Working with people from differerent social strata can be immensely challenging if you come from a middle class, and possibly liberal, background. It’s a very different situation than say your average Babeland class, because the values and lives of the people can be so different. I conducted a series of with young adults from ethnic minorities once and it can make you feel like you are touching upon another world of which your understanding is, and probably will remain inadequate to some point and where you are not sure that you’re welcome.

Props to you for taking up the challenge and good luck!

However, I do strongly believe that we (unknowingly or unwillingly) learn about what it means to be male and what it means to be female from EVERY relationship, regardless of the gender and sex of the people of which the couple is comprised. I think we all communicate, via our actions as well as our words, what is expected of men and women in this world. I wish it weren’t that way. I wish notions of gender roles would become so problemitized by our communities that we could stop this charade of making sense of one another by our genitals, but at this point in our world, that is not the case. Lesbian parents still communicate about what it means to be “male” whether they are aware of that or not, etc. And I feel that looking at these expections of genders is important because it influences how these girls, and the rest of us, make sense of their place in relationships and their families.

Back to your point. Yes, I agree. As the group facilitator I have a responsibility to be open and affirming of difference and of all forms of relationships. You have an incredible point and I wish more people felt that way.

I will agree in principle but I really do not think almost any teenager is going to view that question with that philosophical detachment or that kind of thinking about gender. Instead I think that would limit them, and tell them a same-sex pair isn’t valid for the discussion. Then when you have a girl in your group who was raised by a same-sex pair, or otherwise had a model relationship that was same-sex, she will lie and make up something (as I’m sure she has to do many times all her life). Are you not allowed a change in this question, is it some statewide question format? Maybe the way it could work is if you were explicit with them in your first talk that despite question two, the pair doesn’t need to be a male and a female?

I have worked with similar populations as an adult artist, and earlier I have been in similar communities (not incarcerated myself but homeless/resourceless myself, having many friends who were in institutions and told very painful stories of queer oppression and homophobia in institutions). I think it could be very critical that on the so rare occasions they’re in contact with someone who can be actively non-homophobic, that person is explicitly acting that way. I’m not a trained therapist, only giving you my perspective from that point.