Teen Breakthrough, Part 2: "Resistance Bisexuality"

[This post addresses another positive development on the gender front among teens, not as recent as the erosion of male homophobia I reported on earlier this week, but among girls.]

About 3 years ago, I noticed that girls in the NYC high school where I work were starting to call themselves "bisexual." Lots of them. Wearing rainbow logos on all kind of clothing articles. And it was becoming almost impossible for a guy to upset a girl, or pressure her into sex by calling her a "lesbian," because the term was losing its stigma. (It's still possible for guys to pressure a girl into sex, but one maneuver has been eliminated).

For teenagers, identifying as "bisexual" has often been a step toward acknowledging that they're lesbian or gay, a milestone on the road to coming out. I knew this from the literature and had heard it anecdotally from friends whose teen kids went to more elite schools. But until that point I had seldom heard the term used as a self-identifier by the predominantly Black and Latino working class kids whom I counsel.

The new self-identification, which has also been observed by my friends in other cities who are either teachers or parents of teens, has many sources as well as multiple and sometimes contradictory meanings for the girls who use it. Some of my colleagues see it as a simply a ploy by girls who are basically heterosexual to attract more boys or have more leverage in a relationship ("I don't need you, I can have romance and sex with girls") or to titillate boys with the thought of two girls doing it (and the paradisiacal possibility of joining in). These colleagues say that this new trend, which I've seen affect maybe up to 25% of the girls in a school, doesn't represent any erosion of or challenge to male supremacy.

I think that this view is a bit one-sided. Kids often try out several identities through the teen years; they'll come back in September with a whole new look, self-label ("emo," "ghetto," etc.) and group of friends. So the fact that some girls may later go straight doesn't mean that their bisexual self-classification was simply phony or a ploy. What I pick up is that they're often turned off to men by seeing how women are put down and abused by men, and they're grappling with how to live and have some agency in what is still a "man's world." That's why I like to call this very mixed and contradictory phenomenon not a conscious political act or rebellion, but a kind of "resistance bisexuality."

One girl, for example, said to me in discussing her bisexuality, "I guess I don't like the way I see men treat women, " She had a stepfather who had tried to cop a feel once or twice when he was drunk (and since that hadn't occurred recently, she didn't want to give her mother heartache by telling her about it). She'd seen her mother hit by an earlier boyfriend. She felt more connection and empathy with her female friends, and that led her to explore physical closeness with them. I heard similar statements from other girls who had experienced domestic violence or sexual abuse.

One encouraging by-product of the bisexual self-identification is that it cuts against the widespread "I don't have no females for friends" attitude, which I used to hear all the time from girls: "They act nice, but then they talk about you behind your back and stab you in the back and steal your man." While I'd be the last to minimize how mean girls can still be to each other, the bisexual girls do seem to value their female friendships more highly and are often very conscious about giving each other support.

On the down side, as someone who does conflict resolution, I have to note that this phenomenon creates endless new possibilities for drama. Two female friends find they're attracted to each other but then often they're also attracted to the same boys. So part of the girls' relationship is comparing numbers of suitors and getting jealous if the other girl is getting more male attention, and confusing or toying with a lot of guys--who then get angry and into beefs with each other...

Still, I would hold that the option of claiming bisexuality represents an advance in the deep, ongoing cultural revolution (or, using Gramsci's formulation, "war of position") against male supremacy.

Read more!

Teen Breakthrough, Part 1: "I'm Not Racist Against Gays"

In my workaday world in the NYC public school system, this year's big news was the growing acceptance of and sympathy for gay guys. And because male homosexuality has been, in my experience, so deeply stigmatized among youth, I think this is a tremendous breakthrough. I still don't hear many guys in high school saying flat out, "I am gay," but there's definitely less attempt to deny or repudiate or hide attributes that might brand a young man as gay.

Little things like young men casually mentioning, "My uncle is gay," or an African-American senior who is into fashion design, tends toward the flaming in his manner and shows no romantic interest in girls being elected a class officer. Or a young man saying to a female classmate who called him "fa--ot" in an argument: "Well, I don't appreciate that because you must not think too much of gay people, and my brother is gay. " In the past, the likely response would have been to hurl back an insult, and the main concern would have been to assert his own straightness in front of the peer audience. But now, he takes the offensive and critiques heterosexism!

Another example that impressed me occurred in the context of a school art project for which students chose the theme of taboos. There was a fair amount of art about gay/lesbian relationships, but one of the most intriguing paintings showed what looked like a man in his twenties and a man in his sixties embracing, The young Latino artist, who as far as I know is straight, definitely wanted to provoke reactions and sought out feedback. It really blew me away that he was challenging two stigmas by portraying, in a compassionate way, both gay male sexuality, and the need of older people to express their sexuality (which is often is often a big yuck factor for teens!).

At the same time, teens, like all of us, have contradictory consciousness and they still come up with some disturbing anti-gay practices. One glaring example is the custom of saying "That's gay" when they think something is stupid or silly. I often will challenge this by asking, "How would you like it if when I thought something was stupid, I said 'That's so Dominican' or 'That's so Black'?" Many students will reply, "It's just a saying," "It doesn't mean anything" and vehemently assure me that they get along with gay classmates or friends or relatives, etc.

One young man listened thoughtfully and replied, "No, Miss, I'm not racist against gay people." I really dig this phrasing, because it reflects the reality of racism as the primary form of oppression and put-down that he is experiences and sees in the world. And I'm encouraged that many teens are becoming less racist against gay people.

[Next up, Part 2: Resistance Bisexuality]

Read more!

Unlearning Racism in Newark in the '60s

[This summer marks the 40th anniversary of the Newark Rebellion, one of the most powerful of the so-called "riots" that shook cities across the US that summer. My friend Joy has written up this recollection of being a white girl in the Newark public schools during the Sixties.

