creating a scenario

Something to Talk About: How are LGBTQ People Spoken About in Schools?

This discussion serves to help students look at the ways in which the LGBTQ community talked about (or not talked about) in schools. Throughout this discussion, students will think about the emphasis often placed on limiting or eliminating hate speech in schools as a means to encourage a culture of respect. As a school com- munity, we need to be talking about the LGBTQ community in a positive way in schools, particularly in curri- cula, and not just limiting the negative ways in which the LGBTQ community is talked to or about.

After presenting the above introductory lens to your students, read what we have provided below aloud to your students, which includes the following:

• Excerpts from Cris Mayo’s article “The Tolerance That Dare Not Speak Its Name.” These excerpts are very academic and challenging, and should be reserved for more intellectually advanced classes.

• Paraphrases of “The Tolerance That Dare Not Speak Its Name” quotes (in italics) that are appropri- ate for any high school student.

• Short case studies that illustrate an important point of discussion. Please note that topic #3 is pre- sented without a case study.

• Discussion questions to be used following the reading of an excerpt or short story.

Topic #1: Is Being Nice Enough?

Story

John, a student who is known to be homophobic, screamed ‘faggot’ at Steve, an openly gay student, in the hallway of their school yesterday. Ms. Santos, a teacher at the school, heard John and told him to come to her office. She gave him a warning, telling him to “be nice to other students or he would get detention next time.” John went back to class and never called Steve a ‘faggot’ again… but he did give Steve dirty looks for the rest of the day.

Questions

• Do you think emphasizing being nice only covers up the problem? Do you think more needed to be done to help John respect Steve?

• How effective do you think Ms. Santos was in making the school a better place for Steve? • Does changing the way people talk change the way they think or is more necessary to end discrimi-

nation? • What’s more important – changing behavior or changing motive? Do you think changing behavior

is an effective way of changing motive?

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Quotes to Consider

Encouraging students to “be nice” is just a way to hide problems. It does not help us get down to the bottom of real issues and problems, like why someone would be homophobic in the first place. Efforts to be nice, like using the correct words to address minority groups and using sensitive language, allow people in power to forget that real inequality still exists between straight and LGBTQ students.

Civility, then, is a practice that masks differences, not a practice that enables discourse across difference. Further, practices of civility, such as using the correct words to address minority groups and using sensitive language, enable dominant people to protect their own property interest in the source of their dominance. By keeping up the appearance of being cultivated and sensitive, they seem less culpable for inequalities. By gain- ing a sense of themselves as having currency with issues of diversity, they maintain the veneer of a cosmopoli- tan person in t he know, a kind of tourist of inequality who need never fully engage with the degree to which their own property and investment in saying the right words maintains the inequalities they can converse their way around (Mayo, 2006, p. 35 – 36).

Topic #2: Challenging Our Understanding of the Word ‘Respect’

Stories

During the first week of classes at a high school in Brooklyn, Mr. Roth asked his students to share with the class one thing they would like the class to know about them. Amara raised her hand and shared that she was raised a Buddhist and that her faith was very important to her. Mr. Roth replied by saying that we should respect ev- eryone’s religious beliefs. Zach raised his hand and asked how he could be expected to respect Amara’s beliefs when he did not know anything about Buddhism. Mr. Roth said that Zach should respect her beliefs nonethe- less.

During an Amnesty International after school meeting, Ms. Hansen asked her students to share with the group one thing they would like the class to know about them. Jordan was asked to go first and shared that her sibling identifies as trans and that she loves her sibling no matter what. Ms. Hansen said that it is important to respect all sexual orientations and identities. Marcus then raised his hand and said that he meant no disrespect but he did not understand how he was supposed to respect something he knew nothing about (i.e. being trans). Ms. Hansen said he should respect everyone nonetheless.

Questions

• How do you feel about what Ms. Hansen said? How do you feel about what Marcus said? • Can Marcus and Amara be expected to respect ideas they don’t understand? Why or why not? • Is there merit to “respect that has no particular aim” (see quote below for reference) or do people

need to respect specific things about specific people for it to be meaningful and genuine respect?

