Greg Knotts:
“The Last Closet” begins with a powerfully written Foreword, by Kevin Jennings, executive director of The Gay, Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN). In it he quotes a Washington Times editorial written by Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition. The editorial was typical of many hysteria driven tirades against gay men and lesbians, speaking of the "nightmare" of a confused twelve-year old who gets "manipulated by a gay teacher, molested by a predatory gay adult, and convinced by a gay counselor to 'come out' to his parents" (p. x). Sheldon goes on to say that many parents are unaware that their children are being indoctrinated into the radical homosexual agenda in the public schools due to the infiltration of gay and lesbian teachers who take advantage of children at their most innocent and vulnerable ages.
Rita Kissen's “The Last Closet” gives voice to those gay and lesbian teachers and poses an alternate view for those concerned parents (and others) who may never have heard anything but the acerbic diatribes of people like Sheldon. It is a personal book. Kissen is motivated, in part, by having a lesbian daughter who teaches. Although her research and findings are academically presented, she clearly infuses a more personal voice; one of a heterosexual parent, who upon learning their child is gay "transforms homophobia and heterosexism from a distant political issue into something immediate, personal, and urgent" (p. 2).
“The Last Closet” is a collection of voices that Kissen helps to coalesce into a common experience of being a gay or lesbian teacher. Her voice helps to summarize the intricate weaving together of the myriad voices of the teachers from her interviews.
Kissen sifts the responses from these interviews and constructs a typology of issues concerning gay and lesbian teachers: creating your own individual identity, 'hiding' or passing as heterosexual, horror stories of homophobic encounters, beginning the coming out process and finally, being out and empowered at school.
The reader has the experience of feeling as if they are getting to know these teachers personally throughout Kissen's constructed typology. Alejandra, for instance, is a major player in the 'Race and Culture' section (p. 33), but we also hear her voice in sections like 'Moving Out,' successful out-of-the-closet-at-school stories (p. 164). It is by hearing these individual stories that the reader is better able to identify more intimately with these teachers. They become people, truly human, as opposed to characters or some general type. They have obviously shared their humanity, through heartfelt, and very often, painful stories with the author, and the author has very successfully shared that humanity, in turn, with her readers.
As these teachers attempt to develop a personal identity, Kissen links the idea of racism, sexism and other '-isms' to that of homophobia. The teachers' stories are as varied and diverse as their backgrounds. Kissen finds, however, that "a common thread of oppression runs through the struggles to make sense of identities that often resist integration" (p. 25). For instance, the teachers interviewed would often construct parallels between the struggle of growing up poor or part of a physically disabled group and growing up gay, or growing up as part of a racial minority or religious group and growing up gay. Like many gay men and lesbians, teachers and otherwise, it is difficult to create a sense of self when you do not know which part of yourself to identify with, or when to identify with it.
In the school culture, this is particularly challenging as the students' worldviews are almost always less experienced and more narrow. A teacher may self identify as a gay man or lesbian, but all the student sees is a Black man or Latina woman. A student's view of his or her teacher is often integral to the amount of learning that can transpire in the classroom environment. So while gay and lesbian teachers are struggling with defining their own identities, they need also concern themselves with the identities of their students. Some teachers find their "students who have known oppression [racial minorities] are more likely to empathize with lesbians and gays" (p. 36). Often these teachers find that their students' own experiences with racism help them when they try to counter homophobia. Yet others find their ethnic minority students to be the most homophobic. Entrenched ideas of machismo in the Latino culture or the feeling that Black students are "incapable of identifying with anyone else's oppression" (p. 35) plagues some of the teachers interviewed. In either case, whether for themselves or for their students, the teachers interviewed seek to create a kind of "renaissance" in their identities, where the various individual aspects of identity can all be embraced as people seek to understand themselves in a more holistic way.
Another common area uncovered in Kissen's interviews is that of gay and lesbian teachers "hiding" their sexuality at work. She uses the first three distinctions of Pat Griffin's 1992 study of identity management strategies to qualify the teachers' responses. "Passing" is the most closeted strategy and involves presenting oneself as a heterosexual and even lying to do so if necessary. "Covering" involves censoring their own words or actions, but not explicitly lying. Those who were "Implicitly out" assumed others knew of their sexual orientation, but did not declare it publicly. "Explicitly out" is the fourth distinction, but Kissen reserves a discussion of those who were out at school to a separate part of her own typology (p. 41).
As teachers stayed hidden, Kissen finds that they often overcompensated and became the "super teacher," volunteering for every committee and fearing making any kind of mistakes. Hiding also involved changing styles of dress and hair, making butch lesbians more feminine with items like dresses and jewelry, and effeminate gay men more masculine, trying to avoid anything flamboyant or too "over the top" (p. 43). Most often, teachers, like many gay men and lesbians in other professional sectors, edit conversations, change pronouns and try to avoid the issue of their personal lives outside of work.
At the extreme end of hiding are those that become 'one of the enemy' and compensate for their own sexuality by becoming one of the oppressors. Too often epithets like 'faggot' and 'dyke' are the common insult heard in the classroom and other areas of the school. The gay teacher who allows a student to hurl a slur like that and offers no kind of consequence simply perpetuates the homophobia found deeply rooted in education (p. 57). Worse, the teacher who joins in the homophobic joke or says nothing when a colleague refers to the girls' basketball team as dykes or the boys in the choir as fags, or even joins in deriding them, helps fuel the world of homophobia.
Additionally, gay and lesbian teachers who hide, deprive gay and lesbian students of a valuable ally during a time when their own issues of identity formation are tantamount. Kissen surmises that hiding is a living out of fear and "identif[ies] [these] nameless anxieties as internalized homophobia" (p. 83).
Many teachers, though, share different kinds of stories, where they have come out at school. This is often met with a variety of responses, from open arms to tentative acceptance to being out right ignored or even harassed. These gay and lesbian teachers are met with daily risks and triumphs involving administrators, colleagues, students and their parents. Kissen asserts:
Coming out at school, as in every other part of a gay person's life, is as much a state of mind as it is a statement. The process begins when gay teachers learn to value themselves as gay people and educators. And it continues as they come to believe that the personal costs of hiding are greater than the risks of self-disclosure (p. 158).
Reading “The Last Closet” can inspire the non-academic reader on a variety of levels. There are stories of harassment, as well as teachers and students being confronted from both within and without regarding issues of sexuality. But there are also stories of empowerment from teachers who have successfully come out, and simply just "meeting" these teachers, people that you may never have had the opportunity to meet before, exposes readers to a potentially new world. The academic reader is exposed to a world of issues concerning gay and lesbian teachers, from before becoming a teacher through all aspects of the school environment.
Kissen covers educational issues thoroughly, from dealing with curriculum, to confronting administrators, to practically dealing with students, both gay and straight. Kissen, however, only offers the voices of secondary teachers, leaving the world of the elementary gay or lesbian teacher a mystery. In her attempt to bring the personalities to life, the text, at times, can be as much personal testimony as it can be an academic discussion; at times trite, at times intricately linked to other themes in educational discourse.
Ultimately, Kissen leaves us with interesting food for thought. The world of gay and lesbian teachers is not an easy one. The world of gay and lesbian students is not an easy one. But must it always be difficult? In the multiethnic and multicultural rhetoric that our public school system is steeped in, one culture often seems to be conspicuously absent (p. 69). Advocacy for gay and lesbian issues explicitly being included in the diversity agenda seems the logical next step. Kissen argues that gay and lesbian teachers are the logical proponents for this advocacy, along with straight parents, teachers, administrators and students who consider themselves allies.
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