“I Assumed It Was a Much Safer Place Than It Really Is”: Nonbinary Educators’ Strategies for Finding School Jobs

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Iskander
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Gender Justice ◽  
Hiring Process ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Trans People ◽  
Semistructured Interviews ◽  
American Schools ◽  
Selling Point ◽  
Transformative Approach

People who are nonbinary—one of many kinds of trans identity that do not fit neatly within a man/woman binary—face particular challenges when seeking employment in P–12 schools, which have historically been places where rigid gender norms are strictly enforced. This paper draws on semistructured interviews conducted in 2018 to explore how 16 nonbinary educators navigated the process of finding, securing, and keeping jobs in Canadian and American schools. I found that most participants were concerned about securing a job or potentially losing their job or their safety at work because others might be inhospitable to their gender identity or expression. At the same time, participants had strategies to ensure that they found and kept jobs they were comfortable with, such as investigating a school’s support for queer and trans people, forging positive relationships with administrators and staff, and presenting their gender in particular ways during the hiring process. This study illustrates the limitations of individualistic, tokenizing forms of trans inclusion and reveals the continued prevalence of gender normativity in schools, despite a rapidly shifting gender landscape. While trans inclusion, at least on the surface, may be a selling point for some schools, trans people continue to face barriers when the underlying structures that privilege White, middle-class, cisgender, and heteronormative gender expression remain intact. I argue that, if trans people are to be fully supported in the education workplace, an intersectional and broadly transformative approach to gender justice is necessary.

Macro Changes and the Implications for Equality and Social and Gender Justice in Higher Education

2019 ◽  
pp. 235-254
Author(s):  
Miriam E. David ◽  
Penny Jane Burke ◽  
Marie-Pierre Moreau
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
University Education ◽  
Gender Justice ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
Limited Impact ◽  
Student Parents ◽  
Male Privilege ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
And Gender

This chapter considers the implications of global changes for equality and social and gender justice in HE. Taking a feminist perspective it renders visible the limited impact that neo-liberal transformations have had on women’s equal participation in university education. Starting from a consideration of the international statistical evidence on the massive expansion of HE, the authors consider how white middle-class male privilege remains entrenched in complex ways in new forms of HE. This is shown most clearly through the pursuit of an uncritical notion of excellence and the approaches to pedagogical spaces. The chapter considers how student parents are treated ‘carelessly’ or without care, and how the majority of academic staff have become precarious workers, whilst privilege remains for white middle-class men in power.

Transgender language reform

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lal Zimman
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Language Reform ◽  
Inclusive Language ◽  
Trans People ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Linguistic Challenges ◽  
Contemporary United States ◽  
Individual Self ◽  
Selection Of

Transgender people’s recent increase in visibility in the contemporary United States has presented new linguistic challenges. This article investigates those challenges and presents strategies developed by trans speakers and promoted by trans activists concerned with language reform. The first of these is the selection of gendered lexical items, including both gender identity terms (woman, man, etc.) and more implicitly gendered words (e.g. beautiful, handsome). The second is the assignment of third person pronouns like she/her/hers and he/ him/his as well as non-binary pronouns like singular they/them/theirs or ze/ hir/hirs. Both of these challenges tap into the importance trans people place on individual self-identification, and they come with new interactional practices such as asking people directly what pronouns they would like others to use when referring to them. The third challenge addressed here is avoiding gendering people when the referent’s gender isn’t relevant or known, which can be addressed through the selection of gender-neutral or gender-inclusive language. The final challenge is how to discuss gender when it is relevant – e.g. in discussions of gender identity, socialisation or sexual physiology – without delegitimising trans identities. Several strategies are presented to address this issue, such as hedging all generalisations based on gender, even when doing so seems unnecessary in the normative sex/gender framework or using more precise language regarding what aspect(s) of gender are relevant. Taken as a whole, trans language reform reflects the importance of language, not just as an auxiliary to identity, but as the primary grounds on which identity construction takes place.

