Fear and Loathing on Public Transit

As a student teacher on a budget, I use public transit nearly every day. Buses are awkward spaces to occupy because you are usually jammed uncomfortably close to all kinds of people you don’t know. I tend to get a lot of glares, scowls, death stares and the like from young men and old ladies. Once I was roughly shoved and another time, a guy made a comment to me that prompted the bus driver to pull over and kick him off the bus.

I follow all the rules of bus etiquette regarding backpacks, cell phones, giving up your seat, and not being smelly. This leads me to the conclusion that they are glaring, scowling, death staring, and shoving because of my gender expression. So when I ride the bus to school or to my practicum, my senses are on high-alert.

I was coming home from practicum today on the subway when I could hear the annoying hum of an electronic melody that just wouldn’t stop. I thought someone must be playing a videogame without headphones and managed to ignore it. After a few minutes of this, some guy lost his patience and yelled “Your fucking cell phone is ringing, asshole!” A tension-filled silence hung in the air after the cell phone ringer was switched off. I glanced back to spot the man with the rage issues and hoped he wouldn’t end up sitting near me. Thankfully, he didn’t sit near me. He got off at the same stop as me, though. And he decided to ride up three stories on the escalator standing beside me (in the walking lane), talking to me the whole time like he knew me. He talked to me like I was a fellow male.

I know when straight men are relating to me as a man because they use words like “buddy,” “dude,” or “man”, speak with a certain tone and ‘insider’ humour, and use a certain body language that is different from when they think I am female and are either condescending or flirtatious. It feels like I’ve gained access to the all-exclusive league of men. Normally, I love this feeling because it means I’ve passed.

But this time, riding that escalator, I was scared shitless of what would happen if this creepy man with rage issues realized I wasn’t quite what he thought. There’s nothing quite like the dysphoria that takes over the face of cisgender folks when they realize they were interacting with you as though you were male only to discover you are actually someone quite different than they thought. Some get embarrassed and apologetic. Others get downright disgusted. The cell phone ordeal gave me a pretty clear clue of what kind of reaction this guy would have. If I could just make it up the three flights of stairs without giving away the secret of my feminine voice, I was pretty certain there wouldn’t be an issue. He cracked weird jokes, and I smirked and nodded where I should have laughed. Where responses were required, I mumbled a few words from as far back in my throat as I could manage. We made it to the exit of the station and, lucky me, when we parted he was none the wiser. I felt like I’d dodged a bullet. Maybe nothing would have happened. Who knows? Sometimes the not-knowing can be almost as scary as the knowing full-well.

Who’s really confused, here?

I find the language that the straight folks in my program use to talk about queer folks pretty interesting, because its so different from the kind of language I’m used to hearing queer folks use to describe themselves. Case in point: the idea of “sexual confusion.” Someone thought that I must be “confused” about my gender because I do not always identify as male or female. My response included three points: 1) I am not confused; 2) members of the queer community who are uncertain about an aspect of their sexual identity tend to identify as “questioning” not “confused;” and 3) the term “confused” can be hurtful because queer people who are coming out are often told that they are not queer, but confused, which delegitimizes the significance of their own self-identification.

This third point is also significant when it comes to pronouns. My colleagues tend to use the pronoun that corresponds with the gender a person was assigned at birth rather than the gender a person actually identifies with – even when that self-identification is 100% evident

At one point, someone adamantly claimed, based entirely on a gut reaction, that there was no such thing as transgender children.

And it’s shocking how many of my classmates had no idea what “intersex” was.

Lots of anguish was expressed about not knowing the correct terminology to use…

In my experience, if anyone is confused about sexuality, it’s generally the heterosexuals.

Dialogue and Education

The discussions about social justice in my tutorial have been getting pretty heated. People are getting downright emotional. Things are getting seriously personal. Nobody feels quite comfortable. And it must be interfering with the educative process. Enter my tutorial instructor with the rational solution – a presentation on dialogue (or rather, on how to conduct oneself properly during tutorial!)

