When I was 20 and 21 and lived in India for a year, I wrote a thesis about the burgeoning LGBTQI movement there while enrolled in a college in Delhi. The movie Fire, a lesbian flick, had recently come out (HA! Accidental slip, I swear) and forced the issue of homosexuality, an issue that previously had been rarely discussed and decorously constructed as invisible in polite society. Theaters had been burned in protest, riots had been staged, and everyone was very touchy about the queers. Also, there was this holdover law from the British empire in the Indian Penal Code that made sodomy illegal, and this sanctioned a great deal of police brutality against and extortion from the queer and especially trans community (there was a growing movement to repeal this statute when I was there - it was only finally taken off the books in 2009).
But, like I said, I was writing this thesis, and I traveled all over India with my girlfriend and talked to folks and went to conferences and got threats against my and my girlfriend's bodily integrity taped to the handlebars of her motorcycle and generally acted the radical activist that I was (and am). Which made it all the more shocking to me that it was a professor, a lady professor, and a gay lady professor at my Delhi college who challenged my thesis as "illegitimate."
She hated my thesis. She would ask about it in class and then deride it. She would lodge protests to the principal. She took every opportunity she could to tell me all that I was researching and writing was completely invalid. Homosexuality was NOT, according to her, a legitimate academic topic. And I was confused, I was bewildered, because here was this gay lady, and she was telling me to SHUT UP and GO AWAY about agitating for equal rights. FOR HER. And I was like, uhhhhhh, what the fuck is with desperately trying to get me and you and everyone else all back in the closet? The queers, we cannot pretend we do not exist anymore. We are no longer invisible. There are discussions being had. We're out of the closet. You can't undo this, the dialogue, the movie, or yourself, so why try?
But recently, it has dawned on me how much safety there is in being in the closet, in being a secret. If you're invisible, at least they aren't attacking you.
And it's felt like being under attack of late. I have not managed to go a day reading even just the lightest smattering of news without encountering some heinous, hateful shit about me and my fellow homos.
Specifically, there's been a lot of the queer-while-teaching homophobia. God forbid I get near kids, y'all, because: right? The horrors. Garland Grey wrote a beautiful post about hatred and his experience teaching, and I kinda wanted to weigh in, because I did, after all, Teach While Gay. But I also was lucky, Teaching While Gay, because: 1) I can pass; and 2) I had some really fucking stellar kids.
The thing is, with the passing, I could have gotten away with never saying a thing. But that didn't seem to be an acceptable option, being invisible. Not even if I was being attacked. So I told (and when I was directly questioned, I wouldn't lie; I'd just look at the kid and ask, "Now why would that matter to you?"). The thing is, by the time I was telling kids and we were close enough to have those conversations, we had already established that I loved them and respected them very much. And they loved and respected me back. Basically, I got to be invisible until I was pretty sure I didn't have to be anymore. Still, it was always taking a chance. If I am being honest, I would have to tell you: I am amazed I was never fired for the (revolutionary) shit that was said in my classrooms. I am dumbfounded that I never got complaints, never was rebuked or investigated, and my kids' parents pretty much adored me. I can't really explain that. Like I said: lucky.
But, ok, I never told all the kids. I told, maybe, 90% of them. There were a couple kids that you learned you couldn't tell - the kids who told their parents everything, the kids who tattled, the kids who enjoyed making other people feel small, the really homophobic kids who came from evangelical and usually pentecostal churches (actually, although all my kids in Morocco are Muslim, a religion which (racist) people in this country tend to associate with intolerance, I think every single one of them knows now I am a queer lady. It was in the U.S. I've had to watch my mouth more). But I could take the time to learn the kids, know the kids, build mutual trust; and I wasn't a substitute teacher, I was THEIR teacher, and they were MY babies, and by the time I told, we had already decided to become family; we already belonged to each other.
