Butch boundaries

After being heckled by a 14 year old ("It's a hermaphrodite", which I surprisingly have not heard before), I thought I'd just feel lonesome and a bit disempowered.  But there has been a surge of 'butch' media in lesbian cyber space, and the feeling was a little different.  In the past week, Autostraddle ran this:

http://www.autostraddle.com/butch-please-butch-buys-a-drink-149798/

Which I quite empathised with, and then there was this too:

http://www.afterellen.com/content/2012/11/casey-legler-our-new-favorite-woman-working-male-model

As well as another one about African American butches in another online publications (ok, I lost that link).

And I know like it's not just me out there fucking with gender, so I didn't feel lonely like I usually do.  But that's a double edged sword too, because in this regional high school four hours from my cosmopolitan lifestyle, my edgy butches comrades seemed as far away from me as .  But I still had the knowledge that they might feel the things I do and, perhaps, they elicit the same reactions from people that I have.  Sure, they do it elsewhere (on another continent, actually).  But just like I was alone in the school that day, there is a butch somewhere bracing herself to go to a public bathroom.  Or considering her clothing choice for that day and what that will mean for how her friends/strangers/colleagues will read her. Or some baby butch buying clothes from the menswear section for the first time.

So as I moved past lonesomeness I found a surprising roaring fire of rage. I was really pissed at this kid (and the one day before, and the one on the weekend), and pissed for other women in my shoes.  The OUTRAGE was kind of liberating.  And even if we're separated by distance and politeness (I wasn't going to start chatting to the cop in the street), we have a common bond.  And just knowing that, not even acting on it, well, that's pretty powerful.

Hiatus

Work.  I have limited excuses beyond working as to my silence.

And in that work, I again find myself confusing teenagers and now even my boss.  Well, he knows I'm female (and a dyke), but I ended up in a class with him where kids were asking if I was a boy or a girl.  I handled it with my usual smooth skills (hold your breath for that post) but it was interesting thinking about it later.  My boss is a nice guy, no dramas there.  But normally, if a conflict like that arose about anything else, he'd want to talk about it.

Not this.  How would he raise it?

'Do you know the students thought you were a man?' or perhaps

'How do you think your haircut affects your work?'  (not a good idea, HR doesn't like that kinda talk)

'How do you feel about your gender presentation at work?'.  Nope.

Even the most politically correct boss isn't going to find a good way to mention gender presentation with 'clients', even if it's just to see how you feel about it.  Of course, I could have raised it, but I have no clear answers to give and he's not going to someone who will have them.  So it would have been me exposing my lack of clarity and him feeling like he should help but being a bit out of his depth.

We've never spoken of it.  And of all the dilemmas for a butch looking dyke in education, this is a pretty mild problem.  Just not one with an answer.

Day to day

I wonder if I didn’t take into account how I looked at all, how the world would be towards me. If I wasn’t worried about having to fend off other people’s gender confusion, would that make things easier or harder?  I wonder if it’s on me, that I worry and bring that with me?

Meanwhile the kids are still as perplexed and perplexing as ever.  “Isn’t it a dude” was a titbit last week, as well as kids genuinely asking for help calling me ‘sir’.

I have this one school and class that I go to every couple of weeks. There is this girl, she’s 13 or 14 and gets in my face every time and I really have no idea why.  She comes up to me, quite aggressively really and says “Hi Miss!’ several times. She’ll stare at me during class and sometimes point and whisper. She tracks me wherever I go and when I look up, she’s glaring at me. 

But she’s 13 or 14 and I struggle to find it threatening, even though I think that’s what she’s going for.  I am reminded how glad I am, for all the difficulty one faces, that I can move through the world this way.  That I am an adult and the challenges of being a teenager are behind me.  And when I think about it like that, things aren’t so bad.

Youth of today

Today I was up the back of a year 9 class in a school I’m not too familiar with.  About five minutes in, the kids started asked questions of their teacher:

“Miss, who’s that?”

“What’s that?”

“Miss, there’s someone at the back of the class” (today’s youth.  So observant)

And there were a few others I didn’t hear.  Their tone was not polite.  The teacher quietened them down and said:

“Some of you have asked who’s up the back.  This is Ms______ and she’s from ______”

Well.  If the emphasis on the Ms didn’t give away that the kids were asking pronoun related questions, the “WOAH” when she said it sure did.

Awkward.

And a little unpleasant.

