So far this year I’ve been occupying the role of a cisgender, straight male LGBTQ ally in my classroom. It feels completely bizarre since I don’t think of myself or aim to mark myself as “straight” in my everyday life. But even though being perceived and treated as a heterosexual male is still foreign to me, I’ve been surprised by how comfortable and effective I’ve felt broaching issues of social justice with my students from this subject-position. Having been immersed in particular queer communities that tend to valorize “outness” and equate it – problematically – with radicalism, I’m currently fighting against an ingrained impulse to self-flagellate for being “closeted.”
But what closet am I in, really? “Coming out” as trans is different from, and often does not parallel, queer “coming out” narratives. In terms of gender, my “passing anxiety” has heightened considerably since I began physically transitioning and living as male in my work life. (I imagine this is not an uncommon trans experience.) I’m still dreading the day when I am outed as trans to all of my students. I dread, both at work and in my personal life, having to justify my presentation as though I am somehow “deceiving” people by “masquerading” as a straight man. Self-identifying as queer” seems like it could be a helpful and defensive buffer now, in the sense that it could ease some of that tension in the moment I become out as trans to my students.
But what would it mean for me to come out as a queer man to my students right at this moment in time, when they are not aware that I am trans? Throughout my past I have been sexually and romantically involved with men, but I’m currently in a relationship with a woman and have always been more interested in women. In my social life I am inclined to identify as queer, but even that is complicated at this point – what makes me queer, now? I get uncomfortable when people rely on trans identity to prove or authenticate queerness, because a person’s trans history does not necessarily mean that he or she is queer or queer-identified. Assuming an inherent connection between “trans” and “queer” identities feels like Step One in invalidating many trans people’s genders. The suggestion that my designation as female at birth automatically makes me queer just perpetuates the faulty notion that I am not really a man.
Ultimately, my point is that the “what does it mean to be queer?” question is something I need to grapple with in my personal sphere, not in my professional life or with my students. As “Ms. K” the past two years, I happily and openly identified as “queer” with my students - often in response to the constant questions that arose because of my visible gender non-normativity. I’ve learned first-hand that it can be extremely valuable for students to see queer teachers out and visible in their schools. But there is no need for me to get into the complicated inner workings of my sexuality and desires with my students; and if I were to do open that door it would be coming from a place of self-absorption. It would be more about me than about my students.
I choose to look at it this way: Straight male LGBTQ advocates are often hard to come by, and they – we? – can play an important role in any push for LGBTQ-awareness. So I’m resolved to be happy where I am for the time being.
Showing posts with label public schools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label public schools. Show all posts
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Monday, October 6, 2008
Transitioning on the Job: Part Three
Transitioning has shattered my understanding of how people are perceiving me. In my everyday life, I feel less and less certain about what sexual and gender identities other people are mapping onto me. In the past few weeks, I’ve been read as a straight, cisgendered man at gay male bars, and as a gay man by straight women whom I thought were hitting on me. I had my first experience of having to come out as a transsexual to a gay man who asked me out. These are all firsts for me. The cumulative effect of these seemingly minor, quotidian exchanges has felt utterly overwhelming at times.
Shifts in my physical appearance (and therefore in the way other people interact with me) have been disorienting at work, too. While modeling how to draft a personal essay the other day, the fact arose that my two best friends when I was in eighth grade were named Talia and Joanna. The moment I mentioned their names in my draft, a wave of giggles swept through the classroom. I turned around, surprised and unsure of the reason for the amusement. One flabbergasted student blurted out “GIRLS?” and I replied “yes, they were my friends.” In the brief flurry of whispers that ensued, I overheard comments like “he hung out with girls?!” I hadn’t anticipated that reaction. It hadn’t even occurred to me that it would seem strange that I spent time with girls as a kid. Upon reflection, though, I realize that most of my students immerse themselves in same-sex social groups. The impression I got from students’ reactions was that there was something “off” about an eighth grade boy whose best friends were girls. Perhaps, I realized, they’re suspecting that I might be a gay, cissexual man? I can’t tell.
Yesterday, one student came up to me with a book in hand to point out that “almost all of your books say ‘Ms. Krywanczyk’ in them.” She didn’t say it in an accusatory or “what’s going on here?” way. Her tone was earnest, and she clearly figured she’d inform me of something that she assumed I would want to know. My nervousness came through in my response: “Thanks for letting me know, you can change it if you want.” She walked away from my desk seeming a little confused and curious. Moments like this have illuminated my tendency to project my own “passing anxieties” onto my students. I had assumed that the “Ms. Krywanczyk” written in my classroom books would “give away” my trans-ness to students. However, a friend pointed out to me that students very well may see “Ms. Krywanczyk” not as an indicator that I was designated female at birth, but as a hint that I may have a wife. Sure enough, a few students have approached me to ask me if I’m married. (I’ve said a simple “no.”) But I haven’t fielded a single gender-related question, or had to address an inappropriate pronoun.
Frankly, I’m shocked that this hasn’t come up in my classroom yet. Maybe my sixth graders simply haven’t heard anything about the fact that I used to be Ms. K? That seems highly unlikely, though. Maybe seventh and eighth graders in the school have heard about my transition, and have kept relatively quiet about it? I’m skeptical of that, too. Some seventh and eighth graders who knew me last year have clearly “gotten the memo” about my transition, because they have begun referring to me as Mr. K. (Or perhaps some of them have just put two and two together.) But some of my former students who are currently seventh graders in the school still shout “Hi Ms. K!” when they see me in the hallways. It is possible, then, that my sixth graders have heard about my past as Ms. K – and they simply “get it.”
I would love to wire-tap students to be privy to the ways this kind of information is communicated, discussed, and spread. I’m absolutely dying to know, as very few people – students or adults – are discussing any of this with me. In the past three days, two coworker friends of mine have shared conversations that other teachers at our school have started with them about me and transgender issues. In both cases, other teachers approached coworkers whom they knew were friends of mine to ask extensive questions about my transition. While the thought of having friends put on the spot to speak for me and my identity makes me uncomfortable, I’m relieved that all of the burden of fielding these inquiries isn’t falling on me.
In response to questioning, though, I find myself oscillating between a personal impulse to engage in conversation with adults about my transition and a political obligation to establish that just because someone is transgender doesn’t make it okay to be invasive. I always feel like I should tell curious inquirers that they need to find some trans literature and educate themselves rather than depending on trans people to spoon-feed them information. No individual is obligated to educate the trans-ignorant world at large; and it would certainly be problematic for me to self-authorize to “represent” transgender people. However, at the same time I’m inclined to speak for my own personal experience and transition. And in terms of effective “Trans 101” teaching tools, nothing compares to “real life” interaction with trans people.
In both my professional and non-professional lives, I’ve been struggling to navigate boundaries when adults ask deeply personal questions about my body, my sexuality, my sex life, etc. It’s extremely important that I have cissexual supporters in my school - like these two coworker friends - whom I trust to address questions appropriately, to advocate for me, and to therefore alleviate some of the pressures to “educate” that might otherwise fall completely on me. I dislike the term “ally” for many reasons, but my awesome and trans-aware colleagues are contributing to my hopefulness about teaching this year.
Shifts in my physical appearance (and therefore in the way other people interact with me) have been disorienting at work, too. While modeling how to draft a personal essay the other day, the fact arose that my two best friends when I was in eighth grade were named Talia and Joanna. The moment I mentioned their names in my draft, a wave of giggles swept through the classroom. I turned around, surprised and unsure of the reason for the amusement. One flabbergasted student blurted out “GIRLS?” and I replied “yes, they were my friends.” In the brief flurry of whispers that ensued, I overheard comments like “he hung out with girls?!” I hadn’t anticipated that reaction. It hadn’t even occurred to me that it would seem strange that I spent time with girls as a kid. Upon reflection, though, I realize that most of my students immerse themselves in same-sex social groups. The impression I got from students’ reactions was that there was something “off” about an eighth grade boy whose best friends were girls. Perhaps, I realized, they’re suspecting that I might be a gay, cissexual man? I can’t tell.
Yesterday, one student came up to me with a book in hand to point out that “almost all of your books say ‘Ms. Krywanczyk’ in them.” She didn’t say it in an accusatory or “what’s going on here?” way. Her tone was earnest, and she clearly figured she’d inform me of something that she assumed I would want to know. My nervousness came through in my response: “Thanks for letting me know, you can change it if you want.” She walked away from my desk seeming a little confused and curious. Moments like this have illuminated my tendency to project my own “passing anxieties” onto my students. I had assumed that the “Ms. Krywanczyk” written in my classroom books would “give away” my trans-ness to students. However, a friend pointed out to me that students very well may see “Ms. Krywanczyk” not as an indicator that I was designated female at birth, but as a hint that I may have a wife. Sure enough, a few students have approached me to ask me if I’m married. (I’ve said a simple “no.”) But I haven’t fielded a single gender-related question, or had to address an inappropriate pronoun.
Frankly, I’m shocked that this hasn’t come up in my classroom yet. Maybe my sixth graders simply haven’t heard anything about the fact that I used to be Ms. K? That seems highly unlikely, though. Maybe seventh and eighth graders in the school have heard about my transition, and have kept relatively quiet about it? I’m skeptical of that, too. Some seventh and eighth graders who knew me last year have clearly “gotten the memo” about my transition, because they have begun referring to me as Mr. K. (Or perhaps some of them have just put two and two together.) But some of my former students who are currently seventh graders in the school still shout “Hi Ms. K!” when they see me in the hallways. It is possible, then, that my sixth graders have heard about my past as Ms. K – and they simply “get it.”
I would love to wire-tap students to be privy to the ways this kind of information is communicated, discussed, and spread. I’m absolutely dying to know, as very few people – students or adults – are discussing any of this with me. In the past three days, two coworker friends of mine have shared conversations that other teachers at our school have started with them about me and transgender issues. In both cases, other teachers approached coworkers whom they knew were friends of mine to ask extensive questions about my transition. While the thought of having friends put on the spot to speak for me and my identity makes me uncomfortable, I’m relieved that all of the burden of fielding these inquiries isn’t falling on me.
In response to questioning, though, I find myself oscillating between a personal impulse to engage in conversation with adults about my transition and a political obligation to establish that just because someone is transgender doesn’t make it okay to be invasive. I always feel like I should tell curious inquirers that they need to find some trans literature and educate themselves rather than depending on trans people to spoon-feed them information. No individual is obligated to educate the trans-ignorant world at large; and it would certainly be problematic for me to self-authorize to “represent” transgender people. However, at the same time I’m inclined to speak for my own personal experience and transition. And in terms of effective “Trans 101” teaching tools, nothing compares to “real life” interaction with trans people.
In both my professional and non-professional lives, I’ve been struggling to navigate boundaries when adults ask deeply personal questions about my body, my sexuality, my sex life, etc. It’s extremely important that I have cissexual supporters in my school - like these two coworker friends - whom I trust to address questions appropriately, to advocate for me, and to therefore alleviate some of the pressures to “educate” that might otherwise fall completely on me. I dislike the term “ally” for many reasons, but my awesome and trans-aware colleagues are contributing to my hopefulness about teaching this year.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Transitioning on the Job: Part Two
A month ago, when a friend forwarded me a New York Times article about how transgender people are now experiencing “smoother transitions” in the workplace, I scoffed. After all, the idea that trans people “have it easy” in any way is pretty ridiculous. At that point, I was also anxiously anticipating my first day back at my school and coming out to my colleagues as a transsexual and as “Mr. Krywanczyk.”
