Sovia Szymula in conversation
‘It takes more than gendered teaching materials’

How do teachers deal with gender-sensitive language? Do non-binary people find their place in school? In this interview, student teacher and queer rapper Sovia Szymula a.k.a. LILA SOVIA talks about their personal experiences.

By Stephanie Hesse

Pretty much everything in your artistic identity revolves around the colour purple (Editor's note: Purple stands for people whose gender is a mixture of male and female. At the same time, purple has long been the colour of queer people): purple name, purple hair, purple clothes – and purple art! How did you become a queer activist artist?

It really started in 2021 on 8 March – the day of the feminist struggle. At that time, I had already been doing spoken word for three years – all along with political content. Through the 8 March Alliance, I gave a speech during a protest march, which has since become one of my best-known texts. On that day, the FLINTA+ movement began for me (editor's note: FLINTA stands for female, lesbian, inter, non-binary, trans* and a-gender persons).

Until I was 22 years old, I had built up a lot of pent-up anger towards the patriarchy. It was only last year that I found the right words for it and wrote more lyrics, poems and songs than ever before. At the same time, I found people who see me as the art person I want to be. I have labelled myself female for a very long time because I was socialised that way. My coming-out as a person who doesn't want to use pronouns anymore was of course relatively easy in such a queer activist environment. At some point, poetry wasn't enough for me anymore, and I felt an urge to make music. And now my first EP will be released in April.

Take us back to the time before you were sensitised to the topic of gender identity. What was your life like “before”, for example your school days?

I didn't have a lot of exposure to queer and anti-racist work at school. I grew up in a very white academic family and went to a corresponding grammar school. I could actually have very well turned towards studying business or medicine. Looking back on my life as a young person now, there have always been small rainbow flags along the way to my coming-out: in student exchanges or in inter-class projects, I always felt attracted to the people who now also see themselves as part of the LGBTQA* community.

You yourself are studying to become a teacher of German and biology. What are your experiences from your studies regarding gendering in schools?

The first thing that comes to mind from my current internship at a school are gendered toilets, which are painted blue and pink. I find that very problematic. I think the discourse on gender-sensitive language is more visible now than ever before. In Germany, there are structures like SCHLAU NRW, which deal intensively with pronouns and trans identities in schools. There are a lot of discussions in the field of teaching and schools, and yet in the classroom I was in today, there was talk of “teachers” and “pupils”, which are masculine words in German. Spaces and understanding for trans* or non-binary children are still not visible enough, or there is no serious attempt to ensure a safe school career for these children as well.

In your opinion, does the topic of gender neutrality have enough space in the curriculum?

Definitely not. I do think that schools are very concerned with the further development of appropriate teaching materials though. In my seminars and lectures, deportation, queer perspectives and perspectives of people with immigrant backgrounds play a big role. Nevertheless, there is a snag in the direct implementation of the deconstruction of relevant discrimination mechanisms.

School is a place that could introduce sensitivity to gender identities from the very start. On the other hand, the structure of the school as an institution is simply so old and entrenched that it would take more than gendered teaching material to change corresponding school structures. It would take a staff of teachers that continue to educate themselves, a leading person at the school, to make an effort to ensure that the principles of gendering are properly applied. Eliminating discrimination in the classroom should not be an individual decision of the teacher, but an overall structural and institutional one.

I think that my generation is more sensitive to the visibility of trans* children and non-binary children than the generation that currently occupies a large part of the teaching posts in Germany. Without wanting to claim that they don't understand the issue – of course they do.

How can those affected, but also teachers, deal with discrimination?

The way to deal with this is to believe the people concerned. If the child doesn't want to use pronouns, then the child is not going through a phase, is not weird or has seen a funny video on TikTok, but then the child is to be called what it wants to be called. It's as simple as that. Marginalised groups in particular, like queer people or PoC (People of Colour) are denied the realities of life that they have. Teachers have to take these realities seriously.

Another way – to stay with the example – is to act as a role model. For example, teachers can introduce themselves with pronouns to suggest that pronouns of persons are not to be determined by the way they look or some other appearance. The decision and perception about my gender identity is entirely up to me. In classes, for example, I say: ‘Hello, I am Sovia Szymula. I don't use pronouns, so please don't call me Ms Szymula, just Sovia Szymula.’ And sure, I still get misgendered sometimes, but the pupils and teachers are sensitised.

Meanwhile, there are concepts in the literature on how to deal not only with gendering in school but also with the pronoun debate (editor's note: book recommendations can be found at the end of the article). One example is the active introduction of alternative pronouns in languages that do not have so-called neutral pronouns, such as “they/them” in English. Unfortunately, this does not work in German, because “it” (“es”) as a pronoun has a demeaning effect on people. After a survey in France showed that some 40 per cent of young people identify as non-binary, an alternative pronoun was officially introduced there: “iel”, a composition of “il” (he) and “elle” (she). In Germany, there are only initial – in my opinion still clumsy – proposals, such as “Xier” or “dey/deren”. I think it's extremely urgent to address things like these in class. Of course, this also applies to cis teachers.

I guess some people have to read up first…


Reading does make a difference! There are many smart people who have concerned themselves with post-colonial theory, with deconstruction, with cis-sexism, with racism. There are important non-fiction texts and pedagogically sound books and materials like “Mädchen, Junge, Kind” (“Girl, Boy, Child”) published by Familiar Faces or SCHLAU NRW's LGBTQ* Checklist. For all people who prefer entertaining novels, there are works such as “Unter Weißen” (“Among Whites") by Mohamed Amjahid or “1000 Serpentinen Angst” (“1,000 Coils of Fear”) by Olivia Wenzel. In order to use language critically, you have to concern yourself with language, and in my opinion, that works best through reading or speaking.

The really important thing, however, is that the debate around system critique must continue. Because school as an institution contributed and continues to contribute to the fact that certain people were or continue to be invisible. An environment must be created in which young people dare to come out and are not bullied for doing so – and unfortunately, that is currently not the case.
 

Reading and listening recommendations
 

Non-fiction books:


Mädchen, Junge, Kind. Geschlechtersensible Begleitung und Empowerment von klein auf (Daniela Thörner, Familiar Faces, 2021)

Queer: A graphic history (Meg-John Barker, Jules Scheele, Icon Books, 2016)

Trans* und Schule (SCHLAU NRW; brochure in German)


Novels and poetry collections:


Girl, Woman, Other (Bernardine Evaristo, Penguin, 2020)

Ich bin Linus (Linus Giese, Rowohlt, 2020)

Podcasts:
trans sein

Sexologisch