Fruit Salad! - WEDNESDAY!

Welcome back from Spring Break!! We have a very exciting Fruit Salad! discussion coming up this week. Here are the details:

"Labels are for Cans!"
A discussion about the words we use in the queer community and how they have evolved.
Wednesday, March 25
12-1pm @ LGBTQ Center (CC 235)
FREE PIZZA

Part of our Fruit Salad! series about diversity in the queer community.

Discussion led by Loghann Rimel, '10 and Sarah Conklin from the Counseling Center.

Think Before You Speak - HERMAPHRODITE

Hermaphrodite

1. An antiquated term used in a derogatory way for someone who is intersex. Does not refer to someone who is confused about their gender, was born "wrong," or is transgender.
2. So please, knock it off.
3. Learn more at ThinkB4YouSpeak.com

Did you Know?
Almost 90% of LGBT students are verbally harassed, 44% are physically harassed and nearly 1 in 4 are physically assaulted at school because of their sexual orientation. And 2/3 of LGBT students are verbally harassed, 30% are physically harassed and 14% are physically assaulted at school because of their gender expression.

Think Before You Speak - FAGGOT

Faggot

1. There was a time when the word "faggot" meant a bundle of sticks, but people started using it in an insulting, offensive way and things changed. So when you say things like "homo," "dyke" and "that's so gay" trying to be funny, remember, you may actually be hurting someone.
2. So please, knock it off.
3. Learn more at ThinkB4YouSpeak.com

Did You Know?
83.1% of LGBT students report that hearing "gay" or "queer" used in a negative manner at school causes them to feel bothered or distressed to some degree. Yet only 18% of LGBT students report that school personnel frequently intervene when hearing homophobic remarks and only 8% report that other students frequently intervene.

Another Vassar Student Highlighted

Casey Katims, a junior here at Vassar, is spending the semester in Washinton DC doing an internship with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). Check out this link to see an interview of Casey on the HRC website. Keep up the great work, Casey!

Think Before You Speak - DYKE

Dyke

1. Be honest with yourself. You're not thinking of "an embankment that holds back and controls water." The problem is, words like "dyke" and "faggot" are so commonly used as insults these days, it's really hard to remember a time when they weren't.
2. So please, knock it off.
3. Learn more at ThinkB4YouSpeak.com

Did you Know?
54% of LGBT students often or frequently hear negative comments about their peers not acting "masculine" enough and 39% hear comments about their peers not acting "feminine" enough.

Study Abroad Opportunity - Explore Gay Paris

Faculty-Led Summer Session 2009

UW-La Crosse has partnered with CEA to offer you the opportunity to study abroad in Paris, France. Renowned for its intellectuals, artists, writers, and revolutionaries, Paris represents the perfect combination of tradition and modernity. Long known as a city for freedom and tolerance, Paris has become characterized over the past decade by its acceptance of the LGBT community. Discover the Marais district, the location of CEA's GlobalCampus in Paris and the heart of Gay Paris. You will live in an apartment with like-minded students, fully immersed in French culture.

ACADEMIC PROGRAMS
Paris, the city of lights and host of the Gay Pride Parade & Festival that brings close to 750,000 people together in celebration every June - what better place to spend your summer and complete 6 credits of coursework (compare to 2 units at Vassar). As part of the program you will take the course W-S 250: Introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Studies taught by Sara Sullivan and William Van Roosenbeek from UW-L and earn 3 additional transfer credits (1 unit) by taking Gay Paris: Culture, Society & Urban Sexual Identity at CEA's GlobalCampus. Participating in this program will provide you with unique opportunities to explore Paris first-hang while earning course credit.

*Open to all students who are 18 or older, have completed one year of college, and have a GPA of 2.75 or higher.