As our first staff and faculty in-service day on August 28th neared, I felt incredibly nervous and sick to my stomach. My transition itself had been feeling very good to me. I felt more comfortable in my own skin and knew that I was on the right track for me. But the thought of coming out in an auditorium full of my colleagues and administrators intimidated me. The past two years I mostly avoided social events - such as after-school happy hours - with fellow teachers. My discomfort derived from the sense that I stood out not necessarily for my queerness or gender non-normativity, but for my progressive and radical political stances. Some of my interactions with fellow teachers, including being chastised for wanting to incorporate conversations about genocide and imperialism into our schoolwide celebration of Thanksgiving, left me feeling lonely and alienated. My impulse to protect myself, in addition to the fact that I felt fundamentally uncomfortable with myself, sparked a criticality of many others in my school. I was expecting the worst in coming out as trans.
However, my “coming out day” at my school went surprisingly well. At our first faculty assembly of the year, the speaker I brought in from the NYCLU did a superb job of presenting the basics of “how to respect trans people” without focusing exclusively on my personal transition. He spent a great deal of time connecting trans and gender issues to the students in our school, and explaining from a legal standpoint why it is educators’ responsibility to intervene whenever anybody – child or adult – is being harassed because of their gender expression or identity. His presentation, and my colleagues’ response to it, renewed my faith in and appreciation of third party advocates who know what they are doing. It can be so effective for people who are not familiar with a particular issue to hear about it from a seemingly unrelated person or organization. The NYCLU really came through for me and for other trans people in our school.
After the NYCLU representative spoke, I stood up and announced that I had started transitioning, and that I would be going by male pronouns and by “Mr. Krywanczyk” from that point on. I knew that the NYCLU speaker had discouraged direct harassment or invasive questions, but I was mostly concerned that colleagues would ignore me out of awkwardness or discomfort. But my coworkers, even those whom I have perceived as politcally conservative or “frat” types, pleasantly surprised me. Instead of avoiding me, a large number of them proactively approached me after the speaker that day to congratulate me, assure me that I would be fine, and to tell me that they had my back. Frankly, I had underestimated many of them. Ultimately, I know there’s something valuable in taking a defensive stance and being proven wrong about it – but I felt like a little bit of a jerk for having expected the worst.
Though I was less worried about students’ reactions to my transition than I was about the responses of adults in my building, the teaching aspect of this year has gone smoothly, as well. I have had no issues with my colleagues, and I have been recognizing a great deal of growth I’ve made as an educator – which is undoubtedly connected to, though not equatable with, my personal growth. Already this year, I’ve felt more excited about my job than I ever imagined I could be. My markedly increased comfort in the role of “teacher” and my newfound passion for teaching are the results of several coinciding factors: Everything I’ve learned over the past two years that has helped me be more organized and prepared with lessons and my classroom than I have been before; my decision to dive into “dressing up for work” and wearing ties every day, which make me feel like a responsible adult and are also useful gender markers for colleagues and students; and a new classroom that is spacious and well-equipped for English classes, as opposed to my previous year’s room.
Presenting as male has also caused some palpable and very noticeable changes in the way students respond to me. According to my observation, my status as "Mr. Krywanczyk" has remained unquestioned among my sixth graders this year. As a male teacher, it is clear that I command more respect than in previous years when I identified as female and presented as a butch lesbian. One “teacher stare” goes a lot farther now that I am “Mr. Krywanczyk” than it ever used to, and I haven’t once felt tempted to shout or talk over any students in my classroom. I can’t be sure how much of that stems from my increased organization and ability to do my job, but my perceived gender undeniably helps. Feeling that kind of male privilege with regards to my students has been illuminating already.
Possibly the strangest aspect of this school year so far is the conspicuous absence of any sexuality- or gender-related questions and conversations among my students. I’m not sure how my students read me sexuality-wise, but after the past two years - when my appearance in combination with “Ms. K” prompted immediate and incessant inquiry - it seems bizarre to me that LGBT matters have not yet arisen in my classroom. Passing unquestioned as male with my students, and therefore mostly likely as a straight man by default, helps me better understand the experiences of friends of mine who have struggled to navigate “coming out” in their classrooms. It was never an option for me, before this year, to not be “out” as queer.
The current silence around LGBT issues probably won’t last very long, however. Considering the fact that my students from last year are still in the school, and they often shout “Hi Ms. K!” at me down hallways and across the streets outside our school, it seems inevitable that eventually my students will find out that I was “Ms. K” last year. I’m beginning to feel scared that my overwhelmingly positive transition experience will come crashing down at any minute.
I recently remembered, much to my horror, that over half of the books in my classroom library say “Ms. Krywanczyk” on them in permanent marker. Last year, two very well-meaning students had taken Sharpies to my library in an attempt to ensure that I didn’t lose any books.
Yesterday, one of my current students noticed such a “Ms. Krywanczyk” on the inside of his book, and I saw him look at it, look at me, look back at it, hold it up above his head, and gesture wildly at it to a friend of his across the room until I asked him to put the book down and begin reading. That moment gave me chills, and deflated me a bit – which took me by surprise. I’m realizing that for the first time in my life I’m understanding how right it feels fo rme to be male without necessarily being marked as “trans,” and I’m starting to feel reluctant to let go of that feeling, even though I want to be “out and proud.” I have to wait and see what happens in terms of “disclosure” and “coming out,” and I’m sure it will be a constant navigation.
Ultimately, though, I have received a mind-blowingly supportive and respectful reception in my school, and I am trying to appreciate and enjoy that in the moment. In hindsight, I realize what the New York Times article was getting at, even if it fails to represent more than a sliver of trans experiences. For the small subset of trans people like myself - who have a tremendous amount of resources, support, educational and socioeconomic advantages – maybe transitioning on the job isn’t necessarily a horrible and traumatizing experience. But if there is one thing the beginning of this year has illuminated, it’s how incredibly lucky and privileged I am.
As our first staff and faculty in-service day on August 28th neared, I felt incredibly nervous and sick to my stomach. My transition itself had been feeling very good to me. I felt more comfortable in my own skin and knew that I was on the right track for me. But the thought of coming out in an auditorium full of my colleagues and administrators intimidated me. The past two years I mostly avoided social events - such as after-school happy hours - with fellow teachers. My discomfort derived from the sense that I stood out not necessarily for my queerness or gender non-normativity, but for my progressive and radical political stances. Some of my interactions with fellow teachers, including being chastised for wanting to incorporate conversations about genocide and imperialism into our schoolwide celebration of Thanksgiving, left me feeling lonely and alienated. My impulse to protect myself, in addition to the fact that I felt fundamentally uncomfortable with myself, sparked a criticality of many others in my school. I was expecting the worst in coming out as trans.
However, my “coming out day” at my school went surprisingly well. At our first faculty assembly of the year, the speaker I brought in from the NYCLU did a superb job of presenting the basics of “how to respect trans people” without focusing exclusively on my personal transition. He spent a great deal of time connecting trans and gender issues to the students in our school, and explaining from a legal standpoint why it is educators’ responsibility to intervene whenever anybody – child or adult – is being harassed because of their gender expression or identity. His presentation, and my colleagues’ response to it, renewed my faith in and appreciation of third party advocates who know what they are doing. It can be so effective for people who are not familiar with a particular issue to hear about it from a seemingly unrelated person or organization. The NYCLU really came through for me and for other trans people in our school.
After the NYCLU representative spoke, I stood up and announced that I had started transitioning, and that I would be going by male pronouns and by “Mr. Krywanczyk” from that point on. I knew that the NYCLU speaker had discouraged direct harassment or invasive questions, but I was mostly concerned that colleagues would ignore me out of awkwardness or discomfort. But my coworkers, even those whom I have perceived as politcally conservative or “frat” types, pleasantly surprised me. Instead of avoiding me, a large number of them proactively approached me after the speaker that day to congratulate me, assure me that I would be fine, and to tell me that they had my back. Frankly, I had underestimated many of them. Ultimately, I know there’s something valuable in taking a defensive stance and being proven wrong about it – but I felt like a little bit of a jerk for having expected the worst.
Though I was less worried about students’ reactions to my transition than I was about the responses of adults in my building, the teaching aspect of this year has gone smoothly, as well. I have had no issues with my colleagues, and I have been recognizing a great deal of growth I’ve made as an educator – which is undoubtedly connected to, though not equatable with, my personal growth. Already this year, I’ve felt more excited about my job than I ever imagined I could be. My markedly increased comfort in the role of “teacher” and my newfound passion for teaching are the results of several coinciding factors: Everything I’ve learned over the past two years that has helped me be more organized and prepared with lessons and my classroom than I have been before; my decision to dive into “dressing up for work” and wearing ties every day, which make me feel like a responsible adult and are also useful gender markers for colleagues and students; and a new classroom that is spacious and well-equipped for English classes, as opposed to my previous year’s room.
Presenting as male has also caused some palpable and very noticeable changes in the way students respond to me. According to my observation, my status as "Mr. Krywanczyk" has remained unquestioned among my sixth graders this year. As a male teacher, it is clear that I command more respect than in previous years when I identified as female and presented as a butch lesbian. One “teacher stare” goes a lot farther now that I am “Mr. Krywanczyk” than it ever used to, and I haven’t once felt tempted to shout or talk over any students in my classroom. I can’t be sure how much of that stems from my increased organization and ability to do my job, but my perceived gender undeniably helps. Feeling that kind of male privilege with regards to my students has been illuminating already.
Possibly the strangest aspect of this school year so far is the conspicuous absence of any sexuality- or gender-related questions and conversations among my students. I’m not sure how my students read me sexuality-wise, but after the past two years - when my appearance in combination with “Ms. K” prompted immediate and incessant inquiry - it seems bizarre to me that LGBT matters have not yet arisen in my classroom. Passing unquestioned as male with my students, and therefore mostly likely as a straight man by default, helps me better understand the experiences of friends of mine who have struggled to navigate “coming out” in their classrooms. It was never an option for me, before this year, to not be “out” as queer.
The current silence around LGBT issues probably won’t last very long, however. Considering the fact that my students from last year are still in the school, and they often shout “Hi Ms. K!” at me down hallways and across the streets outside our school, it seems inevitable that eventually my students will find out that I was “Ms. K” last year. I’m beginning to feel scared that my overwhelmingly positive transition experience will come crashing down at any minute.
I recently remembered, much to my horror, that over half of the books in my classroom library say “Ms. Krywanczyk” on them in permanent marker. Last year, two very well-meaning students had taken Sharpies to my library in an attempt to ensure that I didn’t lose any books.
Yesterday, one of my current students noticed such a “Ms. Krywanczyk” on the inside of his book, and I saw him look at it, look at me, look back at it, hold it up above his head, and gesture wildly at it to a friend of his across the room until I asked him to put the book down and begin reading. That moment gave me chills, and deflated me a bit – which took me by surprise. I’m realizing that for the first time in my life I’m understanding how right it feels fo rme to be male without necessarily being marked as “trans,” and I’m starting to feel reluctant to let go of that feeling, even though I want to be “out and proud.” I have to wait and see what happens in terms of “disclosure” and “coming out,” and I’m sure it will be a constant navigation.
