One of the biggest draws of an international education, both for the students who want one and the staff who work in the sector, is the diversity it can create – in many different ways.
This is especially true for students who choose to study in the US and the UK. As major study destinations, both welcome hundreds of thousands of international students a year.
Often, students are able to find a sense of freedom when they study abroad unlike any other. Jena Curtis, a professor of health and a faculty leader of study abroad programs at the State University New York Cortland, helped conduct survey research of US students who were doing just that.
“One of the things that we heard consistently from them is that studying abroad was a place to sort of try out new identities.
“That’s always been the case for studying abroad. And one of the reasons we love international travel,” they note.
A volatile landscape
Some countries have always had laws against homosexuality, and, more recently, against gender identity expression. Uganda recently adjusted its laws to make the act of “aggravated homosexuality” punishable by the death penalty.
Russia, while not as strongly against homosexuality in its law, has a “propaganda law” that prohibits people from outwardly expressing identities and campaigning for their rights.
Recently, in the US and UK, there has been a noticeable shift in rhetoric.
In the US, over 150 bills targeting transgender people and gender affirming care have been introduced. According to the Human Rights Campaign, that number was the highest in the single year.
Multiple senators, including former presidential hopeful Ted Cruz and Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville, have been vocal in their opposition to any sort of trans rights. Some have also questioned the LGBTQ+ rights already in place in the nation, including same-sex adoption and gay marriage.
Across the Atlantic, the UK is quickly gaining a reputation for its questionable approach to dealing with the rhetoric against trans people.
The government recently received a large amount of backlash when it banned conversion therapy, but did not apply the ban to the practice aimed at trans people. A YouGov poll at the time showing the British public largely disagreed with the decision. But the rhetoric of the minority, it seems, is what is making headlines.
Robbie De Santos, the director of communications at Stonewall UK, said, “The current moral panic against trans people is harmfully perpetuated by media outlets who continue to push harmful anti-trans narratives while failing to address the real issues that trans people face.”
“It’s so much more complex than just seeing us”
The right support for students
Trans people, and the community as a whole, have real issues they face every day that the cisgender and heteronormative community do not. In education, diversity is generally celebrated – and when students study abroad, it’s a whole new, unfamiliar world to get used to.
“It’s about there being places in the university or even organisations that we work with together, for them to get that information or for them to be referred to certain services, to be able to get the support – and the right support,” says Aamena Meidell, a student exchange officer at De Montfort University in Leicester.
While studying in a different country is an adjustment for any student, the questions may mount up about how LGBTQ+ students can navigate certain issues. Meidell, while mostly dealing with students going abroad to study from De Montfort, says that it’s paramount universities step up for incoming students.
“Whether [that support] is to do with trans rights specifically or if it’s perhaps someone coming from a minority background and also being LGBTQ+, they might need a different level of support – so it’s thinking about intersectionality in all of this,” she explains.
One issue lies in students often not feeling safe enough to, or perhaps simply not wanting to, disclose whether they’re part of the community. And this is completely normal, and valid – but it’s about ensuring those students feel safe.
“For our short term courses, a lot of it is pre-booked and they travel as a group. So if there’s not been a disclosure but people perhaps suspect things, sometimes that’s those types of conversations we have with students to reassure them.
“When students go to Japan, for another example, the type of accommodation is a factor. It’s usually shared – especially the shower rooms – and we’ve previously had universities ask us about it,” Meidell recalls.
It’s a delicate line to walk, and staff must do it effectively to keep students feeling safe in different environments.
In English language teaching, too, Sea Steele, co-founder of teacher development consultancy ELTonix, says that more can be done to effectively communicate the LGBTQ+ experience. The material used in classes is also a factor to be considered more deeply, they say.
“You might have a picture of two dads atop a text about families and routine, but it’s just there to be visual.
“It’s almost like, ‘we’re inviting you into our world’, and it becomes an oversimplification of things. It’s so much more complex than just seeing us,” they explain.
Staff taking the risks
It’s not just students that are having to adjust to the climate in this new era. As well as having to look after students coming to universities from abroad or sending students abroad, some in the sector must also endeavour to protect themselves.
On the condition that The PIE keeps their identity anonymous, one university representative in the UK spoke about their own difficulties in their job.
They say that as they could pass for a straight person, their job is made significantly easier. But a big part of their job is recruiting in countries where, in some cases, homosexuality or gender identity deviation is punishable by law.
