As I read both readings this week I
was especially struck with the hot-button issue Dr. Rymes mentions in her
chapter regarding the arrests around gender pronouns. Specifically I was thinking about how they
are policed inside and outside of school and the arrests that occur in both places.
As most of you know, I am a second- grade teacher so the issue of whether to
talk about gender or not talk about gender is a very hot-button issue for us
teachers.
I teach my little ones all
subjects, all the day long. I am confronted and conflicted at the thought about
introducing gender neutrality to them. Granted, they have probably all seen
something that caused wonderment about the subject, or made a citizen
sociolinguistic arrest when they heard someone use a pronoun used that was
different from the “typical” or “assumed” his
and hers. However, I am grappling with the notion of if it is my job to do so? In one of my picture
book classes at Penn, there was a story called I Am Jazz (2014) by Jazz Jennings. It is a true story about a boy
who has a “girl’s brain trapped inside a boy’s body” and the book goes on to
explain what being transgendered means and overall promotes acceptance. (This
is a link of the author if you are interested in hearing more about the book https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD_eBMIxTjo
)
After we had a class
discussion about the book and why it is a good thing to share to kids, I remember
I was so conflicted whether to read this or not. When I talked with my
professor about it, she said, “Well, if you’re going to lose your job, better
not do it”. I felt like at my school particularly, the kids themselves would be
fine, but the issue of the arrests would happen majorly with the parents. There
could be a slew of arguments as to why it is not appropriate for me to read the
book to them… it’s not in the curriculum, it’s too progressive, it’s not my
“place” to teach that, etc. However, is it though? Is not school the best place
to hear it from a neutral party rather than from a feedback-loop of negativity
from a family member or trolls on social media? Isn’t it best to give exposure
and promote acceptance?
Since my district is
conservative, I thought it best if I just put it in the classroom library and
not address it directly unless there was a question. In this way, I gave exposure
so that if a child is questioning their pronouns or gender they can feel
validated through this literature. I truly believe that ‘seeing’ oneself
through literature is the highest forms of self-validation possible for a young
child. Yet whenever I see a student choose to read them, I can’t help but hold
my breath and see what happens next.
My best friend
teaches in an elementary school in the “main line” part of Pennsylvania which has
the wealthiest families of the state in attendance. At this particular school,
they are extremely progressive. My friend is not allowed to call the students
“boys and girls” or “ladies and gentlemen” or else risk not just sociolinguistic
‘arrest’, but her job as it is in her contract to be gender neutral. There are
no bathrooms that are labeled in the school and also, they are allowed to do
any “boys v girls” games or teams or any binary ways of division. They have
posters around the school that say “We Belong” surrounded by various pronouns
promoting equality amongst all.
She said that this all stemmed from one parent
‘arresting’, 'policing' or ‘trolling’ the school so badly that they changed it all to
appease the parent. She said she there have been several transgendered children
in the school so far each with trolling parents. Interestingly though, she said
she is not required to directly addresses the subject just promote equality. She
said has never read I Am Jazz or any
other books with non-binary character to her class which is interesting since
they are all about inclusivity.
It makes me wonder about
the parents of children who are not okay with their child’s school teaching the
non-binary aspects of pronouns and people? I wonder what the “like/dislike”
ratios were on the Facebook page when they announced they were doing going to
be sensitive to everyone’s pronouns. I wonder if they were at all like the
ratios on the “Gender Pronouns, Get It Right” video Rymes (2019) illuminated in
her chapter. This is an issue that is certainly still up for debate and I am
sure will continue to be a hot-button issue for years to come.
Besides the questions posed throughout
the reflection, here are some others:
What are your thoughts on schools teaching
non-binary pronouns to children?
What do you think schools and teachers should
do?
If you had (or have) a child, would you
be offended if your child’s teachers did this?
Hi Gab! Thank you for talking about this incredibly important topic and how it relates to citizen sociolinguistics. I think you raised a really critical point about school contexts and how it is sometimes difficult to introduce and navigate social issues in cases where local communities may not be as open to change. I come from a completely different context, more similar to that of your friend’s school. As a student, my school spaces were relatively progressive. I had transgender teachers of color as well as openly LGBTQ teachers throughout K-12. At the same time, my teachers had to fight the school board to teach literary texts like Angels in America, and to this day, the push for LGBTQ-inclusive sex education is being challenged by local authority figures in my hometown. At my undergraduate institution, announcing one’s pronouns during introductions has become normalized and “all-gender” restrooms are installed in virtually all campus buildings. I have many transgender and gender non-conforming friends, so to me, having schools become a primary space to teach students about gender pronouns and LGBTQ issues is an absolute necessity.
