psychic disequilibrium

Reading an article by Dean Spade about his thoughts and experiences with the use and misuse of pronouns, my brain stopped reading the moment he quoted Adrienne Rich. Spade mentioned hearing this quote in a training, and I suppose I’m reading it in a training of sorts, as well.

Rich said, “When someone with the authority of a teacher describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing.”

Two people, whom I hold with the highest level of regard and respect that I can, suggested that I read this article, for two separate reasons. Page Valentine Regan suggested I read Spade to help me navigate moments as a teacher when I recognize the “pronoun go-round” lands on those most vulnerable. Bethy Leonardi suggested I read it as a student in further exploration of why she still wants students to share their pronouns verbally and on zoom profiles.

So, I’ve read this Spade piece more than once now, still in training. Still learning.

My learning brings up a lot of curiosities, a lot of dreaming. And sometimes it brings those moments that simply crack open a piece of self that has been waiting, dormant.

The Rich quote did just that for me. And with my bubble of sudden connection came a question.

How exactly have I been experiencing a world that teachers/educators/influences described as one that I’m not in?

Rich calls it “psychic disequilibrium.” And I’m curious about this because I didn’t realize that what I was feeling as a child, as a teenager, as an adult was disequilibrium. When your given circumstance consistently imposes disequilibrium, it’s impossible to know what balance feels like.

I am biracial, but I’ve never described myself that way until last year, 2021. My family never used the word biracial, and I’ve never been referred to as biracial. In fact, my mother told me about two months ago that she’s never even thought of me as biracial.

I am queer. And I didn’t say that aloud – or even to myself – until 2018, when I was 37 years old. Much of my family probably still doesn’t know. And if they do, it’s because someone whispered a rumor they heard.

Until my late 30’s, I lived within the confines of a narrative that decided I was a certain thing and a certain person. Maybe this is why I have never quite fit in with my family or past circles of friends.

To be clear, that does not mean that I wasn’t loved or that I wasn’t embraced in my family or my circles of friends. My family, in their various ways, have shown me love. My past friends showed me love. This is one facet of my privilege, to have been embraced by folks who don’t truly know, understand, or agree with me.

The distinction I’m hoping to make is that I didn’t see myself in them. I didn’t see them in me, either, but I didn’t recognize that. I became very good at performing belonging and likeness. I became so good at it that I didn’t realize how far lost in the narrative I was.

I’m still working through it.

But the narrative is strong, even though it was insidiously tacit. I was not only seen as straight, but as a straight slut. The pretty, thin one who tried to get attention and validation promiscuously. Or so it goes. But gay enough to be titillating to straight dudes.

I was white. American. But Japanese enough to be seen as a peripherally cool stereotype in my exoticness.

I am also a world of contradiction. Tenacious but prone to subservience. A brash leader and a timid follower. I have been a fierce advocate for equity and justice and a backward-ass oppressor.

And all of these facets of my identity are real. But roughly only half of those, I think, are authentic.

I am nowhere in the storybooks. I am nowhere in the literature. There is no affinity group for whatever this life is that I’m living. And this, too, despite its myriad challenges, is a great privilege.

But I imagine that without my brain working the way it does, without my self-permission to place value on weirdness, without my absolute refusal to acquiesce to things I disagree with, I wouldn’t see this as much of a privilege.

This realization of my disequilibrium makes me wonder about my students. It makes me wonder why what Spade is trying to convince the unconvinced of is such a daily goddamn battle. And it makes me wonder about the students who haven’t come to the realization that they’re being mis-gendered, who are still surviving while buried under the false narratives they were born into. It makes me wonder about the students who are unknowingly disregarding their heritage because they don’t actually see themselves in that history.

My own experience tells me that some folks are able to pass really well as the things they’re not, even when they don’t yet recognize that that’s what they’re doing. And this experience has me curious about what, if anything, could I do as a teacher to change a child’s way of seeing themselves and being in the world.

All of my imagining and dreaming as a young person revolved around histories that weren’t mine, or were only partially mine, and that didn’t include the other intersections of my identity. I wonder how many of my students can say the same. And how much of that was my fault -- almost more than I can bear to consider. But I must.