Mark's posting on what he sees as a 'rightwing PC' intolerance of sexuality in schools has led me to present these few thoughts to Troppo Armadillians, based on my own observations and experiences in schools. I'm not interested in debating the rights and wrongs of the tolerance of diverse sexualities in schools. For the record, I think that a person's sexual orientation--as long as it's not paedophilic--matters very little in whether they make a good teacher or not. I have known more than a couple of excellent homosexual teachers, and in all cases they were perfectly well-accepted by the schools. Their sex lives were discreet, but then so were those of their heterosexual colleagues. I certainly know that homosexual students can indeed have a hard time at school, but no more, I believe, than anyone who's perceived to be slightly 'different' from the norm in any way. Kids zero in on what they might perceive to be a weakness, a separation from the common herd, and that's what you've got to try and fight against and get them to understand is wrong in general (and gay kids are no more immune to persecution of others than are straight kids, that's part of the unpleasant side of our human nature.)
However I think there are several points to be made: first of all, that the case Mark pinpointed was in a primary school--primary, note, not high school. Hardly an appropriate place to swagger about sexual rights of any kind. Secondly, that along with the undoubted sexualisation of general society has come a contrary stream--that of a return to repressed, more-than-Victorian suspicion not only of sex, but of intimacy in any form, especially in schools and other places where adults are in contact with children. I believe this lies at the root of what Mark was talking about, and not l'eft' or 'right' ideologies. The 'witch-hunt' is not about being homosexual or heterosexual, it's about child protection.
Anyone who has anything to do with schools knows that child protection measures that have been put in place recently are designed to put the onus on every adult, of behaving with absolute, dire propriety or risk being accused of being a child molester.
Not only do you have to sign all kinds of forms and things swearing that you're not a convicted paedophile in any shape or form, but you must restrain every normal impulse when faced with children. As anyone who's taught or visited in primary schools--particularly in the infants' classes--knows, children are tactile little beings, who, when you speak to them, will often want to touch you, pull your hair, stroke your leg, etc. I remember reading one of my stories to a Year 1 class and having several of them moving closer and closer to me as I read, finally ending up right at my feet. One little girl leaned up against my leg, a little boy tapped on my feet, another little girl stroked the material of my skirt. They were fascinated by this stranger., and would often interrupt to ask questions unconnected with my story, like 'What sort of cake did you have for your birthday?' and 'Are your parents here too?' Their teacher got rather nervous by all this display, and kept urging them back, but they kept coming back to the charge. There was nothing remotely sexual about it--it was just innocent curiosity and restlessness--but of course some adults don't know that, and children must be protected from predators. But it means the majority of good people can no longer behave naturally with kids.
Teachers are no longer allowed to comfort children by touching them, hugging them or anything; you see these tiny little 5 year olds crying and no-one can actually console them in any meaningful way. The disgusting perversions of a few are then held over the heads of everybody to completely twist and pervert normal human relations. On excursions, teachers have to be doubly careful.
Everything can be deemed to be 'inappropriate', not only between teachers and kids, but between kids themselves. Thus, the policy on 'sexual harassment' in schools means that kids who are 'going out' with each other aren't supposed to touch each other at school, or they get into trouble--especially the boys. The kids themselves flout this rule with contemptuous ease, but if a teacher catches them, they might well be in for it. All the adults are running so scared of what someone might report, or what a parent might say, that it rapidly becomes like a kind of straitjacket. And yet, when they actually leave the gates of the school, what do kids see? Billboards advertising bras or knickers which leave very little to the imagination; TV shows that unblinkingly display every kind of perversion and every kind of sexual behaviour; the sexualisation of everything, the selling of sex as a commodity everywhere, the constant, boring, graphic, often robotic iteration of sex, sex, sex.
Then there's another point--as sex is thrust in kids' faces all the time: in the general society as a constant, wearying refrain, a supposed positive in-your-faceness; and at school as something horrid, dirty, something evil and defiling that lurks in every innocent gesture, every little touch, every expression of love, then is it any wonder some become obsessed by it? Such a thing can cause huge mischief, when these contradictory streams collide.
Accusations can be flung at teachers, unjust, mischievous and unpleasant accusations which, nevertheless, if they come to the ears of school principals or parents, must be followed up, and teachers' names dragged through the mud. Years 5 and 6 in particular--no longer innocent as the littlies(in fact often very prurient indeed), not yet mature enough to put things in proportion--can be a particular danger. I know of several instances where completely innocent people were put through the whole calvary of accusation, suspension, investigation and so on, on the say-so of some prurient kids who imagined they saw a wolf where none was. Of course, each thing has to be taken seriously, just in case the wolf is really there, but the vast majority of cases reported are completely without basis, except for gossip and innuendo, and kids piling half-baked theories one on the other. And yet in a tiny minority of cases, it's true. And therefore you have to be vigilant and not just to ignore things.
Little wonder principals are nervous. Little wonder they'd rather dismiss someone--well, especially an obviously undiplomatic and unaware prac teacher--if that person is accused of inappropriate behaviour. They are liable to have their own names dragged through the mud if that person turns out to indeed be the dreaded wolf. And gay people are no more immune to this accusation than are straight people. They shouldn't expect to be. Everyone is in the same boat.
Everyone is living in fear of being branded a wolf and having stones thrown at them. Therefore it's highly disingenuous and treacherous of the Victorian Dept of Ed to high-handedly pour opprobrium on the principal for actions which may well be covered by the very tight web of child protection measures they're always forcing on everyone. The years 5 and 6 kids who must have reported, suitably embellishing everything, on the prac teacher are the ones the principal had to believe, or else.
Sophie, the 'transgression' of the teacher in question amounted - in her recollection - to the following: her partner picked her up from a school camp. Later at school the kids asked her if she was gay. She said she was. A discussion then ensued about 'gay' generally during which kids offered shocking observations like "my aunty is gay and I think she's cool." It was all over in five minutes. A more experienced teacher might have declined to answer the initial question but what would you have advised a heterosexual teacher to have said if her kids saw her being picked up by her fiance and then subsequently asked her whether she and the guy were an item? In my recollection of school, such questions were asked of teachers constantly and were generally responded to with good-natured banter. Why is this particular incident so different?
I'm curious about your automatic segue into paedophilia. Can we be clear that neither homosexual men nor lesbian women display paedophilic tendencies in any greater numbers than their heterosexual counterparts and can we also be clear that - overwhelmingly - the abuse of children occurs in traditional family settings, perpetrated by people known - and often related - to the child.
I'm not as sanguine as you about gay bullying at school. Homophobia is the last socially-sanctioned
hatred of our era. Kids who appear to fit the mould receive the full force of that malevolence in a setting where exquisite forms of social cruelty can be omnipresent. It's not uncommon for staff to be indifferent to it's application in this circumstance and frequently, kids have no support at home because they're in mortal fear of discussing the matter with parents who generally won't enthusiastically receive the prospect of a gay son or daughter either. I've never, ever encountered a situation where parents simply embraced a declaration of gayness on the part of the child with no fuss or bother. The ordering out of the house scenario is at one end of the spectrum but all families take time to come to terms with a dramatically changed familial landscape. It can all be pretty devastating on a 16 year old kid who doesn't want to upset his parents but can't really endure continuing crap from his classmates as well.
Sophie
I couldn't agree more with your evaluation. I too suspect Mark's example/s had much more to do with the current (excessive?) focus on child sexual abuse than with any neocon-inspired reaction by schools or parents. Even among university academics there's a very strong consciousness sometimes bordering on paranoia of the possibility of students making unfounded allegations of sexual impropriety that may nevertheless be extraordinarily damaging and difficult to disprove (given that any presumption of innocence doesn't seem to apply in these cases). Most academics ostentatiously leave their office door open when meeting with a student, especially of the opposite sex. Gay academics are in an even worse position. They have to leave the door open when meeting with same sex students, and opposites as well in case someone might suspect they're playing both sides of the fence.
I put a question mark after the word "excessive" above because I can't really see a clear answer to this moral panic reaction. Even though the great majority of such suspicions/accusations are unfounded, enough of them are true that we can't afford to take them lightly, and children are entitled to our protection.
At the same time, it's a shame authorities don't keep in mind the fact that often their own reactions to and manner of dealing with the allegations will cause as much trauma as the abuse itself. And those who are accused SHOULD be entitled to a presumption of innocence and a proper chance to defend themselves. On the other hand, it's in the very nature of this sort of abuse that it happens in secret and there are seldom any witnesses. So how do we protect children and also provide fairness to the accused?
Moreover, in Mark's example there weren't even any accusations of abuse. There was just an equation of risk with the prac teacher's overt homosexuality. On the other hand, the prac teacher DID discuss her personal sexuality with her primary school students, in the course of conducting sex education classes. I think discussing her own sexuality with students was a serious misjudgment, and I'd also like to know whether the sex education lessons were programmed and a normal part of the curriculum. If they were, then I don't think her misjudgment in discussing her own sexuality merited termination of her prac placement. If she ran those lessons on her own initiative, however, and without discussing it with her prac supervisor (generally the normal classroom teacher), then the misjudgment is much more serious and does raise real questions about this woman's suitability to be a teacher.
"On the other hand, the prac teacher DID discuss her personal sexuality with her primary school students, in the course of conducting sex education classes."
I thought she denied this, about conducting sex ed classes. Is there new information?
Amanda, you might be right. I didn't read the links exhaustively.
Geoff, with respect, I think that you are jumping to conclusions about what I've said. I said that sexual orientation--except paedophilia, which means both homosexual AND heterosexual paedophilia--is not relevant to people's teaching abilities, but that people must also understand the current climate in schools, which are in a state of panic about anything that can be construed as 'innapropriate'. That's what this prac teacher fell foul of, not homophobia. And I do think this lady was unwise to say the least in discussing her private life at school with 11 and 12 year olds(which is what it was in her case). I would say exactly the same if she had been heterosexual. Kids are not your mates and don't need to know about your private life at all. Especially when you consider the danger such things can bring to the teacher's career and life in general.As to homophobia being the last sanctioned hatred of our era, you have to be joking! Tell that to the fat kid we knew who committed suicide because of the constant taunts he got..
Sad but true Sophie, which is why blokes are abandoning the teaching game in droves, particularly the early years. Policing's the same. You pick up a drunk driver or a druggie and you drop them off at the local hospital's emergency dept, so they can make the call as to whether or not they're safe to roam the streets again, because God help you if there's a death in custody.
There were no sex education classes Ken. The scenario seems to pretty much as I outlined. The acknowledgement of her sexuality seems to have been the problem. Teachers don't have "sexuality" in any explicit terms unless they're gay. Her mistake was in owning that to the kids. Being cast as a sex-crazed obsessive as a result is - sadly - not surprising.
"And I do think this lady was unwise to say the least in discussing her private life at school with 11 and 12 year olds(which is what it was in her case). I would say exactly the same if she had been heterosexual."
Point taken Sophie. But I'm still interested in your reaction to the scenario I offered earlier. If the teacher had been picked up by her boyfriend or fiance and the kids had subsequently asked about his relationship to her, would she have been wrong to acknowledge a bond?
In the current climate, yes, Geoff. She would have had to say either 'none of your business', or ''he/she's my friend' and make it quite clear to the kids that any further questions are off limits. It's unpleasant that it gets as draconian as this but that's the reality. See, someone must have blabbed about the whole conversation--some kid, I mean, to parents or other teachers--which is why it got to the ears of the principal who had to take action. If you really think accusations of 'sexuality' have to do just with gay teachers, then all I can say is you are quite wrong and have not been near a school recently. ALL teachers are expected to be nonsexual/asexual. Nearly all the cases I know of personally where teachers have been accused unjustly have been over heterosexuality, not homosexuality.
just a p.s: in some cases those accusations have been unbelievably frivolous--for instance, one good primary school teacher dragged through the mud because he told kids in a p.e. class that if the girls preferred to do p.e. just in their shorts and shirts, rather than with skirts on top as well, they could. Some year 6 boys(NOT the girls concerned at all!) took it upon themselves to construe that as wicked, and took a complaint to the principal..Now in that case he had to be suspended while an investigation went on, which completely cleared him of any wrongdoing. But meanwhile he had to endure weeks and months of horror and of people thinking it was really just the tip of the iceberg.. There has to be a better way to protect our kids.
"If you really think accusations of 'sexuality' have to do just with gay teachers, then all I can say is you are quite wrong and have not been near a school recently. ALL teachers are expected to be nonsexual/asexual. Nearly all the cases I know of personally where teachers have been accused unjustly have been over heterosexuality, not homosexuality."
My reference was to the term 'sexuality' itself. You're absolutely right about the greater preponderance of accusations relating to heterosexual behaviour but no-one refers to 'sexuality' in these circumstances - it's simply assumed. 'Sexuality' really only arises in relation to homosexuality. Hence the principal's reference to "sexuality" in his admonition. He would never have referred to the 'sexuality" of a heterosexual teacher.
That's my problem. I believe that her sexuality is what is fundamentally at issue in these proceedings. If she'd acknowledged a heterosexual relationship I don't believe there would have been an issue. Do you really think that parents would have been racing to the phone to ring the principal in outaged horror if the female teacher had owned having a boyfriend to the kids? Please.......
