The students in my feminism class read Rachel Lloyd's memoir, Girls Like Us, about the commercial sexual exploitation of children. (Photo, Steve Neiman, used with permission).

During a recent Twitter chat on #sheparty hosted by the Women’s Media Center, I tweeted: “How many feminists know edu hashtags and vice versa?”

The point I wanted to get across is that many feminists today don’t know much about today’s education conversation and, in turn, educators don’t know much about what’s going on in feminist discourse, whether it’s academic or activist.

My job as a feminist high school teacher is to close the women’s and gender studies gap for young people. To stop bullying, stop raping, stop perpetuating racism and sexism, and instead start making social change, I believe in bringing a gender, racial, and economic justice lens to education at all levels. Feminism does this work.

For me, connecting schools with feminist theory and action is personal. When I was in elementary school on Long Island in the early ‘80s, I was called “Afro” and “nigger.” Recess was not fun; to the contrary, it was a time to be bullied by my peers, who surrounded me while I was on the swings and in the sandbox. I always wonder how different my life might have been if my white teachers and white peers knew something about racism or if the rich history of Puerto Ricans and African-Americans had been taught to us as children. The goal would not have been color-blindness, but safety and inclusion, respect and responsibility for each other.

Now that I am a teacher, I believe that the power of feminist theory and action is exactly what young people need to create understandings across differences, learn how to lead healthy lives and to make social change. 

Tapping the Women’s Studies Canon

I start by teaching my high school students the very thing that colleges teach in feminist studies — intersectionality. The students read a variety of texts — Patricia Hill Collins, the Combahee River Collective, Kimberlé Crenshaw, bell hooks, Audre Lorde and Cherríe Moraga. Like any good high school English class, they conduct close readings, hold discussions and write about their interpretations. Their writing also includes blogging on their own feminist blog, F to the Third Power.

Students also write personal essays about their own experiences. From the young white boy to the multi-racial girl, each of my students has a story to share about race, class, gender and sexuality. They include the Dominican girl who was afraid her undocumented parents would be found out and the Asian boy figuring out his sexuality. No theory has ever made more sense to them than intersectionality because it finally gives students the language to describe their everyday lives, making this important tenet of feminism suddenly indispensable.

The social issues that high school students face have long roots in feminist analysis. Schools struggle to combat bullycides, cyberbullying, and mean girls (and mean boys), all of which are ongoing at alarmingly high rates. These concerns involve homophobia and transphobia, sexism and misogyny, racism and classism; feminists have offered rich analyses about these interlocking systems of oppression for over 40 years.

I also teach them how to enact social change in their communities. For the past three years, the students in my high school feminism course have supported GEMS (Girls Educational and Mentoring Services), which is the only agency in New York State to protect girls from re-entering the cycle of domestic sex trafficking. We watch the film, Very Young Girls; we read GEMS Executive Director Rachel Lloyd’s new memoir, Girls Like Us, and invite GEMS outreach workers to talk to the class about the commercial sexual exploitation of children.

The students in my feminism class in 2009 launched our partnership with GEMS (photo, Ileana Jiménez).

But that’s not all. I don’t want my students to just learn about the work of feminist activism. I want them to participate in it, as well, and to develop a sustained relationship with an issue that is part of a gender justice vision, not flavor-of-the-month activism.

For the past three years, the students in the high school feminism class have hosted a GEMS assembly, during which they teach their peers about the commercial sexual exploitation of children. Students write a script, create presentation slides, show clips from Very Young Girls, share their personal stories about why the topic means something to them and invite GEMS outreach workers to answer questions. At the end of the first assembly in 2009, students called their peers to action, asking for donations for GEMS girls and their babies. The next day, our donation box was flooded with baby blankets, clothes and diapers. Following our assembly, we received a rare invitation to visit the GEMS office to participate in World AIDS Day activities.

The second year, a student club at our school called the Community Service Roundtable was so moved by the GEMS assembly that it dedicated its annual coffeehouse fundraising efforts to GEMS. What was once a classroom unit became a school-wide commitment. This year’s effort will include students interviewing Lloyd about her memoir and selling her book to support the Girls Like Us campaign that fights for a world where girls are not for sale.

In my experience, high school students flock to courses that bridge what they learn in the classroom to the outside world. This idea is a core principle of passion-based learning, which is the complete opposite of test taking and racing to nowhere. Passion-based learning inspired one of my students who had seen assemblies on the commercial sexual exploitation of children during her first two years in high school, to take my feminism course her junior year and explore more deeply the kind of social change that is based on gender, racial and economic justice.

The work I do with students incorporates some of the most valuable aspects of education: critical thinking, analytical writing, collaboration and public speaking, all the while connecting them to important social issues that asks them to practice care and compassion.

More Work to Do

More cross-connections between feminists and educators would make a difference. Why don’t we talk to primary school children about gender roles and gender expression at a time when these roles are first reinforced? Why not teach middle school students to be more mindful about the sexualization of women and girls in the media and how these images prime their buying habits and influence how they eat (or don’t eat)? Why aren’t educators teaching high school students how men can stop rape?

People tell me that I’m unique for doing this work with high school students. I disagree. Waiting in the inbox for my blog are several emails from middle and high school teachers from across the country, asking for ideas on how to bring a gender-based lens to their classrooms. Mostly, these teachers need support with age-appropriate content that will help them implement curricula for K-12 classrooms.

Achieving this transformation in schools will take an entire village of feminist scholars, activists and teachers working together. Here are some things that would help:

● Women’s, gender, queer, and ethnic studies departments should offer pedagogy classes for the K-12 sector.
● Professors in women’s, gender, queer and ethnic studies and teachers in local K-12 schools should share content and approaches.
● Education schools should create centers dedicated to gender research and invite teachers to participate in research projects and curriculum design.
● Feminist activists and organizations should partner with teachers on participatory action research (PAR) projects and activist initiatives that involve K-12 students.

