Shannon's Queerest Space
Promoting Genderqueer, Transgender, Youth Rights, Social Justice, and Other Radicalness Since 1999
Why I Care About Queer Youth and Why I Hated High School
Most people who know anything about my life and my politics could tell you that i'm pretty passionate about both queer issues and youth issues. And if you put those two together: Watch Out!!
My concern with queer stuff stems from my own ever-evolving sexual and gender identities. While i called myself straight for the first twenty years of my life, i began to "see the light" after my best friend came out to me, blasting the lock off my closet door. After five months of introspection and reenvisioning my life, i came out with a bang. I moved from identifying as bi to dyke ("lesbian" around straight folks) to queer. "Queer", the latest in my sexual identity labels, stems mostly from my identity as genderqueer, a self-concept that's taken me out of the realm of most sexual identity labels. And then there's my radical politics, which makes me really like the in-your-face-ness, coalition-ality, and outside-the-norm/fuck-the-system aspects of the word "queer."
My concern for youth is very personal, too. Once i came out to myself and graduated from college (i.e., when i had a little more time on my hands), i started reading about the situation of queer youth in high schools. And it pissed me off, all the stuff that out queer young people so often have to go through.
Personally, i hated and loathed high school. From fifth to twelfth grades, i went to a small, private, Catholic, conservative, almost all white, suburban, all-girls high school in St. Louis county, and i was an outcast in so many ways. I liked my classes and teachers, i actually did my homework and got relatively good grades, i hated sports but did theatre and chorus, i didn't drink or smoke or do drugs, i stopped shaving my legs and armpits during my senior year, i was one of the only students in my school to oppose to Gulf War in 1991, i started calling myself a feminist in sixth grade and never once considered being a Republican, i refused to refer to "Russia" but called it the "Soviet Union" (because at that point there actually was a Soviet Union!), i openly supported "homosexual rights," i read constantly, i didn't date boys, i wore a "Question Authority" button (which i would have thought would've been popular among teenagers)....
Needless to say, these were not qualities that were bound to make me popular in a school such as mine. So i didn't have all that many friends. However, i did go from having no friends when i joined my school in fifth grade to having a small crowd of casual friends and an amazing best friend by the time i graduated in 1991. And all this while i wasn't even out -- to myself or to anyone else! I did get "accused" of being a "lesbo" or a "lesbian" a couple times, and i wonder what those classmates would do if they knew where i'm at today.... :::grinning evilly:::
I still harbor a lot of bitterness about the close-mindedness of my peers there, for the way they treated me, and toward my school for being somehow unable/unwilling to create a more tolerant and diverse environment. Their actions and inaction affect my self-esteem and the way i interact with people to this day. I have innumerable moments of being insecure and uncomfortable with people i don't know, i sometimes assume my peers are going to dislike me before they've really even gotten to know me, and i hate being in places where i know no one and have to "meet people." But i'm also much more attuned to how ostracism makes people feel.
I can't imagine what my high school experience would have been like if i had known i was queer. There was no one out at my school when i was there, although that changed at least briefly about ten years ago, when there was one out bi student. (There have possibly been out girls since and i just haven't heard about it. I hope!) I had no young dyke role models in my life. I knew some gay men from the community theatre that i did, and i loved them. But i didn't identify with who they were. I thought that bra-burning lesbians were amazing, but i didn't identify with them, either, since they were older and in a completely different life stage than me. And i'd somehow managed to define my feelings for girls as really intense friendships and just figured that i "hadn't met the right boy" yet. In a lot of ways, this self-ignorance did make my high school years a lot easier than they probably otherwise would have been. But i hate the fact that i spent all that time not being able to name my feelings and attractions. Yeah, i definitely knew that i was "different." I just didn't think that i was different in "that way."
