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.

Others

So, I ran my anti-homophobia session.  It went fine.What was strange was how one queer understood it.  I spoke to a woman about it, and she basically said she was sick of being the only queer in the room.  She’s seen as a lesbian, but she doesn’t identify as one, and all this talk of gay stuff is somewhat irritating to her.

Really?

Yep.  She, on a personal level, is sick of hearing about it and isn’t worried about being a queer teacher.What I got from this was interesting.  I ran the session for all teachers, of course.  But I did consider the gay/lesbian teachers and their 'situation'.  And I wanted to reach out to them.  I love finding community in odd places and banding together. I get a kick out of seeing other queer teachers in schools, and know that we represent in the oddest corners of the straightest places. And I guess I assumed they all felt this way.  That even without acknowledging it, we understood each other. Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe I’m the only one who seeks out my brethren in this way. Perhaps I focus too much on it, perhaps it’s too important to me.  But I really like that idea. Almost like there is a secret treasure in every new place, a sibling you have yet to find. Sometimes they’re hidden and others times they’re visible across a football field.  As one of the latter, I look for support/safety and comradeship where ever I end up.

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..

Newbies

I get a bunch of new teachers soon, as the school year approaches.  Bright eyed fresh faced.  I feel young for my job, and I look different.  I spend so much time thinking about that fact, that I think I make it harder for myself.  If only I could let that go, walk into the room unencumbered by my own preconceptions I would be so light.  Free.  And no doubt better at my job.

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.