"We Penetrate the Cabinets"
The Fourth Industrial Revolution & the Digitization of Humanity
Meet the Teachers
I'm not allowed to be out as trans non-binary at school. Of course, my response to this is to be as obnoxiously queer as possible. So I've got my rainbow hair with leopard print I've got my rainbow-colored glasses, sometimes I wear pins with various rainbow things on them. I wear things that do not match at all. Basically, my approach is to look like a unicorn through me up. If I can't do that, then what is the point?
If all I have to do to let a kid know that they are not alone in this world is be honest about who I am in this world, I have to do it. I have to do it! Like, I owe that to my queer trans kid self, I owe that to every queer trans kid that's out there.
I pledge allegiance to the Queers. A student pulled me aside and asked me if I was trans. I said yes and almost immediately they said, so when I grow up I can actually be a boy? Honestly I am just proud they can say it out loud cause that really takes a lot. When kids are born, the doctor looks at them, and they make a guess about whether the baby is a boy or a girl. At eighteen, I told my family and friends that I am really a boy, and it was this huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders and I had the freedom to be who I actually am.
Ask me questions about sex Ed, and I am sucked into your loophole. But one student was like do you believe that there are multiple genders, like in this country. I said yah, I mean like depending where you live there could be no genders or there could be more than three depending on your culture and your sex. Our society I do believe that there are multiple genders, and he was like I don't believe that because when you are born they assign you boy or girl and I said yes they do based on your biological sex. Gender is the ideas formed from society and culture that are attached to the educational system. So then I asked him what happens when a child is born, and they are assigned non-binary, and he had nothing to say.
I pride myself on being a teacher who is very open about her life. One of the things I am very open about is my sexuality. I have a trans flag, a bi flag, a non-binary flag all on my desk at my work. But there is one thing I am not open about and that is about being poly, and today that came to be something I actually had to worry about for the first time. Yah see, kids are interviewing us teachers as part of learning how to write profiles on others. On Tuesdays going ask me if I have a partner and the answer is Yah. And I have another one too and I don't know how to, and I don't know how to handle that conversation because while I know the kids are more accepting about things like homosexuality, bi sexuality and all of that polyamorous is not in the conversation. It is not something that is talked about.
I had a fun little conversation with my students yesterday. For those of you are new, I am very queer. I am non-binary, and I use they them pronouns, and my students know this. But yesterday I had some boys ask me about it and I explained to them here's how you use it. And they respond with well if you're a man I can be a woman, so I looked at him and I said OK do you want me to use she her pronouns for you, and he goes uh no and I responded with OK so you are just saying that to hurt my feelings then, and he goes what? No. Yes, you are being a bully. You're being trans phobic. How am I supposed to tell parents about this problem when they are probably the people they learned it from?