Harper Keenan, the Quartermain Professor of Gender & Sexuality in Education at the University of British Columbia, thinks a lot about how we support children to navigate their bodies. He talks to host Rafa Kidvai about how important educators are, since our kids spend so much time at school, and how instilling the values of bodily autonomy and self determination at a young age can impact the wider reproductive justice movement.
Visit Repro Legal Defense Fund to learn more. Follow Harper on Twitter at @HarperKeenan.
If you have questions about your legal rights or access to abortion, go to the Repro Legal Helpline or call 844-868-2812. If you are being criminalized for something that happened during a pregnancy, go to reprolegaldefensefund.org.
Rafa Kidvai: This is Nobody Criminalized, how the state controls our bodies, families, and communities. I'm Rafa Kidavai, director of the Repro Legal Defense Fund If/When/How. On our podcast we talk with experts, activists, and advocates whose daily work intersects with reproductive justice and the state's targeting of marginalized communities. Sister Song, A reproductive justice collective led by women of color, defines reproductive justice as the human rights to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities. You will hear us restate the shared commitment throughout our interviews because regardless of the issues guests focus on, that is ultimately the world we all intend to create.
Our guest today is Harper Keenan. Harper is the quarter main professor of gender and sexuality in education at the University of British Columbia. A former New York City elementary school teacher, Harper knows a lot about breaking down complex social issues in a way kids can understand, like bodily autonomy.
Harper Keenan: It's the idea that your body is your own and I think that's the way I talk about it with children is that you have the right to decide what happens to your body and what you do with your body.
Kidvai: Harper spent the last year going back to kindergarten as he explains it, to see how institutions teach kids to think about their own bodies and how kids are navigating those spaces. Through school boards and book bans, extremists are working hard to demonize queer and trans people. As we imagine a future rooted in reproductive justice, we felt it was essential to think about how we are engaging with our youngest community members. A quick note, this episode contains a brief story about bullying, racism, and gender-based violence. Please take care of yourself as you listen, listen with someone who can support you or read the transcript if that's more comfortable for you.
Thank you so much for making time to make this interview. I'm super excited to get into it with you about all things bodily autonomy, self-determination in young people. I would like to ground us in a question about how you describe your work and what draws you to education.
Keenan: Most of my work is about how adults navigate the social world with children and the ways that either reproduces the structures that exist in society that are sometimes confining for all of us or transform those structures into greater freedom for us all.
Kidvai: Since you're a professor, I'm going to ask you for some definitions. How do you define self-determination and bodily autonomy?
Keenan: I will say that perhaps particularly as a trans person, I'm somewhat resistant to crystallized definitions, but I'll give this a shot. The way that I think about self-determination in a lot of my work is through the framework of gender self-determination, particularly as it was articulated by activists like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson and the Star Manifesto in the seventies, which simply stated, we want the right to determine the use of our bodies. So naming and describing our bodies on our own terms and then thinking about what we want to do with our bodies in public space in a way that is responsible to one another and to a collective. Bodily autonomy is deeply intertwined with that. Ultimately, your body is yours. That's how I would talk about it with the kids that I work with.
Kidvai: You obviously think it's important to talk to the kids that you work with. Why is it important for parents, caregivers, other educators to support kids in their understanding and assertion of their bodily autonomy?
Keenan: We live in a world where essentially from the moment that we're born, particularly in places like the U.S. or Canada, where I live now, children's bodies are taken into other people's hands. Other people catch babies and that's important to keep them safe, but then their bodies and minds move through the world with a great deal of adult control and management over them. And so I think it is important for children to be able to think critically about those power structures that govern the conditions that their bodies move through.
So thinking about when you go to school, how do you navigate an environment where someone else is essentially telling you what to do with your body at all times? When people are telling you everything from how to position your hands when you're listening to someone, where to put your eyes, where you can and cannot go? And some of that is all done in the name of keeping children safe and so some of it is important, but I think having children develop an ability to assert oneself to the structures that govern your own life is really important. And that includes even your parents to let your parents know if someone is violating your physical consent in some way. We want children to be able to articulate that to the adults around them.
Kidvai: I have 75 follow up questions. I'm going to try to limit it to three. The first one is it ever too early to be having a conversation around self-determination and bodily autonomy?
Keenan: The short answer is no, I don't think that there is an age that is too young. I tend to follow a fairly well known educational psychologist whose work was really big in the seventies named Jerome Bruner, who essentially argued that anything can be taught in some preparatory fashion to a child at any stage of their development. So you might communicate about those ideas in a different way. A two-year-old isn't necessarily going to understand the words bodily autonomy, but they are developing a sense of, my body is different from your body. What does that mean? What's the separation between us and how do I learn to interact with other people in a way that takes care of my body and takes care of other people's bodies and keeps us all safe? I think you can absolutely start to have these conversations very young, but you have to do it on the terms of children themselves.