For more information, or to apply visit this website or contact Willem Van Roosenbeeck at vanroose.will@uwlax.edu or Sara Sullivan at sullivan.sara@uwlax.edu

Think Before You Speak - GAY

Gay

1. There was a time when all "gay" meant was "happy." Then it meant "homosexual." Now people are saying "that's so gay" to mean dumb and stupid. Which is pretty insulting to gay people (and we don't mean "happy" people).
2. So please, knock it off.
3. Learn more at ThinkB4YouSpeak.com

Did you know?
9 out of 10 LGBT students hear the word "gay" used in a negative way often or frequently in school and nearly 3 out of 4 LGBT students report hearing their peers make homophobic remarks, such as "dyke" or "faggot," often or frequently in school.

Notheast LGBT Conference

Northeast LGBT Conference

"Facets of Oppression"
April 17-19th @ SUNY Albany
A conference run by students, for students from across the North East.

The theme of this year's conference envelops the many identities we hold as LGBTQA individuals and how these multiple identities both effect and are affected by our LGBTQA identity. These facets of oppression can feel overwhelming because they are all essential pieces that make up our lives. The 2009 North East LGBT Conference theme "Facets of Oppression" speaks to the spectrum of identites we hold as LGBTQA people. Join us on Saturday for interactive workshops addressing the politics and policies of our diverse identies, such as our religious affiliations, transgender and gender identities, as well as issues of privilege, sexual assault, don't ask don't tell, and the intersection of identies affecting us as multicultural people. On Sunday attendees will be participating in trainings that will help us overcome oppression and work across our many identities, to find commonalities and celebrate the differences within our own community. Learn more at the conference website.

Registration: Cost of attendance is $25 per individual or $20 per person for groups of five or more. Registration includes all conference materials, access to all workshops, and keynotes throughout the weekend. Breakfast and lunch are also included on Saturday and Sunday as well as seat reservation at Saturday night's exciting banquet dinner.

If you are interested and available to attend this conference, contact Julie at jusilverstein@vassar.edu by Friday, March 6th! If enough people are interested, the LGBTQ Center might be able to arrange transportation and cover conference costs!

Think Before You Speak

Incase you haven't heard of it yet, GLSEN has launched a campaign called ThinkB4YouSpeak that is aimed towards raising awareness of hurtful phrases against LGBT people. Here is what the campaign is about, according to their website:

"Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) teens experience homophobic remarks and harassment throughout the school day, creating an atmosphere where they feel disrespected, unwanted and unsafe. Homophobic remarks such as “that’s so gay” are the most commonly heard; these slurs are often unintentional and a common part of teens’ vernacular. Most do not recognize the consequences, but the casual use of this language often carries over into more overt harassment.

This campaign aims to raise awareness about the prevalence and consequences of anti-LGBT bias and behavior in America’s schools. Ultimately, the goal is to reduce and prevent the use of homophobic language in an effort to create a more positive environment for LGBT teens. The campaign also aims to reach adults, including school personnel and parents; their support of this message is crucial to the success of efforts to change behavior."

Check out Wanda Sykes' commercial in support of this campaign:

We are bringing this campaign to Vassar by raising awareness about words that we often hear misused in a hurtful way by members of the Vassar community. We will be posting on the blog about these words throughout the month of March. Also be on the lookout for our fliers around campus during this Month.

Hope at the Oscars

(Posted by Nick, '11)

“I think that it is a good time for those for voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren’s eyes if they continue that way of support. We’ve got to have equal rights for everyone.”
-Sean Penn, Winner of the Academy Award for Actor in a Leading Role

Watch the speech here:

“And it gave me hope. It gave me the hope to live my life. It gave me the hope that one day I could live my life openly as who I am, and that maybe even I could fall in love and one day get married.”
-Dustin Lance Black, Winner of the Academy Award for Original Screenplay

Watch the speech here:


