In a few days I am going to attempt to present chapter 3 ("Humanizing Research with LGBTQ Youth Through Dialogic Communication, Consciousness Raising, and Action") of the book Humanizing Research to life in my E632 class. Though I've read the chapter twice and read the other assigned reading sections I have become fixated on this chapter because I cannot decide what to take from it and what to bring to the E632 table.
I chose this chapter because the title spiked my interest and I was immediately sucked in when I began to read it. Though I found Mollie Blackburn's story interesting and her experience with the "women who love women" group I do not know what to take away from her story.
The main question that struck me while I read was: how do we participate and do research in a community that we are not part of? And how do we avoid dehumanizing this community?
Though Blackburn identifies as a lesbian she was at this time still a bit of an outsider in the LGBTQ community. She had recently changed her life: quite teaching, came out of the closet and started dating a woman and this change positioned her as a bit of a foreigner from the community that she entered as a researcher. Though overtime through volunteering at ATTIC and participating in the "women who love women" group Blackburn became part of the community I wonder how would I as a straight woman enter this type of community? Though Blackburn sort of confronts this issue with Justine, particularly in the journal swap, she already has a relationship with this girl that has been created while she participated in the "women who love women" community.
But I also wonder, with regards to my thesis interests; how can I enter into the conversation about the IB (international baccalaureate) program and consider the pros and cons of it when I am not part of that community?
Something else that I have been considering after reading this chapter is how do we avoid accidentally excluding/dehumanizing people because we do not understand where they are coming from? This question arose out of the issue that Blackburn presented regarding Steve and Shania. The solution for this issue as Blackburn explains was to learn about these individuals and how they identify while also further clarifying that the "women who love women" group is for those who identify as women who love women. In general the questions that arose out of this is just how do we confront and work with individuals that we do not understand and cannot connect with, without misrepresenting and dehumanizing them?
Hey! What a great question you pose! How do we wiggle ourselves into a group that we normally wouldn't fit in to. I wonder that a little bit as well as I was reading that chapter--I, too, would not necessarily fit into the "woman who love woman" group because well. . .I don't. . .but that doesn't mean that I should not understand that group of individuals. What have you come up in terms of the answer to that question? I feel that, for me, as I get older I noticed these sorts of differences in people that I wouldn't have noticed in my younger years. In that I question what change or realization did I come to and when to make me see that difference? I feel once I figure that out I would be able to pinpoint how I could eventually understand that group and possibly fit into it without changing myself to fit into it.
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