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S1E14 a-safe-zone-for-lgbtq-students

Natalia Sobery22min

Emily Rosenquist

00:00

There's this stigma around all these labels. The pool of identities is expanding because people are finding more and more ways that an identity describes them. And so I think people are like, there's no way I can know all these words and all these terms. You don't have to be a walking dictionary, right? You just have to be able to say like, I don't know what that is helped me understand.

Steve Fast

00:26

lesbian, gay, bi and trans persons can face prejudice that might extend from active bullying to unjustified assumptions. Not all behavior that is dismissive of LGBTQ plus persons is malicious or even active. But education can create more awareness to prevent even unintentional marginalization. This is random acts of knowledge presented by Heartland Community College. I'm Steve fast your host. Today we're talking about how a little awareness can go a long way in creating a safe space for people of the LGBTQ plus communities. To learn. Let our guests introduce themselves.

Emily Rosenquist

01:03

I'm Emily Rosenquist, I am a graduate assistant in the equity compliance and Title Nine office. I'm currently also a student in the Illinois State University CSPA program for Student Affairs.

Jessica Depke

01:16

I'm Jessica Deb key and I am a student intern with the counseling department at Heartland. I'm also a student at Bradley University studying clinical mental health counseling.

Steve Fast

01:27

To start with just call first ask you in the student counseling office, do LGBTQ students have unique concerns that they are facing in a college environment? It's probably for many of them the first time they've been to college, is that something you see uniquely or commonly,

Jessica Depke

01:47

we do have a lot of students who identify in the LGBTQ community, I wouldn't say they come in with unique concerns, their concerns are just pretty much like everyone else in college. But people in that community do have a higher risk of suicide or substance abuse. So that is something that we look out for with that population.

Steve Fast

02:10

What is important in the college's approach to let LGBTQ students know that they have support, as you say, there are a higher percentage wise incidence of self harm other issues that might arise from the world around them, that they might be able to get tools or support from counselling to address. So is there something that the college does to raise that particular awareness of a resource,

Jessica Depke

02:41

we started doing safezone training this semester for the college. So that has been training faculty, staff and students about the community and just providing resources teaching people about the LGBT community and how to be an ally for them. And part of that is you get plaques once you're finished. So we put those up in our counseling department. So that lets students know that the counseling staff has been trained, and we are a safe space for them to talk about those types of issues.

Emily Rosenquist

03:12

I think the The College also has a pride Club, which is really important to build a community and to, you know, there are certain barriers that LGBTQ people from the LGBTQ community face just like coming out and things like that. And so it's important to be able to have that community and pride doesn't only talk about those issues, they do a lot of other fun things, which is important to to not always make it about barriers that individuals might face.

Steve Fast

03:38

I would imagine to have any kind of social activity going on helps a variety of students that have a unique interest or identity. Just find an easier way to get by it's got to be more than just going to class and going home.

Jessica Depke

03:53

Definitely it's important to have some fun in your life and not just continually going to class and homework and your job but having a sense of community and purpose outside of the classrooms.

Steve Fast

04:05

One of the reasons for projects like the training you're talking about the Safe Zone Training is generationally speaking, regionally speaking, the level of exposure they've had in talking about these issues, there might be the assumption that a person's gender or sexuality matches their biological sex broadly speaking, some people might be confused by those terms. Definitely going into this training, even here, you've maybe seen it. So let's go over some terms that people might have seen, but they don't necessarily know what they mean. So I guess this is you know, the the 101. People often see LGBTQ LGBTQ plus, they might know what some of those letters represent. They might know what all of them represents are just a few of them. But to describe that is something that maybe is the first step for people

Jessica Depke

05:00

There have been some variations. So LGBTQ lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer or questioning. And sometimes you throw the plus at the end to just be more all inclusive. So if something maybe doesn't fit within those letters, the plus lets them know that anything else they identify as is also included in that.

Emily Rosenquist

05:22

And sometimes there's an IA added to that. And that stands for intersex and asexual, which are often sometimes excluded from the community. And so a lot of times there's an attempt to add that to the acronym to make sure that there's the inclusion there is important.