This year’s Oscars were permeated by a sense of hope. It seemed like the message that President Obama promoted throughout his campaign directly affected the ceremony this year. Not only did Slumdog Millionaire, a film about hope, win Best Picture, but the winners for Actor in a Leading Role and Original Screenplay directly addressed the passing of Prop 8, and the hope that one day gay marriage will be legal everywhere. Sean Penn and Dustin Lance Black’s acceptance speeches urged California to reconsider its decision, and America to respect the rights of gay people and legalize gay marriage. Of course, the Kodak Theatre erupted into applause, as Hollywood is filled with social liberals. 36.3 million people watched the Academy Awards this year, which amounts to about 10% of the country. It is these people whom the message had to get through to—telling the people sitting in the theatre these things was like preaching to the choir. Interestingly enough, in a survey released in the newest issue of Entertainment Weekly, 46% of viewers thought Mickey Rourke should have won Best Actor, while only 37% thought Sean Penn should have. I wonder why. I hope it doesn’t have to do with the fact that Penn played Harvey Milk. I hope it has to do with the intensity of their performance.

Celebrating Queer People of Color - Margaret Cho

(Posted by Audrey, '11)
Margaret Cho is a self-identified queer comedian, actress, designer, author, and recording artist. She was born December 5, 1968 into a Korean family living in San Francisco, California. She attended high school at the San Francisco School of the Arts, where she was involved in the school’s sketch comedy group. She began her career in stand-up comedy and, after winning the American Comedy Award in 1994, received her own sitcom on ABC called All American Girl—a television show which is often credited as being the first in the US to prominently feature an East Asian family. Despite having her show cancelled after only one season, Cho has gone on to make a name for herself through her overtly outspoken political views and diverse range of projects. Her comedy is often explicit in nature while giving commentary on social and political issues, including eating disorders, substance abuse, her obsession with gay men, her own bisexuality, and Asian-American stereotypes.

The Life of Bayard Rustin

The Life of Bayard Rustin

Black, Queer, Civil Rights Activist
Film Screening, followed by discussion with Faculty

Friday, February 27
12:00 - 2:30pm @ Villard Room
free pizza lunch - with vegan options!

A master strategist and tireless activist, Bayard Rustin is best remembered as the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, one of the largest nonviolent protests ever held in the United States. He brought Gandhi's protest techniques to the American civil rights movement, and helped mold Martin Luther King, Jr. into an international symbol of peace and nonviolence.

Despite all these achievements, Rustin was silenced, threatened, arrested, beaten, imprisoned and fired from important leadership positions, largely because he was an openly gay man in a fiercely homophobic era.

Sponsored by the Campus Life ALANA and LGBTQ Resource Centers.

Celebrating Queer People of Color - Frida Kahlo

(Posted by Audrey, '11)
Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter, known widely for her vibrant use of color (which was heavily influenced by the art of indigenous Mexican culture), her haunting self-portraits, and her tumultuous marriage to fellow Mexican painter Diego Rivera. Both Kahlo and Rivera had numerous extramarital affairs. Frida—who was openly bisexual—had lovers both male and female; Rivera tolerated her female companions but was intensely jealous of the men. As well as being active in the revolutionary movement in Mexico, both Kahlo and Rivera were communists and supporters of Leon Trotsky. After Trotsky was forced from the Soviet Union by Stalin, Rivera assisted him in moving to Mexico—initially into his own home, where Trotsky and Kahlo had an affair.

Kahlo was born July 6, 1907 in Coyoacán, Mexico—though she later claimed to have been born in 1910, so as to attach herself to the Mexican Revolution beginning that year. She began to focus primarily on her painting after a bus accident in which she suffered serious injuries, including a broken collarbone, a broken spinal column, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, and various injuries to her right leg. Additionally, a handrail pierced her abdomen and uterus, damaging her reproductive capability. While recovering in a full body cast, she painted in her bed using a special easel which she could paint on from her bed. Drawing from her personal pain (over her marriage, sexuality, miscarriages, and bodily injuries) to paint, her work was often highly symbolic and imbued with her acute suffering.

