L E SSON S FR O M A GE NDE R S T UD I ES C L AS S R O O M
Continued from page 21
were discussing why LGBTQIA+ people felt
unsafe in the feminist space and a cisgen-
der straight white girl spoke up: “I know we
should be incorporating all women, but I
think it is better to let separate movements
—#BlackLivesMatter, immigrants’ rights, etc.
—fight for themselves because we don’t al-
ways have time to support all groups. Peo-
ple should just prioritize identifiers that are
close to them.” Immediately I felt my close
friends on either side of me, one biracial and
the other gay, tense up. I recognized their
feelings as I also sat with clenched fists, feel-
ing my own identity suddenly tossed into
a game of dissection that I didn’t want to
play. By suggesting the prioritization of sin-
gular identities, the student had excluded
my friends and me. How would I choose be-
tween my being a woman or being queer or
being Filipina-American? Without realizing it,
she had minimized and excluded the people
in the class who did not fit neatly into boxes,
who were not cis straight white women.
But then something happened. My teacher
stopped the class and called out the com-
ment: “I know you have good intentions, but
that statement invalidates the experiences
of some people in this room and outside of
it. Let’s unpack it...”
A conversation opened up that my teacher
started, but then asked if anyone else want-
ed to speak. It opened a way for us to ensure
“...we all felt safe to make
mistakes and to trust that our
peers and our teacher would
hold us accountable, but also
would leave room for us to
re-enter the conversation
and try again.”
everyone felt seen, heard, and accepted in
the space, including the girl who had made
the initial comment. Although my teacher
called out the comment, she called in the
student. 11 She didn’t try to shame or em-
barrass her, and she openly acknowledged
that making mistakes is not only normal,
but actually expected since part of the rea-
son privilege and oppressive systems work
so well is because we are taught not to see
them. By the end of the conversation, we all
felt safe to make mistakes and to trust that
our peers and our teacher would hold us ac-
countable, but also would leave room for us
to re-enter the conversation and try again.
It is important to distinguish between safety
and comfort because throughout much of
that conversation, we were all uncomfort-
able. But that discomfort was part of the
learning curve. As stated in our community
norms, we needed to “lean into discomfort”
11. For a good discussion of calling out vs. calling in, see https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/spring-2019/speaking-up-
without-tearing-down?fbclid=IwAR0iNiOER9Ma6786tRL7hu8BsGCVtjBN9Cd5asNFqS01KdRP2InQw8QYCoM
Page 22 Summer 2019
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