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Archive for the ‘A Focused Lens’ Category

Thanks and New Construction

29 Dec

Thanks for all the feedback related to the post “It’s a Universal Problem”. For those of you who haven’t seen this series of responses and would like to, some have been attached to “A Counselor’s Corner,” some to “Films of Interest,” and some to my personal BIO page. We don’t know how to move them, and we don’t know why exactly they are attached here and there, but we’re working on it! So, check out the comments in these other places, if you like. We think we’ve fixed part of the problem (the pretty simple part), but we might have to change our format all together to improve functionality. We’re very committed to this conversational part of our Blog working correctly.

Thank you in advance for your patience as we undertake this new construction on our Web site.

Because we haven’t quite settled the interactive pieces of the Blog (responses and replies), we’re not going to publish anything else until we have. I’m writing today to simply say “thank you” to those who have written in appreciation. You keep us writing.

Please keep coming back to visit. I have a new entry to publish now (and comments to make on what I see as my own lack of clarity in “It’s a Universal Problem”–written too fast, I’m afraid; my apologies and my gratitude for your appreciation), and we’ll be getting our Counselors’ Corner off the ground too.

As far as using pieces of my thinking in your presentations and whatnot, please simply cite the work correctly (she says, as her English teacher self). That is — say where you got it, and who wrote it, and when you took it from the site. Thanks.

For me, personally, I’d love to know when and if you do use this work in support of your own, or for any other reason. The nature of the Web, of course, makes this impossible to track, but if you appreciate my work, please know that I’ll appreciate hearing about yours too.

 
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Posted in A Focused Lens

 

It’s a Universal Problem

13 Oct

Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Centers, is one of our most important and trusted allies. One of the most important aspects of eradicating any sort of violence is being able to track and name the violence; the Southern Poverty Law Center has been brilliant at this work in race-based issues/situations. No one is good at it in terms of sex and sexuality based issues, for various reasons. BUT, Teaching Tolerance is their very important response to the _fact_ of sex and sexuality-based violence. This is true when the issue of “sex and sexuality” is both perceived and real.

BAI Community Action Alliance is dedicated to “education, service, and dialogue,” for the same reason Teaching Tolerance is dedicated to teaching: because we can’t act when we don’t know. And, boy, is there a lot we don’t know about bullying, homophobia, misogyny, and gay-bashing. Here’s poof: the number of people who, when faced with these facts, will simply respond with “I’m not afraid of gay people,” “I don’t hate women, heck I _loooooove_ women.” Ignorance and fear. Ignorance and fear are counteracted by education and dialogue.

That is, at BAI, we’ve always known and taught that this issue goes _way_ beyond — and starts _way beyond_ — the safety of folks who self-identify as gay. It is an issue that affects every American. It is an issue that affects us all because homophobia, as a phenomenon that speaks more to a desire to maintain the status quo and the fear of those in power losing power if the status quo is disturbed, than it does to who is sleeping with whom or who is attracted to whom. Don’t kid yourselves, or let yourselves be swayed by what those who bully and condone bullying try to convince you of: these children aren’t being harassed because of who they’re sleeping with (please; as if this were truly even an option for junior high and high school children who might find themselves attracted to people of the same sex).

Our children are bullied — and sometimes tortured — and sometimes to death — our children are bullied not because of who they are sleeping with, but because of how they look, the ways they carry themselves, their preferences in clothes, the entertainment they choose, their very facial expressions — in short WHO THEY ARE. At the end of the day, these are gender issues that begin in misogyny and carry on in radically fearful ways from there. EVERYONE should see this film, and stand with BAI Community Action Alliance in the struggle they alone have been leading in Mobile for many years.

The only way to stop this is to begin to discover how this behavior is encouraged in the home, condoned by a public who does not know how to respond, and encouraged by schools who do not act. Learn how to read these situations, how to respond, and how to act. We are a _collective_ — let’s start acting like it. Stand Up.

 
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Posted in A Focused Lens