The Blame Game:

Questioning Why LGBTQ Students

Feel Disrespected in Schools
During this discussion, we would like to challenge students to examine how fostering a culture of respect is
often positioned as being the responsibility of individuals instead of being deeply rooted in structures. We
believe school structures, like curricula, policy, and practices, must change, not just individual behavior, in order
to foster more respectful environments.
After presenting the above introductory lens to your students, read what we have provided below aloud to
your students, which includes the following:
Excerpts from Cris Mayos article The Tolerance That Dare Not Speak Its Name, which are challenging and should be reserved for more intellectually advanced classes.
Paraphrases of The Tolerance That Dare Not Speak Its Name quotes (in italics) that are appropriate for any high school student.
Short case studies that illustrate an important point of discussion. Please note that topic #3 is presented without a case study.
Discussion questions to be used following the reading of an excerpt or short story.

Topic #1: The Importance of School Climate

Story
Jeff is a straight member of the football team who has a gay brother. While walking to class one day he overheard a fellow member of the football team call another member of the football team a faggot. Jeff is friends
with both of these guys and feels comfortable confronting them. He told James, the boy who had said faggot, that it offended him when James said that word because his brother is gay. James said he didnt need to
be offendedhe wasnt calling the other guy gay, but simply using the word faggot to imply the guy was
being an idiot.
Meanwhile, Cara, a lesbian, and her friend Isaiah, a gay male, were walking down the hall to class. Isaiah said
that he couldnt go to a concert with Cara because he wanted to stay home and watch the season finale of
Glee. Cara responded in a joking tone, youre such a homo! A teacher overheard the conversation and
brought Cara into his office, saying that homo is a homophobic slur and that it is against school policy to use
that word. Cara replied saying that she herself is gay and was using the term in a loving way to mock her friend
the way a lot of LGBTQ people do.

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Questions

Do you think Jeff should still be offended after James explanation?

Do you think Cara has the right to say homo if straight students do not?
How do you think Caras teacher should handle this situation?
What can we do to help improve our schools climate?
What makes a school climate positive or negative?

Quotes to Consider
It is important that we question the distinction between insults and hate speech. Furthermore, it is important to
ask ourselves whether we believe words can evolve, be reappropriated, and change meaning. As members or
allies of the LGBTQ, do we believe words like faggot, homo, and queer, can mean something different than
they used to?
When insults are appropriate, in fact, they are no longer insults, but rather acceptable ways of describing people one does not like. Banning the use of a word or even broadly suggesting in a code that all students should
be tolerated does not guarantee that the experience of the school climate improves, especially if nothing else
really changes (Mayo, 2006, p. 41).

Topic #2: Are Words What Hurt The Most?

Story
Xavier wanted to conduct a survey of how straight and LGBTQ students at Central High School felt about their
school and its handling of LGBTQ issues. The first student he interviewed, a junior named Ana who identifies
as bisexual, had some interesting things to contribute. She said, Its nice that people cant call me a dyke or
yell other slurs at me without getting in trouble. But Im still mad that I cant bring my girlfriend to prom. The
school will protect my feelings from getting hurt by other students but it hurts way more to know that they
think my relationship is disgusting or wrong. Darren, a straight student at the school, said, I think its enough
that Ill get detention for calling someone a faggot. Im not comfortable with gay people bringing their boyfriend or girlfriend to prom. Im making changes in the way I act already. I dont see why we have to bend over
backwards for people and leave a lot of kids uncomfortable by doing so.

Questions
What do you think about what Ana said? What do you think about what Darren said? Do you feel
that one of these students had a stronger opinion than the other?
What would you have said to Ana? To Darren?
Does emphasizing the actions of individuals distract from thinking about school culture on the
whole?
What do you feel is meant by the phrase the social fractures that maintain difference? (see quote
below)

Quotes to Consider
We all know that words are powerful. It seems, however, that we have gotten fixated on speech as the one
thing we need to change in order to make people feel safe and respected.
In these examples of students looking for the right words to say to others, one gets the feeling that the correct
words have a magical quality that will heal the social fractures that maintain difference (Mayo, 2006, p. 43).

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Topic #3: Can Changing Individual Behavior Bring About the Kind of Change We Want?
Questions (see quotes below)
Do you believe your school engages in discriminatory practices? If so, what do those practices
look like?
Do you think emphasizing individual accountability for safe environments is the best solution to
problems of inequality or discrimination?

Quotes to Consider
In dealing with hate speech and discrimination, schools often cite individual behavior as the source of the
problem. Saying the right thing only requires a momentary change of pace for a homophobic student. Part
of the frustration of the majority of students who feel they are being unfairly asked to monitor what they say is
that they cannot see any real change in the school from not saying all they would like to say. While an individual can cause considerable damage by saying hurtful or hateful things, we need to consider the context in which
these things are saidwhat the school climate is like and whether or not schools and their employees discriminate against LGBTQ studentsand the tendency for school codes of conduct to focus on individual action.
We also need to focus less on what nondiscrimination policy does and more on what we want our school community to become or be like.
Even policies and rules that purport to protect sexual minority students will not work because they are still
guided by institutions intent on maintaining a veneer of acceptance of sexual minorities through the establishment of conduct codes centralizing individual agency. Though individual acts are sanctioned, schools as institutions continue to engage in substantially discriminatory practices (Mayo, 2006, p. 34).
While damage done by hateful speech is considerable, we need to think more broadly about the context
in which that speech takes place as well as the tendency for codes of conduct to focus on individual action
(Mayo, 2006, p. 34).
In other words, focusing too much on what a nondiscrimination policy or conduct code does and not enough
on what one might want ones school community to become means that the play of meanings and spaces for
different kinds of communication will be diminished (Mayo, 2006, p. 42).
Finding the right words only requires a momentary abatement of the business as usual bias. Part of the frustration of the majority of students who feel they are being unreasonably asked to curtail their speech or alter their
word choice is that they cannot see any real change in not saying all they would like to say. Perhaps because
they have lived under school codes and relatively silent curricula, students have learned that changing the
words one calls another person is sufficient (Mayo, 2006, p. 44)

References:
Mayo, C. (2006). The tolerance that dare not speak its name. In M. Boler (Ed.), Democratic dialogue in education: Troubling speech, disturbing silence (pp. 33-47). New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing.

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