Transcript
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Teaching While Queer is a podcast for 2SLGBTQIA+ educational professionals to share their experiences in academia.
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Hi, I'm your host, Bryan Stanton, a theater pedagogue and educator in New York City, and my goal is to share stories from around the world from 2SLGBTQIA+ educators.
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I hope you enjoy Teaching While Queer.
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Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Teaching While Queer.
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I am your host, Bryan Stanton.
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My pronouns are he/ they.
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And today I'm so excited because we are taking a trip to Glasgow.
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We are meeting with Damon Young.
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How's it going?
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Pronouns are he, they, and today I'm so excited because we are taking a trip to Glasgow.
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We are meeting with, uh, Damon Young.
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How's it going?
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hi, great, yeah, and thank you for having me, brian.
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Really nice to be here.
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I'm so happy I live in Glasgow, but I'm from Manchester in England.
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I currently work in a university in Glasgow called University of Strathclyde.
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I've been teaching there now since 2019, so just before the pandemic.
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Prior to that, I was abroad, working in Italy and Taiwan, where I first started my teaching career, kind of with children and teenagers, before moving into higher education.
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So yeah, Awesome.
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And how do you identify within the LGBTQ community?
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So I am a cisgender male gay man, but I would also identify as being part of a queer community.
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So you know, I recognize traits within myself that don't fit the social construct of you know what a gay man should look like.
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You know what anybody kind of it's not binary essentially.
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So yeah, I would identify as a gay man but also as a queer person within the community.
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Yep, absolutely.
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That's kind of how my journey has been as well.
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I currently identify as queer because I feel like it's most comfortable and, I guess, ambiguous enough um to not have been a mold, you know exactly, yeah, and I think that you know, through the research that I've been doing, I've kind of been learning about myself as well as I've been going reading, you know, a lot of academic research, a lot of kind of personal um anecdotes from people that have been published online.
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So, yeah, it's kind of a lot of kind of personal anecdotes from people that have been published online.
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So, yeah, it's kind of a lot of them have kind of resonated with me and gone.
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Oh, yeah, I kind of see myself there and that's the realization of going.
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Yeah, I'm a queer person and I'm happy to say that, proud to say it, and yeah, we'll say that to anybody who ever asks.
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In the past I probably wouldn't have said that, but yeah, yeah, it's funny, it's definitely.
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The word has had an evolution, um, and I think that it's now reaching a pinnacle of acceptance um, with and without the community right.
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Yeah, I think one of the things that kind of sticks out for me is I don't know about yourself as well, being in in the states, but in the UK the term queer was definitely kind of a derogatory term that was used by, you know, cisgendered heterosexual people, um, as an insult to gay, lesbian, trans people, um.
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But now I think, as you mentioned, we've kind of turned that corner where taking ownership of the word again um is is really great, and actually had a had a conversation with quite a few people in their, you know, 60s and 70s who would say, oh, so we can say that now, and is it okay for us to say that?
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And blah, blah.
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And I said, well, if I tell you I'm queer and you're talking to somebody else, then yeah, you can just say that, of course, if it's used in the right way, you know.
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So I think it's about people from that generation also relearning that you know, lgbtqia plus or queer community have taken ownership again, which is great.
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Yes, absolutely, and that evolution I think is so empowering.
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And also I can see how it would be difficult for folks who maybe only heard it as a derogatory term.
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Yeah.
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So it's, it's interesting.
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It's kind of like I don't know.
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There's a lot of people within the gay community who kind of reclaimed the word faggots and I'm not one yet to get myself there, but like I feel that they you know all the power to you for feeling confident in reclaiming that word.
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But I don't know, having been on the other end of it a couple of times in my life.
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I'm like I don't know.
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I don't know if I can say it Absolutely.
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Yeah, brian, I'm totally there with you, and I think I had a conversation recently over the holiday season and you know the famous Pogue song, a Fair Tale of New York, and the word f thought, oh, I've really not thought about it too much and whether it does affect me or whether it does affect me, and actually I realized, yeah, it still does kind of affect me because, like you, being on the receiving end of that word used in you know a way to cause harm and to discriminate, et cetera, it is still quite triggering, I think.
