thanked, noticed, or praised for your support. Do you speak up when you hear bigotry? With its ongoing and consistent reports of violence against those in the LGBT+ community, the news has made it clear how frequently hate crimes occur. This means that anyone speaking up to support LGBT+ people in a public setting is taking a risk. This may be a minimal risk, or it may be more serious—for example, when involved in witnessing a violent act or some type of harassment against LGBT+ people. Do you have a line at which you stop supporting and stop helping? Acknowledging this in advance can help to prepare you for situations where you may have something occurring in front of you. Too often, people do not think through what they would do in a situation until they are in that situation. That can lead to feeling uncertain of how to respond or not responding at all. In these situations, someone’s safety may be directly threatened.
Knowing in advance how you would respond can help the person being victimized either because you choose to step in or because you are quickly able to find an alternative solution to help that person. Another consideration is whether and how much you would speak up in support of LGBT+ students and colleagues when it comes to your own family. It is common for people to be willing to step up or speak up when something is occurring in a public space between strangers. This is often because right and wrong can appear obvious. Plus, many people are not very concerned with what a stranger may think if they speak up. However, what about your own loved ones? Do you speak up if your spouse or child says something against LGBT+ people in their workplace or school? Do you speak up at a holiday meal when someone in your extended family says something negative about LGBT+ people? Often, there are no clear-cut answers. However, this may be a conversation to have with those you are closest to in advance, or before a large family gathering. In some cases, it may not make sense to challenge a grandparent in the moment. However, you may make the decision to address it with that person and with others at a different time.
Being mindful of this before the event can help to prevent anyone from believing that your silence in the moment equals an agreement to what was just said. Finally, do you self-identify to make sure that bigoted people know that you are not an LGBT+ person? While it may be intentional to identify otherwise when participating in political conversations, attending pride parades, or otherwise choosing to show that non-LGBT+ people also support LGBT+ people, it is also worth examining if there are times when you may want to self-identify so that you are not mistaken for an LGBT+ person. This leads back to the self-conversation of where the line of activism and support is for you.
Now that you have considered the above areas for yourself, within your relationship, within your family, and within your professional capacity, it is also important to identify ways in which it is possible to do better and to do more. Although there may be more LGBT+ representation in the media than ever before, the number of LGBT+ hate crimes that occur each year continues to grow. But this is a statistic that can be reversed with increased education of diversity and inclusion, which can lead to acceptance and lower experiences of violence.
One way to improve is to listen to your LGBT+ students and your LGBT+ colleagues. Being willing to hear the stories of LGBT+ people without interrupting them or turning the conversation back to you and your experiences allows that person to share their story and to feel heard as it is happening. While typical discussions are often a bit of a volley between participants listening and then sharing, specifically sharing experiences related to an LGBT+ identity can be very scary, especially for your students, who may be trying to discern whether or not you are a safe person they can trust. If a person decides to share with you, understand that they are trusting you with something significant. This is not meant to be the same sort of conversation as if you were discussing favorite bands; it is instead a way that you are being asked to absorb and take in their experience.
Next, learn from those lessons being shared, knowing that your LGBT+ students and LGBT+ colleagues are telling you something important. While it is common for people in majority groups to place the blame of negative interactions on minority members, listening to these stories can result in better understanding of how and why people are victimized. As is the case in any attack or victimization, it is never the victim’s fault. It is never appropriate to ask a person why they didn’t behave differently; it is instead necessary to validate that you have heard what they’ve shared, that you acknowledge their trust in you with a vulnerable part of themselves, and that you do not turn it into an opportunity to blame the victim for what someone else did to them.
Next, talk about it with others without outing the student or colleague. When you are talking with others about the issues and stigma that LGBT+ people face, be sure to keep the stories that you tell of other people’s lives vague enough so that you are not outing those who shared with you to new people. You can start with “I have a student who…” or “I heard about a teacher at another school who…” If the details of the story are something you find necessary to be heard by others, discuss this with the person who shared with you. Ask them if they would be open to sharing their story. Offer to go with them and sit by them if they agree to share their story. Or, if they are unwilling or unable, ask them if they would help you figure out what part of the story they would feel comfortable with you sharing. This allows them to remain in control of their own experiences, their personal stories, and their own truth. Once you have received the information and experience that an LGBT+ person has shared with you, think about how you can use this new knowledge to help bring about more inclusion and better resolutions to minimize safety concerns.
Finally, donate your time and your support to your LGBT+ students and colleagues. Find ways to use the resources that you have to support inclusive policies and supportive programming. This may be by advising for a club or group that supports diversity and inclusion, it may be in encouraging the group or activity you chaperone to learn about LGBT+ people or current laws, or it may be by integrating LGBT+ leaders into your group’s learning experience. This allows LGBT+ people the benefit of having a majority person on their side without it leading to a concern that you may breach their privacy, create unsafe situations for them, or turn the situation into something that is about you.
3
Privilege
There has been a lot of discussion and debate about what privilege means, both as a term and how it impacts an individual’s life. In reality, almost all of us have some modicum of privilege, whether overt or not. In fact, nearly all of us also have some situations in which we lack privilege. The point of acknowledging privilege is not to put down people who were or were not born a certain way or to blame people with privilege for having it. It is simply meant to lead to mindfulness. This allows a person to recognize the ways in which they benefit, which may not be something they regularly (or ever) consider.
What counts as privilege?
Anything that you get the benefit of that others do not counts as privilege. For example, if you can walk, talk, see, breathe, and eat on your own, there is privilege. If you live where there is not a war occurring, if you were taught to read, if you have access to sanitary supplies (including tampons/pads, toilet paper, soap, etc.) and clean water, there is privilege. If, in television and films, you see couples and love stories of people of your gender and the gender of people you are attracted to, there is privilege. If you identify as the gender that matches your genitalia, there is privilege. If you are young or classically attractive or financially stable or well fed or have air conditioning in your home or have a working vehicle or have access to medication when you are unwell or own books or watch television or have a smartphone or know how to drive or have a choice of clothing in your closet or sleep in a comfortable bed or consistently have electricity or bathe in warm water or have a consistent address, those are all privileges.
Why does privilege matter?
Too often, a conversation about privilege becomes an argument over who has more privilege than whom, which privilege is better to have than which other privilege, or what negative experiences counteract which
