IIE PACE Podcast: Episode 8
IIE PACE Podcast: Episode 8
Closets Still Exist: Expanding Our Hearts and Minds to Create a Safe Space
Guest Speaker: Scott Fearing
Recording Date: August 28th, 2024
[Announcer]
We acknowledge with respect the Seneca Nation known as the Great Hill People and keepers of the western door of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. We take this opportunity to thank the people on whose ancestral lands The University of Rochester currently resides in Rochester, New York. To learn more about ancestral lands upon which we live and work. Please check out native-land.ca
[Ray Watts]
Hi, this is Ray Watts. I'm one of the co-chairs of the IDEAL Committee and today I'll be speaking with Scott Fearing. Scott, if you'd like to introduce yourself, give us a little bit of information before we get started.
[Scott Fearing]
Terrific. Thank you, Ray. Yeah, I'd be glad to. A little bit about myself. Again, Scott Fearing, I use he, him pronouns. I'm in the HR department here at the University of Rochester within the learning and development team. My primary responsibility is indeed safe space coordination. So, I'm the coordinator of all the safe space trainings that happen around campus. I've been with the university for just over five years, but I have a long history. Of doing LGBTQ+ education. It goes all the way back to when I came out on my college campus way back in 1980. And began to do education about what it meant, why we needed to have a student group, what it meant to be part of the communities. And then shortly after I came out, there was this whole new thing called GRID at the time, Gay-Related Immune Deficiency We now know of as HIV and AIDS. And I did a lot of education on safer sex workshops, educating about AIDS and then eventually actually doing a lot of hospice care for my fellow 20-year-olds who are dying of this disease. Initially, a lot of hospitals wouldn't let them in. Care providers wouldn't come and see them. And so we had to take care of each other. That led me to becoming more of an activist in other ways, and basically, I've spent my entire working job career doing LGBTQ education. It was not something I ever saw in one of those professional planning tests that you have to take in high school, but I've been doing this work for a long time and landed here again at the university a little over five years ago leading up the Safe Space program.
[Ray Watts]
Great. Thank you. So, to start, can you just explain a little bit about how, you know, the University of Rochester organizational structure kind of hopes or hopefully helps create a more welcoming environment for those who identify as LGBTQ.
[Scott Fearing]
The University of Rochester structure, yes. That was one of the things that when I landed here was new to me. I'd spent most of my career working in small nonprofits with no more than 20 coworkers. And now suddenly I've got 30,000 coworkers. In a very complex structure. I know that a majority of folks listening to the podcast are folks who work in the medical center, but we are a big organization with You know, services all over the place. So I travel from Eastman School of Music to the Memorial Art Gallery, all around River Campus. I'm going to be heading down to the Finger Lakes health system down there. They're an affiliate of ours. I've worked with lots and lots of different groups all over the place, so this complicated structure when it comes to LGBTQ issues is really important to keep in mind. You know, we are working, yes, with patients and their families. And we're working with colleagues and coworkers and people who are maybe helping us draw blood or do testing or imaging or whatever it might be. So, we've got this group of colleagues, shall we say, and patients. We also have students. And a lot of our students are international students that are coming up from other cultural backgrounds and ideas about LGBTQ plus issues. Sometimes they are even more accepting or aware than we are here, but there's also an awful lot of them where they are problematic. You know, there are still countries in the world where it is illegal and even a death penalty if you are part of the LGBTQ+ communities. So, we've got a very, very complex structure. But bottom line, our environment is all about having safe respectful workplaces, services, learning environments and that whole idea of respecting each other, understanding that we're all coming from cultural differences and in different places and we're coming here for different reasons is really important to keep in mind. The biggest challenge I see these days is oftentimes around issues around gender. And this whole idea of this binary gender model that we have been so culturally ingrained in, right? This whole idea of a checkbox for male, a checkbox for female, pink and blue, end of story, right? There are just these two genders. The reality is gender is much more complicated, always has been. Across all life forms on this planet. But for some reason, we've created this little binary model that oftentimes gets in our way. And it's a binary model that was initially built into our systems, right? For many years, we didn't allow women to go to school here. You know, things like that. So, we've got within our systems some outdated models that are being challenged and some people are comfortable with that. So, there's lots and lots of changes going on. And when you think about that binary model, again, the pink and blue idea. It's everything from how we take up space, how we use our voice, how we talk with our hands or not. Who is in control, who's in charge, how we behave as a nurse, how we behave as a doctor, as a professor. So that binary model is incredibly powerful and yet can be real challenging. So, a lot of the work that I do across this complicated organization is focus on gender issues, which are part of LGBTQ plus identities. I very clearly remember when I came out as gay, again, decades ago. Part of what came with me saying, yes, I'm gay is the freedom to step away from this need to prove my male masculinity and operate in the world in this proven male way. So, you know, these are not new issues for the LGBTQ community any more than they are broadly newer issues for our full community. People think that they are newer issues. And that's part of what we're up against when we're working in this environment is helping people open their minds, be respectful for each other and to realize that, again, that little pink blue XXY model isn't true, again, for really any life form on this planet. And again, if we talk any about history, there's lots and lots of examples through history where the culture didn't have that very strict, rigid duality, as it were.
