Simplistic Sexuality and the Decline of Discourse

| davidsabey

Discourse with Laptops

As a Mormon alumnus of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, two recent events happened to coincide on my Facebook wall, flooding my feed with passionate rhetoric about sexuality and gender normativity: 1. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) has been the target of much vitriol because of their policy change that explicitly declares members of same-sex marriages to be apostates. Journalists happily report on the thousands of Mormons who have resigned from the church in protest of this policy change. 2. Landon Patterson, the first transgender (from male to female) homecoming queen from a school in Kansas City, spoke at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is being heralded for these cliché, but culturally resonant words: “Be You. Life is too short, and you’ve just got to embrace who you are.”

Here’s my beef: Issues of sexuality and culturally normative practices are complex, but the rhetoric around them is simplistic. Simplistic and passionate. There is nothing wrong with passion or simplicity per se; the problem is that the rhetoric does not correspond with the complexity of the issue itself. Continue reading →

The privatization of privacy

| joshsabey

coed

In Illinois there has been a much publicized court case regarding a transgender female (physically male) student who is suing the school for limiting her access to the women’s dressing room. I have no doubt that many more cases like this one will soon be appearing in courts across the country. As I considered the case, I began Continue reading →

To my one-year-old daughter: Thoughts on Body Image and Beauty

| diadarcey

11960092_4308339073677_2314436844244038233_nMy daughter, you are no longer a baby. This is impossible to me. You are more than a year old right now and I marvel at how big you’re getting. You were trying to stand in an ice cream bucket the other day—giggling as it fell over again and again—an ice cream bucket that we could bathe you in when you were just born. Your growing feet and toes are the foundation for the past miracles of standing and your first, tottering steps—and now for running, jumping, climbing the stairs at the playground outside, and the endless enjoyment as we play “this little piggy” while you sit (and sit, and sit, and waaait) on the potty. Your increased size is paralleled by increased ability and comprehension. Dad and I are amazed every time you show some new understanding: a new sign, a new animal sound, a new mimicry. The other day I told you in pre-dinner end-of-day frustration, “I’m tired, too, but soon Daddy will be home and then we can bug HIM.” You looked at me seriously… and then signed “bug” (as in insect).

I’ve experienced the double blessing of watching myself grow next to you. People joke, “She’s getting so big! And so is Alsina!” Oh ha ha. I’m eight months plus two weeks pregnant, and things have definitely changed dramatically. Moving my bulk around is a huge commitment, and sometimes I wake up at two am half off the bed—having, apparently, decided halfway that it wasn’t worth the effort of getting all the way up to go to the bathroom. It’s not just a big belly added on to the front of my normal frame, either: I can’t even get pre-pregnancy pants up around my ankles, much less my now-herculean thighs, and pre-pregnancy blouses have the same issue around burgeoning… other places.

Why does “getting big” suddenly become a curse as we grow older? Continue reading →

How to Leave Your Religion

| davidsabey

Church

In a previous post, I discussed the parallels between my experiences in romance and religion. In brief, I suggested that love—and specifically marital love—is about choosing an individual more than feeling a certain way. The view of love as an overwhelming romantic attraction is problematic not only because it is unrealistic, but because it is fundamentally egocentric, focusing not on another person, but on one’s own emotional high. This egocentric approach to love seems likely to lead to unhealthy relationships and infidelity. That word—infidelity—suggests a connection between romantic relationships and religion. My earlier post focused on the leap of faith involved in choosing a religion and a romantic partner. In this post, I discuss the implications of a non-egocentric view of love as it relates to ending a relationship or leaving religion. Continue reading →

Is Gender “Stereotyping” All That Bad?

| diadarcey

We (Dia and Brian) wrote this together.

“Sex-stereotyping against her gender nonconformity” was the reason given by the plaintiff, Ann Hopkins, for her firm’s failure to promote her. “Often co-workers described her as aggressive, foul-mouthed, demanding, and impatient with other staff members.” Most incendiary to our sexism-sensitive society, a coworker suggested she “walk more femininely, talk more femininely, dress more femininely, wear make-up, have her hair styled, and wear jewelry” in order to increase her chances for promotion. Continue reading →

Radical Education Reform: Opening Remarks

| davidsabey

The graduating class of 2016 will be underprepared to write at the college level. They will also tend to shy away from STEM careers because of a quasi-collective mathematical incompetence. Something is going wrong. What do we need to change to better prepare these kids for college and careers?

I would be willing to bet that in answering this question, practically every reader automatically began to focus on some problem at the school or classroom level. This seems intuitive: Students aren’t being educated well enough? Fix the schools! To most of us, the entire education system—from the department of education to legislation like No Child Left Behind to the debate about charter schools—is nothing more than the undergirding of the neighborhood school. Schools are where the rubber meets the road. We think education and we think schools.

That just might be our problem. We have conflated education and schooling. Continue reading →