Steve Fast

05:38

Now, sometimes you will hear people refer as an umbrella term as just queer, and not in a derogatory way that maybe we've heard in generations past or decades past. But as something that, at one point, was reclaimed, is queer, an umbrella that is used today that people can say, well, we're just going to throw that out there as a way to not run off half of the alphabet.

Emily Rosenquist

06:07

I caution people to automatically defer to using the term queer. There's certainly a generational difference with using the term queer since it was often considered a slur. And it's kind of something like you said, the community is taken aback. But some people still find it offensive. So using queer as an umbrella term doesn't always necessarily isn't always necessarily inclusive doesn't always encompass everyone. And so sometimes people will use that as an umbrella term. Be careful about that. Just be cautious.

Steve Fast

06:37

Well, I think that raises a question for people that are trying to approach inclusivity, but don't have a lot of exposure to these individual communities. So what do you advise folks that are trying to be inclusive to do in assessing these situations just in everyday life,

Emily Rosenquist

06:57

I think using the acronym LGBTQ i plus or LGBTQ, is usually a safer idea than queer since some people do find it a derogatory term. And just to take opportunities, like doing the Safe Zone Training, like doing your own research, and things like that in like spaces that you know, are educational, and you know, are verified. There's the safe zone project. It's an entire online website with so many resources, which is what Heartland safezone training is based off of. And just to take those opportunities to, like, do a quick search on that website will get you a lot of your answers really fast. And it's a really easy way to just take five seconds, and then educate yourself.

Jessica Depke

07:39

Yeah, and I think there's no harm in asking either. So don't be afraid to ask someone what they identify as if you have that relationship with them where that is comfortable for you and appropriate. But if you are being genuine in your questions, and being respectful, that person is likely not going to get upset that you're asking them because you're coming from a place of respect and wanting to approach them in a way that they feel most comfortable with. So not being afraid.

Steve Fast

08:08

Even after you go through training, have you seen people are worried about that worried that they have all of this could be new information, and that they'll make a mistake, and there's some sort of politically correct line that they are stepping over inadvertently? How do you approach that concern for people, so they won't just turn away from any knowledge and expanding their understanding?

Emily Rosenquist

08:35

I think that any drive you have to educate yourself and to be more inclusive, and to use language that that people are comfortable with is really important, it's really important to act on that drive, we are often so afraid of making a mistake and saying the wrong thing that we don't say anything, which then just kind of leaves us all in a stagnant pit of not advancing on those terms and those situations. So it's really important to say, I don't know, and I need to ask questions, or to be able to say like, I don't know, this is the term that I use, is that correct? Am I okay? Just being okay with being wrong. And when someone is wrong on the other side of that, if you know that they've said something that is offensive to take the opportunity to correct them in a respectful way to say, Hey, I know you're using that term, I would caution you just to like educate other individuals.

Steve Fast

09:32

Do you find that it's difficult for people to admit that their understanding might be incomplete or that it's changed over the course of their lifetime?

Jessica Depke

09:41

Yeah, I think people are somewhat resistant to how our world is changing. I think in general, and this is part of something that is also changing so people are always going to be resistant to change no matter what the topic is. Our training that we do in on campus is not try tend to make people feel ashamed or like they're not knowledgeable is just trying to increase that knowledge. And I think we come from a place that is really non judgmental. So it's okay if you don't fully understand what we're talking about today. And you don't have to be an expert. And you don't have to memorize all these vocabs. The point of the training is to just learn a little bit more than you did when you first walked into the room and to have respect for people no matter what their identity is.

Steve Fast

10:27

So what are some of the things that people get hung up on, when understanding all the diverse iterations we find?

Jessica Depke

10:33

I think the probably baseline one that I see a lot of confusion about is the difference between sex and gender, I would say that is probably the number one thing people get really confused about. And during our training, we do what's called the gender bread person, where we really break down the differences between that, and just your expression and the difference between emotional love and romantic love. So we really try and break that down. So it's a little simpler to get,

Emily Rosenquist

11:00

I think another thing is, there's this stigma around all these labels, and how people need to, like constantly come out and the pool of identities is expanding, because people are finding more and more ways that an identity describes them. And so I think people are like, there's no way I can know all these words and all these terms. You don't have to be a walking dictionary, right? You just have to be able to say like, I don't know what that is helped me understand.

