[Bigi] Re: Bigi digest, Vol 1 #5 - 5 msgs

[Thadd Liszkowski]

>I'm not trying to dis you here, I hope you can hear that,
>our situations are different, I'm not a teacher, and
>I do sense how much teaching and working with children means to
>you.   I'm a computer geek, and queer/poly folk are common and often
>visible.

No offense taken. Yes, there has been the usual prying into my life. But
what I see happening is that the even most of the cool people in education
stop prying after they hear my views on marriage :) My reaction to queer
slurs is enough for them to know it's the tip of an iceberg they'd rather
not run into.

>I hope this isn't prying, but I wonder also if you see one type of
>sex discrimination, in particular because, IME, people perceive an
>adult talking to a child vastly differently if the adult is a man than
>if it was a woman.  I had a really great conversation at a recent party
>with a woman whose done research into gender roles and transfolk, and
>apparently this difference--that men are not allowed to talk to children
>by themselves, but women aren't, "because only men are molesters," [1]
>is apparently very  commonly the most surprising costs of being male for
>FTM transsexuals.
>
>--Joe

Ironically, in education we're trying so hard now to have tolerance for all
the kids, including sexual identification, and it's one thing to be the
queer club advisor, but quite another thing to be queer. You could get
fired for *that!* "Isn't that a sex crime?" I would laugh if it didn't hurt
so much.

Also of note, we are taught in teacher school as a male teacher never to
give a student a ride home, especially a girl, and never to be alone in a
room with a student, especially a girl. Because, after all, "only girls get
raped." [1] Not that I would rape anybody(!), but the idea that a male is
not a sexual object is the just as pervasive flip side of the notion that a
female is not a sexual agent (or subject).

>[1]  Yes, yes, I know how false this statement is, but it is
>widely believed in the gestalt, if not in words, in my experience.

Couldn't agree with you more.

Thadd