[Ray Watts]
So, kind of spring boarding from that. Can you speak a little bit on kind of the concerns and challenges around pronoun sharing?
[Scott Fearing]
Yeah, that's a great transition. Yes, it is, again, a key of a component of a lot of the workshops and a lot of discussions that I help to host and do around the university as well as beyond the university. So, pronouns are a way that our English language has sort of broken and created this binary. We think of just somebody as either being he or a she, right? A him or her kind of an idea. And that's really about all we ever think of when it comes to language and that's what we get taught early on. Again, reality is for many people, it's much more complex than that. So, we need to look at how do we create a welcoming environment for folks who don't fit into that little binary model or are uncomfortable with the pronoun maybe that people assume for them. I have always identified as a boy. I was a side male at birth. Being a boy has never really been an issue. Being a man has not been an issue. So, he, him pronouns have always been comfortable to me. So, I've had the privilege, people see me on the street, and they automatically use the pronouns that I use for myself. So, it's been comfortable That's the privilege that I have when it comes to pronouns, the ease of going through life with the pronouns that again, I exhibit, and people read for me and it just goes. The challenge becomes when somebody maybe isn't someone that we can visually put into a box, or we put them into the wrong box and so discussing pronouns is important to help create a welcoming environment. One of my examples I like to explain is that when it comes to pronouns, sharing our pronouns, whether that be on our name on a Zoom naming plate or wearing a pronoun badge along with our ID badge or whatever it might be or introducing ourselves with our pronouns, is a way to say, ok I'm here, I'm open to hearing what pronouns you want for yourself. You know, I don't want to use just my assumption in my mind. I would like to hear what you, how you want to be referred to. And in essence, it's about creating a safe environment for folks to participate. The other way I like to look at it is, for instance, let's say we're going for a walk and we're walking down the sidewalk. And we get to the corner, and we have to step down off the curb, walk across the street, and then step back up on the curb. For me, that's no issue. Maybe for many of the people listening, no issue. However, we know that there are people who can't walk down that street, whether they're in a wheelchair, have a walker, other mobility issues. So, a lot of curbs these days have a curb cut. A little ramp that'll take the person from the sidewalk down across the street and then they can get back up on the other side using that ramp. Sharing our pronouns is what I think of as the equivalent of a curb cut. It's easy for us to do. That curb cut doesn't block me from walking down the street, but it makes it more accessible to more people. Sharing pronouns makes everything a little more accessible to more people. So, people can get in the habit of sharing their pronouns from the get-go and we can just continue on down the street together being respectful of each other. And it's okay. And I'm not going to be mad at them because of that curb cut, as it were, that they put into our language. It just makes a little bit easier for them and more accessibility. So that's how I look at pronouns. And again, It's a huge issue. And when we talk about across this organization, whether it be dealing with patients, whether again, it's dealing with students, it's a very generational issue. So, we can continue these conversations and look at what does it mean to think more broadly about gender versus those two little, tiny boxes.
[Ray Watts]
So, I have a follow-up question to that. So, I find that you know when someone does have a gender identity that maybe doesn't match what people would assume, maybe they've transitioned or they just use different pronouns I find that often people will refer to them with they, them pronouns, even if they have a different chosen set. And so, I've heard opinions ranging from, you know, that's kind of the safe thing to do to make sure you're not using the wrong thing. Over to you know that in itself can be a form of misgendering where if you know that someone uses, say, she, her pronouns, and you use they, them, is that a problem, a separate problem in itself? Or is that maybe too complicated to try to navigate all the time?
