Out of the closet and into the network: Sexual orientation and the computerized classroom

Abstract

This essay examines ways that issues of sexual orientation can successfully be taught in the computer-assisted composition classroom. Beginning with Michel Foucault's understanding that sexuality in our culture is configured as identity, the essay asks how both gay and straight students can benefit from online and networked discussions of sexual orientation. Benefits for gay students con be tremendous, as they are allowed voice (even if that voice is mediated through pseudonymous participation), but straight students will often wonder at the relevancy of issues of sexual orientation for their own lives, preferring instead to think of homosexuality as something strange and alien and, thus, failing to realize the social implications of their heterosexuality as well as the social nature of all sexual orientation. In thinking about how to explore such issues safely and effectively, the writer suggests that computerized learning spaces offer possibilities for open discussion not available in conventional classrooms. The Internet, the World Wide Web, and synchronous conferencing software, staple features of many networked classrooms, provide powerful tools through which students can probe the relevance of sexual orientation to all students' lives, whether lesbian, bisexual, gay, or straight.