Quotes to Consider

Schools seem to prefer to teach students to have respect for everyone instead of teaching about particular groups that have failed to be respected over the course of history. We need to acknowledge that some groups have consistently had to demand respect while other groups are simply respected from day one.

Character education, for instance, has been embraced by conservatives who argue that the historical/political specificity of multicultural education emphasizes social fractures over commonalities. Rather than educating students about oppression, conservatives want to see all children taught values that have no particular context and respect that has no particular aim (Mayo, 2006, p. 38)

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Topic #3: ‘Where Are All the Gay People?’

Story

Ms. Wakowsky’s 11th grade English class was having a discussion about Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, their most recent reading assignment. Leslie raised her hand and asked the class if they knew that Virginia Woolf had a female lover named Vita Sackville-West. Anja replied by asking whether that even mattered. Ms. Wa- kowsky pointed out that another book by Woolf, Orlando, was about a character that underwent a sex change and Woolf’s own sexuality might have prompted her to address such subject material. Anja replied saying that her only concern was whether Woolf was a good writer or not.

Questions (see quotes below)

• When we talk about including LGBTQ people in curricula, is it important that we also emphasize their sexual orientation when teaching about their work? Do we need to emphasize Virginia Woolf’s sexual orientation when teaching about her work to better understand her work or does emphasiz- ing her sexual orientation distract from her great literary contributions?

• Are there other historical figures you could debate about the way Leslie and Anja debated about Virginia Woolf i.e. whether it matters that the public know the person’s sexual orientation? (exam- ples could be Harvey Milk, Lady Gaga, Rosie O’Donnell, or Ricky Martin)

• In discussing people’s sexual orientation in regards to their work or place in history, do we make their sexual orientation too important?

• If we include information about marriages or love lives’ in heterosexual people’s historical biogra- phies and then do not do that for LGBTQ people, do we send the message that it is not acceptable to talk about LGBTQ people and their sexual orientation?

• Do you think people can ever really respect the LGBTQ community if they do not have genuine information about the LGBTQ community?

• Do you think the absence of LGBTQ people in curricula is more or less problematic than hate speech? Do you think those problems are related?

Quotes to Consider

Though certain schools may have policies that do not allow people to say ‘bad’ things about LGBTQ people, school curricula often fails to say anything ‘good’ about LGBTQ people. Information about LGBTQ accom- plishments is absent from history books, positive information about (safe) LGBTQ sex is absent from sexual education courses, and so on. How can we expect schools to be a respectful environment for LGBTQ students when no one is talking about LGBTQ students in positive ways. Protection from discrimination does not end discrimination; helping people learn about a disenfranchised community might. Covering homophobia by making sure students stop using homophobic language in front of teachers would be an improvement, of course, but it is not a solution to the problem of near total curricular silence on sexuality in public schools.

Further, by making discrimination against sexual minorities against the rules, but not part of the curricula, schools do not need to engage in substantial discussion of why homophobia is so prevalent, what it means to be a sexual minority, and so on. Official silence can continue to do the work of homophobic harassment by trivializing the experiences of sexual minorities and minimizing representation of sexual minority issues” (Mayo, 2006, p. 37).

In Maryland and Massachusetts, as I described earlier, antidiscrimination policies not only stand in for more substantial education of the school community, but also prohibit more substantial curricular coverage of gay and lesbian issues. Simply providing a policy of protection from discrimination does not, after all, end dis- crimination. There is a loud silence in curricula that indicates to all students that there are some people in the school who do not deserve to be spoken about and that even some interested in protecting sexual minority youth appear willing to use a community agreement on civil silence as protection (Mayo, 2006, p. 40).

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Still, concern with liability or desire to stop harassment through simple codes do not fully educate about and against bias. It is not enough to stop bad words, education is also about explaining and exploring why homo- phobic bias has so prominent a place in public schools. Covering over the simmering homophobia by making sure students stop using homophobic language in front of teachers would be an improvement, of course, but it is not a solution to the problem of near total official silence on sexuality in public schools (Mayo, 2006, p. 40).

References:

Mayo, C. (2006). The tolerance that dare not speak its name. In M. Boler (Ed.), Democratic dialogue in educa- tion: Troubling speech, disturbing silence (pp. 33-47). New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing.

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