Kidvai: You talked about schools and just the spaces that kids are in, and I guess I have the distinct memory which I think many of us share of going to school and the feeling that it gave me, which was that I should succeed in this space, but that success looks like really giving into the power of those around me. I was going to be seen as good, as easy, even intelligent if I somehow succumbed to that power. That seems like it's intentional and not just something that I experienced. Do you feel like schools are designed to really set kids up for understanding their bodies and having bodily autonomy or does it feel like a space of control to you too?
Keenan: I'm of two minds about this question because on the one hand, the U.S. public school system was created for a variety of different reasons and it was what might be called a interest convergence of a lot of different people's ideas about what was best for children. So the U.S. educational system was created in part during a time when people were starting to become conscious of the problems with child labor and instead wanting to invest in children's intellectual development, growth, things like hygiene and social learning, et cetera. And there are lots of problems with all of that, but I think there was some benevolent attempt to taking children out of factories where they were facing really dangerous working conditions and taking them and putting them in schools.
And at the same time, another thing that was happening, and this is right at the beginning of the 20th century, was a mass influx of immigrants into the United States and there was a desire to assimilate this population into what it means to be an American. And it was at that point that we start to see systems of compulsory schooling start to emerge. Another thing that is going on is that in the United States, classrooms are crowded places. You've got maybe up to 30, sometimes as many as 35 children in a room with one adult. And so figuring out how all the people in that room are going to be safe together results in a lot of disciplinary measures like making sure that children stay in their seats and aren't leaving the classroom without an adult knowing where they are, et cetera.
So some of that I think is done with benevolent intent, but the impact is that kids' bodies are very disciplined into sitting in desks, looking only at the teacher, focusing on the person who holds the most power in the room, which is to say the adult, and not speaking very much. I will say the exception to that that I get really excited about is in the world of preschool and pre-K where we tend to see children have more freedom to move around and play with each other and speak to one another and not just to the teacher. So that gives me some hope.
Kidvai: How we're talking to kids about consent, their bodies, their self-determination at the youngest of ages I imagine impacts them throughout their lives.
Keenan: So I recently spent a year essentially going to all day kindergarten with five-year-olds, and one of the things that was really clear in observing their experiences at school is how quickly young children learn the social cost of non-conformity. One child that I was working with who from what I understand of him, identifies as a cisgender boy and grew up in a Mexican-American family with indigenous heritage as well, had long hair. And when he came to school one morning and almost immediately upon entry, one of his peers who he'd been in some social competition with, started shouting at him, you've got long hair, you're a girl. And so he starts to express some frustration. I'm not a girl, I'm not a girl, and more children join in, in this taunting. And then the teacher skirts the moment with the kids and starts the morning meeting, says, okay, we need to get back on track.
And then later in the day during recess, the same child is encircled by a group of his peers calling him a girl again. And it culminates in that group of kids pulling his pants down in public as a way of investigating his gender. And so this resulted in a great deal of shame, embarrassment, violation of this child's bodily autonomy and consent in public. And then the consequence of this was that a few days later, he came back to school with his hair completely cut to a buzz cut, and his mother said, all of his brothers have long hair. He is always been really proud of it, but it can't get in the way of his schoolwork.
And I think that line is really revealing. The social cost for this child of non-conformity to Eurocentric understandings of white masculinity that are being imposed on this child is interfering with this child's ability to be academically successful. And so I think this is a lesson that children learn over and over again throughout their entire K to 12 experience. And then it makes us all collectively much more afraid to resist the impositions of social control around gender, around embodiment as we get older because that moment doesn't just teach that one kid to be ashamed of his hair. It teaches all the other children in the classroom to be that way.
Kidvai: Oh, that was really heavy. Thank you for sharing. Yeah, I was just thinking about how high the cost must have felt to that kid and how it gets confirmed that it's so high, getting in that specific example like someone's body, their clothes being taken off in public, which is such an affront to our sense of self to feel like, wow, the risk is actually violence. There's also been an attack on non-school learning spaces. I'm specifically thinking about Drag Story Hour. Tell me why Drag Story Hour is important.
