Bullying, Support and Love: in the Folds of School Memories of Gay Men from the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to reconstruct school memories among gay men from the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Fieldwork is based on a biographical approach structured in four encounters with 30 gay men. We suggest thinking school memories as corrugated cardboard. Its structural rigidity is due to bullies and the harassment suffered that, as a synecdoche, defines the entire school trajectory. However, when the folds of memory are stretched, it emerges both the support they received and the love they experienced during that period. Working with narratives of finished school paths let us bring to light aspects that not always come up in the studies of school trajectories among non­–heterosexual people. As a result of the research, we argue that, although gay men's bad school experiences structure their school memories, these are also composed of other memories that make them more complex.