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So I'm like you, brian, I'm not quite there yet, but maybe one day I'll get there.
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You know it's funny, because I had never heard that song until this year, and it's one of the most popular really songs?
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Yes, but I think it is.
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It definitely has a bigger following in the uk than it does in the us, but I saw oh yeah, I saw a news article about it and about the word and how even the artists were like you know I.
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I think that we should remove the word and and in my brain I'm going well, you're the artist, just go record it you know like go ahead yeah yeah exactly.
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They actually changed the lyrics.
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So, um, I think now in the uk you don't really hear that version unless you go on spotify or whatever or any other platform, and then you hear it there, but you don't hear it online.
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You know mtv or on the radio or anything.
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I think they realize that it would cause more offense than not, so and if the artist is saying it like you say, then I think it's you know, we should take a lead from the artist I guess, if they recognize that it can cause offense, then you know what's the harm in changing the world absolutely ah, what a fun little trail that we just went down um.
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But I know let's talk a little bit more about you um.
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So what was?
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life for you, like as a queer student, like as a youth life for you, like as a queer student, like as a youth?
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so yeah, I mean growing up in manchester, um manchester in the kind of mid to late 90s, there's canal street which is famous kind of globally I guess, for being um a safe space for the queer community, lgbtq plus people.
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You know there are bars for all kind of people within the queer community.
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So I knew that growing up because I remember that my auntie and my cousin who's the same age as me she my auntie took me to my first Pride event in Manchester and I remember being about 10, 11 years old going my gosh.
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This is amazing.
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And looking at all the colours and going, I think I had realised maybe a couple years before that I was gay and having seen kind of what my life would you know maybe look like in the future maybe not dancing on a float or whatever, but kind of the message that it is empowering kind of meant a lot to me.
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So I really that's a memory that always sticks in my mind Because in high school I think, although I had a really good kind of high school journey generally, I think I should also recognise that certain people did target me for homophobic abuse, so the word faggot was used, and also being called George Michael as an insult, and I thought, ok, you think that's an insult, I don't, but OK.
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So yeah, it's these kind of memories that stick in your mind and what is nice that's kind of come out of that is a couple of people from high school have reached out to me since via Facebook and apologize for the behavior, because I think they realized that you know they were just being sheep and I guess you know the society that we were living in kind of late nineties, early north, there was still a hangover effect of.
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In the uk.
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We had something called section 28, which was about, um, in kind of the thatcher years.
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Um, no lgbtq plus material in schools.
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You can't have any books, you can't listen, don't talk about it, no, you know.
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So I think that was a kind of hangover and I was on the tail end of that going to school.
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So it was quite a pleasant experience in high school and, I think, being part of this rock band.
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We weren't really a rock band, we were more like a cover band, so we covered songs, you know, from Tina Turner right through to Phil Collins.
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That kind of saved me so in I think I was about 12 years old.
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So in high school you start 11 in the UK.
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So at 12 years old I joined the band as a singer, had to audition um, I can't sing now, so please don't ask me to sing because I've lost my voice completely.
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Um, but yeah, at the time it was a really good experience and I remained in the band throughout my high school years and I don't know, I felt like everybody was different, um, and I was like, wow, everyone's really different in the band throughout my high school years and I don't know, I felt like everybody was different and I was like, wow, everyone's really different in this band and there were, you know, two keyboardists, a bass guitarist, guitarist, drummer.
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At one point there were five singers and I remember thinking, oh wow, they're totally different to the other people in my class and I started to recognize the differences in people, whether they were gay or queer.
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And you know, now I now know that some of those people that were in the band were actually gay as well.
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Um, so we toured Europe and it felt like a really super safe bubble to be part of, because I'm pretty sure my music teacher, um, recognized that I was gay as well.
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Um, just just how kind of tentative he was, you know, I think he could see that I was quite soft, quite reserved, quite shy, but on stage listen, I thought I was like britney spears or something, but, um, yeah, so that was a really safe space to be part of.
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Um.
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So one of the other kind of memories that pops up, I guess, is in physical education and I guess this is the same for most queer youths or LGBTQ youths kind of going into the shower room.