And also: THERE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN GAY KIDS IN MY CLASSES. I didn't even have to indoctrinate them, guys. They were just there, needing direction and a mentor and someone to listen to them and not judge them and be there for them just like they were any other kid. And essentially what these no-more-queer-teachers advocates are saying is they want more queer teen suicides. They want queer kids to feel more ostracized and alone and freakish and like the only way out is death. It's not enough for the gay kids to just remain in the closet, invisible, anymore; no, homophobes are on the offensive. Going back in the closet for us queer folks isn't even an option. Which is why suicide might look like your lone escape.
I get the impulse of the "It Gets Better" movement, but I am super wary of it, having worked with little people. First, that still puts responsibility on the abused kids to buck up, sack up, and try to be patient while they feel like their souls are being stomped on. I'd rather see a campaign called "Make It Better," where we hold school officials and parents and other kids accountable and responsible for their abuse or enabling of it. Second, I have had some kids with mental illnesses. Fuck, I have a mental illness, and I had my first depressive episode at 14. Telling me it gets better? NOT HELPFUL, LIKE AT ALL. Depression is when you have ceased to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and no one telling you no, really, it's there just trust me, is gonna make you see it. Any policy that revolves around victims' self-help is just not enough.
But finally (ok, there are more reasons that I am wary of this campaign than these three, but I would like to not completely tangent here - more reasons are here) I think this campaign ignores the fact that there may already be gay adults in a position to help these kids. Chances are, this kid had or has a queer teacher! Like me! There is someone in this kid's life who can help! Like, today! Fuck it gets better eventually, there are people in positions to help these kids NOW. Except, they can't, if they are afraid of losing their jobs. Or have been made silent, or invisible, lest they be attacked by the community. There are gay folks amongst us, even in those small towns Dan Savage like to disparage. How can we help them be mentors? How can we help them be safe? Essentially, how can we enable them to help immediately?
I kinda feel like a bunch of youtube videos will not do it. That won't make the Carl Paladino's and the bigoted parents shut up or go away. We need more.
And hey, I don't know how to do this. I don't know the answers. I do know what is not the solution, though. Those gay teachers, they are out there, they are teaching, and they have the chance to save kids' lives. We are not helping kids OR those queer educators by making those gay adults invisible. They're already closest to the kids we need to reach. Now let's start brainstorming about how to make it safe for them, and maybe the queer kids won't have to wait for it to get better. Better should be now.
Please yes. Let's stop telling people they just need to suffer for now, and find ways to stop persecuting the people who could help them. Seriously. Gay teachers will not turn your children Gay if they are not Gay already, PEOPLE. And they might be, even if you don't know it, because they are afraid to tell you!
ReplyDeleteI remember several years back, someone told me that Sesame Street was now bad because they were teaching tolerance of gays. And even though at the time, I was still at least kind of religious (well I was semi-practicing at the time, anyway), I still had the response of, "What is wrong with that?" Teaching us to accept people and tolerate differences instead of advocating hatred and bigotry and persecution? WHAT is wrong with that? I haven't ever seen anything wrong with it.
I don't understand people. We call ourselves civilized, but we are still SO afraid of what we do not know or understand, that the fear rules, and our gut response is violent rejection. Poke it with a stick. Set it on fire. KEEP IT AWAY.
People are people. That's what I've always believed. I wish more people believed that instead of subscribing to stereotypes and engaging in fear-mongering.
I find it interesting (but I don't know what to make of it) that Dan Savage told the White House to shove its hope up its ass, and go either "make it better. Right now." or "have the simple human decency to shut the fuck up."
ReplyDeleteIs he just mad at them for using his tagline? Or is he tacitly admitting that just saying 'buck up' isn't very helpful? Granted, the President could be doing more. But it's not like the federal government is the only entity capable of making the world better in any possible way, Dan.
Ughhh, so many of the responses I've read to that video project have been awful and point-missing. A widely-read blogger in my genre recently posted an It Gets Better entry about all the torments he endured as a kid, and how he tried to kill himself over it; he got like two hundred comments from people saying how glad they were that his suicide attempts were unsuccessful.
ReplyDeleteGREAT. THANKS.
I guess I shouldn't be angry at people who are trying to be compassionate, but really? Too incandescent with fury to even formulate a response or an explanation of why it is misguided.
