understand STEM fields as White and cisheteronormative.

Collectively, the findings from the literature review presented in this study show that students in K-16 schooling still lack opportunities for engaging with queer-related discussions in school in general. These students are not being exposed to queer-related discussions in most of the disciplines due to the ways in which teaching, learning, and curricula are structured and presented in education spaces. When coming into the STEM fields, queer students are still experiencing these fields as White cisheteronormative spaces (Leyva, 2022) that are exclusive of and discriminatory to queer students’ identities. Consequently, queer students have had unpleasant experiences in STEM, and as early as high school, QT students are already developing identities that are in dissonance with their engagement with mathematics (Suárez et al., 2024). In the next section, I provide the theoretical perspectives that shaped this study’s design and methodology.

3. Theoretical Perspectives

In this section, I explain how critical and poststructural theories have supported me in conducting this research study.

The critical tradition that gives ground to this work originated with the Frankfurt school. Critical theory originated in the context of post-World War I as capitalism changed in nature and unemployment and economic depression (especially inflation) highly shaped and changed life in Germany (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2011). Critical theory was born as researchers in the Institute of Social Research at the University of Frankfurt looked for ways to reinterpret the world, defying Marxist orthodoxy by believing that “injustice and subjugation shaped the lived world” (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2011, p. 286). What was born and developed through the critiques of Marx Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse was just the beginning of a school of thought that is still to this day in development. Epistemologically speaking, critical theories recognize that knowledge is socially constructed throughout our social, political, and economical contexts and through the relationship between power and ideologies. Epistemologically, we can understand knowledge through the experiences of those historically oppressed in our societies (e.g., queer individuals, women, individuals of color, etc.) and the experiential knowledge of people from oppressed groups is part of a process of theorizing that better helps us to understand certain phenomena of injustice and oppression in our society (Hooks, 1994). In terms of ontology, critical theories hold that reality is also socially constructed. By understanding the ways different groups have historically had access to power, critical theories see the extreme importance of challenging our reality, which has been constructed through systemic inequalities (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2011). Finally, the axiology of critical theories regards social justice, equity, empowerment, and the social emancipation, etc. of those who have been historically oppressed and disfavored in terms of accessing positions of privilege in society. The end goal of critical theories is ending oppression and moving towards liberation through the praxis of those who belong to historically oppressed groups (Freire, 1970/2017).

Poststructural theories in conjunction with my critical understandings also guided this study. The school of thought of poststructuralism that we know today is a U.S. American creation as scholars in the United States started to gain access to the translated works of Europeans such as Foucault and Derrida and called their theorizations and assumptions poststructural theory (M. Peters, 1998, p. 4). Poststructuralist theories originated from the critique of the school of thought of structuralism. Structuralism was much inspired by the literary work of Saussure (Crotty, 1998). Under the research paradigm of structuralism came the argument that structures could be used systematically to reach an interpretation of a particular text (see Barthes, 1968). For structuralists, nothing is outside of the text, meaning that through text, we can communicate the signifier and the signified (M. Peters, 1998). Therefore, texts are capable of transmitting fixed messages and producing reality through a central point of origin. Poststructuralism goes against structuralism and ideas posed under positivism. For positivists, there is a natural language, while for poststructuralists, “any form of speaking about something, or any discourse […] enables certain ways of thinking and, therefore, excludes others” (Fulford & Hodgson, p. 15). Research under the school of thought of poststructuralism came to unsettle fixed notions of identity (see Foucault, 2005). As Standish (1995) stated, poststructuralist thought exposes the possibility of certainty (truth itself) as a chimera. Therefore, under poststructuralism, there is no possibility of definitive truth as truth varies according to the multiple discourses that one can produce based on the sociopolitical contexts in which they are inserted.

Coming to understand queer high school students’ experiences in TMSJ through a critical poststructural approach has many implications, including the rejection of positivist constructs aiming at the systematization of qualitative analyses such as positionality statements, triangulation, member checks, data coding, etc. (St. Pierre, 2011). Instead, critical poststructural work is grounded in epistemology, ontology, and axiology to drive the production of knowledge through discourses that are produced through the text. Epistemologically, poststructuralists believe that knowledge is not fixed but unstable. Knowledge is shaped by discourses and language and can always change. Ontologically speaking, under poststructuralism, reality is also destabilized and decentered as discursive practices shape reality. Finally, axiologically speaking, poststructuralism also challenge the notions of value. Value is created through discursive practices [for poststructural epistemology, ontology, and axiology discussions, see Biesta, 2009; Jackson & Mazzei, 2012; Murphy, 2013; M. Peters, 1998; M. A. Peters & Biesta, 2009]. Therefore, in this paper, I tell a story I found in queer students’ reflections on their experiences with TMSJ. This story is not solely the story of these students’ experiences, but it is one that is guided by critical poststructural epistemologies, ontologies, and axiologies to give us an understanding of the ways queer students in this study discussed their experiences with mathematics after participating in TMSJ.

Through a critical poststructural understanding, three major constructs that shape my investigations in this work, namely sex, gender, and sexuality, must be discussed. Through a poststructural understanding, sex, gender, and sexuality are socially constructed through discourses. Elsewhere, I have discussed these constructs at length (Ataide Pinheiro, 2023, p. 84); therefore, here, I will only provide a short summary of how I understand these constructs through societal perspectives.

Sex is our socially constructed biological characteristic that aligns with our genital systems, since the binary of sex is not enough to describe all the variations of genital systems formation, such as in the case of intersex people (Esmonde, 2011; Gillis & Jacobs, 2020). Gender is a socially constructed identity (Butler, 1990; Sedgwick, 1990) historically associated with one’s sex. However, this socially constructed identity does not need to be aligned with sex (e.g., transgender, bigender, non-binary, and Queer) (Esmonde, 2011; Rubel, 2016) and is not fixed. Finally, sexuality is socially constructed (Gillis & Jacobs, 2020; Rubel, 2016), and it relates to how we are or are not emotionally, physically, and romantically attracted to others sex and/or gender (Gillis & Jacobs, 2020).

