The importance of queer representation in higher education: How one person can make a difference.

10 minutes

 

Starting my first year in college, I was unsure of myself. I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted to do, and worst of all, I felt an immense pressure to have it figured out immediately. I struggled with my identity and I felt disconnected from my life. It made it extremely hard to focus on college and the process of developing myself, because I didn’t know who or what I was supposed to develop into.
 
Then I met Dr. Jason Scott, a non-binary associate professor at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, who was teaching FMP 250 — a course on sex and violence in film and TV. The class was about the taboo, the things we have trouble talking about, and Dr. Scott was not afraid to jump right into these topics. 

They were also not afraid to discuss their gender identity, something that was also relatively taboo, considering at the time concepts such as being non-binary were still somewhat new in social discourse. 

“I started to have students say things like, ‘You're the first non-binary person I've ever met,’ or ‘You're the first non-binary teacher, or the first queer teacher I’ve had.’ Scott said. “And that would spill over into the topics, especially in FMP 250, the sex and violence class. First time I ever got to talk about queerness, or the first time I ever heard somebody talk about feminists.”

“I became a gateway representative to my kind of uniqueness, which I feel comfortable with, but also to this larger spectrum of queer identity, outside of gay or straight, especially. More now into gender and trans, and multi, however people want to identify their gender. And that became very meaningful,” Scott added.

It was the first time I had heard someone explain from a personal standpoint what it means to be non-binary. ASU was the first environment I experienced where concepts like being transgender or non-binary were not discouraged or outright avoided, they were respectfully and openly discussed like any topic at a University. There were no insidious or profitable agendas behind conversations, in favor or opposed to it, only honest and genuine conversations fueled by interested and knowledgeable parties. It was the first time I had been shown that the pressure I was feeling to conform and find a category was something I had been putting on myself.

That isn’t to say I didn’t have questions, confusion and a lot of learning to do; I felt okay to still be figuring things out. The process of figuring oneself out, queer or not, is a difficult and lengthy process that doesn’t truly stop. It’s a process I am still working through, and one that even took Dr. Scott a while to settle into.

“I was always different in some way, whether it was because I was the new kid at school or a job, or the smartest one, or the youngest one… There were always times when I was framed by some kind of difference,” Scott said. “In terms of my sort of gender and sexuality, something didn't feel right. Like I didn't sit well in the cisgender, heterosexual, male category, even though there was nothing that I could point to, to say that I wasn't one or all of those things. Mostly, it was behavioral.” 

“Then, this is 2013-2014, at one point, Facebook changed, they went from two genders to this sort of list of genders. It was a big deal at the time,” Scott added. “And there was this word, genderqueer. And I thought, oh yeah, that's what it is. And that's evolved to non-binary, to be a little bit more precise.”

When your car starts billowing smoke from under the hood, it is easy to tell something is wrong, but it can be hard to figure out what it is specifically. Feeling the disconnect before you understand where it's coming from is a common experience for queer people. Whether that disconnect comes internally or from external social pressures, its manifestation doesn’t always lead to clear answers, especially in situations without queer representation. 

When Dr. Scott first heard the term “genderqueer,” something clicked. Having a representation of their internal feelings as an option for identification, even if just a tag on a social media site, helped give them knowledge and validation in their identity. It opened up space for exploration and discovery.  

Prior to meeting Dr. Scott, my only interactions with the concept of being non-binary, much less a non-binary person, were inflammatory comments and cruel jokes made by internet personalities seemingly set on misrepresenting this complicated subject to impressionable viewers. Propaganda. The same thing that will happen to any community that is not given the ability to represent itself. 

Seeing a Sun Devil who was non-binary, educated, who cared about their students, who was passionate about film and TV, who cracked jokes in class, led interesting discussions and ultimately oozed humanity, was an epiphany. My entire understanding of non-binary people was imposed on me by someone else. Someone who was nothing like them. 

This is the core of what is meant when I say representation is important. ASU works hard to foster a community of diverse and accepting voices. By creating this environment, students like me were forced to confront their biases. I had to reckon beliefs I had about non-binary and queer people that others had placed in my head, with the real people standing before me. When those people showed me nothing but kindness, care and consideration, not pressuring any beliefs onto me but simply sharing their experience, I knew I had been wrong. 

It was uncomfortable to realize I had been closed-minded, but it was necessary to accept where I was. 

“When people are discussing gender in general, and they will say something that's not right, something wrong to be corrected, I’ll respond with ‘You know what, let's talk about a different word to use’ or ‘How else can we look at this,” Scott stated. 