There is so much more that we can do. Obama’s Council on Women and Girls could collaborate with the Department of Education on how to bring more gender research into curriculum design. International partnerships with the Miss G Project in Canada, which has been working to get a gender studies course into the Ontario secondary school curriculum since 2005, could be created with teachers here in the U.S.

During my time as a Fulbright teacher and researcher in Mexico this past year, working on LGBT youth in schools in the gender studies program at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), showed me that teachers, not just scholars, need to do more global research on issues of gender and sexuality, and bring that knowledge back to their schools.

In the end, this is about working together with young people to tackle our most important social issues. In 15 years of teaching, I have seen that there is no other generation than today’s high school students more ready to take on this work. Are we ready to join them?

Meiling Jabbaar, former high school feminism student, and Ileana Jiménez (Feminist Teacher).

Last year, I launched an on-going guest post series written by my former high school students reflecting on the impact of learning feminism(s) in high school. To mark the beginning of the school year and to inspire teachers to bring a feminist vision to their curricula, I’m posting a piece written by my former student, Meiling Jabbaar, who took my course on feminism her senior year last fall. In this essay, Meiling teaches all of us that learning about feminism in high school made an impact on finding her voice. Meiling will be attending Brown University this fall.

Growing up as a young woman in today’s society, I have always been aware of issues that women, teenage girls, and even young girls face.  When I learned about the feminism course offered by Ileana Jiménez, who teaches in the English department at my high school, I realized that I would have the chance to discuss topics to which I could relate.  But little did I know how much of an impact the class would have on me.

My Fierce and Fabulous: Feminist Women Writers, Artists, and Activists class, which I took during the first trimester of my senior year, did much more than expose me to the world of feminism.  In providing the space to talk about issues important to me, such as female stereotypes, issues of beauty, and how women are portrayed in the media, I learned ways in which I could solve these problems, while at the same time, I learned a lot about myself.

Before taking the class, the only thing that came to mind when I thought about feminism was women’s rights.  I soon learned that feminism entails so much more.  First, we focused on feminist theory.  We read the works of various renowned feminist writers, including bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Cherríe Moraga, and Virginia Woolf.  I was overwhelmed and moved by their powerful pieces that analyze the history and roots of the struggles that plague the lives of women.  After reading these writers, my eyes were opened to what feminism truly represents.

One significant recurring theme throughout our readings was the idea of intersectionality, which pulls together the central focus of feminism.  One cannot analyze women’s issues without considering race, class, gender, ethnicity, religion, etc., because each affects one another and plays a major role in our lives.  Through intersectionality, feminism seeks to establish equal opportunities for all types of women from all walks of life.

Following the multiple feminist readings we did, we wrote personal essays on intersectionality where we had to reflect on the ways in which race, class, gender, etc., have influenced our own lives, something I had never thought about before.  Writing my intersectionality essay helped me come to a better understanding of my identity.  I reflected on being racially mixed, being a woman of color, and the role of socio-economic class in my life.  I took a risk and shared experiences and emotions I had never expressed to anyone.  However, it was both uplifting and self-rewarding to have done so.

Aside from feminist theory, feminist activism was a major part of the class and my favorite as well.  One of the many activist projects we took part in was our work with Hollaback!, whose mission is to end street harassment using mobile technology.  Out of all the activist work we did as a class, Hollaback! had the biggest influence on me because street harassment is an issue I have personally experienced and stand against strongly.

Growing up as a girl in New York City, I have been sexually harassed countless number of times, but have never known what to do.  Hollaback! introduced me to a way I could finally take a stand and stop street harassment. As a part of our work with Hollaback!, we had the great opportunity to write testimonies for a New York City council hearing on street harassment.  This meant a lot to me as it gave me the opportunity to have my voice heard as a young person and make a difference.

At the end of the trimester, I was not the same person I was when I first walked into my feminism class. My newly gained knowledge of feminism’s theories and principles gave me a greater understanding of the world I live in and the problems surrounding me everyday.

With the intent to dismantle the inequalities that exist towards women, feminism has helped me realize my potential to create change by offering the opportunity to stand up against issues about which I am passionate.  As a result, my feminism class led to the realization of my feminist voice I did not know existed within me.

My Fulbright presentation at UNAM on LGBT youth in schools in Mexico City.

Every now and then, teachers get the opportunity of a lifetime.

I know I did when I was selected to be a member of the second cohort of Distinguished Fulbright Award in Teaching (DAT) recipients. Still a fairly new addition to the family of Fulbright awards, the DAT Fulbright provides experienced teachers the chance to conduct research in a host country in an area of education about which they feel passionate.

I’ve just recently returned from Mexico City after having spent six months as a guest researcher in the gender studies program, Programa Universitario de Estudios de Género (PUEG) at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). My research focused on interviewing high school-aged LGBT youth on themes relating to gender and sexuality; coming out/not coming out; safety and discrimination; and their vision for making their school’s curriculum inclusive of LGBT themes and issues.

I could not have had a more life-transforming experience.

While I was interviewing 32 students, six teachers, and two administrators, I kept marveling at the fact that this was the most extraordinary opportunity to create change in schools on a global level. Here was a young man sharing how his mom didn’t hug him when he came out; and here was a young woman telling me how she was harassed at school for being transgender and how she had the guts to come to school wearing a dress when everybody else knew her previously as a boy; and here was a young woman telling me her dreams for making her school more respectful of all her friends.

And here was Fulbright giving me the chance to be a researcher, not as a PhD student, not as a professor, but as a teacher.

Teachers to whom I gave a workshop on LGBT inclusion at Preparatoria 4 in Mexico City.

For six months, Fulbright provided me with the space, time, and funding to pursue my passion as a guest researcher at a major global university; as a public intellectual speaking at international conferences on bullying as well as at UNAM’s medical school; and as an educator delivering professional development to local teachers on LGBT inclusion. This was no sabbatical. This was an immersion in becoming a global educator with a research and passion-driven purpose.