[Scott Fearing]
That's a great question, Ray. Thank you for putting that out there. And it's one that I can't give an absolute answer on because some people may be fine with you using, they, them. Other people may find it offensive that you, you know, I told you it's she, her, why aren't you using that, right? So, it really is very situational. Again, it comes back to what I mentioned before, this whole idea of how we respect each other. You know, they, them is indeed a singular pronoun. And that's one of the things I hear all the time is, you know, he or she are singular and they, them is plural. And it's like, no, uh-uh, we all use they, them as singular all the time. So, if I walk into a room and there's a telephone sitting on the table, somebody forgot their cell phone behind. I might say, oh, look, someone forgot their phone. They are going to miss it. How can we get it to them? So, I'm referring to one person. I just don't happen to know anything about that person. So, I don't want to assign a he or she to that model. So, I'm just talking generically, shall we say, without genderizing. And that's in essence what they, them pronouns do is it's a way to talk to an individual, about an individual with an individual, without putting it into that, again, that binary pink and blue idea of what gender is. So again, as far as an individual sharing maybe their Zoom name is he slash they. In that case, they're saying you can use they, them pronouns. I'm fine with that. You can use he pronouns. I'm fine with that. You know, I've seen them actually with all three pronouns on there, he, she, and they. And that person is comfortable with any of those pronoun choices coming up. It's a matter of in the moment that person who is telling you, I want they, them, and you accidentally use she or he or whatever else comes out of your mouth, you may need to apologize and try to move things forward. You know again apologies are relatively simple, right? Just say, oops, I'm really sorry. I know you've corrected me. I got to get it into my brain. I got to remember this correctly. But getting used to being able to sort of change up pronouns I know the other one that people really have trouble with is using the singular they. One of the suggestions that I love giving to folks, and I didn't create this, this actually came from others, is the idea if you've got any pets at home. Start always referring to them with they, them pronouns. Take them out for a walk. Oh, look, they need to be fed, right? Get used to dropping the he, she and just thinking and your pet's not going to get mad at you if you use the wrong pronoun, right? So, they're still going to eat their dinner and drink their water and need to go out. So just get used to being able to use that to refer to shall we say one person, one individual. It's just a quick little way to practice.
[Ray Watts]
Thanks. Yeah, you kind of mentioned this earlier. You know the data kind of shows like a really big generational difference in terms of who's self-identifying as LGBTQ+. So, you know, here at the university and many places, but definitely here You know, we have a workforce, you know, where collaboration is very multi-generational What advice do you have in terms of understanding how to navigate those differences?
[Scott Fearing]
All right. So, this is about an hour-long workshop, but I will try to talk. You can tell already I talk fast and have lots of stuff to throw out there. When it comes to generationally looking at these issues, I keep thinking of way back when I was a kid and there were discussions back in the 60s and 70s and even into the 80s about the generation gap. You know, that the older folks didn't understand the younger folks or vice versa. And in many ways, when it comes to issues of gender and LGBTQ+ identities, we're kind of reliving that idea of a generation gap again. I recently found this really great piece of research looking at populations who identify as LGBTQ+ within birth generations. Kind of as a side note for decades, as long as I've been doing this work and probably even before that, there was a general understanding that approximately 10% of the human population somehow identifies as LGBTQ. For many years, it was thought that they just identified as homosexual. Then it was like, oh, they're identified as homosexual or bisexual. And then we began to understand gender issues, we sort of started to bring those in. But yet we sort of have maintained this idea that 10% of the population. Well, this research project that I found recently actually did polling of folks based on birth generations. And what they found is that for folks who are currently 79 years or older. What's known as the silent generation. In other words, they were born between 1928 and 1945. So again, they're 79 years or older. Only about 3% of that population currently identify as LGBTQ+. Now, again, keeping in mind. By that point in time at 80 years old and above, we've already lost a number of people in that population. So, they've already died. Maybe in their 60s, 70s, something like that. Again, also these people were around during the height of AIDS. So, a lot of LGBTQ+ folks died during the 80s when HIV AIDS first showed up here. Hundreds of thousands of people. So, you know, maybe that's why that number is so low. But approximately, again, approximately 3% of folks 79 age or older. We go to the next generation down, it's the baby boomers. We talk about the boomers a lot in our society. The boomers were born between 1946 in 1964. So, these are individuals who are currently age basically 60 to 78. And what research shows is, again, we've got approximately 4%, so 1% higher. Of that population identifying. Now, again, that generation was the one that was most strongly hit by HIV and AIDS, right? They were all in their 20s when that disease showed up here. And so, we lost a lot of baby boomers and maybe that's why it's only 4%. I'm at the tail end of the baby boomer generation, but I know an awful lot of my peers who I, again, had to bury when I was in my 20s and 30s who did not survive through life. I often think about them and what a different world it would be with their skills and intelligence and crafts and science or whatever had been able to exist throughout their entire life but unfortunately, they died early. So, we've got about 4% of baby boom generation identifying as LGBTQ. The next generation after baby boomers is Generation Z. So, these are people aged 44 to 59. And here we see a jump up to 7% of the population identifying as part of the LGBTQ population. We go up to the next birth generation, which are the millennials, which are people born between 1981 and 1996. So, we're talking 28 to 43 year olds. And we take a jump all the way up to 