MORE THAN TOLERANCE: DISRUPTING HETERONORMATIVE ASSUMPTIONS IN A BIOLOGY CLASSROOM
Julie Trachman
In “Teaching Queer: Bringing Lesbian and Gay Studies into the Community College Classroom,” Glasgow and Klevitt caution that tolerance and even acceptance is not necessarily adequate for creating a more inclusive classroom setting. They write that “[i]t can do more harm than good because the concept of tolerance itself implies that what is tolerated is something that one does not really consider to be equal in value” (233). This article was one of several sources focusing on curriculum transformation that were suggested as reading material in preparation for the Oct. 28th 2011 workshop sponsored by the Hostos Office of Academic Affairs (OAA) and the Women and Gender Studies (WGS) committee.
This particular statement regarding tolerance caught the attention of many of us in attendance at that workshop. The guest speaker, Prof. Susan Farrell of Kingsborough Community College, led a discussion that considered the above and other articles in order to help us develop ideas on how to both integrate WGS topics into a wide variety of courses and build cross-disciplinary bridges where possible. As a starting point to our day-long conversation, we agreed that as educators we all need to strive to move beyond mere tolerance when it comes to issues of inclusiveness in and out of the classroom.
The emphasis of this workshop was consistent with the ongoing conversation promoting diversity in academia at large. The literature on curriculum transformation in the Women and Gender Studies discipline promulgates many of the same points that have been discussed in the publications of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) throughout this past decade. In AACU’s fall 2011 newsletter, Making Excellence Inclusive (MEI) (fall 2011), Albertine and McNair (4) discuss MEI core principles and ask us to pay “attention to the cultural differences learners bring to educational experiences, and how that diversity can enhance the enterprise.” MEI also advocate for us to ensure that every student regardless of race/ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, ability, etc., is afforded “the best possible course of study for the context in which the education is offered.” CUNY has participated in this endeavor for a number of years, as showcased in a 2009 AACU MEI newsletter (Clayton-Pedersen 4). Faculty on all of the CUNY campuses were asked to participate in a flurry of activities last spring directed at assessing the diversity of the CUNY campuses such as the CUNY Strategy Sessions on Diversity and Inclusion. Some of us were asked also to participate in the session entitled “Inclusive Excellence” held on April 29, 2011, CUNY Central. These sessions focused primarily on diversity of faculty members but to some extent had us consider the diversity of the CUNY student population as well. In talking with faculty while these activities were in progress, it seemed that up until spring 2011 the Inclusive Excellence initiative had been relatively unknown amongst faculty on the Hostos campus. However, Hostos’ mission statement clearly manifests the MEI core principles, and all one needs to do is to take a look at the individuals populating the campus to recognize that Hostos is constantly striving towards the ideal of “inclusive excellence” with respect to student education and faculty and student diversity. Efforts such as the Inclusive Excellence initiative on college campuses like CUNY and K-12 schools across the country exemplify the efforts made in the United States—as well as throughout the world in recognizing and promoting human rights—including LGBT rights. These types of initiatives push us to examine as members of communities and as individuals our own attitudes and practices on human rights issues and concerns, to try to ensure that each person is neither endangered nor made to feel marginalized. As Secretary of State Hilary Clinton acknowledged in her Dec. 6, 2011 speech before the U.N. Human Rights Council, which focused on LGBT issues and was reported upon by Volshoy and Ford, the U.S. is not perfect when it comes to LGBT issues and other human rights concerns and has a way to go. Nonetheless, the country is making progress and working to enact laws that protect everyone. Secretary of State Clinton mentions that “laws are ‘teaching’ and they help to lead the way for the entire society.” She goes on to say that “[l]aws that require equal protections reinforce the moral imperative of equality.” With respect to progress in the U.S. on LGBT issues as of 2003, gay behavior is no longer criminalized in any state in the U.S. Recently, “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” for military personnel has been repealed and more and more states are allowing gay individuals to enter into marriage contracts. New York State legalized gay marriage in the summer of 2011 and the eighth state, Washington, in February 2012 signed a bill to enact gay marriage soon.
Even though it is against U.S. law today and considered to be a hate crime, there are still many LGBT Americans who experience bullying, harassment and / or violence in their daily lives. We know there are occurrences such as what happened to Matthew Shepard who, in 1998, was tortured and murdered for being gay. Even today, we unfortunately hear of similar enough episodes even in New York City and elsewhere: individuals being assaulted or even murdered because of their sexual orientation. And everyone is likely to be aware of the situation regarding Tyler Clementi who was cyber-bullied and committed suicide when “outed” by his roommate. In March 2012, Clementi’s roommate, Dharun Ravi, was convicted of invasion of privacy, hindering apprehension, witness tampering, and all four of the bias intimidation charges. Worldwide, the situation is considerably bleaker. There are 76 countries which still criminalize gay behavior and in five countries, gay individuals may be put to death (Nebehay). Some countries seem to be regressing.
For example, Uganda is currently trying to enact the death penalty for homosexuality in certain contexts (Mugashi).