I frankly don't accept that grade 5 or 6 teachers would always have to refrain from acknowledging affectional relationships with other adults to their classes. I think you protest too much. What about a young teacher who marries? Is she not permitted to own to a husband? What about a gay teacher who can't marry? Is he always forbidden to acknowledge a life partner?
"that homosexual students can indeed have a hard time at school, but no more, I believe, than anyone who's perceived to be slightly 'different' from the norm in any way"
Yes, they can have a harder time. They don't have to be picked on directly: hearing gay jokes, the current use of the word gay by teenagers to mean bad (as in 'that's really gay"), attacks on homosexuality by churches etc., lack of support by not be able to be open with peers, parents etc. It IS harder for gay kids that is why the suicide and attempted suicide rate for gay youth is higher than the heterosexual population.
Just reading this post today and the comments would be enough to stress out a closeted gay kid.
That is why sex education which includes same sex acknowledgement is important as is positive gay adult role models.
As for keeping 'it' out of primary schools, I have many gay friends who say they were aware of their sexuality, of course in an unmature way but they knew they were different, as young as 8 or 9.
We have to protect kids but I wonder if we do them more damage by teaching them that every adult is a possible molester. I have a friend who is a prosecutor and he now says that he believes that more damage is done to molested kids (not the most severe cases such as violent rape of course) by the police and court processes than by the actual molestation.
There has to be a balance: do we really want our children to grow up fearful, to have teachers stand back from comforting an injured or unhappy child for fear of prosecution and persecution? Life was like that in Germany, the Soviet Union etc once.
Tolerance of homosexuals may appear to be better these days but I wonder if it really is?
No, of course you're not forbidden--what you would be wise not to do though is to discuss with kids your private life. She didn't just acknowledge her partner, she obviously discussed it more. If you're married--and you have the same name as each other--kids just assume the relationship, and don't care. If there is some interest in your marital or relationship status as far as the kids are concerned--some mystery--, then they'll pester you with questions and it's best to put them off, either by saying it's your friend, or your partner, if you want to, and then close the discussion. And if you think parents don't care if some teacher is, say, living with her boyfriend, you're wrong--there are cases where teachers have been dismissed for living in heterosexual relationships not sanctioned by the law. Kids will also gossip if they think someone's having an affair out of marriage, or whatever. Best thing is to keep it all out of the classroom.It's not the appropriate forum. Parents get very very toey about those kinds of things, and the Dept of Ed is very nervous about it all. We are not talking about just any social situation here, where adults interact with other adults. In my experience, the gay teachers who have come out and are happily ensconced both with their partners and the school are those who are open about it in terms of other teachers and parents,who didn't declare it first to their classes, and who the kids are not curious about because their relationship is accepted as just a ho-hum marriage/permanent relationship. They know they're gay but don't care. What was this silly woman doing, talking to brats about her private life, anyway, feeding their curiosity? The thing is, Geoff, the whole sexuality-at-school thing is fraught with all kinds of difficulties and problems which I think are appalling and ridiculous but which have come about because of the child protection thing. And it's not just teachers and students, but as I pointed out, between students as well. Gay or straight, if you show your affection at school, you're in trouble.
"What was this silly woman doing, talking to brats about her private life, anyway, feeding their curiosity?"
Come ON. Any person who's exposed themselves on the front line of teaching knows that kids are curious, they don't let up and they don't just accept stuff. Sounds to me like she just decided to be honest. She certainly did not discuss anything controversial, just acknowledged the relationship.
In my view the only person who's behaved reprehensibly here is the principal, who overreacted and burned his novice teacher, instead of supporting her, and managing the issue with parents. His actions breached EEO and anti-discrimination principles. He is supposed to uphold them, even if parents do get toey. After all, the school can't exclude bigoted parents, but can support diversity and tolerance within its own community.
What if the shoe was on the other foot, and it was a gay parent complaining that a hetero teacher had told her class she was married, and that was the same as preaching hetero values?
What Geoff, Naomi and Ron said.
The point Sophie, if you read the article I linked to, is that queer kids in particular are subjected to severe abuse by other kids which in many cases leads to suicide, or problems with substance abuses, and severe problems with self esteem.
It's not the same as being "picked on" in many instances.
There is research on this - and all you're offering is opinion, in the service of some PC crusade and your general dissatisfaction with the way society is now.
I'd have thought that some of the proponents of Right Wing PC might have agreed there's a serious issue here, or at least felt some compassion and empathy, but obviously I was wrong.
"TV shows that unblinkingly display every kind of perversion and every kind of sexual behaviour"
Every kind?
Necrophlia? Bestiality? Paedophilia? I must look more thoroughly in the program guide. I don't recall ever seeing any of those on TV. I don't even recall seeing the more bland types of sex that some people find perverted, like anal sex.
Sophie, I think you are confusing TV with the internet.
Nor is pedophilia a "sexual orientation". Why does it need to be mentioned when we're talking about non-hetero sexualities? Hmmm....
Well, I certainly agree the principal overreacted, just as the principal overreacted who suspended and investigated the teacher I told you about, who told kids they could do p.e. in their shorts and shirts. Point is, Naomi, my whole post was not about the merits or demerits of hetero or homo teachers(please, please commenters, do read my whole post!), it was about how school culture has changed in recent years. You have to deal with the realities, surely, not some imagined ideal. The Dept of Ed can't on the one hand tell principals they have to be utterly vigilant in watching out for any possible paedophilia or inappropriateness in any shape or form, sniffing out the witch in fact, and then pretend they've got nothing to do with it when some dumb principal overeacts. And the prac teacher's not some kid fresh out of uni, she was 49. Surely she should have realised what was going on in schools and not put her foot right in it!
Mark, I'm very struck by the fact that you, who has complained recently about people just running off at a political angle with your posts--should try to do this to me. You as well as other commenters have been very quick to accuse me of equating homosexuals with paedophilia, with absolutely NO evidence in my post at all. We are talking about things happening in schools--ie in places where adults have contact with children, in case you've forgotten. This prac teacher's case is only the tip of the iceberg. There are literarly thousands of cases of this sort. I was trying to elucidate the reality in schools for people who may not understand what is going on there, and just how difficult it is to behave normally. And what I was saying is gay teachers are no more immune than straight teachers to these problems and changes.
"For the record, I think that a person's sexual orientation--as long as it's not paedophilic--matters very little in whether they make a good teacher or not."
Sophie, pedophilia is not a sexual orientation.
"There is research on this - and all you're offering is opinion, in the service of some PC crusade and your general dissatisfaction with the way society is now."
I'm moved to say, like jason in a different context, Mark, that this remark of yours pisses me off rather more than a little. Why do you assume that your much-vaunted research is worth more than Sophie's practical experience in the classroom? How many primary shcools have you visited lately? We all know about advocacy research and how the very term 'research' itself has become compromised by the ideological directions that so often govern it. Only intellectuals imprisoned within the academy (no offence) can't see it.
You''re not engaging at all with the actual ideas that Sophie has presented. You run the risk of being seen to simply spit self-defensive ideological venom.
For goodness' sake, Mark! A paedophile is ORIENTED towards having sex with children. They can be of either heterosexual or homosexual tastes, but their orientation is paedophilic. They are not ORIENTED towards adult sex. Perhaps the word means something different to you than to me, if you like. That's all. The line you quoted from me says exactly that: I do not care if a teacher is gay or straight, as long as they're not a paedophile. And either homos or heteros can be! It's boring to be arguing over semantics and having to underline every damn word I said(which I thought was fairly clear), when really what I wanted were people's reactions re the new climate of fear and repression in our schools. How about it, folks?
"The Dept of Ed can't on the one hand tell principals they have to be utterly vigilant in watching out for any possible paedophilia or inappropriateness in any shape or form, sniffing out the witch in fact, and then pretend they've got nothing to do with it when some dumb principal overeacts. And the prac teacher's not some kid fresh out of uni, she was 49. Surely she should have realised what was going on in schools and not put her foot right in it!"
She acknowledged that she had a female partner Sophie, in response to 11 and 12 year olds asking her if she was gay. She should have the right so to do. Her version of events claims that discussion continued for no more than 5 minutes and was largely about kids observing that they had gay rellies etc. You must surely accept that there would never have been an issue here had she not been lesbian.
I'm sure you're right about the paranoia in schools around inappropriate behaviour but I don't accept that a teacher should have to deny her totally lawful and appropriate relationship bond with another adult as a result.
The implication of your post, Sophie, as with comments made by a number of people on the other thread, is that non-hetero teachers are primarily sexual beings who need to tightly discipline themselves, or be disciplined. I'll leave aside the implications of your describing pedophilia as a sexual orientation - it is not - it is a disorder which appears to be reasonably evenly distributed in the population regardless of sexuality. But the implications of this - and the similar point made by observa on the other thread - is that gay people are unable to understand propriety, and are hypersexual. That's untrue on both counts, and picks up on all sorts of dismissive stereotypes about being queer.
I fail to see how my grade 5 teacher telling us she was marrying another teacher did us any harm, or was in any way improper. As a number of people have said, this would not be in the papers if the woman in question had been picked up by her husband or boyfriend, and I really doubt you'd see it as an issue if someone mentioned it to you.
Would you care to offer instances of teachers not knowing "how difficult it is to behave normally" which don't relate to their sexual preference?
It seems to me that you are saying that it's ok to be gay and be a teacher, but don't tell anyone.
The further implication of being "discreet" in the sense of hiding one's sexuality is that this implies that it's somehow shameful, or deviant. This reinforces the power of the closet, and the message gets to kids. Open discussion of the varying sexual orientations in society, and education about it, by contrast, promotes tolerance, respect and acceptance.
Schools are part of the wider society, and you can't build a wall around them. If you do, with regard to these issues, all you're doing is reinforcing and reproducing prejudice.
"I'm moved to say, like jason in a different context, Mark, that this remark of yours pisses me off rather more than a little. Why do you assume that your much-vaunted research is worth more than Sophie's practical experience in the classroom? How many primary shcools have you visited lately? We all know about advocacy research and how the very term 'research' itself has become compromised by the ideological directions that so often govern it. Only intellectuals imprisoned within the academy (no offence) can't see it.
You''re not engaging at all with the actual ideas that Sophie has presented. You run the risk of being seen to simply spit self-defensive ideological venom."
How do you know what quality the research is, Rob, if you don't trouble yourself to look at it?
This is getting beyond a joke. Any social science research is apparently "ideological" and "biased" if you don't like the findings - you prefer anecdotal evidence. Well, I know parents with kids, teachers, and (shock, horror) have worked in education research and even taught in a Faculty of Education.
Far from it being I who's "spitting ideological venom", what I'm trying to do is take the argument away from assertion, preconceptions and anecdotal evidence. I am utterly opposed to homophobia, and I get passionate about it.
I'd note once again that none of the people on one side of this debate have seriously engaged with the fact that it's been demonstrated over a long period of time, in numerous studies, that non-straight kids in many cases suffer horribly as a result of persecution, lack of acceptance, and teasing at school. The suicide rate is much higher for instance. These are serious issues, Rob, and ought not to be a foil for you and Kevin to use in your conservative crusades.
I would have thought Sophie's point was fairly clear. That the undeniably gross over-reaction of the principal sprang not so much from RWDB-generated hysteria about gays as from a more generalised hysteria about child sexual abuse. It may also be true that a heterosexual teacher mentioning the existence of her partner to her pupils would not provoke the sort of reaction that this woman experienced (as Geoff H observes). The two points aren't mutually exclusive. Society has always exhibited a degree of homophobia (or at least double standards about gayness), and I seriously doubt that it's gotten worse in recent years. In fact I think the opposite is the case (although clearly it still exists and is very unpleasant for its victims to deal with, as measured by suicide rates etc). But again, Sophie's point is that most likely none of this emanates from RWDB/Howard government-generated anti-gay stances.
The operative public hysteria is that concerning child sexual abuse, which tends to get people in authority feeling twitchy, over-reacting and misjudging situations lest they be accused of failing to protect the childen under their care. That said, you would expect a school principal (a relatively well paid executive position) to be able to distinguish between allegations involving a possible risk of child sexual abuse and those involving what was at most a relatively minor professional misjudgment. On the other hand, you also can't blame the principal for being nervous. He knows the politicians wouldn't hesitate to scapegoat him if public reaction to the scandal made that the expedient thing to do, and with principals these days mostly being on contract-based employment they could hardly feel secure whenever a situation like this arises in their school.
"I would have thought Sophie's point was fairly clear. That the undeniably gross over-reaction of the principal sprang not so much from RWDB-generated hysteria about gays as from a more generalised hysteria about child sexual abuse."
There's no evidence of that, Ken, and I fail to see how you can draw that inference from the facts cited in the articles.
Far from Sophie's point being clear, if she wanted to discuss moral panics over pedophilia, and issues to do with whether teachers can touch kids, and whether men are dissuaded from teaching as a career, she could have done so - and those are legitimate concerns and worth discussing - outside the context of the sexuality of teachers.
