Respect for privacy

Mrs. Butter B, you would never be banned -- even if I knew how to do it. For those of you who are confused by that, please read her comment on the last post. And if you want this post to make sense, please read it anyway, 'cause I'm going to respond.

The last post was a bit incoherent. I've mentioned on the blog before about a committee I'm on whose work is confidential. Quite a bit of what is going on has become public knowledge (through no action of my own) so I can tell you in broad outlines what is going on. I'm on a committee that reviews disciplinary actions taken or proposed against tenured* professors where I work. If the college president thinks you plagiarized something, he can suspend you without pay, or fire you for that matter. In either case, you can appeal your case to the committee I'm on. If we decide that you were right and he is wrong he is supposed to "take time to seriously reconsider his decision." **

The committee goes decades without having to meet. It is meeting now and I am on it.

The case is on my mind a lot. I think about the evidence and arguments, about the decision, about how to write the report of the decision, about what, if anything, we can tell the students some of whom are quite upset.

And what I find is that making conversation with colleagues and friends feels deeply artificial. My mind will not always be preoccupied with this, but so long as it is, I have have to struggle to make conversation. So I find myself retreating into silence. I am working at home as much as possible. I'm not blogging.

And it reminded me of the weeks in which Carl did not want us to tell anyone he was gay. I was pre-occupied then. I don't dwell on my kids sexuality much these days. It is a part of who they are, but that is it. In the beginning though I did think about it a lot. I thought about what the house-hold rules were supposed to be. Should I allow him to have boys in his bedroom if he promised they were not dating? Should I forbid a clearly straight boy from going into his room to study with him because the "no boys in the bedroom" rule seemed right? I was feeling new feelings too. I was fearful for his safety. I was embarrassed that I was embarrassed when he talked about the cute boy in English class. I wondered if, as his parent, I should be taking responsibility for making sure he had appropriate sex education and I wanted to run for the hills. A counselor of his told me about a technique for safer oral s*x and just the thought of explaining that made me too embarrassed to ... anything.

So I read anything I could find about the experience of being gay in America. I did everything I could think of to get over being embarrassed, including watching Queer As Folk with him. I subscribed to The Advocate and got him a subscription to Out Magazine. I started being more informed about gay issues. I started caring about them passionately.

And then I would run into a friend who wanted to know how things were going with Carl.

And I had nothing to say. Nothing I could say. At the time EVERYthing in my mind seemed to be about homosexuality. I found myself retreating into silence and asking them to talk about their lives. Sometimes it worked. Usually they figured I was hiding something and would make a guess. They were always wrong, but I had to decide whether to let them believe the falsehood they had created or tell them it was false and hope they didn't make another guess.

I started isolating myself. I stopped calling my mother. I avoided my friends.

Then I realized how unhealthy all this was and we spoke with his counselor about why I needed to be able to talk about it. I had to come out to my friends.

It was during this time that I realized that the military policy of "Don't Ask; Don't Tell" was impossible. I kept asking people to do a thought experiment. Imagine working somewhere for years and not letting them know you were married, or had kids, or attended church, or whatever else is most important to who you are. How can you do that? I know some people can, but they are unusual.

Now, that last post was a little strange, and Mrs. Butter B points out that people often ask questions they should not ask. Strangers ask questions about how we came by our children in front of our children and that is just not acceptable.

But I think that Mrs. Butter B and I are talking about slightly different things, or maybe about two sides of one thing: privacy. I also think are likely to agree on something: privacy should be respected and that means not imposing or invading it.

Of course there are limits to this too. There are private things that it is wrong to share (no flashing) and there are secrets that are wrong to keep. Trying to figure out general rules for that though is just too complicated for me right now. You all are more than welcome to tackle that project though.

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*Nontenured professors can theoretically also appeal. However, nontenured professors are "at will" employees. Since they can be fired without a specific cause being given, there would generally not be anything for the committee to review in an appeal.