I also argue that the concept of “sex” has been ideologized in people’s minds, leading to the symptomatic obsession with gender, when in reality, this obsession is actually about sex.

Moving from my definitions of sex, gender, and sexuality, it is important to discuss queer and queerness. Many times, queer is taken by people as an identity. In this study, ‘queer’ goes beyond an identity; ‘queer’ is a subjectivity. Relying on queer theory and QueerCrit as poststructural and critical theories, this paper aims to challenge normativities of gender and/or sexuality that have been used as colonial power constructs (Lynn & Fúnez-Flores, 2025) to divide, classify, and privilege cishet White men and oppress others (Kendi, 2019; Lynn, 2023, 2024, 2025). Through my poststructural understanding of reality as a social construction, identities are unfit due to their creation of a wanted or unwanted discourse that might characterize what one is and how one must engage in the performative acts of their sex, gender, and/or sexuality (Butler, 1990). Gender, sex, and sexuality as social constructs are in constant change because they are social, historical, political, and contextual dependents. Therefore, if we come to understand gender, sex, and sexuality through a poststructural stance, we also must deny the idea of something as fixed as identities. This way, ‘queer’ is subject-dependent. ‘Queer’ comes and is created through the understandings and performative acts (Butler, 1990) one lives through. Through discourses (our lived paradigms), only can one construct what their queerness means to their queer self. Queer, then, is an umbrella term for a multitude of possible queer subjects, and queerness is the performativity of queer individuals. Because of the imperativeness of racism in the context of U.S. society (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017), we also must acknowledge that the lived experiences of queer people of color are harsher as they live with intersecting marginalized identities (i.e., race, sex/gender/sexuality; Hong et al., 2023).

3.1. Discourses

While I do not claim to be conducting any sort of systematized “discourse analyses,” discourse is an important concept in this study as, through a critical poststructural lens, we come to understand knowledge, reality, being, and our values as constructed through discourses. According to Gee (2014), discourses are symbols, stories, language, and other cultural representations that create our social worlds. Very importantly, discourses can create subject positions, which dictate what one should do within certain discourses (Sunderland, 2004). The work of the renowned poststructural philosopher Foucault (1969/1997) has shown the power of discourses over people, dictating what type of behavior is acceptable. Bondurant and Reinholz (2023) affirmed that since discourses create worlds, dictate subject positions, and have power over acceptable behavior in the social world, “narratives are a key element of discourses, because they define stereotyped behavior of how people should behave” (p. 2). Discourses are also more than just words; they are paradigms through which we operate in society (Gutiérrez, 2013) and that can shape and create realities (Zhou et al., 2023). Through a critical poststructural approach, discourses are created through the process of theorizing about the stories and practices of those who have been historically marginalized (Hooks, 1994). Discourses are not centered but are constructed according to the subject, the context, and the reader through which they are intermediated. Although the emphasis in qualitative research has become very positivist and attempted to formalize qualitative research to produce “validated and reliable” knowledge (St. Pierre, 2011), through a critical poststructural approach, we look more specifically at certain stories that can be told as we read the data to understand certain students’ experiences with mathematics in the context of a post-experience with TMSJ. In this work, I will not provide generalized discourses or any sort of systematized technique to analyze qualitative data through discourse analysis methodology, but rather, inductively (Thomas, 2006), I present some discourses that were interpreted through the reading of students’ transcripts, keeping in mind our assumption that mathematics is a field exclusionary of non-normative genders and/or sexualities, as discussed next.

3.2. Mathematics and Mathematics Education as an Exclusionary Space for Queer Individuals

There is something specific about biases and agency that prevents students from successfully participating in mathematics while holding the social subjectivity they pursue. A literature review study supporting our understanding of the intersection between biases and agency was conducted by Agarwal (2020). In the study, “Disrupting Gendered Epistemic Injustice in K-12 Mathematics”, Agarwal specifically laid the groundwork to understand the literature on gender in mathematics involving successful gendered students through epistemic injustice. Epistemic injustice differs from injustice, specifically because it occurs in the context of learning. For example, if a teacher needs to choose a student to participate in a mathematics competition, but instead of choosing a Black woman who performs as well as a White man in their mathematics course, chooses the man just because of biases that the man might do better in math, this would be considered an epistemic injustice. Therefore, epistemic injustice is the denial of the “right and desire to knowledge, to knowing, to learning, and to being in ways uncompromised by larger sociopolitical formations of gender, race, and class.” Epistemic injustice is “a harm done to people’s very capacity as knowers” (Fricker, 2007, as cited in Agarwal, 2020, pp. 4–5).

In understanding the way epistemic injustices keep students from historically marginalized identities excluded from mathematics, Agarwal extended the discussion to inform us about epistemic agency and biases in mathematics. Epistemic agency refers to one’s agency and credibility as a knower, given through the ways one is able to acquire knowledge from others and also being acknowledged by others in terms of their acquisition of knowledge. However, in unjust societies, one’s knowledge is always validated through the normative knowers in such a society, which are usually those who have normative identities in the society. Therefore, epistemic agency is diminished for those who do not belong to the normative group (Agarwal, 2020, p. 11). In the case of mathematics in the United States, a field that has historically been masculine, where doing mathematics is equivalent to performing masculinities (see Ataide Pinheiro, 2021; Ataide Pinheiro et al., 2025b), queer students who are not male-presenting and hold characteristics as masculinities will have their epistemic agency diminished. Such is the case for feminine women in mathematics (Burton, 1995).

