Thursday, March 09, 2006

That's Soooo Gay!

I haven't published in a few days. We just got a new dog, and lots other stuff has been going on. I also haven't had anything I was inspired to write about. Until now. I was reading the forums at Augusta Underground yesterday, and discovered a thread about Brokeback Mountain. Now, I know some of the guys who were posting, and don't know most of them, but what I discovered was that a lot of them are (1) grossed out by two guys kissing and (2) worried that Hollywood is entirely too politically correct (i.e., w.r.t. homosexuality and race matters). I found myself wondering why the fuck they care. I mean really, who cares if "Humpback Mountain" as one person called it, won an Oscar? Mostly it sounded to me like high school locker room paranoia about gays. Really makes one wonder why supposedly hetero guys are so threatened by two guys getting it on. Is it true, perhaps, that we hate and fear most what we despise and fear about ourselves?

I mean when I think back to my high school days, I was about the same way. Being labeled a fag was one of the worst things that could happen. My friend Evan (a confirmed bachelor, if you know what I mean) was assaulted by redneck jocks at his high school. They beat him up, duct-taped him, and tossed him in a dumpster. I've always had a vexed relationship with the queer aspect of sexuality. On the one hand, so much of my life I've been surrounded with the uber-macho front of, for example, sports, the Marine Corps, punk rock, etc. On the other hand, I have had... experiences, shall we say, the first of which was in the Marine Corps. With a Marine. Well, with all of those fabulous uniforms, I guess it's not too far a stretch. Frankly, I really wonder sometimes how many supposedly straight men in the military have had a taste of the love that dares not speak its name.

The more I live the more I think that most people sort of fall somewhere in between totally hetero and totally homo. I've heard estimates that about 10% of the population is gay or lesbian. I wonder if it's also a fact that only about 10% of the population is completely heterosexual. I'm not saying that everyone in between is partaking of the full smorgasbord of human sexuality, but rather that they have the potential, the tendency, to be attracted sexually to people of the same sex. But there's a problem with it: These feelings and tendencies conflict with the cultural assumption that one either is or is not straight or gay. So, a lot of people have to overcompensate to reassure themselves that they are so totally straight. Methinks they may protest too much, if you know what I mean. If they really are so very not-a-fag (!!!), then why the constant obsession with and kneejerk reactions to all things queer? That may be a bullshit argument. I'm not sure. Nonetheless, where does all the consternation about queerness come from? Obviously people have strong feelings about it, but if you're not a religious freak, then why worry about who someone else fucks, if not to bolster one's own sense of righteous heterosexuality? As Dan Savage wrote in Skipping Toward Gomorrah, and I'm paraphrasing here, what could someone possibly do to a person who wasn't gay that would make them want to gladly, joyfully, lustfully have same-sex relations? What's the problem, then?

Anyway, so what does this have to do with schooling? It's this: As hard as growing up is, how much more difficult must it be for queer kids? When everyone and everything around you (for the most part, at least) militates against what you feel in your heart. When there are people who will condemn and assault you. When your family will disown you? When you loath yourself. When you wish you were dead. When you are so very much in love with someone who literally would turn the school against you if they knew about it. Think hard about that situation. What a brutal and austere lifescape for queer kids, especially in some schools. Rural areas must be hard on them, especially. Religious schools must be, shall we say, hellish. Military schools? Please. Rejection, beatings, ostracism, mockery, with no end in sight? No wonder queer kids kill themselves at such a high rate. It's hard enough being a teenager without also being queer.

I really get tired of hearing people complain about, mock, and frantically distance themselves from all things queer. What are they afraid of? Frankly, it speaks volumes about how hyper-masculinity, for one example, is more a reaction than a state of being. Think about it. One of my writing teachers, of whom I've already spoken, Ehud Havazelet, remarked that, "Isn't it strange how nothing ever happens in Western movies until the men are far away from the women?" Cowboys are pretty damned gay when you think about it. Many of the male bastions--bodybuilding, the military, the police, martial arts and ultimate fighting, and so forth--are, upon analysis, pretty gay. Kinda "brokeback," shall we say (thanks to the Boondocks for that one). Brokeback, in this sense: Something that on its surface is so very manly (e.g., cowboys, NASCAR, ultimate fighting) that upon analysis seems gayer and gayer. Even those sad soft-porn magazines for young men (e.g., Maxim) are more or less Cosmo with pictures of "hot chicks" (and a surprising (or not) number of "hot" guys. Hmm... Really makes you wonder doesn't it?).

One last observation. When my daughter was born, I was teaching at Georgetown College in Kentucky. The school was Baptist and most of the kids there were pretty conservative. I can't remember how it came up, but one of the guys in my class, a starter on the National Championship Georgetown College football team (Sweaty men, tight pants, so gay), asked if I wouldn't be upset if my daughter ended up being a lesbian. "Of course not," I told him. "Why would I?" He was flabbergasted. He literally could not conceive that I wouldn't be devastated by such an outcome. What I didn't say to that student was this: "I love my kid. I don't care if she's a lesbian. In fact, I'd much rather her be a lesbian than to marry some hyper-religious redneck asshole like you, you barely closeted, self-loathing little faggot." I'm so glad I'm able, at times like that, to show some restraint.

Sela. Pause and reflect upon this.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

In With the In Crowd: organizations, mob psychology, and alternative education


Today I was reading some Education News. This article caught my eye. Apparently, the New York City school system has a rubbish bin for its problem students:


“Out of '‘Site' Education”
Thursday, March 2, 2006
by Bernard Gassaway

Over the last two years, while serving as Senior Superintendent of Alternative Schools and Programs, I have visited New York City public school programs in church basements, housing projects, homeless shelters, storefronts, suspension centers, juvenile detention centers, and prisons. I ventured into places that few department of education officials would dare go. Most pretend these makeshift programs do not exist. Worse, they pretend that these children do not exist --– out of sight, out of mind.