My passion is social justice in schools, and, in particular, the creation of safe and inclusive schools for all students. My research was not only about my position as a researcher but also about my position as a change agent. Giving young people the opportunity to voice their opinions for change was the most important piece of my work in Mexico.

When young people told me that they wanted to see accurate information about gender and sexuality in their health classrooms; or when they wanted to see a trans-inclusive or gender-inclusive bathroom on campus; or when they wanted their teachers, prefects, and peers to stop making homophobic remarks, I knew this wasn’t only a research project but more importantly, the beginning of a lifelong commitment to creating change in schools on an international level.

My talk on bullying in June at UNAM's Facultad de Medicina, or medical school.

Now that I’m back in New York, one of the most critical things I hope to do is to continue the conversation about the importance of providing teachers the funding and support to conduct research both in the U.S. and abroad. I recently wrote about this issue in a piece I wrote for Smith College. Teachers are expected to cultivate generation upon generation of thinkers, doers, and scholars and yet we are not given the proper support to be thinkers, doers, and scholars ourselves. For those of us who teach high school, we are only expected to know and teach our content area, assign and grade papers, write college recommendations, and then start over again.

How does this deadening cycle allow us to be a part of a national and global community of educators?

It doesn’t.

For this reason, it is critical that I bring back my just-emerging understanding of Mexican LGBT youth in schools to my already-existing work on safe and inclusive schools in the U.S. There is no doubt that there are many similarities as well as differences between the experience of LGBT youth in Mexico and of those in the States. The richness of those similarities and differences is what will inform the next steps in my work as a feminist educator and activist, such as:

• Innovating the content of my professional development workshops on LGBT inclusion in schools;
• Broadening the scope and sequence of my research in the future;
• Expanding my publishing to scholarly journals in addition to more blogs and other media; and
• Deepening my own high school curriculum, especially my course on LGBT literature and my course on feminism.

One of the most important women I met in Mexico was Gloria Careaga, who is a leading feminist psychologist at UNAM and longtime LGBT activist. Careaga is also the Secretary General of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Intersex Association (ILGA). In one of her articles I frequently referenced, she writes that as teachers, we need to “confront our fears and break the barriers of prejudices and stereotypes . . . to protect the rights of each of our students . . . and to guarantee respect for the free expression of each and every one of them” (“enfrentar nuestros miedos y romper las barreras de los prejuicios y estereotipos . . . para proteger los derechos de cada uno de las y los estudiantes . . . [y para] garantizar el respeto a la libre expresión de cada uno”).

I completely agree.  If there’s anything this Fulbright has done for me is that it has re-affirmed and re-invigorated my commitment to confront my fears, protect student rights, and fight for the free expression—based on race, class, gender, and sexuality—of each of my students for safer schools now, for safer lives always.

Apply today to be a part of the next cohort of Distinguished Fulbrighters.

Feminist Magazine, KPFK 90.7, Pacifica Radio

Within the past few months, I’ve had the terrific honor of being a guest on two feminist radio shows: Digital Sisterhood Network’s Feminism Online Project and Feminist Magazine. Last night, Feminist Magazine co-hosts Celina Alvarez and Christene Kings interviewed me during their show on KPFK 90.7 Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles. Calling in from México, I was thrilled to talk to Celina and Christene about my work with young people in high school.

One of the points I made was that the reason why students are attracted to feminism is because they can use its tools in their everyday lives: “What I do in the classroom not only focuses on gender and sexuality but also race and class . . . Students get excited because it’s about them . . . they face sexism, they face racism, they face classism, they face homophobia, transphobia, all of it, and feminism is the perfect launching point for those kinds of conversations. They want their education to be personal but they also want it to be useable, and I think that feminism is one of those things that you can teach that is so useable and young people just grab it.”

In case you missed the show last night, here’s the archive: my segment starts at 28:24 and ends at 42:18.

Earlier in May, I was also invited by Ananda Leeke from the Digital Sisterhood Network to be her guest for the entire hour (just press play). I was able to talk at length with Ananda about the Fulbright research I’m doing in México on LGBT youth in schools as well as my work in schools in the U.S. During the course of the show, my student and fellow Twitter fiend, Steven Susaña, joined the chat section of the program. Steven took my feminism course last fall, and since then, has been a committed feminist activist and male ally. It was so wonderful to have him as part of the conversation about teaching and learning feminism at the high school level.

Throughout both of these interviews, I was reminded again and again how important feminist media is and how important it is to lift each other’s work through our blogs, op-eds, radio programs, television appearances, and the like. We have to be the ones to invite each other to be guests on our blogs and programs if we want to change the landscape of voices. We have to be the ones to invite a different conversation for a different world.

In March of this year, I was invited to sit on several panels as part of the Smith Women in Education conference at Smith College in Northampton, MA. I was thrilled to be back on campus even if just for a few days, as it took place right in the middle of my Fulbright time in México; it was absolutely invigorating and inspiring to be among Smith sisters in education making change in their classrooms and in their communities.

One of the things I talked about during a panel titled Teaching in the 21st Century, that was moderated by Smith alumna Joan Sigel Schuman from the class of 1962, was the importance of teachers coming to the classroom as whole people, especially along lines of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Our students know when we are not being real or true with them, and we as teachers also suffer when we are not our whole selves with our students, our colleagues, and our school communities.

I went through a time of not being a whole person myself when as a young teacher, I was not completely true to my students during my time in girls’ schools between 1997-2004. There I was, teaching young women to be empowered and to become self-actualized as young feminists, and I was not even out to my students; as a result, I was not a whole educator or a whole person in my profession. I was not self-actualized.

I also talked about how important it is for education to be about vision not just about content. I said,

I don’t think that curriculum should just be about content, I think it should be about some kind of larger vision that you want your students to be able to accomplish and achieve with you. What’s the journey that you’re going to be taking your students on throughout the course of a year, [while] hitting particular moments that will make that vision happen together?”