What could possibly be problematic with dialogue? If only we could engage in calm, rational dialogue, we could arrive at fair solutions to all the world’s problems, n’est pas? Yes, through dialogue, we shall all become enlightened. Empowered by reason, there will be equality for everyone.

To those who say the Age of Enlightenment is over, I say – give it time! Be patient for another century or so, and one fine day we will arrive at the conclusion that you are in fact human, despite the fact that you are so different from me. Trust me. Just you wait and see.

…Errr. Looking around the table, I see those with whom I am to engage in dialogue. There are 10 straight people and I am the only queer. Well the playing field for this dialogue isn’t exactly level, is it? Thanks to these numbers, queer issues might not be considered a legitimate topic for dialogue in the first place. I am at the mercy of the straight people to decide whether queer issues are even on the agenda. And my experience tells me they probably aren’t since many of the folks around this table are reluctant to engage with the topic – its decidedly “not pertinent to the educative process.” No worries, surely I can win them over through the power of reason.

Trouble is, many of their brains are thinking using the assumptions and concepts from dominant discourses (which are homophobic and heteronormative, so the odds are further stacked against me). Within these discourses, there are very rational ways to explain why there are two sexes (male and female) and male-female sexual partnerships are the natural pattern for all humans to follow. Makes sense, right? Well, not to me. I’m not going to spend time discussing the merits and critiques of both perspectives on gender and sexual identity here (I don’t feel like justifying my right to be considered a normal human being right now, thanks). But I will say that we are not operating on the same assumptions nor with the same understandings of crucial words like ‘natural’ and ‘gender.’ The very foundation of the dominant culture rests on there being distinct men and women, who each embody certain characteristics and occupy certain roles. I’m operating on assumptions that are so radically different (but still highly sophisticated and logical) from the dominant culture and most of the people around the table, that for them to engage with my ideas, they need to accept a significant degree of discomfort and trouble the very foundational ideas of their culture and society (such as: what if the line between male and female isn’t so clear cut? How would you understand your identity then?).

This is where another problem with dialogue kicks in. People feel emotions. Cue the fear. Or the guilt. Or the defensive anger. We’re taught that we can use reason to control these emotions, so they don’t cloud our judgment. I’m not sure we should be controlling our emotions so much as understanding where they come from and why they might be problematic. I think we can do this to an extent, but I don’t think it comes easily to many. In fact, I think this is a skill that most of us need to be taught in order to participate in dialogue effectively. And sadly it’s a skill that by and large isn’t currently taught in public schools. So now, if my fellow interlocutors are to understand what I am contributing to the dialogue, I’ll probably have to spend time on getting them up to speed on the latest theories about emotions and education, like pedagogies of discomfort and crisis, and how we can navigate emotions in educative ways. And you know what? I could do that…if I were the instructor! But I’m not.

Rather than the heterosexuals doing some intellectual and emotional heavy lifting, it’s so much easier for them to simply cast the queer voices as less legitimate and on the fringe. The path of least resistance is so tempting that queer voices tend to end up being brushed aside as less than relevant.

So things get heated. People get emotional. It starts to get personal. And guess what identity groups end up bearing the brunt of the emotional burden (and subsequently, guess whose ability to thrive in this educative process is most likely to suffer). And yet we are told to control our anger, because otherwise… we aren’t following the rules of dialogue. And we’ll be seen as disrupting the educative process for everyone else.

On non-existence

End-of-course evaluations are a common practice at any university. They mostly involve responding to a series of questions by shading in a box. I filled out one such form today and the first question asked me to indicate my sex by shading in either the box for male or the box for female. I’ve been filling in these forms at this institution since 2005 and have responded to this question in a variety of ways. I’ve shaded in both boxes, neither box, the female box, and the male box. Sometimes I add a comment, such as “Why?” Today I just circled the entire question and wrote “Fuck you” next to it. It depends on my mood, really.

I showed my paper to the person sitting next to me, with a grin on my face. This sparked an informal discussion about why this data was being collected in the first place. Someone mentioned that the data might show that student satisfaction with a teacher can vary according to the student’s sex. Perhaps a teacher who makes a lot of sexist jokes wouldn’t be very popular with women, but the men might love him. I mentioned that I know a lot of men who are offended by sexism (not to mention, a lot of women who aren’t!). I also asked if it wouldn’t be more efficient to just ask students to rate whether they felt the teacher made an effort to be inclusive of differences in the classroom.