I’m temporary amusement and the kids were soon distracted away from me.  While I felt pretty crap about the whole thing, it’s not so uncommon for me to get this reaction when I’m in new schools.  What was even worse was what happened later in the class. 

When talking politics, they thought Bin Laden was from Iraq.  Turns out their education is not only deficient when it comes the breaking down the gender binary.

Queer colleagues

After my last post and comment, I got to thinking about working in schools with other queer staff, and I remembered something that happened about five years ago.

I started at this new school, got to know the staff etc.  Remember, I'm pretty readable as queer and I was out to whomever it came up with. There was one out dyke on staff, but she was pretty quiet and we didn't have a lot to do with each other, simply due to the nature of our different subjects etc.  After about six months I find out two of the female staff I worked with have been together for a few year.

Huh?

I had clocked one of them (A), but the other (B) I had no idea about.  Not only that, a lot of staff knew about it - they'd gotten together while they'd worked at the school and now lived together.  Sometimes they socialised with other  staff as a couple.  Awesome, right?

Not so.  They were in this limbo land of being out, but not really.  Like I said, a lot of people knew they were together, but they pretended really hard they weren't.  (Just to clarify, none of use were out to students, so when  I say out, I mean to other staff).  Eventually, I got to know them a little better.  This meant I started lending them copies of The L Word, because they had never heard of it (?!).  In this transactional/ gossipy exchange about now mutual friends (the cast) I noticed something strange.

Dyke A was embarrassed to be seen talking to me.  I had clocked her from the start, she was kinda out, but she was awkward about being seen talking me with me - a more visible dyke.  I thought perhaps she didn't like me, but she was fine when there was no one else round.  Nope, it was being associated with a higher level of dyke-ness.  And when we spoke about The L Word, we weren't screaming about it or anything.  Just a nice chat at the water cooler.

Suffice to say, the traffic in L Word stopped (they had caught up to my supply anyway) and conversation with A slowed.  Apart from a bizarre conversation with B about what Shane was doing by the pool in an episode, we had less and less to do with each other until they left the school (together.  To work at another school.  Together). It was kind of disappointing.  But what was really sad to me was them.  They were out, but not.  They were so scared and weird about it.  I'm by no means advocating being in or out of the closet here.  But they were both so uncomfortable the whole time, other people ended up feeling uncomfortable when they were near them.

Homophobia. Again.

So my background is in anti-homophobia education and now I work training teachers.  Oddly enough, I don’t talk much about my old work, often because it’s not relevant, and often because it requires coming out all over again. While I am by no means in the closet, it’s feasible I’m not (explicitly) out to some of the teachers I work with.  Which is fine.

Until I actually have to come out.  So now I am running an anti-homophobia workshop and feel like a teenager all over again.  I have to explicitly come out and talk about what got me into education and how I now have something to teach you.

It’s awkward on two fronts.  One is coming out and talking about sexuality in general.  Everyone shuffles, even if they’re ok with it.  Sometimes I think I even shuffle a bit.  The second part is being ‘an expert’.  Potentially in something others feel weird about.  I'll let you know how it goes..

Musings from the back row

I was in a science class the other day, and the kids were in various stages of an experiment.  Some of the boys were lounging, waiting for their thingy to boil (note: I am not a science teacher).  The girls were chatting too.  All very lovely.

Now in Australia, most students wear uniforms.  No big deal.  Girls have a dress in summer and shirt and skirt in winter.  Boys have long or short sleeve shirt (sometimes a t-shirt) and pants. Most schools give girls the option of pants, but less than 1% take up the offer.  It’s just not done.*

So looking round I saw these boys in shorts and a t-shirt, and the girls in dresses, and I got mad all over again. Of course I wore the same in high school and while I hated it, it was just what you do**.  But I can see teenagers already so well versed in the way they hold themselves so differently and have such different concepts of personal space.  Even in the supremely awkward stages of adolescence, they have their gender performance down pat.  The boys are slouching and taking up space and the girls are perching and limiting themselves.  Even the weird, shy kids (I say this with love as one of them) perform the gender stuff unthinkingly, because they’re so well trained.  Some are less trained in personal hygiene or fashion, but they know what their gender should and shouldn’t do.

And they knew that WAY better than they knew the science-y thingy they were supposed to be learning.