From a critical poststructural standpoint, an understanding of epistemic agency and its intersection with masculinity in mathematics must also be challenged at the intersection of multiple historically marginalized identities. One example regards those individuals who are not White. We will draw on the work of Jett (2022) to further contextualize a discussion of mathematics as an exclusionary field to individuals belonging to historically oppressed groups. Jett investigated the experience of 16 Black men in an undergraduate mathematics program. Jett specifically argues that mathematics is a field where Black men have historically been excluded. Grounded in Black masculinity theory, Jett provides arguments for Black masculinity as a social construct, relational, and hegemonic; therefore, the conceptualization of Black men in society tends towards a deficit model that characterizes them holistically negatively. These views construct Black men as violent and threatening. These mainstream discourses position Black men as gang members, swindlers, and players. These stereotypes create societal discourses surrounding Black men as nonparticipants in highly prestigious, elite, and academic spaces such as mathematics. As a consequence, in the context of the United States, Black men are stereotypically assumed to occupy employment as athletes, rappers, and hip-hop artists, while in positions such as mathematics, Black men are usually seen as unsuitable (Jett, 2022, p. 2). Jett’s (2022) research presents a counterargument to the exclusion of Black men from the field of mathematics as they illustrate what it is like for Black men to be part of a thriving academic community in a historically Black college or university. One of the limitations of Jett’s study regards understanding the experience of Black men in alignment with their sexualities. In their study, they did not inquire about participants’ sexuality.

By looking at the works of Agarwal (2020) and Jett (2022) and my critical poststructural understandings, I had a primary assumption in this work: that the way queer students saw themselves regarding mathematics was that mathematics was exclusionary to their subjectivity, especially because all the students that went through TMSJ with me had at least one historically oppressed identity.

4. Methods

4.1. Context

4.1.1. The Teaching of Mathematics for Social Justice

As discussed in the opening paragraph of this study, Gutstein (2006) published an important work in the field of mathematics education calling for research that would rethink mathematics education purposes towards critical mathematical literacy instead of only functional mathematical literacy. Functional math literacy refers to the set of competencies that does not challenge systems of oppression that cause injustices while critical math literacy refers approaching knowledge critically, seeing and understanding the relationship between ideas, reading underlying assumptions, and finding the purpose of and who benefits from mathematics (Gutstein, 2006, p. 5). Gutstein (2006) argued that critical mathematical literacy has the possibility of reimagining the purposes of mathematical literacy specifically to support students to be active citizens of a just and equitable society. Grounding his work in problem-posing pedagogies (Freire, 1970/2017), African–American education for liberation (Anderson, 1988; Bond, 1934; Perry, 2003), and critical mathematics education (see Frankenstein, 1990; Tate, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997; Secada, 1991; Martin, 2000; Gutiérrez, 2002; Kokka, 2017, 2020; Skovsmose, 2004, 2005), among other fields, Gutstein (2006) saw mathematics for social justice with two goals: (a) social-justice pedagogical goals and (b) mathematics pedagogical goals. Social-justice pedagogical goals include reading and writing the world with mathematics and developing positive cultural identities while mathematics pedagogical goals include reading the world with mathematics, succeeding academically, and changing one’s orientation to mathematics. Therefore, mathematics for social justice encompasses supporting students in understanding the ways mathematics can be used as a tool to combat and challenge injustices in the world. Through mathematics for social justice, students can read (understand) the world, and write (challenge and change) the world, while empowering themselves through their cultures, languages, and mathematical knowledge.

A fundamental aspect of mathematics for social justice concerns action. Osler (2007) theorized that mathematics for social justice includes the understanding of social, political, and economic contexts through mathematics. These theorizations were later re-emphasized in Gutiérrez’s (2013) ground-breaking publication, “The Sociopolitical Turn in Mathematics Education,” where she further discussed two goals for critical mathematics education that lay closely to the goals envisioned by Gutstein (2006) and Osler (2007). For her, the two goals for critical mathematics education were (a) supporting students to develop conscientização (critical consciousness of their lives and the systems that affect their lives in the world) and (b) inclining students towards actions against oppressive conditions students face in society. More recently, Rankin et al. (2021) proposed, through social justice mathematics, a schooling that supports students’ development of a sense of belonging in the world. This can be done through incorporating students’ “life-worlds” in the curriculum, teaching code-switching in the mainstream system, and supporting students to foster a dialogical relationship between curriculum, students, teachers, and content in order to achieve a transformative practice. Kokka (2022) added affective pedagogical goals to mathematics for social justice. Affective pedagogical goals interconnect students’ emotions, attitudes, and beliefs in the context of dominant mathematics, social inequities, and the processing of emotions when acting against injustices. Together, these tenets for social justice mathematics support the teaching mathematics for social justice (TMSJ) framework envisioned by Berry et al. (2020). Berry et al. (2020) identified six elements for TMSJ:

• Equitable Mathematics Teaching Practices
  • Building on social, cultural, family, and community knowledge;
  • Challenging spaces of marginality;
  • Developing positive social, cultural, and mathematical identities.
• Authentic, Challenging Social and Mathematical Questions or Concerns
  • Local and authentic contexts can increase student engagement and motivation to learn mathematics.
• Social and Mathematical Understanding
  • Mathematics content: what we want students to know;
  • Mathematics practice: how we want students to show what they know;
  • Social justice standards: how we want students to demonstrate understanding and a response to an issue.
• Social and Mathematical Investigation
  • Lessons need to be grounded in the mathematically driven investigation of the social context.
• Social and Mathematical Reflection
  • High cognitive demand tasks require students to reflect on mathematics, the social issue, and how one informs the other.
• Action and Public Product
  • Taking action and developing a public product (see Ataide Pinheiro et al., 2023).

Through these six elements, TMSJ generally includes three phases that tackle these elements: (a) introducing students to a socially related issue that has implications for injustices; (b) modeling, with mathematics, the injustice and thinking of ways to relate that back to students’ own contexts (school, communities, etc.); and (c) supporting students in brainstorming, designing, and implementing actions towards social changes in the local and broader contexts of the social justice mathematical investigation. The framework envisioned by Berry et al. (2020) has been used in the context of the lessons taught in this study and is further discussed next.

4.1.2. Data Co-Construction

The data analyzed in this study comprises ten individual semi-structured interviews and one semi-structured focus group interview (with five out of ten returning participants) conducted with high school students from the Midwestern region of the United States. The interviews were conducted after students participated in three lessons taught by me for the teaching of mathematics for social justice to combat and challenge the social injustices of bullying and harassment queer students go through in the United States. These lessons were taken from Berry et al.’s (2020) textbook, Lesson 5.3, “Listen to GLSEN.” The first lesson introduced students to the social injustice queer students go through in society due to bullying and harassment related to their queer subjectivity. We read, together, GLSEN reports to understand, on a national level, school climates for queer individuals in the United States. The second lesson focused around exploring, through matrix multiplication, what bullying and harassment would look like in queer students’ own schools by using, as an example, the national average of U.S. students who are part of queer groups. Students investigated the total number of students in their high school across the four grade levels. Elsewhere, I described what entailed the matrix exploration in the second lesson (Neto et al., 2025).

