Want to make a better society? Wear pink, watch your language
Some days you’re the kid with the stick, some days you’re the pina¯ ta – Alec Baldwin
There are days and then there are days. We all have them; the days where you just cannot deal – with school, with work, with family. When a small slight from a coworker, a classmate or your boss plucks at your nerves like discordant harp strings and sends your stress hormones off the chart.
Some are able to roll with those punches, and maintain good mental health overall – which means we’re probably not the target of microaggressions (the voguish word for all those almost invisible slights we’re supposed to just ‘‘get a sense of humour’’ about) on a daily basis.
There’s a bit of back and forth in scientific circles about whether microaggressions are a real, measurable thing, and how to define them. Something that may be a neutral, or even amusing comment to me, might be deeply hurtful to you; perception is not everything, but it’s something. Where most practitioners seem to come together in agreement is on the harm caused when those microaggressions are so common that they become part of daily life.
Early results from a major multi-year Auckland University research project are beginning to show that New Zealand’s queer, gender non-conforming and LGBTQI youth fall into that category.
If you’ve spent any time at all on a school or university campus in the past decade, you will probably have overheard the phrase ‘‘that’s so gay’’. If you haven’t – how fortunate you are – it’s used as a slur to mean that (thing or event) is bad, weird, or wrong.
I know language is repurposed all the time – there are older New Zealanders who remember the word gay from two iterations ago, and that time it meant something rather nice. This time it does not.
The lead researcher on the Auckland University study, Dr John Fenaughty, put it to me like this: ‘‘Low-grade slurs [like ‘that’s so gay’] that many people might not think are very hurtful . . . remind you that you are on the outer and are not seen as a full member of society, or of this school or this polytech.
‘‘Microaggressions, when they stack up, can be very, very exhausting.’’
He says many perpetrators don’t realise how negative they’re being, but ‘‘it’s the smaller stuff that plays into the high rates of mental health issues we’re seeing’’.
The research – known as ‘‘The Identify Survey’’ – is already breaking significant ground. Although recent, wide studies of Aotearoa’s youth have delivered some insight, there are only so many questions that can be asked in a broad-based survey. The Identify Survey is drilling down into queer youth’s experiences to a level of detail we have not seen before.
Collecting this data is harder than it may seem. It has to be self-selecting for safety and able to be accessed easily and privately, as many young people have not yet come out to their families and schools. It has to be open to ‘‘allies’’ as well as queer rangatahi to further protect participants who might need to conceal their sexual or gender identity.
The survey is also a little out of the ordinary in that it’s targeting youth aged from 14 to 26; so, not just school students but university a¯ konga (students) and those who’ve already entered the workforce. This is a deliberate move to catch the experiences of youth from Asian or Pasifika backgrounds, who may not be ‘‘out’’ to their families until well after their school days are behind them, Fenaughty told me.
Perhaps you won’t be so surprised to know the interim results are rather depressing: 20 per cent say they’ve felt unsafe in their school or university/polytech. Forty-five per cent find their workplace is sometimes supportive or not at all supportive of rainbow issues. Twenty per cent say they’ve been treated unfairly because of their sexuality or gender identity. Thirty per cent have seen a co-worker ‘‘outed’’ without their permission. Most disturbingly, 55 per cent have hurt themselves on purpose.
The minority stress hypothesis shows discrimination and stigma causes stress that leads to negative mental health. Some people manage those feelings by numbing them through drugs and alcohol, some internalise their feelings and develop depression; some respond to anxiety by harming themselves or becoming suicidal because they can’t see a way out.
It should be an automatic assumption, in 2021, that New Zealand workplaces are free from discrimination. If a young person’s workplace is not a safe place for them every day, those formative early experiences of work can be negative ones.
Schools are another level altogether. Schoolaged children have no choice but to attend; in some areas of New Zealand they also have no choice about which school they attend.
A pertinent and current example of this is Nelson’s Nayland College, which has just introduced a zoned enrolment system to cope with ballooning student numbers.
The school’s not happy, but says it’s been directed to do this by the Ministry of Education. Parents and other opponents are worried their children will now miss out on the only co-ed high school in central Nelson. The school’s principal told media the board of trustees was drafting a letter to the ministry laying out its concerns that out-of-zone non-binary and transgender students would have to apply for a ‘‘directed enrolment’’ to attend the college.
Having to jump through significant hoops (to gain a directed enrolment order the student must show evidence they’d be ‘‘significantly disadvantaged’’ if they can’t enrol) is not a good fit for gender-diverse students, says Tabby Besley, managing director of rainbow charity InsideOUT.
A petition is on its way to Parliament this year on Nayland College, but Besley sees it as a national issue.
‘‘What action could be taken by the Government in this area to ensure gender-diverse, and all a¯ konga, are safe and have a choice to attend a co-ed school?’’
Besley says she’s seen co-ed schools get it wrong for rainbow students, too – her organisation helped two families in 2020 negotiate the directed enrolment process for their trans children, whose Wellington co-ed college was dragging its heels in creating a safe environment for them.
Quotes from participants in the Auckland University study show some schools are failing this responsibility. In the words of one respondent: ‘‘The health teacher didn’t even know what most sexualities were and made dodgy remarks about it and didn’t understand transness. I think health teaching really lets us down.’’
Another told the study that health class, the only place sexuality was addressed, was not even offered to ‘‘higher band’’ students who learned Latin instead.
‘‘There was no mention of queerness in my education besides homophobic and transphobic slurs from staff and students.’’
I’m sure come tomorrow morning I’ll be hearing from parents and teachers at schools who do serve their student body well in this area. I salute them.
But, come on – in 2021, this should be a given. If you’d like to participate in The Identity Survey, it’s still open, and they’re looking for more – including rainbow youth with positive experiences of their school and work.
For the rest of us, Friday is the Mental Health Foundation’s annual Pink Shirt Day. I’d like to think we could all pull on our rosy duds and as we do, take a moment to assess whether by word and deed, we’re truly helping to make things better and safer for our fellow Kiwis.