Queer, Trans, and Intersectional Theory in Educational Practice

Student, Teacher, and Community Experiences

Cris Mayo, Mollie V. Blackburn, Cris Mayo, Mollie V. Blackburn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000769067
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica multiculturale

Offering an examination of educational approaches to promote justice, this volume demonstrates the necessity for keeping race, ethnicity, class, language, and other diversities at the core of pedagogical strategies and theories that address queer, trans, gender nonbinary and related issues.

Queer theory, trans theory, and intersectional theory have all sought to describe, create, and foster a sense of complex subjectivity and community, insisting on relationality and complexity as concepts and communities shift and change. Each theory has addressed exclusions from dominant practices and encouraged a sense of connection across struggles. This collection brings these crucial theories together to inform pedagogies across a wide array of contexts of formal education and community-based educational settings. Seeking to push at the edges of how we teach and learn across subjectivities and communities, authors in this volume show that theories inform practice and practice informs theory—but this takes careful attention, reflexivity, and commitment.

This scholarly text will be of great interest to graduate and postgraduate students, academics, teachers, libraries and policy makers in the field of Gender and Sexuality in Education, LGBTQ studies, Multicultural Education and Sociology of Education.

1 Spaces of Collision

Intersectionalities of Race, Gender Identity, and Generations

Cindy Cruz

Interview by Cris Mayo

Cindy Cruz:	I started teaching when I was one month out of undergrad and in undergrad I had really been emotionally and politically affected by This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1981). This is 1987. And I was really in awe of the book, I think because here were women of color, who were lesbians of color, talking politics, and speaking and writing in ways that I found so intimate and yet so political. That’s what I had been looking for in my undergrad degree, or that’s what I had been looking for in my life that was missing. I was looking for some sort of standpoint or vision of a politics that reflected the concerns of women of color, where I was coming from. I did not want my subjectivity to continue to work and exist in pieces. And in some sense, thinking about Bridge, it is the first iteration that I read of intersectional analysis, and yet I realized it was much more complex. When I read these essays that were talking about these women’s lives where violence and racism and homophobia were interwoven with each other in ways that amplified oppression and muted others, but Bridge writers also took into account how the matrix of oppression would shift in ways that were simultaneous and multiplicitous. I recognized this constant change, and I know this is what attracted me to this vision that the writers had of This Bridge Called My Back, this vision of politics where this radical women of color politics was at the center of this articulation. The vision still calls me, and I knew I had to find ways to make this vision real in my teaching. As a high school teacher, I was like “Oh my God, this is life-saving thinking, I need to give it to these students” in Fontana, California. I needed to give it to my students in L.A. Unified where I didn’t see much difference between the working-class youth that I worked with in Fontana and the homeless queer youth that I now had in my classrooms in Los Angeles except now the problems that youth encountered were amplified. No problems were any different between what Fontana and Los Angeles youth were experiencing, and a lot of the problems of homelessness, mental illness, poverty, and abuse were the same. I wanted to think with Bridge to help us theorize about the conditions of our lives.
Cris Mayo:	What you’re talking about is really interesting, not just because you’re talking about how Bridge translates across locations, but about how well it, as a pedagogical tool, manages simultaneous difference, manages disagreement, but so gracefully, and then manages this kind of overlapping building of solidarity.
CC:	You know, it’s one of the few places where I’ve read a call for coalition. Bridge offers us a primer of coalition. It offers us a space, if we look at the premises of these women of color writers, and of a practice of writing that is that is analytic, intersectional, and a re-visioning of our stories. When I read Cherríe Moraga’s La Güera for the first time I was both intrigued and challenged by her writing practice: “could I ever write that brutally honest about my own life?” And Bridge offers us all of these pedagogies. It was offering us a pedagogy of storytelling that was remediated through resistant thinking, where the writers do not just tell us stories of oppression, but also tell us of the work to revise these stories as a narrative of resistance, resilience and survivance. And Bridge also meant a particular approach to writing as it’s practiced, a reflexive political thinking. It also meant a complex communication of coalition, where many of the narratives were these calls to talk to each other—literally “we’re on the phone”—these calls for women of color to talk to each other. In Los Angeles in the 80’s and early-90’s, there were spaces created where women of color talked to each other. Maybe that was a time of coalition that was really influenced by Bridge and women of color feminism, but I was really excited by the potential of organizations such as Lesbianas Unidas (LU) when they would organize activities with ULOAH [United Lesbians of African Heritage], this very large African-American lesbian organization that was in Los Angeles. Or organizing with Asian-Pacific lesbian groups—there was one for Taiwanese, Chinese, there was another for Malaysians—there was all these women of color organizations, and we would come together two or three times a year to celebrate International Women’s Day, sponsor lectures by poets of color and performances. It was a joyful, but hardworking space. It was something that I looked forward to for years as a young lesbian in Los Angeles. And maybe L.A. was one of the few places where you could have that kind of crossover, mixing, a place to meet and greet and love one another, even if it was just for a few hours.