16% of the population. Identifying as LGBTQ+. Now, keeping in mind that today's kiddos have parents who are probably between 28 and 43 years old. So, they're probably that millennial generation. So, you know, we've got sort of more parents suddenly who are aware of these issues and have grown up around these issues, identifying with those identities so they may be shall we say better parents for younger kids who are coming out of the closet or dealing with things. The final generation I have numbers on is actually Generation Z. And this is people born between 1997 and 2012. So these are individuals aged 12 to 27. And of that population, approximately 22 to 28% of them identify as LGBTQ+. I know that both here at the University of Rochester as well as at RIT, that approximately a third of all the incoming classes the last couple of years have identified in some way as non-binary, gender fluid, LGBTQ+. So basically, a third of our incoming classes now identify that way. And that can lead to some generational stresses as we begin looking broadly across this entire age range. So, we're busy maybe graduating folks who work in geriatrics and they're 26 years old graduating from the University of Rochester, and they're going out and working with individuals who are maybe part of the silent generation or even baby boomers who were afraid to be out or maybe came out later in life or were never comfortable being out. And then we got these Gen Zers who are like, what's the big deal? So what? You know, I know lots of gay people. And so there can be this real tension. Okay. Likewise, maybe we've got a young person on campus or a medical student who's wrestling with coming out. And, you know, an older physician or doctor, professor who are basically saying, oh, just don't let your peers know, you know, and trying to keep them in the closet because, oh, we can't talk about those things. It gets very, very challenging as we look, again, cross-generationally, lots of stuff to keep in mind. I think, very interesting dynamics for families. I will tell you that when I do safe space trainings, probably the most common feedback I get from folks is how helpful the information is to their own families more so than even their workplaces. It's like, okay, I've got a kiddo at home. I have a niece or a nephew at home and grandpa doesn't understand. And now I can help explain things. So, this whole generational piece is really critical to help sort of build into the conversation.
[Ray Watts]
Yeah, so that moves really well into my next question, which is how do I work and home lives intertwine in relationship to identity?
[Scott Fearing]
Well, I think it's a great question. And I would actually like to throw right back to you. I won't put you on the spot though I promise but you know, when we think about how these issues come up, and we can talk broadly about OEI issues, right? Office of Equity Inclusion. Issues of adversity, however you want to name it. These issues are important in the workplace. They're important in our social lives, but they're also important within our family dynamics. So being able to have that, again, that whole sense of respect, self-awareness. Being authentic. I know for myself, when I finally came out of the closet as a 20-year-old, again, way a long time ago, it took me a couple of additional years before I could tell my family because I was just afraid. And luckily in the end, I had a wonderful family. My mom and dad even, who were part of the silent generation, were actually very good at accepting and I very clearly remember my mother saying, “Oh, well, we kind of always thought that might be the case,” right? So, understanding how these things intertwine in our work life, our personal lives, we bring ourselves to work. Our families come to work with us. And if I'm wrestling with having a kiddo at home who's maybe wrestling with gender issues, it's going to come to my workplace with me. If I'm wrestling with my own identity, it's going to come to work with me. So, these are things that again, kind of bring all of our lives together and we just need to be able to be authentic in our conversations and realize these are conversations we can have. The other thing I hear, oftentimes is how people are afraid to talk about these issues at work. The reality is these are issues that come up at work. And these are things we can talk about. Oftentimes people say, well, we can't talk about gay issues because we don't care what people do in the bedroom. This isn't about what I do in the bedroom, right? This is about how I identify, how I live my life, how I look at those little check boxes or, you know, again, from a patient point of view, what kind of care I'm getting, what kind of body parts I was born with? What do I identify with? If I'm a student, you know, again, potentially what country am I from. You know, I talked to a student a couple of years ago on campus who was terrified because they had come out of the closet here and were living a pretty comfortable gay life here as a gay man. But they knew as soon as they get home, they're going to have to go back in the closet. They're going to have to find a wife because it is death penalty in their home country to be a homosexual. And so, they knew that they had this life of lying ahead of them, instead of being able to be authentic. It's complex, but again, the important bottom line is being respectful to oneself, living authentically and honestly.
[Ray Watts]
And is that something that the university's employee assistance program can be useful for you think? Having some of those discussions.
[Scott fearing]
Absolutely. So, the assistance program can help set up counseling appointments, things like that. I think it's also really important, especially again from a family dynamic, that maybe if necessary to bring in a therapist or have a therapy session that could come through the employee assistance program. Or talk to your primary physician about a referral. But, you know, again, depending on the situation and the dynamic of it. You know, I've talked to people who are well into their 60s who have finally come out as any one of the numerous identities that are part of the LGBTQ+ communities. And then they have to talk to family who for 50, 60 years knew them as a different person. And that can be really difficult sometimes. So, getting that outside assistance sometimes is really, really important. As we, again, move forward as individuals trying to appreciate ourselves.
[Ray Watts]
I know this is a very broad question. Like you said earlier, you could easily talk for an hour, or you know maybe two, three, four, five DCs worth of content here but What are some of the ways in which the history of medicine has impacted the LGBTQ+ community?