Since I’ve been on my Fulbright, a growing passion of mine has been the place of teachers as experts in their field and as a result of that, the place of teachers as public intellectuals. I said,

How do we give teachers the money, the resources, the time, to become intellectually stimulated, [to become] public intellectuals contributing to the discourse, creating change, creating innovation, and giving them the time and support to do so?”

My fellow panelists were outstanding. Rachel Willis, who is the 2010 recipient of the Milken Educator Award, and graduate of the Smith class of 2004, spoke cogently about how teachers are treated on a larger societal level: “We are not necessarily treated as professionals . . . even though we’re told that we are going to be nation-builders, we’re not treated as nation-builders.”

Kayleigh Colombero, from the Smith class of 2008, reminded us how important student voices are: “Students bring a lot of authentic questions to the classroom and if you can never build space in for their voices and their questions, then what are we telling them about . . . coming to school? It’s almost like they’re not even necessary.”

I was thrilled to be a part of this panel, especially in my role both as teacher-activist and now as teacher-researcher. There was no better place to share where I am right now in my trajectory as an educator than at Smith. As Rachel said at one point in our panel: “Everybody says that Disney World is the most magical place on earth, but that’s because they didn’t go to Smith.”

Kayleigh voiced what was on all of our minds, that what we do as teachers is really about love. “My students love me and I say I love them back . . . do you get that at your job?”

If you are a Smith alum in education–early childhood, K-12, higher education, and beyond–please join our Smith Women in Education Facebook group. 

(Girls for Gender Equity)

Reading Hey Shorty!: A Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment and Violence in Public Schools and on the Streets is like drinking vitamin water for activists. An immersion in how-to community organizing, movement building, and feminist activism against sexual harassment, this book is the one we’ve all been waiting for. Written in easy-to-read language and clearly outlined, bullet point action steps, co-authors Meghan Huppuch, Joanne N. Smith, and Mandy Van Deven make the case for feminist activism in schools in ways that will make our non-initiated colleagues understand that we need to act now.

As hard as it is for some educators and administrators to admit, all schools are sexual and sexualized spaces. More specifically, when it comes to sexual harassment, all schools are spaces of power and submission, authority and silence.

Pervasive and destructive, sexual harassment is considered to be a “typical part” of school life by two-thirds of the 1,189 New York City public school students surveyed by Girls for Gender Equity (GGE), a Brooklyn-based girls advocacy and movement building group dedicated to gender justice.

In this new and important book, GGE co-authors Huppuch, Smith, and Van Deven, reveal urgent research that the young women in their Sisters in Strength program discovered.

Their three pivotal findings should press those of us who are educators and school leaders to respond: 1) in-school sexual harassment occurs in many ways, to many people, and in many locations; 2) sexual harassment is a “normal” part of young people’s school experience, and 3) students want and need more education about sexual harassment. 

One of the most disturbing findings asserts that sexual harassment is part of “what it mean[s] to be at school,” implying that “students find sexual harassment routine and acceptable.”

Of course, it’s not acceptable. As the authors point out, members of school communities, from principals, to other administrators, to staff, to the students themselves, perpetuate sexual harassment to the point where it is so normalized that many victimized students do not report it, nor do they even know that they have a federal law, specifically Title IX, to support them.

GGE reminds us that those who are often the targets of sexual harassment, in particular, women, girls, and LGBTQ youth, are “taught to put up with violent and destructive treatment because they have ‘no choice,’” leading to fear of coming to school, depression, poor decision-making with their bodies, and even attempts at suicide.

In response to these findings, Hey Shorty offers excellent strategies for students, educators, and adult allies to stop sexual harassment. One strategy for teachers caught my attention, namely, that educators should have “anti-discrimination rules for their classroom and incorporate anti-oppression lessons into their teaching.”

I could not agree more. I believe the first thing we need to do to make that happen is make sure that teachers themselves receive anti-racism, anti-classism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, and anti-transphobia training as part of their professional development.

In order to reach the point that all teachers incorporate these kinds of lessons into their curricula, faculty members need to do the work of unpacking their own oppression and the oppression they have done unto others not just in school but outside of school as well. Even those of us who are committed to this work need to practice anti-oppression work with our colleagues—even when it gets frustrating and exhausting—so that we can create a healed and healing community of adult allies for our students. Only then will we be able to reach GGE’s vision for becoming the fully realized social justice educators—not just content teachers—our students deserve.

What makes reading Hey Shorty exciting is that GGE’s work is based in feminist theory, especially intersectionality and women of color feminism. The authors make these theories completely accessible to the audience they are trying to reach, namely: educators, administrators, and students.

For instance, without ever using the word, their explanation of intersectionality—or Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory that asserts that systems of inequality along lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, etc. overlap—makes urgent that we need to apply this theory in our leadership of schools:

Sexual harassment affects our lives in profound ways because it grows out of larger forms of individual and institutional oppression that we experience as young people, women, people of color, immigrants, and members of the LGBTQ community. Achieving social justice is not just about race or class or gender or ability or nationality or religion. It’s about all of these things at once, because, as Mahatma Gandhi famously said, ‘No one is free when others are oppressed.’”

I can imagine my colleagues reading this book. I can imagine my students reading this book. I can imagine teaching this book. I can imagine it on summer reading lists for years to come. I can imagine schools inviting Huppuch, Smith, and Van Deven to come speak at assemblies, delivering their most pressing message: “The world can no longer ignore that gender-based violence is a health, education, and economic-development issue that negatively affects our entire society.”

From Smith’s inspiring founder’s story to Van Deven’s search for Title IX coordinators in New York City’s public schools to Huppuch’s initiation into GGE’s fierce advocacy culture to the poetry and testimonies of Sisters in Strength interns, Hey Shorty reads like the activist version of Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls. After reading their book, we can rest assured that no one’s walking off with all of GGE’s stuff. Each woman and girl’s story of community organizing and movement building bolsters the next, revealing the visioning and action steps for gender justice in schools that we desperately need.