ReplyDeleteTo be completely honest, I’m not sure what I would do if I were in a much more conservative context! I like to imagine that recognizing and introducing acceptance for all marginalized communities is always possible. The Queer Eye reboot currently airing on Netflix, for example, has 5 very openly gay/bi/pansexual men encountering often times very conservative clients in very conservative spaces. Yet, we get to see moments where these face-to-face interactions create possibilities (or ruptures, in citizen sociolinguistic terms) for new perspectives, tolerance, and even a kind of rehumanization of LGBTQ personhood. At the heart of social change, I think, are these intimate, one-on-one conversations that occur with notions of mutual respectability and recognition of the other individual’s humanity. Of course, sometimes, there really are just some people that are so attached to their abstract ideologies that the concrete presence of the person in front of them becomes disregarded. And sometimes, it is just too emotionally taxing and often traumatizing for marginalized individuals to constantly have to engage in these discussions, especially in “polite” and “respectable” ways. It is our responsibility as allies, who don’t experience this emotional labor and marginalization, to share the burden of these conversations.
Thanks for this reflective and thought-provoking post, Gab! I feel like the dilemma you bring up -- in terms of discussing, or not discussing, non-binary gender identities with your students -- is very relatable, also also epitomizes the philosophical distinction that Isin (2008) draws between "responsibility" and answerability". As Rymes fleshed out in her chapter, teachers have both a responsibility *and* an answerability to their students. However, I think it's possible to conceptualize this responsibility-answerability dynamic in multiple ways, in the messy chaos of our actual world. For instance: as a teacher, you are responsible for looking after your students; but does this imply that you are responsible for broadening their worldview *or* keeping them protected/safe? Further, should your "answerability" to your students more reflect your own values/mora, *or* the (potentially different) values/mora of your students' home communities? I don't think there is necessarily a "right" answer to this dilemma; yet I do think it certainly highlights the tricky situation it creates for teachers.
ReplyDeleteFiguring out how to navigate this situation takes me to the wise point Cheryl made about the ways that face-to-face interactions can create opportunities for rupture that wouldn't otherwise occur, and thanks to which everyone's perspectives can be widened & enriched. This idea of the power of "intimate" interaction reminds me of a core point that Michelle Obama made while promoting her book "Becoming" last year (..I can't remember if she actually says this in the book, or if I saw an interview where she said this!). But anyway, in discussing her travels as first lady to a huge range of places across the US, Obama explained how "it's much harder to hate up close". Basically: humans have an extraordinary capacity to find common ground with other humans when everyone is in close proximity/dialogue with one another -- regardless of everyone's personal ideologies and experiences.
If I were in your place, Gab, I feel like my inclination would be to bring up & then discuss a thorny topic like gender identity with my students -- anticipating that this would likely cause some backlash when my students' parents. I think the eventual gains from an open, and difficult, possibly uncomfortable, resultant conversation -- between you, the students, the school, and the parents -- would be worth all the discomfort. Yet I don't think this is necessarily the "right" choice; and I also recognize that it would put you, or whoever the teacher is, in a relatively vulnerable spot in terms of job security.
This got quite ramble-y (..as usual); but I think all of these thoughts are sort of coalescing into another, related question: how can we, as individual "citizens", individual "actors", work to create social spaces where it feels safe to create ruptures? Our readings for this week discussed the walls of fear, habitus, normalcy and trolls that can stifle people's willingness to put themselves out there; what can we do, if anything, to chip away at such walls?
On another, but still related, note -- about a month ago it was "banned books week"! If anyone's interested in reading more about this literary tradition, here is a link to check out: http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10
In the context of gender neutral pronouns, note how many of the top-banned books were challenged for "LGBTQIA+ content"...
Hi Gab,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for your post. As a teacher/parent, the questions you raised up are ones I have been grappling with for a long time.
The Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia once host Drag Queen Story Hour during pride weekend, and some parents were angry about the event and thought it was inappropriate for young children. Sometimes it’s shocking to see in such a progressive world nowadays, LGBT-related topics are still taboos for many people.
That being said, I in some way understand the concern of some parents. When I was an elementary school teacher, one day one of my colleagues told us that she was not sure about her gender and asked us to use the pronoun “they” when referring to her. I lived in a liberal town, and no one said anything about it. The colleague also shared with the 2nd graders she taught the news. She asked them to address her by Teacher C instead of Ms. C. Also, she shared with the students how excited she felt when she discovered a new self and told students that they might also be confused about their gender, which is fine. A few days later, we started to notice a change in the 2nd graders she taught. Many of them refused to use the boys/girls bathrooms, and some of them told their parents that they were not sure about their gender. Not surprisingly, some parents were irritated.
