September 19, 2016
Making Higher Education More Accessible to Trans Students
Spade, Dean. Some Very Basic Tips for Making Higher Education More Accessible to Trans Students and Rethinking How We Talk about Gendered Bodies. (2011). Radical Teacher. 92, 57-62. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/463370
As transgender students become more visible in classrooms,
educators have been faced with a range of new challenges. Access to facilities
such as locker rooms and bathrooms have received the most outside attention,
but pedagogical questions also arise for instructors who strive to make their
total learning environment as positive as possible. This includes assuring
accessibility to trans students by “avoiding unintentional exclusionary
practices” and remedying obstacles to trans students' classroom participation. As
Spade predicted in 2011, the need to address these issues has grown and the
"tips" he offers for making it easier for trans gender and other
gender nonconforming students to feel more comfortable and included are more
relevant today than ever.
Names, pronouns, gender identity
Much of the awkwardness instructors and students feel when
interacting with transgender and gender nonconforming students comes from not
always knowing what pronoun to use and what name to call the student (in
transgender students, it is often different from her/his birth name).
Spade suggests instead of calling the roll, a sign-in sheet be passed around on
which students can say how they self-identify and by what name they want to be
addressed. He gives several tips for specific circumstances, but the most
importance is to set a tone of respect in the classroom. He emphasizes
the need to make the classroom a safe space for students, and I believe this is
of particular importance in a writing class at whatever level, because students
will always be encouraged to write in their most authentic voice, and this will
never happen if they do not feel safe enough to do so.
He goes on, however, to offer additional suggestions which I think
are equally important for creating an environment in which students will be
encouraged to write most freely. Educating oneself about trans history, trans
experience, trans resistance and understanding what gender nonconforming means
will allow the professor to bring more authenticity herself to how she runs the
class. This then leads into the next step of including trans issues and gender
nonconforming literature on the syllabus, making sure that the full spectrum of
experience is included, not just that of wealthy white trans individuals.
This also involves thinking and talking about gender norms and what they mean,
how do they influence what we read and how we write, and what we write about?
Talking about gendered body parts
In the second part of the article, Spade focuses on the language
used to describe and talk about the parts of the body that are gendered, that
is, reproductive and sex organs. He proposes that the only way to
ultimately eliminate the historical gender bias that attaches to our
biologically determined body parts is to dismantle the connection between
gender and part. In practice this would mean saying, for example, "people
who ejaculate" and "people who menstruate" and so on. Without
commenting on the many issues this proposal raises on all different
philosophical, political, sociological, and other fronts, it is enough to
point out that simply from a rhetorical perspective this would be a
major disruption of the language, written and spoken, in a profound way with
tremendous implications for English pedagogy. There is no evidence that
it would improve the English language in any way, in fact a strong argument can
probably be made for it having a negative effect, but that would be beside the
point. The crux of the argument is whether it would be worth it terms of the
greater inclusionary value of language; a classically whether the ends
justifies the means argument. Spade does not address this aspect and nor will
I, but I think it is a fair point to raise nonetheless when an article appears
in a journal read by educators.
I think this article has great value for students of English
pedagogy, although I suspect most would not give it a second glance were they
to see it in a table of contents. It is also, of course, a "hot
button" issue which many people would prefer not to acknowledge at all,
even in the context of higher education, especially if that education is in any
way supported by state funding. Nonetheless, it raises issues about situations
in which educators are increasingly going to find themselves and an
ostrich-like attitude is not going to be possible. Thought-provoking articles
are important not only for those entering the field, but for those who are
entrenched in it; and the more provocative sometimes, the better. I think that
the first part of the essay is excellent and should be read and considered by
every student who takes the Eng 664 course and anyone who teaches any of
the composition courses. I think the second part of the essay is valuable
because, in its wonderful extremity, it highlights in a way that it might not
be possible otherwise, just how gendered our language is; how that
genderization (if you'll allow me) which is so institutionalized and ingrained
in our vernacular, has real political and sociological implications for the way
we perceive men and women differently regardless of how unconscious we are of
doing so; and how uncomfortable it should - though I suspect it won't and will
be mostly dismissed as ridiculous - make us feel if we really think about it.
The author enumerates in the very first paragraph of the section all the ways
the presence of a uterus, for example, shades the way women are just inherently
perceived.
Although I'm very certain the author did not it intend it in this
way, when reading this section I could not help but think of Jonathan Swift's
"A Modest Proposal et al. This article fits very well in my
continuing consideration of the pedagogy of race, “multiculturalism” and
cultural values in the writing classroom.
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