Follow Girls for Gender Equity on Facebook and Twitter. Learn more about their book tour for “Hey Shorty!” and bring them to your school.

It was a complete honor to be a part of Mexico City’s first international conference on bullying earlier this week. Bringing together speakers from around the world—including Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Spain—the Congreso Internacional de Bullying was hosted by the office of Mexico City’s Secretary of Education, Maestro (Mtro.) Mario Delgado Carrillo.

As the opening speaker, I shared the context of some of the most tragic bullying stories the U.S. has endured these last few years, especially in the form of bullycides, which is the preferred term when referring to suicides that have resulted from bullying. Stories such as those of Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, Phoebe Prince, and Tyler Clementi, have catapulted us into an even more pressing era for making change in our schools. 

Supported by behind-the-scenes help from safe schools activist Shannon Cuttle, founder and director of the Safe Schools Action Network, and Eliza Byard, executive director of GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight, Educators Network), I highlighted some of the urgent policy issues facing anti-bullying advocates, including Congress’s need to pass the Safe Schools Improvement Act as well as the Student Non-Discrimination Act. If passed, both bills would ideally work together to improve the lives of LGBT as well as gender non-conforming youth in schools across the country.

During my talk, I also showed a clip from the recent White House Conference on Bullying Prevention, which placed both the President and Michelle Obama in the spotlight both as parents and as public servants concerned about bullying.

Fellow speakers held equally important and pressing concerns regarding bullying. Creating “espacios de paz” or spaces of peace in Mexico City’s schools are on Secretary of Education Mario Delgado Carrillo’s mind.

Argentina’s Alejandro Castro Santander stressed how violence is an “enfermedad social” or social illness that is often silenced. Santander argued that violence is further subsumed into this silence by the fact that we have become desensitized to it within our respective cultures.

Antonio Jesús Rodríguez, a researcher from the University of Córdoba in Spain, highlighted the psychological impact of school violence. Reinaldo Pontes, from Brazil’s Observatório de Violências en Nas Escolas (Observatory of Violence in Schools), shared research being done to measure school climate in northern Brazil’s Belém do Pará’s public schools.

I walked away from the conference feeling sad that the various forms of bullying that we see in the U.S.—such as cyberbullying—are also prevalent throughout Latin America and Europe. What made me hopeful, however, is that the people who attended the conference—such as educators and social workers, academics and activists—were all there to create a unified, and indeed international, front to help not only those who are being bullied but also those who are bullies.

Creating safe schools is not easy, but it makes it feel much less lonely knowing that somewhere in Belém, Cordoba, Mendoza, and Mexico City, we are all working together to make spaces of peace.

Day of Silence, April 15, 2011

To help support educators sponsoring the Day of Silence in their schools, I asked Elizabeth J. Meyer to write a guest post providing advice for this Friday’s national event. Meyer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Education at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. She is the author of two books: Gender, bullying, and harassment: Strategies to end sexism and homophobia in schools (2009) and Gender and sexual diversity in schools (2010). She blogs regularly for Psychology Today and the Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy.

I was excited to get the invitation to write this guest post about the upcoming Day of Silence (DOS) on Friday, April 15, 2011. This is an important event that is taking place in high schools and universities across the country and I was asked to offer some suggestions for educators on how best to support students who have decided to participate in this event.

What is the Day of Silence?

This somewhat controversial event began in 1996 at the University of Virginia when a group of students chose to remain silent for one day to call attention to the anti-LGBT name-calling and harassment at their school.  In 2008, over 8,000 middle and high schools registered with GLSEN (The Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network) to participate. Although it was originally a grassroots, student-initiated event, GLSEN has provided their infrastructure to create educational resources and organizing ideas to their network of chapters and via their website to support widespread participation. There has been backlash in some communities against this event, but students and teachers who have participated indicate that it is a non-confrontational, yet empowering way to highlight these issues in a school community.

What is the controversy?

The Alliance Defense Fund, supported by the Southern Baptist Convention Press promotes a Day of Truth, now the Day of Dialogue, in response to the “homosexual agenda” of public schools participating in DOS activities. In Day of Truth/Day of Dialogue activities, generally scheduled for the day after DOS programs, students are encouraged to express an opposing viewpoint. In 2006, ADF claims students in over 700 schools, participated in Day of Truth activities (Janofsky, 2005). One of the more popular tee-shirts includes the message “Homosexuality is Shameful” along with other religious based anti-gay messages. Some school leaders’ response to this show of intolerance is to ban the shirts from school grounds.

The American Liberties Institute supported the efforts of James Nixon against a middle school for not allowing his son to wear a tee-shirt stating, among other things, “Homosexuality is a sin!” (Nixon v. Northern Local School District Board of Education, 2005).  The Southern District Court of Ohio granted an injunction prohibiting enforcement of the tee-shirt ban.

In a similar case, Tyler Harper was suspended for wearing a “Homosexuality is Shameful” tee-shirt (Harper v. Poway, 2006). The principal considered Tyler’s message to be “inflammatory.” Poway High School has been the scene of several altercations and incidents surrounding DOS events. In fact, Tyler admitted that he had been confronted by a group of students protesting the shirt that very morning. Further, a San Diego Superior Court jury had recently awarded damages of $175,000 and $125,000 to two former Poway High School students because of a failure to protect them from peer sexual orientation harassment (Littlefield, 2005). The 9^th Circuit Court concluded that Tyler’s tee-shirt did collide with the rights of other students. As such, it was proper for the district to ban the wearing of the tee-shirt.

Balancing law and pedagogy: What are educators to do?

Although there are contradictory legal precedents on how to address these situations in schools, the DOS can provide great teachable moments for educators. Teachers, counselors, and administrators can use it as an opportunity to promote dialogue around civic engagement, the role of allies in promoting equality rights, as well as bullying and harassment related to homophobia and transphobia. I wrote a blog post about stopping bullying based on gender and sexuality that can provide some talking points for teachers.

