Teaching Myself

I am sick and tired of the lack of education on overarching social topics. I didn’t learn someone could be queer until fifth grade, when a friend told me his mom had been fired for loving another women. I never learned about issues with masculinity until a friend told me during cast dinners during tech week my subbie year. Every bit of information on society that I have, I have had to seek out myself, in the form of individual research, friends, social media, or class electives. I learned about two-spirit people and the effect of colonization on gender identity because I chose to, not because it was included in the curriculum. I learned what language to use and what to avoid when talking to and about queer people because I am queer myself and I wanted to know because no one told me in the environment that is supposed to be educating me to enter the world. I have teachers that still needlessly gender things like voice parts. I have a teacher that uses “he or she” and though I know they don’t mean harm, it hurts every time I hear it. I read textbooks and worksheets and see myself erased in every one of them, in the official materials of the school that is supposed to help me learn to be myself. I may have an environment where I am accepted, but so many people are not as lucky as me. Students just a city over were harassed for wearing pride flags, had them taken away, and had “holy water” sprayed on them by other students. That could have been me. I can’t live with that. Even just a section or two in the mandated health class could teach so much on queer mental health and relationship navigation. We talk about non-queer relationships, so why not talk about queer ones? Why not talk about how to navigate polyamory? All of these are topics that are erased and so students have to learn about them themselves.