Call for Submissions!

The Closet Door
(a new publication from the LGBTQ Center)
A collection of personal stories by queer, questioning, and allied members of the Vassar community about life on all sides of the closet door.

Submit stories to jusilverstein@vassar.edu, or place in Box 555. Please specify if you'd like your story to be published anonymously. Any type of submission accepted - creativity encouraged!

Submissions are due by April 17, 2009.
Publication will be released in October, 2009.

Out on Campus: Vassar Student on Shewired.com

Shewired.com is a queer focused website/blog about LGBT-related news, entertainment, and more. They have a blog series called "Out on Campus" that is meant to bring readers a varied perspective on coming out, and being out at college. This week, our very own Clare Ciervo (current President of ACT OUT!) was profiled on the site! Be sure to check it out here!

Queer Pop Culture - Mini Course

Mini Course: Queer Pop Culture

Wednesdays, April 8, 15, 22, & 29
4-5:30pm @ Rocky 201
Instructor: Julie Silverstein, Assistant Director for Campus Life/LGBTQ Programs

This course will examine the history of the gay rights movement in America and how it has impacted the portrayal of queer characters on television and in movies. We will also compare common themes within mainstream media and queer subculture films and TV.

To sign up for this course, e-mail Julie at jusilverstein@vassar.edu by Friday, February 27th! (or register through Ann Lynch at anlynch@vassar.edu)

Celebrating Queer People of Color - Edinanci Fernandes da Silva

(Posted by Dominic, '11)

When in Doubt- international athletic competitions and intersexuality: Edinanci Fernandes da Silva

Edinanci Fernandes da Silva (born in 1976) is a Brazilian judoka from São Paulo. She has represented Brazil so far three times in the Summer Olympics, beginning in 1996. She also won the gold medal in the half heavyweight division at the Pan American Games. She was born with one of many conditions classified under the umbrella term “intersex conditions” (literally being ‘between the societally recognized sexes’), which affect about 1 in 1000 people, and can occur as a result of chromosomes, hormones, internal sex organs and/or external sex organs.

Edinanci Silva received surgery in the 1990’s in order to compete legally and live as a woman. Whatever an individual’s personal choices are about surgery- I believe that it should be just that— a personal choice, made in adulthood, with informed consent.

It could be that major athletic competitions have taken things too far for athletes like da Silva. For the Beijing Olympics, officials worked for more than a year to design laboratory tests to arbitrarily force competitors whose “sex is in doubt” to submit to a series of invasive and often unwanted tests to verify that they may compete as women or men. The testing this past summer clearly targeted athletes competing in the women’s divisions who were ‘suspect’ for being ‘too strong’. This testing is inherently unfair for a variety of reasons—not the least of which is for the protection and security of those intersexual athletes who wish to compete. If you are not traditionally sexed (i.e. if you are not clearly biologically male or female, or have biological characteristics of both), the tests will inevitably show some differences—thereby subjecting these athletes to the harsh eye of the media and to possible disqualification for nothing more than a characteristic of their biological body. Because intersex conditions can display with such variety hormonally, chromosomally, and physically, athletes who are tested may not even know that they have such a condition, having lived their entire lives as one sex or the other.

In the 2004 Olympics, Edinanci Silva was subject to such a test, and she passed. Suspicion, but not the media’s eye, was removed from her. This strong athlete represented her country for years, but was only allowed to do so after her surgery. Even years after, competitors beaten by da Silva routinely refer to her with masculine pronouns, showing ignorance and disrespect for intersexual persons.

Other athletes, with no prior knowledge of their condition, have in the past been stripped of their medals and subjected to harsh criticism by the media and by the very countries they represent proudly. Santhi Soundarajan, a 27-year old Indian athlete, was stripped of a silver medal for the 800m at the Asian games in 2006 after ‘failing’ a test comprised of physical examinations, endocrinological tests, psychological tests, and genetic tests due to a condition called “androgen insensitivity syndrome”. She has lived and identified as female for her entire life, and was reported in September to have attempted suicide due to her public and national humiliation, caused by the blatant ignorance about intersexuality displayed by many international competitive athletic games.

