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Oct. 3rd, 2008 04:40 pmI had my frist English tutorial yesterday andBiblical Studies tutorial today. Both of the tutors are Americans (which I suppose isn't surprising given the numbers of international students who come to Edinburgh to do their post graduate degree). I wasn't as intimidated as I thought I would be in the English one. It was a lot like Advanced Higher English. I was WAY more intimidated by the people in Biblical Studies, mostly because, unsurprisingly, there are a lot of Christians in the group.
This in itself wouldn't be intimidating (some of my closest friends are Christians) but that it makes me uncomfortable when there are people who are calling themselves Christian when I don't know them very well. I don't know exactly what their beliefs are - and as much as some of my closest friends at school were Christian, almost every homophobe I encountered there was also the particularly heinous type who used God as an excuse to justify their ignorance. I feel vulnerable in a context where 'Christian' could, very easily, mean 'homophobic bigot'. It makes me nervous about outing myself. It makes me nervous about engaging with them in any kind of theological debate (which, lets face it, is going to happen at SOME point - we may be in this for the academia but theology is going to come in at some point - we're studying the bible for pete's sake...) Hopefully the fact that they are actually interested in studying the Bible in an academic way is a suggestion that they are open minded and looking to find out more about the text that is their religious authority. Hopefully.
But there's one guy in the group who set my gay-dar through a loop so I'm fairly sure I'm not the only wavy person there, at least.
There was also a guy from my old school. 0.o Fortunately, this is his second degree, so he left school a good four years ago and I don't know him. I was wearing my school hoodie (only clean one I had this morning) which is how he recognised me.
(Merlin day tomorrow! ^_^)
This in itself wouldn't be intimidating (some of my closest friends are Christians) but that it makes me uncomfortable when there are people who are calling themselves Christian when I don't know them very well. I don't know exactly what their beliefs are - and as much as some of my closest friends at school were Christian, almost every homophobe I encountered there was also the particularly heinous type who used God as an excuse to justify their ignorance. I feel vulnerable in a context where 'Christian' could, very easily, mean 'homophobic bigot'. It makes me nervous about outing myself. It makes me nervous about engaging with them in any kind of theological debate (which, lets face it, is going to happen at SOME point - we may be in this for the academia but theology is going to come in at some point - we're studying the bible for pete's sake...) Hopefully the fact that they are actually interested in studying the Bible in an academic way is a suggestion that they are open minded and looking to find out more about the text that is their religious authority. Hopefully.
But there's one guy in the group who set my gay-dar through a loop so I'm fairly sure I'm not the only wavy person there, at least.
There was also a guy from my old school. 0.o Fortunately, this is his second degree, so he left school a good four years ago and I don't know him. I was wearing my school hoodie (only clean one I had this morning) which is how he recognised me.
(Merlin day tomorrow! ^_^)