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Now, in the UK in the 90s most schools had communal showers still, so you would have to go and it'd be one kind of long shower, basically, and people would say to me you know, oh, don't look at my penis, you know, and I'd be like I'm not, don't flatter yourself.
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You know, and I think they were really trying to, you know, make me feel insignificant.
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You know, and at times it really did, and you know we would.
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I would actually make up excuses for not having my sports kit to play, um, uh, soccer, because I just didn't want to get changed, because I just thought they're going to bully me again.
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They're going to say that to me.
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They know that I'm gay, you can see that, um, and then I got made to be referee, so I didn't know the rules for soccer, so I would just blow the whistle randomly and, yeah, people would shout at me and anyway.
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So that was an absolute nightmare.
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It was like hell on earth, I think, and those kinds of traumatic experiences I think they stay with you, you know.
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And now when I go to the gym, even in Glasgow, there's still that kind of oh, you know that, still that kind of oh, you know that, that kind of tension of, oh, you know, please don't say anything to me, even though nobody is going to say anything.
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You know um, absolutely, but it still kind of niggles there in your mind um.
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So yeah it, it's.
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It's been an interesting but mostly pleasant experience.
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I know that's not the same for most queer use, but I know that um, a lot of young people um kind of from my generation, late 90s, early noughties, experienced pretty much the same as me.
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Having spoken to friends, my age and things, and yeah, it's, it's traumatic, I will say that I've been into a lot of schools when I was doing teacher training and all these different things and volunteering and it's just incredible to see.
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You know um an equality diversity inclusion board and it's got information about pride and it's got the.
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You know the, the progress flag, it's got the trans flag and it's got.
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You know all of these.
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You know marcia P Johnson on there as as uh in in history month that they were happening and I just thought, oh my gosh, this is amazing.
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I really wish I'd had this in school growing up, because you know, when you leave school and you start to learn about yourself and you go to university or whatever you go to work, we don't know about our history.
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You know the civil rights not civil rights the pride movement in New York.
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You know the Stonewall movement that we then learn about and go, wow, what bravery you know, and I think had that been part of our history lessons and you know, it just would have been so empowering to be like you know what.
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I can stand up and I can stick up for myself, because these people did, they were fearless and I kind of wish I had that, but you know now I do, which is is great.
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So yeah, absolutely.
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And there's something about it like where I think that as a community we have not only like ancestral connections to like our own blood, but ancestral connections to our community.
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And so for me, I grew up around like we're about the same age and I grew up kind of disconnected from the queer community.
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And now I'm like, oh, look at all these trailblazers who came before me and I see how I'm connected to them and what that means for me as a person on what I want to blaze trails for going into the future.
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Oh, 100 percent.
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And, like you said, you kind of they're like idols, you know, and I think it's, it's, and I was in, I was talking to my therapist a couple of months ago about this, and I was talking to my therapist a couple of months ago about this, and there's a kind of shared experience through reading about the sufferings that a lot of the queer and LGBTQ plus community went through.
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And, like you say, you know it's when you learn about these things I don't know about you, but it can be quite triggering as well, because you think, my gosh, we, we, you know we're living in a world I mean, the world isn't perfect still and we've got a lot, um to do to get to a place where it is equitable and equality is, you know, existing completely.
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But it was a lot worse back then.
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You know, um, and I think just, you know this word bravery just keeps coming to my mind because it really was brave.
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You know the amount of not only physical but mental trauma that a lot of people went through to stand up and say I exist, I'm here, I'm not going anywhere.
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So, you know, deal with it.
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You know, and I just think it's, yeah, it's just it's incredible that these people stood up and we are, you know benefits of those people standing up, those 50 years ago, 60 years ago.
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Yeah, absolutely watch a documentary, or I will read something and just like it's almost completely triggered trauma for me because of the the treatment of queer people before my time um yeah, just like thinking about how that connects to me and that and part of that is that I'm a very empathic person.
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I like I feel lots of things, um but um it.
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It's been interesting, kind of like as I learn and grow, the things that I didn't realize that maybe I was holding onto um and that they don't get unleashed until it's connected to some sort of like historical lesson about queer people from the past yeah, absolutely yeah.