In the second lesson, students had to consider how the national average of queer students experiencing bullying and harassment due to their gender and sexuality might manifest in their own high schools. To solve the problem presented in the second lesson, students needed to investigate the number of students enrolled in each grade level (9th to 12th) [note that in the U.S., high school consists of four years] at their schools, create matrices representing the number of students per grade, and multiply the number of students by the national average percentage of individuals with non-normative gender identities (1% in the U.S.) and non-normative sexualities (8%). This calculation would provide an approximate percentage of queer students in each high school grade based on gender and sexuality. They then had to multiply this “result matrix” by another matrix representing the percentage of students who might have felt unsafe and/or experienced verbal, physical, or other forms of assault due to their gender and/or sexuality (all these percentages were provided to the students). The problem required multiplying a matrix representing the percentage of students in their schools from 9th to 12th grade (a 4 × 2 matrix) by another matrix representing the national percentages for bullying and harassment based on gender and sexuality (a 2 × 4 matrix). Figure 1 illustrates these two matrices (p. 12).

Finally, in the third lesson, we thought of ways to move towards action to stop the injustice of bullying and harassment queer students go through in their schools due to their genders and/or sexualities.

In this study, I was particularly interested to understand how students experienced the teaching of mathematics for social justice that had, as its center, a discussion about their queer subjectivity; therefore, I used interviews to gather this information. The focus of this study was not the investigations of the mathematical discussions happening in the lessons. The lessons were conducted in two ways: four students (pseudonyms: Beth, Lacy, Lin, Rob) from the same school participated in the lessons as an in-person group and the other six students (pseudonyms: Cameron, DW, Eric, Mackenzie, Olive, Tom) participated in the lessons via Zoom since they attended multiple different schools that were not close to one another. Notice that I did not change much between the in-person and the Zoom lessons, attempting to create similar experiences for students who participated in the lessons online or in person. The lessons took place on three consecutive days in person and three consecutive different days online and lasted about 50 min each. The individual interview asked students about their experiences with the three lessons for TMSJ and about their experiences with mathematics. The interview questions also probed students about their social subjectivity and their influence on students’ perceptions of their mathematics subjectivity. The focus group protocol was developed based on preliminary findings from the individual interviews to specifically probe about queer students’ experiences shared with me during our individual conversations.

4.2. Participants

The ten participants in this study came from different schools across the Midwestern state where this study was conducted. Participants were recruited through a survey after indicating willingness to participate in further studies about being a queer individual in the context of mathematics. At the time, I was a volunteer in a GSA (gender and sexuality alliance club) that oversaw all the GSAs across the Midwestern state where this data was co-constructed. I asked my supervisor to share about my study with supervisors of high school GSAs across the state. At the time of that first request, I was asking queer students to share about their experiences with mathematics through the survey. Out of the 39 students who answered the survey completely, ten showed interest in participating in this study and I contacted them via email, inviting them to participate in the three lessons for TMSJ and follow-up interviews. While the results of the survey do not help us understand our aim in this study, they can be found elsewhere (Ataide Pinheiro, 2022).

Table 1. Participant demographics.

Pseudonyms	Pronouns	Gender	Sexuality	Race	School Type	Grade
Beth	She, Her, Hers	Cisgender Woman	Queer	White	City	9th
Cameron *	She, Her, Hers/ They, Them, Theirs	Genderqueer	Pansexual	White	City	12th
DW *	They, Them, Theirs	Nonbinary spectrum (Genderflux)	Androsexual	Black	City	12th
Eric	He, His, Him	Cisgender Man	Bisexual	White	Town	12th
Lacy	They, Them, Theirs/ She, Her, Hers	Cisgender Woman	Lesbian	Asian	City	9th
Lin	She, Her, Hers	Cisgender Woman	Lesbian	Black	City	10th
Mackenzie	She, Her, Hers	Transgender Woman	Bisexual	White, Asian	Town	12th
Olive *	She, Her, Hers/ They, Them, Theirs	Cisgender Woman	Queer	White	Town	9th
Rob *	They, Them, Theirs/ He, His, Him	Transgender Man	Bisexual	White	City	10th
Tom *	He, His, Him	Transgender Man	Queer	White	Town	10th

* indicates student participated in both interviews.

presents a summary of the interview participants.

4.3. Data Analysis

In this study, I used a post-qualitative research methodology approach to work with the data (see Lather, 1993, 2008, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017; Lather & St. Pierre, 2013; St. Pierre, 2014, 2016, 2019). Post-qualitative methodology critiques qualitative research as a positivist approach attempting to systematize ways to understand qualitative data, replicating the assumptions of the positivist/logical empiricist paradigm. Therefore, in post-qualitative research, rather than focusing on methodology, or prescribed theoretical ways of interacting with data (positionality statements, triangulation, member checks, coding, thematic analysis, etc.), we depart from theoretical inclination towards an onto-epistemological approach (practices of knowing in being, Barad, 2007) to the interpretation of the data. We focus on the ontological, epistemological, and axiological assumptions of our theories to understand the data. Therefore, rather than trying to systematize and create generalizable “findings2,” I used my poststructural critical inclinations and an understanding that mathematics has historically excluded oppressed groups to read the data and discover the possibilities of discourses being given in students’ stories. Notice that I am here refusing the usage of qualitative methodologies such as coding and thematic analysis, but rather, I used my theoretical inclinations that the process of theorizing and creating of theories can come out of the lived experiences of individuals (Hooks, 1994). I also looked for discursive marks on students’ interviews that signified the historical exclusion of queer bodies from mathematics. This assumption was born out of the theorization of the works of Agarwal (2020) and Jett (2022) as discussed in the theoretical perspectives section. As aligned with my theoretical poststructural critical perspectives, by no means are the interpretations of students’ experiences of this study generalizable to all queer students. These interpretations are very specific to the experiences of some of the students who participated in this study, and might happen to be true for other queer students as well. However, by no means are the interpretations I am sharing here universal. The interpretations shared next specifically show my participants’ constructions of discourses to their experiences with mathematics as a discipline that is discursively constructed as exclusionary to their queerness, as hypothesized in the theoretical perspectives of this study.