Engaging Social Justice Methods to Create Palliative Care Programs That Reflect the Cultural Values of African American Patients with Serious Illness and Their Families: A Path Towards Health Equity

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-230
Author(s):  
Ronit Elk ◽  
Shena Gazaway
Keyword(s):  
Palliative Care ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
African American ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
End Of Life Care ◽  
Life Care ◽  
Serious Illness ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Healing Power

AbstractCultural values influence how people understand illness and dying, and impact their responses to diagnosis and treatment, yet end-of-life care is rooted in white, middle class values. Faith, hope, and belief in God’s healing power are central to most African Americans, yet life-preserving care is considered “aggressive” by the healthcare system, and families are pressured to cease it.

Inadvertent Exemplars: Life History Portraits of Two Socially Just Principals

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Scanlan
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Life History ◽  
Elementary Schools ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Public Elementary Schools ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Native English Speaking

This study creates life history portraits of two White middle-class native-English-speaking principals demonstrating commitments to social justice in their work in public elementary schools serving disproportionately high populations of students who are marginalized by poverty, race, and linguistic heritage. Through self-reported life histories of these principals, I create portraits that illustrate how these practitioners draw motivation, commitment, and sustenance in varied, complicated, and at times contradictory ways.

Breaking the Trance: Moving beyond the Straight, white, Middle-Class Male Script

1991 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 365-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul G. Schurman
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Pastoral Counselors ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Privileged Position ◽  
Liberation Movement ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Human Liberation

Explores the creative roles men might play in a human liberation movement in which their privileged position will need to be modified. Sees pastoral counselors as “hope agents” who may faciliate the transition of men to new and different roles in which patriarchy will play less and less of a role in society. Details specific ways in which the loss of patriarchy can lead to a fresh and creative equality in which both men and women will experience new freedoms.

The White Middle Class

2001 ◽  
pp. 271-292
Author(s):  
Melvyn L. Fein
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
White Middle Class

scholarly journals In Visible Families: Gay Fatherhood and the Politics of Family Change

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Community Settings ◽  
The Public ◽  
Gay Fathers ◽  
Gay Parents ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
The Media ◽  
Family Inequality ◽  
Public Imagination

Who counts as a gay father? The answer to this question reaches beyond demographics, encompassing histories of family inequality, LGBTQ identity, and social movements. Presentations of gay fathers in the media and scholarship are often skewed toward white, middle-class, coupled men who became parents via adoption or surrogacy. Yet the demographic majority of gay parents continue to have children in heterosexual unions. My dissertation research uses ethnographic and interview data to argue that contemporary narratives of gay fatherhood have prematurely dismissed gay parents who have children in heterosexual unions. The choice to exclude gay fathers via heterosexual unions can be attributed to emerging narratives of LGBTQ identity and political strategies of the marriage equality movement. The consequences of gay fathers’ disproportionate visibility have led to a stratified system of access to gay parenting resources. By identifying the mechanisms that undermine gay fathers’ diversity in the public imagination and in gay parenting community settings, my dissertation amplifies the voices of marginalized gay fathers and offers an intersectional approach to the study of LGBTQ families through a social movements framework.

scholarly journals Why Is There Learning Disabilities? A Critical Analysis of the Birth of the Field in Its Social Context

2010 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Sleeter
Keyword(s):  
Learning Disabilities ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Low Achievers ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Minority Children ◽  
Degree Of Protection ◽  
White Middle Class

This chapter presents an interpretation of why the category of learning disabilities emerged, that differs from interpretations that currently prevail. It argues that the category was created in response to social conditions during the late 1950s and early 1960s which brought about changes in schools that were detrimental to children whose achievement was relatively low. The category was created by white middle class parents in an effort to differentiate their children from low-achieving low-income and minority children. The category offered their children a degree of protection from probable consequences of low achievement because it upheld their intellectual normalcy and the normalcy of their home backgrounds, and it suggested hope for a cure and for their ability eventually to attain higher status occupations than other low achievers.

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