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This web site is defunct. An updated version will be coming soon. Sorry for the inconvenience.
EBook: The QPages Living Gay in Oxford and at Ole Miss concerning issues relating to the individual freedom of sexual/political expression at Ole Miss General Information:
This said, Oxford is atypical because of the presence of the University. Not ten years ago, tenured gay professors were in danger of losing their jobs at Ole Miss if they revealed their sexual identifications to be anything but heterosexual. Now, there are openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual teachers who can speak about issues of sexuality without having to rephrase or translate everything for “normal” students. Currently, at Ole Miss as with most good schools, the battle wages on to stop homophobic ignorance from crystallizing into hatred. For every gain made by the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Association or any other group at Ole Miss (e.g., a full page ad in the Daily Mississippian of students dressed in modest attire in front of the Lyceum and captioned, “Your Gay & Lesbian Colleagues Welcome You Back”), hostility has set back those same advances (e.g., a retraction from the DM and a series of ads taken out attacking the initial welcome message). The campus, in learning to accept people of various gender identifications and sexual orientations, is experiencing much of the difficulty it had in the sixties and seventies with simple acceptance of racial equality. And just as the war against racial bigotry continues, it looks like the University of Mississippi will be dealing with various other issues of acceptance for decades to come. Helpful Numbers:
Oxford
Memphis(all area codes are 901)
*A note about Memphis night-life: it starts late, say, 11:00p.m. Driving back to Oxford after a night out in gay Memphis can be dangerous due to sleepiness (not to mention the added effects of any consumption). To really enjoy any of the clubs, measures should be taken to assure safety on the drive back. Options include: take a nap in the day before heading up, find a hotel in Memphis or on the way down, have friends to stay with, or, at least, rest your eyes for an hour or so at one of the rest stops along the way. Regarding Unsolicited Solicitation:Finding gay/gay-friendly partners or friends in Oxford can be difficult, but, that’s no different for “straight” people. Generally, the groups listed above are a good start towards networking with other, similarly open-minded companions on campus or in Memphis. As for meeting folks about town (i.e., cruising), another warning should be interjected. Watch out for traps or “sting operations” run by either UM Campus police or the City of Oxford police. These “crack-downs” most often occur in public rest rooms or wooded areas. Sources have reported being arrested for saying just a few suggestive words in these places. Usually, the police feel that they are doing a service to the citizenry; however, some police have been reported to arrest people for lewd conduct after having received sexual pleasure from those they arrest. With laws and court decisions so weighted against equal rights for all, many gays feel that extra precautions for same-sex relations have to be exercised, especially in typically cruisy areas. Queer Theory/Gay & Lesbian Studies at Ole MissThe English department at Ole Miss has many professors as well as students who are concerned about feminist as well as gender theory and queer issues. Even the few English teachers who have expressed their dislike of gays or gender deconstructionists seem to grade fairly despite their political opposition to equal rights. For the most part, teachers wish to know more about the exciting things happening as queer theory takes shape in the wake of Foucault. Expect, of course, to apply your knowledge of queer textual interpretation to the subject prescribed by the teacher so as to illuminate vital points about that subject, and then there can be little dispute as to the validity of your high grade. Within the department, professors have expressed a wish to help students interested in queer theory or gay and lesbian studies including Dr. Karen Raber. Along with directing you towards texts (like, Judith Butler's Gender Trouble or Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet) that help orient a student in the conflicts and hermeneutic tools of queer theory, she can also help you make sure the employment of your exegesis or tonality readings (e.g., coerced retraction or camp) are not only applicable but also used with the same precision required of all academic disciplines. Bible Belt Mentality & Sexual FreedomMany students at Ole Miss cannot fathom the complexities that shaped the interpretation of religious texts in the South. Often forgetting, or simply ignorant of, the use of the Bible as an oppressive tool against Blacks and women, even intelligent students will act as if condemnation of sex (any sexual activity other than procreative duty) is the only valid interpretation of the Word of God. Putting aside the fact that, for many people, the canonized Bible is no more the word of god than a joke on a Bazooka gum wrapper, those who do associate the Bible with divine inspiration are too often, in the South and throughout the Bible Belt, given interpretations of scripture that would seem to condemn: gays, those who've had or those who support the right to an abortion, effeminate behavior in men, or butch behavior in women, etc. Of course, other popular and still prevalent condemnations that some