[Scott Fearing]
Wow, that is a great question. And it's one, I'm a history nerd and anyone who's taken safe space or if anybody who listens to this signs up and takes a safe space training with me, you'll find out just how much of a history nerd I am, but there's some really important things to understand as far as where LGBTQ+ identities have been in the past. Where we are today, maybe where we're going into the future. If we look like historically, like at Aboriginal cultures, you know, here in North America, as well as literally around the world. What we know is that they knew that sometimes people were born with genitals that didn't fit that pink, blue model. And the reality is people who are born with variable genitalia, it occurs approximately one in every 2,500 births. Those individuals we now refer to as being intersex. The old-fashioned term was hermaphrodite. And that is this idea of, oh my God, they're not either a boy or a girl. You're somewhere in between, right? And so that gets morphed into an LGBTQ+ community member because it's about gender and figuring out what does gender mean and go through society. So again, Aboriginal cultures knew that. They knew that sometimes people will, you know, one kind of genitals fell in love with people with the same kind of genitals, right? They knew that somebody with this kind of genital sometimes lived more like somebody might have different looking genitals, right? So again, that whole binary model wasn't as clean-cut, neat and tidy. It was a much broader way of looking at things. That really began to change in the late 1800s, early 1900s. Part of it had to do with the work of our own local resident here, Susan B. Anthony, and challenging gender expectations. Accepting that women had brains and could vote on their own kind of an idea and trying to break that ink box of the day. At the same time, there were other things going on in the world trying to challenge issues around that gender binary. The biggest effort was actually going on in Berlin, Germany. In Berlin, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld opened up the Institute for Sexuality. He sent researchers around the world to research Aboriginal cultures. Again, from the Amazon to the Orient to all over Asia, whatever, to look at how do people deal with gender? How did they deal with sexuality, relationships? How did they deal with birthing? All sorts of things. And so, in Berlin, he was creating all sorts of groundbreaking work. He did the very first trans surgery in, I believe it was 1927. He convinced the German government in the 1920s to reissue passports to individuals who had been maybe assigned a male at birth, but now identified as female, they could get a new passport with their new gender identity on it. So again, these aren't new things that we hear about. Unfortunately, for Dr. Hirschfeld and the work that he was doing with his institute, by the late 20s, the work that he was doing was getting some, shall we say, unfavorable attention by a certain political party that we now know of as the Nazi Party. And one of the things that they ran when they ran for office, public office in 1933, one of their platforms was we need to save our country. Look what's happening. These people are destroying mothers and fathers and gender and this and that. And once the Nazi party was elected to office in 1933, one of the first things they actually did was to go to Berlin, burn the library of research that was done by Dr. Hirschfeld and his team. And they actually ended up burning the entire institute to the ground. And the work that the Nazi party sort of put into place then was, okay, we got rid of all that because homosexuality is an illness. We know there are two genders. That's what we need to push. And that's the way the world needs to work. And so, some of the first people locked up and put into concentration camps were actually homosexuals, primarily men, but women as well were persecuted, shall we say. And so, this became an illness, something that needed to be cured. And in Nazi Germany, they began to try all sorts of medical ways to cure this illness. Well, this illness they called broadly homosexual. That work that they were doing ended up landing here in the United States as well. And what we find is early research by the 1930s dealing with homosexuality. And I mean, even here in Rochester, people were being locked up in the asylums over on Elmwood Avenue and other places for being a homosexual. I had the opportunity to meet somebody here in Rochester a few years ago. Unfortunately, he has since passed. But he was born in the mid-1930s. When he was 16, so we're talking kind of the late 1940s. His father caught him as a, again 16-year-old, messing around with another boy and his father freaked out, threw him in the car, drove him to the asylum on Elmwood Avenue, had him locked up. He was subjected to two rounds of electroshock therapy. They were going to do a lobotomy on him next as a way to cure his homosexuality, and again, homosexuality was the umbrella term of the day for everything from non-binary behaviors to again gay love, two men, two women, whatever it might be. So, all of those things were put under the category of homosexuality. And the asylums were there trying to treat those people. So, after his second round of treatments of electroshock therapy, he told them he was cured. His dad came back. Picked him up, put him in the car, drove him to the southern tier, dumped him at a monastery and never spoke to his son again. He ended up living down on the southern tier. Kind of a family-less life for a number of decades. Came back to Rochester basically about three decades later, so into his late 40s. And at that point, his parents had both died. And his siblings wanted nothing to do with him because he brought such shame upon the family. And as they told him or he shared with me, that they said that he ruined their family forever. So, he was living a life of complete solitude and While he still identified as gay, he wasn't very comfortable admitting that publicly, again, thinking about his generational issues. So, the medical world has the medical world some challenges from the past as far as dealing with LGBTQ plus issues. Happily, those things began to change by the 1970s. It wasn't until 1973, actually, that homosexuality was removed from the list of mental illnesses. So, there's a long history there. On looking at the challenges created by the medical world around you know again these complex issues of gender and sexuality.
