Intimately Bound to Numbers: On the Rhetorics of GLBTQ School Climate Research

The GLBTQ research community has become, in some ways, bound to using quantification within their arguments about the changes that are being recommended for schools and the lives of GLBTQ youth. This article considers the rhetorical nature of quantification when arguing for such changes. This article draws from the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Educational Network’s 2009 National School Climate Survey report, a report that has become central to the discourses concerning GLBTQ youth, including use in television, news media, and academic research. This article begins by considering the nature of rhetoric and how quantification has come to play such an important part in social science writing and argumentation. The article then critiques how quantificational rhetoric is deployed as a tool of fear, guilt, safety and accountability as evidenced in the National School Climate report.