As Secretary of State Clinton says in her speech to the U.N., “[W]hen any part of humanity is sidelined, the rest of us cannot sit on the sidelines…. Progress starts with honest discussion... reaching understanding in a constellation of conversations in places big and small….” (Voshoy and Ford).
All college campuses including Hostos (representing small places) need to participate in these honest conversations in order to move everyone as much as possible into the 21st century attitude-wise regarding to LBGT issues. According to Blumenfeld (21), 31% of LBGTQ students, faculty and staff who were recently surveyed at higher education campuses reported they experienced “a difficult or hos- tile campus climate and 21% experienced some form of harassment related to their sexual identity or gender expression.” The hostile climate at these campuses had negative impacts on the students’ educational experiences, with many considering leaving school, and others experiencing “lower educational outcomes.” Many felt the hostile campus climate affected their mental and physical well-being.
Hostos, like many college campuses across the country, is not as safe a haven as we would like it to be for all of our students, staff and faculty. Occasionally, homophobic comments are overheard in the classrooms, hallways and Hostos’ environs, and we all worry about the potential occurrence of more violent forms of gay bashing. The Sexual Harassment Awareness and Intake Committee helps educate students and faculty on campus regarding these matters, but it is not enough. Many faculty, staff and students have come together in new initiatives to expand on educational outreach. The Hostos Civility Committee came into being in fall 2010, the Safe Zone initiative was launched officially in fall 2011, and The Open Alliance kickoff occurred in April 2012. These efforts, all sanctioned by the OAA, are directed at promoting safe and supportive environments for all of us to work towards educating our students and maximizing the positive learning experiences of our students. Besides supporting the WGS workshop held October 28, 2011, the OAA also co-sponsored in fall 2011 the WGS film series, which was used as a platform to promote a better understanding of WGS issues.
Promotion of curriculum transformation in regard to LBGT issues and other diversity concerns such as race, ethnicity and gender issues is a topic being considered in many of our recent pedagogic journals as evidenced by Armstrong’s article in National Education Association’s journal, Thought and Action. Armstrong (51) asks us to contemplate that “students learn best when they are truly visible, respected, and safe, and that you want them to be prepared to thrive in a world that is complexly diverse.” Armstrong (53) posits that we should consider fostering this type of inclusivity across all disciplines.
In AACU’s publication Diversity and Democracy, devoted to LBGTQ issues, Blumenfeld (21) advocates similarly that LBGT issues should be considered in all classes regardless of the discipline.
In accordance with the above, Hackman in her article in the AACU Diversity and Democracy publication focuses on the social justice aspect, whereby each student will be ideally fully engaged because he or she is being treated fairly irrespective of his or her background and is afforded equal opportunities to be successful in his or her studies. Hackman suggests that we take this even further by asking us to explore in the classroom the incorrect rigid notion of the binary constructs of male and female in order to understand the origins of heterosexism and homophobia. Like Hackman, Zacko-Smith and Pritchy Smith (8) ask educators in the classroom to “strive towards an understanding that both gender and sexuality lie on a continuum, with no point on that continuum being better or worse than any other.” With this understanding that gender and sexuality are on a continuum (an idea given credence by the scientific work of Kinnsey et al. and Fausto-Sterling), it becomes possible for us as educators and as a society as a whole to ask everyone to appreciate and respect these inherent differences amongst human beings; moreover, these values can be utilized to enrich our students’ educational experiences. Zacko-Smith and Pritchy Smith (2) ask educators to serve as mentors and to help define the reality for those we are educating, and configure this reality to coincide with the demands for social justice and equity. This endeavor to expose students to more diverse ideas has long- term benefits for our society. Several studies have shown that student exposure to diverse ideas, especially in the first couple of years of college, increase the likelihood that these individuals will be able to continue entertaining more diverse thoughts after college (Milem et al. 689; Schott-Cecacci et al. 37).
Human beings like to think in binary terms when it comes to an individual’s sex (that is, his or her maleness or femaleness, according to an “evaluation of chromosomal sex, gonadal sex and morphological sex and secondary sex traits”) (Loue 54)and when it comes to an individual’s gender (that is , his or her masculinity or femininity, which in reality are socially constructed roles, behaviors, thoughts, characteristics, etc. that a given society deems suitable for males and females respectively) (Loue 59 -60). Echoing what was said earlier, Kinnsey (897), in discussing male homosexuality states “[t]he world is not divided into sheep and goats. Not all things are black nor all things white. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories. Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigeon-holes. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects.” Fausto-Sterling in her work on human sexuality has been talking for years of the idea of not just being two sexes, but rather five (acknowledging that there is in reality a continuum with male and female at either ends of the spectrum, which Fausto-Sterling refers to as “intersex”) (Fausto-Sterling 1993, 21; Fausto-Sterling 2003, 19). Many of us in society still tend to think in heteronormative terms. These heteronormative assumptions are not correct and unfortunately, if maintained, can lead many individuals who do not fit in the pigeon-hole to feel marginalized or to experience homophobia. Those of us in education, regardless of our discipline, have been asked to work towards disrupting this heteronormative thinking (Sumara and Davis 191, 202; Broadway 296). As a biology teacher, one would think this would be easy, but many of our textbooks still maintain many heteronormative viewpoints (Broadway 294), so we have to look elsewhere for alter- native resources and think somewhat outside of the box.
