How to be inclusive

In an effort to make an already uncomfortable topic more comfortable to any LGBT students who may be in the classes I teach, I try to use gender and orientation neutral language as much as I can. Sex ed is always an awkward class, but if you are of a minority and the facilitator is speaking as though you don’t exist, it would be even worse. I always use the term “partner” and try to mention “life partner” every time I mention a husband or wife.

Today I was doing our high school presentation “Sex & It’s Consequences” for 2 classes of freshman health students. I realized that many of the little “activities” we do are strongly reinforcing heterosexism. During a discussion about pregnancy, I pick out 1 girl who, for the purposes of discussion, just found out she’s pregnant, and one boy who is her ‘boyfriend’. I ask the other girls how they feel about her and the other boys if they’d date her, demonstrating how isolated and alone teen moms become. I think it is an important illustration, but it points out the fact that the girls would be her friend and the boys her partner.

In another example, I ask the boys what kind of peer pressure they get to have sex, from friends and girls. Then I ask the girls the same question. This reinforces stereotype of boys as horn dogs, but I try to break it down and discuss it. “Boys, you have my respect. Our society expects you to be be pursuing sex constantly while we expect girls to say no for a while. If you chose not to have sex, its really hard!” BUT during this discussion there is a lot of talk about what pressure you get from the opposite sex….and the opposite sex is just implied to be the gender pursuing romance.

I did a little research on inclusive language and the only things I really found were discussing using "partner" instead of girlfriend/boyfriend. But I know that my assumptions that everyone is heterosexual go much deeper. Now I have to decide my priorities. Do I sacrifice these valuable parts of my presentation, because they aren't inclusive? Do I try to alter them, making it painfully obvious that I'm including LGBT students? Do I leave it alone? This one is sitting on the back burner for a while, I think.