I thought I should add a bit more here, because in the xmca context
Jenna raised the attention-to-sexualities issue in relation to
learning and learning communities, while in the blog it's all a bit
more about political strategy in relation to the wider digital media
and learning community.
I've recently written a Forum piece for Cultural Studies of Science
Education responding to a paper from two Canadian authors detailing
ideological bias concerning sexualities in a standard biology
textbook. To be published relatively soon.
I made some points there about our educational responsibility to
address students sitting in front of us every day in our classrooms
who otherwise never hear issues of gender complexity and sexualities
addressed anywhere in our rather outdated curricula. Matters that
are of far greater concern to them than most of what is in our
curricula, especially if they don't identify as normatively
heterosexual, and even if they do. American culture (and we're not
the only ones, though among the worst) is ridiculously reticent
about anything concerning sexuality and is preoccupied with moral
anxieties about the subject. This would be laughably Victorian
(including as Foucault notes the associated hypocrisy relative the
the general cultural obsession with sex) if it weren't for the fact
that a lot of young people are seriously in need of informed
intelligent discussion and sophisticated knowledge about the
diversity of real-world sexualities, as opposed to the reductionist
fantasies of one dominant normative mode and a few marginalized
Others.
As I noted in the blog, we are all queer in our sexualities in one
way or another. The number of different sexualities is truly
staggering, sexualities intersect and interact in complex ways with
various aspects of gender identity, social class, age, ethnic
culture, and certainly childhood and adolescent development. How
could they not be critical factors in learning? Even without going
as far as Freud did in seeing sexuality as pervasive throughout
culture (though to some extent he was probably correct in this), and
just as we more or less accept today that pretty much everything is
"gendered" (i.e. stereotypically more associated with masculine vs
feminine identities, themselves entirely reductionist notions), it
follows that these matters are also sexualized (because sexuality
and gender are one system so far as identity is concerned). In my
Forum article I note that Science (as a cultural phenomenon) and
science education (as a professional identity) are not just
masculinized, they are hetero-normatively masculinized (i.e. in
common language, male and straight).
A biology course that pretends there are only two sexes, in one-to-
one correspondence with two genders, and mentions neither same-sex
activity among numberless nonhuman species, nor the biologically
significant frequency of intersexuals at birth, nor chromosomal
combinations such as XXY and XYY and their phenotypes, nor the non-
reproductive functions of sexual attraction in humans and other
species -- and a host of other matters -- is not preparing students
to deal intelligently with a primary aspect of human diversity. A
history course that omits to mention the non-normative sexualities
of important historical figures (while being obsessed with every
other detail about its Great Men) or the history of oppression of
sexuality minorities is likewise doing a disservice, first to
students who don't feel comfortable with normative sexualities, and
then to every student who lives in a world filled with sexuality
diversity. A literature course that does not point out how many
canonical writers (especially poets writing in English) had non-
normative sexualities, while adducing every other detail of their
lives to "explain" their writings is disingenuous at least and
intellectually fraudulent at worst. But all this is taken for
granted as business as usual in 21st century "education".
It may already be enough of a leap to require some intellectual
honesty about what we think of most immediately as "non-normative"
sexualities: i.e. gay men and boys and lesbian women and girls. But
what I mean by saying we are all at least a little bit queer in our
sexualities encompasses far more. Non-normative attractions to those
younger or older than we're supposed to desire, to those fatter or
thinner, to those of other races and colors, to those with physical
disabilities or deformities, even in some communities to those of
the wrong religion or social class. And beyond desires, to modes of
expression of sexuality, in dress and manner, in practices involving
the "wrong" kind or degree of pleasure or pain, flexibility of
movement or bondage and restriction, non-genital sexuality and a
whole host else. How can there not be, in real fact, a queer
majority with respect to the diversity of non-normative feelings,
desires, and practices?
And how can our sexualities not be omni-present in the development
of identity, and so in the critical contexts of learning? If this is
not an obvious fact, I think it can only be because for generations
our dominant culture and our academic disciplines have deliberately
refused to pay attention to it.
JAY.
Jay Lemke
Senior Research Scientist
Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition
University of California - San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, California 92093-0506
Professor (Adjunct status 2009-11)
School of Education
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke
Professor Emeritus
City University of New York
On Mar 29, 2011, at 9:37 AM, Jenna McWilliams wrote:
Several members of this listserv attended the recent MacArthur
Foundation-sponsored Digital Media & Learning Conference in Long
Beach, California. During and since the conference, I've been
involved in conversations about a notable lack of queer studies-
focused work in this year's program. Some of this conversation is
accessible online, on danah boyd's blog and on mine. (Links: http://www.jennamcwilliams.com/2011/03/28/some-thoughts-on-queering-dml
and http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/03/24/the-politics-of-queering-anything.html.)
Most of the people I've talked with about this issue come from the
"digital media" side of Digital Media & Learning, and I've been
wondering about folks who fall more on the "learning" side of
things. It seems to me that there's a general lack of attention
given to integrating queer studies work with learning theory and
work in educational research, though with a few (extremely notable)
exceptions. I wonder if xmca folks have thoughts on this issue that
might help me figure out the true lay of the land in this respect.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts you might have. (And, of course,
if you WANTED to visit and comment on my blog and the conversation
I've been having with danah in the comments section there, I would
certainly not be offended by this.)
best to all,
jenna
~~
Jenna McWilliams
Learning Sciences Program, Indiana University
~
http://www.jennamcwilliams.com
http://twitter.com/jennamcjenna
~
jenmcwil@indiana.edu
jennamcjenna@gmail.com
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