Embedded in “queer” is the notion of disruption, so what does this mean for participation and our relationship to it as instructors?

What does it mean to be “queer”? In “Queering Student Participation: Whispers, Echoes, Rants, and Memory,” Matthew Cox defines queer in two main ways: first, as a catch-all term for anyone who’s LBGT; and second, that it is “by definition whatever is at odds with the normal.” To be queer is to disrupt the norm; Cox notes that “the norm is also the heteronormative,” or the assumption that until proven otherwise, everyone’s a cisgendered heterosexual. In order to queer participation, therefore, it is necessary to fundamentally change our understanding of how participation should operate. However, in this push to change participation, we come up against entrenched sociocultural ideas of gender, sexuality, and embodiment.

In their article “Building gender inclusivity: disentangling the influence of classroom demography on classroom participation,” Tina R. Opie, et al, write that “students enter the classroom with a lifetime of experience enacting gender. These gendered norms impact class dynamics and can hinder… efforts to build inclusive classroom cultures” (38). To achieve this change, we have to queer more than just participation; every facet of the classroom culture must be challenged and made queer. To do so, Cox encourages us to see the “value in the concepts, archetypes, and issues we have previously seen as culturally undesirable,” such as uncomfortable silences, spirited debates, and power sharing, suggesting that “by placing value on these… we carve out safe learning and knowledge-making spaces.” I, personally, have a hard time with uncomfortable silences; I always struggle with allowing that weird silence to stretch out, to give my students time to decide if they want to participate or not.

Reading through Cox’s article, it struck me that I had (unintentionally) picked a similar theme to my first reading. Feminist pedagogy, which aims to restructure the power dynamics of the classroom, and queer pedagogy, which aims to disrupt the power dynamics of the classroom, have much in common.

To queer our understanding of participation, we need to also recognize the myriad forms it takes. Traditional classrooms and traditional ideas of participation, according to queer scholars, including Cox, privilege “some students while oppressing others.” If our goal as instructors is to empower our students, “one of the ways we can counter such oppression and make space for resistance” is by focusing on what’s not the norm, giving students the space they need to comfortably participate as they desire.

As a BizCom instructor, Cox has useful advice for those of us wondering how to queer participation in a classroom that’s not necessarily given to personal forms of communication. He writes, “bringing up issues of race, class, gender, disability, and sexuality in (professional) writing classrooms may be unexpected to students,” yet these are issues relevant to the lives of many students. Doing so goes against the narrative of, as he puts it, “an ‘asexualized’ classroom,” a repressive, unfriendly space which stymies “LBGT and queer-student participation.” By doing so, in his experience, students were able to engage queerly with the classroom; his article examines four cases, involving five students, who were empowered to tackle queer subject matter and to be open and honest about their experiences. One such moment over the past semester arose during the discussion of how to write for “goodwill,” when I took the time to point out that no one should ever feel or be excluded on the basis of sexuality, gender identification, race, religion, or any other aspect of their identity. I do not know if this has allowed my students to feel freer, but the effort alone has value.

Cox suggests that students who take the initiative — in a queer-friendly space — to be openly queer are, in fact, helping their fellow students participate; Critel terms this “underlife of helping.” These students, by their openness and vulnerability, enable their fellow students do the same, helping to create a safe space for students to learn about diverse life experiences. Opie et al note that “it is through the process of discussion and the exploration and integration of diverse perspectives that students learn how to advocate for their own view as well as adjust their perspectives in response to others” (38). When the classroom is “queer,” it acts as a rising tide which lifts all boats, benefitting all students, regardless of their identity.

At the beginning of this post, I referenced a quote from Matthew Cox where he notes that the experience of being an outsider and of not fitting in is universal. Although his work focuses mainly on the inclusion of queer voices in the classroom, queering participation has a larger implication for all the students in our classrooms. Traditional academia is structured around the idea that the ideal student is white and male, with all the problematic baggage that entails. However, we are, in fact, diverse instructors teaching diverse classrooms, and as instructors, the power to disrupt these traditional notions of academia — to, essentially, queer it — is in our hands. What we do with it, and how we move forward from here, is entirely up to us.