L.K. Langley and the Power of Listening

Note: This is the third of four articles as the campus begins Equity and Inclusion Month and the kickoff of the Equity and Inclusion Forum; seminars and offerings from the forum facilitators will run throughout the school year.

L.K. Langley, the manager of Western’s Equal Opportunity Programs in its Equal Opportunity Office, remembers vividly a lesson learned while volunteering with a community nonprofit in Boston that worked with LGBTQ youth from the city; most were kids of color.

“I came in without fully recognizing the need to build trust with the youth, and thinking my experiences as a young person would be directly relatable to theirs. But as a white person coming from a privileged socio-economic background, my experiences were in many ways so different from theirs. I was fortunate to have adults in the organization mentor me, and really help me understand how to most effectively support these young people,” Langley said. “For that to happen, I needed to think deeply about the ways race and class were influencing my interactions in that space. And I needed to listen hard – to my mentors, and to the young people.”

That simple, powerful act of listening – and then putting into motion the information and wisdom that was just given to you – is the driving force behind Langley’s decision to become a facilitator in Western’s new Equity and Inclusion Forum workshop series.

“As committed as Western is, there doesn’t come a time when as a campus you ‘arrive’ and can say ‘We’re done with the work of equity and inclusion.’ It’s a process of continual, ongoing, intentional work,” Langley said. “We all need to engage in it, and part of this is thinking about ways to support transgender and genderqueer members of our campus community.”

Langley’s workshop will focus on how faculty and staff can create positive learning communities for transgender and non-binary students. It will be interactive and include opportunities for participants to share promising practices.

“I imagine that for some faculty and staff who attend, it will be their first discussion of these issues.  Others who come may have been working towards these goals for a long time. I can share what I know from doing community-based work, from excellent survey data that’s become available in recent years, and from my own experiences. And we can use all of this information to think about how to best move forward in our classrooms and offices,” Langley said.

As someone who identifies as genderqueer – a broad term that Langley describes as used by some people who identify their gender as in the middle, or somewhere outside of, the male/female binary – Langley knows firsthand the importance of creating inclusive spaces.

“Like many people with marginalized identities, trans and genderqueer people often have to develop a set of life skills that people outside that identity group don’t have,” Langley said. “The at times tremendous and exhausting isolation experienced by some trans people is a big part of why I and some fellow students started the Committee on Transgender Inclusion of the Massachusetts LGBTQ Bar Association while in law school.”

“That group gave us a launching pad not just for advocacy within the legal profession and on legal issues impacting trans people, but also a place to be without the need for the identity management which is required of marginalized people in so much of life,” Langley said.

Langley acknowledges that the effort involved in changing the social norms about how people interact isn’t going to be on the top of everyone’s list.

“Well-intentioned people often assume the genders of the individuals they interact with,” Langley said. “But we can think about how to shift our language; instead of saying ‘that guy over there,” use ‘the person in the red hat’ until you know how they identify.”

“Letting people tell us who they are, rather than us assuming, can be so impactful in building working and learning relationships with one another,” Langley said.

“Everybody has a story to tell. Everyone’s voice is important,” Langley said. “But to hear their story, we need to be willing to listen.”

Note: L.K. Langley's Equity and Inclusion workshops will be held on Oct. 30 and Nov. 19; for a full list of all 15 E&I workshop opportunities, click here or go to https://west.wwu.edu/training/default.aspx#.