What followed next was a discussion on how the survey might be altered. One student suggested there be three options: Male, Female, and Other. Or maybe students could mark where they fit on a continuum. Or maybe the question could be deleted from the survey altogether. Nobody said it out loud, but I’m quite certain some were thinking that the two options were fine as they were, and no doubt they thought this discussion was ludicrous!

What I find ludicrous is that the bureaucratic system of my university refused to recognize my existence! Let me qualify that. They recognize my existence when I owe them tuition fees. Incidentally, they don’t ask me to declare a sex when they ask for my money. (Wouldn’t it be lovely if that were a requirement…”I can’t pay because according to your system, I don’t exist!”). But on that piece of paper it was crystal clear: I do not exist within the realm of what is human, unless I declare myself to be male or female.

Relating to the abyss

The Abyss

“Really, teachers are powerless to change broader social structures. Yes, you have to look into the abyss. But then you have to step back – and party! Some people get stuck staring into the abyss. But life can’t be all doom and gloom.” These are the pragmatic words of my tutorial instructor to my teacher education class. The abyss, in this context, represented all the social problems that impact the classroom – poverty, drugs, alcohol, abuse, racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. ad infinitum.

His assumptions are revealing of his positionality, experience, and perspective. He’s assuming one can actually choose when they ‘look into the abyss.’ And I suppose he has generally been able to choose when he will contemplate poverty, racism, homophobia, and other social justice issues, because as a middle-class, straight, white man he enjoys a relative place of privilege.

People who don’t enjoy this privilege can’t simply choose to step back from the abyss and party, because the world won’t let them. The abyss is in your face, and maybe sometimes you get to look away and party, but sooner or later your face will get shoved back towards the abyss when somebody shouts the word faggot (and they are talking to you), or when someone asks why you have to flaunt your sexuality (when you just want to hold your partner’s hand), or when you have to go pee but no matter what bathroom you go into, people give you dirty looks and want to know what you’re doing there. And if you dare to feel upset about it, or, someone forbid, speak out about it, well then, you have an attitude problem. Why can’t you just look away? You’re spoiling my party!

The benefit of having your face held up to the abyss is that your eyes start to adjust to the darkness and you begin to see what its really made of and how it all works. You begin to understand how power works – and that we really aren’t powerless. Every action and every word serves to either reinforce the way things are or nudge the world toward change. Even ‘doing nothing’ is an act of power that reinforces the way things are. There is no neutral, no powerless act or word, no middle ground here. Social structures begin to change when enough of us are nudging in the same general direction. It’s often a process that moves at a glacial pace, but that doesn’t mean we are powerless.

Stepping back from the abyss, looking away from it, or ‘partying’ as it were, is also an exercise of power and thus an act that needs to be guided by ethics. We need to enjoy life, but we also need to constantly question the cost of our enjoyment. I think that this is one of the fundamental purposes of education – to help us look into the abyss, make sense of what we see, and choose how to act.

I worry about the effects of my tutorial instructor’s words to my class. Since schools function in our society to reproduce knowledge and culture, teachers in particular are in a position of power. It’s really dangerous to tell a room full of teacher candidates that they are, in fact, powerless. I’ll take this as a lesson of how not to teach.

How to be a queer activist (?)

activist

Today I had an ‘inspiring’ conversation with my tutorial instructor. He said, “You can spend your life fighting the battle against ‘isms’ if you want to, but you
will lose.” Since September, he’s peppered me with other variations on the uplifting theme, “One person can’t change the world.” He tends to speak to me in the paternalistic way that only a straight, white, balding, middle class male can pull off so well. So far, I’ve been tempted to not only ignore his advice to give up on fighting oppression, but prove him wrong by creating change.

