I am sharing this heartfelt report with my community here in North Carolina. Surely, if youth in New York are having these reactions, the reactions of our queer youth here in this purple state (where the GOP legislature is following FL, TX and other regressive states re: abortion rights) must be as strong if not stronger. What are we doing for them? How are we protecting them? Thank you.
The likelihood of getting struck by lightning is 6000 times higher, at one in a million. It's also regional--I live in Massachusetts, where there has never, ever been a school shooting (as I said to a cop as I walked out of a workshop on how to "protect" students--"how about we just stop scaring people for no reason except as propaganda for the police?")
I don't doubt that students are genuinely terrified about the future of queer life; I hear that from students and young folks in my life too. But I grew up in the Reagan '80s. I was gay-bashed 3 times (physically beaten up) before I graduated from college, and harassed in the street pretty much every day. I genuinely believed (and I still think it was true) that on at least two occasions I received lower grades because professors believed I was queer. That may've been a little worse than an "average" gay experience in college--I was visibly butch, which provoked the ***holes.
But in the '80s, in spite of an awful lot of bad stuff, I don't think we were--as an overwhelming affect--terrified or anxious. Even as our community began to die in overwhelming numbers from HIV/AIDS, I think we nevertheless dwelt in hope and anger, because we had activism, a movement, each other. We need to find that space again, because I suspect things are for the most part actually measurably better than they were 40 or 50 years ago. We need to tell each other that we have a right to be furious, and to imagine a future when things can get better.
Thanks for this comment Laura. I completely agree that movement organizing is necessary for younger generations to turn their fear and sadness into fury. I spent much of the semester teaching my students about the history of queer social movements, especially around HIV/AIDS, and many of them said that learning the history of queer activism helped them get in touch with a more embodied sense of queer community and activism in their own lives. I don’t know if we can really say whether things are “better” or “worse” for queer people now—of course, it depends on who you ask. Certainly, as a lesbian woman who was able to legally marry my partner, I have many privileges not afforded to older generations. But I would also argue that the current attack on trans lives is unprecedented. These new laws are not just excluding, but directly attacking trans and GNC people by explicitly cutting off their access to public space, healthcare, and education, and demolishing democracy, social services, and free speech in the process.
On the topic of gun violence...as a graduate of a high school that experienced a deadly school shooting not long after I graduated, and as a person who lived a few miles from Columbine when I was young, I can’t say that I agree with the notion that educators’ fear of gun violence in schools is overblown or merely a result of pro-police propaganda. Terror, an emotion many educators live with these days, does not arise from the statistical likelihood of something terrible happening. Most people don’t live in terror of lightning strikes. But we do live in terror of school shootings, because they are preventable, human-made, and unfathomably traumatic. Our terror arises from the feeling that at any time, in any place, children and teachers can be murdered in their classrooms because the government doesn’t care enough to meaningfully regulate guns. This is unacceptable, and it should elicit fear, because it is terrifying. Of course, the police are no more a solution to this than the prospect of arming teachers. Only political organizing can achieve the necessary change, which is strict gun laws.
Several important points here: I think one reason school shootings are powerful is that they are so random. When Virginia Tech happened, I am not sure there had been such an event since the guy in the tower at UT-Austin. But when that happened (and there was a prof who was killed bracing the door shut as his students escaped out the windows) it made a huge impact on all of us at Wesleyan, and the university developed a protocol for how to respond. Then, a man who had been stalking one of our students came to campus, shot and killed her, and then evaded capture on campus. It happened--in CT--and I was in charge of my building as department chair: every time I went down to answer the door for a student trying to shelter in place, I did have to hope (and ok, pray) that whoever was at the door wasn't the gunman. But I had to take that risk to try to keep students safe.
I wasn't killed; no one else was killed; but here's the thing--that's the point of terror. That fear--and the grief at the loss of that student--will never leave me.
The flip side of this, to Laura's point, is that the training of students to endure school shootings is erally horrifying (in Texas they are now teaching students as young as third grade how to provide battlefield quality wound care) and a part of the terror inflicted on us by gun violence.School trainings normalize it, but it is still terror. It is also a complete evasion: we need to severely restrict gun ownership, and no amount of training keeps students safe. I think it is interesting that while NYC has plenty of gun violence deaths, and plenty of violence in schools, we don't have plenty of school shootings. In part, that's because of metal detectors, which have been in place for decades to take knoives off kids. But it's also because you can't have a long gun in New York, and until quite recently, carrying a handgun has been near impossible.
On gun violence in schools, to Hannah’s point, I am an elementary educator in a the very conservative part of Colorado where several school shootings have taken place. My colleagues and I comment daily about not being comfortable wearing the orange vests when we go out to recess with our kids, they make us an easy target! How sad that we thinks this way. This is very real, mental strain and illness, especially in elementary school, is very real. I see it every day, in every grade. I have taught for 23 years and have never confronted this kind of crisis. There are not enough mental health facilitators in my school to deal with the daily incidents that take place. It’s mentally and physically exhausting on the entire staff. Gun violence is real and arming teachers and teaching students to treat “battlefield wounds” is an absurd notion to a seasoned educator. We are here to teach, to mentor our young student to be the best humans they can be and it has become so hard. It breaks my heart to see what these kids bring with them to school everyday, at such a young age. The least we can do as the “adults” in the room is to passionately protect their future. This is the only way to protect our future, and from the way I see it, we are failing miserably!
I am sharing this heartfelt report with my community here in North Carolina. Surely, if youth in New York are having these reactions, the reactions of our queer youth here in this purple state (where the GOP legislature is following FL, TX and other regressive states re: abortion rights) must be as strong if not stronger. What are we doing for them? How are we protecting them? Thank you.
