I spent my spring break this year at my home in New Jersey. Every time I’ve come home since the beginning of my time at Duke, I seem to bring home with me a new or controversial topic of discussion—that leaves my family and I debating at the kitchen table for 45 minutes after we finish eating dinner.
This time home, I was out to dinner with my dad, mom and grandma. And before I knew it, my family and I somehow got to talking about newer theories of gender and sexuality. So, not typical dinner conversation for my family, or many other families, I’m sure.
I am far from an expert on queer theory, gender theories or sexual studies, but I have learned much about the topics since coming to Duke in August. In high school, I never learned about the development of human sexuality or gender identity. A year ago, I couldn’t tell you what the gender binary was or explain to you the difference between someone who is cis- and trans-gendered.
For me, coming to Duke threw open the doors to a world of gender identities which I rarely, if ever, had encountered before. I was exposed to different identities and people. My friends and I got Love = Love t-shirts, and I saw people around campus wearing them proudly. I’ve seen countless advertisements for Women’s Center, Baldwin Scholars and CSGD events relating to gender and sexuality. Without ever having taken a class on these topics, my knowledge has grown exponentially since coming to Duke.
Learning so much about the world of gender relations made me feel a false sense of moral superiority over those who didn’t know as much about the topic as I did. So I sat down to dinner with my grandma with a much bigger head than I’ll ever deserve to have.
My grandmother, on the other hand, never went to college. She is also the kindest, most thoughtful person I have ever met and will probably ever meet. So after I recited my litany of scholarly facts and figures at dinner, my grandma took about a quarter of the time to add her two cents to the conversation.
“You just have to be nice to everyone,” she said when we brought up social movements. And with that, she had hit the nail right on the head. No fact or figure I could ever cite could be as truthful as what she said. Oh yes—I played the role of overconfident college student, a la "Good Will Hunting," so well.
From the day I was born, my parents taught me to treat others as I wanted to be treated. And when I went to school, I learned to share and be nice to my classmates. They were, in effect, the same message: Be nice to everyone. All sizes, shapes, colors, identities. It’s not a grand statement. It is not padded by facts, figures, dissertations or reports. Perhaps that is why it is easy to forget.
From time to time, we all might need a reminder that, for the most part, all anyone wants is to be treated nicely. It’s an essential fact that can get lost among others. In a time where groups are in the throes of various theoretical, factual, and moral arguments about sexuality, one need only be armed with the fact that others should be treated kindly. This strategy is far from the answer to all of our problems regarding gender and sexuality issues—or any identity-based issue—but it’s not a bad start.
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