Sophie's post didn't need to raise these issues:
"For the record, I think that a person's sexual orientation--as long as it's not paedophilic--matters very little in whether they make a good teacher or not. I have known more than a couple of excellent homosexual teachers, and in all cases they were perfectly well-accepted by the schools. Their sex lives were discreet, but then so were those of their heterosexual colleagues. I certainly know that homosexual students can indeed have a hard time at school, but no more, I believe, than anyone who's perceived to be slightly 'different' from the norm in any way"
- which are the ones that have prompted discussion, not surprisingly given the link she made back to my post. I agree with Geoff's questioning of Sophie's "automatic seque into discussing pedophilia".
Pedophilia is not a sexual orientation, as is clear from Sophie's concession that the gender of object-choice is not relevant, but rather the age object-choice. In this case, semantics are important, and Sophie's linking of this with "sexual orientation" plays into harmful stereotypes about gay people. I'm sure that's not her intention, but the fact remains.
Had Sophie discussed the issues she's interested in without adding this extraneous context, I'm sure this thread would have taken a very different course.
" However I think there are several points to be made: first of all, that the case Mark pinpointed was in a primary school--primary, note, not high school. Hardly an appropriate place to swagger about sexual rights of any kind"
Sophie also wrote this, which again raises issues to do with whether non-hetero teachers should be out at school, and whether children ought to learn about the fact that there are other sexualities than hetero.
I'd also note that Rob's contribution, in which he accused me of spitting venom, which I think hardly fair given that all of us ought to be passionate about ending discrimination and abuse on any ground including sexuality, doesn't go to any of the issues Sophie states are her primary concerns.
Therefore, it's wrong to claim that what people are talking about doesn't arise from what Sophie wrote in the post.
Well, maybe we are getting a bit heated here and maybe we shouldn't. But can I ask you this, Mark? Why do you seem to find it so difficult to accept that people of good faith, wide education, and extensive experience of the world (I'm not talking about myself) can come to opinions so apparently entirely contrary to your own without being part of a neo-con conspiracy or a 'conservative crusade'? Maybe we just disagree with you, on the basis of our awfully unreliable anecdotes. After all, that's all most people have to go on.
You say that on this issue you are 'passionate'. Well, I think that's unwise. Being passionate about any issue (other than the correct use of language, of course) is the one sure way of losing your perspective. Not to mention your sense of humour. :-[
I do try to keep things in perspective, Rob, and I'm not questioning that others can form a legitimate opinion - just pointing out where I think they are wrong, and why.
I think the real test is whether you ask yourself whether they might be right, after all, and you might be wrong, after all. I do it all the time. That's why I changed sides. Nasty RWDB, me. OT.
I do too, Rob. I'm not a "standard" leftie, though perhaps that doesn't come across on Troppo. I think personal responsibility is incredibly important, and terribly and wrongly out of style at the moment, and I think the sorts of omnipresent sexualisation of everything Sophie's worried about are a worry too. Of course, I attribute the blame to capitalism :)
I agree it's getting unnecessarily overheated. My last comment was an attempt to cool things down, but doesn't seem to have worked. I'm not entirely sure why tempers are getting frayed. I think it's pretty clear that no-one on this comment thread condones either child sexual abuse or homophobia. It may well be that aspects of Sophie's post caused those things to become a tad conflated, but I'm sure that wasn't her intention. What about we all agree to make room for each other on the high moral ground and keep in mind that we're all civilised, intelligent people discussing issues in an open forum with a select readership that has minimal effect on the course of world events. It's not the UN Security Council debating whether to invade Iraq. It's just a brain gym and cyber-salon when all's said and done, and not worth getting hot under the collar about. None of us are the messiah, we're all just naughty boys and girls.
"You''re not engaging at all with the actual ideas that Sophie has presented. You run the risk of being seen to simply spit self-defensive ideological venom."
He is engaging with them Rob, so am I - and I think some ground has been conceded in regard to an intiial mischaracterisation of the teacher as some - presumably- dyke-on-bike "swaggering about her sexuality." I don't think that anyone has disagreed with Sophie's portrayal of a hyper-sensitivity bordering on paranoia prevailing in schools in relation to inappropriateness. However, the more compelling debate - forced by Sophie's featuring of the Melbourne case as an example of the sort of 'stupid behaviour' that just encourages hypersensitivity - is about whether a teacher acknowledging a perfectly legitmate relationship with another adult should be persecuted as a result. The question that interests me here is whether the same events would have unfolded had the teacher not been a lesbian and I suspect that in all probability they would not have - regardless of the no doubt all-too-real heightened sensitivity that Sophie speaks of.
I also share Mark's irritation at what looks like Sophie's blithe dismissal of gay-related bullying as just another instance of kids being kids. It's real, insidious and can be utterly devastating to a kid caught in a double bind between persecution at school and a desperate desire not to acquaint his family with the reason why he's being persecuted - because it will devastate and disappoint them. There is - too often- no way out. You just try to fit in. I did many years ago at boarding school because I was good at footy and swimming and could "pass. The quid pro quo was that I became expert in detecting poofter behaviour in other kids and wasn't backward in joining in the bullying sessions on them. One "effeminate" boy hung himself and I recall the principal telling us later that it was very sad but the boy had,"had problems."
My central concern could well be about estimating how far we've travelled when simply acknowledging that you're a lesbian can basically still make you "the problem?"
I'm in agreement with Geoff. A good friend of mine who was gay at High School also hung himself, and was discovered hanging from a beam under his house by his 14 year old sister. We only found out the truth of his sexuality after his death. I have no doubt whatsoever that he'd be alive today if there'd been any awareness of these issues when I was in High School. Perhaps people can see why some people get passionate on this topic - it can be an issue of life and death.
And the effects of poofter-bashing, verbal and/or physical never leave you. Here I am today, 40 years out of school, stressed and anxious because of the this thread with the memories, fears and feelings it has raised.
Geoff, I certainly did not 'blithely dismiss' the bullying of gay kids at school. If you read my comment you can se that what I said is that I do not believe they suffer more than other kids who are bullied, for other reasons(not kids being kids, cruelty being cruelty actually.) I am prepared though to be convinced this is the case, if there are actual real figures about it(and I know that being gay in some places is much harder than othes, too--in our town it's not that difficult, but perhaps in more remote or isolated communities it may well be.) But cruelty is not just directed against gays. As I told you, we knew someone whose child--who was fat and constantly taunted at school--did end up killing himself as a result. I know of other kids who also killed themselves for other reasons, too. I was also very badly bullied for a whole year at the first high school I went to--because I was a wog, because I was too eager about writing, because I was perceived to be a dag, because I existed, because this girl was a thorough-going bitch who loved power over others. It was a horrible experience--all my so-called friends deserted me, and the girl who was relentlessly bullying me was so clever she never got caught out by the teachers. I used to feel sick every morning, literally sick, and completely changed in a short time from being quite an outgoing child to a very wary one. In the end my parents had to remove me from the school. What this experience did was make me hate cruelty in all its forms and to be extremely strong against it. I hate homophobia as much as you do, as I hate all forms of blind and horrible prejudice, and of turning a living person into some abstract thing to be kicked. But I just don't feel that this case was a case of homophobia. I think the principal's dismissal of the prac teacher was because of that perceived inapprotriateness of amny form or mention of sexuality at school--except in designated sex education classes. The principal was stupid, was far too zealous and overeacted but my point was Mark was wrong in attributing this to some kind of PC crusade, and then conflating it with studies about homophobia, and what gay kids suffer. I was taking up his point, and trying to explore what I think are really the issues. Now I may well be wrong about what I think was the thrust of this case, and what it says about the wider debate in general re the hysteria about child sexual abuse, but I think that it is wrong also to therefore make assumptions about what I think and don't think about gays. That is simply unfair.
That's a very moving contribution, Geoff, and I respect what you're saying. Gay friends of mine have told me what it was like to grow up in the 70's - how they felt they were the only ones in the world that felt as they did, before they discovered that they weren't. And I don't know what the answer is.
That said, I agree with Sophie. Our society has had to deal with a level of public visibility of matters sexual that no other has had to deal with (Greece and Rome notwithstanding). On an absolute scale of human rights it's not doing badly, although of course its record is not perfect. Twenty years ago, in the public service at least, people sniggered when they knew a colleague was gay. Ten years ago they just shrugged. Now, I don't think they even care. It's just another way of being normal. Which, it seems to me, and I hope I don't seem patronising, is the way it ought to be.
Even so, I think in some arenas and some professions, there is still truth in the old axiom that 'discretion is the better part of valour'. You can be a swaggering gay in the arts or advertising; not so elsewhere. I think that's just common sense. This teacher I think should have opted for discretion. This is not a view that will appeal to absolutists of any kind. Yes, it's a compromise. But we all have to compromise. No-one ever gets it all their own way. You can't ask for too much too soon or force the natural pace.
I don't proclaim my love of opera in the workplace for the very same reason.
People's natural sense of decency will get them to the right place in the end - which really does, when I come to think of it, sound horribly patronising.
Sophie, I continue to maintain that the PC moral panic would have been a contributing factor in the incident under question, and my reasoning is most clearly set out in my comment at the beginning of the thread in response to Andrew Norton.
If you want "real figures", you could contact the research centre whose spokesperson was quoted in the Age feature to which I linked. I'm sure she'd be more than happy to email you a copy of the report. I suspect it's probably available on the web. It might help if people were to do some research to get to grips with the dimensions of the problem.
I didn't mean to suggest that you and Rob were motivated by an anti-PC crusade, but I think Kevin Donnelly is. He's found his niche in the ideas market, makes a living from it, and will defend his position regardless of the evidence. But I think the broader point about the disinclination to let kids participate in open discussion about non-hetero sexuality has been proved in spades on these threads.
Ron's comment should show how serious this issue is.
Few people commit suicide only because of individual problems. There's usually a pattern to bullying. In your case, it was perceived difference in ethnicity. In the case of your friend's child, it was their weight. In the case of gay kid's, it's their sexuality, and as Geoff rightly observed, they're more often than not caught in a double bind because they don't feel able to tell their parents why the abuse is happening. In all these cases, strategies put in place by schools to address prejudice and bullying help immeasurably.
Because sexuality, and ethnicity, are often factors in prejudice, such strategies should bring these issues out in the open. But that's increasingly difficult because people like Dr Donnelly, sundry right wing op/edsters, and Dr Nelson will start squealing about "normalising unnatural homosexuality", "preaching multiculturalism" and so forth. So there is, I'd argue, a direct link between the PC Culture Wars and the victimisation of children because attempts to educate fall victim to political beatups, or are not even attempted - the Principal's concerns, let's remember, were about what parents would think and how this would play given all the stuff about "values" in schools. If we want to ensure that all children have a right to learn in an environment free from prejudice (which is their right by law), then we must take these issues seriously.
Rob, it's sad that you don't openly proclaim your love of opera in the workplace. I suspect if you did, you might not encounter the negative reaction you anticipate.
I don't know what "swaggering" sexuality is. If people go back and read my earlier post (link in the thread to my more recent post), it's the case that a lot of queer folks are no different in behaviour and mannerisms from straight folks. And some straight folks have mannerisms that stereotypes equate with being gay. Some sorts of "swaggering masculinity" are widely condoned, if not praised - I'm thinking of the Rugby League players I went to school with. If the teacher wanted to have short hair, or spiky hair, or whatever people think are the visual signifiers of her sexuality, then so what? Most people of whatever sexuality understand how to dress and present themselves appropriately in the workplace, and any "signs of difference" are fine as far as I can see. As usual, it's only with queer people that the issue gets raised.
My High School economics teacher, who was a beefy league enthusiast who wore his Valleys scarf to school in winter was never thought of as deviant.
"You can be a swaggering gay in the arts or advertising; not so elsewhere."
You forgot hairdressing Rob, but no matter :)
The teacher in question appears to have restricted any latent "swaggering" tendency admirably. On the face of it, she simply owned her sexuality on enquiry and participated in a 5 minute disussion about the kids' freely-offered knowledge of gay aunties and the like. That was it.
I see absolutely no reason why she should not have been able to do so.
Argh, Sophie, your meaning was just not that clear from your posts. You did bring in issues of paedophilia, and they don't belong in a discussion about gay teachers in schools. I didn't say the teacher was young or naive, but NOVICE and there's a difference. And I know that teachers get dismissed for living 'in sin', but that's not right either (unless the school has a clearly articulated religious-moral code), and certainly doesn't make this case acceptable.
I completely agree with the numerous posters here who have asserted that it wouldn't have happened if she wasn't gay. Again, no parent or principal would have gone 'pedophile alert, there's a hetero woman in the school and the kids know she's got a boyfriend'.
I'm very mindful of Ron's points about poofter bashing, and about the scars that it leaves. Also about the points made by the woman's lecturer, who said that sending a message to kids that you can drive a teacher out of a school by complaining about her sexuality is a powerful message that will go with those children for life.
And I'm deeply sceptical about the insider claim ('I'm trying to tell you what's going on in schools'). We've all got a stake in schools, I'm a trained teacher of some experience, and many of us have kids.
The report on same-sex attracted kid's experiences of victimisation and another report on suicide among gay youth are available (free) for download from the website of the Latrobe Uni research centre here:
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/arcshs/downloads.html
I'd encourage people to read them.
"And I know that teachers get dismissed for living 'in sin', but that's not right either (unless the school has a clearly articulated religious-moral code), and certainly doesn't make this case acceptable."
