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Be an effective ally for LGBT people

Read this if you’re interested in being a more effective advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people. (http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=722)

These are some guidelines for people wanting to be allies for LGBT people. In today's world, LGBT issues are being discussed more than ever before. The discussions taking place in homes are often highly charged and emotional. This can be a scary topic and confusing to people on a very personal level. Being an ally is important, but it can be challenging. This list is by no means exhaustive, but provides a starting point. Add your own ideas and suggestions.

Don't assume heterosexuality. In our society, we generally assume that everyone we meet is heterosexual. Often people hide who they really are until they know they are safe to come 'out'.

Use gender neutral language when referring to someone's partner if you don't know the person well. In general, be aware of the gender language you use and the implications this language might have.

Educate yourself about LGBT issues. There are many resources available, reading lists and places to go for information. Don't be afraid to ask questions.

Explore ways to creatively integrate LGBT issues in your work. Establishing dialogue and educating about LGBT issues in the context of your other work can be a valuable process for everyone regardless of sexual orientation. Integration of LGBT issues into work you are doing instead of separating it out as a separate topic is an important strategy to establishing a safe place for people to talk about many issues in their lives.

Challenge stereotypes that people may have about LGBT as well as other people in our society. Challenge derogatory remarks and jokes made about any group of people. Avoid making those remarks yourself. Avoid reinforcing stereotypes and prejudices.

Examine the effect sexual orientation has on people's lives and development. Identify how race, religion, class, ability and gender intersect with sexual orientation and how multiple identities

Avoid the use of heterosexist language, such as making remarks implying that all people of the same gender date or marry members of the other gender.

Respect how people choose to name themselves. Most people with a same sex or bisexual orientation prefer to be called gay, lesbian, or bisexual rather than homosexual. 'Queer' is increasingly used by some gay, lesbian or bisexual people (especially in the younger generations), but don't use it unless you are clear that it is okay with that person. If you don't know how to identify a particular group, it's okay to ask. Don't expect members of any population that is a target of bias (e.g. gays, Jews, people of color, women, people with disabilities) to always be the 'experts" on issues pertaining to their particular identity group.

Avoid tokenizing or patronizing individuals from different groups.

Encourage and allow disagreement on topics of sexual identity and related civil rights. These issues are very highly charged and confusing. If there isn't some disagreement, it probably means people are tuned our or hiding their real feelings. Keep disagreement and discussion focused on principles and issues rather than personalities and keep disagreement respectful.

Remember that you are human. Allow yourself to not know everything, to make mistakes and to occasionally be insensitive. Avoid setting yourself up as an 'expert' unless you are one. Give yourself time to learn the issues and ask questions and to explore your own personal feelings. Ask for support if you are getting harassed or problems are surfacing related to your raising issues around sexual orientation. Don't isolate yourself in these kinds of situations and try to identify your supporters. You may be labeled as gay, lesbian or bisexual, whether you are or not. Use this opportunity to deepen your understanding of the power of homophobia and heterosexism. Make sure you are safe.

Prepare yourself for a journey of change and growth that will come by exploring sexual identityheterosexism and other issues of difference. This can be a painful, exciting and enlightening process and will help you to know yourself better. By learning and speaking out as an ally, you will be making the world a safer, more affirming place for all. Without knowing it, you may change or even save people's lives.

Choose the tuxedo

KELLI DAVIS, Class of 2005

“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us." –Herman Hesse

Sometimes when I wake up too early and read the newspaper before having that first cup of coffee, and particularly when I see a headline like “Lesbian’s Picture in Tux Cut from Yearbook,” I get confused and wonder what year it is. Could this be a headline in 2005? I'm just so thankful that we've solved the Mideast crisis, world hunger, and the AIDS epidemic so we can turn our attention to more vital concerns like lesbians in tuxedos.

On February 24, 2005, in Clay County, Florida, county school officials backed the decision of Sam Ward, principal of Fleming Island High School to bar a picture of a girl dressed in a tuxedo from the high school yearbook. The principal is quoted as saying that he pulled the senior class picture because Kelli Davis was wearing boy's clothes.

