Highlights from a conference: Thoughts on theory, method, and practice

Before I leave for my next conference, I want to write about the one from which I just returned, a Themed Meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development on The Positive Development of Minority Children.

I’d hoped this conference would help me be a better ally and a better researcher, and it did. Furthermore, it strengthened my ability to take an intersectional lens when studying sexuality and gender. Most of all, the theoretical and methodological approaches used to study racial diversity and racial socialization are quite exciting to me as I explore what it means to be a feminist scientist. I came home from this conference truly believing that doing the kind of research I want to do is both important and possible.

I want to summarize three of the major highlights of the weekend.

1. Methodology with Niobe Way: Push yourself to the limits of what you know and pose research questions at those limits. Using herself as an example, she walked us step by step through her research methods. Then we conducted our own research on the person sitting next to us (bless the sweet professor sitting next to me who blushed when I posed my interview question to her). Way focused throughout the whole workshop on the importance of understanding your own assumptions in the questions you pose, the methods you choose, and the analysis you conduct. As I begin to plan and conduct my own research projects, I hope to demonstrate some of what I learned from Way's approach through reflections posted here. I also hope to keep learning from Niobe Way...

2. Intervention theory with Margaret Beale Spencer: Make sure the support you provide is actually experienced as supportive. Words that make so much sense on paper, but are too rarely pursued in practice. An intervention can have the best of intentions, but it just will not work if it does not address the lived experiences of the people it is designed to help. Spencer talks (and writes) a lot about phenomenology—how individuals experience their own lives and their own development. Reality varies from person to person. Strengths and vulnerabilities vary from person to person—but everyone has both. What makes research a little more complicated can then make intervention and practice a lot more effective.

3. Intersectionality symposium: Identity is messy, and power structures are inherently intertwined. One of the last sessions of the conference, I was looking forward to this symposium from the beginning. Three presenters shared their research on intersecting identities in school contexts: wealth disparities among black students at elite independent schools; perceptions of race and gender among students at an all-male, all-black charter school; and messages that black college students receive around homosexuality. I started thinking about the intersection of gender and sexual orientation. Specifically: What does it mean, as researchers, when we hear “that’s so gay” in response to a male enacting stereotypically female behavior and then label it homophobia OR label it sexism? Does it depend on context? Alternatively, do we need an expanded concept that includes both, perhaps something like “homophobic gender policing”? (Warning: mouth-full!) And whether we call it homophobia, sexism, homophobic gender policing, or something else, we must continue to emphasize that it hurts all children, and all teens, and all adults, not just the ones who are “different.”

I look forward to many more thoughts and ideas about theory, method, and practice at my next conference, with the Society for Research on Adolescence, coming up in Vancouver this week!

Better, Bolder, Hotter

First: watch this video.

Lyrics here.

Rebecca Drysdale made this video for Dan Savage’s It Gets Better Project, and I hereby dub this video my favorite thing on the Internet. I challenge you to find something online that I will love more than this video–seriously, go for it.

I love so many things about this video.

It’s hot and fun and funny.
Having fun has a very important role to play in the process of enjoying and promoting sex positivity. After all, sex is about pleasure and ecstasy and just plain feeling that. Watching this video makes me feel good. Pleasure is an important theme throughout the video—what the youth find pleasurable, what adults find pleasurable. In addition, the video itself provides an opportunity for us (the viewers) to enjoy the pleasures of the entertainment media—comedy, music, and dance.

It makes me want to throw a dance party.
I have been searching for sex positive hip-hop and pop music for many years now. This song promotes positive messages about queerness, community, and sexual empowerment. What other song would you rather dance you? (Read: another challenge for you to post sex positive links in the comment section.)

It is an active, multidimensional demonstration of how better it can get.
She did not just tell us that it gets better–she proved it by making this video. We can see that she is a smart, talented, edgy, hilarious young artist. She also shows the personal, professional, and sexual confidence necessary to sing loud and proud a plethora of explicit sexual slang and anti-gay slurs effectively used to communicate a clear positive message. Furthermore, she has a community. You heard her at the end–there were over 50 people involved in making the video! They embrace her artistic talents and demonstrate their support of her sexual identity. If that’s not better, I don’t know what is.

Special shout outs to Rebecca Drysdale, The It Gets Better Project, and The Trevor Project for their ongoing support of LBGTQ youth. Thank you!

I've been away so long...

I have been steeped in grad school applications (and my job), and I'm really sorry I haven't posted in so long! Here are a few thoughts, really briefly:

I just read a fabulous post on Feministing.com about sexist humor. It really gets to the core of why I protest offhand comments, jokes, and yes, it specifically mentions the ever-sexist Family Guy.

I'm beginning to enjoy the New York Times Style section more and more. I highly recommend a recent article about young adults increasingly popular androgynous clothing styles, and an article from a few weeks ago about high school students dressing in clothes more often attributed to a different gender.

In terms of my own job and my own thoughts... What can we do about sexual harassment on the middle school schoolbus? How can we create systems that support safety and accountability? How can we work to teach past and potential perpetrators new behaviors? How can we help the students who have been targeted and the other students who fear being targeted? This problem is far bigger than individual incidents, and the schools and bus monitors need to treat it as such.

I'll start writing more frequently, and in more depth, in January. Thank you for your patience! Meanwhile... your responses to my brief ideas would be much loved!

Homophobic Bullying As a Sign and Symptom

Judith Warner just posted a blog about the topic I brought up two weeks ago -- kids calling each other gay. The article and many of the online comments provided me with insight into multiple perspectives on this issue: addressing it either as a sign of homophobia, a symptom of patriarchy, or one of many acts of childhood bullying. In my opinion, we can understand the “that’s so gay” epidemic as a sign and symptom of all of these problems, and seek to eradicate it using a social transformation perspective.

Bullying is not and never has been separate from sexism. When children bully each other, they're reflecting society's prejudices -- they are re-creating the same systems of violence that torment the adult world. To get rid of this behavior among children we need to model healthy alternatives, teach preventive behaviors, and discuss issues as they arise.

All that my students know about bullying is that on the one hand, they shouldn't do it because they might get in trouble, even though if adults get involved they do not always effectively stop the bullying. My students also believe that “respect” and “being nice” are the opposite of bullying. Maybe respect is just not a strong enough concept to encompass the alternative and preventative behavior we all need to practice.

Calling a classmate gay is not simply disrespect -- it is participation in the violent, deeply rooted systems of sexism and heterosexism. We need to actively work to counter the systems that define our worth based on how effectively we fit into certain social categories and how fully we meet certain social expectations. We need to counter children's urge to use cruelty to “police” their own in each other's behavior. We need to teach our children processes of support and affirmation so that they don't need to fear who they are and who their friends are. We need to find out why they put each other down and replace that behavior with its opposite.

Gender and the pressures that come with it intervene in children's lives with pervasive and contradictory expectations. What would happen if children didn't need to worry about being the perfect boy or girl and instead worried about reaching a standard of humanity -- being loving, caring, and kind? And what if other roles children reach for, such as student, athlete and partner, were no longer differentiated by gender and instead everyone had the same encouragement and guidance as well as the same expectations for success and achievement within these roles?

What if children were taught to be their whole selves, and nothing but themselves, in order to achieve happiness and success? What if they were taught to help others do the same? How can we teach them to do so?