A rant about a teacher

My partner is majoring in Japanese. My partner’s Japanese teacher is the head of the department and also one of only two people (one of whom is away and will be for most of our time in college) who can be my partner’s academic advisor. She has a lot of power over my partner. This is not a good thing.

The first thing about her that bothered me is that she’s commented on how she doesn’t want to produce “handicapped Japanese speakers”. By this she means she wants everyone in class to be as fluent as possible. But it doesn’t erase the ablism of it. The way she teaches class, a deaf person would almost certainly not be able to learn, and my partner has a hard time due to undiagnosed hearing problems (they probably need a hearing aid, but yay being poor with sucky health insurance). The undiagnosed making it impossible to get the school to tell her to lay off, although I doubt she would anyways.

This teacher expects you to go to class sick. Not just go to class, but go to class completely prepared and able to function as well as you can while not sick. If you can’t do this, she gets furious with you. She gets furious with you if you don’t go to class. Generally not going to class is the better option, but she still expects students to go to class no matter how sick they are and do just as well as they would on a good day.

She also communicates very badly. I don’t mean this to be a jab at her English. I mean that she’ll say “You can use your books in class” then get angry when people use their books in class. I think that what she wants to happen is that she says “You can use your books in class” and then everyone is so awesome that they don’t need to even though they have the option. Similarly, she says “you shouldn’t be afraid to make mistakes in class”. However, if you make a mistake she felt that you shouldn’t have made, she won’t call on you for the rest of the class, meaning that you lose valuable practice. Again, I think what she wants to happen is for her to say that and then everyone is so awesome that they don’t make mistakes. This sets up an incredibly frustrating situation for everyone.

My partner is a UK citizen and a permanent resident in the US. Most of the people in the class are US citizens. The teacher sometimes sends out emails with scholarship opportunities to study Japanese, at least one of which said it was only open to US citizens. My partner pointed this out and the teacher responded with an email giving a link that had to be followed through several pages just to be told “Countries who have an agreement with Japan” (which may or may not include the UK). This link was accompanied with scolding that in the future, my partner should do their own research. She then publicly said to the class not to email her about unnecessary things, which is something she does to publicly shame students.  Let me point out once again that US citizens are not expected to do their own research.

And right now my partner is passed out exhausted next to me and can’t rest as long as they need to and has another unneeded stressor added. Namely, the teacher decided that because they have a midterm tomorrow and can’t study for a test for tomorrow, my partner should just do it today. This was decided this morning, the test’ll be at 2. So rather than having the extra time to study for the midterm at a relaxed pace, my partner will instead be cramming for a test.

This is all without going into the utter fail of the sections on gender or that she forces my partner to use male first-person pronouns (when there are fine neutral options) and say they have a “wife”.

I am not happy with her at all, and there are plenty of other things I’d love to tell her off for. But the problem is that she is the only Japanese teacher in the school and essentially the only person who can be my partner’s advisor. My partner is stuck with this person for 2 of the next 3 years (plans to go to Japan for Junior year. We get to arm wrestle with the school to get them to let me go to a place in Kyoto for a semester as well because she doesn’t want people to go to Japan unless they’re doing it her way).  I do not think that she is in any way above making my partner’s life hell if I let her know that she’s already discriminating against my partner on the basis of their citizenship. Which I’m pretty sure is against the school rules to do, but I don’t know who to go to about this because, again, she’s the head of the department and I can’t risk getting someone involved only for her to take it out on my partner.

Horrible System

This school caters to rich kids. What this means is that they expect you to have a lot of spare change, so that it’s okay for them to randomly shut the dining hall to make people eat at the fundraising dinner for the school. Which really, really bites you in the ass when you aren’t rich.

One of the issues is that, if you miss a counseling appointment, they charge you money. Now, I could understand that if you get charged $X for every session, so even if you miss that session you still get charged that $X. But, no, that’s not how it works. They only charge you when you miss it. So if you’re missing it because you’re really stressed out and have been sick for a month and really did try (I set a fucking alarm and everything) and still managed to miss it, you get charged. Which is fine if you’re rich and have a lot of money on hand, so mummy and daddy give you a stern talking to about being more responsible while pumping a few hundred more dollars into their account.

When you haven’t got that much disposable income? Not so great. It costs 3 weeks of pay for every appointment I miss. I’ve missed two, entirely by accident. 2 weeks ago I realized exactly an hour late that I had an appointment. Today I really did mean to. I was reminded of it every time I checked my email. I set an alarm to go off half an hour before it. But it ended up under a pile of about 5 coats during dinner so I didn’t hear it. I didn’t have enough time today to check my email because I’ve been so tired because, once again, I’m sick. I can’t do that. I’m too stressed out to be getting counseling appointments because I keep forgetting them and get charged money I don’t have for it.