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I completely agree with you, brian um, and it is all about I think it's important that we, you know, we just never forget this the kind of experiences that people in our shared, in our shared history went through for us to be able to, you know, live the lives that we live in today.
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Yeah, it's just so important not to forget.
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Absolutely, which is why pride is even more important, you know.
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It's funny because a lot of people are kind of of the mentality well, a lot of people I've encountered at least are on the mentality of like Pride is just a party, now, it doesn't really mean anything, and so it was almost a blessing that, like the anniversary of Stonewall, the 50 years happened in 2019 to kind of remind people what it was for.
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And then, unfortunately, around the world, we've seen this kind of pushback on the queer community, and so now it's even more important because we're again standing up and saying you know, we're here and we're not going away and you're going to have to learn to live with that fact to live with that fact.
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Yeah, it's interesting because the first thing that makes me think of that is I kind of well, me and my partner both got a job in Glasgow after having decided to move back from Italy back to the UK, and we both managed to get jobs in Glasgow, which was great, and I'm really glad that we did Not to say that I wouldn't want to live in Manchester or England because Manchester is a very liberal city.
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It's, you know, very left-leaning, it's very forward-thinking.
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You know, the suffragette movement started in Manchester, so it's always had that kind of mentality of hang on, this is oppression, we will stand for it.
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So I'm not saying that I wouldn't want to live in England, but Scotland and the Scottish government seem to have a different direction to the English government, which is also the UK government.
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So Scotland tried to pass laws for the Gender Recognition Act to make it easier for trans people to self-identify, but the English or UK government blocked it in the Supreme Court.
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So it's this kind of, you know, push and pull from, even with internal within the UK.
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That just seems really unfair and I know that's a totally different subject to do with independence in Scotland.
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However, it, yeah, it just makes me think that the injustices that exist because of governments and because of laws and just general oppression and, like you say, kind of going backwards, a lot of governments.
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I know that in Europe the right and even the far right has risen in a lot of countries and a lot of um far right parties have been winning recently, which is again quite worrying because generally the far right, as we know, are um, yeah they.
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They don't like us, do they?
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so yeah it's interesting because, um prior to moving to new york city, I lived.
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I lived in Texas for five years.
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Texas is very conservative, very far right, and my description of it is that Texas is anti-people, and that is kind of that is how I feel about the far right movement.
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Is that, while they have this, this, uh, the near of like we're doing this for family values and all this stuff, but they don't actually care about their constituents.
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They don't care about any people, but the people in power.
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Um yeah.
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And so my, my concern is and this is where I see kind of a lack of humanity across the board, like around the world.
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We're seeing this lack of humanity and it's coming from these pushback of the far right community, because I very much believe that they are not for people period, they are for control and power.
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And that's a generalization and I am not a political scientist, so you know disclaimer, but these are my observations that, as an educated person who has experienced living in, you know, liberal spaces and living in very conservative spaces, this is what I see there.
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That businesses have more power than people in the conservative spaces, the government has more power than people in the conservative spaces, while also at the same time, saying the government needs to get out of my house, but then the government wants to be in my house.
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It out of my house, but then the government wants to be in my house.
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So it's a contradictory thing where it just really feels like we are losing our humanity due to this kind of politicizing of things.
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Yeah, I couldn't agree more with you on every point yeah, it's, it's a wild time.
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I I, when I email guests for those of you who are listening, you, you know, may not realize like the back end stuff that happens, but when I email guests about things, I I always include a line that's like we are living in turbulent times, so if you need supports on x, y and z, you know, reach out to me and like that's really what it feels like.
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It feels like at any moment you know you're flying your lot, you're playing, which is your life, and at any moment it's going to drop 10 feet because something, something wild has happened um, yeah, it does feel like that.
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Yeah, I think it's, um, it's, it's yeah.
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To be living in that space constantly as well is also quite challenging.
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It's exhausting, right?
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um, I mean you, you, you, totally yeah so how do you think your experience I I would agree with you in the sense that, like late 90s, early aughts, like it was easier, I feel like I didn't have a hard time either in my high school years.
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I had, you know, a couple bullies, a couple of instances like you're talking about, and you know the gym um, and I still have, I still have issues at the gym because of that.