CM:	Do you think that that’s a question of critical mass, and then space to also not have to engage in coalition? I mean do you think that there is a rhythm to the ability to be in coalition, that it requires—I’m not going to say a safe home—but a kind of place where you don’t feel embattled?
CC:	You know, the women who ran that International Women’s Day, were the same women who did it year after year. And I worried about that, I’m like “wow, Bridget and her partner Elena”—they’re the ones holding on to Lesbianas Unidas, and it’s not like there weren’t problems. I remember, it was 1994 and there were huge marches against Proposition 187. Proposition 187 was an anti-immigrant bill that was on the ballot in California. The organizers Elena Popp and Ridge Gonzalez had a really cool banner for Lesbianas Unidas (LU) for the Anti-187 March in East Los Angeles, and no one showed up! And I’m like “you know what, I’m going to go march with the women of ACT UP, because no one’s here.” And yet when I marched, I saw tons of LU women on the sidelines. And it made me think. Earlier I was mad, I was angry at people for not marching and participating against this anti-immigrant proposition. But later on, I thought “well, these are all working class Mexicanas, Chicanas, migrants, you know, who were a part of this group, and maybe I have the privilege of marching, and being seen, and photographed by police,” and all those surveillance practices that LAPD does during big protests. I kind of stepped back from my initial anger a little bit, but those were the hard parts of doing this kind of organizing and consciousness-raising, and work like that. International Women’s Day events happened a few times a year, and I loved them, but they were hard work. And the same people did that work over and over again, and I’m know they’re going to burn out, and they did! No one seemed to take over the reins of the organizations, almost all of them, and now that women of color coming-together doesn’t really happen in Los Angeles anymore.
CM:	What you’re talking about reminds me of the more spatial-oriented work that you do with queer kids of color who are homeless, and I’m thinking about tight spaces (Cruz, 2011). I mean you’re already talking about a kind of pedagogical realization that people are in, that they’re just stuck, that they can’t always do the kind of work they want to do. I wonder if in a way the experiences that you’re talking about—they have these moments that could possibly lead to solidarities, but the solidarities can’t go to every place. So is there something in our pedagogy—I mean it seems to me that you’re articulating a very generous vision of our students trying to push us to see that we may want to tend to all these differences, but everyone cannot attend to them in the same way.
CC:	I would tell the queer youth of color that there is a reason you are here—Thai students and Indian student, and all the Latinx youth from every country, and African-American students—we are the connections between communities, and that’s your role in coalition, “that’s why you’re here!” Because I really wanted to move them away from, “I’m queer, I’m Black, I’m poor,” the atomization of identity. I really wanted them to think about the strengths of all those things on one body. And in L.A., at that time, we did have that space. We had these funny little spaces for this queer school. We had space in West Hollywood, where we could rent the hall, you know, just sign up for the time. And a big International Women’s Day would happen for very little money, you know $120 for the afternoon. I don’t know what the space is like now in Los Angeles, but I think you have to have the space, or you take over the space, in order to pull this off. You know, last night my partner Wanda and I went to this space called The Smell—and it did! [laughter]—and you had to walk through a parking lot into an alley to get into this place. It was exposed brick walls and had once been an old car garage in downtown Los Angeles. And we went to go see all these punk Chicanas from Southeast L.A. play their punk music. It was a fundraiser for this summer camp called Chicana Roqueras. But I was amazed with all the girls that were here, and I was amazed at the space. It was all ages, no alcohol, they sold horchatas and aqua frescas to drink, so there was no alcohol, which was very cool. And I got a chance to witness how all these high school age girls were there to support each other, doing punk, there was even a mosh pit! And so I thought, “look at this space! Look how beautiful this space is!” Yeah it smells [laughter], but they made that space and it’s been there since, wow, the early-2000s. Every young person who is seeking an alternative music scene knows about The Smell, this underground punk scene, but I don’t think people realize that this punk scene is run by girls. Young women of color. I saw young Black girls wearing Compton Skate Crew sweatshirts. So, there are all of these new kinds of configurations of what young lesbians of color are doing in Los Angeles that I’m not even aware of, that don’t look like identity-based groups anymore. I have to train my eye to recognize that all over again, because I now realize that lesbian of color organizing doesn’t go away, it just changes its shape. That’s what I was realizing last night, maybe the spirit of International Women’s Day, and the 90s, and identity politics—maybe that hasn’t gone away, maybe the idea or the practice of it hasn’t gone away, but it doesn’t look how I thought it would. Because maybe I don’t have that language, or I don’t recognize these new practices. I loved what I saw! I thought it was so cool!