Keenan: I've worked with Drag Story Hour for a number of years. I'm not a drag performer myself, I'm just an appreciator and a fan. Drag Story Hour is exactly what it sounds like. It is drag performers coming into typically libraries or community centers to read books aloud in drag, and those books tend to be about things like family diversity, inclusion, finding your voice, standing up for people who might be marginalized. It's a wonderful program and the kids absolutely love drag performers because they're larger than life. They have really captivating, exciting energy. They tend to wear a lot of glitter and bright colors, and they're a lot of fun to be around.
More recently, these story hours have really come under fire from the right wing in the United States because it is being interpreted or sold to us by the right as an indoctrination into queer culture for children, which is a problem only if you think it's bad to be LGBT. I think that queer communities have a long history of finding ways to practice community safety when our safety has been neglected by the systems that are theoretically meant to protect us. And so these story hours have been created with that in mind. They were created through a partnership between a group of drag queens and a queer parent who was going into public school with her own child and saying, I feel really uncomfortable with this climate for my kid. And as a parent, I want my child to be connected to culture and the beautiful things about it in a way that they can really understand.
And so Drag Queen Story Hour tries to create that beautiful world of queer culture in a way that is welcoming and appropriate for children, and they do it really well. And unfortunately a lot of people in the U.S. seem to find that threatening, but at the end of the day when you attend the Story Hour and you watch a bunch of kids standing up and singing and getting really excited to read books, it's easy to see the value in a program like this.
Kidvai: So what you're describing sounds incredibly wholesome and beautiful, and yet attacks on Drag Story Hour intentionally frame folks as predatory or groomers. And then similarly in the repro space, [inaudible 00:14:40] describe a fight for abortion as callous or cruel when it's actually about creating a world that is safe and beautiful. How does this total flip of reality feel to you?
Keenan: The people who are attacking programs like Drag Story Hour have done very little to meaningfully support children in the United States. These are people who are actively working to privatize public education. These are folks who are working to stymie efforts around public childcare, around healthcare for children, supporting pregnant parents, et cetera. Really disappointing, devastating, really to see people falling for it when these folks have done nothing to demonstrate a meaningful commitment to children. In fact, they've done entirely the opposite.
Kidvai: We've been asking everybody this. I would love to hear what this means to you, which is that we call it Nobody Criminalized, and I just want to know what that brings up or what comes to mind.
Keenan: Well, I would love to see public education systems that didn't result in criminalized bodies. Some bodies are criminalized and some are not. Some are valued and that terrain is constantly shifting in different classrooms, in different places, in different social contexts, et cetera, but someone is always being criminalized at school, almost always. I've never been in a school where I'm not seeing children being marginalized or punished or told that their behavior is out of line or outside the rules. And so I think that's where frameworks around abolition are really helpful to me in thinking about education, which is what are the roots of how a person has become seen as criminal in this setting, and what can we learn from that to prevent the criminalization of people in the future? How can we reorient ourselves to relating in this environment such that we are not criminalizing young children from their earliest experiences in public space?
Kidvai: So many people don't know that schools have suspension hearings for children that function like sham courtroom proceedings. I remember the decision from one hearing that read, "A gun is a gun," after the child brought a Lego sized gun to school citing to their zero tolerance policy for violence, which can get seen as violent and dangerous is obviously about race, disability, income status, et cetera. And so much of that happens in the name of telling us that we're being kept safe when it's obviously not that. Right?
Keenan: Is it the role of the public institutions that are meant to support us to draw enclosures around who we are allowed to be and become places like schools, doctors, hospitals, the law, et cetera? Or is it about supporting our material needs to be able to take care of our bodies in ways that we define on our own terms? And I think there's a lot of overlap around the experiences of trans people, and some of it is overlap in people's own individual embodiment who are navigating being pregnant, facing challenges around access to reproductive healthcare, et cetera. There's lots and lots of overlap, but I think just that basic principle of who gets to decide if we are able to competently assess our own needs? Because we have been granted the agency to do that, then what is the role of public institutions? It should be, in my opinion, and I think this is a uniting factor here about helping people to meet their material needs as they articulate them for themselves, whether that is access to abortion or access to trans healthcare or self-definition in the eyes of the law.
Kidvai: On that note, I'm looking for examples that you have in your attending kindergarten of people that are getting it right in terms of really laying the groundwork for young children to understand self-determination.
Keenan: It is easy to look at the headlines right now and feel so discouraged about what is happening for LGBT people in American schools and around critical race theory and education. It's easy to feel hopeless. To feel hopeless though is to let the haters win. And the reality is that there are a lot of people working really hard to support queer and trans youth and youth of color in American schools. And so I want to just highlight an afterschool program in Northern California that is actually led by a staff that is primarily queer and trans people of color. It's based at an elementary school and what's amazing is the folks who work there enter the school environment just as the day is wrapping up and then they completely remix it.
