Today is Valentine’s Day, and you can bet that there will be materials writers promoting their own materials. How many of them will include Queer love in their resources? How many of them will represent the Black community? How many of them the disabled community?
You’ll notice the image I’ve chosen as the main feature of this post. I’ve added alt text to the image as follows: Two Black men gaze into each other’s eyes, touching foreheads in an embrace of love. They both have an earring, and wear large winter coats.
However, on the site, Pexels, where I got the image from, the alt text reads as follows: Black cheerful gays touching each other among luminous lights.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I have more than one issue with that description. ‘Gays’ used as a noun to me is offensive. Gay is an adjective, not a noun. Secondly, ‘touching each other’ sounds inappropriate, and perpetuates the stereotype that gay men are simply hornbags. The argument might be that these inappropriate tags are there for better search results, but I would argue that they do more harm than good.
TRIGGER WARNING: This is an angry post, written while shaking.
What with the current administration in the US, they are determined to erase trans and non-binary people from the earth. It’s recycled homophobia, and any member of the LGB community who can’t see that needs to take a serious look at themselves. Don’t they recall the arguments against LGB people from the 1980s and 1990s? Have they forgotten who stood beside the community? A simple betrayal against the community and they should be ashamed of themselves. (They won’t – they’ll argue for why they are supposedly standing up for their own rights while trashing trans and non-binary rights).
But what about in English Language Teaching?
Yes, we have representation in some places – not official, of course. I’d be interested to know what the publishers are going to do with this new wave of anti-LGBTQIA+ sentiment (although we know it’s not new – it’s just become more official). Will they bow down to the bigotry and erase mentions of trans and non-binary people from their guidelines? We’ve already seen the erasure of those communities from the National Stonewall Monument in the US and various governmental departments. In fact, do they have any representation of trans and non-binary people to erase?
Other material examples supposedly incorporate Queer narratives and representation, but a lot of these perpetuate heteronormative ‘ideals’ (cis, white, non-disabled, Global North and all the other privileges), or quietly, but obviously, bash trans and non-binary identities by misgendering them or misrepresenting them, continuing harmful stereotypes.
Of course, there are people who make their own materials – so what about them?
TRIGGER WARNING: Inappropriate and offensive examples of homophobia, and in particular, transphobia.
There are myriad examples of self-published ELT materials on the internet. On a search for a workshop I gave, here are some of the examples I found:
‘You are sitting in a bar … A woman comes and sits at the same table and you start chatting. After a while you notice that she has very big hands, rather a deep voice and obviously shaves. Discuss how you would feel and what you would do.’
‘Do you think there are jobs which homosexuals should not be allowed to do?’
‘Walk around the class and talk to other students about LGBT issues.’
‘How far do you agree? HIV started because of homosexuality.’
‘She was a man!’
‘Would you employ a gay person? Why? Why not?’
These infuriate me. But they’re probably still out there, and are probably still being used in classrooms today.
Enough is enough.
Without analysing the problematic representation in our materials, how on earth can we find ways to make things better? The gatekeepers of the ELT industry would prefer not to listen – whether it’s representation of LGBTQIA+ identities, having a diverse range of identities on a conference panel or teaching adverts specifying ‘native’ teachers only, the marginalised communities are still marginalised in ELT. Look at the gatekeepers – who are they?
The ELT industry needs a tectonic shift.
Who’s with me?