Reflecting on "Safe Spaces" by Vaccaro, August and Kennedy

         "Safe Space" is a book that was written by Annemarie Vaccaro, Gerri August, and Megan S. Kennedy where they bring up some really great points about issues in the lives of young lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people. This is another topic that I never think about enough therefore I never see how much of a problem it really is. In chapter 5 they discuss the importance of teaching children more about those with different sexual orientations in school so that the classroom can feel like a more comfortable and less judge-mental space for LGBT youth in the long run.
           I completely agree that your middle school and high school years can be some of the hardest years of your life, so adding the stress of being ridiculed for being gay can definitely feel like too much to bear. For one, I really do not think that starting teaching children about these issues as early as elementary school is a good idea. The way that the show called Postcards from Buster that Vaccaro, August, and Kennedy actually seemed like a good thing to show kids as a way to show them that there are families out there with two mom or two dads and they are just as happy and normal like any other family. I could not believe that people actually went out of their way to get that episode, which was called "Sugartime!", cancelled off of the show saying that children should not be shown these kinds of lifestyles. That is why I looked it up on Youtube and was glad to see most of it was leaked so that we could see it.

           A part of this chapter that I feel is important is where the authors talk about a girl that was in a Spanish class, and did not feel uncomfortable at all with being a lesbian in this class and enjoyed not only the class but her teacher as well. When this girl had wrote in Spanish that she had a sweetheart in the feminine form, since she had a female sweetheart, the teacher marked it wrong and changed it to the masculine form. I felt so bad for her and wished that she would have gone to the teacher and asked her to fix her grade because she really did mean to put the word in the feminine form and it should not be marked wrong since it is who she is. But I can understand why that would have been hard for her to go through with since LGBT youth can be so harshly judged.

My talking point for class would be to discuss why any teacher would compare homosexuality to bestiality and why a teacher's student being transgendered has to be a big deal.