For example, when children in the afterschool program move through the building, they don't walk in single file straight lines. They're taught to be safe with their bodies and to be mindful of the people around them, but you're more likely to see packs of kids walking together. You're also more likely to see children walking on their own between places, and part of that is supported by the fact that those educators have a much more enhanced communication system. Every adult has a walkie-talkie that they carry, and they're in constant communication about where kids are going, Hey, I'm sending Rafa over to the art room. Can you make sure that they get there? So there's so much care put into supporting children, but that care and support produces a much higher level of agency for those children.
Even the simple act of being able to walk from one classroom to the art room by themselves teaches children something about what they are being entrusted to do. During their afternoons at this program, which is called Rainbow House, there is a therapist who is a black woman who is on site and kids can just check in there. The lights are dim, there's a lot of sensory materials for kids to play with, or they can just have a conversation with her, and it's always there for them as a place to chill out. If they're feeling a little revved up in the classroom or like they're having really big feelings that might become unmanageable in a group setting, that place is always there for them and they're always granted permission to go and-
Kidvai: I need that place now.
Keenan: Me too. It's really cool because if a kid is going there all the time, then they have a conversation with that child about what's going on. All the curriculum is about artistic production, and they try to be responsive to the student's interest. The child drives the curriculum, and that creates a culture of hospitality to creativity that's really different from the culture of school that really tends to incentivize conformity and reproduction of the conditions of society. It's a really beautiful thing to witness. And at the end of the year, this program culminates in an original musical that the children produce, which typically takes up themes from whatever's going on in the world at the time and reimagines the conditions that they're living in, broadly speaking. So last year it was all about breaking free of technology during the pandemic, and that was beautiful. It was called Together Land, and it was just lovely to watch.
Kidvai: I felt so many things when you were talking, one of them was that it sounded really safe, but it also makes me feel like this feeling of being trusted. I trust you to do hard things, make this walk from one part of this building to another, and I've given you the tools to do it, and now you have skills and I trust you. And I feel like that would go a long way with kids, and really trusting them to be able to make decisions about themselves and then blow that up to all the big parts of our lives, whether it's consent in romantic relationships or whether it's our gender journeys. It's this idea that you can trust yourself, you can trust your inside feelings and your thoughts. You can navigate hard things. It just sounds like it sets folks up for something that's quite incredible.
Keenan: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I guess just to riff off of what you just said, I think something that happens in schools a lot is that we mistake efficiency for safety. So this idea of here's how children should move from one place to another, here's how a child should get the materials they need to do the task I've assigned them to do. But actually none of that is particularly empowering. It doesn't create agency for children. Even things that are so simple as if I need a pencil, can I go get one? I can't work on my work if I don't have a pencil. And I think one of the things that I appreciate about this program, Rainbow House, is that it is so highly relational and so much less focused on efficiency that a lot of the decisions that they're making are coming from a desire to teach through the way they're relating to children. So the way that I'm communicating to you is teaching you something. I think that's a really incredible reorientation to education.
Kidvai: This has been a really moving and lovely conversation, Harper. Thank you so much for joining us.
Keenan: Thanks so much for having me. It's been great to be here.
Kidvai: Here's food for thought as we wrap up the episode. Harper is challenging educators to think about how they can support children in navigating bodily autonomy and self-determination. With school being the place children spend the majority of their time, we should be asking how are the systems that are already in place helping or hurting kids as they're discovering who they are?
Harper Keenan is the quarter main professor of gender and sexuality in education at the University of British Columbia. You can find out more about him at harperkeenan.com. I'm Rafa Kidavai, the host of this podcast and director of the Repo Legal Defense Fund at If/When/How. The Repo Legal Defense Fund funds bail and strong defenses for anyone criminalized for something that happens during pregnancy. Learn more at reprolegaldefensefund.org. If you have questions about your legal rights, go to reprolegalhelpline.org or call (844) 868-2812.
Nobody Criminalized is produced by LWC Studios for the Repro Legal Defense Fund at If/When/How. Sage Carson and Jen Girdish are the media and marketin g team at If/When/How. Pamela Kirkland is the show's producer, Pa Velasco is the managing producer at LWC Studios, Kojin Tashiro is a lead producer and mixed this episode. And remember, keep your community safe and don't talk to cops.
CITATION:
Kidvai, Rafa, host. “It’s Never Too Early to Teach Bodily Autonomy.” No Body Criminalized, Repro Legal Defense Fund at If/When/How. April 17, 2023. Reprolegaldefensefund.org.