If I'm remembering correctly, the horrendous (ly silent) response to my work came from a smaller piece entitled "The Good Queer" (which I think I still have around here somewhere)--a kind of  precursor to our "big" essay--it was only 2 or 3 pages or some such. It was all about--go figure--the exhaustion, both physical & psychic, of being a good queer & being polite & attentive & "proper" & always making sure not to offend straights or make them feel uncomfortable in the slightest & all that  good horse shit--both in terms of my then-very-public job as the GLB liaison AND as a member of any given classroom environment. The THUNDERING silence to my piece proved my point, natch, that straight folk might be willing to listen to the Good Queer--but only if they absolutely HAD to--but they were COMPLETELY unwilling to listen, or engage with, the queer who voiced any frustration w/the status quo or who called them on THEIR inability to embrace an imaginary domain not their own. 

The only man who spoke--notably, NOT [the professor]--could say only something about Robert GRAVES (??), which had nothing to so w/what I'd written, of course (his experience, presumably, of  homosexuality)--and the only women who spoke were those who were MOST 
MARGINALIZED--i.e., a struggling artist (i.e., struggling w/being taken seriously as a woman artist) and an anorexic. Hmmmm. 

They, too, were incensed by the reception I'd received (theirs wasn't much better). In light of the response to all 3 of us--i.e., the most marginalized of the class members--it was clear that only certain stories would be validated in this workshop; that only those students who confirmed to a particular white bourgeois world-view would be taken seriously. Anyone who didn't fit into that schema was made to feel extraneous to the life of the class--and it was FELT, emotionally & physically, by all 3 of us. 

Hegemony, anyone? 

To be honest, I don't even remember if my larger essay was workshopped (the one about growing up queer & reading Henry James's "Turn of the Screw"). I  don't think so...[The professor] couldn't deal w/it & didn't know HOW to deal w/it--what was to KNOW? It's a narrative, a piece of writing like any other--and praised me to high end for my honesty & bravery--blahblahblah--and then foisted me off on to a professor on the east coast. 

Of course, that worked out very nicely for me when all was said & done, but the point is that [the professor] refused to leave the safety of his own imaginary in order to fully engage w/what I was doing. Which was his RESPONSIBILITY as the professor--in particular, the prof. of a seminar in PERSONAL NARRATIVE! And in the classroom itself, HIS silence made it clear that not only was my narrative "invalid," --but worse/more damning--that silence was the APPROPRIATE response to what I had done (ironic, of course, in light of the fact that my fucking THESIS was about the proscribed silence both in James's text & the world in general--but I'm pretty sure this was lost on that class--excluding the 2 women I mentioned already). 

The professor's own silence set the tone for the other students' responses, and validated the non-engagement w/anything & everything I had to write--or SAY, for that matter. I was not to be taken seriously. I was not to be taken AT ALL. 

An aside: this scene was played out again, in a different context, a year or  2 later, when I was asked to be part of a panel on what the admin. had done since the Chancellor's Report on LGB issues... me & (Affirm. Action) & the VC of Academic Affairs: after listening to their bullshit about how much the Admin. had done in the 2 or 3 years since the Report's recommendations, I called them on it and pointed out 
that the Admin had done NOTHING--ABSOLUTELY nothing--(I was no longer the LGB liaison @ this time--thus, did not feel compelled to be the Good Queer). 

This, natch, did not sit well, and I was rebuked by both of them for not being optimistic & not considering what the Admin HAD done--which was still nothing; talk w/no action counts for nothing--and I was also attacked by the head ref. librarian, a Good Queer, for not acknowledging the LIBRARY'S inclusion of gay ref. materials. Anyway--as I'm sure you know--the point is that as soon as I stepped out from behind the mantle of the Good Queer--didn't say what the kindly liberals wanted me to say (i.e., didn't kiss their ASSES for not stringing me up/for being so goddamned TOLERANT and ACCEPTING), I was excoriated & dismissed as someone who wasn't playing fair, reinforcing the limited parameters in which the Good Queer--and ONLY the GQ--can move w/out threat to his or her psychic safety. 

So.    And Shame?