people distill from the Bible include: no cutting of hair for women, no consumption of alcohol (or other recreational chemicals--like, say, caffeine), no swimming with people of the opposite sex, no wearing of colorful clothing (e.g., many Amish Christians call those people who wear other clothes than black or white, "gay people"), etc. The point here is that there are just as many Christian churches in the United States that support the rights of gays as there are churches waiting to condemn them. Also, in creating an ecumenical society between denominations, much tolerance must be afforded not only for someone else's personal restrictions, but also for personal liberties that others may not feel fitting for themselves. Locally, only a few branches of national Christian churches accept non-heterosexuals, including: the Society of Friends (Quakers), the Episcopal Church, and the Lutheran Church. On the national scene, one Christian church, the Metropolitan Community Church, has grown since the early seventies to become a substantial Christian church both in size and theological aptitude. While the MCC in Memphis is actually an evangelistic outreach of Covenant Metropolitan Community Church in Birmingham, Alabama, Safe Harbor MCC is a young, growing church for gay Christians and their supporters. Certainly of equal importance is Holy Trinity Community Church on Madison Avenue (1559) across from WKRB. A substantial congregation has existed at Holy Trinity for several years, and it is the largest area church for Christians not accepted elsewhere. Both Safe Harbor and Holy Trinity offer uncloseted worship of Jesus Christ for people of all gender descriptions and sexual orientations. Two Questions Concerning Alternative Sexualities or Gender Constructs and Pedagogy:
Should an instructor “come-out” to his/her class?This is a question that, luckily, the English Department doesn’t comment upon at all. I’ve always been given the impression that the University of Mississippi is more interested in the quality of your teaching than in your personal entertainments and passions--as long as they don’t get in the way of work. Now, who’s to say when your personal life has “gotten in the way” of your example of conflict within a character like, say, Billy Budd or Alan in A Streetcar Named Desire? This catch 22 often affords “straight” teachers the ability to talk about issues like Eve Kososfsky Sedgwick’s “homosexual panic” (i.e., the fear within heterosexuals which creates conformity, and thus, a constituency) that gay teachers at Ole Miss might not mention. Nearly all instructors have to decide daily if they must alter information for less experienced students. One choice, the blatant truth, is right for some, while some others choose to “bend” or fictionalize specifics of personal illustration. Once again, the English Department doesn’t restrict an open forum, but they do remind us that we have extra authority within the classroom forum. The choice of your classroom’s decorum regarding topic choice and diction will influence tendencies toward blatancy or circumlocution--both in speaking and writing. What seems so ironic, though, is that the implicit mask of “passing” as straight often creates less direct and specific communication in the classroom, while at the same time, Freshman Composition teachers are often trying to teach their students to become more direct. Composition teachers, however, have the youngest, least experienced students to deal with. Some teachers feel that since most of their students are from conservative backgrounds (complete with conservative parents paying for their children’s education) that confronting students with examples and anecdotes outside of rigid lines of conformity will hurt their students’ ability to focus on the larger issue of precise, inventive writing. Other teachers feel that within the same anxiety that makes queer/gay/lesbian/bi-sexual/transgender issues or sexual choice such hot topics, the source of powerful thinking and writing springs forth self-evident to the student when allowed to explore such intimate feelings. So, while some find it hard enough to barrel through their students’ general resistance towards writing, others tackle hard questions to force students to write down and examine their own feelings, biases, and ideas. Basically, it’s an unanswerable question. Some graduate instructors don’t even come out to their peers, much less to their students. Either path is tough, but each has its own benefits. Luckily, the University of Mississippi supports the ideals of academic standards over pure conformity and is, at least, wrestling with questions of individual rights. Finally, a recent case within the English Department showed the rigor of Ole Miss’s commitment to professionalism within the classroom. A teacher had to confront several students in conference regarding their whispering and jeering about that teacher’s sexual orientation. With witnesses and the full support of the English Department, those students were advised to stop discussing issues that were not part of the subject being taught. They were told that their class grades at that point had dropped severely by their poor classroom participation grade. The issue, as all parties (and all but one of the students) confessed, was not over anyone’s sexual desires but, rather, over a lack of individual writing work and the concentrated focus needed for good workshop participation. Some of the students basically admitted that they only gossiped when they weren’t prepared for workshop. The teacher, rightfully, was commended for handling this situation.
