Tag: sexuality

Sexual Configurations Theory as a Tool for Vocational Reflection

The post discusses the significance of supporting students’ understanding of their sexualities beyond traditional frameworks, emphasizing sexual configurations theory (SCT). SCT, developed by Sari van Anders, encourages deeper reflection on sexual identities, acknowledging diverse lived experiences and the interplay of various identities. This approach fosters authentic self-discovery and meaningful relationships in the context of vocational exploration and discernment.

silhouette of a couple behind a rainbow flag
Photo by Pavel Danilyuk on Pexels.com

In my first job after graduate school as a visiting professor, I did not advise students officially, but happily mentored many of them. Because I was both out as a queer person—genderqueer lesbian at the time—and open about my own struggles as a first-generation college student, students often shared with me their own identities, questions, challenges, and longings. One day over lunch at a language-immersion table, a student told me that she was having a really hard time. She had long known that she was queer and recently had experienced her first relationship with a woman. Their time together was short-lived—the partner had graduated early and moved away—and the student didn’t feel like it was a serious relationship. She judged herself for the intensity of her feelings about it and its end. I listened, thanked her for sharing with me, and reminded her that relationships don’t need to be serious to be important.

Continue reading “Sexual Configurations Theory as a Tool for Vocational Reflection”

Rethinking Vocation in Gender and Sexuality Studies

Both Gender and Sexuality Studies and vocational exploration invite students to rethink assumptions, to contribute to the world in which they want to live, and to be ready to redesign the shape that their engagement will take over a lifetime. 

Major Decisions, Major Discoveries: Exploring Vocation in the Undergraduate Years, a series of posts from Nebraska Wesleyan University about helping students develop meaning and purpose as part of their major coursework 

Vocation is a shared language for me and the students I teach, advise, and supervise. Not only are students still identifying their future careers but I, after 25 years as a professor in religious studies, am also still exploring my vocation by directing the Gender and Sexuality Studies program, which offers an interdisciplinary, advocacy major that draws on the humanities and the social sciences. This role illuminates for me that what we do as teachers, professors, advisors, and internship supervisors isn’t about sharing what we think we already know. In this program, the collaborative, high-impact practices do not include lecturing (see the AAC&U on high-impact practices). Instead, we engage students at the intersections of what we control and what we don’t, what we are good at and what we can do for others, and what can be planned for and what we encounter despite our planning—without perfectionism or self-deception. Both Gender and Sexuality Studies and vocational exploration invite students to rethink assumptions, to contribute to the world in which they want to live, and to be ready to redesign the shape that their engagement will take over a lifetime. 

Continue reading “Rethinking Vocation in Gender and Sexuality Studies”

Supporting LGBTQIA+ Students in the Pursuit of Meaningful Work

As educators and advisors, we best serve our queer students not by adopting a one-size-fits-all kind of approach but rather by helping them understand and articulate the relationship between their sexual and gender (and other intersecting) identities and their emerging and evolving professional interests.

A few years ago, one of my queer-identified students shared with me some resume advice they had received from a colleague in our career center: not to include their internship at an LGBTQIA+ advocacy organization because potential employers would respond negatively. This advice confused and frustrated the student. They were out, and their queer identity had played an important part in their vocational discernment. This internship had reinforced their sense of calling by clarifying and strengthening their emerging professional commitment to work in the queer community after graduation. Not surprisingly, this student wanted to know what I thought they should do.

Continue reading “Supporting LGBTQIA+ Students in the Pursuit of Meaningful Work”

Teaching Trans Vocation

First and foremost, our trans students must experience our classrooms as hospitable spaces that integrate their entire selves, explicitly embracing their gender and sexual identities as meaningful sites of knowledge.

In the final chapter of Leslie Feinberg‘s 1993 novel, Stone Butch Blues, Jess Goldberg, the novel’s trans protagonist, attends a lesbian and gay political rally in New York City. As Jess listens to the speakers testify to the oppression they have experienced, she realizes, “This is what courage is. It’s not just living through the nightmare, it’s doing something with it afterward. It’s being brave enough to talk about it to other people. It’s trying to organize to change things.” This encounter sparks Jess’s queer calling, one that allows students who read the novel to see their gender and sexual identities as playing important roles in the discernment of their vocations.

Continue reading “Teaching Trans Vocation”

Our Call to Trans Flourishing

We must continue to transform our campuses and communities into more just and humane places so that our transgender students can flourish and lead magnanimous lives.

This past year saw a dehumanizing anti-LGBTQ+ legislative season in many states across the country, which has threatened our transgender students’ well-being and limited their vocational exploration. To support their vocational journeys, we as educators need be more fully responsive to the particular challenges that they face. As we accompany them, we must continue to transform our campuses and communities into more just and humane places so that our transgender students can flourish and lead magnanimous lives.

Continue reading “Our Call to Trans Flourishing”