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An Interview with Write Your Principal’s Jacqui Shine

November 11, 2010 by Sarah

If you’ve been reading my blog recently, you know that I’ve been talking about how we can prevent LGBT bulling in schools. I’ve focused on what parents and schools can do to build a more accepting and affirming culture—emphasizing that it will take many, many parents, and many, many schools to produce the necessary cultural shift in our country. And I now want to share with you a brilliant way for all of us—whether we are parents or not—to help combat bullying in schools and, ultimately, to change America’s culture of disparaging and undermining those who are different.

Jacqui Shine launched the Write Your Principal project to channel the despair that so many people have felt after the suicides of several LGBT teens in September. She encourages us all to write letters to our high schools, asking what they are doing to stop bullying and support LGBT students and their allies. I love this project, and am writing my own letter. I interviewed Jackie to introduce you to her work and encourage you to write to your principal, too.

Sarah Hoffman: What is Write Your Principal?

Jacquie Shine: I’ve started a campaign to encourage everyone, both LGBTQ people and allies, to write a letter to the principal of the middle or high school you attended—even if you graduated 30 years ago!—expressing your support for LGBTQ youth and asking the principal to tell you what she or he is doing to protect the dignity of every human being in their school. I collect and publish both the letters and the responses on my website, where you’ll also find a variety of resources including sample letters, statistics, and frequently asked questions.

SH: Who are you?

JS: The big secret is this: I’m not an activist. At least, I wouldn’t normally call myself one. I’m a full-time graduate student (in a completely unrelated field) and a part-time Office Lady (in another completely unrelated field). I don’t work in K-12 education or in LGBTQ organizing or social services. I just . . . started this website. I live in the SF Bay Area with my wife, our dog, a lesbian-riffic number of cats, 3 bicycles, and a million books. I have been trying to control my inner monologue since 1983.

SH: Why did you start this project?

JS: I’ve been feeling pretty heartbroken in the wake of this rash of teen suicides. I think about those boys and their parents a lot. And like a lot of queer adults, I started to really confront my own experiences in middle and high school. I went to a Catholic girls’ school, and when you’re a lil’ Jewish lesbian . . . well, let’s just say that’s probably not going to end well. But I wasn’t satisfied with sending the message that things get better later—I wanted a practical, concrete way to step forward and speak up on behalf of queer kids and, in a way, on behalf of the queer kid I once was.

The idea to write a letter to my principal came from a college mentor, Jennifer Walters, who’s an out Episcopal priest and an all-around rad lady. She suggested it . . . on Facebook, of all places. So I did it, and it was so scary and so powerful for me that I wanted to bring the idea to more people. And Write Your Principal was born!

SH: Why do you think it’s important? What impact can this have?

JS: I think the power of this project comes from a couple places—one is storytelling and the other is the authority of a collective voice. When we tell our stories, we find healing and resolution for ourselves, something I think the It Gets Better Project demonstrates very clearly. But we can also make the problem of violence and school bullying much more real to the administrators and teachers we write to. We make clear that this is an old, old problem that hasn’t been resolved—that what’s happening now is not an aberration, but a deep systemic crisis.

And we also make clear that we are paying attention and that we are holding schools accountable—that we care about what is happening in schools, that we insist on change, and that we are watching for signs of improvement. It really elevates education and school safety issues into communal issues, not only issues for children and their families.

SH: What’s the response been like so far?

JS: Many of the letters are posted on the site—and I know there are many more I don’t even know about! Some are from allies, some are from parents, and some are very eloquent and very powerful testimonies from alumni who were bullied or harassed. (You can see some excerpts in our YouTube video here.)

What’s been loveliest is that a number of people have gotten very, very quick responses from school administrators who have invited them to have extended conversations, by phone or in person, about how to address school climates for LGBTQ kids. And I am just astonished at how far this project’s reach has been and how vulnerable people have made themselves and how much healing has come to the project’s participants. I am so humbled and surprised to find that this project is, in its way, a part of the work I’m meant to do.

It’s as simple as writing a letter, isn’t it?

Follow the Write Your Principal project on Twitter @WYPrincipal, and become their fan on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/WriteYourPrincipal. Send your correspondence to writeyourprincipal@gmail.com, and visit Jacqui at http://www.writeyourprincipal.com/.

