Today is International Women’s Day. This is a day to celebrate women’s advances and to contemplate how we can continue to make the world equal and equitable for all. This is also a day to consider what we mean and who we signify when we say “women.” Read the rest of this entry →
Over the past couple of weeks, I have discussed some ways for college campuses and instructors to make education more equitable for trans and gender-variant students. Today’s post will offer up many more ways for specifically instructors to accommodate trans and gender-variant students in their classrooms.
An obvious one is to have empathy and compassion for students who face some form — or many forms — of oppression. This compassion should be the driving force behind any changes you make in your teaching, your policies, your discussion technique — everything — because this is truly what teaching for equity is about.
Trans Ally Button from usc.edu
However, be aware that empathy and compassion are different from pity. Teaching students who face oppression, whether because of their gender identity, race, sexual orientation, class or some or all of these, with compassion does not mean that you avoid challenging them or that you let them slide. The fundamentals of best practice — asking students to explain their reasoning, to hand in their work on time, etc. — remain valid, even as we discuss accommodating students who face various forms of oppression in our classrooms.
Teaching with compassion instead means that we should be aware of the effects our many pedagogical choices have on our students. Teachers should think about the messages we send in the reading we assign (who it’s written by, what it’s about, and what attitudes it promotes are part of this consideration), in the ways we conduct discussions (sharing personal stories, asking particular students to “speak for” their ethnic/racial/religious/gendered group, privileging some students/voices over others, etc.), and in the way we present ourselves (as experts, as guides, as followers, etc.) and the impact these choices may have on our many different students. Read the rest of this entry →
As I noted in last week’s post about making campuses safer and more equitable for trans students, I am hoping to use this week’s post to delve into some ways teachers, rather than only administrators, can contribute to this cause.
An article I found recently sheds some light on how we can minimize the impact of harmful gender stereotypes at a younger age:
Gender bias may be preventable in the classroom by minimizing stereotypes of gender roles, according to a UT researcher.
Psychology professor Rebecca Bigler presented the findings of her study Wednesday on how children interpret gender and racial inequality.
The study was an attempt to learn about how children develop stereotypes and how to reverse the processes that enforce biases about race and gender.
“My research suggests you shouldn’t label because the kids will stereotype,” Bigler said. “It’s really simple when you think about it. In the case of race, you would see how stereotyping would get worse if I came in and said, ‘Good morning, black and Latino children,’ but why don’t we see a problem with always saying ‘boys and girls?’”
Thereafter, the article discusses the ways that male privilege is passed on and reinforced in the classroom, through such subtle means as not discussing gender equality in the same terms as racial equality.
The excerpt above illustrates one simple way that we as educators can not only mitigate male privilege and call the gender binary into question but that we can begin to make our classrooms that much more equitable for trans and gender variant students. By avoiding gendered terms when talking to or about groups of students, we make the binary system less powerful. For the last few years, I have been trying to use “you all” (as I don’t feel comfortable using y’all — not that there’s anything wrong with it!) instead of “you guys” for this very reason: “you guys” misgenders anyone who does not identify as a “guy,” which is problematic for trans and cis women in particular. This is one strategy that I’m still working to use consistently, but one that I see great value in.
Another relatively simple way to defang the binary gender system in the classroom is to do away with gendered pronouns whenever possible. It may be grammatically incorrect on a very technical level, but using “they” instead of “he/she” to talk about someone makes gender a relative non-issue. This allows students of all genders to place themselves in the shoes of the “someone” being discussed.
How else can we mitigate the binary gender system in the classroom to equally include and acknowledge trans, gender-variant and cis students?
Last week, I posted about an article in the LA Times discussing a report that a disproportionate number of cis men are accepted into college considering how many apply. While this sexism — with the intent of maintaining equal numbers of cis men and cis women students on campus — is deplorable in and of itself, what occurred to me after I posted was that I never stumble across anything related to trans or gender variant students and their numbers or equality on campus. I rarely read about trans students, period — this is a group that is largely ignored by the mainstream media, as well as the majority of faculty and administrators on most college campuses.
I have been reading and thinking quite a bit lately about the ways our culture reinforces a binary gender code and the ways this binary disenfranchises everyone, especially the people whose gender identity does not fit within this binary structure. Still, I’m not an expert, and my privilege as a cis woman keeps me from being from being the best spokesperson: I haven’t encountered this form of oppression, so I don’t grasp all of its nuances. Nonetheless, it is important to me as someone who is anti-oppression, someone who is a feminist and a teacher, someone who is concerned with the freedom and liberty of all of her students, that I share the information I do have with people who maybe haven’t thought about this at all. Read the rest of this entry →
As a teacher always in search of new texts, You Tube has opened up a treasure trove of possibilities for my Queer Identities: LGBT Literature and Film course.
With my school’s requirement of homework blogs, has come the additional perk of assigning videos that allow my students to become acquainted with authors such as James Baldwin and Leslie Feinberg even before we begin reading their novels. In addition, students can also learn about gender via short educational films such as Transgender Basics by the Gender Identity Project.