In Catholic and Lutheran schools, for instance. I once turned down a job in Employment Relations with the Brisbane Catholic Schools commission because I didn't want to be involved in this practice - ie dismissing teachers for their sexuality or for having a partner to whom they're not married. The issue of whether exemptions to Anti-Discrimination law for religious schools ought to remain (and Peter Beattie to his credit - whatever people say about his supposed conservatism - had the courage to raise this issue) is a separate one but discrimination has no place in public schools.
Well, I think it comes down to that pitiless figure of 1.3 (or if Kevin's research sources are right, 1.6) per cent. And if anyone tells me this makes me homophobic I will start throwing things.
When society at large gets the feeling that homosexuality is being privileged, it's going to jack up. Not because it's homophobic, but because gay-ness has absolutely nothing to do with 98% of the population. Don't push it. Any more than opera lovers should.
I'd say that is the no. 1 thing for the gay community to be worried about: appearing privileged. Don't do it; most of all, don't insist on being privileged. You'll upset people, like the teacher did. It won't help you; there'll be a backlash, like in this case.
Recognising that I have probably stopped making sense, I shall now go to bed.
No idea where this 1.3% figure comes from and it makes no difference whatsoever as to whether or not queer people should be out, or obviously out. If anything, all the signs are that the more queer people come out, the more prejudice is dispelled. The point here is that it's a politicised distinction. There may be 10% of the population who have red hair (I don't know, just guessing) but because we don't make any judgements about people based on their hair colour and it's not said to define their identity, it's irrelevant. Ideally, no matter what the percentage of queer folks in the population, they should be able to express themselves as they choose, and it should be irrelevant too.
But if anyone's interested, here's an excerpt from the report on the research I quoted in my post last year:
"Australian National University sociologist Shaun Wilson, however, has begun to open the closet. "The population is much more diverse than the cliche suggests," says Dr Wilson who has outlined new research in the Monash journal People and Place.
Outside the so-called gay ghettos of Melbourne and Sydney, he says, may reside a "less visible" homosexual population defined beyond the conventional markers of a modern gay community made up of urban professionals and service workers.
In sheer size, too, they are probably stronger than the official statistics would suggest.
The census, which does not pose a specific question on sexual orientation, lists only same-sex couples living in a de facto relationship within the same household. At last count, this covered only 37,774 people - or 0.25 per cent of the population.
But Dr Wilson says this is an underestimation. Last year he polled 2100 adults on their sexual orientation and found close to 3 per cent were same-sex or bisexual. Indeed, based on US precedents it was not improbable that the level was as high as 5 per cent.
So what defines Australia's same-sex population?
For the record, they don't appear to cluster around occupations such as floristry or hairdressing. Neither urban geography nor education and employment categories were much of a predictor of homosexuality or bisexuality in Dr Wilson's sample.
The research does, however, suggest that the same-sex population might be younger and less religious than society at large. More males than females also tend to identify as gay or bisexual.
The population is much more diverse then the cliche suggests.
Interestingly, a class division also emerged in Dr Wilson's study. While middle-class workers tended to identify outright as gay or lesbian, blue-collar workers were more likely to say they were bisexual.
"This may suggest that gay and lesbian identity is more accessible to the affluent and educated," Dr Wilson says."
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/12/16/1102787212389.html
"When society at large gets the feeling that homosexuality is being privileged, it's going to jack up. Not because it's homophobic, but because gay-ness has absolutely nothing to do with 98% of the population."
I just don't get it. If "gay-ness has got absolutely nothing to do with 98% of the population", then why worry?
The argument against "homosexuality being privileged" - which is meaningless - what it appears to mean is that people live their lives openly and that others discuss and recognise this - seems to me to be a sub-species of the anti-gay rhetoric used to great effect in the States about queer folks claiming "special rights". Whatever. All I'm saying is that there are queer people, that everyone has a right to their sexuality, and that it would be great if this were recognised in schools.
"I'd say that is the no. 1 thing for the gay community to be worried about: appearing privileged. Don't do it; most of all, don't insist on being privileged. You'll upset people, like the teacher did. It won't help you; there'll be a backlash, like in this case."
Have you got a handy guide for poofs who want to avoid inadvertently appearing "privileged" Rob?
What's this privileged crap? How about equality in our so-called egalitarian society?
As for the 1.3, my life experience says 10%. Figures around 1% are usually sourced from right wing and/or Christian sources (and if they don't appear to be one of those dig a little deeper).
Rob (if you're still awake)
I don't understand why you're using expressions like "pushing it" and "appearing privileged". If I'm now understanding the facts correctly, this woman merely responded matter-of factly to curious questions from pupils after they saw her with her partner, and then participated in a fairly short, low key discussion with them about sexuality. As others have said, if she'd done exactly the same thing after being seen with her hetero partner, it's highly unlikely anything would have been said or done. So how was she "pushing it" by behaving in exactly the same way as a straight teacher would have done?
That said, she probably WAS somewhat naive (although I note that adjective got someone into trouble earlier on the thread) not to have realised that public attitudes towards homosexuality aren't yet utterly undiscriminatory, and that this residual community homophobia is probably currently being exacerbated by the heightened sensitivity to child sexual abuse. Note that I don't think one can avoid making that linkage purely as an explanatory factor for the otherwise somewhat bizarre moral panic public reactions, not because the two are in fact linked in any way.
Ah, more advocacy research. What you say strikes me as just silly. Red hair - what a telling analogy. I'll leave the field to the dreaded Kevin.
for Christ's sake, Rob, what ever is advocacy research? if you reject the Latrobe studies on that ground, do you also reject Shaun Wilson's study? it's impossible to argue sensibly with you guys - since any reference to the facts is invariably countered by claims - not sustained by any critique of methodology - that it's "biassed".
by yr own standard, Kevin Donnelly's PhD thesis probably counts as "advocacy research"!
let me suggest that deconstruction can help us here :) if we posit a binary - hetero/homo that has to classify everyone, and if hetero is the norm and homo is not, then any attempt to assert the validity of homo is read by the defenders of the normative sexuality distinction as being asserting "privilege".
all I want to do is get on with my life free from assumptions made on the basis of my non-hetero sexuality.
as I said before, we're here, we're queer, get used to it! we're not going anywhere and particularly nowhere near any closets!
Sophie, the RWDB folks on this thread apparently see no interest in discussing the issues you tried to raise I note (though I agree with Naomi that yr point wasn't altogether clear and that you muddied it by linking pedophilia to the question of queer teachers).
here's what I said in response to Dr D on the other thread, which I think is also relevant to Rob's nonsense about "privilege" which seems to mean - stay in the closet, you unnatural buggers when we strip away the rhetoric (not that I'm saying Rob is prejudiced - but the drift of his arguments is to force queer girls like me into some sort of closet):
"yr making a category mistake, Kevin.
yr premise is that sex is always oriented towards reproduction. from this you infer that sex between men and women, because it has the potential to lead to reproduction (though obviously there are many other reasons for hetero people to make love) then it is 'natural'.
some men have always had sex with men, and some women with women, depending on individual predilection, and prevailing societal norms. if you were to read Plato, you'd see that not being attracted to beautiful young men was thought to be "unnatural" - because - the Greeks did not make the linkage between sexuality and reproduction as its only legitimate purpose that came in with the Christian church.
now, the further thing yr missing is that defining people by who they primarily prefer as a sexual partner is something that only happened in the Nineteenth century, and that the category of "heterosexuality" was invented subsequently to that of "homosexuality" to oppose a norm to what had been branded different.
prior to that, the Church held that "sodomy" was a sin but no-one went around thinking that someone's whole identity was defined by sexual object choice. many kings for instance, had male lovers and favourites, James I for instance.
in other words, the point I'm making is that the linkage between sexual behaviours and object choice with "nature" and a distinction between hetero and homo is an artefact of culture. "nature" itself is a cultural construct, able to be employed differently in different contexts.
I suggest you read Foucault's History of Sexuality so that you can educate yourself on these matters.
it's a great pity that the fact that you didn't study deconstruction at high school has impeded yr ability to reason clearly :)"
Yellow argues her point well, I think. The obvious benefits of a university education in sociology and philosophy!
Right, because the closet is at issue, I'll come out (though I was never in one). I'm not entirely straight. On three occasions in my life, I've had sex with men. Most of my relationships have been with women, and I suspect that will continue to be the case. I never define my sexuality because I reject the heterosexual/homosexual distinction. If pressed, I'd happily identify as queer. If that troubles anyone, deal. It's not my problem.
My personal practice is not to make any assumptions about people's sexuality unless they tell you. You're often wrong. And it's usually quite irrelevant, unless you're thinking of having an intimate relationship with them. And it should be.
good on you, Mark :)
no doubt Dr D will now accuse you of "special pleading" or having a "gender agenda" (one thing I will say for the culture warriors, all that parsing poetry they do constantly taught them how to spin a catchy - if meaningless - phrase). I have no doubt yr arguments would be the same - and as valid - no matter what yr sexuality. that's why I like queer, because it enables us to be ourselves without buying into hierarchical distinctions. I suspect there are a lot of men and women out there who have sometimes been attracted to people of the same sex. it'd be much better if that wasn't a problem. that's why "bisexuality" is a troubling identification -it reinforces the binary by suggesting that we're all pushed towards one side.
Paul Keating's comment about the "straighteners" in public life is starting to have a lot more meaning for me in light of these Troppo discussions :)
Mark, thank you for posting the link to the Latrobe Uni study. I've read it now and have to say that this sober and cautious study--'empirical evidence is needed though there is a great deal of anecdotal information'doesn't entirely back up what you and other people have said re same-sex attraction and increasing risk of suicide. In fact it says that 'whilst same-sex attracted young people may attempt suicide more often, there is no correlation with attempted suicides'. It also points out the sheer lack of real, hard data, and about the lack of consensus amongst researchers. Inter alia, it also points out data such as when results from a Kids' Help Line survey of calls were analysed it was found that callers concerned about suicide(suicidal feelings)were less likely than other callers to mention sexual orientation. It also details the vast amount of factors involved in suicidal feelings, of which sexual identification is only one(or in fact, sexual confusion, or more importantly, 'gender non'conformity', which doesn't mean being gay, necessarily). Bullying of any kind is a major reason. Failing to conform--whether consciously or unconsciously-- is a major reason for being bullied, though even conforming may not protect you. Yes, there are defintely problems for gay kids--or same sex attacted kids or whatever you like, but they're only part of the reasons for suicide or suicidal feelings. And lots of other kids feel the same way. Maybe what it boils down to is a sheer horror that you are misunderstood and unvalued. And that is a cruel cross for any kid to bear. The study also points to something which I think is quite true-- that it is amongst boys that there are more homophobic taunts and bullying. That goes with boys' generally more physical bullying. Girls' bullying, in my experience and observation, tends to be rather different.
Christ, how boring. The Age article makes it clear that the principal apologised, and the student teacher had the opportunity to take the case to the EOC, but chose not to.
Sophie tries to provide some social context to the principal's (erroneous) decision and suddenly she's supporting homophobia?
This has to be one of the most obvious examples of "conspicuous indignation" from the left that I've seen in quite a while.
Take a chill-pill, people.
Sophie, I'm glad you had a read. One of the reasons why more research is needed on these questions is that it's difficult to get it funded - but that's the case for a lot of areas where more research is needed. There is indeed a link between victimisation of same-sex attracted kids and the broader phenomenon of bullying, but as Geoff acutely pointed out above, part of the difference is that same-sex attracted kids often lack access to the support networks outside of school which can be helpful to other kids. Coming out to your parents is often frightening, and so is telling teachers or principals who sometimes react negatively. The Victorian Government, when Jeff Kennett was premier (and I pause to pay tribute to the Jeff as a good social liberal and someone who's done very praiseworth work in the areas of mental health) commissioned some research which demonstrated this double bind. Unfortunately I don't have the reference to hand. Needless to say, sometimes, support networks through church groups that some kids are involved in, particularly in the country, are also unavailable (though not always). The Victorian study found that gay rural youth often encountered much bigger problems than urban gay youth, and all sorts of factors (inward looking small communities, etc) were at work here which also contribute to the generally higher suicide rates in rural areas.
Looks like I should step in here and raise the tone again.
Someone once made the observation that homosexuality really described behaviour not people.
I've made few observations of my own; looking out my St Kilda flat window at the area's main transsexual prostitute beat in the carpark across the road. I've noticed that a lot of their late night clients appear to Australia's middle management looking for little stress relief on their home after working late or whatever, judging by all the big late model sedans and the SUVs. Whereas what I've seen of the early morning/sunrise custom is a lot of white vans and utes, apparently tradesmen looking for a pick-me-up on the way to work.
So I'd be wary of surveys about people's sexuality and sex practices, an area that many will lie their heads off about, especially if they're ostensibly straight and or married men, who sometimes like a bit of dick, or tom or harry on the side.
A couple of friends, who have delved in the world of beats, also confirm this kind of predilection by otherwise straight blokes is surprisingly widespread.
Sophie, I think the problem that you discuss in the main thrust of your post doesnt only apply in child protection. People are afraid of being sued more and more these days, because it's happening more often. Public liability insurance is at an all time high because it's in such high demand. Everyone, including schools, has to fork out for insurance, write disclaimers, jump through legal hoops and deal with parents to go on excursions...