5. Interpretations

As stated in the introduction, in this article, I address the following research question: how do queer high school students in a Midwestern U.S. state experience the teaching of mathematics for social justice, and how do these experiences relate to their queer and mathematical subjectivities?

Throughout this study, the ten queer high school students many times signaled that mathematics was disconnected from the world they lived in and that doing mathematics in high school was a procedural process. It seems that such a disconnect impacted the ways the students discussed their involvement with mathematics. The specific disconnect between what it means to do mathematics and what mathematics is for caused these students to create multiple discourses about mathematics. Below, I present some of these discourses through students’ narratives and subsequent analyses.

5.1. Lack of Understanding of Conceptual Mathematics: Math Classes Are Just “This Is What You Do, This Is What You Do, End of Story.”

During the interviews, the queer high school students could reflect on their experiences in TMSJ. One of the recurring discussions in these interviews was related to queer high school students’ confusion and frustration with the mathematics they learned in school, as we can see in Tom’s response when asked what stood out to him during TMSJ lessons:

Hmm, well, I’d say with the information-based learning, I’d say there was a lot more like reading and research that went into it then like a normal math lesson that I would usually have but, honestly, I mean I didn’t mind that much. I liked that we were able to lead to discussion through the information. So, a lot of time math classes are just like “this is what you do, this is what you do, end of story.” I liked that it was able to open up a sort of discussion because I prefer those sorts of learning environments over just, you know, ABC ones.

Tom expressed that the teaching of mathematics he experienced in school is like the teaching of the ABCs. These are particular discourses being created by Tom about school mathematics (e.g., math does not have reading, discussions, and it is procedural). Tom does not see the teaching of mathematics as open to interpretation, implying that such teaching does not have space for discussion. One of the strengths of TMSJ for Tom was that through the reading of research, he could contextualize mathematics teaching, which connected to the fact that through contextualization, he could also have a discussion about the topic being learned. Whereas mathematics teaching, or more specifically the mathematics Tom knew of, was a procedural discipline where one just followed what they were supposed to do, as he expressed, “this is what you do, this is what you do, end of story.” Therefore, for Tom and some other queer students in this study, the discourse that mathematics is a discipline where you are just told “what you do” and you do not have agency to “lead to discussion through information” was prevalent.

Later in the interview, I asked Tom what he liked the most about the mathematical content in TMSJ, and Tom repeatedly expressed that he did not like math. All the students who participated in this study, besides DW, expressed either that they did not like mathematics or that they felt indifferent about the discipline. This perceived discourse of “I don’t like math” guided me to ask Tom why he did not like the discipline, and he said,

I guess I usually don’t like math because there’s always just one right answer. And that goes back to what I was saying earlier about how I liked that it was a discussion. Math is usually just, you know, finding the solution, finding what’s correct, but specifically about this study, what I liked is that whenever you open up those topics for discussion, yes, there is a correct answer that we’re looking for, but I feel like the lesson was less about being correct and more about having a conversation, so I guess what I liked about the math was that it was important to me and I was able to just care about it in a way.

Tom reaffirmed his views of mathematics and why he disliked the discipline. He emphasized that he saw mathematics as finding the only correct solution because that was what mathematics was about. These discourses of mathematics being about “finding the solution, finding what’s correct” shaped his experiences with school mathematics. In contrast, he made it clear that he liked TMSJ because although there was a correct answer, there was also a shift in how we treated the math during TMSJ. Tom said it was not about getting the correct answer, as it usually is in mathematics; it was about having a conversation to understand why the correct answer was correct. Therefore, TMSJ was an excellent counterbalance to the creation of discourses that differently shaped the nature of his experiences with mathematics. Being exposed to TMSJ shifted his discourses, and Tom expressed that “this math” (TMSJ) was important to him. In fact, we can infer that the math was relevant to Tom because we were specifically discussing issues of social injustice to ones historically targeted for gender and/or sexuality oppression through mathematics. This relevancy of the math discussed in TMSJ not only made him like the math but also made him care about the math. We can say that to some extent the change of approach to teaching mathematics through TMSJ shaped his experiences in mathematics differently and could potentially contribute to creating positive discourses about the ways he perceived himself in regard to mathematics and mathematics as a discipline.

Just like Tom, Lin expressed her views about mathematics. When I prompted her to discuss what would probably happen if TMSJ were brought to her regular mathematics class at school, Lin said that people would be confused. I asked her why she thought that, and she said,

I think the way math is taught now is not connected to [the] real world or anything. Like we are gonna get a word problem but they are kinda like bizarre, honestly. But we don’t really talk about what math really means. Besides like probably functions.

In this quote, Lin expressed that the math she and her classmates learn at school is disconnected from the real world. Therefore, differentiating mathematics teaching by making such an explicit connection to the real world, as TMSJ does, would confuse students because mathematics is very disconnected from our world, and honestly, the ways that mathematics is contextualized are super unrealistic or, as Lin described, “bizarre.” Lin ended up expressing that in school, they did not discuss what math means, which can be interpreted as, besides functions, she did not know conceptually what mathematics is and can be used for. The discourses shaping Lin’s experiences with mathematics are (a) math is decontextualized and (b) word math problems are unrealistic. In addition, there is a lack of discussion regarding “what math really means.” Therefore, we can infer that if TMSJ were to be introduced in her school, it would create confusion because TMSJ seemed to be everything for Lin but the mathematics she had experienced, which was disconnected from the real world, unrealistic, and meaningless.