Only trouble is, I’ve been fighting oppression for years, and how often can I say I’ve made a real difference? I could probably give you about 50 inspiring examples of stories with happy endings – times when I really did help change someone’s relationship to the heterosexual/homosexual or masculine/feminine binary. And I could give you about 500 depressing stories where I failed. That’s not a great batting average. It’s exhausting to fight, fight, fight and meet with so little success.

So as much as I hate to admit it, there is some truth to what my tutorial instructor is saying. I can spend my life fighting oppression, but generally speaking, I will lose. I thought he was telling me this because he’s a heterosexist homophobe who thinks the status quo is the way things should be, so I should stop trying to change it. He’s a Christian and a conservative, so I don’t think I’m that far off the mark. But even so, I believe most people have good intentions. I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s also telling me to give this activism business a rest so that I will enjoy a decent quality of life.

He raises an interesting point.

An activist has to balance the need to transform society with their own need to enjoy a certain quality of life. I used to feel so miserable that I figured sacrificing my own quality of life for the sake of the greater good wasn’t a big deal – my life as a queer in a heterosexist, homophobic world was going to be pretty lousy anyway. It might as well be lousy for a purpose. But somewhere along the line, I started enjoying life despite all the heterosexism and homophobia. And in a way, what could be more radically activist than that? What could be more radically activist than saying to my oppressors, “You have not and will not defeat me,” with a big fat genuine smile on my face? And besides, what kind of activist can I be if I’m curled up on the floor in the fetal position? In this way, my own survival becomes crucial to my project as an activist, just as my project as an activist is crucial to my own survival.

So how does a queer activist survive in this world? I’ve been seeking answers from other queer activists. One answer: “Pick your battles.” This means, counterintertuitive though it may be, that sometimes someone will say something heterosexist or homophobic and I need to just let it go. My initial reaction is to call this strategy cowardly, lazy, and unethical. But if I’m not going to win every battle, why make my own life even more miserable by trying to fight every battle?

I’m pretty queer looking. Stepping out the door in this body is already a pretty radical act. Dealing with the social repercussions of living in this body already challenges my sanity and security every day. Why willingly insert myself into even more situations that further sacrifice my sanity and security for a losing battle?

Maybe next time a teenage boy on the bus says something homophobic, I can let it go rather than trying to educate him about why he’s being a douche bag (am I really going to cause a stranger on the bus to have a revelation about their relationship to privilege and oppression?). Because seriously, one of these days I’m going to get beat up doing that. I need to feel physically safe in my environment to enjoy a decent quality of life.

And maybe next time someone in my teacher education program mentions an imaginary child’s mom and dad, I don’t have to interrupt with “or two moms or two dads” because my peers will think I’m annoying and nobody will want to eat lunch with me, or be my partner in gym class, or sit next to me in science class, or work with me on a group project. And let’s face it, I may be an adult now, but I still need a degree of social acceptance from my peers to maintain a decent quality of life. (And really, is everyone in the room going to remember from now on that we cannot assume everyone has two heterosexual parents?)

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not throwing in the towel on queer rights. There are already way too many people who are unwilling to sacrifice an iota of their comfort for the greater good on any given cause. But the opposite of this, sacrificing too much for the greater good, isn’t sustainable either.

My gay “agenda”

gay agenda

Today was rough. At lunch time, one of my classmates overheard me talking to another classmate about what happened at my practicum when one student called another student “such a fag” (see below entry: Of hand vaginas, fish and fags). She turned around to join the conversation and asked why I felt the need to tell that student that I was gay. She said that in personalizing it, I was making it all about me. I told her that I felt my talk with the student would have a greater impact if I positioned myself this way. She suggested that teachers shouldn’t talk about their personal lives with students. To this, I responded that she probably wouldn’t refrain from mentioning her husband to her students or their parents, and is in effect discussing her sexuality, so why can’t I discuss the same aspect of myself? She argued that she wouldn’t mention her “husband”, she would just say “Mark*.” I replied that “Mark” is clearly a men’s name, so its obvious that she is in a heterosexual partnership when she mentions his name. She concluded by saying that she wondered what my agenda is. I said that my agenda is to make schools more welcoming spaces for gay students – and that I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. She didn’t disagree, but rather said that I shouldn’t be so focussed on one issue. She suggested that I bring up ‘the gay thing’ too much during our tutorial. I was genuinely shocked by this because I feel like I don’t bring it up very often at all. When I do, it’s usually because my position as a homo informs the perspective I’m about to share on whatever topic is up for discussion. I responded that if I don’t bring it up, no one else will, and it needs to be discussed. Then it was time to go to math class. As we walked to class, I was feeling upset so I asked her if she still thought I brought up gay stuff too much in class. Her friend then entered the conversation and said that there is so much more to who I am than just being gay, and that I have lots of wonderful things to say about other topics and should share those, rather than just focusing on sexuality. And that was the end of the conversation. I do share my perspective on other things… I had a really hard time concentrating in math class, especially because I ended up sitting at the same table as these two people since there was no where else to sit.