Steve Fast

11:32

Talking about some of these distinctions that you mentioned earlier, you say use a gingerbread person. Let's go into some of those differences in terms what is the difference then between gender identity and gender expression?

Emily Rosenquist

11:46

So gender identity is internal. Gender identity is how you identify your gender, gender expression is external. And so when we describe gender identity and expression, we're not describing a utopian world. Gender expression is often like things like clothing, you wear ways you express yourself, like emotions, and other things like that. And so gender expression is how others interpret you.

Jessica Depke

12:15

Yeah. And when we do the gender bread person, there's scaling for each of those components. So for gender expression, is a scale of masculinity to femininity. So you might not be 100% on any of those scales, you can fall in the middle for all of them.

Emily Rosenquist

12:35

And just be clear, there's a separate scale for masculinity and femininity. So it's not like you're all on one side masculine are all on one side timing in its two separate sliding scales, so you can express both.

Steve Fast

12:49

Similarly, I think people might get hung up a little bit on how romantic attraction and sexual attraction aren't necessarily 100% the same thing. So with your gingerbread person analogy, how do you talk about that? We do

Emily Rosenquist

13:05

specifically talk about it and the gender bread person. And so we break down attraction into romantic attraction and then also sexual attraction. And so romantic attraction is like the dating the like, more like marriage flirtation kind of side of things where a sexual attraction is like kissing and more physical.

Jessica Depke

13:26

That one is hard for a lot of people to understand. I know when I was going through training for the first time, a couple years ago, I was hung up on that one for a while. And my person that was doing the training really helped me understand that by using examples. And examples are a really great way to show that this occurs in real life. And we use examples that people know really often so like Ellen DeGeneres, or other people who are popular in the community, just so they can put the definitions of the terms are learning to a person that they actually somewhat know.

Steve Fast

14:00

And I think, again, when people are trying to learn this terminology, and think perhaps differently than they have previously about these concepts, there's a tendency to want to slide a person into one box or another and there are even other terms that add to this and it adds to the, as I said that the alphabet that we use to express inclusiveness and there are other terms such as ace, what does ace mean when somebody refers to a person that way?

Emily Rosenquist

14:32

So ace is shorthand for asexual? And so asexual means that you don't experience that sexual attraction that we talked about. Some people who are asexual also experience romantic attraction, they still date and get married and things like that. Some people also who are ACE do not experience romantic attraction.

Steve Fast

14:53

I think a lot of this has to do with having a recognition of all of these things towards the greater community. So if somebody doesn't identify in any of these particular categories, that doesn't exclude them, there's a spectrum of categories, somebody might find themselves a little bit within,

Jessica Depke

15:11

right? Like some of these terminologies that we're using even today were non existent 1015 20 years ago. So just because you don't identify with something that we have a name for right now, doesn't mean there's not going to be a name for it in the future, the list that we have in the Safe Zone Training that's forever growing, and it's never going to stay the same.

Steve Fast

15:31

We'll talk a little bit about how this affects folks in ways that if you are living a hetero normative experience, you might not realize the term white privilege is something that over the last few decades, if it's not at least fully understood, it's recognized as a thing people understand the concept. But the privilege that people that are heteronormative, have might not be as obvious to them. Is that something that you talk about, in your training, something you tried to raise awareness? Regarding?

Jessica Depke

16:04

Yes, we do. There's a whole privilege activity about it. And what I love about the privilege activity and Safe Zone Training is that it feels a little less judgmental than maybe some other privilege activities that people have done in the past. Basically, you get a list of privileges, and you have to buy them back. And it makes you realize, like, Oh, if I only have $800, I can only buy eight privileges out of this list of 30, something, what's really important to me, whereas someone who is cisgender, doesn't fall into that community already has all of them.

Emily Rosenquist

16:40

And I think privilege, like you said, sometimes it's weaponized. And it's important understand privilege is something a lot of times you're born with, you know, sometimes the privilege you have is out of your control. And with things like white privilege, like that's something that's recognizable, whereas LGBTQ identities, are invisible identities. And so that's why that privilege is is harder to recognize, because we don't see it actively.

