Agenda
As is all too frequently the case as the weekend approaches, I have gotten distracted by the reapparance of the disrespect for gender-variant people. While I do enjoy creating Teacher's Lounge, and hope you enjoy it as well, it was not my purpose when I joined DailyKos. I came here to actually teach...about those very variations in gender...knowing that such teaching mostly has to take place one person at a time.
It is not easy to teach a one-person class. I mean, I have supervised self-study and discussing a topic with someone who really wants to learn it is a joy. But teaching a one-person class when the student doesn't want to learn the lesson, even is adamantly opposed to learning the lesson, is not easy.
Teaching tolerance is not easy either. It requires that one gain a certain degree of respect. When one is a member of a group which is disrespected, who's going to listen to the message? If the "common wisdom" is that members of the group are frauds, liars, and charlatans, it sort of puts the potential educator at a disadvantage. It helps me to understand what it must be like to be a gypsy. But I have tried. I've done this for 15 years now., in one venue or another.
I use my poetry and my art work to try and build some of that respect that denied. I believe I am a good person. I'm a pacifist, ex-hippy, justice marching, draft-dodger who was caught, Spec 5 correctional specialist, husband for 24 years, father, taoist, mathematician, college professor, fucking-outstanding teacher. As both a mathematician and a teacher my best strength has been as a communicator, an explainer. Give me any theorem and I can learn it and then explain it better than the person who proved it in the first place. That is my strength.
So I have gone places in my efforts to teach about me, my identity, and people like me. - In the community of Conway and the entire state of Arkansas, where I transitioned as a college mathematics professor, in front of God and everybody.
- The Sappho lesbian list when I was the first ever openly pre-operative member, so that members of that community could know what it was like, first-hand from someone going through the process.
- A founding member of the Owls lesbian list, so that transsexual women could know that they were welcome.
- PFLAG, so that they could know that it was sometimes the people who are parents of gay or even straight children who needed support themselves, where I co-moderated the tgs-pflag email list for transgender parents and parents of transgender children, which successfully opened up PFLAG for transgender people and their families.
- The gay community in Arkansas, as a columnist for Triangle Rising and board member of the Arkansas Gay and Lesbian Task Force
- In Women's Space, where I was the first openly transsexual woman to attend a Women's Project Retreat, where I could engage the lesbian community in the discussion of the place of transsexual women in women's communities. I like to think I made a difference in that.
- A college campus in New Jersey, where I arrived fresh and new to ask if they wanted to employ a transsexual woman who was one damn good teacher.
- And here, because what else could be the next step in trying to change a society.
One person at a time. That's what I try to do. I try to be respectful of people. I ask them why they need to behave as they do, ever reinforcing the dispespect society has for my people. Yes, I may seem single-minded. It's why I came here.
Did you know a giant step happened this past year in an episode of the CBS television show Missing? The transsexual woman didn't die in the end.
Peace.
Awareness?
--Robyn Elaine Serven --Bloomfield College, NJ |