Ultimately, though, I have received a mind-blowingly supportive and respectful reception in my school, and I am trying to appreciate and enjoy that in the moment. In hindsight, I realize what the New York Times article was getting at, even if it fails to represent more than a sliver of trans experiences. For the small subset of trans people like myself - who have a tremendous amount of resources, support, educational and socioeconomic advantages – maybe transitioning on the job isn’t necessarily a horrible and traumatizing experience. But if there is one thing the beginning of this year has illuminated, it’s how incredibly lucky and privileged I am.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Seeing Our Students
I recently heard that the family of Lawrence King has filed personal injury claims against the Oxnard, California school district and county. Unfortunately, however, King's family has decided to blame the school for "allowing" King to behave and act flamboyantly and to wear clothes that were out of the school's gendered dress code. While I understand and sympathize with the family's grief and eagerness to hold the school accountable in some way, this particular lawsuit seems to be another frustrating gesture blaming King's gender expression for his/her own death when in fact King should have been protected no matter what.
I believe it is important to hold schools accountable for failing to foster an atmosphere and environment of safety for trans and queer youth. Administrators and teachers need to start understanding that it is impossible to protect students who are invisible to us. We cannot “protect” students whose identities and realities we refuse to see and respect.
The atmosphere of repression around sexuality and gender expression in public schools is astounding. Every day I get an influx of email news updates about another public school that has denied its students a Gay-Straight Alliance, or another instance of students being bullied, or another administrator who lectured a queer or trans student about how wrong homosexuality is. Most public schools seem dead-set on invisibilizing, weeding out, or ignoring LGBTQ students and LGBTQ issues that directly affect students.
Even in the context of my school, where teachers generally have a remarkable amount of freedom to determine our own curricula, I could not share news articles about King’s death with my students without admonishment and warning from numerous colleagues. My administrators have also expressed a strong desire to keep my transition as quiet as possible. I was recently informed that my principal has been advised by the New York Department of Education to avoid talking to students about my transition, and I learned that I am being moved to a different floor in my school. However, even if nobody raises questions or concerns about my transition, trying to sweep it under the rug is a band-aid solution that implies that my administration believes me to be an exception, a special case, and the only transgender person with trans-related needs in our school.
This is where my school, though well-intentioned and relatively supportive, seems to be making the same mistake that so many other public schools make. My transition is not the singular reason my colleagues and administrators need to learn to respect and support transgender people. In fact, my feelings are probably the least important aspect of all of this. After all, I am an adult, and it will not be the end of my world if someone refers to me as “she”. However, what message would it send to students about respecting gender identities if my colleagues use inappropriate pronouns or disrespect my identity in front of students? What impact could that have on a gender variant or queer middle school student? LGBTQ issues are students’ lives, identities, families, friends, neighbors, and teachers. They are immediate, real, and non-negotiable – and it is inevitable that some of the students of the 1,000 in my school are trans or gender variant.
And we can’t protect students whose realities and identities we refuse to see.
It is also inevitable that most of the school this year will know I am a transsexual. For administrators to maintain a willful ignorance about the controversy, emotion, and curiosity that will undoubtedly arise at some points as a result of my transition would shift onto me, individually, all responsibility to “educate” others about trans matters – and I find that unacceptable. I can’t speak for all trans people, and I should not be obligated to spend my energies versing my colleagues in Trans 101 or to spend my professional time doing transgender “damage control.” I am happy to engage in conversation and answer (some) questions on my own time, and only when I have the emotional energy.
Luckily, my principal has given me permission to find a third party to come and speak for fifteen minutes during one of our in-service days next week. I’ve contacted a lawyer from the NYCLU who has committed to talking with my colleagues and administrators on August 28th about transgender rights in New York City and about how to respect transgender people (both adults and children). He and I have collaborated to plan the presentation, and he has experience engaging with administrators and public schools, so I hope this will be a significant step towards establishing a common transgender and queer vocabulary at my school. I also hope that this speaker will help teachers and administrators realize that opening, rather than avoiding, dialogue is crucial to recognizing identities and experiences.
This approach applies to individual classrooms, as well. Instead of censoring what students “can” or cannot say in a top-down fashion, I prefer to encourage an expansion of students’ knowledge and understanding about the history and power of language. This past year I spent one day reading a GLSEN text on the etymology of the word “faggot” with students and engaging in class conversation about the violence of the word, and about why some people choose to describe and identify themselves as “faggots.” Declaring any particular word “off-limits” both entices students to use it when they are out of earshot and denies the experience of students who may identify with the word or what it symbolizes to them.
I believe it is possible to establish a safe environment without restricting students’ free speech, but it requires the classic teaching method of showing – not telling – students that words can have serious implications. This means that teachers and administrators must begin opening conversations in our schools that are difficult, painful, and often cause a great deal of anxiety.
But look at it this way: How will students ever understand the word “faggot,” and why they shouldn’t use it in a derogatory way, if we cannot talk about it or use the word itself? How can we truly see our students, let alone protect them, if we are scared to engage with the language used to defile and tear them down?
We can’t.
Likewise, we can't protect students if we don't acknowledge their gender expressions as valid and legitimate. Though I have the utmost sympathy for Lawrence King's family, the lawsuit they have filed fails to hold King's school truly accountable for its failures.
I believe it is important to hold schools accountable for failing to foster an atmosphere and environment of safety for trans and queer youth. Administrators and teachers need to start understanding that it is impossible to protect students who are invisible to us. We cannot “protect” students whose identities and realities we refuse to see and respect.
The atmosphere of repression around sexuality and gender expression in public schools is astounding. Every day I get an influx of email news updates about another public school that has denied its students a Gay-Straight Alliance, or another instance of students being bullied, or another administrator who lectured a queer or trans student about how wrong homosexuality is. Most public schools seem dead-set on invisibilizing, weeding out, or ignoring LGBTQ students and LGBTQ issues that directly affect students.
Even in the context of my school, where teachers generally have a remarkable amount of freedom to determine our own curricula, I could not share news articles about King’s death with my students without admonishment and warning from numerous colleagues. My administrators have also expressed a strong desire to keep my transition as quiet as possible. I was recently informed that my principal has been advised by the New York Department of Education to avoid talking to students about my transition, and I learned that I am being moved to a different floor in my school. However, even if nobody raises questions or concerns about my transition, trying to sweep it under the rug is a band-aid solution that implies that my administration believes me to be an exception, a special case, and the only transgender person with trans-related needs in our school.
This is where my school, though well-intentioned and relatively supportive, seems to be making the same mistake that so many other public schools make. My transition is not the singular reason my colleagues and administrators need to learn to respect and support transgender people. In fact, my feelings are probably the least important aspect of all of this. After all, I am an adult, and it will not be the end of my world if someone refers to me as “she”. However, what message would it send to students about respecting gender identities if my colleagues use inappropriate pronouns or disrespect my identity in front of students? What impact could that have on a gender variant or queer middle school student? LGBTQ issues are students’ lives, identities, families, friends, neighbors, and teachers. They are immediate, real, and non-negotiable – and it is inevitable that some of the students of the 1,000 in my school are trans or gender variant.
And we can’t protect students whose realities and identities we refuse to see.
It is also inevitable that most of the school this year will know I am a transsexual. For administrators to maintain a willful ignorance about the controversy, emotion, and curiosity that will undoubtedly arise at some points as a result of my transition would shift onto me, individually, all responsibility to “educate” others about trans matters – and I find that unacceptable. I can’t speak for all trans people, and I should not be obligated to spend my energies versing my colleagues in Trans 101 or to spend my professional time doing transgender “damage control.” I am happy to engage in conversation and answer (some) questions on my own time, and only when I have the emotional energy.
Luckily, my principal has given me permission to find a third party to come and speak for fifteen minutes during one of our in-service days next week. I’ve contacted a lawyer from the NYCLU who has committed to talking with my colleagues and administrators on August 28th about transgender rights in New York City and about how to respect transgender people (both adults and children). He and I have collaborated to plan the presentation, and he has experience engaging with administrators and public schools, so I hope this will be a significant step towards establishing a common transgender and queer vocabulary at my school. I also hope that this speaker will help teachers and administrators realize that opening, rather than avoiding, dialogue is crucial to recognizing identities and experiences.
This approach applies to individual classrooms, as well. Instead of censoring what students “can” or cannot say in a top-down fashion, I prefer to encourage an expansion of students’ knowledge and understanding about the history and power of language. This past year I spent one day reading a GLSEN text on the etymology of the word “faggot” with students and engaging in class conversation about the violence of the word, and about why some people choose to describe and identify themselves as “faggots.” Declaring any particular word “off-limits” both entices students to use it when they are out of earshot and denies the experience of students who may identify with the word or what it symbolizes to them.
I believe it is possible to establish a safe environment without restricting students’ free speech, but it requires the classic teaching method of showing – not telling – students that words can have serious implications. This means that teachers and administrators must begin opening conversations in our schools that are difficult, painful, and often cause a great deal of anxiety.
But look at it this way: How will students ever understand the word “faggot,” and why they shouldn’t use it in a derogatory way, if we cannot talk about it or use the word itself? How can we truly see our students, let alone protect them, if we are scared to engage with the language used to defile and tear them down?
We can’t.
Likewise, we can't protect students if we don't acknowledge their gender expressions as valid and legitimate. Though I have the utmost sympathy for Lawrence King's family, the lawsuit they have filed fails to hold King's school truly accountable for its failures.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
This is not what bravery looks like.
A teacher colleague (and friend) wrote me today about what he called my “courage” for “standing up, being visible, saying the truth, taking risks, being a leader, teaching teachers and policy makers, changing the climate …”
I have to say: This is not what bravery looks like. I appreciate the compliment from the bottom of my heart, but this is not bravery. Robert Anthony once said, “Courage is simply the willingness to be afraid and act anyway." I have rarely been afraid. Because, unlike teachers, I flit into schools as a guest speaker, and the institution has less power over me. And because I happen to work for a city and county and public health department that have always had my back. The voters in this place and the honorable people they elect passed ordinances prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation decades ago. And my supervisors and their supervisors have always stood up for the need to protect the health and well-being of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, gender variant and transgender youth and families of King County.
Courage would be working to end homophobia and racism under threat of losing my job or, God forbid, my spouse and children. I have never faced those threats. Teachers all over the country do that every day.
Courage would be working to end homophobia and racism even as people were repeatedly stealing your identity and cyberharassing you … as happened to this teacher friend twice this year. Students set up false web pages purporting to be him and containing lies about him. Twice. Courage is remaining in the profession and continuing to teach social justice, even as the student "contributors" to those fake sites go unpunsihed.
Courage would be working to end homophobia and racism even as graffiti about you continues to shout from the walls of the restrooms, and the school refuses for weeks to paint over it. That’s what my colleague Kyle did this year, his senior year in high school. He, too, was cyberbullied and received death threats to his face and online. Courage is to keep going to school every day and even continuing to insist that the school stand up for your friends in the gay-straight alliance, knowing that you will graduate and be gone.