It's just getting ridiculous, on both the insurance and child protection fronts. Soon, as you say, teachers wont be able to do their jobs because they are in perpetual fear of being sued or investigated. Very very sorry state of affairs.
It has to stop.
Opps, should make it clear I posted the above before I saw Mark's most recent comment. They are not related. Although Mark's comment seems to bear out the observation that we talking about people sometimes or forth do, not who they are.
Nothing wrong with a good wrestle with the same sex from time to time if yer in the mood, they've got the same equipment and know what works and doesn't - though in my experience I've found girls do smell nicer.
Sorry, the quote from the study (above)should have read, 'whilst there does appear to be a correlation with a risk of attempted suicide, there is no correlation with completed suicides'. I'm still hoping that people will actually engage with my ideas and what I tried to do in my post, which is give a wider social context to what's going on in schools. I'm disappointed at so many kneejerk responses. And for me too the whole thing has revived memories--of being bullied, hectored and wilfully misunderstood at school! Anyone can feel that, whether they're gay or straight. However, unlike Mark on his original post, I see no reason to close off this thread. Go right ahead and keep discussing. Just don't expect me to engage anymore with straw men. As Fyodor says, it's just too boring.
Thanks, Nic, for your comment. It's quite true what you say about the public liability thing going haywire, and I think that's a related area. But this area is not only connected with people suing, it's also about branding teachers as child molesters, ruining lives and dragging people through the mud, conducting horrible witchunts. In the case of the lady concerned, even her own union said she did not respond appropriately to the kids' questions, maybe because she was inexperienced. If she had been, she would have known to deflect their questions. That's the reality of modern schools. And that is what I was describing.
Yeah Sophie I understood that. I was saying that is just half the problem teachers, as well as other professionals, face. The other half is that you can get sued if something happens to the child, and then a similar witchunt to the ones you describe happening to teachers accused of being child molesters takes place within the school - they need a scapegoat and it's much easier to dismiss a teacher and blame him/her, leaving the teacher to the dogs of lawsuits, than to involve the whole school establishment.
Two different problems, both very similar, both seriously out of control.
wow, Mark. OT- no probs with your sexuality but I am interested in how the context of blogging threads does seem to have the effect of making people more candid about their personal lives and preferences than they might otherwise be in other conversational contexts. i've noticed the same effects in myself:-)
Teachers don't have "sexuality" in any explicit terms unless they're gay.
Geoff I realise I'm going back a long way and that everything that could be has been said except:
The specific social and cultural situation in which you find yourself working as a teacher can straight jacket your personal life.
The responsibility of teachers to be 'squeaky clean' is unrealistic and non-educational, in fact a crime against thinking. However, the fact is, that, unless you have the right people on your side at the right time the bureaucrats can and may deem you are unsuitable.
Anything personal regarding the teacher or the student is unsuitable. On the communities, choice of partner may be deemed unsuitable, swearing outside schooltime can elicit censure.
The bureaucratic censure method is very simple. Give this person nothing they want, isolate them, make them feel as uneasy as possible until the teaching contract expires or the teacher decides to leave.
It may be fair enough that the personal does not enter the classroom, but we are dealing with children here, teenagers, who want to know about how the world works. They are curious and judgemental clients. It is with great sadness that I regularly say nothing, 'do you want to see the counsellor?' or 'I can't answer this' when confronted with my teenage students personal lives.( which happens everyday)
Thus am I deemed professional.
Having said that, I do fall out of the strictly professional tree more than I would like and that is stressful, because as a teacher, we are not 'caregivers' in any wider sense than that we take care to create a learning environment.
The school nurse, counsellor and constable are great colleagues and leave us subject teachers to our subjects and our OWN personal lives.
"and so is telling teachers or principals"
Mark stop!
That is precisely the point.
Teachers cannot enter those areas with impunity. We are far better off pre-empting and referring a student (about whom we care) to the appropriate support staff.
Well Jason, it's Mark's almost painfully open and earnest intelligence and willingness to confront big and/or personal issues head on have that helped make Troppodillo such a lively salon of late.
That, and Sophie's book club thang, the provocative photoshop stylings of M. Arthur and Ken and jen's occasional woolfish outbreaks. And Geoff, pull yer finger out and wiggle it here instead a bit more often.
And incidentally Ken, since yer giving Educationalist Kev the luxury of a guest spot, why not some equal time for a guest yellowvinyl post as well?. I bet she's got few things now she's been seriously thinking about and could expound on well.
I mean I'm certainly not here for long-winded and often too nerd-like discussions about tax policy and political agendas. I get enough of that shit at work.
Actually the most interesting thing about the original post and resultant thread here is watching a urban myth get nipped in the bud.
We started off with an out-there dyke swaggering her politically-loaded agenda around in a sex education class and ended up with:
"Teach, who was that?
"My partner."
"Really? I've got an Aunty who's gay."
"That's nice Damien, now open your books to page 20."
I wonder how many of Educationalist Kev's shock horror PC run amok examples would fall down like that under informed scruntiny?
Thanks, Nabs. Jason, I thought it was relevant under the circumstances.
Thank you for thanking me Mark. It occured to me that my previous comment could have been seen as rather patronising - which was as far from the case as possible.
Haven't you got a thesis to finish anyway? Listening to what Phikip Larkin called Coltrane's "thin vinegary drizzle" ain't gonna get it written. Oh wait, didn't Phil say that about Miles?
Whatever. Just whack on some Funkedelic/Parliament and hit the single malt. Works for me when I'm facing a deadline.
it's the night for thanking Nabs. thanks, Nabs :)
Mark was egging me on to write something about identity/ies - given that I cover the spectrum rather comprehensively (American, amputee, lesbian-identified, anarchist grrrl), before my nascent blogging career was rudely interrupted by being really bloody ill.
ask and ye shall find, as they say :)
[she says with a swagger]
Wow, Mark! That certainly puts a new perspective on my joking comment over at Jason's place...
I've chucked in a few bob's worth on the issue at hand, by the way.
Whoops, links were stripped. Here:
http://badanalysis.com/catallaxy/index.php?p=677#comments
http://robert.redrag.net/2005/03/08/lesbian-teacher/
Trackbacks arent working, my piece is here
http://52nd.blogspot.com/2005/03/fence-around-blackboard.html
I'm coming back into this thread after a long hiatus - work's like that, curse it - and I see that Geoff and others have taken exception to my use of the term 'privileged' when referring to gayness. Not quite sure myself what I mean by it, and unfortunately I have no learned research to back me up just some wholly unreliable anecdotes.
Some years ago I was watching SBS I think it was when an ineffably smug (yes, gays can be like that too) opera lover advanced the following proposition: "Any male who says he likes Maria Callas must be gay because because only gays can identify with her agony.... [blah, blah, blah]'.
As a straight male who adores Maria's artistry I immediately started looking for an axe - not to put through the head of the smug, elitist homosexualist pontificating dickhead, you understand, but that of the SBS programmer who'd given the dim dork a platform for his insensate prejudicial stupidity.
That's what I mean by 'privileged'. Having said that I still don't really understand what I mean. But I know what I mean anyway.
Hope that helps (or not). However, I see Ken has inaugurated a civility post across the way and I'll go over and read that.
'...what I wanted were people's reactions re the new climate of fear and repression in our schools. How about it, folks?'.
I've come to this discussion pretty late, but for what my view is worth, I suspect it's a beat-up.
Sophie was talking about schools mostly, but Ken thinks it extends to universities.
I've been working in three universities for nearly twenty years, and I'm unable to relate to Ken's claim that 'among university academics there's a very strong consciousness sometimes bordering on paranoia of the possibility of students making unfounded allegations of sexual impropriety.'
Maybe it's true in schools and other universities, but no university teacher I know personally has ever been accused of anything, and I certainly don't live in fear myself. The few incidents I'm aware that led to investigations, were very serious (if they were reported accurately), but I believe they were investigated discreetly and with every attention to natural justice.
Geoff's various comments capture my thoughts on all this perfectly. This oh-so-sensible advice that teachers keep their private lives to themselves reflects an absurd double standard. There's no way a married teacher would have been criticised for admitting to a husband, any more than she would be criticised for talking about her kids or her dog. Of course if she started talking about oral sex to twelve-year-olds you'd worry, but nothing like that happened in this case.
I take Rob's point that it's not helpful to make generalisations about conservative crusades. But I'd have to say that Kevin's comments on the other thread sounded genuinely homophobic, and it such circumstances it's fair to call a spade a spade.
Mark has reminded that this thread remains open and we can post stuff here about Troppo's recent enthusiasm for burning witches. I think we've done it to death, me. Here's one RWDB signing off for now.
admit it Rob, you loved it, and are sad to see there's no more - until next time then
While I agree with Ken's action in closing off the thread on Mark's post, I'm not altogether happy with where the matter has been left.
Firstly, I think we need to get the story straight, at least as reported in The Age. I have to admit that at first I didn't follow the link to The Age story and reconstructed it from the various comments. When I did check the source I found my reconstruction was wrong in important ways. Let's recap the basic story.
"Jane" a 49 yr old woman living in a lesbian relationship is doing a stint of prac teaching near the end of her 3 year course. A friend of her partner has a child at the school, so she worries that her gay status may get out.
It seems that her concern was justified, as several children in the class later admit they knew she was gay before the events described in the article.
On Friday pm on returning from a school camp Jane is picked up by her partner. Jane is sick on Monday, but on Tuesday as the kids come into the class a girl walks up and asks her who the woman was who picked her up.
Jane tells her it is none of her business. But during the day the question keeps coming up. Then "In a reading group, a boy picked up a stuffed animal she used as a teaching aid. 'This frog's got a bow tie,' the boy said. 'It must be gay. Yuck!' He hurled it across the room."
The kids are obviously not going to let up and IMO Jane had no alternative but to take the issue head-on. Not to do so would have been to relinquish control of the classroom.
"Jane decided to act... She challenged him, asking what he thought would happen if he touched a gay person.
Then came the question. 'Miss, who was that woman who picked you up Friday?'"
Jane answers directly:
"Yes, that woman was my partner. Yes, I'm gay."
"A discussion of no more than five minutes followed. One girl told the group she had an aunt who was gay and 'I think she's great'".
Next morning as the kids go off to music Jane is summonsed to the principal's office . He accuses her of "discussing gay issues with children" and "conducting sex education lessons."
She tries to explain the circumstances, but he cuts her off. She finds him "very hostile, very condescending."
She becomes angry and says "Do you want me to make this easy for you and leave?" And then does, first to the classroom and then out of the school. By the time she gets back to uni the principal has rung them saying the internship was "irretrievable."
The uni contacts the principal telling them they are disappointed, pointing out that he may have contravened the Equal Opportunity Act. He is at first defensive, then apologises (to the Uni, please note, not to Jane.)
In this sequence I can't fault the teacher, except perhaps that she got angry and left. But I wasn't there, the principal was provocative and inflammatory by her account, and maybe if she was going to be hung without being heard it was the best course of action anyway.
On Jane's perception the kids were baiting her. It seems clear to me that indeed they were and were on the point of bringing her down. Had she not acted by challenging them her effectiveness as a teacher would have been at an end.
The principal, in my view, had no option but to support her. I don't see it as being all that hard. He could get back to the parents and tell them he had investigated the matter, that there were no planned sex education lessons, that there had been a short discussion after persistent questioning by the children and that the matter was now put to rest. Just tell them calmly, letting them know that he's in charge and everything is under control.
Of course that may not kill the issue off, but then he should have his next move(s) planned in advance.
As it was he lost control of the situation, the ultimate sin for an administrator, and sent a signal that homosexuals are fair game and can be hunted out of the classroom.
Where I disagree with Ken, I think, is that he seeks to keep it all very low key and work on community attitude over a period of time. I think Ed Depts and schools should be a bit proactive on the issue.
The Department needs to recognise first of all the homophobia in some of their principals and evolve some strategies to improve the situation.
wrt to schools, at a minimum they could perhaps make special mention of homophobia in whatever they are doing about bullying. Perhaps also they could suggest some guidelines for how such matters may be dealt with and sponsor a network to facilitate they sharing of ideas and approaches between schools. After all some schools are already running proactive programs. The Dept could get on board and lend some weight.
If they are truly brave they could develop a course of study, perhaps in Health Education. This would be justified if, as one project found, "the level of the students' homophobia [in year 9] was 'extreme, violent and deep-seated.'" But the pollies would need to be fully on board.
My basic point is, Ken, that I feel you can be proactive without "dogmatic assertion or coerced values re-education". I see coercion and education as being basically incompatible.
But as I've said, we do coerce kids into school, thus majorly intervening in their lives. If, in the process, we leave the offspring of narrow and bigoted parents no more liberal than their parents I would question why we bother.
That's a bit log, sorry, but bugger it I've done it so here goes.
No not too long, Brian - it does the job nicely.
On your reconstruction, Brian, it seems to me that the teacher just lost it.
"Jane decided to act... She challenged him, asking what he thought would happen if he touched a gay person."
I'd say that was pretty dumb and totally unnecessary..
Unless kids have changed since I was one, they are always probing their teachers for weaknesses - or what they see as weaknesses. Seems like it worked on that occasion. It probably sounds callous but I think 'Jane' acted rather stupidly.