*A quick fashion segue – the pants are often just the boys’ pants, or the most ugly cut of pants possible.  Sure, the summer dress is just a cotton sack, but at least all shapes and stages of development can pull it off.  The pants they offer girls would make Cindy Crawford look lumpy and Marilyn Monroe look dumpy.  Even a butch would look girly in them.  I don’t know how they do it, but they make every clothing option for girls truly awful.

**Until you leave high school and swear never to wear a dress again and burn all your school uniforms on the last day, cackling and realising it is about to get sooo much better.  Or something like that.

Teachable moments

I think, perhaps, I’m getting immune to it all.  The other day I was in a class, helping out and a student asked ‘what’s he doing here’.  It wasn’t calculated, it was just a suburban kid making assumptions.  Perhaps for this reason, I didn’t flinch, I just ignored the pronoun and explained what I was doing.  Thankfully the teacher also took it in her stride.  I don’t know if the boy worked it out or not.  We just got on with the class. I could have missed a teachable moment.  But the most important thing for me was that I missed an awkward moment. 

What is homophobia when it's not homophobia?

I work in schools, but I don’t work for them.  I with a team of others who also go into schools, and work with teachers. We meet semi-regularity, and this is what happened last time we met.

It’s never come up before, but one of the teachers we worked with was worried about starting at a news school as a gay guy.  There was some discussion as to what the legal issues were (you can be out, but you have to be appropriate.  Usual vagaries that could protect or screw you, depending on who’s in power).  A senior staff member on this point said.:

“It’s ok (then she screws up her nose) as long as you don’t mention it to the kids”.  Because then you will contaminate their pure minds and recruit them like the deviant you are.

Before I rant, a disclaimer: I don’t get along overly well with this person.  And secondly, I have a post grad thesis with a focus on lesbian and gay teachers experiences in heteronormative environments.  I therefore feel superior in many ways.

That aside, she raises a common trope as well as my ire. She wouldn’t consider herself a homophobe and many observers would not either.  And what she said isn’t – there is no way I could call that homophobic to my HR department without looking like a hyper sensitive queer.  BUT.  But.  What she was implying was the ‘lesser than’ argument.  Or as I like to call it, the borrowed time implication.  For my mind, she may as well have said you are here and that’s fine, but it’s by my good grace, not your own natural humanity and inherent value as a member of society.

It (clearly) enrages me.  The lip curl.  The distain.  The inability to comprehend others difficulty.  This poor guy. He’s going into a straight, white environment.  And he is neither.  And this straight white woman is dismissive of him, and his queer brothers and sisters.  And she’s dismissive because she can be.

That was nearly the end of the conversation.  I said his concerns were valid, everyone nodded sagely.  We've come this far at least - perhaps 10 years ago it would have been a different response, or the issue would not have been raised. But now the overt homophobia is gone, and only it's sneak insidious silent cousin remains.

Other teachers

In one school, there was another out dyke on staff. She was only there for a term and I later found out she’d been fired from her previous school.

For taping a kids mouth shut and locking him in a cupboard.

Anyway, she (let’s call her Jenny) took a shine to me.  Now, I’m not the world’s most perceptive person, but I could see the ‘locking kids in cupboards’ crazy coming a mile off.   I was still polite, and that was enough of an invitation for her to seek me out in the main staffroom come by my desk a lot. 

I think we got to know each other when I had car trouble and she drove me to school one day.  It was not my first choice for a ride I assure you, but  she lived in the same dykey neighbourhood.  I get in and she’s blaring Pink’s ‘Fingers’ at top volume and grinning at me.  Being behind all pop culture curves, I didn’t know the song but still managed to feel uncomfortable just listening to the distortion and her singing.

Such an overt display of lesbian ‘friendship’ was unprecedented at my school.  My staffroom was abuzz with innuendo and titters (I never understood ‘tittering’ til I heard it happen.  Unmistakable).  When I revealed I was not thrilled by the attentions of the lady in question, well, that was even better. We had entered lesbian stalker territory!

Now when Jenny visited, other staff would smirk and generally humiliate the woman behind her back.  Awkward for me though.  Don’t like the crazy lady, don’t like the homophobes.  And, as we know by now, I was always going to take the path of least courage…I said nothing. To either party.  I ducked my colleagues comments, I weaved her and I felt shitty about both.

In the end, she was de-registered by the powers that be.  Maybe it was the Facebook photo hugging students, or perhaps the rumours of the affairs that followed.  Either way, she left under a cloud.

