Inclusivity in our lives
In our recent interview with Dr Elizabeth Kerekere about takatāpui, we had the awesome opportunity to discuss inclusivity in education and in our own schools.
She gives us the lowdown on intersectional education, and how we can strategically and safely challenge things like homophobia and transphobia within our communities.
How do you ensure that the education you provide is intersectional?
It’s really important to come into things with an intersectional analysis. When you understand that our struggle is connected with other people’s struggle, because the forces that are trying to act against us are systemic and intertwined. So, they might impact on us differently, but they are still the same structure, the cis-hetero-patriarchy and the whole entire colonial construct in which we live. As a person who does this work, the ways I try to make sure is I’ll take a particular lens, and then I’ll always check in. I’m a cis-gendered woman who is takatāpui and lesbian femme, so I present in the world in a certain way. So I need to make sure, I pass everything by my trans, intersex and non-binary whānau. I also have people who specialise in disability within our Rainbow communities to make sure that the languaging is going to work. I also make sure in terms of our relationship with our people from the pacific, people who are migrants and immigrants and refugees and asylum seekers.
Whatever it is when we’re talking about, when you have an intersectional analysis it’s very easy to be inclusive. It means you always use inclusive language. And this happens in Parliament - they were talking about cervical screening programme, so instead of just saying it’s for women, actually it’s for any person who has a cervix and a vagina, and that includes trans men and intersex and non-binary people. We need to say that all the time to use whatever privilege it is we have, whatever platform we might have to always think “how do I go wider than myself? Once my personal needs are taken care of, how can I help other people, because people have always helped me.” I will use every single thing I have to fight for our young people, to fight for our communities, and use whatever privilege I have now I’m in Parliament to keep bringing these things up until people get sick of hearing of it and then we make change.
Do you have any strategies for efficiently countering homophobic and transphobic culture in schools and workplaces?
I’m a strategic person, I’m actually the strategist for the Green Party in our caucus in Parliament, and I’ve made my living doing strategic planning for a long time. So, I’ve always got a plan.
The first thing is always, if you’re part of Rainbow communities, have good strategies for keeping yourself safe. Now this is not necessarily about self-care, although it can be related to it, this is about how you build up your resilience so you can be in spaces which are homophobic, which are transphobic, but you stay safe. That is something I have built up over a very long time. There were a whole group of young people [at a recent hui] who had come from all over the country, and I said “while you sit here, you feel really safe ‘cause you can feel the love and everyone’s around you. What I want you to be able to do is take that feeling, and take it with you wherever you go - so you don’t have their physical selves here but you feel them spiritually, you feel you can call on that.” So that’s one of the ways is to absolutely keep yourself safe.
The other thing is you pick your battles. You decide what are the things you’re going to step out on. Because it’s difficult to call people out face to face. It’s much easier to do it online, but when you’re in a room with people and it’s like, it’s your school, it’s your people that you actually might like them in every other case and then they do that really revolting joke, and you’re like “oh my god what do I say, should I say something?”. So depending on how safe you are, you can engage directly with a person and say “you know what, it’s really not cool when you say that, you may not realise but that is actually offensive for trans people” and they go “oh, its only just a joke”, and then I go “well I’m not laughing, it’s not funny.” So, if you feel confident to do that, just have a couple of lines, a couple of things you can use, ‘cause when you get in that situation you go, “oh my god, oh my god, what do I say? I’ll feel stink if I don’t say something, but I don’t know what to say” so sometimes it’s good just to think ahead. Just simple things that just goes “hey that’s not cool, I’d really appreciate it if you don’t use that kind of transphobic language”, or “that joke is not funny, please don’t tell jokes like that around me.” And even that, it’s like you might do it in the rest of the world, I don’t want you doing it around me.
If you don’t feel comfortable dealing with it front on yourself, then always have people you can go to. Whether that’s a mentor, whether that’s your school counsellor, whether that’s one of your mates, just to say, “hey this thing happened, I wasn’t comfortable to say something about it, but I think we should do something about it”. Sometimes you might just want to talk to someone to process it, or you might want to take it further so it can be addressed. Because if a teacher says something like that, that is a real problem in which case you have to take it up to a higher level, and that’s when you need mates. You need some people to help you do that, it might be another teacher who can help support. Once you start getting up to challenging people higher in the structure, people who are above you, then you need support. It’s never good to go up against a power structure by yourself. Always find your allies, always find your friends.
The other thing to is to bring in groups like InsideOUT to come and work with your school, ‘cause it’s hard to be an individual that says “I’m a non-binary person and there are no toilets here I can use without getting hassled one way or another” for example. And it’s hard to be the person trying to change that at your school. It’s much easier if you’re working with an organisation who is working with your principal, and who is working with the Ministry of Education to do some of those things. Then you can find out what [is] some of the higher-level support you can start to access. Always look for where the decision making happens on a particular issue, and then who can influence the ones who make the decision – if you are not one of those people.