Set four years before the actual rebellion, this story highlights some of the conditions that led up to it: white flight and the conscious abandonment of the school system in Newark by the local and state power structure as the student body became Black. It also reminds us that decades of students since then have suffered from this same educational abandonment and been made to feel unworthy in the same ways Joy's memoir details.

It is also the moving story of one thirteen-year-old white girl suddenly becoming aware of how white people make Black people invisible. I gladly take this opportunity to plug Chip Smith's splendid new book, The Cost of Privilege, which sets this phenomenon in a social and historical context--it's a must-read for anyone seeking to break down the system of white supremacy in this country. --Napolitana Piemontese]



Newark, New Jersey, 1963

It’s the first day of 8th grade for me and there’s complete chaos in the halls of the Hawthorne Avenue School. Hawthorne is the school I have gone to since I was in kindergarten, but everyone seems so unfamiliar.

It’s Newark, New Jersey, 1963 and white flight is in full throttle. And the hallway looks like a place that people are fleeing from. Classes and teachers have not been assigned. No directions for where to report have come in the mail over the summer. So hundreds of Black students and dozens of white teachers occupy the hall. Many students are new to the school and look nervous. No teacher or administrator is rushing over to welcome us back to school. We are just waiting, waiting for our class assignments, getting tired in our new shoes.

Last year the school only went up through 7th grade. This is the first year it is going through 8th grade. This change is instituted so we can avoid the infamous Clinton Place Junior High which draws students from even rougher neighborhoods. Clinton Place is a 7th through 9th grade school, so we would not get to enter Weeequahic High School until 10th grade. None of the parents want that year’s delay. Weequahic has a good reputation. It’s where the whiter, more affluent population of Newark goes. So this is the first year of 8th grade for Hawthorne, and no one seems to know what to do with us.

I am a good student. I have always gotten straight A’s in school. In 7th grade I was in a special class that covered a year and a half of instruction in just a year. The year started with the second half of 6th grade and when it was over you were ready for 8th grade. This was needed to get everyone on a September start schedule. When I and others had started kindergarten, eight years earlier, if you turned five after November you started in February. A placement test was given and either you got to skip a half -year, or you were forced to stay back a half-year. The special class was for those of us who were skipping. The students in the class were two-thirds white, which I am, and one-third Black. But now in the hall, I do not see any of the kids who were in the special class with me. They have all moved over the summer. I start to cry.

I am almost thirteen, and crying like a kindergartner just starting school. But no one even notices me. Finally we are lined up to get class assignments. I notice one girl who lives down the block from me. Dori is her name. She is chubby, white and loud—not school-smart like me but kinda fun. Now they are assigning classes---very clearly tracked. 8-1 is the top, smartest class and 8-4 is the bottom. The principal comes up to me and greets me somberly. “What are you doing here? How come you didn’t move over the summer?” I do not know what to say. I feel humiliated, and poor. Then he tells me that there is a policy that if you were allowed to skip the year before, you cannot be in the top class, because you might still be a little behind. He tells me he knows that is not true of me and shakes his head in pity for me.

The class assignments begin. Almost all the white kids are being assigned to 8-1. I realize the significance of what the principal told me five minutes earlier. I am being made a token white kid in 8-2. That is not totally accurate---there are other white kids, but they are notoriously bad students. I am really crying now. Dori, who was a September starter and so did not need to skip, is of course assigned to 8-1. My one hope of a friend is gone. I continue to cry.

Darlene, a very quiet Black girl, comes over to me. I remember when she was the only Black girl in first grade. I remember that her mom died when we were in 6th grade, and I went over to her house to tell her I was sorry. She was so happy to see me, and her father seemed amazed that I had come. Darlene asks me why I’m crying. I reply, “Because I don’t have any friends in my class.” She asks me what class I was assigned to. I tell her 8-2. She gets really excited and tells me she’s in 8-2 too, and we’re friends!

It suddenly hits that I’m crying because I don’t know any white kids in my class. I do know many of the Black kids, including the few like Darlene who had scored high enough on the test that they, like me, had been allowed to skip half a year. I am totally ashamed of myself.

I hadn’t even noticed Darlene’s class assignment, but now her welcome lifts me and makes me resolve to see her as my friend. Then all the other Black kids, who I have known for years but only in school, not outside, start crowding around me, happy to be with me again. And I’m reciprocating, even as I conceal my shame that they have been invisible to me the whole morning.


The Year That Changed My Life

As the 1963-64 school year unfolded, all the views that I had unconsciously internalized from the culture, about Black kids (then Negroes) misbehaving in schools, dissolved. I experienced firsthand, with my classmates, the fact that no one cared about our education. There were days when we had no paper and not enough workbooks. The classroom contained 35 seats nailed into the floor, but there were 40 students. Instead of bringing five additional desks into the room, it was just assumed that five kids would be absent every day.

The generosity of my Black classmates continued to educate me.
I was never excluded from the teams or from socializing. If anyone put me down, or threatened me on the way home, a classmate always magically rose to my defense. Some of my fellow students looked to me for help with homework; and my classmates ultimately elected me class president.

For the first time in my life, I had Black friends over to my house after school; and my out –of-school reading became fiction and non-fiction about heroic fights against discrimination. A book called The Barred Road, about a girl excluded from nursing because she is Black, is still vivid in my memory.

At first, the principal’s remarks had made me feel that my parents did not care about me enough to move, or finagle me into a better school district, and I was angry at them. What really happened that year, though not by design, was that I was educated to the reality of racism, and my own internalization of that bias. That 8th grade year has changed the rest of my life.

Read more!