Courage would be having a teacher keep mocking the way you speak, as has been happening to my grandson this year in high school, and still going to class and trying to pass! He tells me he hears the N-word all the time at school and teachers don’t intervene. Being an African-American kid in a mostly Caucasian school for the first time in his life is taking a toll on him this year. And yet, he goes back every day. That’s courage.
I think that those of us who don’t work in schools sometimes forget just how fragile the safety of teachers and students really is. Or we think it must be better in 2008. Or we imagine that we would have courage like that of Martin Luther King and be willing to die and leave our spouse a widow and single parent for our principles.
It’s easy to be glib when you lose perspective like that. Earlier this year, I spoke at the Northwest premiere of the film It’s STILL Elementary. I said, almost with disdain, that ten years ago, when the filmmakers were scouring the country looking for teachers and principals willing to be filmed addressing gay issues in schools … I said that nobody in Washington State was brave enough, even if they were addressing sexual diversity, to allow the camera into the classroom. We hunted and couldn’t find a single school. I said it as if it were an indictment, a description of cowardice. I’m ashamed of myself. I apologize.
“Cowardice” is not even remotely a description of a teacher who intervenes in anti-gay or anti-racist bullying and who finds ways to dispel students’ stereotypes and replace them with accurate portrayals of sexually and racially diverse people … and who decides not to risk being allowed to continue that life-saving work by going on camera. I apologize for the implied disrespect.
I promise to keep cognizant of just how scary life is – still in 2008 -- for so many school employees and students.
-- by Beth Reis
I have to say: This is not what bravery looks like. I appreciate the compliment from the bottom of my heart, but this is not bravery. Robert Anthony once said, “Courage is simply the willingness to be afraid and act anyway." I have rarely been afraid. Because, unlike teachers, I flit into schools as a guest speaker, and the institution has less power over me. And because I happen to work for a city and county and public health department that have always had my back. The voters in this place and the honorable people they elect passed ordinances prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation decades ago. And my supervisors and their supervisors have always stood up for the need to protect the health and well-being of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, gender variant and transgender youth and families of King County.
Courage would be working to end homophobia and racism under threat of losing my job or, God forbid, my spouse and children. I have never faced those threats. Teachers all over the country do that every day.
Courage would be working to end homophobia and racism even as people were repeatedly stealing your identity and cyberharassing you … as happened to this teacher friend twice this year. Students set up false web pages purporting to be him and containing lies about him. Twice. Courage is remaining in the profession and continuing to teach social justice, even as the student "contributors" to those fake sites go unpunsihed.
Courage would be working to end homophobia and racism even as graffiti about you continues to shout from the walls of the restrooms, and the school refuses for weeks to paint over it. That’s what my colleague Kyle did this year, his senior year in high school. He, too, was cyberbullied and received death threats to his face and online. Courage is to keep going to school every day and even continuing to insist that the school stand up for your friends in the gay-straight alliance, knowing that you will graduate and be gone.
Courage would be having a teacher keep mocking the way you speak, as has been happening to my grandson this year in high school, and still going to class and trying to pass! He tells me he hears the N-word all the time at school and teachers don’t intervene. Being an African-American kid in a mostly Caucasian school for the first time in his life is taking a toll on him this year. And yet, he goes back every day. That’s courage.
I think that those of us who don’t work in schools sometimes forget just how fragile the safety of teachers and students really is. Or we think it must be better in 2008. Or we imagine that we would have courage like that of Martin Luther King and be willing to die and leave our spouse a widow and single parent for our principles.
It’s easy to be glib when you lose perspective like that. Earlier this year, I spoke at the Northwest premiere of the film It’s STILL Elementary. I said, almost with disdain, that ten years ago, when the filmmakers were scouring the country looking for teachers and principals willing to be filmed addressing gay issues in schools … I said that nobody in Washington State was brave enough, even if they were addressing sexual diversity, to allow the camera into the classroom. We hunted and couldn’t find a single school. I said it as if it were an indictment, a description of cowardice. I’m ashamed of myself. I apologize.
“Cowardice” is not even remotely a description of a teacher who intervenes in anti-gay or anti-racist bullying and who finds ways to dispel students’ stereotypes and replace them with accurate portrayals of sexually and racially diverse people … and who decides not to risk being allowed to continue that life-saving work by going on camera. I apologize for the implied disrespect.
I promise to keep cognizant of just how scary life is – still in 2008 -- for so many school employees and students.
-- by Beth Reis
Friday, June 6, 2008
Don't Take it Personally...
As the end of the school year approaches, it becomes easier and easier to take what students say as a personal attack. To successfully do my job and be a responsible adult, I must understand that the words and actions of my students have more to do with themselves than with anybody else - but with less than three weeks left, I can feel myself losing patience and perspective. On my more selfish and self-victimizing days, it can feel like stepping into my classroom inherently means I consent to constant ridicule and criticism. This line of thought is absolutely ridiculous, I realize - if there is anyone wielding an inordinate and oppressive amount of power in my classroom, it is me.
Instead of placing "blame" on students for whom cruelty to others is simply a necessary part of their adolescence and nothing to do with me specifically, I consider the crux of the problem my lack of community around LGBT issues. While several teachers at my school are out to their peers as gay or lesbian, none of my colleagues or friends who teach at other schools are, to my knowledge, explicitly out to their students. Many educators I know can and do discuss abstract instances of homophobia – when one student calls another a "faggot," for example. But I do not personally know any other teachers who have watched one of their students point at them and say "I can't stand her class because I don't like gay people" (in a conference among this students' parents and all of his teachers, my colleagues). I also do not know of any other teachers who have received a message from one of their students reading "shut the fuck up you fucken pussy licker faget," as I did a few months ago from one of my sixth grade students.
The way my "authority" is undermined through these displays of homophobia causes me much more anxiety than I often admit. While my sixth graders may be twelve years old, their parents and many of the people in their spheres are not. From what I have seen and heard about, it is considered a matter of fact that parents often share or even encourage their student's homophobic sentiments. When a queer or trans teacher is criticized, it is impossible to know who – if anybody – will step up to defend us. Merely having used the word "queer" to identify myself to students could be grounds for increased scrutiny or suspicion.
When my aforementioned student stated in a parent-teacher conference that he didn't like my class because I am queer, I did not respond. To do so would imply that I need to defend myself or my identity – which I refuse to do. I did appreciate it when one of the other teachers at the meeting firmly established that the student needs to get over his issues with gay people if he expects to continue in public schools, where he will learn about "all different kinds of people." However, it was difficult to determine how the student's parents were reacting to this message. His father sat there and appeared to scowl.
Just two weeks ago, the mother of a student who is failing my class came to the school to speak to the Assistant Principal. She blamed her daughter's grades and disruptiveness on "a personality difference" between her and me. Her daughter has done no classwork and no homework for months, and she distracts other students during class on a daily basis. This student is currently failing multiple classes, and I have spoken with her other teachers and discovered that they take similar issue to her work and behavior. But for some reason, this student's mother did not use "personality difference" excuses with regards to any of the other teachers. When I brought this student to the Principal’s Office during my lunch period recently, it seemed as though the principal gave her more credit than she gave me.
Some would call me paranoid for feeling this way. However, considering the current climate in public education – which pushes administrators to do anything to minimize complaints and criticisms leveled against their schools – I worry that it would be easier to turn against an openly queer and gender variant teacher than to stand by me.
This brings up the question: Who bears the burdens to “be careful” in public schools? It seems that queer and trans teachers are weighed down more heavily by the burden of “carefulness” than some others. When I had my students read an article about the homophobic murder of Lawrence King, I was admonished by several colleagues to ‘be careful” bringing up such “mature” topics with middle school students. Another teacher at my school, though - a white, straight, normatively gendered man - apparently didn't feel any obligation to "be careful" last week when many teachers overheard him shouting to an eighth grade boy "What happened, did you lose your vagina?"
When I inform my colleagues that I am out as queer to my students, I often get “wow, how is that?” and “how does your administration feel about that?” Many people express incredulity that administrators and parents could have possibly not voiced some kind of problem. I almost sense a vague "tsk tsk" in some people's voices, as though I should know what to expect in being out, and particularly in allowing queerness and sexual orientation to arise as fodder for discussion, in my classroom. If I lose my job for allowing students to learn about such "mature" topics as the etymology of the word "faggot" or what "homophobia" means, then in the minds of some people I will have deserved it.
If it were not a large risk to one’s job security, I know for a fact that many more educators would come out and be open about their identities. If it did not entail putting your neck on the line in some way, more educators would push students to think critically about homophobia, transphobia, and social justice. As it stands, the emphasis of the public education system and the national government are to blame teachers for as much as possible, which puts pressure on teachers to cram every minute of every lesson with content that No Child Left Behind has deemed "valuable." I feel I constantly have to be careful, and that all it takes is one wrong step - and I don’t think I’m crazy for thinking that.
Instead of placing "blame" on students for whom cruelty to others is simply a necessary part of their adolescence and nothing to do with me specifically, I consider the crux of the problem my lack of community around LGBT issues. While several teachers at my school are out to their peers as gay or lesbian, none of my colleagues or friends who teach at other schools are, to my knowledge, explicitly out to their students. Many educators I know can and do discuss abstract instances of homophobia – when one student calls another a "faggot," for example. But I do not personally know any other teachers who have watched one of their students point at them and say "I can't stand her class because I don't like gay people" (in a conference among this students' parents and all of his teachers, my colleagues). I also do not know of any other teachers who have received a message from one of their students reading "shut the fuck up you fucken pussy licker faget," as I did a few months ago from one of my sixth grade students.
The way my "authority" is undermined through these displays of homophobia causes me much more anxiety than I often admit. While my sixth graders may be twelve years old, their parents and many of the people in their spheres are not. From what I have seen and heard about, it is considered a matter of fact that parents often share or even encourage their student's homophobic sentiments. When a queer or trans teacher is criticized, it is impossible to know who – if anybody – will step up to defend us. Merely having used the word "queer" to identify myself to students could be grounds for increased scrutiny or suspicion.
When my aforementioned student stated in a parent-teacher conference that he didn't like my class because I am queer, I did not respond. To do so would imply that I need to defend myself or my identity – which I refuse to do. I did appreciate it when one of the other teachers at the meeting firmly established that the student needs to get over his issues with gay people if he expects to continue in public schools, where he will learn about "all different kinds of people." However, it was difficult to determine how the student's parents were reacting to this message. His father sat there and appeared to scowl.
Just two weeks ago, the mother of a student who is failing my class came to the school to speak to the Assistant Principal. She blamed her daughter's grades and disruptiveness on "a personality difference" between her and me. Her daughter has done no classwork and no homework for months, and she distracts other students during class on a daily basis. This student is currently failing multiple classes, and I have spoken with her other teachers and discovered that they take similar issue to her work and behavior. But for some reason, this student's mother did not use "personality difference" excuses with regards to any of the other teachers. When I brought this student to the Principal’s Office during my lunch period recently, it seemed as though the principal gave her more credit than she gave me.
Some would call me paranoid for feeling this way. However, considering the current climate in public education – which pushes administrators to do anything to minimize complaints and criticisms leveled against their schools – I worry that it would be easier to turn against an openly queer and gender variant teacher than to stand by me.
