«Li ho iniziati a scrivere con la schwa e basta, senza chiedere il permesso a nessuno». L’esperienza scolastica di studenti nonbinary in Italia attraverso l’analisi dei racconti di vita

For nonbinary students, school is often characterized by hostility, discrimination, and invisibility. Formal educational settings reflect the codes and values of a broader social system based on gender binary and cisnormativity. Schools act as cisnormative devices that render nonbinary subjectivities invisible and invalid. While the scientific literature recognizes these obstacles, it also highlights forms of resistance enacted by nonbinary students, emphasizing the ambivalent nature of school-based cisnormativity. Adopting a theoretical framework that integrates gender pedagogy and trans pedagogy, this paper presents the life stories of three nonbinary students (18-22 years old) in Italy, collected through biographical interviews and analyzed using thematic narrative analysis. Situated themes are identified in these narratives, such as: tension between cisnormativity and the invisibility of nonbinary existences; processes of negotiating coming out; forms of resistance and self-determination enacted by students. The analyzed experiences inform a pedagogical proposal that critically examines the systematic nature of school-based cisnormativity starting from the educational relationship. It questions the cisgenderist assumptions that guide the teacher-student relationship, and promotes an education capable of articulating the complexity of gender.