I have been an on-and-off college student for 10 years, and in that time, I have attended three different universities. I have taken and excelled in journalism courses covering everything from history and ethics to the nuts and bolts of writing and reporting. I am also an active member of three professional journalism organizations, and I have completed four hands-on internships.
And last summer at NLGJA’s National Convention in San Diego, I was introduced to transgender issues for the very first time in my journalism education.
Moderated by renowned performance artist Scott Turner-Schofield, the session was called “Good Transitions: Writing the Whole Person Into Your Story.” I watched from my folding chair as Turner-Schofield undressed, put on a pair of pantyhose, some black strappy sandals and a spaghetti-strapped black dress while he recounted a touching, and at times outrageous, story of attending a friend’s debutante ball.
In the essence of full disclosure, I should say that I am a straight woman. I participated in last year’s NLGJA Student Print/Online Project, a program that thankfully got me out of the classroom and into the real world of LGBT issues.
In those five days in San Diego, NLGJA members not only did a phenomenal job of preaching to the choir, but for folks like me who snuck into the choir stand, they taught me a few new songs. I was exposed to a whole world of LGBT media that I had never heard of, as well as a host of LGBT issues that I had never encountered or considered.
I wish I could say the same for some of my college classmates back home.
I attend Georgia State University, a major school in the heart of downtown Atlanta with over 30,000 students. Unfortunately, I cannot give any hard numbers, but in an urban campus of that size, I am positive that the LGBT student and faculty population is substantial.
I can say with all honestly that LGBT coverage issues are not being adequately addressed at my school or within my department, at least not in the classes that I have ended up in. It took spending time at NLGJA’s conference for me to arrive at this realization.
The one time I remember LGBT issues making their way into a class was in a discussion of a post-op transgender woman who had been murdered. Our class struggled with whether or not to refer to the victim as a woman or a man. My teacher did not know the correct answer herself, and of course, our textbooks and reading material did not offer any additional insight. In that moment, I remember thinking that the right answer was to refer to the victim as whatever she felt she was. She had lived her life as a woman, so that should be how we identity her. It felt right to me personally, but from the perspective of a journalist, no one in class that day seemed to know.
I also once had a teacher who often used the word “queer” when referring to her LGBT friends. At the time, I did not know if that should be considered offensive or not. Even after attending NLGJA’s National Convention, I am still not sure. However, I will say that I have learned extensively about biased, sexist and racist language in these same classrooms, and that I really do not think LGBT issues and terminology should be any different.
As an editor at my campus newspaper, I recently published my own stylebook that covered these tough terminology issues. Overall, it was well received by our readers, many of which wrote in to thank me because they had questions, too.
With or without my college, I am a journalist and my job is to tell stories fairly and accurately as best I know how.