In the same line of thought, Lacy expressed their views about mathematics through my questioning to understand how Lacy saw their social identities influencing their experiences with TMSJ. Although Lacy did not respond directly to what I was asking, they said,

Well, I didn’t really notice any like effect until like the study, where I realized that you can apply like these, like, when we brought up the LGBTQ issues with math it made me realize that you can incorporate like real-world issues into math problems, which is not something I think a lot of people have dealt with before, like a lot of math problems are very unrealistic.

Lacy had an “aha moment” finding out that there was a way to incorporate real-world issues, such as the injustices LGBTQ+ students face in school, into mathematics, and use mathematics to help her understand what these issues look like. It is important to notice that the way Lacy saw this application of mathematics to “real” real-world issues is different than just trying to contextualize a mathematical problem using a real-world example (e.g., ‘Mario buys three houses. Each house costs $300,000. How much do the three houses cost altogether?’). Lacy reaffirmed Lin’s sentiments, using a similar discourse: “math problems are very unrealistic.” They also reaffirmed that this approach to the teaching of mathematics (TMSJ), where you can make a connection to the real world, is not something that many people have experienced. This reaffirms their view that mathematics is a discipline that is often times disconnected from students’ lived experiences and the “real-world.” Nevertheless, by being exposed to TMSJ, Lacy had the opportunity to change their discourses about mathematics. Until TMSJ, they never thought real-world issues could be applied to mathematics, but with TMSJ, they saw it was possible. Therefore, mathematics does not always have to be the discipline of “unrealistic problems.”

Finally, I analyze Lin’s narrative to close up this first part of the findings. When asked what she thought should change in terms of high school mathematics, she said the following:

Lin: I think it would be nice if we have different tracks for math. Like for the most part would be cutting board [inaudible] calculus. But you also have an option to do statistics too. And even more to try other things other than just calculus.

Interviewer: Why do you think that would be really important to change?

Lin: I think it is a pretty narrow view with what you can do with math. And how math really works. So maybe like doing other types of math that people prefer they would be more interested in it.

This quote from Lin brings back the importance of relevant and conceptual mathematics to people’s lives, as discussed by many queer students in the interviews. She expressed that perhaps people would be more interested in mathematics if we could teach the type of math people prefer. I infer she meant that teaching different kinds of mathematics would allow for the mathematics being taught to be more relevant to the people learning it. She discussed how the ways mathematics is currently taught in her school is “a pretty narrow view” of mathematics and what you can do with mathematics, which takes us back to the critical point students discussed in the interviews—the mathematics they learn is disconnected from their lived experiences. The discourses that in school students are presented with a narrow view of mathematics and there is a lack of learning how math works could possibly change if TMSJ were brought into schools.

5.2. Discourses Shaping Mathematical Subjectivity: “I Don’t Find Myself Caring About Math; It’s Just Not Something I’m Interested in”

Frequently in this study, queer students (except for DW) discussed a sense of being disconnected from mathematics, and how that has played a role in how they build and see their mathematical subjectivity. When Tom was explaining the intersections between his identities and learning, he made it clear that there is a disconnect at the intersection of mathematics and queer subjectivity that makes mathematics learning difficult for him. He said,

I find myself leaning towards subjects like history, specifically history for things like representation. Whenever we get to talk about historical figures or, you know, people in history, who I know are queer, like maybe not everyone knows they’re queer, but since I’m queer, and, you know, queer people know they’re queer people. When I’m able to, like, look on those historical figures or read books in English about you know, maybe they have a queer character and or queer coded character in it, it makes it so much more interesting for me, because seeing yourself represented, seeing characters that you’re able to connect with, everyone’s read Romeo and Juliet, but whenever people say oh Mercutio was gay suddenly it becomes a lot more interesting. Suddenly, you care, a lot more so. I find myself leaning towards subjects that have like characters or figures that I know I can connect to and relate to, which again, is part of what makes math so difficult is that there’s really nothing to connect me to it.

In this quote, Tom makes it clear that he has not yet seen an intersection between mathematics and his queer subjectivity because he has not found images and characters he could connect to in mathematics, and we can infer he relates to disciplines where there are queer images and characters (“it makes it so much more interesting for me because seeing yourself represented, seeing characters that you’re able to connect [with]”). The fact that there is nothing in mathematics Tom can relate to makes the discipline difficult, something he does not care about, as Tom discussed throughout his interview. Some of the discourses brought out by Tom that shape his subjectivity are related to the importance of representation of queer “characters and figures,” which is something that he cannot find in mathematics. This lack of representation ends up shaping his experience in mathematics: “part of what makes math so difficult is that there’s really nothing to connect me to it.”

I open space for another example here of the discursive construction of mathematics as exclusionary to queer subjectivity through my conversation with Beth. When I asked Beth about how she liked the TMSJ lesson, she said,

So math has always kind of been something that I struggled with, like I said before. And I guess just because, I don’t know, I never really had like something to like connect with it. Like I could connect with like language arts because I can connect to different stories and history because like there are certain parts that like applied to members of my family and stuff like that. And I guess with math I just never really had that sort of connection. And seeing that it was applied earlier like to something so personal like sexual orientation, was like applied to that, it really helped me like I guess kind of understand it, and like want to learn more about it.

Beth was explicit that she could never connect with mathematics because there was never anything to connect her with the discipline. However, when thinking about the languages and arts, she was able to make connections between her lived experience and the stories they read, and in thinking about history, she could make connections between certain parts of history and members of her family. In fact, we can interpret her statements as saying that she could not connect with mathematics because she could not connect mathematics to her subjectivity. However, Beth saw a direct application to her and her family when language arts and history were at stake. Through TMSJ, Beth was able to see the application of mathematics to something that applied to her for the first time. As a consequence, she not only created possible discourses wherein she was able to understand the mathematics, but she also wanted to learn more mathematics, a discipline she had struggled with throughout her life.