Not even sure if homophobia was actually involved, just an inexperienced teacher making a fool of herself in front of a classful of kids. In fact I wonder if that wasn't the real reason for the principal's 'hostile' attitude and what followed from that.
I read it differently, Rob. I'm well aware that kids can get a kick out of making life difficult for a teacher. The suckers will chew a teacher up if given a chance. But poofter bashing can start in earnest a couple of years before yr 5. I can tell you that from personal experience. It didn't happen to me directly, but it was close enough, and diabolical.
It's hard to know for sure in this case, because we only have one side of the story. But I thought, from her own account, she was pretty much on top of things before the principal intervened.
The parents are another matter. One of my branches used to answer all the ministerial complaints about books and films etc in schools in Qld. It was tricky when the Minister and the Director-General were likely to agree with the complainant. But we saw off the great morals campaigner Rona Joyner. The main tactic was to push matters of community values back onto the school community but to give them guidelines for school resource selection policies, encourage them to formulate a policy, outline procedures and give them advisory support, emphasising certain principles and procedures that would make it difficult for bigots to prevail. But that was back in the days when Depts of Ed had capacity to actually make themselves useful.
Also I can tell you for sure that a mere mention of sex will become "sex education" and you are faced with people, having found the truth insist that there is only one truth.
This one is different in that we are not talking about vicarious experience through books etc. As others have said we are talking about personal identity and the right to be yourself.
The threat to the teacher was great and direct. I can't find it within myself, on the evidence presented, to blame her for reacting the way she did.
OTOH you would have to wonder how the principal thought he was going to resolve the situation, given, again on the evidence presented, the approach he took.
Gotta go to bed now, mate, (and I mean it!)
It's taken me days to be able to post on this thread again. That is because by the end of the other day, I felt exactly like a hunted witch or heretic, being questioned in an extremely hostile fashion by an Inquisition which took my words and twisted them in a direction they had never had. I posted my original piece because I felt Mark was mistaken in attributing the case of the lesbian prac teacher to homophobia; I felt that he did not understand the climate of schools today, or how the sexual liberation idea has run up against a brick wall when it comes to contact--any contact--with children, on sexuality.(one day when I'm feeling stronger I will post on this aspect; it's a part of modern society that I don't feel many commenters on this thread seem to understand has happened, and it has nothing to do with neo-cons or right wing, but a rejection of the 'anything goes' mentality of the old sexual liberation--as distinct from civil rights). I believe that Troppo ought to be a place where one can discuss things without being labelled right wing or left wing, homophobic or heteronormative, whatever, but simply discussed calmly, reasonably and with civility if passion too. I don't mind at all being disagreed with; I don't think I have the answers to anything, but am merely offering observations. Besides, disagreement helps to hone my own reasoning skills. But I really do not like being bullied. And that is precisely what it felt like. I wrote the piece originally because I felt that though the principal was in error in dismissing this woman, she was also mistaken in rushing in where angels fear to tread these days. And I felt there was a certain question of appropriateness in terms of the fact this was a primary school, and most likely pre-pubescent children. I feel very strongly that my original post was not given the courtesy of proper reading; that people immediately jumped to conclusions and accused me of things which I have never done, have never thought and never would. It took the whole discussion off into areas which really had nothing to do with my original point--that the child abuse hysteria--the point where sexual liberation runs smack bang into a brick wall-- has reached such a point in our schools that it is curtailing all normal relations. Gay people are no more quarantined from this fact than are straight people. That's all. We are all in the same boat in this. It is changing our society, that is the truth of the matter, whether we like it or not.
Sophie
In my case I did respond to your argument. I said you were on the wrong track. Even if it's true that there's hysteria about physical contact etc, I can't see what that has to do with this case. There's no suggestion by anyone that Jane was herself presented any danger to the children. The principal just didn't like her discussing homosexuality with the kids. It may have been because he is sensitive to parent complaints, but the fact that he treated her so angrily and perfunctorily suggests a bit of prejudice on his own part. The furore over the lesbian mothers on Pre-school may have been in his mind as well, and if so, I think Mark's analysis is closer to the mark than yours.
You won't agree, but I hope you'll acknowledge that I am addressing your point.
Sorry: Play School, not Pre-school.
Sophie, perhaps the discussion did get a bit heated but that's in the nature of such debates, I feel. A number of people early in the thread pointed out that your intention in the post wasn't unambiguously clear. I don't think that 'incivility' was manifested on one side of the argument more than the other. I copped a lot of abuse, for instance. Yes, sometimes, in these fora we feel somewhat besieged - I certainly did on some of the education/po-mo threads. But reflection suggests that it's best to keep arguing the issues calmly and rationally, as James and Brian are doing. Claims about "witch burning" are not an appropriate way to inteverne in a debate. Both sides gave as good as they got, in my view, and if it was personalised, it was personalised on both sides. At least it's a sign that your opinion has stimulated discussion.
However, if I said anything at any point to upset anyone, that was not ever my intention, and you have my heartfelt apologies.
Sophie, your post here has probably negatively impacted the GDP of Australia for 05-06 but apart from that I'd say the ratio of abuse to sincere expostulation was acceptably low. My claims of homophobia (which were not directed at you btw) are not in my opinion uncivil. I believe myself to be also homophobic in some measure and so naturally do not consider it an outrageous claim at all.
James Farrell has put it very well why there was plenty of room for disagreement to your post.
And given that, in Geoff Honnor's now immortal words 'homophobia is the last socially-sanctioned hatred of our era' it is always going to be an issue that will generate a fair degree of heat.
We as a society have a huge division that will see a lot of argument before the gulf is bridged.
If Brian Bahnisch's comment, a few up, had been the first comment to your post, I'm guessing there would have been hardly any of this discussion. Exceptionally dispassionate and wise reckoning of the matter. Nonetheless, I'm glad it's spun out the way it has. I've learnt a lot about peoples' attitudes, that means I am now far less complacent about the status of gays in contemporary Australia.
By the way I agree 100% with you that the hysteria in schools about sexual predation is out of hand.
I'm very biassed of course, wbb, but Brian's experience in educational matters (having been a prominent educationalist from 1968 to 1991 and having had an award named after him), and his rational and gentle spirit, and his genuine ability to engage without personalising issues, which I think is evident in what he writes on blogs make me proud to be his son.
Christ, Mark, is that me? But thanks anyway and thanks wbb also. Now I'm afraid to comment for fear of failure to meet those high expectations.
Just to clarify, I worked in the production, evaluation and management of curriculum resources covering the full spectrum of P-12. We were a significant policy develpoment and service outfit. At one point I counted 34 work groups under my general supervision (I could never use the word 'control') and I think that was before the publishing group came on board. As such I got to know a little about a lot, but perhaps not too much about anything.
Sophie, like wbb I agree that hysteria in schools about sexual predation is out of hand. My sister taught most of her professional life in Toronto, mostly in Year 1 but towards her retirement in 1993 she did a spell in what we would call kindergarten. She said that if a child messed him or herself they were instructed by their union to hand the kid a wet cloth, towel etc, plus a clean change of clothes and leave the child to it. But on no account was she, even as a female teacher, to touch the child.
I do agree also that there is strong pressure to believe kids in sexual abuse cases and unfortunately this can give some students a powerful weapon they can use as revenge. And revenge seems to be becoming more acceptable in our society.
But I don't believe these kids were being abused in any way. Indeed Jane was not "rushing in where angels fear to tread" as far as I can tell. She took the line that her private life was none of the kids' business, until, under provocation, she had to act to retain control of the class.
I've puzzled over what the principal thought he was doing in taking the approach he did. Frankly, I suspect some personal homophobia. But administrators are busy people and there is a tendency to want to make life easy for themselves. The parents were there for the longer haul whereas Jane was passing through. He could give her a bit of a dressing down and then report to the parents that he agreed with them, the teacher was in the wrong, but he had spoken to her and it wouldn't happen again.
But Jane was under his supervision and effectively working as his staff. It is not good personnel practice, I would have thought, to accept the line of reporting from the kids to the parents to him and then apparently refuse to hear the teacher's side. Outrageous, in fact.
The poverty of his position was shown by the way he crumbled and apologised to the university people when they pointed out that he may have broken the law.
When our youngest was in primary school the school organised a sex education session in the evening, with outside consultants, and with parents present. Curriculum-wise it fitted in the Human Relationships Education (HRE) strand within Health and Physical Education. Parents attending had plenty of forewarning about what was going to be covered. I don't remember specifically, but attendance was no doubt voluntary.
There is a lot of flexibility in the curriculum up to Year 10. I'm not a curiculum developer, but I feel that the issue of homosexuality should be addressed at least twice in the HRE strand, once in the mid-primary years to fit in with sex ed at that level (to give information and to influence attitudes) and again in the early teens as the focus is on identitiy formation.
Our current attitudes are clearly killing some people and causing significant distress to many more. I know that the effect of schools can be overrated, but likewise they can be underrated. You only need to imagine what things would be like if schools didn't exist. The curriculum is overcrowded, certainly, but only because we look to schools to do something about every problem under the sun.
Brian, thanks to Mark's typical candour, I now know of yr educational credentials.
We are looking at schools for our 4yo next year and are sorely tempted by a local alt school. (If it weren't for the dough & fear of marking ourselves (and our child) out as different we'd not give the choice a 2nd thought. The school appears to be just the ticket.)
I had under-rated the concern Sophie has raised about the sex-hysteria factor. I was brought up to speed on the issue rather suddenly yesterday when I read this from the aforementioned school's prospectus.
"This school is an alternative school, and does not ban physical contact. In this school there are friendly gestures, voluntary horseplay, and if necessary, momnetary physical restraint. This school is not suitable for parents who require a blanket ban on physical contact."
This eg combined with yr Canadian eg makes me feel pretty sad at the thought that there are 5 year olds out there in institutional care who are being denied the emotional nurturing of physical comfort simply because of contemporary societal hysteria.
Pre school the young child is in constant near proximity to a salving hug. Then suddenly that child is abruptly cast into a world of emotional independence. This is an enormous failure.
It dwarves the concern that school's principal had about homosexuals exposng their circumstances to the young. We have somehow tied a few but unrelated vital concerns into a single ugly knot.
I know this is not the central issue, and I have an open mind on this, but I don't see much substance in these examples. Brian had to resort to a Canadian case. Baboon tells us about a school that in fact doesn't ban contact. But where are the actual Australian examples? I've had kids in a state school for four years - not that long, perhaps - and never heard of any teacher getting into trouble, nor complaining about excessive restrictions on touching. I guess there isn't that much touching, but I'm not sure I that I got daily cuddles at school thirty years ago myself.
I help out with coaching at cricket and soccer, which involves occasional manhandling of small boys, and no one has ever read me the riot act nor asked me to sign anything, and even the more experienced and certified coaches don't hesitate to pat kids on the back and so on. I never saw any parent getting edgy about this. Have I been living in a fool's paradise? Am I plain unobservant?
There was excitement in Sydney recently when a swimming club tried to enforce a Randwick Council bylaw prohibiting people from taking photos at the pool. But the pool management soon capitulated in the face of overwhelming ridicule. But apart from that, it's mostly something you hear people getting conspicuously indignant about on talk-back with Lawsy.
wbb to round out my quals, I've been out of the Ed Dept since S11 1991. I did a B Ed St as a second degree, but have never been a classroom teacher. I did a bit of part time teaching at a teachers' college. I've been a parent for 32 of the last 34 years, I think, and my missus is a preschool teacher. So I'm a bit out of it in terms of recent contact.
James I used the Canadian example, because it was the clearest I knew. It illustrates how as a teacher you can be constrained by how much support you are going to get from your union. You'd be nuts to teach and not be union member, IMO, because you are just too exposed legally.
Today as it happens I had the opportunity to talk to the wife of my wife's nephew, who is the boss person at a child-minding centre attached to a school. They have kids from age 4.5 to about 10 before and after school and all day during the hols.
When I asked her what their policy on touching kids was she said their policy was to touch kids as much as they needed. Didn't I know about the research that says...?
When we got down to it, she said that they did have guidelines. You never went into the toilet with a kid unaccompanied. They had 'special needs' kids who sometimes did mess themselves, and their policy was to get them to clean themselves up, but to talk them through it if necessary.
You could cuddle a child but never, never have a child sitting on your lap. She said this was necessary because they had male staff and they didn't want to discriminate gender-wise.
If anything happened that might cause later comment or questioning they did an incident report for their employer, the school P&C Association.
A report would be done if they were obliged to go into the toilet, for example. Another eg was when she tackled and manhandled a kid who was about to stab another kid with a pencil.
None of the policies were written down and she seemed to prefer it that way. I can assure you, though, that this lady would make very clear to staff what the policies were.
I asked my wife about policies at their school, being a Departmental facility. She talks about her work a lot and I recall her saying she cradled a child in her arms who was in need of reasssurance.
She said there was a very strong 'minimum touching' policy pushed by the Department. The union, as far as she knew, had said nothing. There was an understanding, however, that such a policy was hard to implement sensibly with the youngies.
So she operates in a grey zone. I guess she feels she would be supported if she acts professionally both by the school principal and the union if any-one made trouble.