The Today Show and My Cloak of Secrecy

November 8, 2010 by Sarah

The Today Show this morning featured an interview with mom blogger Cop’s Wife (who has identified herself as Sarah—no relation) and children’s book author Cheryl Kilodavis. Cop’s Wife’s blog about her son’s female Halloween costume had over 40,000 comments and more than a million hits at the time this post goes live, and was publicized on CNN and ABC news. And Kilodavis’ book on her gender-nonconforming son, My Princess Boy, appears in People magazine this week.

I am thrilled to see these two courageous women bringing attention to the topic of gender nonconformity, and so glad to see that tens of thousands of people have come out in support of Cop’s Wife and Kilodavis. They do have critics, nearly all of whom take issue with parents allowing their children to appear on television or in blog photos.

When writing about my son, I have chosen to keep our family’s identity hidden—I write under a pen name for our safety. When I first started writing on the topic, a parent I interviewed told me she had received death threats because she’d allowed her son to dress like a girl. After my first article came out, there were—amid letters from readers offering heartfelt support and gratitude—scary letters from critics who told me I should have my children taken away from me. I did not question my decision to write under a pseudonym.

My fellow pink-boy-parent bloggers Accepting Dad and Girlyboy Mama also use pen names. Perhaps in part because of our anonymity, we have never gotten the sort of attention that Cop’s Wife and Kilodavis have. When I published my first article and essay on pink boys, I got calls from talk show hosts (everyone from Tyra to Oprah), asking if I’d talk on their shows—with my son. When I said I’d be glad to appear, without my son, they lost interest. Some of the media frenzy over Cop’s Wife and Kilodavis is their willingness to expose that which I have stubbornly refused to make public. Do I feel a little pang that I don’t have a million people looking at my blog? I do. Does that make me doubt my decision to maintain our privacy? A bit—though not enough to change my mind. But does it make me judge Cop’s Wife and Kilodavis for their choice to go public? No way.

I’m incredibly grateful to these two women for bringing the issue of gender nonconformity out into the open in ways that I have not. Readers and viewers responded because stories are so much more potent when there are real people attached—otherwise People magazine and the Today Show would not have perked up their ears (no other picture book about a pink boy has made it into People; no other moms of pink boys have made it onto the Today Show). By talking about their sons in the public way that they have, they’ve opened up a necessary national dialog about why gender-nonconforming boys are scoffed at, ostracized, and bullied. By being unconstrained by my privacy rule, these mothers are perhaps paving a way to a time when families like mine do not have to hide—a time when boys like mine don’t have to fear for their safety.

The world I wish for is one in which the mother of a pink boy would not have write cloaked in secrecy for fear of violence against her family. And I’m thinking that Cheryl Kilodavis and Cop’s Wife, each in their own way, brought us one step closer to that world.

The “My Son is Gay” Phenomenon

November 4, 2010 by Sarah

Yesterday I read an essay by mom blogger Cop’s Wife, entitled My Son Is Gay. It’s a fantastic essay, about the blogger’s son, Boo, who dressed as Daphne for Halloween. It says most of what I’ve been saying on my blog for more than a year about acceptance—but she’s funnier and smarter than I am, so you should definitely read it. I made a comment on her blog, and signed up to receive future comments by email, because I take a personal and professional interest in how people respond to stories about gender-nonconforming boys.

By this evening, there are 14,000 comments on the site (all of which have appeared in my inbox…I might think twice next time I sign up for that function). Maybe I’ve just been sheltered from the viral blog phenomenon, but I’m completely blown away. There are 14,000 people who care enough to comment on this woman’s boy in a skirt (probably more by the time you get this post from me and check out her website)! Most of these people are enthusiastically supportive (and only a few tell her she’s sinning, or ruining her son’s life, or using other assorted scare tactics). And this is what really blows me away: how much support we have. How many people will jump to defend a boy who’s different. How strongly people feel about not bullying boys who make choices like Boo did. I really had no idea.

So please read it, pass it around, talk about it with your families and friends, and celebrate how many supporters we have in the world!

An Interview with Write Your Principal’s Jacqui Shine

The Today Show and My Cloak of Secrecy

The “My Son is Gay” Phenomenon

Praise for our books

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