[Ray Watts]
We were just talking about that a little bit from a preservation standpoint kind of collection management whereas you mentioned, you know, that change in 1973 Where that was removed from the DSM. You know we're kind of thinking now, you know, we're on the DSM5, much different you know than it used to be. But then it kind of begs the question of, you know, are there things in there now that we'll look back on and find some shame or mistake in that should we, you know, should we be retaining the current stuff so that we can still go back to it later? Where, you know, spaces at a premium some of the materials, it's difficult to keep them in good shape, but we were just talking about this and we really didn't come to an answer per se, but you know, our history of medicine collection You know we have a number of items that you know kind of come with a disclaimer I'll say in terms of you know content and how people and groups are just described, portrayed, whatever.
[Scott Fearing]
I'm thrilled to hear that those conversations are going on because I think it is really important. And again, we've seen a lot of changes, not just this one on homosexuality, but on other things as well. As we learn and grow and be, you know, bring respect in, hopefully change happens.
[Ray Watts]
Moving on from that a little bit, how do you think geography, regional attitudes, influence where people choose to live and work in terms of receiving the best support and understanding of their lifestyle, identity, what have you?
[Scott Fearing]
All right. You're asking the good ones here today. First off, let me put out the term lifestyle. A lot of people are turned off by that. Just be careful. Okay. Again, I'm not criticizing you, but it's just an awareness building because it isn't just a lifestyle, it's who I am. It's my life. Back in the day, even just a decade ago when marriage equality was the big push, it was like, oh, well, they have that gay lifestyle, like it's somehow different. I would challenge people who were, you know, I was talking with, I'd say, okay, well, what makes my lifestyle, right? You know, lifestyle we usually think of back again in the day, there was a television show, right? The Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous, right? It all had to do with the money that we have. Lifestyle isn't necessarily something that is about how we self-identify. It's our lives. So just put that on the table again. No shaming intended, but just a learning opportunity. Geography plays a huge role in this, and it has for a long, long time. I've talked to many of the older members of our community here in Rochester who admit that back in the 60s, 70s, 80s, a lot of LGBTQ community members moved here because it was seen as a safe place. People would move from the southern tier, from Pennsylvania, from Ohio, because they heard about Rochester having gay bars, right? Things like that. It's still true today. Look at what's happening in Texas and Florida and Mississippi and other places as far as legislation. Anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and all the Florida Don't Say Gay law and things like that. So, geography still plays a huge role. And where we find biases that are pretty ugly still, right? You know, what we oftentimes refer to as transphobia or homophobia, heterosexism, however you want to think about it. Geography, more rural areas tend to have more issues than suburban or urban life. And part of it is in suburban, urban lives, we have to learn to get along with a lot of people from a lot of different cultures. We have learned how to do, for the most part, we've learned how to live with that respect. In smaller communities, it's like, okay, you live here, you've got to be one of us or else kind of an idea. And so there can be that real challenge. And I still definitely see that happen. You know, more and more folks, young people get kicked out of the homes if they're coming out as part of the queer community, shall we say, in a rural town than in an urban or suburban city. So, there are still a lot of challenges that come into play. Again, whether it be trans issues or orientation issues or whatever it might be. So broader LGBTQ+ issues and I know I just used the term queer, so let me just put that out there. A lot of people use the term queer as the umbrella term these days for LGBTQ+ communities. Some people don't like it. So, I always use or try to use it with a little hesitation because There's a lot of folks who really hate that term, but there's also a lot of people who embrace it. It tends to be generationally, so generally younger people embrace the term queer more than older people, but that's not always the case. Just be cautious and thoughtful. Again, that not everyone's going to like that term.
[Ray Watts]
Do you think that that I've kind of heard before, and I'm certainly no expert that the kind of that general generational breakdown is a little bit where the term queer would have been more likely to be used as a slur previously than today.
[Scott Fearing]
Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, if we go back, you know. Well, I don't think we have to go back. Again, if you're in a rural area, probably the term queer at the high school is going to be used to put somebody down. Again, I remember when I was coming out as a college student back in 1980 and there were resources on my college campus and I decided to try to start something. And I very clearly remember walking across the quad and having people go, oh, look, there's that queer. And because they were using it as an insult. I decided to own it and I would look at them and I would just yell back, yep, that's me, I'm the queer one. Come on, let's party or something like that as a way to try to like just break through it. And so, I've owned that term for basically most of my life. But I do remember also very clearly as a kid, I think it was fifth grade was the first time I ever had it used against me as a way to try to put me down. And so, it still exists out there as a negative. So, it's up to the individuals oftentimes whether they accept it or not.
