To be uncomfortable that my heterosexual friend is volunteering for lgbt kids charity?

[travellingbird]

My friend has to be the most conscientious person. She is exceptionally engaged with social issues and currently works in a lefty cause (climate change). She told me she was about to start with a work-approved charity for LGBT young people in schools. The aim is to go into schools and address homophobia and gender stereotypes etc. She is hetero and cis. I'm gay, and she has been one of my closest friends even before I came out at 15. She has witnessed and supported me through my battles with homophobic parents. Our mutual best friend is also gay and identifies as agender.
She is well aware of her privilege (in a good way) and has aired her concerns about not being quite right for it, yet is proceeding.

So, am I unreasonable to be uncomfortable with her taking this role? Should I just be happy she is er, "helping us" and being a wonderful ally?

"what total nonsense to say straight people are privileged" - seriously? Are you posting from the UK? The country where I wouldn't have been able to get married until about a year ago?

People in the privileged class (in this instance, straight people) should be willing to be led by people who have experience living with the oppression and be very sensitive to their concerns.

But surely, by volunteering with a charity and taking their guidance on how to deal with the issues she will be talking about, that is what the OP's friend is doing? I doubt that they will just send her in to chat about anything that comes into her head - I presume there will be training and opportunities to learn provided by those who have lived through it and researched the best way to approach it.

Those who think it's not appropriate, do you feel the same way about people providing support to disabled people or those with certain medical conditions?

senecafalls, I am perfectly well educated thank you, clearly better than you. what I am not is ignorant, bigoted and heterophobic.

It says in the OP that she is going into schools to tackle homophobia.

I wouldn't say that is giving talks on what it's like to be a gay person. I would say that what she's doing is specifically aimed at straight people by it's very nature because you aren't really going to be going in and giving LGBT teens lectures on why homophobia is bad are you?

If the girl is going in to tackle homophobia I think that her being straight may very well prove to be an effective tool with those who are already prejudiced against gay people and would view someone gay through that prism of homophobia when they try to get through to them.

If the point is to prevent homophobia then why shouldn't a straight person do it if that's effective? It would be cutting off your nose to spite your face if you said someone straight shouldn't be doing this when the people who are most at risk of homophobia might be the least likely to listen to a gay person telling them why it is wrong.

I mean, the type of girl I talked about, who thinks that if you're friends with a lesbian she'll want you to stop shaving your legs and get an anchor tatto'd on your arm, you have nothing in common and should keep away lest you catch lesbianism or they try and seduce you. That kind of girl, if someone straight comes in and talks about her experiences as a teenager with gay friends, supporting them through coming out and their experiences together growing up, and dispels all those myths. I think that might be a lot more effective than someone LGBT coming in and talking to them about things which they may not relate to or want to listen to exactly because they are already prejudiced against them.

And if that stops a couple of LGBT teenagers being bullied or ostracised isn't that more important than worrying about the sexuality of who's delivering the message and stopping it happening?

Giraffe - "What about the people who grew up lgbt and were fully accepted no one really cared, it was just life." If I ever meet one of these people, I'll let you know.
Tenerife - I don't have a disablity or a medical condition so I wouldn't presume to make that decision for those who do.

"Privilege" is one of those things where you have to compare like for like.

All things being equal ,straight people have privilege in some areas over gay people (assuming everything else is equal).

The aim is to go into schools and address homophobia

It seemed quite clear in the OP from that, she's probably going to be working with straight kids, not gay ones.

Is it heterophobic to say that some gay people would prefer to talk about their problems (perhaps related to their sexuality) with another gay person?

I get your point, I'm married to a black woman who feels no need to be part of a black community at all. In fact she's a little bit insulted if people suggest it! However, she says she feels very African. I suppose we are all different.

Wizard - "It seemed quite clear in the OP from that, she's probably going to be working with straight kids, not gay ones." Not sure how that would work in practice, are the LGBT kids to be excluded from these sessions then? But if that's how it is, then your point is a good one.

why don't you ask your friend of you can observe one of her sessions, see how she actually handles it and then judge whether you personally feel it's appropriate for her or not

Really? Like tag along to a school and watch her do it? Cant imagine that would be allowed.

If you mean ask the friend to give OP a demo at home? I'm also in the "i'd be telling her to do one" camp. She isnt part of the charity, it isnt really up to her what OP says or does. Thats entirely up to the people running the scheme who i'm sure are probably better placed to train The friend than OP is, what with that being their job and all!

The OP has detailed exactly what the friend is going to be doing in schools. What she will be doing should be done by someone who isn't coming from an ignorant position of privilege.

However great an ally is, they are still ignorant of the actual lived experience.

Charis, how nice to come to a thread where I don't disagree with you! Also, of course, in the majority, white, straight, cis people have had more 'privilege' in terms of civil rights and social respect. Doesn't mean they never suffer prejudice either.

I still don't believe it is a negative thing going into schools to talk about homophobia, whatever your identity. If we are to have true equality in life, we need to drop labels and show acceptance comes from everyone. And quite honestly, not all young people realise they are using homophobic language. Throwing around 'gay', is an unfortunate norm as an insult, but mostly used to describe objects or situations. As long as the person teaching can really get a message across, be supportive and make a difference, does it really matter what sexuality or gender they are?

Of course, there should be support for those coming out or being bullied by those who have been through it, no denying that for a moment. Sometimes the only people who can help, are those who can empathise as well as sympathise.