“But when they say something that is just flat out a lie, like, ‘Oh, there's no such thing as bisexuality, or there's no such thing as non-binary, it's just people who are confused.’ I will jump up and down the street screaming bloody murder,” Scott said., ”No, my identity is not going to be rationalized out of existence, and I'm not going to let you do that, and I want everybody to see that I'm going to make a big deal out of it.”

A common phrase among queer people is, “Respect my existence, or expect my resistance.” There is always room for conversation, disagreement and differing ideas to exist. But when the basis of a disagreement invalidates the entirety of a person, to the point where there is no discussion to be had, it isn’t a disagreement, it is a fundamental misunderstanding. 

I realized that I had allowed others to define queer people through not just a non-queer lens, but an anti-queer one. Which, of course, created confusion and misunderstanding. The differences between people help define them, but the fact that we all have differences should unite us. 

“I believe everybody experiences this in some way,” Scott said “In some way, everybody's not just a little teeny bit different, but you're a lot different in some little way. Like you hate chocolate chip cookies or something. A big difference in a little way. So everybody has what I would call some element of queerness in them, and they navigate that, or they mask it, or they live it.”

Understanding this became the foundation of how I moved forward. Everybody could be defined as queer — queer simply means different. 

It can be hard to bridge gaps when you can’t see the other side. Many people in my life have told me the phrase, “I can’t imagine what it must be like,” when they hear that I am transgender. However, we all have queerness in us, and can recognize when we are different from our surroundings. 

If you have ever been at a sports game, stuck in a sea of hometown fans as you cheer for the away team, you might have a better understanding than you realize. People see you as different, they insist that you should be rooting for the home team, too, and if you cheer with the same passion as them, they will see it as a challenge. Being queer is not that dissimilar. 

 It is important now more than ever for queer voices to be heard, to ensure a future where they are respected, validated and included. 

ASU promotes inclusive and affirming academic and campus environments by providing educational opportunities and advocacy programs that empower students of all gender identities and sexual orientations, and their allies, to thrive. Organizations like ASU’s Rainbow Coalition and its array of member organizations, events such as Spring Pride Week and Trans Awareness Week and a plethora of resources dedicated to supporting the 2SLGBTQIA+ students on campus are just some of the examples demonstrating ASU's commitment to inclusive excellence. 

Additionally, as a community, we lean on our allies to help bolster our voices when we need to be heard.

“The stories that resonate with me, the film stories, were always the stories about the people who, regardless of their status or queerness or difference, recognized that they were in a position to help the more vulnerable,” Scott said. “It's Atticus Finch, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ it's Mr. Smith in ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,’ or George Bailey and ‘It's a Wonderful Life.’ People who do these crazy, crazy things based on beliefs and faith and the knowledge that they can move the way forward for people.”

“It's why we tell the Martin Luther King stories, and the Malcolm X stories… all the stories. It can't just be one exceptional person,” Scott added. “You have to see it as potentially dozens, and hundreds, and thousands of people who have gone before, who have taken that chance on behalf of a small part of their community.”

”Its okay to be thinking, ‘No, I can't do it now, but maybe when I'm 30, and I've settled into something, and something has landed in my body, in a place where I've put it, and I'm in control of it, I will trust that I will have the strength to then say I can stand up for the next person who's scared,’ because I think we're all capable of that.” 

You have to apply your oxygen mask before you help others as help without a solid foundation isn’t very effective. You probably wouldn’t hire a contractor whose own house is falling apart. 

My family tells a story of Heaven and Hell. They are the exact same. A big room with a large pot of soup in the middle, surrounded by people tied to chairs. Tied to their arms at the elbow are large wooden ladles. The only difference is the people. In Hell they are starved and miserable. The way the ladles are tied to their elbows prevents them from getting the soup to their own mouths. In Heaven they are full and happy. The ladles are tied the exact same way, but they realized the ladles were the perfect length to feed each other. 

The world will always be filled with difficulties and hardship. Our reactions to these hardships determine whether they will be temporary or permanent. If we react with empathy, understanding that everyone faces difficulties in their own “queer” way, we all eat. If we isolate, and let our differences separate us from the universal human experience, we all starve. It’s okay to take the time and resources it requires for you to be full, but once you are, remember that there are plenty of hungry people around you. 

Without hearing the perspectives of queer people on campus, I don’t know when or if I would have come to these understandings about myself and the world. I am just one person, and this is just one story, but it only took one story to inspire me. If this can inspire one person, who can inspire one more and so on, then we are that much closer to everyone being fed.