This also means that I didn’t get my prescription for anti-depressants, but I can’t do this right now. Weening yourself off something over 2 days is hardly a good plan, but it’s what I’ve got to work with. And I can’t help but be so pissed off and upset that this school is set up that this is the option I’m left with.

Blame

I really need to come up with a pseudonym for the leader of the cisCenter… But, back at the thing that “didn’t go as bad as it could’ve“, she asked me if I blamed Keith for what was happening. I’m not really sure what she wants me to say- yes. I blame Keith for his actions. I already acknowledged my part in it, but that doesn’t erase what he’s done. I do not control him, I am not responsible for his actions and he is not responsible for mine. So, yes, I do blame Keith for what he’s done because he’s the one that’s done it. But I didn’t say that, I said “I didn’t think he’s doing it on purpose, but he is doing it” or something like that.

And, you know what, no. I don’t blame Keith for what happened. I blame her. Because I don’t think Keith is the one who put those ideas in his head. She called him and his girlfriend the “Best Allies”. I’m sure she’s the one who either put the idea that being an ally means you’re allowed to mistreat the people you’re an ally of because you’re more important. And the way she treats trans people, well, it’s no surprise.

Speaking freely, or not

A few friends of mine who recently spoke at a trans workshop told me about a cis-privileged woman who had said some things that they’d found offensive. Apparently this woman later defended it because some of the trans people she knows told her it wasn’t offensive. This is an incredibly busted argument, which I will get to. But first: this makes me wonder.

If I don’t find something offensive, I won’t think to walk up to someone- even someone I know well- and say “That wasn’t offensive” unless this person has a habit of offending me and I’m trying to teach them how not to. If that is the case, then she’s in the habit of offending trans people (so it’s possible that they said this wasn’t offensive because it wasn’t in comparison to what else she has said). Or, possibly more likely, she walked up to them and asked them if it wasn’t offensive because she was hurt by the mean old trans people who dared to assert their rights as humans, putting them in a bad situation where they would have to face her privilege if they said that it was and they may not have been up to that for any number of reasons. Or maybe they tried to say it was and, like a certain leader of a certain cisCenter, she explained to them why they were wrong and decided that the matter was settled and they agreed with her because they weren’t going to waste energy arguing with someone like that. Or maybe she just meant “Well, they didn’t SAY they found it offensive so they must not have” because they didn’t say anything about it. There’s any number of things that could have happened to make a person who found something offensive not say it was, or any number of situations where a person tries to say it is but gets ignored or twisted into something else by someone who doesn’t want to accept they said something offensive.

Obviously, this is speculation and it’s entirely possible these people really didnt’ find it offensive and that’s fine. It doesn’t make this any less busted, because this cis person still assumes that all trans people are the same- that they’re all offended by the same things, so if one person isn’t offended by something, no trans person can be. It removes the rights of trans people to have personal, individualized views and opinions. It also reinforces cis privilege under the guise of “See, a marginalized person agrees with me”.

I don’t want to do this

I don’t want to email my teachers to ask for the correct pronouns

I don’t want to go to another class or room or place where everyone thinks I’m a girl

I don’t want to have to explain my gender to have any hope of getting it

I don’t want to deal with a world that refuses to acknowledge I exist except to attack me

I don’t want to feel like I have to take T even if I don’t want what it’ll do to my body

I don’t want to have to wonder if my friend’s room is actually a safe space or not or if it sort of is but she’d still vote against me having equal rights to her

I don’t want to have to wonder if I’ll ever have true friends in meatspace

I don’t want to take two tests tomorrow because on Thursday I threw up breakfast and probably had had the flu for a week so couldn’t take the test then and I haven’t been able to study well for either of them because of depression and exhaustian and still being sick.

I don’t want to continue living on this hall where I have to hear that asshole‘s voice because the walls are too thin and he practically lives here

I don’t want to have to move when he doesn’t

I don’t want the best place to move to be so far from everything else that on days like this it’ll be even more difficult to drag myself to class or food.

I don’t want to have to convince some cis guy that I’m depressed just to get medicine that may not even help

I don’t want to worry about money any more

I don’t want to deal with this

ugh

Yesterday, Friday, at 5:02 pm, literally 2 minutes after business hours (okay, well, an hour and 2 minutes after everyhitng on this @#$#@$@$@ campus closes…) I get an email that I won’t be able to pre-register for classes because of holds on my account. Basically- I need to give them money.  Pre-registration starts next week. And I won’t be able to get this settled until then.  When I check my holds, it tells me nothing of why they’re there and does say this:

“The Amount below is not the amount owed on your account, but is the minimum amount owed for this hold to be placed on your record and may not reflect your actual account balance.”

… that is so useful. No, no, really it is. So useful. Thank you. Thank you for telling me absolutely nothing about how much money I need to pay you or why I need to pay you this money and for waiting for the last @#$#@$@ second to tell me that this will effect my ability to register for classes.