So i sit here from my perspective of mid-thirties, Generation X, high school survivor, and i get really angry when i read about what out queer youth have to face. Listening to their stories, it really infuriates me that i have to be grateful that i "only" felt hated by most people in my class, because my physical safety was never in danger at my school (except when that volleyball was hurtling toward me). And i never suffered anything worse than being ignored, laughed at, teased, or left out. At the same time, of course, i am bowled over by the courage, integrity, and activism of queer youth. And i envy those who are out and know other queers their age. They are receiving role modeling and peer support that i never could have imagined experiencing.
Add to all of that the world-expanding experience that learning about transgender has been for me, and getting "into" trans/genderqueer youth wasn't that much of a stretch. I started out looking into trans youth issues shortly after beginning my Masters program at GW. And, in May 2001, i finished my thesis, which i wrote on the relationships between gender non-conforming youth and their heterosexual, gender-congruent peers. I'm admittedly pretty damn proud of that work, " 'Blue Coconuts' [...]". I've managed to get one paper out of it and am working on publishing it as a book. I was blessed with an incredible group of twenty-four informants, many of whom are now heroes to me. I'm eager to help them get their stories out there, in the hopes that that can help other gender non-conforming teens and the other people in their lives.
I'll close this page with some words that i heard in the summer of 2000 at the Gay & Lesbian Association of Choruses Festival in San Jose, California. "Millennium Mosaic," while very focused on gay & lesbian youth (to the exclusion of bi and trans young people) is a really powerful work. And one of the lyricists, Kat Wilson, was a sixteen year old lesbian when she got involved in this project. Hats off to her and to every gender- and sexual-minority youth suffering through adolescence today. You will make it. Life on the other side is better!
"This is what I want to ask of those with tight-shut minds,
'How you gonna keep us down when time is on our side?'
How they gonna stop our march when we dance in the streets,
Throw open all our doors and shout, 'At last we will be free!'?
We've had enough of insults. We've had enough of pain.
We're goin' to stand together and work for common gain.
[…] Come on, we dare you friends to live as proud humanity.
Let's make the world a safer place where everyone is free."
--Kat Wilson and Janice Gould, "Millennium Mosaic: Voices of Queer Youth," Portland (OR) Gay Men's Chorus
My concern with queer stuff stems from my own ever-evolving sexual and gender identities. While i called myself straight for the first twenty years of my life, i began to "see the light" after my best friend came out to me, blasting the lock off my closet door. After five months of introspection and reenvisioning my life, i came out with a bang. I moved from identifying as bi to dyke ("lesbian" around straight folks) to queer. "Queer", the latest in my sexual identity labels, stems mostly from my identity as genderqueer, a self-concept that's taken me out of the realm of most sexual identity labels. And then there's my radical politics, which makes me really like the in-your-face-ness, coalition-ality, and outside-the-norm/fuck-the-system aspects of the word "queer."
My concern for youth is very personal, too. Once i came out to myself and graduated from college (i.e., when i had a little more time on my hands), i started reading about the situation of queer youth in high schools. And it pissed me off, all the stuff that out queer young people so often have to go through.
Personally, i hated and loathed high school. From fifth to twelfth grades, i went to a small, private, Catholic, conservative, almost all white, suburban, all-girls high school in St. Louis county, and i was an outcast in so many ways. I liked my classes and teachers, i actually did my homework and got relatively good grades, i hated sports but did theatre and chorus, i didn't drink or smoke or do drugs, i stopped shaving my legs and armpits during my senior year, i was one of the only students in my school to oppose to Gulf War in 1991, i started calling myself a feminist in sixth grade and never once considered being a Republican, i refused to refer to "Russia" but called it the "Soviet Union" (because at that point there actually was a Soviet Union!), i openly supported "homosexual rights," i read constantly, i didn't date boys, i wore a "Question Authority" button (which i would have thought would've been popular among teenagers)....
