The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

A couple of items in the news and personal experiences came to my mind this week when creating my blog this week.  One particular story stood out about a gay man who went for a physical with a new doctor and the doctor diagnosed him with "homosexual behavior" and coded it with the code (302.0) (Kemp, 2013).  This man is openly gay and was simply going for a check up.  When he confronted the doctor about the diagnosis and the code and the doctor stood by her diagnosis even though that code: (302.0) means "sexual deviancy or mental illness" and the code was to stop being used as of 1973 (Kemp, 2013).  After hitting a brick wall with this doctor, he decided to write a letter to the network that the doctor works for and received an apology for them explaining that they do not condone this diagnosis from the doctor and do not participate in using code (302.0) (Kemp, 2013).  I could not believe I was reading this story in 2013 in the United States.  I really believed that our society had at least moved past treating homosexuality as an illness with at least the medical profession.  I am hoping that the action this man took will send a message to the doctor's network to talk to her about her bedside manner and diagnosis process.  I applaud this man for pursuing equity in a calm and intelligent manner.

Another example of biases and prejudices that popped into my head this week and it may seem small but it was enough to get my attention and cause me to think about what I was going to do next.  I was subbing for a teacher at summer school and she had left in her notes that the children were to play around the world with sight words with the second grade classes.  Since this is summer school, the classes are small.  This particular class had 9 students with 4 being female and 5 male.  The kids were excited to play and I kind of asked them how they played because everyone plays differently and it gave me the opportunity to instigate conversation with the students since this is my first day subbing for them.  The first thing the students told me was "We have to line up boys against girls."  I said "What?"  They said "Yeah, we make two lines, girls on one team and the boys on the other team."  So realizing the chance to make this a teachable moment, I said "We're going to mix it up a little today and have boys and girls on each team."  They fought me for about 2 seconds and then got into the game just fine when they realized they had good teammates regardless if they are boys or girls.  I know some teachers do this as a type of organizational way of categorizing and/or lining up children but as an educator, I really believe we need to get away from this type of thinking because then we unconsciously pit girls against boys and start evaluating and assessing children based on their sex.  There are a ton of other ways to line up children such as with numbers, letters, colors, etc.  By doing something simple as using another way that does not involve someone's identity, we as educators bring the equity back.  Also as educators we have to call each other on things like that in a productive and sensitive manner in order to show what that action can actually lead to such as boys thinking they are superior to girls and vice versa but being sensitive to the teacher and where they might be in their thinking.

Ok so I have to end with this funny moment with my son the other day with no intention of offending anyone.  Sometimes, you have to laugh at life's little moments and not take life so seriously.  My son, Anthony, is 6 years old and him and I were playing the LIFE board game.  By the way, talk about stereotyping, the LIFE game still uses pink pegs for the girls and blue pegs for the boys. Well it appears our LIFE game is missing some pieces because there was only 1 girl (pink) peg.  So when my son landed on the space that says "You get married", he could not find any more pink pegs.  So he says, "I guess I'm going to have to marry a boy because there are no more pink pegs."  It was one of those funny moments but also an insightful moment.  People worry about young children being affected negatively by homosexuality.  My son has been exposed to homosexuality due to the openness of some of my family members.  I thought it was interesting that his statement was so "matter of fact" and he really was not expressing a homosexuality issue but a way to solve the problem he was having.  That is how kids think and work.  Too bad more adults do not think and work that way.  Our world would be a lot more accepting of people's differences and a lot more fun.

References

Kemp, J. (2013).  Chronically Gay?  California doctor diagnoses gay man's "homosexual
      behavior" as chronic illness.  New York Daily News.  Retrieved from
      http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/chronically-gay-california-doctor-diagnoses-
      gay-man-homosexual-behavior-chronic-illness-article-1.1423160