Not all queer students in this study produced discourses about mathematics unfavorable to their subjectivity and the discipline. For example, DW was the only queer student who demonstrated a strong sense of a positive mathematics subjectivity. Some of the discourses they presented were connected to the fact that mathematics is an essential discipline in the world and influences everything in our society. During their follow-up interview, they mentioned that some people were math people and others were not; when I asked them if they were a math person, they said,

Yes, definitely, I 100% [laughs] feel that I am a math person, um, so even like to the point where like even my nerdy friends are like “oh my God you are such a nerd,” like, I’ll watch math videos in my spare time about, like, I was watching this one video by this one channel called Potassium and they were talking about like the loan cubic and like how for like years there’s no way to fact this thing, and there was no cubic formula, and then they came up with one by like completing the cubes and then how that led to the creation of imaginary numbers. And how the discovery like maybe the world just makes more sense mathematically, you know? So, like, I find myself interested in math and then also mathematics generally isn’t hard for me, so I definitely consider myself as a math person.

In this quote, DW discusses how they really identify themselves as a math person. Such a subjectivity was not common among the other queer students in this study. In this quote, DW did not produce many discourses about mathematics. They said that the discipline was not hard for them and that they were interested in math, which seems to imply for them that because of that, they were a math person. They mentioned that in their spare time, they liked to watch math videos and even their “nerdy” friends thought they were a nerd. Although, besides the discourse that mathematics was not hard for DW, in their follow-up interview, DW did not present any other discourse about mathematics. However, in the focus group interview, DW mentioned their view of the discipline. They said,

I just feel like there are too many people in the world who look at mathematics and say “oh it’s hard but like,” but they also follow that up with “oh these, I don’t understand like these random, you know, symbols like these x’s, these variables, these letters, they don’t really have any effect on the real world, like, why do I need to know about this?” And it’s just sad in a way, because, like numbers have a major impact on the world. It is like the entire universe is built off of numbers and to think that something so foundational would be important to learn about and these things are used by like companies, for example, to like make people’s lives more difficult, and to selectively, you know, make a system where certain archetypes can succeed and others cannot succeed as easily.

In this quote, DW intensely discusses how many people create discourses that mathematics is a difficult discipline and that mathematics is “random.” However, DW thinks it is sad that people think that way because DW thinks that mathematics “have a major impact on the world” and “the entire universe is built off of numbers.” These discourses that DW has brought out about mathematics have influenced them to think that mathematics is a crucial discipline and that not understanding mathematics could significantly impact people’s lives because companies use mathematics. Moreover, companies can make people’s lives harder, even though these people will not even perceive it because they do not understand and do not think mathematics is essential. DW’s perception of mathematics as a discipline that “governs” the universe shapes DW’s mathematics experiences and identity. It seems that because they can see the importance of the discipline to one’s life and the world, they create a strong mathematical subjectivity and value the discipline.

There were multiple reasons why queer high school students felt uninterested in mathematics. The major one was connected to the discourse that the discipline of mathematics has been too disconnected from these students’ queer subjectivity. Many discourses were in the between-lines of students’ discussions, including those that math is objective and disconnected from our subjectivity. When reflecting on TMSJ, queer students frequently mentioned that they did not see much applicability in the mathematics they learned at schools. The discipline had not helped them make meaningful connections to essential things that mattered to them. However, as we saw from DW, not all queer students were uninterested in the discipline. DW demonstrated a strong interest and a solid and positive mathematics subjectivity and disposition (mathematics usefulness). Differently from some other queer students, DW produced the discourse that mathematics is interconnected with everything in our society and therefore, the discipline is crucial. In addition, people should see the importance of mathematics because when they do not, mathematics can be used by corporations to manipulate them.

6. Discussion and Conclusions

One of the first discourses that appeared as queer students discussed their experiences with mathematics was the procedural aspect of the discipline and how TMSJ could change students’ narrow experiences with the subject. Although queer students in this study might not be the only people who have these experiences with mathematics, they agreed that the way mathematics is taught has little if no connection to “real-world problems.” As the students in this study emphasized, mathematics is disconnected from the real world, and when connected, the connection is made in unreal ways (e.g., Lin said that math problems are bizarre). Therefore, some students in this study created the discourse that they did not understand the reasons why or for what purposes they were learning mathematics. Such a discourse creates, in queer students, a lack of interest in the subject because mathematics is a procedural discipline that is disconnected from one’s life. Queer students in this study appreciated the fact that in the TMSJ lessons, they could engage in mathematics discussions connected to their queerness. They specifically were able to explore real-world data, which gave TMSJ more of a “research” feeling, and made the students feel like they were actually doing something during the TMSJ lessons, while in their schools, they mostly felt like they did what they were told to do. Therefore, I infer that many students were saying they did not even know what they were doing; they just did it to find the (only) answer, and it seemed that this (finding the only answer) was what mathematics was about for these students (or at least, that was one of the discourses they created in their experiences with mathematics and TMSJ). These disconnected discourses also influenced the creation of queer students’ mathematical subjectivities that were pertinent to the participants in this study: “we don’t like mathematics” or “mathematics is irrelevant to us.” Tom specifically was the most outspoken person in terms of his mathematical subjectivity. He discussed how TMSJ helped him to be able to care about mathematics because the topic being discussed was important to him. In sum, queer students expressed TMSJ was crucial. After all, it mattered to them because it connected specifically to their subjectivity—it approached a real-world problem (the bullying and harassment of queer students) relevant to these students’ lives as queer individuals. The importance of cultural relevancy has been discussed in the literature, specifically by those who study Culturally Relevant Pedagogy’s importance in the teaching and learning of disciplines in general (Ladson-Billings, 1995) and mathematics specifically (Willey & Ataide Pinheiro, 2019; Ataide Pinheiro et al., 2025a).

The type of teaching used in TMSJ was also relevant because it gave students an opportunity to engage in mathematical discussion, which was not something queer students in this study seemed to have experienced in school mathematics. While I recognize that discourses of mathematics being procedural might not be exclusive to the discourses created by the queer community, it does affect queer students more specifically when they discuss other discourses that are specifically connected to gender and/or sexual identities in mathematics, as discussed in the next paragraph. In addition, some students in this study (i.e., Mackenzie, Olive, Rob, Tom) discussed that their schools were not safe spaces for them, and they found comfort in environments like TMSJ, where they were surrounded by other queer individuals. Unsafe school environments appeared to intensify students’ desire for social relevance in both school and mathematics education. The queer students in this study found such relevance through their experiences in TMSJ, highlighting the importance of teaching mathematics for social justice.