The thing is, they are really nice people. And they said all these things with a kind tone. I want to be their friend. But the things they said made me feel like shit. I’ve started doubting myself. Maybe I shouldn’t have told that kid I’m gay. Maybe I do mention gay stuff too much. What the hell is wrong with me?!

Anyway, things got worse. In math class, we have decorated name plates that sit on our desks in front of us. One side of my name tag says Emily* and the other side says James. Although I’ve used this name privately since 2005, that name tag is the first time I’ve publicly shared my boy name. I just added it one day when I was bored and there were markers on the table. It felt good to be Emily*/James in public. Usually just the girls I date, and some of my close friends, know about ‘James.’ However, given my earlier conversation, I faced the James side towards me so that the two women wouldn’t see it. But then the guy who was sitting next to me said, “James? What is that, your last name?” I explained that it is my boy name, as though everyone has a boy name and it wasn’t a big deal. The women wanted to know what they should call me. I said I’m fine with either name, but they insisted that I tell them which one I preferred. I insisted that I honestly don’t have a preference, which is true. It would make me feel warm and fuzzy if someone called me James, though. At that moment, I felt anything but warm and fuzzy. I felt embarrassed. Maybe James shouldn’t go out in public.

After math class, I asked another girl in my program (who is also in my tutorial), if I could speak to her alone. I really needed to talk to someone and I thought she’d be a sympathetic ear. She was. We went into the fire escape stairwell and I told her what happened. I asked if I bring up gay stuff too much and she said she hadn’t noticed. I told her about how I told a seventh grader that I’m gay and she suggested that it’s not in my best career interests to do that since it goes against my principal’s wishes. She advised me to wait until I am officially a teacher before I disclose that to students. I think that’s good advice. Although it’s frustrating as hell.

Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing here. Sometimes I feel like I don’t belong here.

*Names have been changed for privacy.

Of fish, fags and hand vaginas

College_Humor_Hand_Vag.flv

Today I ventured out to the suburbs to do my weekly practicum in an elementary school. In the morning, I was walking from the school to our portable when I heard some boy in the playground loudly declare, “Cory* is such a fag.” I walked over to the boy, who was probably in Grade 7, and asked him his name, which turned out to be Max.* I said, “Max, I thought I heard you call someone a fag. Was I correct?” He laughed and said he had. So I said, “I’m gay. I know you might not have meant to say something mean about gay people, but when I heard you say the word ‘fag’ it really hurt my feelings. Could you do me a favour and stop using that word?” He nodded and said he wouldn’t say it again. We both went our separate ways.

As I walked away, I wondered if I did something wrong by telling him I’m gay. I was instructed by my faculty advisor ‘not to advertise my sexuality.’ He also told me that just as Christians have to hide their beliefs when they come into a public school, I shouldn’t disclose ‘what I do on evenings and weekends’ when I’m in the public school setting. Oh, and he said that “sexual orientation is not pertinent to the educative process.” He said all of this in front of the principal of my elementary school (who agreed with him), and as a result, I’m worried that I might get in trouble for coming out to a seventh grader.