This seems to me as much a problem of political organizing and thinking as it is a problem of how the world is.
For example, we need to stop saying to each other--and hearing from 'trainers'--that those of us who teach have to take a bullet for students. The statistical likelihood of being a victim of gun violence in a classroom in the US is vanishingly small--one in 614,000,000. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/school-shootings-are-extraordinarily-rare-why-is-fear-of-them-driving-policy/2018/03/08/f4ead9f2-2247-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html
The likelihood of getting struck by lightning is 6000 times higher, at one in a million. It's also regional--I live in Massachusetts, where there has never, ever been a school shooting (as I said to a cop as I walked out of a workshop on how to "protect" students--"how about we just stop scaring people for no reason except as propaganda for the police?")
I don't doubt that students are genuinely terrified about the future of queer life; I hear that from students and young folks in my life too. But I grew up in the Reagan '80s. I was gay-bashed 3 times (physically beaten up) before I graduated from college, and harassed in the street pretty much every day. I genuinely believed (and I still think it was true) that on at least two occasions I received lower grades because professors believed I was queer. That may've been a little worse than an "average" gay experience in college--I was visibly butch, which provoked the ***holes.
But in the '80s, in spite of an awful lot of bad stuff, I don't think we were--as an overwhelming affect--terrified or anxious. Even as our community began to die in overwhelming numbers from HIV/AIDS, I think we nevertheless dwelt in hope and anger, because we had activism, a movement, each other. We need to find that space again, because I suspect things are for the most part actually measurably better than they were 40 or 50 years ago. We need to tell each other that we have a right to be furious, and to imagine a future when things can get better.
Thanks for this comment Laura. I completely agree that movement organizing is necessary for younger generations to turn their fear and sadness into fury. I spent much of the semester teaching my students about the history of queer social movements, especially around HIV/AIDS, and many of them said that learning the history of queer activism helped them get in touch with a more embodied sense of queer community and activism in their own lives. I don’t know if we can really say whether things are “better” or “worse” for queer people now—of course, it depends on who you ask. Certainly, as a lesbian woman who was able to legally marry my partner, I have many privileges not afforded to older generations. But I would also argue that the current attack on trans lives is unprecedented. These new laws are not just excluding, but directly attacking trans and GNC people by explicitly cutting off their access to public space, healthcare, and education, and demolishing democracy, social services, and free speech in the process.
On the topic of gun violence...as a graduate of a high school that experienced a deadly school shooting not long after I graduated, and as a person who lived a few miles from Columbine when I was young, I can’t say that I agree with the notion that educators’ fear of gun violence in schools is overblown or merely a result of pro-police propaganda. Terror, an emotion many educators live with these days, does not arise from the statistical likelihood of something terrible happening. Most people don’t live in terror of lightning strikes. But we do live in terror of school shootings, because they are preventable, human-made, and unfathomably traumatic. Our terror arises from the feeling that at any time, in any place, children and teachers can be murdered in their classrooms because the government doesn’t care enough to meaningfully regulate guns. This is unacceptable, and it should elicit fear, because it is terrifying. Of course, the police are no more a solution to this than the prospect of arming teachers. Only political organizing can achieve the necessary change, which is strict gun laws.
Several important points here: I think one reason school shootings are powerful is that they are so random. When Virginia Tech happened, I am not sure there had been such an event since the guy in the tower at UT-Austin. But when that happened (and there was a prof who was killed bracing the door shut as his students escaped out the windows) it made a huge impact on all of us at Wesleyan, and the university developed a protocol for how to respond. Then, a man who had been stalking one of our students came to campus, shot and killed her, and then evaded capture on campus. It happened--in CT--and I was in charge of my building as department chair: every time I went down to answer the door for a student trying to shelter in place, I did have to hope (and ok, pray) that whoever was at the door wasn't the gunman. But I had to take that risk to try to keep students safe.
I wasn't killed; no one else was killed; but here's the thing--that's the point of terror. That fear--and the grief at the loss of that student--will never leave me.
The flip side of this, to Laura's point, is that the training of students to endure school shootings is erally horrifying (in Texas they are now teaching students as young as third grade how to provide battlefield quality wound care) and a part of the terror inflicted on us by gun violence.School trainings normalize it, but it is still terror. It is also a complete evasion: we need to severely restrict gun ownership, and no amount of training keeps students safe. I think it is interesting that while NYC has plenty of gun violence deaths, and plenty of violence in schools, we don't have plenty of school shootings. In part, that's because of metal detectors, which have been in place for decades to take knoives off kids. But it's also because you can't have a long gun in New York, and until quite recently, carrying a handgun has been near impossible.
On gun violence in schools, to Hannah’s point, I am an elementary educator in a the very conservative part of Colorado where several school shootings have taken place. My colleagues and I comment daily about not being comfortable wearing the orange vests when we go out to recess with our kids, they make us an easy target! How sad that we thinks this way. This is very real, mental strain and illness, especially in elementary school, is very real. I see it every day, in every grade. I have taught for 23 years and have never confronted this kind of crisis. There are not enough mental health facilitators in my school to deal with the daily incidents that take place. It’s mentally and physically exhausting on the entire staff. Gun violence is real and arming teachers and teaching students to treat “battlefield wounds” is an absurd notion to a seasoned educator. We are here to teach, to mentor our young student to be the best humans they can be and it has become so hard. It breaks my heart to see what these kids bring with them to school everyday, at such a young age. The least we can do as the “adults” in the room is to passionately protect their future. This is the only way to protect our future, and from the way I see it, we are failing miserably!