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So I'm with you there, um, but how do you think your experience has kind of influenced your work and education?
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How has it influenced my work?
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Well, massively actually, because I mean, to be honest, I was a little bit when me and my partner first decided to go to Taiwan.
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Bit when me and my partner first decided to go to Taiwan.
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That's kind of on a whim we both just graduated, um, from our undergraduate degrees and we thought let's go to sports somewhere else.
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So we did that and then we thought, oh, we could turn this into a career, so it was teaching English in Taiwan, um, and then we got a qualification and we moved to Sicily where we stayed for three years.
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Um, and I'd never, in in taiwan, didn't receive any kind of homophobic abuse or anything like that.
00:24:38.271 --> 00:24:54.984
Now, in sicily that we did get into an incident whereby, um, these uh sicilian guys, we was switching between italian and english speaking with some friends and these guys overheard us and called my partner a faggot.
00:24:54.984 --> 00:25:00.001
So then it ended up being a fight.
00:25:00.001 --> 00:25:08.579
Police were called ambulance, they broke my nose, they broke my partner's nose and I was just like I can't deal with this anymore.
00:25:08.579 --> 00:25:13.936
I can't take it, and that was in 2018.
00:25:13.936 --> 00:25:15.400
Yeah, 2018.
00:25:15.400 --> 00:25:19.025
Early 2018.
00:25:19.369 --> 00:25:25.083
So we decided maybe that was part of the reason why we decided to come back to the UK as well.
00:25:25.083 --> 00:25:38.638
Sicily was generally very open, but, you know, it was also a place where, um, I wouldn't feel comfortable walking down the street holding hands with my partner, just because you would be targeted.
00:25:38.638 --> 00:25:56.458
That's that was how I felt, um, and so when we moved to glasgow, I got the opportunity, um, whilst we're teaching, um, I teach now academic english to international students, um, at the university I work at, and I got the opportunity to start my doctorate.
00:25:56.458 --> 00:26:00.031
So I thought, okay, what do I want to look at here?
00:26:00.031 --> 00:26:02.759
What, what kind of what do I keep coming back to?
00:26:02.759 --> 00:26:11.098
And I had a conversation with a few people at the university and it kept coming back to EDI, edi, edi.
00:26:11.098 --> 00:26:16.546
And I thought, ok, yeah, this is something that I could see myself doing long term.
00:26:16.546 --> 00:26:20.560
I could see myself working with an EDI in some capacity.
00:26:20.560 --> 00:26:25.589
I could see myself, you know, looking at the law, looking at these policies.
00:26:25.589 --> 00:26:26.492
Are they working?
00:26:26.492 --> 00:26:27.355
Why are they not working?
00:26:27.355 --> 00:26:28.199
Et cetera, et cetera.
00:26:28.199 --> 00:26:33.290
So I did that as part of my research, working, etc.
00:26:33.290 --> 00:26:33.371
Etc.
00:26:33.371 --> 00:26:34.354
So I did that as part of my research.
00:26:34.354 --> 00:26:41.915
Um, I went to, uh, some universities around scotland and I interviewed the um equality leaders of the universities and asked them okay, from your perspective, what's working, what are the barriers, etc.
00:26:41.915 --> 00:26:51.019
And, yeah, the results I'm not, I'm just about to finish, so, um, I can't talk about the results yet, but I'm just about to finish my doctorate.
00:26:51.019 --> 00:26:55.571
In the next kind of five months, I hope, fingers crossed.
00:26:56.011 --> 00:27:08.686
And yeah, I would say that my life experiences of going into to kind of into education are pushing me now more towards EDI.
00:27:08.686 --> 00:27:16.517
That's not to say that I don't love teaching, but maybe I'd love to teach on some kind of equalities or equity course.
00:27:16.517 --> 00:27:31.940
But I definitely see myself going into, maybe, education establishments like elementary schools, high schools and saying, okay, this is what your policy looks like, this is what the law says.
00:27:31.940 --> 00:27:41.334
How are you going beyond that to make sure that your you know your um lgbtqi plus students are safe and they do feel like they can come to you, etc.