She does, however, have kids who need help wiping their bottoms. The toilets have a clear glass wall to make for easy supervision. At that age it doesn't seem to be a problem. But when she goes to help a kid, she sings out to the aide that she is about to wipe x's bottom.
Prior to '91 there were the beginnings of such problems. Specifically, I recall problems with instrumental music teachers, who by regulation had to teach 3 kids at any one time with the door open.
Soon after '91 I was working in the garden of the Lady Gowrie Centre in Brisbane and saw the male teacher-in-charge cradling a child in his arms. I asked him later whether he had any concerns. He said he did and would only do it in full view of every-one. He wouldn't be touching any kid in isolated parts of the garden.
His boss, who had hired me, had suggested that it would be good if the kids could help me in the garden. After one fell out of the sky and narrowly missed braining himself on the edge of my barrow and another threw a rock at me, I decided that gardening on the weekend was not such a bad idea.
So James, I think perhaps Aussie good common sense does prevail to some extent, but I think it masks an underlying problem that will only manifest itself when the proverbial hits the fan. So I'd suggest forethought and caution, especially around toilets!
wbb, it's good that the school is on the front foot, but it does indicate there is a general problem.
Thanks, Brian. A detailed and considered response as usual. My wife tells me that for parents who volunteer to help out with school maths, reading sport etc., from now on there's a mandatory one-hour 'course' on appropriate behaviour. She's attending next week, so I'll let you know what transpires.
There are, after all, a few paedophiles out there. I guess I wouldn't want my child sitting on a stranger's lap. The question is a practical one: what exactly do schools have to do to prevent that sort of thing, without going so far as to get 'hysterical'.
"The question is a practical one: what exactly do schools have to do to prevent that sort of thing, without going so far as to get 'hysterical'."
Indeed!
Hello to you all. I've been sitting at my pc for hours, reading all kinds of comments about my being "axed". I haven't read every single word - there's far too much of it to read all of it. All I want to say is this:-
I did not conduct a sex education lesson with these grade 5/6 students, nor would I ever do so without the permission of their parents.
I did not discuss gay issues with the students. I DID question the homophobic remarks of one male student, who was carrying on about how awful it would be to touch a gay person, which he started doing because the toy frog we were using as a "talking stick" was wearing a red bow tie. The wearing of a bow tie was taken by this boy to mean that the frog must be gay, and in his mind gave him cause to throw the frog across the room in an overly dramatic show of disgust. When I questioned the boy about his remarks, other students made comments to the effect that there is nothing wrong with being gay, and one student told the group that her auntie is a lesbian. There were a couple of other questions, such as "how do you know if you're gay?" and "is Ian Thorpe gay?", stuff like that. I was trying to wind the session up and get the students ready to go back to join the rest of the class (this was a reading group of about 10 students). Then came the question about who was it that picked me up after camp. This was not the first time I had been asked this question. I had been fending off questions like this one, and about my marital status (telling them it was none of their business, etc) for the previous three weeks, as well as ignoring numerous very obvious remarks about gays, quite clearly attempts at baiting me.
The only reason I finally decided to answer the question about my partner was that it had become very obvious to me that these students ALREADY KNEW that I was gay. They knew it because there was a student in another class in the school who had met me and my partner. Several students came to me privately AFTER the reading group incident and admitted to me that they did already know.
In all of my teaching rounds prior to this one, and in the teaching I have done since, I have never discussed my sexuality with students, nor would I. As I said, the only reason I did so this time was because it was painfully obvious that they knew it already, and that they were not going to leave it alone until they heard it from me.
I am not a child molester, I don't force my sexuality down anyone's throat, or any other of the outrageous things I have been accused of on a variety of discussion boards.
I did make one mistake in all of this. I listened to the advice of the school placement officer at my university, when I spoke to her about my fear of going into a school where I knew there was a student who knew me and knew I was gay. She said that it would probably be ok, and that most likely nothing would happen, and if it did happen, the university would support me. Well something did happen, and though the university were supportive, looking at it all with hindsight, if I were ever in the same position again, I would never set foot in a school attended by a student who had knowledge of my sexuality. I have already turned down CRT work in a school near my home for that reason.
To those of you who have written supportive things - thankyou.
To those of you who have written otherwise - you have either missed the point, failed to read the article properly, or maybe are just so caught up in your own homophobic agendas that you can't see a simple truth when it is staring you in the face.
For those of you who think that gays are all sinners doomed to burn in hell etc etc - you may be surprised to know that me and my partner are Christians. I don't believe that homosexuality is a sin, but if it is, it is God who will judge me, not any of you - and I wonder how free of sin you all are?
I am not uni-dimensional. I am much more than just a lesbian. The thing that I am at this point in my life that is most important to me is A TEACHER. I try really really hard to be a good one, and who I go home to at the end of each day is irrelevant to that. Other than the fact that she is the most loving, most supportive partner any person could ever hope to have.
Thanks, and have a nice life all of you.
"jane"
p.s. The email address supplied with this post is not my real one. No way would I post that. I get enough junk mail to sink a ship already - don't want to add hate mail to that.
Jane
Thanks very much for posting. It must have taken a great deal of self-control and patience. I dont know that I would have had it. I don't think anyone who regularly reads this blog would be into sending hate mail, so you can relax at least on that score.
I am no doubt one of those who was less than supportive of your position, for reasons I explained at nauseating length in previous comments on various posts. I should put on record the fact (for what it's worth) that your explanation completely sets at rest my concerns. In particular, this passage:
"In all of my teaching rounds prior to this one, and in the teaching I have done since, I have never discussed my sexuality with students, nor would I. As I said, the only reason I did so this time was because it was painfully obvious that they knew it already, and that they were not going to leave it alone until they heard it from me."
As far as I'm concerned anyway, that's a complete answer. You clearly acknowledge and accept the distinction I was arguing and that some other commenters argued against. Your position was obviously a very difficult one, that you've thought about deeply. I must say the newspaper stories carried a subtext that suggested a militant lesbian approach, and that was what I reacted against. It's clear from your response that any such inference is very unfair to you. Speaking only for myself, I apologise for any distress my comments may have created. You're clearly a courageous, thoughtful and committed teacher, and I hope you don't let the bastards get you down (and hope that I'm not one of them).
Jane - Thanks for the comment and best of luck for the future. May that be your first and last brush with the meeja.
Ken - No commment.
That'll probably be one of the toughest gigs you'll face as a teacher and now you've got to look forward to new and different ways of maintaining equilibrium and sanity and humanity. As I've said before, tell 'em nothing as a rule, but when the grey area approaches - and it approaches without much warning - as you already know, its via con dios. Because the bureaucrats are usually very good at the rules and guidelines pertaining to their position. They are antithesis of mind expansion, even in education. Ironic huh?
wbb what's this no comment business? I myself thought it a magnifencent apology. Intelligent, sincere, not grovelling. Yes an exceptional apology. You are just being mean.....grumbling into the distance.... 'no comment'.
Yes, good on Ken. And good on Jane too - she writes very eloquently, and I think also in the process helps dispel some myths. I have no doubt she's a great teacher.
More strength to you Jane - and to you, Ken.
what Geoff said!
10 year old: "is Ian Thorpe gay?"
Priceless.
Speaking as a generally heterosexual and often high Tory male - if I had kids, you can teach 'em anytime Jane. The world needs more smart and thoughtful teachers and a lot less argy-bargy about sexuality.
Beyond that I'd just run a highlighter through a previous comment by the only professional educator here who has had actually had a teaching award named after him, and certainly seems to know what he's doing personally, judging by at least one of his kids turned out.
Thanks so much Jane. I hope everything else goes well for you.
Ands thanks Ken for whatever you did to give Jane the right of reply and us all the full story.
Good call Jane! Yes, thanks Ken. Another win for the blogosphere!
my partner and I
Thanks, Jane.
Gilmae: You wouldn't say, "There was a student who had met I," so "me and my partner" is correct in that context.
Great comments from Jane and Ken, and best wishes to Jane in her - no doubt successful - career.
I think if Jane had been heard earlier there wouldn't have been so much bile on this blog. Ironically, she seems to have done more than anyone to "heal the breach".
Can you feel the love tonight? I'm all gooey.
Fyodor, that's the sad nature of the 'sphere. Jane, you're an outstanding human being.
Jane, thank you very much for your long reply. As the originator of this thread, I'd just like to say, first of all, bravo for replying. That takes guts. Secondly, thank you for clearing things up re the events. It does put a lot of things into perspective. Thirdly, I apologise unreservedly for any intemperate remarks, such as 'silly woman' which I may have made regarding you. Fourthly, though, please don't think that I was implying you're a child molester or anything remotely like it--my original post was taking issue with Mark's contention that a case like yours necessarily represents homophobia--my feeling was it was part of the general hysteria in schools today. Do you believe that the principal's reaction(cowardly and erroneous as it was)was actually homophobic, or rather the kind of over-zealous over-reaction caused by him feeling scared of parents' reactions, or of in some way contravening guidelines(spoken and unspokenn) re appropriate behaviour in schools? I quite understand how difficult it must have been for you(having had to deal with prurient and aggressive Years 5 and 6 boys myself)but do you not think that once it got out beyond the class, that's what caused problems for the school? I have seen several teachers almost detroyed by the horrible accusations of little deadshits(and know a couple of them personally)and think that in general school administrators take the easy road when it comes to any dispute of this kind involving sexual issues in any way whatsoever. It's cowardly but true. And I guess they thought you, as a prac teacher, was an easy sacrifice.. As I pointed out on the original post and several times since, I know gay teachers are every bit as good--and bad, and indifferent!--as straight teachers. Homophobia is not in my lexicon. I was taking issue with something rather different which in the end never really got discussed at all. I wish you all the best in your teaching career and hope the baptism of fire hasn't put you off entirely.
Having rather belatedly just read Jane's account of what happened, I also retract and apologise for the negative comment I made further up the thread. The way Jane explained it makes clear she was put in an impossible position and had no alternative but to respond as she did.
Kids, eh.
Good luck with whatever lies ahead, Jane.
Thanks for the explanation Jane and I would wholeheartedly concur with Ken's position now on the basis of it, although I understood his more generalist position before getting it straight from the horses mouth, regarding the intolerable teacher situation you found yourself in. This does not alleviate the general problem of the recurrence of situations like Jane, which all teachers can face from time to time. Jane cannot be expected to comment on this now for obvious reasons we should all understand, that none of us wants to be the specific media focus of a more general problem for society and schools.
Let me switch this completely to the much milder form of the general problem Mrs O faces as a JP teacher. Her problem is that increasingly parents feel they have an individual right to own the values taught to their children, despite what educating authorities may see as her role to inculcate their version of the good society. Enter the Professor Sawyers here, although it may be as seemingly innocuos to the middle classes, to have Mrs O introduce 'fruit time' for recess for all the right reasons. Now Mrs O has to enforce this policy by checking that the munchkins are not eating sweet fruit bars, crisps, or simply tucking into their vegemite sandwiches before lunch. No kiddies this is fruit time, even though a number of kids don't like/eat fruit and don't bring any. Also notice that if say SPB mum thinks fruit is too expensive, then her munchkin is on the outer too. Sooner or later you get some mum beating on the door complaining that her little Johnny is being discriminated against with fruit time. Little Johnny can of course use his special status to great effect, if he chooses.
The question is should the school policy roll over or should mum and munchkin be asked to leave and go elsewhere? If the latter, where can they go in a monolithic public education sector? I guess that's why many of us believe in competitive choice in the marketplace for ideas. The Janes and Mrs Os should be able to teach in environments that suit them(ie with solid community and administrative policy backing), as much as suits their students and their parents. Otherwise more and more teachers are increasingly finding themselves in Jane's unenviable position.
Thanks all for your apologies and kind remarks. Sophie and Mark - I am inclined to agree with both of you: yes, Sophie I think you're right that there is hysteria in the school system, and in some way my case falls into that category. However I think Mark was also right - I do believe that the school principal in question acted the way he did at least partly due to his own homophobia. I think he reacted in a knee-jerk fashion because of that homophobia. I bet though he'd defend himself from that label by declaring: "But I have friends who are gay!" But his gay friends, if he has any, don't teach at his school, and that's no doubt how he'd like it to remain. It's easy to say "I have gay friends" - another thing entirely to accord them the exact same status in your life that you give to those who aren't gay. Sorry Ken, I'm probably sounding a bit militant here, but in my experience, that's the way it is. I'm not really a militant - lesbian or otherwise. I do believe that gay teachers ought to able to be out in their school communities without it causing any fuss - but I think we're a very long way from that position. In the meantime, I will continue to try to be the very best person, and teacher, I can be, and as such be a positive role model for the students I teach. Maybe if later they find out I'm gay, some of them might just be prompted to think, "Gee, maybe gay people aren't so bad". But for now, when I'm at a school, I am firmly in the closet. I don't like being in there, but that's how it has to be. Maybe if a few more straight parents complained to their kids' schools about the horrendous time gay kids (and those perceived as being gay) get, then things would change just a little bit faster.
Thanks again, and kind regards to you all.
Jane
p.s. When I wrote in my last post about being called all sorts of nasty things, I didn't mean anyone from this thread. You've all been most civil - even those who were not supportive of my position. If you have the stomach for it, you might like to have a look at another discussion board to see what I was referring to, at:-
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1357297/posts?q=1&&page=180#180
Speaking as a gay teacher, I am very glad Jane posted. I wasn't going to myself since there seemed to be far too little precise details to do so.
