No apologies
I still ache when I read tales of teachers bringing up homosexuality/homophobia/heterosexism in their classrooms and face kids who are so reluctant to change their assumptions about heterosexuality being, essentially, better. Partly these stories touch me so much because I've been the one at the front of the class, and because I realize how much needs to be done. I ache because I know, when I read yet another story of a kid who chose to end their life rather than keep going to school, that it's because we still think it's OK to think heterosexuality (and the codes of femininity/masculinity) is just a little more natural, just a little better.
I rant about this constantly but it's because it doesn't go away. It won't go away, for me. I don't really want it to, though. I've been working on a funding application for my PhD project (which is on anti-homophobia education) and I've realized just how much I care about this project and this issue. I want it to be my life's work as much as possible. I want to keep feeling I have to do something about it every time I read about homophobia in schools, and I want to feel like I'm doing something about it. I want to be unapologetic about it, and I don't care about feelings being hurt, not when something so important is at stake.
As Dan Savage said in a fantastic blog post today,
The dehumanizing bigotries that fall from lips of "faithful Christians," and the lies that spew forth from the pulpit of the churches "faithful Christians" drag their kids to on Sundays, give your straight children a license to verbally abuse, humiliate and condemn the gay children they encounter at school. And many of your straight children-having listened to mom and dad talk about how gay marriage is a threat to the family and how gay sex makes their magic sky friend Jesus cry himself to sleep-feel justified in physically attacking the gay and lesbian children they encounter in their schools. You don't have to explicitly "encourage [your] children to mock, hurt, or intimidate" gay kids. Your encouragement-along with your hatred and fear-is implicit. It's here, it's clear, and we can see the fruits of it.
It's not about painting all Christians with the same brush. There are wonderful, activist Christian people out there, who fight against the status quo and the prevalence of hateful, conservative voices in their religion. Some of them are LGBTQ. But it IS about telling people who think they're "nice", who think it's "just" their opinion, people who refuse to face the fact that teaching your children that same-sex couples shouldn't be able to get married or adopt children because they're less good than opposite-sex couples (against all actual evidence, scientific and otherwise) does teach your children that it's OK to tease and mock and undermine people who challenge heterosexual expectations.
Sometimes being faced with well-meaning people is a good start, and it's not about telling everyone to fuck off just because they don't get it. But there's a place for that, too, for expressing unapologetic frustrations and anger and for stepping on toes, because while you're upset that we're saying you're teaching your kids to hate, our kids are being bullied, and schools are doing little about that.
On another 'fuck off' note, France continues to suck (link in French). The Constitutional Council just refused today to strike down a law which stops same-sex couples from being recognized together as legal parents of a child.
I rant about this constantly but it's because it doesn't go away. It won't go away, for me. I don't really want it to, though. I've been working on a funding application for my PhD project (which is on anti-homophobia education) and I've realized just how much I care about this project and this issue. I want it to be my life's work as much as possible. I want to keep feeling I have to do something about it every time I read about homophobia in schools, and I want to feel like I'm doing something about it. I want to be unapologetic about it, and I don't care about feelings being hurt, not when something so important is at stake.
As Dan Savage said in a fantastic blog post today,
The dehumanizing bigotries that fall from lips of "faithful Christians," and the lies that spew forth from the pulpit of the churches "faithful Christians" drag their kids to on Sundays, give your straight children a license to verbally abuse, humiliate and condemn the gay children they encounter at school. And many of your straight children-having listened to mom and dad talk about how gay marriage is a threat to the family and how gay sex makes their magic sky friend Jesus cry himself to sleep-feel justified in physically attacking the gay and lesbian children they encounter in their schools. You don't have to explicitly "encourage [your] children to mock, hurt, or intimidate" gay kids. Your encouragement-along with your hatred and fear-is implicit. It's here, it's clear, and we can see the fruits of it.
It's not about painting all Christians with the same brush. There are wonderful, activist Christian people out there, who fight against the status quo and the prevalence of hateful, conservative voices in their religion. Some of them are LGBTQ. But it IS about telling people who think they're "nice", who think it's "just" their opinion, people who refuse to face the fact that teaching your children that same-sex couples shouldn't be able to get married or adopt children because they're less good than opposite-sex couples (against all actual evidence, scientific and otherwise) does teach your children that it's OK to tease and mock and undermine people who challenge heterosexual expectations.
Sometimes being faced with well-meaning people is a good start, and it's not about telling everyone to fuck off just because they don't get it. But there's a place for that, too, for expressing unapologetic frustrations and anger and for stepping on toes, because while you're upset that we're saying you're teaching your kids to hate, our kids are being bullied, and schools are doing little about that.
On another 'fuck off' note, France continues to suck (link in French). The Constitutional Council just refused today to strike down a law which stops same-sex couples from being recognized together as legal parents of a child.