Talking to high schoolers
I spoke to a high school health club on Friday – the one who emailed me the questions I’ve been answering the last few days – and had a really good time. They weren’t too knowledgeable about queer/trans issues, but I much prefer well-intentioned and open-handed ignorance to feigned understanding… And they were all willing to learn, which counts for a lot in my book.
Most of the chat was pretty expected, with me going over my (abridged) life story and transition, talking about how hormones have changed my experience of emotions and sex, and so on. I did have one student ask, “So, if you did get…the surgery, and you like women…how would you have sex after?”
One of the other students waved her fingers in front of his face, which made me laugh. I also directed them to Early to Bed, which is actually only a few blocks away from their school. I hope, for the sake of his current and future partner(s), that he learns about the options available beyond penis/vagina.
It did make me think a lot about how topics of sex and gender are handled in school, if they’re handled at all. For example, none of them had the guts to directly ask me about sex, even though it was in the list of questions they emailed me. I brought it up anyway, since it’s pretty much guaranteed to be a question people have, and I’m willing to discuss it. I spoke very frankly about my differing sexual experiences pre- and post-hormones, and the students were a bit awkward. But then I said “…but I know none of you care about this, because none of you have ever had sex, or masturbated, or had an orgasm.” They all laughed, and it felt like the rest of the hour or so I was there went a lot more smoothly; I had established the classroom we were in as a space where I was going to be open with them, and they were allowed to be open with me.
And they took me up on it! I was asked I still get boners, whether I want surgery, and what it was like to grow breasts. (In order: I do, although not as frequently as I used to; maybe? I want to have had successful, sensation-retaining surgery, but getting surgery is a different matter; awesome.)
That’s part of the reason I volunteered to go to this class, and why I went to a class at Loyola the day before: someone needs to tell these kids (well, not really ‘kids’ at Loyola) things they probably won’t hear elsewhere. Oh, I won’t lie: I also do it because I really enjoy it, and find my own catharsis in sharing my story. Cedar wasn’t totally off the mark in calling out my confessional style of performance. But I also think there’s an aspect of trying to share the information I wish someone had told me at 15. Or my therapist when I was 15. Someone to say, “It is 100% OK to be straight, to be cis. But it’s also 100% OK to not be those things. Or to not know. Or to experiment and postpone a firm identity.” And to offer some sort of possibility for what that future might look like, if you do take the road less traveled.
There’s an essay in Yes Means Yes about sex education, Real Sex Education. It talks about the importance of including a discussion of pleasure in sex ed:
Sex education that does not involve discussions of pleasure is innately sexist. Why? Because one can discuss pregnancy, STDs, and prevention in relation to heterosexual sex without a single mention of the clitoris. Educators definitely should not do this, but the fact is that it’s entirely possible to give a scientifically accurate and even practical description of birth control, condom use, vaginal intercourse, and other sex education staples without ever acknowledging the clitoris’s existence. And the same holds true for the female orgasm.
The importance of including trans(whatever) education in health/sex ed may be slightly more obvious than the importance of including pleasure in health/sex ed, but I think they’re on similar grounds. If we want to move away from a model of sex education that’s about as informative (and exciting) as an instruction manual for changing your car’s oil, we need to do a better job of including everyone in the discussion. I was really glad to have two opportunities this week to try and help at least a few dozen students – many of whom were future therapists and social workers – push their own education in that direction.
gender, queer, sex, theory, trans, transitioning
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education, high school, questions, theory
Themocracy
Horribly amused by the fingers.
On the subject of things I wish I’d known when I was 15, ‘you can be a boy, or a girl, but it’s also okay not to be either’.
Totally! I tried to get this across to them, but who knows if it sunk in.
[...] talking at a high school last week, one of the students said, “Wow, you really look like a woman.” I told him I appreciate [...]