I'm pissed

So I haven't blogged in a few weeks. With finals and commencement just around the corner it's hard to find the time to even breathe. But now I'm pissed. I got into it with one of my fellow staff members last night. Just to backtrack a little bit: I'm a resident assistant the University I go to. Alright back to the present - so I got into with this staff member who will remain nameless. We began to become nostalgic about our English teachers from our freshman year. I stated that I admired my teacher because she was a lesbian. My colleague (I loosely use this term here) proceeded to tell me that I was a bad person. I gently inquired why. He told me that you shouldn't like someone just because they are this or that. Point well taken. I told him that it wasn't the same thing; however, to state that I like teacher so and so because she is straight. He told me that it was. What a douchebag. So I had to explain the niceties of classroom dynamics at a predominantly white heterosexual male institution (of aformentioned dominant group my colleague is a member). I stated that his privilege was invisible to him. His perspective is always taught in the classroom while the gay/lesbian perspective does not usually arise. These experiences are not honored or praised in any way. We have Western Civilization taught as the default history. Patriarchal Sexist Catholic Theology courses taught. These are part of the core of our Jesuit education. The very construction of epistemological discourse has been, well, constructed by white propertied heterosexual men on the backs of those minority groups whose voices are squelched. So yes sir, I did like my teacher because she was lesbian because she taught to my experience. She spoke of my existence in a way that is quieted in dangerous and oppressive ways in the conventional classrooms at Marquette University. I could see myself in her. I could hear the voice of the oppressed, whose existence I was left painfully unaware of until that moment. No longer bound by the immanence of patriarchal white-washed one-sided oppressive institutional frameworks dictating and canonizing what is of educational value she pulled me into transcendence. So yes, I liked my teacher because she was a lesbian you fucking asshole.