[Ray Watts]
One thing that I've always told people, having gone through your safe space course a couple of years ago is just the way that you try to instruct is very non-judgmental. Trying to you know educate get people on the same page and you know just try to encourage respect. And I think that that goes a really long way, in terms of trying to get more people kind of in the right spot. Where maybe we have to do a little extra work to break through sometimes, but I think you do a really great job of that. And again, we really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today.
[Scott Fearing]
I'm going to jump in. I want to say thank you. That is sort of at the cornerstone of my life's work is to say, you know, we don't have to be judgmental. You may be operating with, again, misinformation that you we were told is true. You know, maybe your church told you that all gay people are, you know, the devil on earth or, you know, maybe it comes from your family, wherever it comes from but you as an individual get to pause, think about the people in your life, reflect upon that, and open your heart and mind into maybe learning something new. And that's ultimately what it comes down to. Again, part of what I do is allow people to use inappropriate language or terms that they may not necessarily know the proper way to talk about it. That's what safe space is all about is how do we help to move beyond the negativity so that we can create a positive work environment for individuals. Thank you.
[Ray Watts]
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I'll just add too, and hopefully I'm not getting too off track here but I think that's one thing that sometimes, you know, people may assume if they're quote unquote a little more old fashioned or if they're cisgender straight whatever maybe feel like they're going to be chastised or lectured. But I mean, safe space is really for them as well. It really is for everyone to kind of work through ideas respectfully and you know just come to, as you said, better understanding, better relationships, you know between coworkers, colleagues, friends, family, whatever.
[Scott Fearing]
I mean, part of, again. At the core of the work that I do, is that it's about learning about a culture you may not be part of. As an old, white, gay guy, you know, I don't know. Understand what it means to be a person of color in our world. I don't understand what it means to be a straight or gay person of color, right? There are all these different ways our identities shall we say get in the way of communication and acceptance and respected between each other. And it's just a matter of being able to open it again. Our hearts and our minds to learn. One of my pet peeves in the medical world, and this goes way back, you know, back in the 1990s, I spent a lot of times, I'm a native Minnesotan. I spent a lot of time working with Mayo Clinic and they would talk about cultural competence training. And I hate that term because you will never, you will never be competent at a culture you are not part of. You can be culturally aware, culturally sensitive, culturally wise. But you cannot be competent at a culture you're not part of. And so, you know, one of the things I always stress is just open your heart and your mind to become aware. I can't guarantee cultural competence in the end, even on LGBTQ issues, but I can build some awareness for you to help understand and open up your own heart and mind.
[Ray Watts]
I think another danger of kind of the cultural competence framing is it almost makes some people feel, I think, that it's a class that you take and then you're done. That's it, right? Where, correct me if I'm wrong, you know, you kind of recommend that people take those safe space training every few years, right?
[Scott Fearing]
Yeah, that's what I encourage. I'm actually in the process of looking at adding some additional classes that may not have the term safe space But it'll be sort of the newer ways of looking at things. What are the changes? The curriculum is constantly being updated at least, at least annually, if not even a couple times a year. I'll meet with other folks and we'll go through the curriculum and talk about what needs to be changed, what language that needs to be added, things like that. So yeah, there's lots and lots of constant change going on from an LGBTQ perspective that we need to keep on top of. So yes, continuing education. That's one of the reasons I do a program called the Safe Space Lab. It is a one-hour, online, virtual learning that's focused on a very narrow topic within the LGBTQ community. I try to do one quarterly because right now I'm so swamped with other trainings, I can't really add more, but hopefully I'll be getting some assistance to do this. So, I've done two so far. The first one was on how to be an ally. So how to be an LGBTQ+ ally. As a cisgender heterosexual person, you know, what are ways to step up, do the work? The second one was focused on trans issues, specifically on an employee within the university here who's an engineer in the laser lab, who in their 60s transitioned from male to female and is now living and working as a female laser engineer and what that meant personally, professionally, and within their little work team. The labs are available to view online. People can go in to MyPath and search for Safe Space Lab. I just yesterday booked the next one, which is going to happen in late October of 2024. And that'll be focused on intersexuality. And that'll be a discussion with a person who was born at Strong Hospital in 1957. Was born with ambiguous genitalia So for much of their life, they weren't a boy or a girl. And so, they needed to navigate gender on their own and what it meant to have variable genitalia. So that'll be the next one. And I've got a couple other ones in the works that'll be coming around, probably next year, if not before the end of this year. So, watch for the Safe Space Labs. You can find, again, find them on my path. You'll see the information about upcoming ones, but then you can also find past ones and watch them there.
[Ray Watts]
Awesome. Thank you. I had no idea that those were in there. That's really good to know. Sort of similar idea, as we wrap up, we always ask the same final question in these, which is, we ask all of our guests to recommend a book, film, podcast. Just really whatever that you think relates to the topics we're talking about in an interesting or informative way. And I saw you had a couple. Feel free to share all of them, you know, whatever you want to do. If you could just kind of tell us about that.