I suppose the problem with "it can be better now" is that it won't always. If you'd told me that in highschool, I would have laughed in your face. I was told that it would improve eventually because, even with great teachers, they can't force everyone to behave well. They can't make bullying stop completely, they can just take steps to prevent it getting violent, overt and unmanageable. Over here, all the classes are filled to bursting and schools only have one counselor on staff.
ReplyDeleteIf I had come out during my teen years, I know what would have happened. My life would have been hell on earth. I had to wait it out.
The thing is, this isn't the sort of campaign that is designed to do anything but make teenagers feel like they're not alone. It's not suited to the purpose of providing closer, personal support. It's about awareness and hopefully inspiring some people who aren't a part of the community to care about it.
The youtube videos won't do it because they can't. What they do is very important because I know so many gay people I went to school with who were just hanging on until their time was over and they could go out and be themselves free from catholic schooling. To know that you're not the only one living it, that's important. It means someone else made it and maybe you can too.
The big changes, they won't happen quickly enough. They can't happen quickly enough. This is a bandaid on a gaping wound and that's all it can be.
And with the mentoring thing... If you go to a religious school, do you think a lot of kids are going to risk coming out until their church does a 180 on homosexuality? Some will. Others either don't know they're gay or don't want to admit it to themselves yet or simply won't take the risk.
I love the campaign because it says something positive and makes it abundantly clear that there are many of us out there and we survived and we care. Why throw out something good to try to do something else good that has a slightly different aim?
Why not do both?
It's clearly inspired people to think more widely and try, tentatively, to bring forth some positive social changes. Youtube videos and queer teachers (in the US, mind, you can be gay and teach here, though you might not want to admit it) and mentoring. Sounds good to me. I hope they never take the videos down, I know they would have meant a lot to me in highschool.
jerkfacemcgee, considering that the Obama administration has been saying things like this - http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/76517 - Obama can bite me, and THEN shut the fuck up.
ReplyDeleteIany, I am not saying the campaign will do nothing, and I hope it will do something, but it is certainly not enough. You said no one can stop bullying completely, and maybe that's true, but I think you underestimate how much teachers can change things. I also think you are working with the default of, "Well, children are just cruel."
I reject that children are cruel. They don't have to be cruel. They can be taught OTHERWISE. And many of them are just not cruel! I wasn't. Most of my kids weren't. And while I am sure "It Gets Better," can help some gay kids, but what is it saying about ALL kids? That we can expect no better from them? That we will expect no better from them?
The point of the post was to say this IS only a band-aid on a gaping wound. There is something I find highly suspicious about a bunch of adults talking at gay kids about How Shit Is, instead of listening. I have a problem with adults who think the entirety of their activism is over once they are done telling a confessional life story. I have a problem with NOT HOLDING BULLIES AND ENABLERS ACCOUNTABLE. I think it's a little too close to victim-blaming.
And I have a problem with erasing gay teachers, because we need help and support and to know we won't lose our livelihoods, too.
Hey, because I am a law nerd, you know what this reminds me of? The Velásquez Rodríguez case in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. It is well-established international law that nations not only have an obligations to not themselves violate their human rights, but they have an affirmative duty to prosecute and punish human rights offenders, to not enable others to violate human rights, to not to create a culture of impunity for violators. And frankly, if we can expect the nations of the world to not create cultures of impunity, I think we have every right to demand and expect it in our schools, for our children.
Gayle --- I agree with you re: Obama. I was just pointing out the inconsistency in Savage saying "YOU go and actively make things better, while I make a bunch of YouTube videos about how happy my spouse and I are."
ReplyDeletejerkfacemcgee, TOTALLY.
ReplyDelete"Well, children are just cruel."
ReplyDeleteI've got to admit, I resent this a bit. I've been reading and replying to your stuff for a while now, so I think you know I'm also an educator (of a sort). I don't try to make generalisations about groups of people unless their engineers* and I like kids. I do think most people are fundamentally good.