00:27:41.334 --> 00:28:11.663
Um, unfortunately, a law um has just come into place in england um whereby if a student um so an under 16 year old tells a member of staff their preferred pronouns, they have to inform their parents now, which I just think is devastating because, you know, I remember having teachers in school where I felt comfortable going to talk to them and I always felt safe.
00:28:11.663 --> 00:28:17.915
Talk to them and um it, I never, I always felt safe.
00:28:17.915 --> 00:28:20.627
Now that this is in place, the teacher may think, gosh, if, if that gets out, I could get into trouble, I could lose my job, etc.
00:28:20.627 --> 00:28:24.617
So it puts them in a really precarious position and I think it's yeah, it's really unfair.
00:28:24.617 --> 00:28:44.892
So the reason I'm going to you know, edi, and and that's what kind of led me into um higher education EDI specifically is that you know, we just spoke about the world changing or feels like there's a pushback about equality in many different areas of the world, and that's one of the things that kind of is pushing me towards it.
00:28:45.973 --> 00:28:51.544
Um, I also had um about two months ago.
00:28:51.544 --> 00:29:05.458
I was on some public transport and this guy was using his phone and sending voice notes to somebody and screaming down the phone again, this word, you faggot, this faggot that da, da, da, da.
00:29:05.458 --> 00:29:09.635
And so I approached him and I said listen, could you not use that word?
00:29:09.635 --> 00:29:11.696
And he completely flipped on me.
00:29:11.696 --> 00:29:14.954
This is a free country, I can say what I want.
00:29:14.954 --> 00:29:17.842
Who are you to tell me Sit the fuck down?
00:29:17.981 --> 00:29:19.814
And I thought what the hell?
00:29:19.814 --> 00:29:22.240
Everyone around me kind of just stood there, didn't say anything.
00:29:22.240 --> 00:29:24.394
And I was like, right, I could call the police.
00:29:24.394 --> 00:29:29.557
But you know what I just felt the police aren't going to do anything, yeah.
00:29:29.557 --> 00:29:58.579
So anyway, long and short of it is, I went into education because of those experiences and because I think I want to be able to help people, and that's, first and foremost where my head's always at how can I help them, what can I do to facilitate that, and how can I make the world a bit more of an equitable place, make the world a bit more of an equitable place to be for people like us and for people trans, youth, non-binary you know how can we make it even better for them?
00:29:58.579 --> 00:30:01.212
And that's, yeah, that's where my head is.
00:30:02.655 --> 00:30:29.034
That is also fascinating because I was quite literally in a conversation with a friend from high school yesterday about EDI In the US the acronym has changed around to DEI and we were talking about like policy versus law and the fact that you're talking about going into institutions and being like okay, well, this is what the law says, but couldn't your policy be better?
00:30:29.034 --> 00:30:34.384
And that is where I'm going yes, yes, it could.
00:30:34.384 --> 00:30:53.801
And we should all be able to blatantly say to lawmakers like yeah, here's the letter of the law, but we're doing this, we're in line with the law, but we're actually a step ahead, because I think that lawmakers need to hear it.
00:30:56.451 --> 00:30:57.834
Yeah, yeah, totally.
00:30:57.934 --> 00:31:26.752
And one of the things that I did was I, as part of my research, I looked at the policies the EDI, but more specifically, the LGBTQI plus and trans individual policies and non-binary policies that the university is as part of my research in Scotland and I analysed them and I kind of looked at the law to see, okay, are they doing just the bare minimum, to kind of go, okay, tick box, performative exercise, um, or are they going beyond that and um.
00:31:26.752 --> 00:31:38.307
Now the equality act in the UK came in 2010, and I think there was an amendment in 2012 in Scotland and that protects seven characteristics.
00:31:38.307 --> 00:32:08.433
Now, when I looked at the Equality Act and I looked at kind of pre-Equality Act actually, and I looked at what policies existed pre-Equality Act, only one of the universities I looked at and I looked at four universities, four big universities in Scotland only one of them had an LGBTQ plus policy that was talking about protections and you know what's available, et cetera, and how people should be treated.