In a democratic nation, it is very important for schools to teach and promote civic engagement. One important element of this is to be able to understand the issues in your community, draw conclusions based on your knowledge and experiences, and then take action to improve the issues identified. The DOS is a wonderful example of students participating in democracy and expressing their concern in a respectful and relevant way in order to encourage change in their school communities. For more information on students’ legal rights, you should read this guide from Lambda Legal.

Issues of solidarity are also important in social change movements. It is valuable for students to learn about ally work and what it means to help advocate for the needs of a silenced minority group.

5 Ways Educators can teach through the “Day of Silence”

1. Make an announcement at the beginning of each class that you are aware of the event, and that you will ask students participating to contribute to class in other ways (writing on the board, yes/no signs, reflective writing piece, etc.).
2. Break the silence around LGBT issues in the curriculum. Find some relevant way to address LGBT invisibility in your course content. Either discuss the absence of the topic in your course texts, or prepare a lesson that explicitly addresses issues related to sexual orientation, gender identity, LGBT rights, or notable contributions by LGBT people in history (arts, sports, literature, math, science, etc.).
3. Show your support by wearing a “Day of Silence” T-shirt. You can make your own or order one online. Although you may not be able to maintain your silence all day long, the visible show of solidarity with the students can be a powerful one. I did this when I was working at the University of New Hampshire in 2003, and many students expressed their appreciation for this gesture.
4. Ask your students to write a reflection essay on the reasons they chose or chose not to participate. This can help teach critical thinking, logical reasoning, and encourage them to consider their position on bullying and harassment as well as LGBT equality rights and the role that each individual can play in maintaining or challenging the status-quo.
5. Work together with the student council and the administration at your school to plan a post-Day of Silence assembly and debrief. Invite outside speakers to be on a panel that can address topics such as: bullying and harassment, the invisibility of LGBT individuals and history from the curriculum, current local issues related to safety and equality for LGBT people, legal issues related to freedom of expression in the school community, and/or separation of church and state (particularly if Day of Truth/Day of Dialogue events are planned).
   

   Elizabeth J. Meyer

I hope you find these ideas helpful – please post questions or responses about how things went at your schools and universities on the Day of Silence this Friday.

Readers can visit Meyers’s webpage, follow her on Twitter, and read her blog posts at Psychology Today.

The following is cross-posted at Gender Across Borders and Equality 101 for their jointly hosted Feminism & Education series.

Each year, boys sign up for my high school course on feminism (photo, Ileana Jiménez)

When I was in college, I always thought that teaching girls about feminism was my life’s calling. It turns out that teaching boys about feminism has made that calling even more profound.

In the past three years, I have taught a high school course on feminism titled Fierce and Fabulous: Feminist Writers, Artists, and Activists. Each year, girls and boys sign up for the class and each year, these young men are awakened not only to injustices regarding race, class, and gender in national and global contexts but also to injustices regarding how they have been socialized as boys.

With every example of women, girls, queer folks, and people of color facing discrimination, marginalization, and violence, boys awaken. White male boys begin to realize the male privilege they have enjoyed in a culture that valorizes powerful white men while boys of color gain language to describe their painful experiences of racism and classism. And each year, without fail, regardless of racial identity or socioeconomic class, the boys—both straight and gay—express their fear of being called a “fag.”

The boys in my feminism course participated in Columbia's "What is Feminist Politics Now?" conference in 2008 (photo, Ileana Jiménez)

Boys of all backgrounds begin to share that they have been robbed of learning how to express their masculinity in ways that are healthy, loving, and emotive. They begin to see, via feminism, that they have grown up in a culture that glamorizes what Don McPherson calls “toxic masculinity.” By the end of the course, they are ready to make some changes in how they navigate the world.

How does this happen? In the same way that the “personal is political” becomes an important catalyst for women reaching feminist consciousness, it is also critical for becoming a male ally.

For example, last fall, I invited Emily May, co-founder of the incredible anti-street harassment movement Hollaback!, to come speak to my class. During the course of conversation, May invited the students to share their experiences with street harassment. One by one, the girls in the class began to voice their horrifying yet brave stories on New York City’s streets and subways.

I’ll never forget one boy’s reaction to these stories. Ian was so moved by his peers’ experiences that he submitted a post to May’s Hollaback! blog. In it he wrote:

It was during the session with Hollaback! that my eyes truly opened. The girls in my class started speaking about their past experiences with street harassment and the stories just didn’t stop . . . I was shocked at the kinds of things that were happening to my classmates and I was more shocked as to how clueless I was during all of this . . . If these women have gone through traumatic experiences from which they had lasting memories, then most definitely women I know even more personally have gone through this type of harassment as well. It is scary to think that all of these things are going on without ever being called out. It’s scary to think that a man can completely get away with making a woman feel uncomfortable or unsafe on the street or subway.”

Ian was so moved by his female peers' street harassment stories, he blogged at Hollaback! to support them (photo, Ileana Jiménez)

Days after Ian wrote this blog post, his classmate Grace testified at a New York City Council hearing on street harassment. Ian’s support, along with that of the rest of Grace’s class, made her going up in front of an entire room sharing an intensely personal testimony that much more bearable. She had the backing of her classmates—both male and female—in the fight not only against street harassment but also against our larger culture of misogyny.

This same boy and another male classmate also led the male allies action spot at last fall’s SPARK Summit to launch a movement against the sexualization of girls and women in the media. As a result of the conference, my student Steven has talked about the importance of men being a part of the feminist movement, “Because men tend to be at the top of the ‘food chain,’ having their support is vital to getting the message heard. When no one in the oppressing group is willing to listen, nothing happens. But boys will listen for a little longer when I talk about what I’ve done with my feminism class. Another role for men in feminism is to show that the things feminism is fighting against affects everyone not just exclusively women . . . Men in the feminist movement give hope to some women who think that all men are against feminist thinking and don’t understand what oppression is.”

In the following video made by the Women’s Media Center, Steven shares more of his thoughts on gender justice for both women and men.