Thank God. Otherwise, what's next? Girls playing softball, getting jobs, and voting? It's a slippery slope from shirts with collars to downright anarchy.

Officials at the school have said the picture was pulled because Davis didn’t follow the dress code. Among the items not permitted at Fleming Island High School:

• Sleepwear (i.e. pajamas, robes, bedroom slippers, etc.)
• Apparel with spaghetti straps.
• Shirts without sleeves. 
• All pants must be fastened at the top closure and worn at the waist. 
• Sweats are not to be worn to school. 
• Footwear of some type must be worn at all times. Shoes must have a strap across the back      of the heel or the shoe must have a 1" heel.

There is no mention of gender specific clothing or tuxedos. (I do wonder how many revolutions are started by teenagers in sweatpants with flat shoes who are wearing bathrobes, but that’s another discussion altogether.)

I can only hope that Kelli Davis’ tuxedo pants were buttoned at her waist, and that she had sleeves because evidently her grade point average of 4.0 isn’t enough. She has already lived though two years of vicious taunting from classmates about her sexual orientation—who would think the next round of abuse would come from the principal’s office?

When Kelli went to the photo studio with her mother to have her senior picture made, she had only two choices of outfits—either a black drape or a tuxedo top. As reported by Susan Armstrong in Folio Weekly, Kelli watched as a girl with orange spiked hair and ear- and lip-piercings adjusted the drape low between her breasts, barely covering her nipples.

A modest girl, Kelli didn’t want to expose her chest, so she chose the tuxedo top. The principal justified his decision to ban the photograph because Kelli’s picture was not “uniform.” Evidently, lip piercings and breast baring are. Spaghetti straps are verboten at Fleming, but girls are expected to have their picture snapped for time immemorial with a piece of sheeting draped around their chest like they’re just waking up in bed.

When you’re a senior, your picture in the yearbook is critical—through all eternity, this is how your classmates will remember you. If you’re not there, you’re forgotten. Kelli’s mother had to buy an ad for $1,000 in the back of the yearbook so Kelli’s picture could appear, over Principal Ward’s continued objection.

Let me be fair. Being a high school principal is one of the toughest jobs around. I have great admiration for people who manage that complexity and I try hard not to second guess their decisions. I know that creating a fair, accurate, and inclusive yearbook is hard. But as much as possible, shouldn’t the yearbook represent everyone at the school as they would like to be remembered?

Everyone at that school has a right to be fully who they are. The adults involved are falling all over themselves to avoid saying the “L” word and pretending that Kelli’s sexual orientation doesn’t have anything to do with their decision. I think it does, given some of their oblique references to it, though the ramifications are much larger than that.

Three years earlier, in Tampa's Robinson High School, Nikki Youngblood’s photograph in a suit and tie was also banned. Nikki remarked at the time that asking her to wear the drape would be like asking a boy to wear a dress. As reported by Mubarak Dahir, Robinson High’s attorney noted that “if the school had let Ms. Youngblood get away with wearing a coat and tie this year, then the next year, you might have 10 boys dressing as girls and vice versa.”

The absolute horror.

Evidently, that prospect is more shocking to these administrators than graduating seniors who can’t read and write, don’t know enough math to balance a checkbook, and who are doing drugs in the school bathrooms.

This is about more than lesbians in tuxedos—it’s about all kids—their gender identity, roles, and strictures. Nikki Youngblood and Kelli Davis aren’t in their yearbooks because they don’t conform to the outdated gender roles that we still expect kids of all sexual orientations to conform to. They are questioning what’s “appropriate” for men and women in our society—thank goodness. And the administrators of those two schools are also sending “a clear message that gays and lesbians are inappropriate misfits who should simply try to blend in,” says Dahir. “It’s no wonder the administrators at Robinson High and others like it around the country are so nervous and frightened by a 17-year-old girl in a coat and tie,” Dahir notes. “She threatens their entire sense of order in our post-modern world.”