Steve Fast

17:06

I think that also gets into an understanding of why people are more active in asserting an identity. If you're living in a heteronormative world, you don't have to announce it to the rest of the world, it kind of comes to you in a certain way. And I think that's something that needs to necessarily flip in their mind. Because when you see things like a Pride Parade, you can see any spectrum of people expressing themselves in the most outrageous way, to the most reserved way. And for people that aren't exposed to things, the outrageousness might be a shock to them, or they might not understand why somebody would want to be so expressive. And I think that might be the cause, they might not have had to worry about how they express themselves.

Jessica Depke

17:49

Right not having to come out or just people assuming that you're straight, and you are the gender that you appear as that's a privilege in and of itself.

Emily Rosenquist

18:01

And I think there's a lot of internalized messages of transphobia and homophobia that individuals in the LGBTQ community grew up surrounded by and they internalize them. And so a lot of times those pride parades are great moments of acceptance, where you can kind of take that transphobia and that homophobia that you may have internalized and kind of confronted in a way that's really prideful.

Steve Fast

18:24

So some people also might think, well, that is how anyone that identifies one way or the other might act all the time, or might be the one expression that someone would have, and they don't have a full understanding of how people might, you know, want to express any of their identity or how they might want to, it's just a part of someone's life.

Jessica Depke

18:47

Yeah, there's definitely stereotypes of what a gay person or a lesbian person is going to look like. And that is not always the case. It's not visible, like we've said,

Emily Rosenquist

18:58

right? It's, like you said, it's one of those invisible identities. And those stereotypes are dangerous too, because a lot of people who may identify as part of the LGBTQ community may have a hard time coming to terms with that not because they're having a hard time coming to terms with their sexual orientation necessarily, but not necessarily feeling like they fit into the LGBTQ community because some stereotypes are being perpetuated. So

Jessica Depke

19:24

I think something that is also good to mention is the pronouns that is being used more. So asking people what their preferred pronouns are, and understanding when there isn't a he she or his hers that you can use the pronouns as they them. An understanding that that doesn't mean that it's plural. A lot of people have a lot of trouble with that. It becomes easier the more you use it.

Emily Rosenquist

19:48

And along the lines of pronouns, we often say preferred pronouns and I personally think it's better to say pronouns preferred kind of implies like you have the option to not use someone's pronouns, you should always use the pronouns that someone says to you. It's just respectful, right? Like you wouldn't call someone by by a different name. And so calling people by the pronouns that they use is really important. It's a really good point. Yeah, it was pointed out to me. And that's the only reason I say something because I always used to say preferred pronouns until someone was like, that kind of makes my pronouns feel like a choice. And that's not true. It's also great to add pronouns to your email signature. Just kind of like to say, here are my pronouns. If you want to share yours with me great, like, feel free to do so. I also think it's great to know where gender neutral bathrooms are on campus, students use them and students are quest to know where they are. So there are some in the cafe in SCB, and there are some in ICP as well.

Jessica Depke

20:47

So even just like talking about that, like making sure that students are aware and not having it be some like, hidden secret of our campus, it's nothing to not talk about, like why wouldn't you know where the gender neutral bathroom is? I think that's awesome,

Emily Rosenquist

21:00

right? And if students or staff or faculty ask you like, Oh, where are where are gender neutral bathrooms? Like, oh, like, how do I do this? It's okay to say, I don't know, but it's not okay to say, I don't know, go figure it out. Right. Like, it's important for us to say, I don't know, like, let me help you find the answer. And that's a great opportunity for you to learn in them to learn and everybody walks out a little bit better.

Steve Fast

21:23

So I want to thank you both for joining today and talking about these issues.

Emily Rosenquist

21:26

Thanks so much for having us. Thank you.

Steve Fast

21:30

Emily Rosenquist works in the equity compliance and Title Nine office of Heartland Community College. Jessica Deb key works in the student counseling office. Both are involved in Heartland Safe Zone Training for faculty and staff. If you're interested in hearing more, subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify or audio boom. Thanks for listening

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