University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire


PROFESSOR BOB NOWLAN



THE RIGHT TO TEACH: CONFRONTING GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER ISSUES IN THE CLASSROOOM

NORTHWEST EDUCATION ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE SESSION

SPONSORED BY THE CHIPPEWA VALLEY CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION



PRESENTERS: ASHLEY OLSON, REBECCA NELVILLE, AND BETH FRANKLIN; MEMORIAL HIGH SCHOOL, EAU CLAIRE, WISCONSIN;  
AND BOB NOWLAN AND JOEL PACE, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-EAU CLAIRE



MEMORIAL HIGH SCHOOL

EAU CLAIRE, WISCONSIN
 
THURSDAY OCTOBER 10, 2002




PRESENTATION FROM BOB NOWLAN



    Before I began my current position as a tenure-track assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in the fall of 1997 I learned I would be the first openly gay faculty member in the entire history of this campus.  This information only increased my determination to be forthright, and to remain so, in my open stance.   From the beginning of the semester, in every class I teach, and in all relations with colleagues, supervisors, and fellow University staff I am entirely open about the fact that I am gay.  Allow me to explain to you why I believe this is important by referring to what I tell my students when I include this information in my introduction of myself to them on the first day of the semester:


         I want next to share a serious point of information with you about myself and that is I am gay.  There are two basic reasons why I tell you, and all my students, this, right from the beginning of the semester and in all of my classes.   The first reason is that I believe in being open, candid, and forthright with my students.   I believe you have a right to know who your teacher is and where he or she is coming from.   And being gay is a very significant part of who I am and where I am coming from.   I hope in trusting you enough to be honest about who I am and what I am about that you will come to trust me to be likewise honest about who you are and what you are about.


        What’s more, for me, gayness is not simply reducible to a mere homosexual orientation.  Gayness is a complex social identity; it is a particular way of being and relating in all forms of social relations.  It has to do with my perspective on life, with how I look at and engage with the world around me, with my foremost values, principles, ideals, and commitments, and not, by any means, simply with whom I choose to have sex.   I therefore don’t want to pretend to be something I am not about something so important to whom I am.   


        The second reason why I am telling you that I am gay is that gay people have been and still often continue to be oppressed, no matter how much more visible and how much more widely tolerated and accepted gay people, at least relatively privileged gay people, are today than was the case only a few short years ago.    Gay people have been and continue to be the targets of  extensive and often brutal forms of discrimination, prejudice, and abuse.   Because of this fact, most gay people, at least most poor and working class gay people, are still hesitant, if  not indeed fearful, of being widely publicly out about their gayness, and that goes for gay people here at UWEC, and in Eau Claire, as well as elsewhere.   


        In fact, although there are and long have been a considerable number of gay faculty here at UWEC, I was the first openly gay faculty member in the history of UWEC when I came here in the fall of 1997, and I am still one of the very few gay faculty or staff to be open about his gayness with his students here at UWEC.  I am also still the only person ever to teach a course explicitly focused on gay issues here at UWEC – in the fall 1999 and 2001 semesters, when I taught courses in Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgender-and Queer film.


        At the same time, although there are many–according to my estimate, quite likely well over five hundred–gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students enrolled here at UWEC, in my five years to date teaching here, even as an openly gay faculty member myself, and as one who does teach gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender topics in all of his classes, only five people have felt comfortable sharing with their fellow students that they themselves were gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.  Many gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students obviously do not, therefore, find UWEC, or Eau Claire, entirely welcoming and supportive, to say the least.  Many of these students, moreover, tell me, privately, that they in fact feel far less comfortable in most of the rest of their classes, and that rarely, if ever, do their teachers in other courses engage in direct, serious, and respectful discussion of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues in the classroom.  At other times, students, and even teachers themselves, make disparaging and demeaning remarks about glbt people without any repercussion, and the climate in social settings, such as in dormitories and at parties, frequently becomes even yet far more hostile.

        Because so many others here at UWEC cannot be open about who they are, I think it is important for me to be forthright about who I am–in the interest of helping contribute to the creation of a climate which will make it possible for these others eventually not to have to hide who they are about something so important.  As contributions toward this end not only do I teach openly, and proudly, as a gay man, include courses and sections of courses, devoted to glbt issues, but also I am the Founder of Equality: UWEC Faculty and Staff in Support of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues; I am the Faculty Advisor for the UWEC LGBT-Straight Alliance, the Student LGBT organization on this campus; I have served as a founding member of the Board of Directors of the Chippewa Valley Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center; and I am a member of the state board of directors of Action Wisconsin, an organization dedicated toward advancing and protecting the civil rights of our state’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered citizens and their families.   In addition, I work with colleagues, most notably my close friend and fellow English professor Joel Pace (who will speak after me), in encouraging and assisting these colleagues to teach glbt texts and topics openly, seriously, and respectfully as well as decisively, effectively to confront the often considerable resistance that emerges toward doing so.  I am tremendously thankful for wonderful straight allies like Joel; without people like that behind me I could not continue to do what I do.


