CMU School of Drama


Thursday, July 19, 2018

Teacher and genderqueer Capital Fringe performer Al Baker's personal story

DC Theatre Scene: Being genderqueer or part of the LGBTQIAA* community in the Theater world is nothing new and usually accepted without much question. To be part of that same world and out about it in the Teaching field is not as frequent, nor is it encouraged. Enter code switching stage left!

1 comment:

Mitchell Jacobs said...

I cannot express how much I admire Al Baker and their bravery in writing about this online. The societal pressures surrounding genderqueer persons in the larger world are so oppressive, but even within the LGBTQIAA community there is a lot of harassment and intolerance toward non-binary people. Cisgender people often find it hard or even impossible to understand the struggles that a person goes through in their realization of their gender identity. A large social stigma that can even come from transgender individuals is the false idea that gender fluid or non-binary people just don't want to decide. Even in my town, which has a small LGBTQIAA population, the transgender community separates themselves from the small number of out non-binary individuals because they don't understand that they are going through the same issues. Also, Al is unfortunately right that the L and G parts of the community tend to be the harshest on genderqueer people because they forget that we are all a part of the same community. It really disappoints me to hear and see personally that there is so much intolerance within the LGBTQIAA community, because it is impossible for the rest of the world to accept us if we cannot accept each other.