In my opinion, it is fine to talk about these sensitive topics with our students, but teachers should be mindful of their tone, which should be as neutral as possible.
Thanks for your post, Gab! I am confronted with a similar situation but in reverse. Students in my intermediate German class have to read a novel about young people in East-Germany in the 1980s. In the past, students enjoyed this novel because of its unexpectedly humorous and adventurous portrayal of life in East-Germany. In recent semesters, however, I have noticed that especially the women in the class, are critical of the cartoonish, somewhat sexualized portrayal of the female characters in the novel. Please keep in mind, this is an intermediate foreign language class: Students struggle to understand the content and are not able to confidently launch into a critical analysis of the text as a cultural product of the late 1990s. Yet, I am glad that students are beginning to have the confidence and the awareness to be uncomfortable. A change, I suspect, brought about by the #metoo movement. And why should they be subjected to reading this text? I have advocated for a change of text but feel that not all of my colleagues feel the same way. I know I will press on, but my situation is by far not as delicate as yours.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the uncertainty about what to do could be an expression of the Heideggerian “uncanniness” quoted in Isen (p. 32)? Isen elaborates on Bakhtin’s dialogic concepts of “responsibility” and “answerability” in order to find an answer to the question about the identity of the “Other” in that relationship. According to Isen, Heidegger locates that Other in our selves: “The call of conscience directs the being that I myself am out of uncanniness” (p. 32) and that direction is towards a “conscience as care” (p. 33).
While I don’t believe that there is a “view from nowhere” and that it is not possible to be “neutral” as a teacher (neither ‘reading the book’, nor ‘not reading the book’, nor ‘putting the book on the shelf’ are neutral acts), I do think we have to engage with the question whether we care and are ready to engage in “acts of citizenship” for which Isen’s three principles provide a useful roadmap.
Sorry, about the anonymous post above. It's Claudia.
DeleteThank you Gab for this excellent post! I think you have highlighted a very important dichotomy I have observed around issues such as the use of gender pronouns: meaningful engagement vs. performative engagement. I think your examples show both of these perfectly. The situation you described in your friend’s school seems to be performative. There is a lot of effort put into giving the appearance of promoting equality/equity stemming from one parent’s policing, but there is nothing done to engage meaningfully through discussion about the subject. I think your efforts to have the book in your library are more on the meaningful end of the dichotomy. You have created a space/opportunity for the discussion to take place, while at the same time taking into consideration the wider social and political context of your school’s location.
ReplyDeleteI think having a discussion about non-binary pronouns with children is important, but I also think parents’ wishes need to be respected (especially if the children are in elementary school). Schools are important sites for education (i.e. learning to engage meaningfully with ideas you may or may not agree with) but in elementary school I think parents should get to decide if they are ready to broach specific subjects with their children. I was 7 years old when I first learned from an older cousin what the word “lesbian” meant and I promptly returned home and announced to my mother that I was a lesbian. She was less than pleased and I was so confused about what the big deal was. I thought I was sharing something I thought was novel and cool, but it was not a subject my very conservative, Christian, West Indian mother was prepared to discuss.
Returning to the need for meaningful engagement, I was very amused to see Jordan Peterson mentioned in this week’s readings. My first encounter with him came from a NYT op ed that basically made him sound like the anti-Christ, but over the last year other encounters with his work have cemented in me the belief that meaningful engagement with people across the ideological spectrum is fundamental for social change. I think most of the discussions around social change today are incredibly performative and many people who have never listened to a full length lecture by Peterson or read any of his books are usually the first to tell others how awful he is. To be clear, he says things I flat out don’t agree with, but the fact that a lot of people agree with him makes me curious. Why do people agree with him? Who are these people? This is what meaningful engagement must mean. Those who consider themselves educated and who take on the responsibility of educating others must go beyond social media style ranting and name calling i.e. “you’re a mean mad white man” a la Michael Eric Dyson ( https://youtu.be/ST6kj9OEYf0?t=4163. ) This is the height of performative engagement. This was the most substantive contribution Dyson made to this very important debate which I think is woefully unfortunate. It was hilarious to some, but shouldn’t we demand more than entertainment if we truly want social change?
Hi Gab! Thanks for your inspiring post and bringing up the topic: gender pronouns. I totally understand that you wanted to introduce students the non-binary concepts, but you still have some concerns because of their parents. In my opinion, if I were a teacher, I would like to teach my students about gender-neutral pronouns, because it is indispensable to build an inclusive environment and let students know what's happening outside the classroom. For instance, some industries in the society are building LGBTQ inclusivity. United Airlines now offers travelers booking flights nonbinary gender options for identifying themselves. Travelers can now identify as M(male), F(female), U(undisclosed) or X(unspecified), and will have the option to choose the title "Mx" while booking a flight (e.g. "Welcome Aboard, Mx."). United Airlines is taking an important step forward for non-binary inclusion.