This brings up the question: Who bears the burdens to “be careful” in public schools? It seems that queer and trans teachers are weighed down more heavily by the burden of “carefulness” than some others. When I had my students read an article about the homophobic murder of Lawrence King, I was admonished by several colleagues to ‘be careful” bringing up such “mature” topics with middle school students. Another teacher at my school, though - a white, straight, normatively gendered man - apparently didn't feel any obligation to "be careful" last week when many teachers overheard him shouting to an eighth grade boy "What happened, did you lose your vagina?"
When I inform my colleagues that I am out as queer to my students, I often get “wow, how is that?” and “how does your administration feel about that?” Many people express incredulity that administrators and parents could have possibly not voiced some kind of problem. I almost sense a vague "tsk tsk" in some people's voices, as though I should know what to expect in being out, and particularly in allowing queerness and sexual orientation to arise as fodder for discussion, in my classroom. If I lose my job for allowing students to learn about such "mature" topics as the etymology of the word "faggot" or what "homophobia" means, then in the minds of some people I will have deserved it.
If it were not a large risk to one’s job security, I know for a fact that many more educators would come out and be open about their identities. If it did not entail putting your neck on the line in some way, more educators would push students to think critically about homophobia, transphobia, and social justice. As it stands, the emphasis of the public education system and the national government are to blame teachers for as much as possible, which puts pressure on teachers to cram every minute of every lesson with content that No Child Left Behind has deemed "valuable." I feel I constantly have to be careful, and that all it takes is one wrong step - and I don’t think I’m crazy for thinking that.
Friday, May 30, 2008
"Weeding Out" Homophobes
Two weeks ago in South Carolina, Eddie Walker resigned from his principalship at Irmo High School after a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) was created at Irmo. His resignation letter stated that his religious and professional beliefs “put him at odds” with such a group. Recently, there has been quite a fuss over Walker’s resignation. (See http://www.thestate.com/local/story/417460.html for more information.)
Let’s tell it like it is: An admitted and unapologetic homophobe has chosen to remove himself from a position of authority over children. This is a sign of hope for LGBT youth in public schools, because it indicates that Walker felt it would be futile to attempt to destroy the GSA from within.
Though he was clearly hoping that the school board would ban the GSA, Walker’s resignation doesn’t seem to have hurt the Irmo High School community yet. If anything, it appears to have further cemented the solidarity among queer-positive people in Greenville. Earlier this week, a large crowd gathered outside the district school board meeting to support the foundation of the gay-straight alliance that Walker protested. One Greenville resident spoke about the homophobic murder of her son this past year. The crowd sent a message to the school board about the absolute necessity for the gay-straight alliance that Walker had such a personal problem with.
Though I believe education is a crucial first step in effectively addressing LGBT ignorance, I also believe that it doesn’t hurt to put pressure on homophobes and transphobes to get out and stay out. People who are unwilling to self-educate and open their eyes to ever-growing worlds of sexuality and gender should be made to feel unwelcome. I have no qualms about forcing people like Eddie Walker to confront their own biases, and I have no sympathy for bigots who are put on the spot and called out for their violence. Claims about so-called “reverse discrimination” against heterosexuals are completely bogus.
We need to trash this trumped-up notion of “tolerance” that fosters condescension from heterosexuals and cisgendered people towards LGBT individuals. Let’s dispose of the concept of “tolerance” that does nothing to prevent the stigmatization and phenomenalization of queer and trans people. I wish more public schools would send the message: We will not tolerate anyone who propagates bigotry and hate. Not around here.
To Eddie Walker: Good for you, for standing with your convictions. And good riddance.
Let’s tell it like it is: An admitted and unapologetic homophobe has chosen to remove himself from a position of authority over children. This is a sign of hope for LGBT youth in public schools, because it indicates that Walker felt it would be futile to attempt to destroy the GSA from within.
Though he was clearly hoping that the school board would ban the GSA, Walker’s resignation doesn’t seem to have hurt the Irmo High School community yet. If anything, it appears to have further cemented the solidarity among queer-positive people in Greenville. Earlier this week, a large crowd gathered outside the district school board meeting to support the foundation of the gay-straight alliance that Walker protested. One Greenville resident spoke about the homophobic murder of her son this past year. The crowd sent a message to the school board about the absolute necessity for the gay-straight alliance that Walker had such a personal problem with.
Though I believe education is a crucial first step in effectively addressing LGBT ignorance, I also believe that it doesn’t hurt to put pressure on homophobes and transphobes to get out and stay out. People who are unwilling to self-educate and open their eyes to ever-growing worlds of sexuality and gender should be made to feel unwelcome. I have no qualms about forcing people like Eddie Walker to confront their own biases, and I have no sympathy for bigots who are put on the spot and called out for their violence. Claims about so-called “reverse discrimination” against heterosexuals are completely bogus.
We need to trash this trumped-up notion of “tolerance” that fosters condescension from heterosexuals and cisgendered people towards LGBT individuals. Let’s dispose of the concept of “tolerance” that does nothing to prevent the stigmatization and phenomenalization of queer and trans people. I wish more public schools would send the message: We will not tolerate anyone who propagates bigotry and hate. Not around here.
To Eddie Walker: Good for you, for standing with your convictions. And good riddance.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Another Campaign to "Cure" Trans Youth
Below is TransActive Education and Advocacy's response to yet another attack on transgender youth, this time by the Philadelphia Catholic Medical Association. The PCMA takes the position that trans youth need to be forced to adhere to the proper confines of their "birth gender," at any cost. According to them, it's in trans kids' best interests to be forcibly denied their basic rights of self-expression.
I wish I could chalk this up to the work of insane right-wing Christians whom nobody could actually take seriously, but the PCMA's position seems to be reflective of the current climate surrounding trans youth. The PCMA cites Kenneth Zucker's writings to support their claims. And... Zucker was just appointed to head the APA's committee to review the DSM - V, which covers Gender Identity Disorder.
Does anyone else find this infuriating? Is it possible to deny that there is currently a full-fledged assault on transgender youth going on in this country?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Portland, OR (May 27, 2008)
TransActive Education & Advocacy, a Portland, Oregon-based non-profit organization that works on behalf of transgender and gender non-conforming children, youth and their families speaks in opposition to the Philadelphia Catholic Medical Association's recently issued Press Release on so-called cross-dressing In schools.
Our response to this Press Release follows the excerpted statement below.
_ _ _ _ _
THE PHILADELPHIA CATHOLIC MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
http://www.cathmedphila.org/
May 16, 2008
Excerpt from the Catholic Medical Association's statement:
"Superintendents and school district should insist that parents who want their children to attend school dressed in opposite sex clothing be required to have a mental health evaluation for such a child to determine if the child has a gender identity disorder.
"Permitting behavior such as cross-dressing by a child with GID will not help the child; rather, it will enable and reinforce a serious psychiatric disorder. Principals and superintendents should not permit or tolerate any cross-dressing in schools. Not only will this further harm a child with GID, but it will cause other children to suffer confusion and distress.
"The Philadelphia Inquirer recently published an article on May 3, 2008 about a nine year old boy at suburban primary school, who will be allowed to dress as a girl and be addressed by a girl's name. In the article the principal of the school is noted to have written a letter to parents explaining that a transgender child is one whose biological gender does not match his or her gender identity.
"This demonstrates a common but serious lack of knowledge of the medical literature related to psychiatric diagnoses in children. These studies show that children with strong transsexual thinking and behaviors, in fact, usually have the diagnosis of a Gender Identity Disorder (GID). GID leads to the desire to dress in clothing of the opposite sex and to be called by a name of the opposite sex. The major textbook on this subject is Gender Identity Disorder, by Zucker and Bradley.
"These children have failed to identify and embrace the goodness of their masculinity or femininity for a number of reasons, related particularly to conflicts with peers and parents, primarily with their mothers.
"As Zucker and Bradley document in their clinical work and research, most children who are treated for GID recover. They come to accept and embrace their birth gender.
"Paul McHugh, former chairman of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, studied those who sought transsexual surgery and has written, 'I have witnessed a great deal of damage from sex-reassignment. The children transformed from their male constitution into female roles suffered prolonged distress and misery as they sensed their natural attitudes. Their parents usually lived with guilt over their decisions - second-guessing themselves and somewhat ashamed of the fabrication, both surgical and social, they had imposed on their sons.'"
_ _ _ _
From the outset, the Catholic Medical Association's statement is disingenuous in its representation of both the child and parental motivation for allowing this nine-year old to attend school in a way that is respectful of their true gender identity (female) rather than reflective only of their assigned birth sex (male) based solely upon their anatomy. Furthermore, this is a standard to which other students are not held. There is no school in the country that we are aware of that requires students to first submit to a gender identity/anatomical sex congruity exam prior to being allowed to attend school.
To imply that this child simply "wants" to attend school dressed like a girl is a gross and misleading over-simplification of what a gender non-conforming child experiences. This child has always identified as female. She simply wants to be extended the right to express herself in a way that is consistent with her gender identity.
The implication by the Catholic Medical Association that gender non-conforming and transgender children, youth and their families do not seek out psychological guidance prior to making these difficult decisions is nothing more than a blatant attempt at prejudicing their membership and those who might read this press release against these children, their families and anyone who might support them.
Our organization works with many therapists that provide counseling services to these children, youth and families. In fact, we have never come across a single case of a parent or caregiver that has not first sought counseling for both their child and their family before taking any specific action related to their child's gender non-conforming identity.
Nor is there and credible evidence that a transgender or gender non-conforming child will cause other children to be confused or distressed. They may ask questions, but the last time we checked, school was about asking questions and learning not only about reading, writing and arithmetic but about developing the social skills to work with and respect the many types of people our children will encounter throughout their lives.
They assert, incorrectly, that "children with strong transsexual thinking and behaviors, in fact, usually have the diagnosis of a Gender Identity Disorder (GID)." In fact, the reverse is true.
A clinical diagnosis of GID (Gender Identity Dysphoria) in children predates by several years any conclusions regarding what may or may not be a 'transsexual' outcome. It is not up to the therapist, psychologist or the Catholic Medical Association to decide when or if a child is a 'transsexual'. That decision is theirs and theirs alone to make once they attain an age of informed consent.
They claim in their press release that "GID leads to the desire to dress in clothing of the opposite sex and to be called by a name of the opposite sex. The major textbook on this subject is Gender Identity Disorder, by Zucker and Bradley."
Again, this is a misleading and distressingly wrong-headed statement for a so-called medical organization to make. GID does not "lead" to the desire to dress in any type of clothing or to be called by any particular name. In fact, a child's sense of their gender identity is independent of clothing or name preferences.
As to Zucker and Bradley having written "the major textbook on this subject", this is a substantial overstatement of the credibility and acceptance the work of Kenneth Zucker and Susan Bradley has been accorded within the circle of those who research and treat transgender and gender non-conforming children and youth.
In their press release, they outrageously state that, "These children have failed to identify and embrace the goodness of their masculinity or femininity for a number of reasons, related particularly to conflicts with peers and parents, primarily with their mothers."
They clearly choose to accuse these children of "failing" to accepting the "goodness" of an arbitrary or stereotypical standard of 'masculinity' or 'femininity' and then go on to broadly apply questionable Freudian thinking regarding peer pressure, parental influence and ultimately, blaming the mother for causing a child's gender non-conformity. This is more than voodoo medicine...it's blatantly misogynistic.
