Heteronormativity in the Classroom

     One never really notices privilege in a classroom. We look at our peers in class as all one thing: Students in a higher education institution. We are all vessels retaining the information being taught at us. I used to notice everyone in my class as another student like me. Then I realized that that is not how I viewed them at all. Rather, this was how our university made us seem. In class we all adhere to rules and power relation between student and professor and then begin to "act" like students. It is important to notice that we are never one thing in any setting. This is best described in the feminist concept known as Intersectionality. Intersectionality was introducdiced by Kimberle Crenshaw's 1986 article Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color. In the article she states that we all have multiple identities that function simultaneously to make up the condition of our lives. Each identity is often placed in a category of privilege or subordination. One one level we may be privileged and on another we may be subordinate. For example, one may identify as white in the category of race, which is seen as privileged in our society, but in the category of sexually one may be homosexual, which is seen subordinate compared to heterosexuality. Our identities are complex and all need to be taken into account as to not further subordinate an individual, and to strive for equality. This is particularly true in the classroom.
     Heteronormativity has been inducted on an institutional level. We often don't notice this in the classroom because we are only seen as students. However, to not notice our identities in a classroom space is to make that space unsafe. It is to make it unsafe because institutionalized heteronormativity is assumed. To assume heteronormativity in the classroom is to marginalize individuals who do identify as "straight", or "man"/ "woman" or even male/ female.
     My point is that we go through our lives with uncertainty if when we are not identified as privileged in any category that makes up our identity. In many ways, those of us who identify as queer, homosexual, gay, lesbian, butch, femme, etc. are silenced in institutions that assume everyone is heteronormative.
     I've taken many classes at UCR, and for a campus that prides itself on diversity, sometimes race seems to overshadow all of our other identities. On one hand, this is good because no one race seems to be centralized and praised, but on the other hand, race is just one level, and for identities like sexuality, sex, and gender that are not as visible as race, these identities are overlooked.