Kelli Davis had searched long and hard to find just the right quote to go under her yearbook photo. It’s by German Nobel Prize-winning writer Hermann Hesse, who died in 1962: "If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us."

Ironic, isn’t it?

~*~ 37 Days: Do it Now Challenge ~*~

I wish every girl in high school, straight or gay, would choose the tuxedo next year for their high school photo. In fact, I think I’ll start a “Girls in Tuxes” movement to make sure that happens.

 

More immediately, if this issue moves you, let the people at Fleming Island High Schoolknow how you feel about it. Here are email addresses – send a quick note to let them know we’re watching and we’re outraged:

            Fleming Island High School

Sam Ward, principal, sward@mail.clay.k12.fl.us

Laura Johnson, vice principal,  ljohnson@mail.clay.k12.fl.us

Dan Finley, Assistant Principal dfinley@mail.clay.k12.fl.us

Thomas Pittman, Assistant Principal tpittman@mail.clay.k12.fl.us

Deputy Fred Eckert, Youth Resource Officer fgeckert@mail.clay.k12.fl.us

Clay County Commissioners commissioners@co.clay.fl.us

            Clay County School Board:

Carol Vallencourt CVallencourt@mail.clay.k12.fl.us

Carol Studdard CStuddard@mail.clay.k12.fl.us

Charles Van Zant, Jr. CEVanZant@mail.clay.k12.fl.us

Wayne Bolla wbolla@mail.clay.k12.fl.us

Lisa Graham LGraham@mail.clay.k12.fl.us

Clay County Superintendent of Schools:

David L. Owens dowens@mail.clay.k12.fl.us

If you are involved in any way with a high school, pass along this list of questions suggested by the Southern Poverty Law Center to ensure that yearbooks are fair, accurate, and inclusive:

Yearbook Checkup (from www.tolerance.org)

• Look at the senior portraits. Are all girls and all boys dressed alike? If exceptions are allowed, what reasons can you identify?
• Review photo captions, cartoons and editorial comments. Do any of these elements demean certain groups or reinforce stereotypes? Is the humor harmless, or does it happen at someone's expense?
• Look closely at advertisements. Do any contain hurtful images, symbols or messages?
• How does the yearbook portray student couples? Does this coverage reflect the social reality at your school?
• How does the yearbook cover events and issues of the past school year? Do you think this coverage is fair or biased? Explain.
• Compare coverage of various sports teams and events. Which sports get the most coverage, and which get the least? What reasons can you offer?
• Compare coverage of athletics and other activities, such as academics, service projects and other interest groups. What patterns do you see?
• Are all the clubs at your school represented in the clubs section? If not, why do you think some are left out?
• Consider the "superlatives" categories and winners. What messages do these honors convey about the culture and values of your school?
• Examine the photographs of students acting goofy or just hanging out. Do the snapshots do a great job, a fair job or a poor job of representing the whole school community? Explain.
• How well does the yearbook staff reflect your school's cultural and social diversity? 

Why can't we have White History Month?

There is a petition being circulated on the Web that is addressed to “All Whites.” It has been signed by thousands of people, and reads in part: “We believe that if African Americans and now Hispanics can have their history month for their heritage, why can’t the White Americans have White history month? Wake up Americans before we become extinct! Please, sign my petition so that we can also have our White history month.”

This is an issue that surfaces every February, like clockwork, when Black History Month rolls around. I have the answer to the question: it is, quite simply, because every month is White History Month. 

When scholar Carter G. Woodson created what was then called Negro History Week in 1926, he hoped for the day when it no longer would be needed, when the contributions of people from various races, ethnicities and even genders would be taught fairly and properly. Woodson believed that Negro History Week would accomplish two things: build self-esteem among blacks and help eliminate prejudice among whites.

It was needed. As professor Yaw Boateng of Eastern Washington University reminds us, “between 1619 and 1926, African Americans and other peoples of African descent were classified as a race that had not made any contribution to human civilization; they were continually dehumanized and relegated to the position of non-citizens and often defined as fractions of humans. It is estimated that between 1890 and 1925, an African American was lynched every two and a half days. Peoples of African descent were visibly absent in any scholarship or intellectual discourse that dealt with human civilization.” This was the world in which Woodson lived.

