Hop Against Homophobia
Once again, I'm beyond late doing things, but it's a worthy enough cause that I figured better late than never.
So, homophobia...
A part of me feels a little hypocritical standing up to talk about homophobia when I ended up married to a wonderful man and in a life that doesn't bring me face to face with that kind of attitude very often, but while it's never been directed at me, I have dealt with homophobia and its effects in the lives of the people around me.
I taught school for 16 years, a lot of them wonderful years, and I took that job very seriously, not just as an instructor of language, but as an instructor of life. I taught my students as much French as I could cram into their heads in the two, three, or four years they sat in my classroom, but I did my best to cram a few other things in there as well.
My students learned pretty quickly (at least if they wanted to survive the year) that there were two kinds of words I didn't want to hear in my classroom, no matter how they intended them when they said them. I didn't want to hear any variation of the word "nigger" and I didn't want to hear any insult related to someone's sexuality. They didn't have to like something, but they couldn't express their displeasure by saying it was "gay." They didn't have to like each other, but they'd better not call each other "fags" or other less polite terms.
It paid off too.
The summer after I quit teaching, I was manning Dreamspinner's booth at the Pride Festival when one of my former students walked by. He smiled at me, looked at a couple of our books, smiled some more, and kept walking. That might seem like little enough in terms of payment, but a few months later, I did an interview at a very popular m/m blog, and my student read it and left me a comment. He told me how much it meant to me that I'd always stood against the derogatory comments so many of his classmates made unknowingly and that seeing me at Pride had given him the courage to come out to his friends the following year.
I haven't heard from him since, but I don't need to. It was enough to know that my stand against homophobia touched the life of a young man who needed reassurance that he was okay just as he was, that not being "straight" didn't make him bent, just gay.
I don't teach anymore, but I have two children of my own, and last week we discussed the fact that one of my daughter's friends has two mothers. My daughter, bless her heart, didn't find this disturbing in the least. There are many grand and important ways to fight homophobia, and then there are the small ones, one little person at a time. My children are seven and four, two young really to identify their sexuality, but they're learning one lesson already: whoever they love, Mama will love them just the same.
So, homophobia...
A part of me feels a little hypocritical standing up to talk about homophobia when I ended up married to a wonderful man and in a life that doesn't bring me face to face with that kind of attitude very often, but while it's never been directed at me, I have dealt with homophobia and its effects in the lives of the people around me.
I taught school for 16 years, a lot of them wonderful years, and I took that job very seriously, not just as an instructor of language, but as an instructor of life. I taught my students as much French as I could cram into their heads in the two, three, or four years they sat in my classroom, but I did my best to cram a few other things in there as well.
My students learned pretty quickly (at least if they wanted to survive the year) that there were two kinds of words I didn't want to hear in my classroom, no matter how they intended them when they said them. I didn't want to hear any variation of the word "nigger" and I didn't want to hear any insult related to someone's sexuality. They didn't have to like something, but they couldn't express their displeasure by saying it was "gay." They didn't have to like each other, but they'd better not call each other "fags" or other less polite terms.
It paid off too.
The summer after I quit teaching, I was manning Dreamspinner's booth at the Pride Festival when one of my former students walked by. He smiled at me, looked at a couple of our books, smiled some more, and kept walking. That might seem like little enough in terms of payment, but a few months later, I did an interview at a very popular m/m blog, and my student read it and left me a comment. He told me how much it meant to me that I'd always stood against the derogatory comments so many of his classmates made unknowingly and that seeing me at Pride had given him the courage to come out to his friends the following year.
I haven't heard from him since, but I don't need to. It was enough to know that my stand against homophobia touched the life of a young man who needed reassurance that he was okay just as he was, that not being "straight" didn't make him bent, just gay.
I don't teach anymore, but I have two children of my own, and last week we discussed the fact that one of my daughter's friends has two mothers. My daughter, bless her heart, didn't find this disturbing in the least. There are many grand and important ways to fight homophobia, and then there are the small ones, one little person at a time. My children are seven and four, two young really to identify their sexuality, but they're learning one lesson already: whoever they love, Mama will love them just the same.