The school system's response to children who do not fit is to place them out of 'site.' The familiar cry, "“Lock '‘em up and throw away the key,"” is more of a reality than you might realize. The New York City Department of Education's (DOE) way of dealing with children who are described as disruptive is to treat them like criminals. As states across this country have moved toward privatization of prisons, this current administration has opted to follow suit and outsource education. DOE establishes partnerships with community-based organizations (CBO) to service children who have historically been failed by the system. These children fall into the following categories: suspended, homeless, pregnant, over-aged and under-credited.

By outsourcing services for our most challenging students, DOE concedes it is not willing to meet the needs of these children. In fact, the organizations being bankrolled and contracted by DOE to serve these students cannot meet their needs. These organizations will never admit it; to do so would be to bite the hand that feeds them. However, they have told DOE officials they will not service special education students. These students are considered too far gone and beyond help.

Read the rest of this, as it is quite informative and, I think, important.


Are the same trends toward privatization happening in the more commonly recognized forms of carceral systems (i.e., prisons, asylums, etc.) occurring in U.S. schools? I think that they are. More and more, parents, who are led astray from their children by hucksters posing as educational experts, attempt to regain "“control"” of their children through oft draconian methods. Some send their children to special places to get them straightened out. Sometimes, as the article referenced above suggests, we do so through special programs for "“troubled"” and "“at-risk"” youth, that enable parents, private organizations, and the State to articulate increasingly tight systems of surveillance, control, and punishment. I am aghast at where this might take our schools and where it might take us collectively as a society.

This disturbing trend, as marked the emergence of increasingly hellish prisons, government detention facilities , and behavioral modification programs, particularly B-Mod programs for youth, seem like an Orwellian nightmare in the early stages. In about thirty short years, we have gone from a society oriented toward humanitarianism to one oriented even more strongly toward dehumanization. I would assume that most folks would be disturbed by this, but it doesn'’t seem to be the case. I have a theory as to why this is happening. Let'’s call it the parable of the Mob and the Innocent Bystander. In this story, I want to illustrate how organizational psychology and mob psychology have something in common. I also want to talk about how most people, aside from those brave enough to dissent, stand by and let things like this happen, or, in some cases, join forces with the Mob.


Reading books like Bill BufordÂ’s Among the Thugs, a inside view of hooliganism in European football (i.e., soccer) has influenced my understanding of crowd behavior. I have come to the conclusion that when you get a bunch of people together they no longer act as individuals, but as something else. Sometimes being in a group allows people to act out in ways they wouldn'’t even think of in closer company. Crowds act differently than individuals. This helps to explain riots, revivals, concerts, and other mass happenings. They feel different. They allow individuals to become part of something far larger and different. Under such conditions, people will do some fucked up things. When everyone is involved, one'’s own actions seem like a part of a larger whole. There is an element of anonymity, of intensity of perception, of intensity of purpose, that is simply not possible otherwise. Millions of screaming sports fans and attendees at music festivals and religious happenings could no doubt testify to how that feels and what happens as a result.


This helps me to understand, also, why individuals'’ behavior inside of organizations (e.g., clubs, gangs, churches, corporations, and so forth) departs from their private behavior. For example, Lyndie England, the famous face and scapegoat of the Abu Graib prison scandal, probably behaved much differently under the circumstances of her fame than in more normal circumstances. When we create organizational structures that more or less process human beings, producing more ideal human "“products,"” there is a greater and greater danger that the individuals in the organization, driven by that larger organizational purpose, will be able to treat any human "“dysfunction"” in that organizational system (e.g., poorly behaved children) as less than fully human. This ignores that human beings cannot, logically, be dysfunctions in an organizational system, unless one's thinking about organizational functioning assumes that people are less than human. To assume this is to make a categorical error. Human beings are not the same thing as organizational "parts." Children, prisoners, the insane, the mentally challenged, the crippled of mind, limb and spirit, become human sacrifices on the altar of organizational mission.

We must be careful to remember that education is always, always, always about human relationships. When we allow organizational mission to occlude that, and to create the conditions that breed dehumanizing behavior, and sociopathic personalities for that matter, then we do not serve humanity. We don'’t help anyone by forcing every individual into conceptual cubby holes. But it happens every day. We break a lot of these individuals as they are made, with increasing forcefulness, to comply with organizational rules, roles, and outcomes. More importantly, people who fail to fit well, who get broken in the process, are personally to blame for their victimage. Those who are made to fit, easily or not, and survive the process, often have, themselves, internalized the logic of their oppression. Even if we think, for example, that a teacher is unfair, and school sucks, it is difficult not to pay attention to what one'’s poor grades are supposed to mean. Very few people who make passing grades have sympathy for those who don'’t. They feel lucky, skilled, and maybe a little bit righteous about it. They succeeded where others failed. Failure, of course, is a matter of not having the right attitude or not applying oneself or--—Fates forfend!--— resisting the attempt to mold one'’s cognitions and behaviors. This trend toward sameness and blame for failure to conform may be the greatest danger facing our public schools. It stifles creativity, arbitrarily rewards conforming behaviors, and lays the groundwork for scapegoating those who pose a problem for the smooth functioning of the system.

Do y'’all get what I'’m talking about here? If so, feel free to post me some examples in the comments.

Sela. Pause, reflect, and get pissed.