Note: when discussing this question with this section's author, I forwarded the opinion that one could choose to leave sexuality outside the classroom. The author mentioned how heterosexual instructors/professors may mention wives or husbands, and asked whether this wasn't an expression of sexuality--which a homosexual professor or instructor might have to modify or avoid altogether.
What about your self-destructive or suicidal gay/lesbian/bi-/transgendered or sexually confused students?The official US statistics as to the frequency of gay teenagers who commit suicide speak volumes: gay teens are two to three times as likely to try and are generally more successful in their attempts at suicide. Others, including myself, believe these numbers to be woefully below the actual incident rate. Self-shotgun fire has quelled the life of more than one Ole Miss student who couldn't accept the idea he might be gay. Nationally, incidents of alcoholism and drug abuse rise within the group of gay adults, especially among closeted gays; therefore, it's only reasonable to accept the possibility of heavy chemical usage as a means to dilute passions an Ole Miss student feels must be hidden from his/her peers. The presure to conform often crushes gay teens in one way or another. What do you do when a student threatens suicide because he/she thinks he/she can't live in this world if that's who he/she really is? Have the student call the Wellness Center. If you're really concerned, then make sure this student has a counselor that he/she can talk with. It's fine to discuss subjects with students in a professional manner outside of the classroom; however, it is of particular danger to the English teacher (like the music teacher or coach) that students will seek us out as trained counselors despite the availability of free counseling on campus. Particularly around finals or paper due dates, sudden outpourings of deeply hidden thoughts seem to burst forth from students who earlier may have seemed rather listless or excessively absent. As for the nature of these dangers they are several-fold: 1) to the student, 2) to yourself as a teacher & your career, 3) to the department, 4) to the school, 5) to the student body of graduate instructors, 6) to the general principles of ethical educational practices, etc. Watching a film like Oleanna, To Sir With Love, Dead Poets Society, or even Tea and Sympathy will give some bearing as to the dangers whereof I speak. Everything from suicide to sexual harassment to charges, like those placed against Socrates, of misleading the country's youth can be and have been placed on teachers who really challenge students to think and live without unfounded societal constraints. However, by passing the student on to people who are trained to deal with these conflicts, the teacher can usually assure better care for the student as well as, honestly, fewer legal dangers. Some of the best advice, especially for writing teachers, is to invite those students having sexuality problems (or problems being accepted because of their sexuality) to use their journals and personal writing times for exploring those feelings. Without having to place a grade upon the work, the teacher can write to the student to observe certain passages or tendencies of each passage so the student can use writing as a tool to become more honest with him/herself. The same is true of any traumatic experience that the student might undergo.
So, if it's because they take their own lives from self-loathing or if it's because society forces the hemlock to the lips of young folks who might be anything but heterosexual, no one can say. But something is killing gay teens. Sedgwick points this out at in her essay "How to Bring Your Kids Up to be Gay" as she reminds us that so many institutions in American society (e.g., marriage, public life, a bussiness, education, acting, clerical or military career, etc.) reinforce mandated, gender-proscribed behavior as well as the need to punish those outside of those behavior guidelines. She also reminds us that a quarter of gay sons are "kicked out onto the streets" without any parental support when they refuse to try and be heterosexual. Please, do be sensitive to your students needs and issues, but remember not to overstep your abilities in trying to help, or to place yourself in danger of being manipulated.
Ya'll take care
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