PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

This Perspectives column addresses the pedagogical and ethical need for gender justice in all of our language and teacher education practices. Framing practices as gender just, rather than gender neutral or gender inclusive pushes us to consider this issue in the realm of rights, where it should be. The contributors name and nuance the reasons why we must do this and share research from this emerging area of theoretical and praxis-oriented scholarship. Kris Knisely wrote the anchor piece, to which the commentaries respond. Knisely offers us a comprehensive introduction to the issues and research that explicate how nonbinary gender identities, and personhood, are tied to language. Commentaries by Kosnick and by Flores note the current and deplorable anti-trans legislation that is part of the gender-toxic air we breathe in the United States. Moore's commentary recognizes the inertia that exists in the field of modern language teaching. Hagen and Kosnick ground their discussions in accounts from university French classrooms, and Lesniak does the same from his experiences in a middle-school Spanish classroom. These language teacher–scholar authors help us envision the benefits students feel in a gender-just classroom as well as recognize that trans pedagogies and curricula that extend beyond the classrooms of one teacher committed to gender justice can be tremendously challenging. Not all teachers have the skill or the will to model, teach, or co-create gender-just language. Not all teachers are confident in how to expand their culture teaching curricula to engage their students in learning about trans linguacultures. Being able to language, and trans translanguage across binaries is an exciting prospect for teachers and researchers interested in translanguaging. Flores’s commentary recognizes that this conceptualization of translanguaging may be a blind spot in the very active translanguaging research agenda. Moore's commentary underscores the need to do this work in a way that is critically reflexive and committed to relationality with trans people. Moore humbly observes that it is very important to avoid any assumption that knowledge of one community that is marginalized because of gender or sexuality applies to another community. Queer theory and trans theory are useful for exploring the positionality that researchers and educators hold, but also to support better and more just ways of theorizing gender justice. Moore also amplifies the fact that gender binary, cisnormative, and heteronormative materials are a powerful form of trans erasure. Critical queer and trans inclusion are, in turn, more reflective and careful of the many ways of being queer or trans, and the latter offers a way to fight back against transphobia. Many branches of applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and language education have demonstrated commitments to social justice and equity in education, but trans inclusion is a new borderland that asks us to do a deep dive into our own linguistic practices and curriculum, to examine how language is embodied and can welcome,offensively erase or exclude a person. Our classrooms are only one space where we can seek out and embrace queer and trans ways of being and knowing that normalize the acceptance of a multitude of marginalized and forever fluid identities among us. I hope that this Perspectives column contributes to our work for social justice in language education by giving us new words for talking about gender and a deep appreciation for the power of grassroots learner languaging for gender justice.