But Woodson’s dream that Negro History Week would no longer be needed still isn’t a reality, nearly 80 years later. He dreamed of a day when every student's education would include such African-American figures as Crispus Attucks, who died in the Boston Massacre; Dr. Daniel Williams, who performed the world’s first open-heart surgery; Matthew A. Henson, who co-discovered the North Pole with Robert Peary, and Benjamin Banneker, the pioneer scientist who helped conduct the first survey of Washington. If you’re like me, those names weren’t mentioned in your history classes, and still aren’t today.

After the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Black History Week was expanded into Black History month. I’ve heard people joke that February was chosen because it’s the shortest month. Cute. But no, that’s not the reason. It was chosen in part because the birthdays of slave abolitionists Frederick Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, as well as poet Langston Hughes and musician Eubie Blake, are in February. It’s also the month the NAACP was founded (in 1909) and the month that its co-founder, W.E.B. Dubois, was born (in 1868). On February 3, 1870, the 15th Amendment granting blacks the right to vote was passed. February 25, 1870, the first black U.S. senator, Hiram Revels, took his oath of office. It was on February 1, 1960, that a group of black Greensboro, N.C., college students began a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter. February is an important month in Black history, though few of us in the White community know it. The intention of Black History Month was not to confine our study of Black history to those 28 days of February. Rather, Black History Month must be the climax of a study of the Black experience throughout the year.

So back to the question of the petitioners: why is there no White History Month? In the words of a Tulane University Black History Month website, a “White History Month is not needed because the contributions of whites are already acknowledged by society.” In other words, American history is white history, plain and simple. And as Thomas Sowell has written, “You cannot understand even your own history if that is the only history you know.”

Being white in the United States means that when my daughters attend school, the curricular materials they receive reflect the color of their skin; the same is not true for my African-American friends and colleagues. When my children hear about their national heritage or about “civilization,” they are shown that people of their color made it what it is; again, not so for the children of my African-American friends. Scholar Peggy McIntosh, associate director of the Wellesley Colllege Center for Research on Women, listed these and other realities of what it means to be white in this country - simply conditions of daily experience which, as a white person, she once took for granted. Not only do “flesh” colored bandages match her skin color, she noted, but when she turns on the television or looks at the front page of the paper, she can see people of her race widely represented—and not just as criminals or sports figures. The same is not true for African-Americans.

Last year, the Long Beach Grunion announced that January 2004 would be the first annual “White History Month.” They reported that White History Month festivities would include mass viewings of the latest Pixar and Disney brand films, the NBC’s Frasier farewell season, wine-tastings, and free Jet Blue travel. “White Americans,” they reported, “are in a celebratory mood, eagerly anticipating their first month where they can finally pay respect to their culturally rich traditions and the lifetimes of all the white people who have made the world a better place to be white in.” It was written as satire, but truer words may never have been spoken than those last seven: a better place to be white in.

Let me change my answer to the opening question: we don’t need a White History Month - not because every month is White History Month, but because every year is White History Year. In fact, a colleague of mine put it even more aptly: “it’s even more than White History Year…it’s White History Life – just look at the names of bridges, mountain ranges, parks, universities, colleges, streets, cities, management styles and philosophies, pictures on money, constellations, the color of Santa Claus...”

Quick! Who were Otis Boykin, Garrett Morgan, Lewis Latimer, and Patricia Bath? If you don’t know, don’t tell me we don’t need Black History Month.

 

 

Otis Boykin (1920–1982) invented the electronic control devices for guided missiles, IBM computers, and the pacemaker. Garrett Morgan (1877–1963) invented the gas mask and the first traffic signal. Lewis Latimer (1848–1928) invented an important part of the light bulb — the carbon filament. Dr. Patricia E. Bath (1949–) invented a method of eye surgery that has helped many blind people to see.