In spring 2011, the Women and Gender Studies committee conceived the idea of showing a series of films in the fall to somewhat complement the Women’s History Months events held in March of every year. Because of my long-standing interest in gender and biology issues (and the nature vs. nurture aspect of psycho- logical issues), as well as an awareness of the Safe Zone Initiative to be launched in fall 2011, I considered a number of movies that bore a relationship to LGBT issues and decided upon the award-winning movie, “TransAmerica,” which pertains to transsexualism. Because this topic was not directly germane to the biology classes that I was teaching during the fall 2011 semester, I offered to show the movie out- side of class time, but was willing to offer my Anatomy and Physiology 1 (A&P1) students’ extra credit if they attended and did a write-up on the movie topic. I also knew that there was a possibility that my colleagues on the WGS committee would send their students but they also were showing movies of their own that tied in with their particular course content. Mentioning the movie to my students, many showed interest but could not attend at the scheduled time. Some were willing to watch on their own. However, because expanding student awareness about LGBT issues was very important to me, I decided to broaden the extra-credit assignment and scaffold it in a way that it would also help all students who decided to do the assignment, including those who had attended the movie. As a springboard with which to link the film with concepts and factual content of the A&P course text- book by Martini et al., I had the students read a New York Times article entitled “Pas de Deux of Sexuality,” which I believed was a good complement to the movie topic because of its dealings with the biological complexities of gender identification/sexual orientation. I felt that under the circumstances I could carefully use it for
A&P1, which does not cover human reproduction, genetics, nervous system or the endocrine system or topics that are directly relevant to the assignment (in science courses, we are under tight constraints as to topic coverage). I had been including gender and biology topics “gently” prior to the introduction of this assignment. For example, my discussion in my classes about the South African female athlete Caster Semenya (Dreger) made quite an impression on my students. Because of her male physique, Semenya was accused for a time of being male and not allowed to compete for a given period. The creation of this assignment based on the Pas de Deux article was, indeed, a huge leap forward in transforming the curriculum regarding WGS issues. Given the launch of the Safe Zone initiative, the legalization of gay marriages last summer in New York State, and the specter of individuals like Tyler Clementi, I felt the extra-credit assignment was worth doing as long as I carefully crafted the assignment in such a way as to not take students too far beyond the scope of the A&P1 course and make it somewhat relevant to course content that they would need at a future time in A&P2 (overall, a win-win situation).
Using the A&P text and the NY Times article as the basis of the writing assignment, I constructed a series of questions that would get the students to appreciate just how complex sex and gender identification really is. I wanted the students to see all of the steps involved in determining a person’s sex. I started with the basic genetics: What happens if someone has XX vs. XY among their 46 chromosomes as compared to those an individual with certain genetic anomalies like XO vs. XXY? What is the role of the SRY region on the Y chromosome? I had students considering the influences of the sex hormones at different stages of hu- man development. Students became more aware of the sex hormones’ physical and psychological impacts on brain development and function. I had students recognizing that both males and females produce both of the stereotypic male and female hormones but typically produce them in differing proportions; however, there are individuals where the hormone production does not always fall within “normal” ranges. Additionally, there are some individuals who could produce these hormones in adequate amounts but could experience atypical developmental patterns if the individual is lacking the necessary hormone receptors. I wanted students to realize, even if subliminally, that within all of this complexity due to underlying biology, there is a continuum, and sex/ gender identification is not simply “binary” – male or female. Understanding this, they would better understand the ‘Brees of the world (Bree being the fictional subject of TransAmerica) or more importantly, the Chaz Bonos and Tyler Clementis of the real world. These individuals are part and parcel of the full spectrum of the human condition.
Twenty-four students attended the movie with fifteen in attendance from my A&P1 classes. Eleven students from my A&P classes submitted the extra-credit writing assignment (with three A&P students also attending the movie). Between the quality of the contents of the assignments submitted, and the discussion in class after the viewing of the movie, it was apparent that the students genuinely appreciated the fact that sex and gender are a lot more complicated than first meets the eye (even the discussion in class when the assignment was disseminated to my three sections of A&P students was of some value in getting the point across about the complexities regarding gender and sex). Students who submitted the write up and / or came to the movie clearly demonstrated that they understood that it is much more than having XX chromosomes equated to being female and XY chromosomes equated to being male. The students came to understand as well that as a society we need to appreciate that there are many “in-between” areas that exist and that we can be much more “sensitive” in regard to how we approach our conversations about human sexuality and gender.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Prof. Elyse Zucker for looking at earlier versions of this article and discussing with me some of its content.
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