Needless to say, these were not qualities that were bound to make me popular in a school such as mine. So i didn't have all that many friends. However, i did go from having no friends when i joined my school in fifth grade to having a small crowd of casual friends and an amazing best friend by the time i graduated in 1991. And all this while i wasn't even out -- to myself or to anyone else! I did get "accused" of being a "lesbo" or a "lesbian" a couple times, and i wonder what those classmates would do if they knew where i'm at today.... :::grinning evilly:::
I still harbor a lot of bitterness about the close-mindedness of my peers there, for the way they treated me, and toward my school for being somehow unable/unwilling to create a more tolerant and diverse environment. Their actions and inaction affect my self-esteem and the way i interact with people to this day. I have innumerable moments of being insecure and uncomfortable with people i don't know, i sometimes assume my peers are going to dislike me before they've really even gotten to know me, and i hate being in places where i know no one and have to "meet people." But i'm also much more attuned to how ostracism makes people feel.
I can't imagine what my high school experience would have been like if i had known i was queer. There was no one out at my school when i was there, although that changed at least briefly about ten years ago, when there was one out bi student. (There have possibly been out girls since and i just haven't heard about it. I hope!) I had no young dyke role models in my life. I knew some gay men from the community theatre that i did, and i loved them. But i didn't identify with who they were. I thought that bra-burning lesbians were amazing, but i didn't identify with them, either, since they were older and in a completely different life stage than me. And i'd somehow managed to define my feelings for girls as really intense friendships and just figured that i "hadn't met the right boy" yet. In a lot of ways, this self-ignorance did make my high school years a lot easier than they probably otherwise would have been. But i hate the fact that i spent all that time not being able to name my feelings and attractions. Yeah, i definitely knew that i was "different." I just didn't think that i was different in "that way."
So i sit here from my perspective of mid-thirties, Generation X, high school survivor, and i get really angry when i read about what out queer youth have to face. Listening to their stories, it really infuriates me that i have to be grateful that i "only" felt hated by most people in my class, because my physical safety was never in danger at my school (except when that volleyball was hurtling toward me). And i never suffered anything worse than being ignored, laughed at, teased, or left out. At the same time, of course, i am bowled over by the courage, integrity, and activism of queer youth. And i envy those who are out and know other queers their age. They are receiving role modeling and peer support that i never could have imagined experiencing.
Add to all of that the world-expanding experience that learning about transgender has been for me, and getting "into" trans/genderqueer youth wasn't that much of a stretch. I started out looking into trans youth issues shortly after beginning my Masters program at GW. And, in May 2001, i finished my thesis, which i wrote on the relationships between gender non-conforming youth and their heterosexual, gender-congruent peers. I'm admittedly pretty damn proud of that work, " 'Blue Coconuts' [...]". I've managed to get one paper out of it and am working on publishing it as a book. I was blessed with an incredible group of twenty-four informants, many of whom are now heroes to me. I'm eager to help them get their stories out there, in the hopes that that can help other gender non-conforming teens and the other people in their lives.
I'll close this page with some words that i heard in the summer of 2000 at the Gay & Lesbian Association of Choruses Festival in San Jose, California. "Millennium Mosaic," while very focused on gay & lesbian youth (to the exclusion of bi and trans young people) is a really powerful work. And one of the lyricists, Kat Wilson, was a sixteen year old lesbian when she got involved in this project. Hats off to her and to every gender- and sexual-minority youth suffering through adolescence today. You will make it. Life on the other side is better!
"This is what I want to ask of those with tight-shut minds,
'How you gonna keep us down when time is on our side?'
How they gonna stop our march when we dance in the streets,
Throw open all our doors and shout, 'At last we will be free!'?
We've had enough of insults. We've had enough of pain.
We're goin' to stand together and work for common gain.
[…] Come on, we dare you friends to live as proud humanity.
Let's make the world a safer place where everyone is free."
--Kat Wilson and Janice Gould, "Millennium Mosaic: Voices of Queer Youth," Portland (OR) Gay Men's Chorus
