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.

Moving in packs

I went out to dinner with a dozen women the other night.  Good friends, all dykes.  For a range of reasons we ended up in a pretty suburban restaurant.  It’s well known by locals and the food is pretty good.  We were seated at a big table up the back and had pretty loud conversations for a couple of hours.  The table next to us knows up better than they wanted to.  It was a good night, for the company and the fact that no one kicked me out of the women’s toilets.  Ok, so no one else was there when I was, but I take any evening without being accosted as a win.

The fun came at the end of the evening.  It’s an average sized restaurant and we had to walk the length of it to get out. Twelve women leaving at once is perhaps a little odd, as most tables were of mixed gender.  But it was the five of us that were clearly not so straight that I think drew the attention.  The rest of the group were guilty by association. And they didn’t look so straight to begin with. Needless to say, the place was pretty silent as we left. 

But it felt ok.  It wasn’t an isolating experience, where I had to second guess myself and wonder if I was imagining it, or checking if I was safe.  I was part of a pack.  And it felt pretty awesome.

Public places

A new school year here, and a chance for me to get back into other people’s classrooms and see a bunch of new teachers and new kids.  I work in high schools because that’s where I was trained, but it’s what I prefer.

Primary kids scare me.  They’re little and the world is so black and white and gender is a perfect example.  Short hair you’re a boy, long hair you’re a girl.  And while I don’t work in primary schools, I managed to run into enough kids to make me (and their parents) feel uncomfortable.  Mainly in shopping centres. And then mainly in shopping centre toilets.

Seriously, what are your options when a kid screams ‘ what he doing in the women’s toilets mummy?!?!’  

Answer - not many. I have found the last thing a mother wants is the man/butch lesbian/strange person in the toilets to talk to their kid.  They’re either embarrassed or they’re scared.  Neither ends well.  The mother generally mumbles something to their child and I beat a hasty exit.  But you carry you things with you, more than they do. 

I know it’s about me, so I have a place in it.  But I feel the damage is done when people feel under threat, and the least confrontational thing to do is back away.  Slowly.

Visibility. Again

The question of visibility raises the chestnut of assimilation or separation.  I prefer to be separate.  I like feeling like I’m part of a renegade group who push the boundaries.  I don’t really do it anywhere else but in how I look and who I live with. Apart from that, I work, pay taxes, drive on the right side of the road (which is actually the left side). But in that most obvious sense, I’m a bit on the outer of the mainstream.

My friends, however, are a different story.  Many of my dyke comrades have had kids (five couples so far, with another two in the works) and several have moved to the suburbs.  They send Christmas cards, our email updates about their families.  They appear happy, but it’s not a life I want.  They are straighter than the straight couple next door.  ‘Married’ (four of the five had commitment ceremonies), monogamous, with child/ren and conforming to all of societies expectations.  Except for the bit where they married a man.

I don’t want to disrespect them.  Like I said, they seem happy. But it’s no longer the radicalism that has been the hallmark of the queer community for over fifty years.  Perhaps it’s easy to say now that we have legal rights and don’t get routinely bashed/arrested/shunned for being LGBT. Maybe I am being arrogant and self entitled.  But I look at my married friends and have less and less in common with them.  I have begun to hang out with straight couples without kids and other less traditional queer folk.

The second part of this argument seems to point to the importance currently placed on gay marriage.  Which, really, is a topic for another time.

Armour

I worked with a guy once, he was nice enough, for a PE teacher.  Anyway, I swear he had no armour. He just came in as he was.  You know what I mean, normally you put your game face on, especially when going to work, even if it's somewhere you like.  You prepare yourself, you have a facade of some sort.  He just didn't do that.  He was a bit annoying, but it was all him.  Work didn't tire him, because he didn't waste energy projecting what he thought people should see.  I didn't particularly like or dislike him, but I really envied his ability not to put on a front.  It wasn't conscious, I don't think.  Being a straight white guy he didn't need to do anything more to fit in and not have people question him. But for me, someone who is so conscious of what people expect and the performance of the everyday, he was quite refreshing.  Almost enviable.

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.