00:32:08.433 --> 00:32:37.659
The others just had kind of general equality policies, but then when the law came in, they changed it and you know, I have to say that they've gotten better, but some of them are still so vague that, you know, the law itself is very vague and can be, you know, misinterpreted by different universities and I think, well, that university is doing this, but that university is doing that, okay, have they looked at the local culture and the needs of university and that's why they've adapted the policy, or have they not looked at it?
00:32:37.679 --> 00:32:50.321
Um, so, yeah, it's been a real kind of journey of, you know, moments that go in, but how can you interpret, you know this as that and how's that university interpreted it in this way?
00:32:50.321 --> 00:33:01.960
And I'm not saying there needs to be a standardized way of understanding the the um, the law, because I do think that, you know, different universities have different cultures and I think it needs to be looked at.
00:33:01.960 --> 00:33:16.161
For example, if there are more trans individuals going to one university, then the policy needs to reflect that and I think it should be updated regularly to reflect the local population of the university, but that's not happening.
00:33:16.161 --> 00:33:19.451
So that's where, for me, in lies the problem.
00:33:19.451 --> 00:33:36.636
And I think you know equality impact assessments, or EIAs, are what a lot of universities are now adopting and employing, to kind of put that as part of every part of the university experience.
00:33:36.696 --> 00:33:55.095
So, and it should be adopted in every part, so part of the curriculum, how can we look back at you know what, what's been taught over the past 10 years in you know a chemistry department, and how can we make sure that that is inclusive and representative in what we say, how we say it, etc.
00:33:55.095 --> 00:33:58.823
So, yeah, that's just one example, but yeah, it's.
00:33:58.823 --> 00:33:59.284
It's.
00:33:59.284 --> 00:34:00.732
There's a lot to do.
00:34:00.732 --> 00:34:03.621
Even though it is better, there's still a lot to do.
00:34:04.589 --> 00:34:15.853
Absolutely, and I think one of the biggest things that any government can do at the moment is that I think that queer people and all of our categories need to be included in data.
00:34:15.853 --> 00:34:47.972
Um, because, for instance, the 2020 census in the United States was set up by president Obama to include, you know, uh, the lesbian gays for everybody, um, uh, transgender folks and whatnot, and then was changed, uh, by Trump to only allow for those people who are married to say that they're in a same sex relationship.
00:34:47.972 --> 00:35:19.543
So if you are married and your partner was same-sex, it like really held to the binary and it only counted those people who were married, and so that, I think, is incredibly frustrating, because, as much as I don't want to be a number on a page, I think that we need to have our data available, because people think that we are a very small portion of the world, and I'm kind of inclined to believe that we are much bigger than people think.
00:35:19.809 --> 00:35:21.302
We just don't have the capacity.
00:35:22.130 --> 00:35:25.121
We don't have the capacity to get realistic numbers.
00:35:27.550 --> 00:35:33.543
That's it, and, and this is something sorry, go on, Brian Ohrian.
00:35:33.603 --> 00:35:34.545
Oh uh, there's.
00:35:34.545 --> 00:35:53.952
There was a tiktok I watched recently, uh, of a woman who found some data somewhere about the us population of queer people and was like if we put them, all the queer people, in one state, we would be the fifth largest state in the united states and I think that's incredibly powerful.
00:35:53.952 --> 00:36:07.103
Wow, and that's the kind of data, that one I want to be able to cross reference, right, because I'm not going to rely on tiktok to tell me something, yeah, yeah um and two yeah, yeah and two.
00:36:07.451 --> 00:36:38.675
It's like if we had that data available, it is a lot easier for us to combat some of the problems that we're facing, because if people think that we're one in a million versus like one in three, then we are going to continue to face adversity, and the biggest message that I've seen is you are alone in this experience, in this idea that that cisgender, heterosexual community wants to make queer people feel like they're the only ones.
00:36:40.900 --> 00:37:00.998
Yeah, and I think it's speaking about censuses the census in the UK, the census I think it was the 2021 English England and Wales census, sorry, where it was the first time that they had included gay, lesbian, trans, etc.
00:37:00.998 --> 00:37:02.141
On the census.
00:37:02.141 --> 00:37:12.304
So now there is data that shows, you know where there are high numbers of trans people living or high numbers of gay men living, etc.