“Before we get into any specifics, it must be understood that our identities are different than your perspective. Our queerness makes up the fabric of who we are, and undermining that is not a disagreement; it is discrimination” – Anali Martin and Emily Powell (2018) from their article “N.T. Wright Should Not Be Allowed to Talk” (2018).
“It takes three weeks to form a habit. There is absolutely no reason for them to be messing up pronouns because it really absolutely hurts me more than it is an inconvenience to them” – Finn Wengerd from Anna Cahill’s article “LGBTQ+ at EMU” (2019).
“We envision a community that rejects notions of scarcity, where justice is abundant and freedom is genuine . . . show up for your students in the classroom, at our events, in this nation and this world. Show up for your marginalized students in the ways we’ve been asking of you. This is how we live into our mission” – Anisa Leonard and Maya Dula in “EMU After the Verdict: Where We Go From Here.”
Our student leaders see very clearly where EMU must go for us all to be liberated, and I urge us to follow.
Like human beings, organizations maintain underlying structures that routinely create disconnects between their intentions and actual impact. One underlying structure that sometimes goes unnoticed is an organization’s database system and its forms/survey language. In her article, “Data, Technology, and Gender: Thinking About (and From) Trans Lives,” Anna Lauren Hoffman states that “the continued exclusion from or subjection of [trans and queer] populations to information systems that do not represent their lives or needs represents . . . a phenomenon what we might rightly call data violence” (p. 11). Considering our proclaimed Anabaptist values, which compel us to “walk boldly in the way of nonviolence and peace,” EMU must take heteronormative and data violence seriously.
In 2015, EMU changed its hiring policy to no longer discriminate based on gender identity or sexual orientation. Since then, EMU has approved several policies including an Inclusive Community-Creating Policy which states that “Eastern Mennonite University expects all its faculty, staff, and students to adopt inclusive written and spoken language that welcomes everyone regardless of race or ethnicity, gender, disabilities, age, and sexual orientation.” Furthermore, EMU’s LGBTQIA+ Student Support Policy states that “a student or employee may request that their correct name and gender identity be used in internal records such as the Registrar’s Office, Admissions, Student Life, or Human Resources.” However, a vast majority of EMU’s forms and its database only have a field titled “Gender” with three options: male, female, or other/unreported. Our data, forms, and language communicate to current (and prospective) LGBTQ+ students and employees that they are (or would be) considered “other” at EMU. Therefore, as it currently stands, our practices are in direct contradiction with the policies above.
How might you (your committee, your department/office, your council, your cabinet, your board) make changes to uncover our internalized and structural genderism and heterosexism? We have approved the policies above, so how might you practice them?The stories of LGBTQ+ stakeholders throughout EMU’s history reveal how much harm we have already done (ranging from microinvalidations that nullify and negate the realities and identities of LGBTQ+ individuals, outright discrimination and terminations before 2015, and hate speech as President Huxman named in 2018). As named in the monumental 2020 “Letter to the President,” we have so much transformational intersectional work to do to better live into our vision to “open new pathways of access and achievement for all students” (EMU Vision Statement).