Steven’s vision is clear. Young men can and will connect to feminism if they see it as a tool for connecting to their peers—both male and female—to rid their lives of issues that are pertinent to youth such as racism, homophobia, and the sexualization of both men and women in the media.

In other words, boys will connect to feminism if they see it as a way to create partnerships with other boys and girls to make social change.

I’ve read many horror stories about women’s studies professors being heckled by male students who are just there to make a sexist scene. In the high school setting where I teach, I have never had that experience. Instead, the boys in my classes are curious about how feminism might connect to their lives. They want to know if feminism can help them become better versions of themselves in a world that tells them only one version is acceptable.

The boys in my feminism course have taught me that it is essential that we teach them about the various global feminisms so that we can finally reach gender, racial, and economic justice together as fully realized men and women. They have taught me that it is crucial that we bring a feminist lens to not only high school classrooms but middle and elementary schools as well.

My dream as a result? That whole generations of young women and men will never experience and/or perpetuate everything from street harassment to rape; frat boy misogyny to workplace discrimination; bullying of queer kids to the banning of LGBT soldiers in the military. All of these issues connect along lines of gender and sexuality, power and politics. If we teach gender justice to all young people, we might just make lasting institutional change.

My student Ian said it best, “Any man who finds himself ashamed of many of the things that women go through could be considered a feminist; I hope to gain from this class a better understanding of myself as a man.”

AtreveteDF, a new chapter of Hollaback!, fights against street harassment throughout Mexico City.

Earlier this fall, Feminist Teacher readers learned about the work that my high school students did with Emily May’s Hollaback! anti-street harassment movement. In particular, my student Grace Tobin testified at a New York City Council hearing on street harassment and the peers in her class sent in their powerful testimonies to the Hollaback blog. The importance of addressing street harassment in schools was never made more apparent to me than when my students shared their stories about being harassed on the subways and streets of New York, especially going to and from school.

Now that I’m in Mexico on a Fulbright, I have had the honor to meet with the founder of the Hollaback! chapter here in Mexico City, called AtreveteDF. A fairly new addition to the national and now global work that Hollaback! started in 2005, AtreveteDF is a growing force in the anti-street harassment movement. To mark International Anti-Street Harassment Day today, I invited AtreveteDF to write a guest post sharing its work and vision, especially in relation to the need to address this issue with young people. Below, readers will find both English and Spanish versions of AtreveteDF’s guest post. Please note that due to safety concerns, AtreveteDF contributed their post anonymously.

Education Against Street Harassment

One memory remains from a recent visit to a soccer stadium here in Mexico. Two kids, who were about 6 or 7, were shouting–in an almost eloquent manner–quite derogatory and objectifying comments to the cheerleaders and other women in the stadium. They also made comments directed at the players of the opposing team regarding homosexuality and their supposed “lack of manliness” as well as to members from their own team when players failed to score. People passed by and laughed; most men and women seemed to applaud this behavior, and nobody, including myself, asked them to be respectful or otherwise.

Today is International Anti- Street Harassment Day. When we speak of the daily realities many women and LGBTQ folks face when they walk down the street, let’s not forget to mention the children and youth who learn how to repeat these behaviors from the widespread sexual violence in our communities, the media, their homes, streets and schools.

While verbal harassment disguised as a compliment is not considered by many as sexual abuse (though it is by law in Mexico

"No fue romantico en aquel entonces, no es romantico hoy"; "It wasn't romantic back then, and it's not romantic today."

City), it is the beginning of a chain of gender-based violence that leads to femicide. Cases of violence against women have been treated with impunity here in Mexico; in other words, it is normalized and ignored. This is the message, subliminal or otherwise, that is portrayed to the children of our community. If you’re a man the thinking might be: “It’s ok, no big deal,” and if you are a woman, the thinking might be, “Well, what can you do about it? “

We also know that in terms of machismo, “one is not born but made.” During the years of childhood and adolescence, there is much that can be done to counteract the collective forms of reaffirming masculinity that is perpetuated by both men and women in our society.

Any educational effort to promote equity should consider the different cultural and educational environments we navigate so that messages of respect towards women and for diversity constitute are accounted for. At a UNESCO meeting on masculinity and culture of peace it was mentioned that coupled with teacher training on effective methods against sexism, homophobia, and racism, measures should be taken “to reduce hierarchies and gender antagonisms at all levels of social life [such as] the public arena, mass media, the private sphere, the workplace, and institutions.” Moreover, within schools, talking about gender as only an isolated topic should be avoided, and instead incorporated into discussions about equity, peace, and respect within the curriculum since all subjects include themes that touch on both men and women.

Ileana Jiménez (Feminist Teacher) told me how her male students’ perception of street harassment changed when they listened to the experiences of their female peers during a workshop with Emily May, founder of Hollaback; for these boys to realize that this was a daily reality for their peers caused a real impact, as many had never stopped to think about the issue.

For this very reason, I strongly believe that sharing personal stories about street harassment is essential to demonstrating how gender-based violence and discrimination are more common than they appear. They are proof that these compelling realities for women and LGBQT folks should not go unnoticed, especially since they are such an important element of the widespread violence in Mexico.

AtréveteDF (Atreverse means “to dare”)

At the end of last year, I discovered the Hollaback! blog and decided to reach out to the New York Hollaback! team to open a

"No Soy Tu Mami," (I'm not your 'mami') from AtreveteDF's Latin American sister counterpart in Buenos Aires.

Mexico City chapter. We’ve always known that founding it would be controversial, particularly because of the fact that since Mexico has one of the highest rates of violence against women in the world, some think there are more important issues to deal than street harassment. Many people consider the “compliments” that call attention to women subject to interpretation rather than degrading; others believe that they part of a culture of courtship and “picardía.”

Clearly, this is not so, since now there is a Mexico City law specifying that forms of sexual abuse in public places range from leering, comments, suggestive gestures, and touching. Even with this law, AtreveteDF believes that there are cultural limitations to this legislation since women are often questioned and made to feel guilty when they share a story or complaint about harassment and /or sexual abuse.