So why did I feel the need to tell the kid who dropped the f-bomb that I’m gay? I really thought that if I approached him as some adult telling him not to use a bad word, he wouldn’t really get it. And he would probably keep using it. I thought that if I appealed to him as a human being who was personally hurt by his remarks, he would really think about his choice of language and each time he says the word “fag” out loud, he’ll think of me. And maybe he’ll feel bad, because I was really decent to him, even though his actions toward me were hurtful. Actually, I believe that telling that kid that I am gay was an appropriate action in that context. Perhaps I’ll even tell my faculty advisor so. Please tell me your thoughts on this!

On a lighter note, today was my first day with my official associate teacher, in what is now partly ‘my’ Grade 4/5 class. My associate teacher said she really wanted to work with me because she really liked how I handled the children’s questions about whether I’m male or female earlier in the school year (I always said, “I don’t know. What do you think?”). That was so encouraging to hear. She also has a rainbow at the front of her room, and regardless of what it signifies to her, it makes me feel welcome.

When the children came into the classroom this morning, there was something about a “Mr. Fish” written on the blackboard. So the kids assumed I must be Mr. Fish. I said they could call me that if they like. It turned out that Mr. Fish was a scientist/magician we were going to see in the gym that morning. So nobody calls me that anymore.

Later that day, as we walked from the gym to the portable, a girl was showing me how to do something with her hands. I had no idea what we were making by folding our fingers in this particular way, but I did it anyway, to play along. It ended with her saying, “And then you open your hands like this, and you can see where the pee pee comes out!” Yup, unbeknowst to me, I had just spent the last two minutes making a hand vagina with this kid. That was a bit awkward.

And that was my day!

*Names have been changed for privacy.

Swing yo’ bitch to the left

Real Men Square Dance as Girls

Today we learned how to teach dance to elementary school students as part of the physical education curriculum. We started out with the hokey pokey, which happens to be one of my many gifts. I never confuse my left hand with my right hand, and I can shake it all about with the best of them. No problems there.

The problem came when we had to partner up for the circle dance. I chose Andrew* because he was standing closest to me when we had to grab a partner. The teacher started giving instructions for what the boys should do and what the girls should do, and I started to panic because I wasn’t sure which instructions I should memorize. Girls’ hands on the top, boys’ hands on the bottom. Girls on the right, boys on the left. Girls on the inside of the circle, boys on the outside of the circle.

I blurted out to Andrew that I was going to be the boy. If my partner was a guy, there was no way I was going to play the girl. Andrew wasn’t about to argue, but he clearly didn’t want to be the girl, either. He was the only boy on the inside of the circle and people were looking at us. He glanced around nervously. I puffed out my chest because I had totally won that test of male dominance. We did the circle dance and ended up repeatedly changing partners. I wondered if the other girls felt funny dancing with a tranny boy dyke.

Then we did some square dancing. The teacher partnered up 4 pairs of boys and girls for the demonstration and I was terrified he was going to pick me to be a girl in front of the whole class. He didn’t, thank God. When he played the music, the caller kept instructing the boys to “swing their lady” and promenade with their “honey.” I was starting to feel really weird participating in this performance of heteronormativity. I was getting distracted and messing up the dance steps, repeatedly screwing up the whole group. Then I felt even more flustered. So I made a joke about how we could make a hip hop version: “swing yo’ bitch to the left, dosee-doe around yer ho!” I mean, would that really be *that* different?

After class it was time to go to the change room. I reluctantly went to the girls’ change room. Sometimes I use the boys’ change room, if I show up before everyone else. But I didn’t want to take my shirt off in front of the other boys. In the girls change room, I wondered if they thought I was looking at them when they undressed. No matter what change room I’m in, I feel out of place.

While I was changing, I mentioned to some of the girls that dance doesn’t have to be so gendered and hetero. Instead of having boy-girl partnerships and roles, why can’t there just be a leader and a follower? Why couldn’t the teacher pick songs that don’t require women to be some man’s “sweetie.” I’m thinking about suggesting that to the teacher, but I don’t want him to think I’m being difficult. Stuff like this happens all the time, and if I complain each time, I’m worried everyone will hate me.

*Names have been changed for privacy.

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