The moral here?  Well, there is none.  And there is no winner when your allays are not you people and your people are not your allays.

Family

What I look for when I go into schools is the butch lesbians on staff.  Generally, there is at least one, sometimes two.  They’re extremely readable in all the ways you imagine – hair, clothes, subject area (hello PE teachers, I’m talking to you).  And while I may get some lip from the kids, these teachers sometimes don’t.  As I mentioned in a previous post, they become part of the furniture.  Their reputation, after a year or two is all that students in the school.  And when kids come is as fresh faced 12 year olds, they take the lead from the older kids.  That’s not to say they have a good run of it, but sometimes it’s easier when you’re taken for granted.

I, of course, love seeing them.  In the sea of uber hetro teachers and kids, seeing a queer teacher is like a breath of fresh air.  And maybe that’s another reason I haven’t changed either.  If I feel that way, as an adult with a queer circle of friends, how much a little teenage queer feel to see such a visible sister. 

That’s how I met S____.  The campest boy I’ve ever seen.  He’s up the back of the class, with the girls and does a double take when I come in the room.  He’s got locks of curly brown hair and often (I find out later) gets mistaken for a girl.  It could be anything; his high-pitched voice, his soft hands, his school scarf, plumped up and tied slightly to the side – an effort to make the drab uniform a little more dapper.  He’s glorious, and so not made for this school system.

And as soon as they’re onto student centred work, he’s talking to me.  Invoking the modern incantation of the secret gay handshake/blue star/code word etc.

“Do you like Glee Miss?”

‘Family’ pops up in the strangest of places.

A history of teaching

Before I began classroom teaching, I was a diversity educator.  I went into schools and talked about not being straight. Even then, I was worried that looking too dykey would work against me, because not all dykes are so readable. I could talk about discrimination, visibility and the importance of inclusivity.  My personal experience was central and kids love a different teacher, a different topic, especially when it’s a bit taboo.

Fast forward to teaching my own kids. In many ways it was better.  My own class, my own school.  After about six months the kids forgot I didn’t really look like a girl and they knew me as their teacher.  My gender was not confounding, but to me, my silence around it was.  They knew, I knew.  It was not spoken of.  To them, I had a partner, but beyond that the silence was deafening.  A lie of omission.  This is nothing new – the coming out, the not coming out.  I was out to staff and some students.  It’s a glass closet, and what is also visible is your shame.  I look butch, but I’m not willing to speak it.

So I left full time teaching and now I teach teachers.  As with my old students, the teachers I work with know me as a professional and we work well together.  The fodder for this blog is their students.  They see me on random occasions, and they have no idea who I am or what I am doing there.  So they take me on face value.  

Options

I thought about growing my hair.  And then I thought about wearing pastels.  I tried scarves, because they’re kind of girly.  But I felt ridiculous and the metrosexuals keep ruining good unisex clothes through appropriation.  I keep going, as I am, waiting for the inevitable.

Why go back to school at all, especially when you fit in even less the second time around?  I like it, I’m good at it.  But it’s like the outside world.  Not my world – I’ve managed to cloister myself, and am surrounded by queers and leftys and live in a place where I look mainstream in comparison to others.  But that’s not where I work.  I work in the mainstream.  In the suburbs.  In tough schools where gender and nationality are the defining features.  There’s no time for mamby pambey gender analysis.  This is survival, and that is done through extreme performance of all that is expected.  And part of that performance is weeding out those who don’t fit in.  I’m a visitor, and I’m suspect looking.  And that’s worth throwing down a challenge to.

How it is

Schools are their own microcosm, a petri dish of hormones and half-baked people.  I mean that with affection.  The order alluded to in the rest of society is clear here.  There is a hierarchy.  There are people with clear levels of explicit authority.  Regardless of the lip service, it’s not a democracy.  Students must stay in line, or face the consequences.  Same goes for staff.

Personally, I like the order and structure.  The bells, the timetable, the clear expectation (whether they are met or not) and the general orderliness.  It’s neat, reliable.  And more than a little stifling.

I am teacher and I work across a few schools. I walk into new classes daily and sit up the back, trying to be invisible. But I’m not. I am so visible, in all the wrong ways, for teenagers at least.  They can’t work out why I’m there.  But more importantly, they can’t work out what gender I am.  So, being teenagers, they ask.  Loudly.

Clearly, I am not invisible.