CM:	I think you’re also raising really interesting generational problems, which is, I mean, just exactly what you’re saying, that the next politics does not look like that last politics. And it’s a hard one, because I also see—and I know we could talk about any number of people whose work we know where you see kind of political efflorescence either in trans or queer communities that wind up being exclusionary, whether they are exclusionary along race lines, or along class lines, or gender or gender identity. Like in a way you want to have a kind of, I hate to say it, maybe teacherly voice and say “now kids, today we’re going to learn why we don’t exclude,” [laughter] because I worry about that, and yet I also see what you’re saying, which is there are spaces that have figured this out already and are working against it quite radically, and they just don’t look like what I do—thank heavens, possibly. But I think trying to find that balance of the potential of new spaces, but then also of the potential of the emergence of white supremacy, redlining, transphobia, and all of those. I mean I’m just not sure how to or if this should be up to pedagogues; maybe this has to be an internal conversation. But I think to a certain extent, we’re hoping the collection is going to push people along to say, “oh I’ve been really good at addressing x, but not really good at addressing y: how could I possibly not have done those simultaneously?” And I wonder how those questions come up in those spaces.
CC:	Hmm, I don’t know. I think when I was hanging out at The Smell, I wasn’t the oldest person there, because someone’s mom was there [laughter]—well maybe I still was the oldest person! But I was like, “oh look how these girls are pulling it off, DIY,” and I loved the energy of the place. And you know what, that place has stayed, despite all this massive gentrification of downtown Los Angeles, it’s still there! It’s two doors down from a Mexicano gay bar called Jalisco with a big gay flag outside of it. It’s next door to this weird, wonky cinema where you can go see international films for $2. And those places have stayed as 2019 downtown L.A. looks so different under gentrification, and yet those spaces persist. And so there must be something happening, someone has some sort of savvy to either ward off potential gentrifiers, or they’ve been able to organize against it. I don’t know the history of that; I would love to know the history of that kind of persistence. Wanda has one of her students from the University of Arizona who is looking at Chicana punk and she was there at that scene, and I was thinking that I’d like to know more about how they’ve maintained this really rich space, for women in particular. We even bought stickers that said “Men are trash.” [laughter]
CM:	Ah, good old separatism in a different form! That’s nice! [laughter]
CC:	It looks a little different, you know. And so, I just loved the space. There is a history of this kind of backyard connecting, where you could go see a very political band like Atzlan Underground at a house party, but there would also be all of these organizations who would put up a card table with fliers and sign-up sheets to learn more about their organization. The Smell felt familiar in this way. It had an East Los Angeles women’s health center with a little table, “here, have some condoms!” So, I signed up, you know, hear more about their work, and I signed up with some other girls—except you don’t really sign up anymore, you take a picture of their QR, and it takes you to their website. You don’t really even need money at these places as long as you have one of those alternative kinds of currencies that they’ll take, so it was a really interesting kind of space. It’s always sliding scale, it’s usually really cheap—it’s like five bucks to get in, and I was like “well this is a fundraiser, you guys should have asked for ten bucks,” but then I saw the high school girls who were there from all over, and I thought “oh no, five bucks is right—here’s forty!” It was a space very much in the vein of Maria Lugones’ (2010) concept of a resistant sociality. There were so many girls there. And so many girls that looked like my nieces! [laughter] Just the kind of good energy that came out of their music. And these Chicana punk bands were pretty good. I was really happy to see that, I was happy to be in the space, even though I was exhausted from that afternoon, I was like “yeah we should go, we should support them.” We felt like the tias going out to go support the nieces.
CM:	Yeah, I like that generational continuity doesn’t necessarily—I mean, from my perspective, with a very small family, my generational continuity is all pedagogical, whereas yours could also be familial—itself an issue not without complexity.
CC:	Oh yeah, yeah. I love these girls. I love their songs with lyrics like, “Fuck those sexist men in our anarchy group!” [laughter] One young group of musicians w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Misses and Connections: Queer, Trans, and Intersectional Pedagogies
• 1 Spaces of Collision: Intersectionalities of Race, Gender Identity, and Generations
• Section I Teachers and Students in Classrooms and Schools
• Section II Families and Communities in the Educational Lives of Students
• Section III Students and Higher Education Policies
• Index