The Catholic Medical Association quotes Zucker and Bradley as reporting that, "most children who are treated for GID recover. They come to accept and embrace their birth gender."
The facts are that Zucker and Bradley believe (inaccurately) that 75% of gender non-conforming children end up identifying as homosexual rather than transsexual or transgender. We suspect this is what they refer to as "recovering" from GID and later "embracing" their birth gender. Would it be too cynical to believe that under different circumstances, in a different press release, the Catholic Medical Association might not consider this alleged "recovery" to a homosexual identity to be an altogether positive outcome?
The quote from Paul McHugh, former Chairman of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University contains, to be blunt, a misrepresentation of data clinical research with regard to transgender identity and surgical or hormonal outcomes in children and adolescents. During Dr. McHugh's tenure at Johns Hopkins there was virtually no hormonal or surgical treatment of transgender children or adolescents.
There was treatment by Dr. John Money (since completely discredited) done with regard to intersex, genitally ambiguous and surgically mutilated infants, however those conditions are unrelated to transgender identity in children. Any suggestion otherwise by either Paul McHugh or the Catholic Medical Association is, to put it generously, a stretch.
The continued assumption by organizations like the Catholic Medical Association, Exodus International and NARTH, as well as individuals like Kenneth Zucker and Paul McHugh that gender non-conforming and transgender children are confused, distressed or 'disordered' as a result of their gender identity belies an arrogance that only does further damage to these amazing children and their families.
Their failure to recognize that the stress, unhappiness and too often, suicidal ideation these children and youth experience comes as a consequence of the judgments, stereotypes, fundamentalist religious persecution, indifference and ignorance of these organizations and individuals is not only appalling, it dances precipitously near the fringes of child abuse.
The Philadelphia Catholic Medical Association should ask forgiveness for their ethical, moral and medical sins against these children, youth and their families.
I wish I could chalk this up to the work of insane right-wing Christians whom nobody could actually take seriously, but the PCMA's position seems to be reflective of the current climate surrounding trans youth. The PCMA cites Kenneth Zucker's writings to support their claims. And... Zucker was just appointed to head the APA's committee to review the DSM - V, which covers Gender Identity Disorder.
Does anyone else find this infuriating? Is it possible to deny that there is currently a full-fledged assault on transgender youth going on in this country?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Portland, OR (May 27, 2008)
TransActive Education & Advocacy, a Portland, Oregon-based non-profit organization that works on behalf of transgender and gender non-conforming children, youth and their families speaks in opposition to the Philadelphia Catholic Medical Association's recently issued Press Release on so-called cross-dressing In schools.
Our response to this Press Release follows the excerpted statement below.
_ _ _ _ _
THE PHILADELPHIA CATHOLIC MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
http://www.cathmedphila.org/
May 16, 2008
Excerpt from the Catholic Medical Association's statement:
"Superintendents and school district should insist that parents who want their children to attend school dressed in opposite sex clothing be required to have a mental health evaluation for such a child to determine if the child has a gender identity disorder.
"Permitting behavior such as cross-dressing by a child with GID will not help the child; rather, it will enable and reinforce a serious psychiatric disorder. Principals and superintendents should not permit or tolerate any cross-dressing in schools. Not only will this further harm a child with GID, but it will cause other children to suffer confusion and distress.
"The Philadelphia Inquirer recently published an article on May 3, 2008 about a nine year old boy at suburban primary school, who will be allowed to dress as a girl and be addressed by a girl's name. In the article the principal of the school is noted to have written a letter to parents explaining that a transgender child is one whose biological gender does not match his or her gender identity.
"This demonstrates a common but serious lack of knowledge of the medical literature related to psychiatric diagnoses in children. These studies show that children with strong transsexual thinking and behaviors, in fact, usually have the diagnosis of a Gender Identity Disorder (GID). GID leads to the desire to dress in clothing of the opposite sex and to be called by a name of the opposite sex. The major textbook on this subject is Gender Identity Disorder, by Zucker and Bradley.
"These children have failed to identify and embrace the goodness of their masculinity or femininity for a number of reasons, related particularly to conflicts with peers and parents, primarily with their mothers.
"As Zucker and Bradley document in their clinical work and research, most children who are treated for GID recover. They come to accept and embrace their birth gender.
"Paul McHugh, former chairman of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, studied those who sought transsexual surgery and has written, 'I have witnessed a great deal of damage from sex-reassignment. The children transformed from their male constitution into female roles suffered prolonged distress and misery as they sensed their natural attitudes. Their parents usually lived with guilt over their decisions - second-guessing themselves and somewhat ashamed of the fabrication, both surgical and social, they had imposed on their sons.'"
_ _ _ _
From the outset, the Catholic Medical Association's statement is disingenuous in its representation of both the child and parental motivation for allowing this nine-year old to attend school in a way that is respectful of their true gender identity (female) rather than reflective only of their assigned birth sex (male) based solely upon their anatomy. Furthermore, this is a standard to which other students are not held. There is no school in the country that we are aware of that requires students to first submit to a gender identity/anatomical sex congruity exam prior to being allowed to attend school.
To imply that this child simply "wants" to attend school dressed like a girl is a gross and misleading over-simplification of what a gender non-conforming child experiences. This child has always identified as female. She simply wants to be extended the right to express herself in a way that is consistent with her gender identity.
The implication by the Catholic Medical Association that gender non-conforming and transgender children, youth and their families do not seek out psychological guidance prior to making these difficult decisions is nothing more than a blatant attempt at prejudicing their membership and those who might read this press release against these children, their families and anyone who might support them.
Our organization works with many therapists that provide counseling services to these children, youth and families. In fact, we have never come across a single case of a parent or caregiver that has not first sought counseling for both their child and their family before taking any specific action related to their child's gender non-conforming identity.
Nor is there and credible evidence that a transgender or gender non-conforming child will cause other children to be confused or distressed. They may ask questions, but the last time we checked, school was about asking questions and learning not only about reading, writing and arithmetic but about developing the social skills to work with and respect the many types of people our children will encounter throughout their lives.
They assert, incorrectly, that "children with strong transsexual thinking and behaviors, in fact, usually have the diagnosis of a Gender Identity Disorder (GID)." In fact, the reverse is true.
A clinical diagnosis of GID (Gender Identity Dysphoria) in children predates by several years any conclusions regarding what may or may not be a 'transsexual' outcome. It is not up to the therapist, psychologist or the Catholic Medical Association to decide when or if a child is a 'transsexual'. That decision is theirs and theirs alone to make once they attain an age of informed consent.
They claim in their press release that "GID leads to the desire to dress in clothing of the opposite sex and to be called by a name of the opposite sex. The major textbook on this subject is Gender Identity Disorder, by Zucker and Bradley."
Again, this is a misleading and distressingly wrong-headed statement for a so-called medical organization to make. GID does not "lead" to the desire to dress in any type of clothing or to be called by any particular name. In fact, a child's sense of their gender identity is independent of clothing or name preferences.
As to Zucker and Bradley having written "the major textbook on this subject", this is a substantial overstatement of the credibility and acceptance the work of Kenneth Zucker and Susan Bradley has been accorded within the circle of those who research and treat transgender and gender non-conforming children and youth.
In their press release, they outrageously state that, "These children have failed to identify and embrace the goodness of their masculinity or femininity for a number of reasons, related particularly to conflicts with peers and parents, primarily with their mothers."
They clearly choose to accuse these children of "failing" to accepting the "goodness" of an arbitrary or stereotypical standard of 'masculinity' or 'femininity' and then go on to broadly apply questionable Freudian thinking regarding peer pressure, parental influence and ultimately, blaming the mother for causing a child's gender non-conformity. This is more than voodoo medicine...it's blatantly misogynistic.
The Catholic Medical Association quotes Zucker and Bradley as reporting that, "most children who are treated for GID recover. They come to accept and embrace their birth gender."
The facts are that Zucker and Bradley believe (inaccurately) that 75% of gender non-conforming children end up identifying as homosexual rather than transsexual or transgender. We suspect this is what they refer to as "recovering" from GID and later "embracing" their birth gender. Would it be too cynical to believe that under different circumstances, in a different press release, the Catholic Medical Association might not consider this alleged "recovery" to a homosexual identity to be an altogether positive outcome?
The quote from Paul McHugh, former Chairman of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University contains, to be blunt, a misrepresentation of data clinical research with regard to transgender identity and surgical or hormonal outcomes in children and adolescents. During Dr. McHugh's tenure at Johns Hopkins there was virtually no hormonal or surgical treatment of transgender children or adolescents.
There was treatment by Dr. John Money (since completely discredited) done with regard to intersex, genitally ambiguous and surgically mutilated infants, however those conditions are unrelated to transgender identity in children. Any suggestion otherwise by either Paul McHugh or the Catholic Medical Association is, to put it generously, a stretch.
The continued assumption by organizations like the Catholic Medical Association, Exodus International and NARTH, as well as individuals like Kenneth Zucker and Paul McHugh that gender non-conforming and transgender children are confused, distressed or 'disordered' as a result of their gender identity belies an arrogance that only does further damage to these amazing children and their families.
Their failure to recognize that the stress, unhappiness and too often, suicidal ideation these children and youth experience comes as a consequence of the judgments, stereotypes, fundamentalist religious persecution, indifference and ignorance of these organizations and individuals is not only appalling, it dances precipitously near the fringes of child abuse.
The Philadelphia Catholic Medical Association should ask forgiveness for their ethical, moral and medical sins against these children, youth and their families.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Religious Right Says: Save Our Children From Trans People!
The following radio spot, entitled “Predator,” began circulating this past month in Colorado: http://www.denverpost.com/ci_9350160.
This is yet another classic example of the religious right’s invocation of “children’s safety” in order to promote their own political candidates and agenda.
This clip is not coming from groups who aim to eradicate sexual assault and violence against women, though “Predator” may seem to insinuate that. In fact, Focus on the Family Action and Colorado Family Action, the two groups responsible for creating and running the spot, could seem to care less about women’s rights. Focus on the Family Action states on its website that it is geared towards those who care about the “family” and about “traditional moral values.” The Focus on the Family Action page is devoted entirely to a preservation of traditional marriage between a man and a woman (and, I would think by extension, the “traditional” use of marriage as a means for men to possess and own women) and the restriction of abortion and contraceptive access for women.
“Predator” invokes age-old stereotypes about trans women and gender non-conforming individuals in order to fight against public schools’ development of gender-neutral bathrooms. The groups behind the clip are clearly trying to capitalize on mainstream society’s rampant transphobia and anxiety about gender norms in order to endorse their politician of choice.
This endorsement parrots the classic transphobic cliché: We must carefully monitor conditions in our public schools to ensure that gender non-normative and transgender people cannot comfortably or safely enter those spaces. If not, trans people will inevitably destroy “our children.”
Is anyone else getting sick of this bullshit? I can only hope that anyone who hears it realizes how downright ridiculous it is - unfortunately, I fear that may not be the case. As a gender non-normative educator in a public middle school, the fervor and confidence with which these ludicrous right-wingers attack trans people’s humanity in instances like this gives me pause, despite my better sense.
This is yet another classic example of the religious right’s invocation of “children’s safety” in order to promote their own political candidates and agenda.