[Scott Fearing]
Yeah, there's a lot of them out there. Again, if you have access to YouTube or Netflix or Amazon movies or Apple TV, whatever, if you just go in and do search for LGBTQ these days, a lot of things come up. I remember about a month or so ago, I went into IMDB database and put in LGBTQ and it was page after page after page of movies and documentaries. A couple that I do want to recommend. The first one is a little bit tricky in that you have to be a university employee and you probably have to log in using your university ID because it is a movie in our library system and available, again, only to students and staff and faculty here, but it's a movie called Cured. It is a, I want to say it's like 46-minute, 54-minute movie, something like that. That looks at the role that medicine played back in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, as far as building this case that homosexuality is an illness. And then sort of the individuals, there's like literally three individuals who work together to help challenge the medical association and convince members of the medical association to be willing to come out and be honest about the fact that they were gay. And didn't want to get locked up and they didn't see themselves as sick. So, the film is, again, it's called Cured. If you go into the library website, you can find it out there and watch it. So that would be one I would highly recommend, especially for folks in the medical world there to know that piece of the history. The other one is a relatively new movie that's coming up. It just finished doing the movie, the film festival circuit. It's called 1946: The Translation That Shifted a Culture. And it's about the first Bible that was printed in the English language that included the term homosexual. And it actually interviews folks who in 1946 were part of a team at Yale University that were working on translating the original shall we say Bible verses into English. And they ended up adding the word homosexual into the mix and that really brought churches into coming into alignment with the medical world as far as looking at homosexuality as this illness, this disease, this sin that needed to be gotten rid of. At the same time, those two organizations, so medicine and religion, brought politics into it so that we find the political world also then stepping up and trying to put laws in place. Keep in mind in New York State here, when the end of prohibition it became illegal to sell alcohol to homosexuals. So, there were all these strange little legal laws that were put into place to limit LGBTQ+ identities that a lot of people don't know about. These are hinted at in that movie. A couple of other ones I'm just going to very quickly try to put up. Out there. One is a podcast. That you can find, again, if you're going into wherever you get your podcasts from, do a search for LGBTQ history. It is a history podcast series. It's, I believe, now in its 13th year, if I remember correctly. And if you go back 13 years and listen to some of the interviews, it includes people who, again, way back when were challenging the medical association, some of the first community leaders. There's some really great stuff there. From the past as well as stuff that they're doing today. So, if you're a podcast person, you got 13 years’ worth of podcasts to listen to. Another one from the past that I like to put out there is if you have access to PBS and you can find this again on YouTube, I believe. If you go into PBS, the series called American Experience. And just search for a film called Stonewall. It talks about the big turning point in LGBTQ history here in America, where the police went in to raid a gay bar in Manhattan in 1969. And for the first time really ever, the patrons fought back against that police raid and it really kicked off, shall we say, the modern gay liberation movement. Now, there had been stuff going on prior. There were actually some very effective small things happening in the 1950s and 1960s. In one of the early parts of the 60s, what was called the Homophile Movement And there were chapters in New York State as well as Detroit and in California. But those individuals running those organizations faced lots of challenges, including the fact that it was illegal for them to send meeting minutes or notes to each other because the postal service said it was pornography. So, they couldn't mail it through the mail. So, they were having to literally drive their meeting ideas and their plans and their protest rallies or whatever between those different locations. So, some really interesting stuff out there looking again historically. There's just some recommendations probably way more than people need, but there's lots and lots and lots of good stuff out there.
[Ray Watts]
Great. Thanks. I appreciate it again. Great resources like you said. Got a lot of options. Just kind of anybody hopefully can find one that sounds interesting to dive into.
[Scott Fearing]
There's almost literally no series on Netflix or wherever these days that doesn't have out gay characters. I mean, that's been the biggest change in, again, my years of doing this work. You know, when I was back when I was a kid, there were not out gay characters. If they were, there were hints, you know, they were all psycho killers or some sort of embarrassing comic fop kind of a character. But no, they were not out there invisible as far as good characters. Which today they are, which is really, I think, really helpful. And one of the reasons we see more younger people coming out because they have role models. They can see themselves that they can say, oh, well, that's me too kind of an idea. I welcome folks to come take the safe space training and other things that will hopefully be popping up. Look for the Safe Space Labs, but there's lots of information out there. Feel free to reach out to me specifically if you have questions and you want to ask me a question or look for resources. Be glad to help.
[Ray Watts]
Great. Yeah. And again, it's just so easy to get in touch with you and get into those classes, So again, thank you so much. And thanks to everybody who Listen to our podcast we hope to have another great one for you next time as well.
[Scott Fearing]
Terrific. Thank you, Ray. I appreciate your questions.