Re-Teaching Gender and Sexuality
November 26, 2010
Reteaching Gender & Sexuality is a message about queer youth action and resilience. The video was generated to contribute additional queer/trans youth voices to the national conversations about queer/trans youth lives. Reteaching Gender & Sexuality intends to steer the conversation beyond the symptom of bullying, to consider systemic issues and deeper beliefs about gender and sexuality that impact queer youth. We invite you to share the video with your friends, family and networks; we invite you to share with us what THIS issue means to you!
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Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 
Wait, how can you be a girl and a boy? how can you procreate if there are two penises? I think if you are born with what’s on your body that pretty much clarifies it. I understand that mentally some wires can get crossed so you’re sitting there with breasts when all you really want is a penis. sigh, its all complicated these days.
“This is about needing more than just a safe space — How about a liberating space?”
I think it’s important to recognize the youth’s call to move away from DADT/gay marriage “Pride Box” conversations that continue to comply with an oppressive capitalist/militaristic system and actually address that oppression, which is tied up with race and class issues.
Discussions about queerness and gender-identity also shouldn’t be limited to “LGBT circles”–one small way to move toward a liberating space is to include Preferred Gender Pronouns (how each person prefers to be referred to) during introductions at meetings, whether you are gathered to discuss art events, environmental justice, immigration, etc.
In terms of educating educators, I met LA-based Kalil Cohen in Detroit at the Allied Media Conference and was excited about his current project, “The Next Gender Nation: A Teacher Training Curriculum” (http://kalilcohen.com/2010/06/18/16/)
In general, I think all students should have more say in school policies and curriculum. I’d love to see support for youth organizing around school quality in Grand Rapids. The initiative is there (http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2010/03/100_grand_rapids_public_school.html). Ideas?
Kyla, thanks for sharing your perspective on this and for the link to The Next Gender Nation material. As for the GRPS students, there is a group of students who have been organizing independently since last spring. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=272212821570&ref=ts#!/group.php?gid=272212821570&v=info
Jared, there is nothing confusing about what the young people in the video are saying. They are confronting the rest of us about how we see them and based on your comments here it seems you might be threatened by their definitions of gender and sexuality. Gender and sexuality are certainly more than just our biological make up, in case you had not thought about that before.
Excellent to hear. Thanks for the link.