"(Un)Covering" in the Classroom: Managing Stigma Beyond the Closet

Abstract

While many instructors closet stigmatized identities, others downplay them—a tactic that sociologist Erving Goffman terms “covering.” What are the personal, ethical, and pedagogical costs of covering? What are the gains? How can feminist university instructors cover stigmatized identities without fueling oppressive respectability politics against their own communities? These are the questions that confront me as an openly gay university instructor, as well as nearly all teachers who do not fit what Audre Lorde calls “the mythical norm”: “white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christian, and financially secure” (11). Any instructor outside this narrow norm, as well as those who are not ablebodied and neurotypical, cisgender, and native-born citizens of the countries where they teach, may face pressures to cover in the classroom. To help navigate these challenges, I propose a “pedagogy of uncovering”: strategically covering to gain students’ respect, and later explicitly “uncovering” to help students deconstruct the very respectability politics that make covering exigent. I am fortunate to teach in a progressive setting where coming out as gay does not instantly discredit me in the eyes of most students. However, even once I am “out,” I find that students take me more seriously when I pitch my voice in a deeper register, minimize my hand gestures, and avoid gay buzzwords like “fabulous.” In other words, covering has pedagogical value for me: Even when I state my gay identity, and even when I specifically teach about LGBTQIA topics, I find that students take me most seriously when I censor my speech and behavior to avoid culturally constructed markers of gayness. I worry that if I let myself come off as more stereotypically gay, students will interpret me as a trivial amusement rather than a real person with real knowledge to share. And if students dismiss me this way, how can I effectively challenge their stereotypes about LGBTQIA people or encourage them to critically analyze the notion of essentialist gender, sexuality, race, class, and ability categories? From this perspective, “(Un)Covering” in the Classroom: Managing Stigma Beyond the Closet