This clip is not coming from groups who aim to eradicate sexual assault and violence against women, though “Predator” may seem to insinuate that. In fact, Focus on the Family Action and Colorado Family Action, the two groups responsible for creating and running the spot, could seem to care less about women’s rights. Focus on the Family Action states on its website that it is geared towards those who care about the “family” and about “traditional moral values.” The Focus on the Family Action page is devoted entirely to a preservation of traditional marriage between a man and a woman (and, I would think by extension, the “traditional” use of marriage as a means for men to possess and own women) and the restriction of abortion and contraceptive access for women.
“Predator” invokes age-old stereotypes about trans women and gender non-conforming individuals in order to fight against public schools’ development of gender-neutral bathrooms. The groups behind the clip are clearly trying to capitalize on mainstream society’s rampant transphobia and anxiety about gender norms in order to endorse their politician of choice.
This endorsement parrots the classic transphobic cliché: We must carefully monitor conditions in our public schools to ensure that gender non-normative and transgender people cannot comfortably or safely enter those spaces. If not, trans people will inevitably destroy “our children.”
Is anyone else getting sick of this bullshit? I can only hope that anyone who hears it realizes how downright ridiculous it is - unfortunately, I fear that may not be the case. As a gender non-normative educator in a public middle school, the fervor and confidence with which these ludicrous right-wingers attack trans people’s humanity in instances like this gives me pause, despite my better sense.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Final Thoughts Defending the Day of Silence
A troubling article in this week’s SnoValley Star [http://snovalleystar.com/2008/05/14/hutcherson-vows-another-protest#comment-200] quotes the local pastor who led a demonstration during this year’s Day of Silence, promising more protests during next year’s Day of Silence at this tiny rural Washington State high school.
The Safe Schools Coalition is proud of the brave gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning students at Mt. Si and their wonderful straight classmates who stand up for them every year on the Day of Silence. And at almost every other high school in the region. And we will keep turning out in their defense for as long as Rev. Hutcherson continues to turn out crowds to express disapproval of them.
These courageous students have the same right to safe passage to, from and during school, every day of the year, as does Rev. Hutcherson’s daughter. And their liking someone of their own sex or their not being as masculine or as feminine as someone thinks they should be ought to have absolutely no bearing on their access to an education. They shouldn’t have to pretend and they shouldn’t be made invisible. And they have every right to the civil disobedience of being silent one day out of the year! For Pete’s sake, give everybody writing assignments that day; encourage reading, athletics and arts. Teachers can find a bazillion perfectly appropriate teaching methodologies that don’t require verbal discourse for one day!
As for Mr. Potratz’ analogy … the teacher was obviously just trying to say that children’s free speech doesn’t end at the school house door, no matter how odious their beliefs might be.
That said, comparing forms of oppression is dicey. Gay and transgender young people do get murdered on a regular basis — about one every two months in the U.S. (see http:www.50under30.org) — as did middle schooler Larry King this past February. But their numbers pale relative to the generations of African Americans beaten to death during slavery and lynched since abolition. We appreciate people’s sensitivity about analogies to horrific things like slavery.
The point is, nevertheless, that it’s tragic for schools to ignore racism, homophobia, misogyny, classism or xenophobia. When schools abdicate, students learn anyway. They learn from media and older peers. They learn prejudices and misinformation about people different from themsleves.
The Day of Silence is a protest against teachers’ silence in the face of anti-gay bullying and disrespect. Adults in every school need to do a better job of stopping ALL harassment and of teaching about ALL kinds of diversity.
Hear, hear for teachers like Mr. Potratz and Ms. McCormick who stand up for students, even if the particular words Mr. P used may have been too easily misconstrued. He tried. Besides, some folks may intentionally misconstrue others' words for their own reasons. How many other teachers stand by, afraid to say anything, while students like the boy who killed Larry hurl words and fists and, eventually, bullets.
Let's stand by teachers who care.
The Safe Schools Coalition is proud of the brave gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning students at Mt. Si and their wonderful straight classmates who stand up for them every year on the Day of Silence. And at almost every other high school in the region. And we will keep turning out in their defense for as long as Rev. Hutcherson continues to turn out crowds to express disapproval of them.
These courageous students have the same right to safe passage to, from and during school, every day of the year, as does Rev. Hutcherson’s daughter. And their liking someone of their own sex or their not being as masculine or as feminine as someone thinks they should be ought to have absolutely no bearing on their access to an education. They shouldn’t have to pretend and they shouldn’t be made invisible. And they have every right to the civil disobedience of being silent one day out of the year! For Pete’s sake, give everybody writing assignments that day; encourage reading, athletics and arts. Teachers can find a bazillion perfectly appropriate teaching methodologies that don’t require verbal discourse for one day!
As for Mr. Potratz’ analogy … the teacher was obviously just trying to say that children’s free speech doesn’t end at the school house door, no matter how odious their beliefs might be.
That said, comparing forms of oppression is dicey. Gay and transgender young people do get murdered on a regular basis — about one every two months in the U.S. (see http:www.50under30.org) — as did middle schooler Larry King this past February. But their numbers pale relative to the generations of African Americans beaten to death during slavery and lynched since abolition. We appreciate people’s sensitivity about analogies to horrific things like slavery.
The point is, nevertheless, that it’s tragic for schools to ignore racism, homophobia, misogyny, classism or xenophobia. When schools abdicate, students learn anyway. They learn from media and older peers. They learn prejudices and misinformation about people different from themsleves.
The Day of Silence is a protest against teachers’ silence in the face of anti-gay bullying and disrespect. Adults in every school need to do a better job of stopping ALL harassment and of teaching about ALL kinds of diversity.
Hear, hear for teachers like Mr. Potratz and Ms. McCormick who stand up for students, even if the particular words Mr. P used may have been too easily misconstrued. He tried. Besides, some folks may intentionally misconstrue others' words for their own reasons. How many other teachers stand by, afraid to say anything, while students like the boy who killed Larry hurl words and fists and, eventually, bullets.
Let's stand by teachers who care.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Today, in the News (Or Not?)
Word of California’s decision to lift the ban on gay marriage implemented in 2000 has spread like wildfire today. Though it is true that this decision could set a valuable precedent in terms of legal policy, I can’t help but be incredibly frustrated by the nearsightedness and narrow-mindedness of the gays who tend to dominate these political pushes.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is the perfect example of an assimilationist, visible gay rights organization. The HRC focuses on the legalization of gay marriage to the exclusion of numerous issues that are pressing to many LGBTQ people throughout the nation. This past year the HRC abandoned transgender people in their push to get an ENDA bill passed that would ban discrimination against LGBT individuals in the United States. Apparently, the HRC felt it would be easier to get the bill passed to protect the rights of gays and lesbians if they dropped the “T” and forgot about trans folks’ rights. So they did. Simple as that.
It is what is not so visible in the mainstream news today that betrays the fact that upper- and middle-class gays, as exemplified by organizations like the HRC, could not care less about more disadvantaged LGBT people.
Yesterday, a man named Willie Campbell was sentenced to 35 years in prison for spitting at a police officer in Dallas, Texas. The reason for such a severe sentence, for what could be passed off as an intoxicated slip-up? Campbell is HIV-positive and was therefore charged with assault with a deadly weapon. The arresting officer, Dan Waller, has been quoted as saying “I know it sounds cliché, but this is why you lock someone up, so our streets are safer… Without him out there, our streets are a safer place.”
Wait a second. I thought HIV couldn’t be contracted through saliva? Campbell’s sentence is obviously grounded in a stigmatization of people who are positive, rather than in any rational – or legal, or scientific!– concern that Waller had contracted HIV from Campbell’s spit. Are we going to begin quarantining people with HIV/AIDS now, because the world would be “safer”? The sentencing of Willie Campbell is a classic instance of fear tactic employment by the government, which uses idiotic law enforcement officers like Dan Waller as its pawns. Regimes, like George W. Bush’s, that operate by fear always designate certain bodies as “monstrous” or “scary.” They promise mainstream members of society that they will all be “safe” if those deviants are put behind bars and isolated from society. Trouble is, the only groups of people not categorically classified as “dangerous” seem to be white and upper- or middle-class.
What does all of this have to do with education and LGBT issues in schools? Everything, particularly because many of my students are young, low-income children of color deemed “unsafe” and closely monitored by law enforcement because of their demographic. The NYPD is already just waiting to pounce on if they make one misstep – and most of my students are acutely aware of this. Students in many under-resourced, urban public schools end up becoming less than human, becoming known and tracked by their scores on standardized tests. As I discussed in my first post, public schools often serve as funnels to channel society’s “unwanteds” into prisons. From the moment they are born, or from their second grade year when they missed thirty days of school, or from their fifth grade year when they failed their math class, many students in these schools are branded as “dangerous” or as soon-to-be criminals.
Where were organizations like Lambda Legal and the HRC while Willie Campbell was being sentenced? While Campbell's sexual orientation and sexual practices are unknown, and HIV cannot be considered an exclusively “gay” disease, HIV/AIDS activism has been a cornerstone of LGBT culture and recent history. After wealthy white gays initiated HIV/AIDS activism when the pandemic broke out in the United States in the 1980’s, all of a sudden they can’t seem to find the time, money, or energy to help communites grappling with HIV access resources. In more ways than one, the refusal of HRC and other LGBT organizations to lift a finger to combat HIV stigmatization and improve access to care in impoverished communities – where many severely underresourced schools are located - hurts students like mine.
Gay marriage is a pressing issue for only an elite subset of LGBT individuals. For mainstream gay groups to fail to address the dehumanization of people with HIV/AIDS by the criminal justice system is an utter tragedy. Many of the individuals - some LGBT-identified, some HIV-positive - whose lives are in the crosshairs of this issue attend public schools in the United States, right now.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is the perfect example of an assimilationist, visible gay rights organization. The HRC focuses on the legalization of gay marriage to the exclusion of numerous issues that are pressing to many LGBTQ people throughout the nation. This past year the HRC abandoned transgender people in their push to get an ENDA bill passed that would ban discrimination against LGBT individuals in the United States. Apparently, the HRC felt it would be easier to get the bill passed to protect the rights of gays and lesbians if they dropped the “T” and forgot about trans folks’ rights. So they did. Simple as that.
It is what is not so visible in the mainstream news today that betrays the fact that upper- and middle-class gays, as exemplified by organizations like the HRC, could not care less about more disadvantaged LGBT people.
Yesterday, a man named Willie Campbell was sentenced to 35 years in prison for spitting at a police officer in Dallas, Texas. The reason for such a severe sentence, for what could be passed off as an intoxicated slip-up? Campbell is HIV-positive and was therefore charged with assault with a deadly weapon. The arresting officer, Dan Waller, has been quoted as saying “I know it sounds cliché, but this is why you lock someone up, so our streets are safer… Without him out there, our streets are a safer place.”
Wait a second. I thought HIV couldn’t be contracted through saliva? Campbell’s sentence is obviously grounded in a stigmatization of people who are positive, rather than in any rational – or legal, or scientific!– concern that Waller had contracted HIV from Campbell’s spit. Are we going to begin quarantining people with HIV/AIDS now, because the world would be “safer”? The sentencing of Willie Campbell is a classic instance of fear tactic employment by the government, which uses idiotic law enforcement officers like Dan Waller as its pawns. Regimes, like George W. Bush’s, that operate by fear always designate certain bodies as “monstrous” or “scary.” They promise mainstream members of society that they will all be “safe” if those deviants are put behind bars and isolated from society. Trouble is, the only groups of people not categorically classified as “dangerous” seem to be white and upper- or middle-class.