ReplyDeleteAlternatively, if I were a teacher and were not allowed to teach the non-binary concepts or read a related book in class, I would practice gender-inclusive language. For example, replacing "boys and girls" or “ladies and gentlemen” with “everybody” helps make people who do not identify as boys or girls feel more included and safe around us. Also, it may give students a glimpse that we can’t know someone’s gender by just "looking" at them.
Hi, Gab! I really enjoyed reading your post about the tension between schools, parents and teachers surrounding the gender pronouns issue. I can see your dilemma of exposing students to gender neutrality while also being cautious of the pushback from the parents. Since Korean is a null-subject language where subjective personal pronouns are often omitted and there are gender-neutral pronouns for possessives and objectives, the use of gender pronouns has never been a salient issue in Korea and thus the recent practice of nuanced uses of gender pronouns in English is quite eye-opening to me. Given your questions and applying them to Korean context, I imagine that teaching these gender pronouns in EFL classrooms would take on a whole other dimension of complexity. On one hand, I expect that it will be easier to bring up the issue since it will be received as part of learning about American (or English-speaking communities’) culture. On the other hand, I can also see a major pushback from schools and parents since Korean society in general is less familiar with and open to the discussion of transgender or non-binary genders compared to the U.S. But I certainly believe that exposing students to non-binary pronouns in EFL classrooms will be fruitful in both pedagogical and ethical senses because it really shows the critical interrelation among our language use, social categories, and ideological projections regarding those. I think it would be interesting to discuss with children how Korean speakers may approach non-binary genders in different ways than English speakers do due to the less frequent or explicit uses of gender pronouns in Korean language.
ReplyDeleteThank you all for the comments and Gab for raising this important question. I often wonder how the school environment and norms will be when my daughter starts elementary school in a few years, it seems that we are in such a pivotal transition moment.
ReplyDeleteI think I attempted and failed a citizen sociolinguistic act about this just last week. My sister was visiting from France last week and we went to a restaurant, where the hostess introduced our server with "name, they will be taking care of you today". I wanted to draw my sister's attention to this, and it was very confounding for her. She asked me why the plural when it was just one person, so I had to explain the need for a gender-neutral pronoun (the binary is the same in French) and she thought it was quite strange and frivolous. I gave her some context from my professional life as a college educator about the first day of class, and signing pronouns in our emails... Her first argument was: how can anyone be expected to remember every person's pronoun? I told her it wasn't that difficult, that it tended to be salient. Later I thought I should have told her an argument I read on a Twitter thread about "preferred pronouns" (and the problematic use of preferred), that we remember people's first names which are at least as arbitrary, so what is so difficult about pronouns (at least it's a finite number of them)? I was left with a feeling of inbetwenness (that I often feel when I see debates about political correctness and social issues in France) and of inability to translate one culture into the other, instead of sparking the citizen sociolinguistics dialogue I had hoped for.
To loop back to your question and the context of little kids. I honestly don't know how I feel. Sadly/ironically, my first inclination is to use my sister's argument: isn't language and grammar confusing enough to introduce another layer of confusion to such young kids? I often here my 5.5 y.o neighbor confusing he/she (or using he as umbrella pronoun) for instance.
But is this my way of copping out?
Hi Gab! Thanks for your inspiring post. I really enjoyed reading it. I can understand your dilemma, as there are so many tensions in institutions to address the gender issues. Some parents might worry about the negative influences caused by introducing gender neutrality ideas. This concern is also prevalent in China. Gender neutrality becomes the hot button issues that school and institution will not address at all. This neglecting and understatement leads to stronger conflicts between gender issues.
ReplyDeleteI also encountered in a similar situation in my classroom. I teach in PEDAL program which provides free English courses for family members of Penn. And during the first four weeks, the students who came to our class are mostly females. There is a male students who is from east Asia. During a break, he asked me whether this English course is only for female students. His question stuck me a little bit, for I never imagined that gender issue will be a problem in my class. As most of the students are adults. However, it happened. So at that moment, I only told him this course is not specific for women, but just accidentally most of the students are women. And while he was talking to me, there were also some students overheard our conversation. And that really made me very awkward and panic.
After this thing happened, I realized that even adult students will have concerns of gender. As a language teacher, who is even much younger than my students, I doubt my legitimacy to address this questions. So I still have no answer to cope with this questions.