Hi All,
First of all I wanted to thank everyone for the fruitful, thought-provoking conversation we had today.
Second, I wanted to reiterate what I said earlier about the importance of SOGI 123 from a biological standpoint.
As I said in class, SOGI education is not just about teaching the diversity of sexual orientation and gender expression. It is also about the physically diverse bodies people inhabit. And not just in reference to sexuality. As I stated in class, my high school experience was not one that promoted inclusiveness or diversity, and as a result I had no space in which to come forward about the complicated, stunted, painful, non-traditional puberty I experienced. I didn’t know anything about intersex health or where to go or who to talk to. I had no reason to believe my body would be understood or accepted, and as such, I waited years to seek medical help–years in which irreversible damage was done to my body. Years that ended in medical professionals telling me to my face that I should not divulge the realities of my body to anyone because the statistics said they would reject me and that rejection and bullying would likely lead to my suicide.
This was in 2004. The world in 2004 was–according to said professionals–too hostile to someone with my genetic and phenotypic makeup.
I proved those health professionals wrong by telling plenty of people about my diagnosis and being greeted with acceptance, but I was fortunate in how accepting those close to me turned out to be. As we’ve seen from opposition to SOGI implementation in some districts, not every intersex or trans youth (in our current climate) will necessarily be greeted with the same understanding.
It is this experience that has taught me the importance of creating inclusive classes where students have access to information about the broader spectrum of human existence. And I’m not just talking about in Sex Ed classes. If there had ever been an intersex character in a story in English class, or if there’d been a conversation about genotypic and phenotypic diversity in science class, or–yes–if there’d been education about intersex bodies and the risks inherent in Sex Ed (PHE these days), I could have been spared so much. So please, if ever you encounter resistance to SOGI curricula either in your own behaviour or in the behaviour of colleagues based on ideological resistance to orientations or anything else, please think of the biological sides of things that can also affect queer individuals in intersex, trans, or even cis bodies. There are plenty of pitfalls facing these individuals, and increased understanding can only be positive.
<3