Haven't read the thread, but it boils down to this. Empathy isn't exclusively gained on having experienced something personally. If she's an empathic person, that's all that's required.

SurlyCue. I didn't suggest LGBT teens should be excluded. But the purpose of these sessions is not to counsel LGBT teens. It's to combat homophobia. So although LGBT teens will probably be at the talks they are not the ones that this initiative will be trying to reach.

The initiative is trying to address homophobia so almost exclusively the message is going to be most important to get through to straight teens.

What is the point of aiming lectures against homophobia at LGBT children? It would be like teaching your grandmother to suck the proverbial egg.

Anyway you couldn't exclude teens on the grounds of their sexuality because half of them wouldn't even be sure what it is yet.

Put the boot on the other foot. If you have someone LGBT come into school to talk to children about LGBT issues, with a specific hope that they will be heard children who identify, or think they may identify, as LGBT would you expect that message only to be heard by LGBT children? Would you expect them to go into assembly and put their hand up as LGBT/potentially LGBT to volunteer to go to the talk? Of course you wouldn't. You would send all the children to the talk so that you knew all the children who needed the message got the message without having to stick a label on them. Ditto these kind of talks. Who is to know which of those children is going to be homophobic. So send them all in so you have the best chance of the ones who might be homophobic getting the message.

But still doesn't mean that those children might not get the message better from a straight person. Especially if they are already holding prejudices which mean that they might be predisposed not to listen to what someone LGBT has to say.

If this were about safe spaces I would agree with the OP, but this is about someone going in to a school and talking to the entire school/year group/mixed class.

SurlyCue. I didn't suggest LGBT teens should be excluded.

Think it was another poster that suggested this

uglyswan So, you can make a decision to represent LGBT experience purely because you have lived experience? A bisexual woman will have a very different experience to a young male who is transitioning at the age of 16.

The ridiculous notion that basic human rights such as the right to marriage and family life are a privilege is one of the most toxic notions that is turning people away from caring about political issues.

OP, in your OP you seem to be complaining that your friend isn't in a position to talk about gender stereotypes. She's a woman!!!

There are some situations (such as the safe space example) where an LGBT person should do it. Whether this is such a situation is up to the organisation who runs it, and they seem to think it isn't.

Cigars the purpose of these talks are not to give people a 'lived experience' of what being gay is like. It's to combat homophobia.

To somebody who is homophobic someone coming in and giving them an account of their 'lived experience' as a gay person may well, in their warped minds, be a 'batty boy trying to convert me'. Or they might think 'Well you're gay, so of course you're going to tell me it's okay to be gay, because you want other people to think that the dirty things you do are alright'. Or 'People like you want to break down society and the traditional family with your perverted messages and you've come in with gay propaganda'.

I think that people like that may well be better reached by seeing that somebody who is heterosexual and just like them can live their own heterosexual lifestyle perfectly happily and make their own choices whilst being completely comfortable with the fact other people are gay. That you can be friends with gay people, have them in your family, have them as the parents of your friends children without them trying to seduce you purely because of your sex, without your sexuality being affected, without having to make the same lifestyle choices as them or any of the other homophobic expectations people have.

I really think that for the most prejudiced it may well be the best way of getting through to them. And I think it would be very sad to lose an effective tool against homophobia on the grounds that some people think only LGBT people should be allowed to talk about anything to do with LGBT.

Wizard and Curly - that was me
I'm speaking only from my own experiences as an angry and alienated queer teen. What I needed as a teenager was not counselling, nor was it a straight lady coming in to tell everyone that what I had wasn't contagious, or giving a lecture on how it might feel to be me. Sitting in a lecture with a bunch of straight kids and listening to them being told to stop being such utter dicks to people like me and enduring the sniggers and glances in my direction would quite frankly have made me want to scream and punch somebody. What I needed was a cheerful and professional woman to show up and say "Yes, of course I'm a lesbian. It's not a problem." I wish I could make you understand just how much that meant to me.

And this: "What is the point of aiming lectures against homophobia at LGBT children? It would be like teaching your grandmother to suck the proverbial egg." No, it wouldn't. The level of self-hatred and disgust experienced by a lot of LGBT teens is a real problem and self-acceptance is not a given.

Tenerife - well, no, I wouldn't presume to represent gay men or trans people either. That would be ridiculous. I wouldn't even say I represent bi or lesbian women. But I'm not talking about representation, I'm talking about visibility. And that does go a very long way when you're trying to combat internal and external homophobia.

SurlyCue sorry.

Just as an example. There was some guy from Towie a couple of weeks ago in all the celeb magazines talking about how he identified as gay but his family were very homophobic and his parents wouldn't accept it (I think because of their religion, some sort of Christian sect). He said his brother and sister were really supportive but were still really uncomfortable with it. He said it made him wish he was straight and he might try and force himself to have relationships with women because it would make his life easier.

For people like his family, I really don't think a load of LGBT people coming in and giving them a lecture would be helpful. But I think if his siblings could sit down and talk to non-homophobic siblings of gay people that would be much more likely to help them deal with their prejudices. If other Christian parents who were non-homophobic could talk to his parents about how you can reconcile your faith with having a gay child without holding prejudice against them I think his parents would be more likely to get the message.

Surely it's the end result of the message that's important? Stopping people being homophobic? It's not the sexuality of the messenger that's important, it's the end result of making the lives of LGBT easier by reducing homophobia that is the important factor here.