What does all of this have to do with education and LGBT issues in schools? Everything, particularly because many of my students are young, low-income children of color deemed “unsafe” and closely monitored by law enforcement because of their demographic. The NYPD is already just waiting to pounce on if they make one misstep – and most of my students are acutely aware of this. Students in many under-resourced, urban public schools end up becoming less than human, becoming known and tracked by their scores on standardized tests. As I discussed in my first post, public schools often serve as funnels to channel society’s “unwanteds” into prisons. From the moment they are born, or from their second grade year when they missed thirty days of school, or from their fifth grade year when they failed their math class, many students in these schools are branded as “dangerous” or as soon-to-be criminals.
Where were organizations like Lambda Legal and the HRC while Willie Campbell was being sentenced? While Campbell's sexual orientation and sexual practices are unknown, and HIV cannot be considered an exclusively “gay” disease, HIV/AIDS activism has been a cornerstone of LGBT culture and recent history. After wealthy white gays initiated HIV/AIDS activism when the pandemic broke out in the United States in the 1980’s, all of a sudden they can’t seem to find the time, money, or energy to help communites grappling with HIV access resources. In more ways than one, the refusal of HRC and other LGBT organizations to lift a finger to combat HIV stigmatization and improve access to care in impoverished communities – where many severely underresourced schools are located - hurts students like mine.
Gay marriage is a pressing issue for only an elite subset of LGBT individuals. For mainstream gay groups to fail to address the dehumanization of people with HIV/AIDS by the criminal justice system is an utter tragedy. Many of the individuals - some LGBT-identified, some HIV-positive - whose lives are in the crosshairs of this issue attend public schools in the United States, right now.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
What is "Safe" in Middle School?
Making it through two years teaching English at a public middle school in Brooklyn hardly qualifies me to define what it means to be a radical or queer educator. However, one lesson I have quickly learned is that for teachers anecdotes can be crucial building blocks of community and direction. Keeping that in mind, I’m sharing my experiences and reflections as a 23-year-old, white, dyke-identified, visibly genderqueer, recent Ivy League graduate oriented towards social justice and educational equality.
What my queer and social justice sensibilities have fostered in me over the past two years, more than anything, is a desire to shift away from traditional pedagogical power dynamics. My school’s student population is overwhelmingly non-white, and over ninety percent of students receive government subsidized lunches. My school is also one of innumerable public schools in the United States in which obedience or “being good” seems to be among the most emphasized traits. These facts are not coincidental, as anyone who has taken a glance at the New York City public education system can glean.
Ultimately, I am happy to have landed at my school. It is considered a better place to be, both as a teacher and as a student, than many schools in Brooklyn. But this fact itself attests to the infuriating discrepancies between white- and upper-class-dominated schools pushing their students to challenge what they learn and underfunded schools in which students who are mostly low-income minorities are applauded for forming straight lines in the hallway. The silent lunches imposed upon students at my school when they are disobedient is one manifestation of the overwhelming segregation – in terms of class, race, and the allocation of government funding – of schools in New York City.
Thinkers like Michel Foucault and Angela Davis have gone into detail explaining how schools can serve as pipelines either towards or away from the prison industrial complex. As it stands, even relatively stable schools like mine end up channeling a shocking number of children of color into the criminal justice system via ACS, juvenile detention facilities, or high schools with abysmal graduation rates. Even well-meaning teachers, deans, and assistant principals end up feeling pressure to “get rid” of “problem students.” Threats from teachers, along the lines of “If you don’t sit silently, you’ll be thrown into In-House” or “If you don’t shape up, I’ll have you out of this school before you know it” are commonly heard by students. It is crucial to also consider the disadvantages faced by LGBTQ students in such a culture of condemning “deviant” behavior.
I want to resist these trends to rule by threats and prison-like punishment, but I’ve recently found myself resorting to some teacher authority trips that mortify me. My hope that an individual teacher can affect change, despite being mired in such a convoluted web of oppression, ebbs and flows. I constantly struggle with so-called classroom management in part because I am unsure what a “safe” classroom looks like. The models I have seen of ideal classrooms show students as robots who are terrified to step out of line, let alone shake things up with a controversial opinion.
This lends me to believe that “safe” isn’t a particularly useful word unless its meaning is clearly delineated. I want to push students, and I want every single one of my students to feel “safe” to intellectually challenge themselves and each other. Clearly, I must not allow some students to ruin other students’ learning opportunities, or to discourage other students from participating in class – but how do I do this? Simply banishing students from my classroom to sit in the hallway is not ultimately effective. Tactics such as this and sending students to In-House Suspension only perpetuate the deeply problematic myth that students who are “bad” (and whom the teacher self-authorizes to designate as such) should be weeded out, isolated, and deemed hopeless. One of the most horrifying thoughts I have ever had as a teacher is “I wish that student would just disappear.”
I have begun to notice recently that many of the classroom management “problems” that occur in my classroom have more to do with my attitude and reaction than with student behavior. If I feel particularly impatient and defensive on any given day, I sometimes make the mistake of taking what a student does or says as a personal attack on myself. In these moments, I have lost sight of the fact that though the way I comport and present myself in my classroom has a profound affect, none of what happens in the classroom is about me. I need to be conscious of my own positioning in my classroom, and the fact that my responsibility as a teacher is to meet my students where they are intellectually, emotionally, and developmentally.
When I was able to address a students’ use of the word “faggot” in the hallway without taking it personally, I discovered that he had no idea what the word actually meant. Due to the popularity of “faggot” as an all-purpose insult, I conducted a language study of “faggot” with my classes. The study confirmed, for the most part, what I had already suspected: Most of my students did not associate “faggot” with homophobia but simply recognized it as the most potent insult society-at-large had provided them. An overwhelming number of my students thought that it was specifically an insult to “fat people” because of the linguistic similarities between “fat” and “fag.” Tracing the history of the word “faggot” provided a window into the way words change over time that my students appreciated and paid a great deal of respect.
Teachers who assert that middle schoolers are “too young” or “too immature” to handle complex discussions of identity are either out of their minds or determined to repress students’ intelligence. This belief is the crux of my attempts at radical and queer pedagogy, which involve more than simply inserting LGBT or minority authors into curricula. Queer pedagogy entails pushing students to think critically about issues of power, identity, race, sexuality, gender, and class, and opening (rather than shutting) discourse. This requires a certain amount of respect for students that is difficult for any teacher to maintain due to the threat of having one’s authority undermined.
Therefore, the question is: Is this even possible to attain while simultaneously preparing my students for the standardized tests that determine so much of their educational future?
What my queer and social justice sensibilities have fostered in me over the past two years, more than anything, is a desire to shift away from traditional pedagogical power dynamics. My school’s student population is overwhelmingly non-white, and over ninety percent of students receive government subsidized lunches. My school is also one of innumerable public schools in the United States in which obedience or “being good” seems to be among the most emphasized traits. These facts are not coincidental, as anyone who has taken a glance at the New York City public education system can glean.
Ultimately, I am happy to have landed at my school. It is considered a better place to be, both as a teacher and as a student, than many schools in Brooklyn. But this fact itself attests to the infuriating discrepancies between white- and upper-class-dominated schools pushing their students to challenge what they learn and underfunded schools in which students who are mostly low-income minorities are applauded for forming straight lines in the hallway. The silent lunches imposed upon students at my school when they are disobedient is one manifestation of the overwhelming segregation – in terms of class, race, and the allocation of government funding – of schools in New York City.
Thinkers like Michel Foucault and Angela Davis have gone into detail explaining how schools can serve as pipelines either towards or away from the prison industrial complex. As it stands, even relatively stable schools like mine end up channeling a shocking number of children of color into the criminal justice system via ACS, juvenile detention facilities, or high schools with abysmal graduation rates. Even well-meaning teachers, deans, and assistant principals end up feeling pressure to “get rid” of “problem students.” Threats from teachers, along the lines of “If you don’t sit silently, you’ll be thrown into In-House” or “If you don’t shape up, I’ll have you out of this school before you know it” are commonly heard by students. It is crucial to also consider the disadvantages faced by LGBTQ students in such a culture of condemning “deviant” behavior.
I want to resist these trends to rule by threats and prison-like punishment, but I’ve recently found myself resorting to some teacher authority trips that mortify me. My hope that an individual teacher can affect change, despite being mired in such a convoluted web of oppression, ebbs and flows. I constantly struggle with so-called classroom management in part because I am unsure what a “safe” classroom looks like. The models I have seen of ideal classrooms show students as robots who are terrified to step out of line, let alone shake things up with a controversial opinion.
This lends me to believe that “safe” isn’t a particularly useful word unless its meaning is clearly delineated. I want to push students, and I want every single one of my students to feel “safe” to intellectually challenge themselves and each other. Clearly, I must not allow some students to ruin other students’ learning opportunities, or to discourage other students from participating in class – but how do I do this? Simply banishing students from my classroom to sit in the hallway is not ultimately effective. Tactics such as this and sending students to In-House Suspension only perpetuate the deeply problematic myth that students who are “bad” (and whom the teacher self-authorizes to designate as such) should be weeded out, isolated, and deemed hopeless. One of the most horrifying thoughts I have ever had as a teacher is “I wish that student would just disappear.”
I have begun to notice recently that many of the classroom management “problems” that occur in my classroom have more to do with my attitude and reaction than with student behavior. If I feel particularly impatient and defensive on any given day, I sometimes make the mistake of taking what a student does or says as a personal attack on myself. In these moments, I have lost sight of the fact that though the way I comport and present myself in my classroom has a profound affect, none of what happens in the classroom is about me. I need to be conscious of my own positioning in my classroom, and the fact that my responsibility as a teacher is to meet my students where they are intellectually, emotionally, and developmentally.
When I was able to address a students’ use of the word “faggot” in the hallway without taking it personally, I discovered that he had no idea what the word actually meant. Due to the popularity of “faggot” as an all-purpose insult, I conducted a language study of “faggot” with my classes. The study confirmed, for the most part, what I had already suspected: Most of my students did not associate “faggot” with homophobia but simply recognized it as the most potent insult society-at-large had provided them. An overwhelming number of my students thought that it was specifically an insult to “fat people” because of the linguistic similarities between “fat” and “fag.” Tracing the history of the word “faggot” provided a window into the way words change over time that my students appreciated and paid a great deal of respect.
Teachers who assert that middle schoolers are “too young” or “too immature” to handle complex discussions of identity are either out of their minds or determined to repress students’ intelligence. This belief is the crux of my attempts at radical and queer pedagogy, which involve more than simply inserting LGBT or minority authors into curricula. Queer pedagogy entails pushing students to think critically about issues of power, identity, race, sexuality, gender, and class, and opening (rather than shutting) discourse. This requires a certain amount of respect for students that is difficult for any teacher to maintain due to the threat of having one’s authority undermined.
Therefore, the question is: Is this even possible to attain while simultaneously preparing my students for the standardized tests that determine so much of their educational future?
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