But, I also live in a country that stole children because they thought it was the "right" thing to do just about a generation ago. It took years of work before attitudes about that changed. I have cynicism that is not entirely unfounded.
I don't think you can generalise how we approach international law to how we approach communities neatly. Especially since what we hope for in a community is not to punish the bad out of people (punishment as a disincentive doesn't work unless you are 100% sure you're going to be caught) but rather to change how a community approaches minority groups such as, in this case, people who are queer. You may not be able to make that homophobe stop being a homophobe. I've been terrified of people who never laid a hand on me because their demeanor made it quite clear that the only thing between me and bad shit was some rules.
If we treat it as two sides, you have queers and their supporters next to non-supporters and people who are ambivalent. I still argue that this campaign is important because it has sparked some thinking and made it clear that on the queer-friendly side there are other people who made it through while they were waiting for social change that didn't come fast enough.
But: in some places it is happening, like here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGdx8yPybGI
So, I'm not ignoring that active participation is important. At all. I'm just arguing that criticism of the campaign ignores that it has a very wide scope (international) isn't entirely US-centric (which most things I see on the web and in blogs are) and offers a little succour to people who aren't going to get that help they need until after it comes in vogue.
I am again referring to religious schools, which are less likely to even bring the issue up. I was not taught safe sex past a dictionary definition of a condom, pill and IUD, let alone whether things like oral sex could give you an std.
I did have a gay teacher going through school and he got hazed so hideously badly by all the kids. Yeah, the school tried to teach them better but it was a whole lot of kids and we didn't have a whole lot of funding or even enough people who cared. I know I'm much less hopeful about a movement getting started and being supported than you are but that doesn't mean I don't want it to happen. I just don't want to discard any sort of press which can do us some good because even though I live in the gayest city in Australia, I also live in a country where our PM is an atheist, a woman, in a defacto relationship and still thinks that marriage is between a man and a woman.
Highschools don't have gay-straight alliances here. People are pushing and getting nowhere fast, even with a political party on our side (the Greens). Active change might happen in the cities, given some time. It won't be in the burbs until I'm old, if then. If you're raised in a Hillsong household... You're not coming out until you leave home (unless you want to be whisked off somewhere to get reprogrammed on the sly).
Iany, I wasn't ascribing the "children are just cruel" to YOU, but to a movement that seems to accept that they will be. And I never said "It Gets Better" was problematic and thus we should burn the whole thing down. I just said it wasn't a solution. I really hope it helps some kids. It just doesn't go far enough, and we need to do more.
ReplyDeleteI also didn't really understand how the cruelness segued into the Lost Generation.
And while I do not know that much about the situation in your country, I do know a thing or two about kids. Maybe even three things (I rarely compliment myself, but I was an AWESOME teacher). And I am saying we need to hold the right people accountable, our investment cannot begin and end at talking at kids in a youtube video, and MOSTLY I am also saying that we need to make sure gay teachers are not petrified to come out and be mentors and help other queer kids/openly fight homophobia.
I just wanted to say I like this post! We definitely had gay staff at my Catholic school, and they were definitely in the closet or they would have been fired immediately. Gay kids had to stay in the closet because you could get kicked out if you came out. Unless your parents donated a lot of money to the school.
ReplyDeleteI also think you are working with the default of, "Well, children are just cruel."
ReplyDeleteYou actually did ascribe it to me.
And the reason I make a link in this case is due to the fact that, while an entirely different crime, the Stolen Generation is a blazing example of how slow change is and how awful actions can be condoned within a society, specifically mine. They are not related past that.
I just get frustrated whenever people want to change campaigns which fit their purpose pretty damn well, instead of supporting them and promoting different campaigns that fill other gaps.
I don't like one movement being treated as an end, when it is a beginning.
Iany, we're on the same page here. My problem is that people DO treat this as an end. And I think it's really problematic. But like I said, I never claimed we should burn the whole thing down.
ReplyDeleteAnd: it is revolutionary, what can be done in a classroom, in the space of a school year. It isn't "It Gets Better," it IS better.