American data suggests about 2.8% of males and 1.4% of females are gay, without about another 7% also engaging in same-sex activity as some stage. (This is not so far from Kinsey's "10% of males engaging in exclusively(?) same-sex activity for at least one two-year period.")
It is increasingly clear that homosexuality
(1) has genetic (if your mother had notably more sisters than brothers, or a gay brother, the likelihood increases) and congenital causes (the more older brothers, but not sisters, a boy has the more likely they are to be gay)
(2) has nothing to do with upbringing and
(3) is a clear human variation with distinct cognitive patterns.
Fathers may be a bit more distant with gay sons who are more different from them than expected and mothers may be a bit closer to gay sons who are bit more like them than expected, but that is a result, not a cause. The Catholic Church currently clings to blaming the parents for their children being "disordered", but at some stage it is going to have to fact that homosexuality is not a disorder, it is as much a part of Creation -- and, therefore, the purposes of the Creator -- as heterosexuality.
Thus the Mosaic tradition that homosexuality is 'against nature' is simply wrong. It is naturally-occurring variation, and the full range of homosexual behaviour (sexual activity, couples, even homosexual parenting including adoption) has been in a wide range of animal species. Homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality, it is just less common.
Since homosexual children overwhelmingly have heterosexual parents, being homosexual can be a lot more isolating than being, say, Jewish or otherwise ethnically distinct -- at least your family is likely to be very supportive of your ethnic identity. It is quite common for gay children to be frightened of revealing their sexuality identity to their parents. Think about the isolating nature of that, let alone a lack of other known gay people.
The interests of gay children, the views of parents, official religious positions are all in some tension, therefore. Many people clearly do not consider the interests of gay children in this because they either think homosexuality is chosen (tell me, when did you "decide" to be heterosexual then?) or they just don't think it through or don't want to.
As for the sexuality of teachers, obviously you have to be a completely asexual in your relations with students. (Personally, the thought of sex with a student is pretty repulsive.) But to suggest people should deny having a partner is bizarre.
Gay teachers should no more have to deny having a same-sex partner than a heterosexual teacher should have to deny having a husband, wife, boyfriend or girlfriend.
But a certain level of common sense is required. I was once basically offered a job at an Islamic school I was doing CRT work at. That did not seem to me to be a good idea, so I politely declined. Yes, obviously there are gay Muslim children too. But sometimes discretion is the better part.
Michael, are you the Michael Warby who used to work for the IPA?
Onya, Jane.
Onya, Ken. But...
But you wrote:
"I must say the newspaper stories carried a subtext that suggested a militant lesbian approach, and that was what I reacted against."
I only read the report in The Age and didn't find that subtext there. Maybe for homework you should read it again, Ken, to discover whether the subtext is really there or whether you were projecting it-:)
Jane, I agree with you when you say "I do believe that gay teachers ought to able to be out in their school communities without it causing any fuss - but I think we're a very long way from that position." Whether someone is gay or not should be completely ho-hum.
Likewise in the world I look forward to Mark's 'revelation' should not have been seen as remarkable in any way.
Jane, on reading your account of the events it occurred to me that the boy who threw the frog may have learnt something that day, partly from your response and partly from the comments of the other kids. It's what some people used to call 'a teachable moment', the more so because passions were running high. Most likely his parents tried to undo whatever he learned but you never know. It may well have been a seminal moment to which he will return many times as he grows older.
Nabs, I think that was a compliment, so thanks! Mark is such a prodigious talent that I sometimes suspect extra-terrestrial intervention, but no, I'm proud to claim responsibility for half his genetic inheritance.
As to upbringing, that's a long story, but suffice it to say I had three kids (no longer kids) each very different, and each given to surprising me from time to time. Wouldn't have it any other way.
Sophie, thanks for the post. It may not have met your intended expectations but must surely have exceeded them in other ways. I think we've all learnt a lot.
"It is increasingly clear that homosexuality
(1) has genetic (if your mother had notably more sisters than brothers, or a gay brother, the likelihood increases) and congenital causes (the more older brothers, but not sisters, a boy has the more likely they are to be gay)
(2) has nothing to do with upbringing and
(3) is a clear human variation with distinct cognitive patterns."
I wouldn't dispute any of this, Michael, but evidence cited as favouring genetics can often also be cited as favouring the environment. For example your place in the family sets up a different environment (I forget the jargon term for it). First in family tend to have personality traits that are common and different from second in family etc.
Also I believe "distinct cognitive patterns" may not necessarily genetically based. Thoughts are physical events and if we think differently from environmental causes such differences will be reflected in different physical brain patterns. That's how I understand it.
There is another intriguing aspect. If gays reproduce less than non-gays and the basis of being gay is genetic then one would think it a trait that would be bred out over time.
FWIW my suspicion is that the propensity to be gay is very widespread in the gene pool and the triggering mechanisms are perhaps still a mystery.
The important point is that being gay, for most if not all who are gay in our society, is not a life-style choice. It's part of being human and hence blame and sin are irrelevant concepts.
If there is a genetic basis to being gay it doesn't neccesarily mean that the trait would of been selected against. The fact that homosexuality does exist in nature indicates that there are reasons for the trait to be selected. It may be the trait is preserved as the result of favouring other selective forces. And while homosexuality in nature doesn't produce offspring the gene could still be carried by siblings who do reproduce.
Brian
Yes, but the evidence continues point to underlying genetic and congenital factors. Part of the complexity is that genes are more like a recipe than a mould -- the process of their triggering is interactive with the environment.
And yes, the cortex is somewhat plastic, which is why it is interesting that observed brain difference are in the far less plastic sub-cortical area.
As to the breeding-out issue, it depends greatly on the degree of selective pressures. These are far from constant, and have been fairly low for homo sapiens for a long time. Also, homosexuality may be linked to other factors which are selection positive.
Actually, I think the prevalence of homosexuality in nature is a bit of a problem for the Malthusian basis of Darwinism. Not in any sense an insuperable problem -- the theory of natural selection just needs a somewhat more reasonable concept of what economists call a budget constraint than Malthus's heavily overstated one.
Jane - May I wish you all the best
Michael - thank you for pointing me here
Michael (or someone else)
I vaguely remember reading a media report a few years ago of research showing that the incidence of homosexuality in rats increased in situations of serious overcrowding. I think it was suggested that this appeared to be triggered by increased stress on the mother during gestation. Whether it triggered a latent genetic factor or a biochemical reaction I'm not sure.
But I wondered at the time whether this pointed to homosexuality being an innate aspect of most species because it has adaptive advantages in certain situations. It means that a species' population will be to some extent self-regulating.
Of course, if that theory is correct, you'd expect the incidence of "triggered" human homosexuality to be at very high levels today, given that the world's human population is higher than it's ever been.
Thanks irant and Michael. You can readily see that I don't know much about genetics.
I did report on the thread on Mark's post, I think, that I heard an American on the radio who was giving his ideas about the differences between men and women. The guy was a surgeon for many years who daily observed the differences in design of male and female bodies. He formed the opinion that gays functioned as extra adult labour within the group around the camp and hunting. As such they assisted survival when the pressure was on during the ice ages.
I can't see that he would have had any evidence to base this on.
No worries Brian.
The trouble with explanations as you mention is that they are "just so" stories and my issue with ascribing a genetic basis to human behaviour is that cultural/social issues are relegated to marginal importance or simply dismissed.
Not every trait needs to be adaptive. Though, say with certain beetles and the Lesbian Ruse it serves a function. However I say that there is ways to go with regards to determining the extent of genetic influence.
"Nabs, I think that was a compliment, so thanks!"
Absolutely. In my opinion, Bahnisch, fils et pere, have played a very significant part in turning some bits of the Aus blogosphere into a genuine salon (in the classic sense of the term). And you couldn't have done it for us without bouncing off eachother.
A brief comment as I'm in a Web cafe in Sydney--just about to go to a Literature Board meeting--to say I'm glad to have left this comments threads open! If I hadn't, we wouldn't have heard from Jane, or continued the discussion. The comments part can be very painful sometimes and can be counter-productive; but not in this case. It is inherently democratic and a great way to continue discussion! Thank you very much, Jane, for the graciousness of your comments.. Did anyone see, just the other day in the media, just another example of the unitended consequences of the child abuse hysteria? In Victoria, it is now illegal to depict sex in film--or at least on screen--when one of the partners is a minor, ie, under 18, despite the fact the age of consent is 16! This was intended to protect young people against paedophiles filming them but it's impacting on legitimate film-making, though Bracks says the anomaly will be fixed. If such a thing became standard, imagine the consequences! You couldn;t have Romeo and Juliet; and I could be in trouble for at least one of my books, The Sun is Rising, where a 16-17 year old boy falls in love--and has a sexual relationship with--an 18 year old girl!
Hmm, I don't want to get into a long (or even short) discussion about genetics vs nurture blah blah, just to say that I don't think homosexuality is genetically or congenitally determined - there are plenty of lesbian (and probably gay) scientists around who have argued against this obsession within science for finding a gene for every human trait and behaviour - which is all nonsense as far as I'm concerned. It's all based on very rigid notions of sex-appropriate behaviour and harks back to talk of 'male' and 'female' brains and from there goes on to the 'negroid' head structure and so on ... in other words, the worst kind of biological reductionism.
Couldn't agree more, suzoz. That's what I was saying in my post on heteronormativity.
Reminds me of the old Chaser headline: "Gay scientists discover Christian gene"
The trouble is that if you conclusively deny the applicability of genetic explanations for fear of opening up eugenics horror scenarios, you can't really help but leave open the proposition that nurture may have a causative role. And that in turn means it isn't possible logically to argue that social taboos on homosexuality are meaningless because gayness is innate and unchangeable (which most people on this thread have been arguing vehemently is the case).
You can't really have it both ways, unless you think people should simpy accept the radical PC position without any argument or justification being needed. All that can reasonably be demanded, at least on utilitarian grounds, if discussion of nature/nurture origins is to be regarded as taboo and dangerous, is that homosexuality must be socially and legally tolerated, but not necessarily accepted by everyone as equally valid. In other words, prohibiting nature/nurture discussions necessarily means that you can't simply reject as blind prejudice the religous argument that homosexuality is morally wrong.
Confused by your reasoning, here Ken. If homosexuality is not "innate", and I'd refer here again to the distinction between biological sexual behaviour and its cultural framing which is what I'm trying to argue (and what I talked about on an earlier post), then I still fail to see why it ought not to be a legitimate and valid way of expressing one's sexuality.
I see no way any non-religiously grounded ethic could condemn same sex preference.
And what, pray tell, is the "Radical PC Argument"?
I hope I haven't opened another can of worms. I have no desire to re-start this argument. But I wanted to point out what I see as a problem with your comment.
the worms are out now Mark (and the amoebas)
So if I find myself not wanting to give or get orgasm from my friend, but I'm happy to be tactile, am I acting biologically or in accord with my social framing?
I would say social frame. Where does sensuality stop and sexuality begin?
What a hell we create for ourselves by reading sex into physicality.
If people really want to debate the causes and morality of homosexuality, I'd say it's time to start a new thread.
Debate away, but I'm reluctant to get into it again!
I think I said all I wanted to say here:
http://troppoarmadillo.ubersportingpundit.com/archives/008697.html
And that thread didn't end well, sadly.
Even though I commented on genetics I tend to agree with suzoz. I'm very much a Gouldian and the problem with reductionism is that it stems from the idea that any trait is adaptive and must be explained as such. But that enters another debate regarding evolutionary theory.
And the link below is for Stephen Hill though I can't confirm the sexuality of the scientists involved.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7147
I'm just staggered that a lesbian teacher admitting that she has a partner is treated differently to a heterosexual teacher admitting that she has a partner. The latter is viewed as having nothing to do with sex; the former as being some kind of freaky sex-talk! The word "lesbian" doesn't mean "characters in the porn I like to watch".
I'm just staggered that anyone could defend the school on this.
And if I were the teacher, and the kids were talking about how much they hated gay people, I'd certainly do my bit to confront them on it, not on the basis of sex education, but on the basis of my responsibility as a teacher to raise well-adjusted future members of the community who don't automatically respond with hatred to people who are different.
I can't believe this thread is still going. Going pretty slowly, but, which isn't surprising now that the topic seems to have switched to the old nature/nurture causes of homosexuality debate. *Yawn* WHO CARES???? For all I know, homosexuality is caused by a select few humans being visited in their early life by aliens from a planet where homosexuality is the norm, and secretly administered a magic "gay" potion. Totally crazy theory, but so what - it DOESN'T MATTER as far as I'm concerned. I'm gay, I'm totally comfortable with it, and I don't care why.
MrLefty - I was staggered too. Still am.
I'd like to thank again all the lovely people on various blogs who've been so supportive, but now I'm also mad at you all, cuz you've got me sitting at my pc for far too much time reading all the interesting stuff in this strange cyber world of blogdom. How on earth do you folks find the time??
Good question!
Idle academics is what they are. Bone idle layabouts who flirt wirh PHD's, ergonomic chairs and office equipment. Wouldn't know a day's work if it hit 'em in the head!