The suicide of Tyler Clementi is a tragedy that has hit close to home for many Rutgers students, staff, and faculty as well as the greater university community in the country. Incidents like these are unfortunate and often times spark hasty reactions. While it is difficult to make any claims that Tyler's death was the result of a hate crime, it is clear that a general environment of disrespect, cruelty, and bullying were factors (again not particularly decisive) that affected the emotions and actions of this young man.
It is unclear as to whether or not, and to what extent, we can read gender, sexuality, or any form of identity politics into such a personal and singular act. This unfortunate event does, however, prompt a question of how a department like Women's and Gender Studies can engage with this event to examine how they conceive of and educate politics of difference through their respective disciplinary lens. Women's and Gender Studies is a department and discipline forged out of adversity that demands that perspectives of the world and the creation of knowledge need to equitably address groups historically marginalized by gender and sexuality. A most basic definition to be sure, I find the possibility of discussion about the multiple resonances of Tyler's death can be productively mediated through the tools this field has used to speak about, interrogate, and challenge the politics of difference and the right to identities both marginal and normative.
What I would like to ask of Women's and Gender Studies is not what the roots of greater historical and cultural causes that can be mapped onto and through Tyler's death but rather, 'how do we educate a new generation to create a world where his suicide could be prevented?' In other words, my most burning question after hearing of Tyler's passing was 'what have we done as a society to make this young man, almost a child still, feel as if this was his only solution?' Adolescence and college are difficult stages of human development to be sure, but it is unfortunate that events like these are the only times that we take a second look at how we are educating a new society of people to live in the world; a world that challenges every one of us at every moment.
I do not think that we teach hate; however I do feel it is not only a question of 'what gave him a reason to jump,' but also the flipside, 'what gave him a reason to
live?' Do we have a responsibility to each other to give one another those reasons, to teach those reasons and their histories? Is it within our disciplines and ideologies of self-hood and freedom from oppression to take care and give one another reasons to be here, methods of ascertaining self-worth? It seems to me that is more than just allowing marginal groups to sit at the table, but actually inviting them without hesitation; setting a table implied with their place. How can we be active about respect of difference and the burdens that come with the idea of freedom of identity? Our orientations towards freedom, respect, and equality come with responsibilities that gesture towards social actions. Ideas of a democratic notion of
belonging influence the way we teach and equip our new society to construct their worlds, but they are not a given.
This is why it is so important not just to have a department and pedagogy of Women's and Gender Studies, but to consider how the construction of the worlds through these discourses can be not only a revisionist perspective applicable to what has been, but a gesture outwards, towards a greater sensitivity to what our actions do and a greater possibility of what our world can be.
