Teach the teachers and the students

Dustin Johnson/ Roundup

 

Have you ever been afraid to make a comment because it would expose your sexuality?

 

Some people may answer that they share a fear of ridicule and teasing from their peers or their teachers.

 

On Nov. 4 the Gay Straight Alliance club sponsored Teach the Teachers, panel in The Great Hall.  The objective was to brainstorm ways to make college campuses a safe and welcoming environment for anyone who is Lesbian Bisexual Gay Transgender Queer.

 

The first three rows of chairs in The Great Hall were lined with anonymous statements written by those who had a common anxiety toward publicly identifying their sexuality.

 

Two Pierce professors, two graduates and one current student, shared their experiences, both positive and negative, about how their sexual identities garnered attention from professors and peers at Pierce and voiced their own views on the line between the hetero-normative and homophobic approaches toward LBGTQ individuals.

 

“Sometimes I still freak out about coming out,” said panelist Chris Murphy, a Pierce graduate and student at Cal State Los Angeles.  “I want to pave the way so other people have the opportunity to come out.  I want to help create those safe spaces.”

 

Richard Follett, professor of English, was the first in the panel to draw a line between homophobia and a hetero-normative perspective and that some individuals are hesitant to voice their opinions on homosexuality for fear of being labelled as bigots.

 

“A lot of things that can be perceived as homophobia by those of us who are gay and lesbian seem to be ignorance of the hetero-normative people and they don’t know what they’re doing sometimes,” said Follet.  “They may not know some of the things that we know because our perspectives are different.”

 

He described an experience in which a former student of his requested to not attend a class discussion of the Bible and homosexuality.

 

When Follett asked why, the student replied, “I don’t want to be called a bigot and I don’t want to be called a homophobe and I don’t want to be called a bully.”

 

“I wrote back, ‘Nobody gets called those names in my class anyway,'” said Follett.

 

Double Standards

 

From television programs to inside classrooms, people have strong biases of the gay community.

 

“‘Will & Grace’ runs for nine seasons and you don’t see the two men kiss until the very last season.  But you do see the two heterosexual women kiss quite often–at least five or six times–during the season.  Why?  

 

Because it turns men on and gets men to tune in and not tune out.  Even with heterosexual women, they’ll sit there and say the same thing that they get repulsed when gay men kiss but not repulsed when two lesbian women kiss.”

–Follett.

 

In one of Pakhchian’s sociology classes, the professor asked how many of the students were homophobic and five immediately raised their hand.  

 

She spoke up and asked why they so readily identified themselves and homophobes.

 

“One of the students said, ‘I can’t stand it when I see two fags kissing.  But lesbians are cool.  They’re fine.’  I’m sorry, I don’t particularly want to watch anybody kissing.

–Pakhchian.

 

In the Classroom

 

Feeling safe and protecting others around you are two of the concerns professors choose to take on. 

 

“Depending on the class, I decide if I have to come out or not because sometimes I just want to be a student.”

–Murphy

 

“I’ve had a lot of classes in which when we’re talking about attraction the teachers will say, ‘Girls, what do you find attractive in boys?’ and that automatically throws me out of the category. When I decide to answer on the boys’ side, everyone turns and they know that I’m the lesbian in the class.  All you need to do is ask, ‘What do you find attractive in a person?'”

–Pakhchian.

 

“Two men literally can’t walk hand-in-hand and sometimes [students] giggle about that and I’ll ask them, ‘What’s the laughter about?'”  Sometimes it’s about discomfort for them and we’ll talk about it.”

–McKeever.

 

“Usually when a homosexual topic comes up, I generally don’t let the teacher skip over it.”

–Kagwada.

 

“I had a [sociology] teacher that […] refused to go over the chapter that was specifically based on homosexuality.  It was the only chapter we skipped all semester.  I tried to start conversation saying, ‘Why aren’t we going over that chapter?’ and he just said, ‘It’s not important.’  In other classes I just try to keep the conversation going […] sometimes a few comments come back and forth and it’s better than nothing.”

–Pakhchian

 

“What happens when […] people start basically placing bets just to see what gender I am, what restroom I’m going to go to.  It really can ruin your academic experience.  You want to know that you’re going into a safe space.”

–Murphy

 

Power of the 

Pronoun

 

Gay, straight or somewhere in the middle, we are all the same– human beings. 

 

“I’m insistent that when referring to people, my students use the pronoun ‘who.’  People are not ‘that’ and people are not ‘which.'”

–Follett.

 

“I kind of go against grammar and say ‘they, their, them,’ which I feel like encompasses all my different identities anyway.  Or you can say ‘Chris.”

–Murphy.