We would like to reiterate that the AtréveteDF/Hollaback! movement around the world is not anti-man, but instead, anti-harassment. We recognize that not all men harass women and many are aware of its impact and work against it. We firmly believe that sharing stories and ways to deal with street harassment en masse is an effective way to raise awareness about social problems that are frequently made invisible.

When voices come together, it leads to creating and modifying public policies as well as to creating supportive communities for those who are made to think that their experience of street harassment has no value or that they are responsible for what has happened to them.

Dare to tell your story and let’s walk our streets without fear.

Follow AtreveteDF on Twitter and on Facebook.

La educación contra el acoso en las calles

El recuerdo principal de mi ultima visita a un estadio de futbol aquí en México es el de dos niños, de aproximadamente 6 o 7 años gritándoles cosas denigrantes, con motivos de objetificación y por cierto bastante elocuentes a las mujeres que caminaban por las gradas o que animaban el juego; ni hablar de los comentarios de homosexualidad y ‘falta de hombría’ dirigidos a los jugadores del equipo contrario o al del que apoyaban cuando fallaban en alguna jugada. La gente pasaba y se reía, la mayoría de los hombres y mujeres parecían aplaudir este comportamiento, y nadie, incluyéndome, se quejó o les pidió respeto.

Hoy es el Día Internacional contra el Acoso en las Calles y mientras hablamos del diario caminar de muchas mujeres y personas LGBT, no olvidemos mencionar a la infancia y juventud que son testigos y aprendices de la violencia sexual generalizada en nuestras comunidades en los medios, en sus hogares, en las calles y en las escuelas.

Si bien el acoso verbal como un piropo ofensivo para muchos no se considera abuso sexual (lo es por ley en la Ciudad de México), es este el principio de una cadena de violencia con base de género que llega hasta el feminicidio. Con el ejemplo de la impunidad con la que se han tratado los casos de violencia hacia las mujeres a lo largo de la historia de México y últimamente, este es naturalizado e ignorado. Esta es la imagen, subliminal o no, que se refleja hacia los niños y niñas de nuestra comunidad. Que si eres hombre . . .“Que no pasa nada”,  que si eres mujer, “¿Pues qué le vas a hacer?”

Sabemos que en términos de machismo uno no nace, sino se hace, y en la infancia y adolescencia hay mucho que se puede hacer para contrarrestar las formas colectivas de reafirmar masculinidades impuestas y perpetuadas por hombres y mujeres a la par.

Dentro de cualquier esfuerzo educativo que promueva la equidad, se deben de considerar los diferentes ámbitos culturales y educativos que navegamos para que los mensajes de respeto hacia las mujeres y hacia la diversidad conformen una experiencia completa para los hombres y las mujeres. En una reunión de la UNESCO sobre masculinidades y cultura de paz se menciona que aunada a la capacitación de maestros en métodos eficaces contra la discriminación como el sexismo, la homofobia y el racismo, se deben de tomar “medidas para reducir las jerarquías y los antagonismos de género a través de la gama de la vida social [como] la arena pública, los medios de comunicación masivos, la esfera privada, los lugares de trabajo, las instituciones.” Por otra parte, dentro del ámbito escolar se debe de evitar el hablar de género de forma aislada, y comenzar a generalizar la equidad, la paz y el respeto dentro del curriculum ya que cualquier tema de aprendizaje tiene que ver y es revisado tanto por hombres como mujeres.

Ileana Jiménez (Feminist Teacher) me contó sobre la experiencia y cambio de percepción que tuvieron sus alumnos al escuchar las experiencias de sus compañeras con respecto al acoso en las calles el día que tuvieron un taller con Emily May, la co-fundadora de Hollaback!; el saber que esta era una realidad diaria para ellas los hizo reflexionar, ya que la mayoría jamás se habían detenido a pensarlo. Por esto mismo, creo cada vez más que las historias de acoso en las calles es un ejemplo imprescindible para demostrar que la violencia de género y la discriminación son mas comunes de lo que parecen y que son realidades contundentes para las mujeres y  miembros de la comunidad LGBTQ que no deben de pasar desapercibidas, siendo estas un eslabones importante dentro de la violencia generalizada en nuestro país.

AtréveteDF

A finales del año pasado me encontré con el blog de Hollaback! y decidí comenzar los planes con el equipo de Hollaback y otras personas de abrir el capítulo en el Distrito Federal. Siempre hemos sabido que su apertura iba a ser controversial, particularmente por el hecho de que hay quienes piensan que siendo uno de los países con mayor índice de violencia hacia la mujer, hay cosas más importantes a tratar. Mucha gente considera los piropos y el atraer la atención de una mujer de manera denigrante es subjetivo y que es parte de una cultura de cortejo y picardía muy arraigada.

Tan no lo es que ya existe legislación en esta ciudad que especifica que las formas de abuso sexual en la vía pública incluyen desde miradas lascivas, comentarios e insinuaciones sobre el cuerpo hasta tocamientos. Por otra parte me pareció que la legislación tiene todavía la limitación cultural donde es común que una mujer que denuncia o comparte una historia de acoso/abuso sexual sea puesta en duda, muchas veces se le hace sentir culpable por ser acosada.

Quisiera reiterar que el movimiento de Atrévete no es anti-hombres sino anti-acoso, que reconocemos que no todos los hombres acosan y que muchos están conscientes de sus efectos y están en contra de ello. Creemos firmemente que el hecho de compartir historias y formas de lidiar con el acoso en masa, es una forma efectiva de crear conciencia sobre problemas sociales invisibilizados, y que finalmente cuando las voces se unen, es más fácil crear o modificar políticas públicas al igual que crear comunidades de apoyo para quienes creen que su experiencia ha sido única, que no tiene valor o que son culpables por lo que les ha sucedido.

Atrévete a contar tu historia y transitemos las calles sin miedo.

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