    Next, I would just like to read an excerpt from a statement I drafted for the English Department at UWEC, and which we approved prior to the start of this fall 2002 semester as a recommendation that faculty include in their syllabi or otherwise make available to students at the beginning of the semester.  Students often seek to censor open discussion of glbt issues in the classroom rather than use the opportunity to make their opposing positions known and to engage forthrightly in principled debate on these issues.   No other single set of issues provokes more of this kind of resistance; for instance, my film studies students routinely experience virtually no difficulty at all watching, discussing, writing about, and reporting on films that graphically represent gruesome forms of horrendous, serial violence yet often a significant number of these students at the same time claim that any representation or discussion of homosexuality is “offensive” to them and they should not therefore have to engage with this.  Even many seemingly more relatively enlightened students find it quite awkward and difficult to say words like “homosexuality,” “gay,” and “lesbian” in class, and tend to discuss glbt people as if we were far distant and extremely different in our fundamental human nature from they themselves.  Nothing seems to scare many of these students more than the idea that they themselves might be suspected as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, even by showing a relatively small degree of understanding, sympathy, and interest in glbt people and glbt issues.   Here’s the excerpt from the statement I mentioned just a short while back:


        The higher educational academy is not a “safe space” separate from the rest of the “real world” where you can expect to be sheltered from encountering anything you might find disagreeable or objectionable.  On the contrary, we expect you to take up the challenge to confront these kinds of texts and topics in a mature, responsible way, and that means bringing directly to bear your negative reactions-including your reactions of shock, dismay, and discontent-in class discussions and in your writings and presentations for class.  If you find a position or practice represented by a text or topic included in the assigned readings or screenings for class to be objectionable, it is therefore of crucial importance that you raise your objections openly and honestly, not simply claim personal exemption from having to see, hear, or talk, read, and write about these kinds of matters.  After all, disturbing positions and practices exist extensively outside of the classroom as well as in what we read, see, hear, and otherwise confront in and for class; what we do confront in class exists in this institutional space as symptomatic of positions and practices that operate beyond the confines of the classroom, the course, and the university.  If and when you find any  text or topic genuinely appalling,  you maintain the ethical responsibility . . . not simply to try to hide from these positions and practices but rather to work to critique and change them.  
        


    Finally, I want to suggest something else we can explore further in discussion that Joel has requested I take a few minutes to address.  Joel will proceed next to show how difficult, if not impossible, it in fact is to use The Bible in any logically meaningful way to condemn homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgenderism, especially in contemporary forms.  I propose that so-called “religious objections” in fact ultimately only function as a kind of convenient “smokescreen”; ultimately opposition to glbt equality really has nothing to do with religious concerns that gayness, lesbianism, bisexuality, and transgenderism represent horrific sins that God condemns and call all true followers likewise to condemn.  Those operating under this misconception have fallen prey to a classic, and terribly unfortunate case of false consciousness, while dedicating themselves to work on behalf of fundamental material interests that are, in the vast majority of cases, essentially opposed to their own.  Full glbt equality actually threatens binaristic, and especially hierarchical, gender divisions that have proven especially useful throughout the history of capitalist society toward facilitating the smooth reproduction and maintenance of labor power expended by ultimately cooperative, conforming, and consenting laborers, through gendered divisions of labor involved in the social processes of production and reproduction.  Glbt oppression further enables capitalist interests by dividing and thereby conquering potential united opposition toward common exploitation (along lines of sexual orientation and gender identification just as so frequently happens along lines of gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality) and by securing superprofits through the superexploitation of the comparably less valued labor associated with work performed by populations culturally stigmatized as of fundamentally less social social worth.   What’s more, full equality for glbt people ultimately requires social transformation transcending divisions along lines of sexual orientation and gender identification, thereby opening up the possibility for exponentially qualitatively richer, and especially far more extensively fluid forms of sexual and gender expression, communication, and interaction than we can readily imagine from where we today are at.  This prospective transformation threatens to rupture divisions between private and public, labor and leisure, desire and need, community versus individual identity and interest, production and reproduction, pleasure and responsibility, and sexuality and sublimation, as well as the essential stability and fixity of subjective identity–all areas bourgeois society polices in order to insure the profitable continuation of capitalist “business as usual.”  These are all complicated issues, so I will leave it there for the moment, but invite questions and discussion of these once we have completed our presentation.



Return to Professor Bob Nowlan's Home Page

UW-Eau Claire Home

This material is copyrighted (©)

Professor Bob Nowlan

Last Updated: October 14, 2002