Check out this video showing some of Edinanci Silva's martial artistry!

Upcoming Center Happenings

TONIGHT - Friday, February 20
7pm @ LGBTQ Center

Gayme Night
Saturday, February 21
9pm @ LGBTQ Center




Coffee Hour
Monday, February 23
6:30-8pm @ LGBTQ Center

Yea, I'm Gay. But...

(Posted by Nick, '11)
Hey!

I thought I'd give you the day off from my long-winded blog posts. Here's some (cute) food for thought:

Celebrating Queer People of Color - Staceyann Chin

"Staceyann Chin is a fulltime artist. A resident of New York City and a Jamaican National, she has been an “out poet and political activist” since 1998. From the rousing cheers of the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe to one-woman shows Off- Broadway to poetry workshops in Denmark and London to co-writer and performer in the Tony nominated, Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, Chin credits the long list of "things she has done" to her grandmother's hard-working history and the pain of her mother's absence." (stacyannchin.com)

Chin performed at Vassar in Spring 2008 as part of the Vassar First Year's "Art as Activism: 3 Poets, 1 Mic" program (see picture). The following poem is a great example of how she discusses her intersecting identities in her spoken word pieces.

CrossFire
by Staceyann Chin

Am I a feminist
or a womanist
the student needs to know
if I do men occasionally
and primarily am I a lesbian

Tongue twisted in cheek I attempt to respond with honesty-

This business of sexual dykes and dykery
I tell her
is often messy-with social tensions as they are
you never quite know what you're getting
-some girls can only be straight at night
-hardcore butches be wearing dresses
between nine and six during the day
sometimes she is really a he trapped
by the limitations of our imagination-

Primarily
I am concerned about young women
who are raped on college campuses
in cars
after poetry readings like this one
in bars
bruised lip and broken heart
you will forgive her if she does not come
forward with the truth immediately

Everyone will think she asked for it
dressed as she was she must have wanted it

The words will knock about in her head
horny bitch
slut-harlot-tease
loose woman
some people cannot handle a woman on the loose
you know those women in silk-ties and pin-striped shirts
women in blood-red stilettos and short pink skirts
-these women make New York City the most interesting place
and while we're on the subject of diversity
Asia is not one big race
and there is no such country called the Islands
and no-I am not from there

There are a hundred ways
to slip between the cracks
of our not-so-credible cultural assumptions
and other peoples' interpretations of race and religion

Most people are surprised my father is Chinese-like
there's some preconditioned
look for the half-Chinese lesbian poet
who used to be Catholic but now believes in dreams

Let's keep it real
says the boy in the double-X hooded sweatshirt
that blond haired blue eyed Jesus in the Vatican ain't right
that motherfucker was Jewish, not white

Christ was a Middle Eastern Rastaman
who ate grapes in the company of prostitutes
and drank wine more than he drank water
born of the spirit the disciples also loved him in the flesh
but the discourse is on people who clearly identify as gay
or lesbian or straight
the State needs us to be left or right
those in the middle get caught
in the cross-fire away at the other side

If you are not for us you must be against us
People get scared enough they pick a team

Be it for Buddha or for Krishna or for Christ
God is that place between belief and what you name it
I believe holy is what you do
when there is nothing between your actions and the truth

I am afraid to draw your black lines around me
I am not always pale in the middle
I come in too many flavors for one fucking spoon

I am never one thing or the other-
at night I am everything I fear
tears and sorrows
black windows and muffled screams
in the morning I am all I want to be
wild rain and open laughter
bare footprints and invisible seams
always without breath or definition-I claim every dawn
for yesterday is simply what I was
and tomorrow
even that will be gone