They would not be able to take their partner on these trips with them, knowing the risk of being out in these countries.
Curtis also takes their own precautions. As a genderqueer person, they have to navigate certain kinds of situations depending on the context.
“It’s the same way that we navigate everything else. It depends on the degree to which they want to or can pass as straight or cis. I look pretty cis and pretty femme. Occasionally, I’m grateful that I have that option because it allows me to choose to sometimes work in places where it’s not safe or effective to be openly queer,” they say.
“I will actually, depending on where I work and what I’m doing, take my pronouns off my emails before I send some emails,” they explain.
It’s not just happening in higher education. Steele tells The PIE Review how an incident in Colombia rocked their outlook on the sector.
“I was working for a language organisation at the time, helping place children at a school in Colombia and I had shaved hair [halfway up their head] then a sort-of curly mohican.
“It was a private group of Catholic schools, I remember. And my boss asked if she could have a word, and she asked if I could cover up my hair because I could be ‘negatively influencing’ the kids.
“This was coming from an organisation that prides itself on diversity and equality – and I just couldn’t believe it,” they explain.
Curtis muses that it’s often a weighing game – what “we need to do to be effective”, versus “what I need to do to be me living authentically”.
“I got to have this really great conversation about that with all of my students, but particularly the ones with queer identities to say, for example, ‘I take my pronouns off my emails here because in this context, people don’t do that’.
“It’s confusing. But also it could make it harder for me to do this work. It could make me less credible and it could put me in danger – I don’t like that,” Curtis says.
“When international students arrive, we give them a sex talk about what our expectations are around consent and such”
Reassurance at home
In the state of New York where Curtis resides, rules and laws are generally very favourable towards LGBTQ+ people. It’s a new climate they tend to have to remind incoming students.
“When international students arrive, we give them a sex talk about what our expectations are around consent and such. We know that students who study abroad, no matter where their home country is, when they go abroad, they become more vulnerable because they don’t know the culture and they don’t know the norms.
“This year, for the first time, I added a couple of slides for students who are queer and gender queer America and raised the issue. I said, ‘look, we’re in New York which has abortion rights protected in our laws. We have a Gender Non-Discrimination Act in New York – you cannot be discriminated against based on gender identity or expression’.
“But of course, international students might want to travel around. So for example, they may go to Florida for spring break, which is a rite of passage for American students. Florida is passing so many laws that curtail gender expression and people’s ability to talk about gender and sexuality,” they explain.
Curtis firmly believes that education is the answer. The more these students know about what they might face – especially those more vulnerable in such situations due to their sexuality or gender identity – the more they can protect themselves, and ultimately enjoy their time as an international student.
Meidell is a big advocate for education of staff, too. The odd conference session on diversity isn’t really enough, but instead, it’s about making specific plans to develop advisors’ and teachers’ knowledge so they can support their students.
In partnership with the MindOut mental health charity, staff from across De Montfort’s various offices participated in an intensive workshop to get into the minds of both international students and students from the university going abroad.
“You were asked to kind of check your own privilege… I can imagine for some people it was very uncomfortable. But I thought doing that kind of activity collectively as a sector was a really good idea.
“It broke up those different intersections, when we looked at it from an incoming and outgoing international student perspective, and pinpointed the kind of things you need to be aware of,” Meidell states.
Light in the tunnel
And the support works. Meidell tells of a student that will soon be coming on as an ambassador, who went to the US as part of the study abroad program.
“It was a trans male student who really got involved in the fraternities from an academic perspective – they really enjoyed that experience and had only good things to say.”
In the SUNY Cortland survey of US students studying abroad – not yet released, but well on the way – Curtis remembers that there were really encouraging responses that show years down the line might make for better times to come.
“Things that we consistently heard were, ‘I got to introduce myself to people as queer for the first time’, or ‘I had people who never knew me before I transitioned immediately using my name’,” Curtis says.
In the ELT world, the key also lies with staff, Steele says. “I think at the core of this is teacher training – it’s where we need to focus.”
It’s clear that if the sector can keep doing what it’s doing, it might be able to at least be part of the solution to these issues.
As long as there is room for students to make their voices heard, both those incoming and outgoing as international students, and there is support from staff who feel empowered to do their job, the needle can continue to move in the right direction.
This article first appeared in The PIE Review.