In this study, I came to understand that many queer students do not see themselves as doers of mathematics and are not very attracted to the discipline. These findings have also been found by other researchers in the context of higher education (Leyva, 2022; Kersey & Voigt, 2021) and recently in the context of K-12 education (Suárez et al., 2024). Of the ten participants in the interviews I conducted, only DW demonstrated interest in mathematics and described themselves as a “mathematics nerd.” I recognize that with a larger pool of participants, it is possible that more voices like DW’s might have emerged, potentially revealing greater diversity in positive experiences and attitudes toward mathematics. While some students did not show interest in the discipline and were indifferent, the majority of the participants (Olive, Mackenzie, Lin, Tom, Cameron, and Beth) did not like mathematics. There are many possible reasons why these students might not have been interested in mathematics, but the most concerning is that they did not think they could relate to the discipline due to disconnect and the irrelevance mathematics had to their queer subjectivity. Queer high school students emphasized that when one can see queer figures, queer stories, and queer histories in other disciplines, those disciplines become exciting and relevant. Mathematics is a particular subject where they do not see that connection. Of course, the mathematics taught in formal schooling varies a lot according to the teacher and the context in which the school exists. It is also influenced by the specific standards the school follows. Although there should be possibilities for more discussions about gender and sexuality in high schools, such limitation could be due to the fact that queer students do not learn, in depth, the history of mathematics in schools or just connections in general between STEM and queerness (Snapp et al., 2015). There is also the challenge to bringing gender and sexuality topics to K-12 grades while knowing these topics are not in the curricula and there is constant retaliation when teachers discuss queerness in schools (Fredman et al., 2015). If students did learn in depth about history and queerness related to math and STEM, the history of mathematics could serve as a tool for representation since many mathematicians have been queer or speculated to be (e.g., G. H. Hardy, Bertrand Russell; Grattan-Guinness, 1992). And throughout history, having same-sex relationships, for example, in Ancient Greece, was not even stigmatized (Kauffman, 2021). As suggested by Tanswell and Rittberg (2020) in their study on epistemic injustice, even when interventions such as TMSJ are introduced into the classroom, some tensions with other stakeholders (e.g., teacher preparation load) may still remain unresolved.

In TMSJ, the intersectional experiences of queer students became apparent when mathematical and queer subjectivities were discussed. Queer students were able to care more about mathematics and pay attention to what was being discussed in particular because they could relate to the experiences of queer students who were being discussed in TMSJ. Then, right at the intersection of their queer and their mathematics subjectivities, we could see a change in the ways that students thought about their social and their mathematics subjectivities. In the context of TMSJ, it became clear that the students did not portray their mathematical subjectivity as unfavorable. On the contrary, the students started to mention they liked mathematics taught through TMSJ; they did not mind studying it, they were able to care, they found math interesting, and so on. As Tom expressed, “I guess what I liked about the math was that it was important to me and I was able to just care about it in a way.” Therefore, in this specific example of TMSJ, we see that through the intersection of a discipline where students could connect to critical everyday-life situations that were explicitly connected to their queer subjectivity, the students were also able to become more interested in mathematics. In the intersection of TMSJ and queerness, queer students produced positive discourses about mathematics and their engagement with it. These results could be beneficial to students learning mathematics and the dissemination of positive discourses that could break the idea of mathematics being a procedural discipline that students do not understand the use of (discourse of irrelevancy). These findings align with the discussions introduced in the work of Moore (2021).

Through the intersectional analysis of queer and mathematical subjectivity, we saw queer high school students’ experiences in this study allowed them to produce positive discourses around the discipline regarding doing and the nature of mathematics. The discourses produced were different from the discourses students specifically discussed when they were asked about their mathematical subjectivity in a context where they were not actively thinking or aware of the ways their social subjectivity impacted their experiences in mathematics. The central message I highlight in my interpretations of queer students’ experiences is that mathematics is often constructed discursively as a socially irrelevant discipline. This framing makes it difficult for queer students to engage with mathematics content in ways that are meaningful and relevant to their subjectivities. This message has been conceptualized in the works of Agarwal (2020) and Leyva (2022). However, we must challenge the message revealed in this study. Queer students must be given opportunities to find social relevance in mathematics so they can see themselves as part of the discipline and as capable doers of mathematics.

I started this article by contextualizing the current political attacks on queer individuals. In the US, these attacks will now intensify due to the recent executive orders signed by the sitting president. These orders specifically attack queer individuals; in particular, they aim at the erasure of transgender individuals (e.g., The White House, 2025). As an outcome of these orders, transgender folks are being excluded from US government websites (see U.S. Department of State, 2025). These attacks have a strong impact on queer lives, and mathematics education as a field has the responsibility of not being silent in lieu of these injustices. We need to listen to queer students’ voices. In particular, we need to bring into mathematics, now more than ever, things that will make mathematics a place of social relevance to queer folks and others historically oppressed. From the voices of queer students in this study, the following are a starting point of consideration for mathematics educators to transform mathematics into a socially relevant discipline for queer folks. We must bring, into mathematics, reading, discussions, history, different mathematics (non-European ways of doing math), real-world issues, critical issues, conceptual mathematics, queer characters in mathematics, language, and arts. These recommendations tie back to the pursuit of onto-epistemology recommended by post-qualitative researchers. In the study of practices of knowing in being, the interpretations of this study pointed to areas which mathematics educators must focus on to create socially relevant mathematics for queer students.

One of the methodological limitations of this study was the inability to foreground other aspects of queer students’ subjectivities for analysis through Crenshaw’s (1991) theory of intersectionality. The students in this study did not highlight how race, socioeconomic status, national origin, or other subjectivities influenced their experiences with TMSJ and mathematics even when asked about it. This limitation could also be attributed to the design of this research in being unable to support students to develop critical consciousness of their other social identities intersected with their queerness. Future research must continue to investigate how to make mathematics a discipline that is no longer discursively disconnected from and irrelevant to queer students’ queerness and how to support students in developing critical consciousness of their other subjectivity (e.g., class, race, disability, etc.) connections to their mathematical subjectivity.