With Time to Listen, a Montgomery College Professor Finds New Voice

By Esther Schwartz-McKinzie, Ph.D.

I offer this advice for my colleagues who are eligible to apply for a sabbatical project at Montgomery College but have not done so yet:

Ask yourself where you need to grow and do it.

Sabbaticals create opportunities for personal expansion and self-challenge that are unique among the professions. I have completed two, and both are among my most profound professional growth experiences.

I am fortunate in that my work life as a faculty member has always overlapped with the things I care about in the larger world. At MC, I have been able to work to increase attention to the needs of student veterans, to educate my community about sexual violence and the power of bystanders, and most recently, to spotlight the need to pay attention to and work against the politics of hatred fueling anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment and legislation.

For me, this last issue has been incredibly personal, and my recent sabbatical project empowered me to find community when I needed it, to become a better advocate, and perhaps even to become a better parent.

When my daughter–resisting the considerable pressure that pre-teen girls feel to “perform” gender–came out as lesbian in 7^th grade, my husband and I knew that a new journey was ahead for our family. Though acceptance was never an issue for us, we found ourselves navigating new territory with family and friends. Some of this was joyful…some was very difficult.

At the same time, we saw the growing wave of anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment gaining strength, and we felt alone.

My efforts to self-educate led me to a discouraging array of “sound bites;” websites and chat forums tend to convey information in short, emotive clips, where what I needed, at that time, was deeper connection. I wanted the full, complex, and real stories of people who had traveled the road before us.

This experience sparked the idea of conducting an interview project that would enable me to ask hard questions and to understand better the journeys of LGBTQ+ people and their families as they had unfolded over weeks, months, and years.

I remember telling my publisher, Robert Giron, when I first pitched my idea to him, that I wanted to write the book that I needed but could not find.

My sabbatical gave me this opportunity.

It also gave me the time to get involved. I attended my first conference of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), and I even joined HRC’s lobbying team, meeting with Congressman Jamie Raskin and a handful of other members of Congress or their representatives to seek legislative sponsorship of the Every Child Deserves a Family Act, designed to prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals in child welfare programs receiving federal funding, and the Therapeutic Fraud Protection Act, aimed at ending conversion therapy.

Advocating, doing research, and conducting those first interviews, I began to feel stronger and more optimistic. I met parents who had become fighters for their children’s rights and children who had grown up fierce and proud.

Over the past three years, hateful anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric has indeed gathered momentum. In addition, a worldwide pandemic has challenged us in previously unimaginable ways, and young people—people the ages of our students at Montgomery College—are (as national headlines blare every day) struggling to find confidence and grit.

These challenges are multiplied for millions of youth who identity as LGBTQ+ or as questioning.

Currently, some 410 anti-LGBTQ+ bills are twisting their way through statehouses across the country. Many of these bills have to do with educational environments and promote censorship.

Florida may seem far away, yet one can see the trend in Maryland; recently, the Carroll County School Board banned the display of rainbow flags as symbols that go against a so-called “neutrality policy.” Next door, in Virginia, pending legislation seeks to force teachers to out students to their parents, regardless of the risk to these students.

Censorship and surveillance are powerful tools of erasure.

My immersion in my sabbatical project helped me to know, intimately, people who push back against silencing in their daily lives. I better understand the political dynamics currently at play, and (despite this), I have hope…

This is what knowing courageous people can do.

Moreover, my journey has deepened my admiration for my daughter, Mac, whose words open my book:

“What is more important than an attempt at understanding a different corner of human experience than the one you inhabit? What is more life-giving than an affirmation that people like you can live?”

Speaking Out, Families of LGBTQ+ Advance the Dialogue, was published in October 2022 and includes interviews with nineteen people. Some share their experiences discovering their LGBTQ+ identities and coming out, and some share their experiences as parents who also had work to do—coming to terms, defending their children, growing their perspectives.

Jennifer Sartorelli’s chapter, “You Are Perfect the Way You are,” describes parenting her child, Luca, who first came out as gay at age nine and now identifies as gender-fluid. Sartorelli, who was forced to take Luca out of Montgomery County Public Schools because of bullying, offers a reality check: while people who have generally accepting attitudes may feel at ease living in the progressive haven of Montgomery County, she saw her child treated with fear and intolerance that led to “scary stuff,” including a suicide attempt. Sartorelli has campaigned to bring LGBTQ+ positive books to elementary schools because, “By the time you go to middle school and high school, it is too late; these kids come with transphobic, homophobic opinions and attitudes.”

This, as many states have banned or are working to ban such literature—or even the possibility of discussion—in K-12.

Sartorelli and others in Speaking Out convey the message that parents must not only accept but fight for their children. Clay Adams, a young person who grew up in Maryland and is now estranged from his unsupportive family, asserts powerfully, “If you are not empathetic, you could ruin your kid’s life. My life is not ruined… but there were close calls. You risk losing the relationship. You risk losing the kid.”

I have been fortunate to give several readings and to talk with people who are moved by Speaking Out. After a Humanities Days reading at MC, one student remarked on how they now had hope that they could one day come out to their family; another memorably said, “I can feel my heart expanding.”

At the annual Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference in Seattle in May, I helped to celebrate Gival Press’s 25^th anniversary. I met people who came up to the Gival Press table in a vast hall filled with poets, writers, publishers, educators, and readers. I spoke with one woman who confided, through tears, that she was devastated by her mother’s recent rejection, her pain raw despite having come out as an accomplished adult with a teenage child. Another woman, a community college professor, told me about her role as support-person for a transgender student who had been rejected by their family. She is worried about whether this young person will survive rejection. She told me that she would give this student my book.

I hope that the stories collected there might offer (as they have done for me) a sense of connection, a feeling of shared determination.

Through my sabbatical, I have been able to have experiences and participate in dialogues that were not open to me before. My world literally expanded through the opportunity to become the learner.

Most of all, through Speaking Out, I have been able to add my voice to the necessary chorus of those who resist the current, hateful efforts to undermine acceptance and undo progress.

Read the Introduction from Professor Schwartz-McKinzie’s book Speaking Out, Families of LGBTQ+ Advance the Dialogue.

Esther Schwartz-McKinzie earned her BA from Bard College and her PhD in 19th Century British and American literature from Temple University. Her scholarly work includes efforts to recover the voices of marginalized women writers who used literature as a way to expose injustice and to expand imaginative possibilities for their readers. As a professor of English, Literature and Women’s Studies at Montgomery College, she has worked to promote access to the humanities, improve the well-being of student veterans, and to reduce violence against women and members of the LGBTQ+ community. Her chapter, “Keep ‘Doing Good’: Women’s and Gender Studies Programs and VAWA Education Initiatives Against the Tide” appeared in Theory and Praxis, Women’s and Gender Studies at Community Colleges in 2019. Also in 2019, she was among the first recipients of the College’s Excellence in Equity Award, recognizing individuals who demonstrate a commitment to social justice, equity, inclusion, antiracism, and diversity. Her photography and poetry have appeared in the Sligo Journal.

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