Fraternity Helps Prospective Brother Fund Top Surgery

Gawker article

These men from a fraternity at Emerson College raised enough money (and more) to fund a prospective brother’s top surgery. I think this bring a TON of important things to light from fantastic to frustrating. I think it’s a happy moment in that this fraternity is openly embracing a brother even though, by some ridiculous societal standards, some would not choose to see him as a “brother”. In this way, I think this is fantastic. This cause also brings a lot of things to mind that are queerly frustrating, such as the fact that even though this particular fraternity at a progressive school is embracing this man, this does not apply to most cases. Also, I thought the entire time of less privileged transgender and transexual individuals who cannot afford surgeries they need and insurance won’t cover as well as those who lack support and others to work to help find them the money. Food for thought.

QueerWes Meeting 2/20

Attendance: Vivianne, Izzy, Songyi, Madalena, Bing

(COME OUT NEXT WEEK!)

1. APPLY TO LIVE IN OPEN HOUSE. Applications due on Monday at noon! Living in Open House allows residents to share a common queer experience and also provides the opportunity to be more involved with queer life at Wes.

1.5. QUEER PROM will certainly take place on APRIL 13TH at PSI U. MARK YOUR CALENDARS. Queer Prom committee will convene soon, potentially pre-meeting next week.

2. Visibility Initiatives
We’d love to make a conscious effort to be an incredibly present part of this campus. Also, increased visibility hopefully will lead to students being more comfortable being part of the queer community. We brainstormed some ideas for including the whole campus and being more visible, such as:
–Queer T-shirts (shout-out to SOPHIE MASSEY for taking the initiative to organize this project and VIRGIL TAYLOR for designing the shirts!) Also, having a queer t-shirt day where everyone who ordered a shirt wears them– perhaps take a picture together on Foss or in Usdan or in front of Olin.
–Other small signifiers we can hand out. ideas suggested: pins, bracelets, hair extensions (though idea quickly nixed)
–Queer Day on the hill. On a spring day, we’d love to queer up Foss. We’d hand out pins or bracelets, somehow give other students a chance to show their support for queer persons at Wes (sign something, contribute to some bigger art project….Ideas welcome! We’re thinking of doing this at WesFest, so please come to the meeting next week or email irode@wesleyan.edu to discuss ideas!

3. Decided that 7:30 is simply a bad time for snacks. BUT WILL CONTINUE TO BRING THEM DAMMIT. Charlotte stops by and eats Cheez-its and Izzy swoons.

4. Individual tasks
In hopes of attracting more students to events as well as getting more lovelies involved, each member at the meeting discusses what they’ll work on for QueerWes this semester. We’re more than happy to have more help!
-Vivianne will draft an all-campus letter to be put in mailboxes. (content unclear thusfar but suggestions have included but are not limited to: WE ARE HERE AND WE ARE QUEER AND EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW, we welcome queers and allies with open arms, updated campus resources, events for the spring semester, FUCK THE STATUS QUO) Vivianne will also make poster for Consciousness Raising Group that will take place (ideally) next weekend on Friday or Saturday over a potluck.
-Madalena takes charge in figuring out logistics both for writing a QUEERWES MANIFESTO and QUEERED SPEED-FRIENDING.
-A lovely (absent) Ben will be helping with new Consciousness Raising Groups. These will be super informal discussions over a potluck, hopefully taking place at a different, safe location every couples weeks or so. Vivianne suggests first one being on the subject of “Queer @ Wes” so people can meet and discuss general experiences before delving into subjects such as Race and Queerness, Bisexuality, Gender presentation and society, our role as queers, etc. Shout-out to Ashe Kilbourne as these are in many ways modeled after the Trans*/Gender Collective she helped organize.

WHEW that was a lot. see y’all next week! 

<3 QueerWes

The Marriage Plot: Inside This Year’s Epic Campaign for Gay Equality

I’m doing a project on marriage equality, and I found this link particularly illuminating for anyone who might be interested in what kind of went down in this past election cycle when it comes to marriage equality.

OPEN HOUSE ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS

 

^^das a link.

Social Justice Leadership Conference (23 Feb 2013)

Presented by Student Activities and Leadership Development, Wesleyan Student Assembly, and Usdan University Center:

This Saturday, come to the Social Justice Leadership Conference! There will be brunch+keynote, followed by 3 blocks of 9 sessions!

The full schedule and session write-ups can be seen here:
www.sjlcwesleyan.tumblr.com

Register here so we know to get you food!
http://www.wesleyan.edu/sald/sjlc/sjlc_registration.html

____________

SCHEDULE

KEYNOTE & BRUNCH
11-12pm (DFC Usdan)
P.Davis Smith, M.D.

SESSION BLOCK 1
12:10-1pm (41 Wyllys)
• Denying Dischord: The Effect of Explicit and Implicit Bias on Representation of Sexual Assault
• Constructing Racial Bridges Through Literature
• Radical Accessibility

SESSION BLOCK 2
1:10-2pm (41 Wyllys)
• Servant Leadership: Theory and Practice
• Flashmob: The Prospect of Using Dance to  Fight for Social Justice
• Racial Segregation at Wesleyan

SESSION BLOCK 3
2:10-3pm (41 Wyllys)
• When Faith and Justice Collide
• The Privilege of Allyship
• Racial Identity Formation

CLOSING SESSION
3-4pm (DFC Usdan)

Registration begins at 10:30am in the DFC

____________

The Social Justice Leadership Conference (SJLC) is a collaborative effort which provides a space for students, student groups, community members, alumni, faculty, and staff to discuss social justice and to learn and refine leadership skills. SJLC seeks to empower its participants to create change by applying the skills and knowledge acquired during the conference.

QueerWes Meeting 2/13

Spring 2013 Meeting #2

Attendance: Shauna, Vivianne, Amelia, Joel, Katy, Michael, Bing, Izzy

1. Fran Koerting, Director of Residential Life, joins us to talk about wording for the freshman housing preference form. General confusion is discussed as well as prior university attempts. Consensus is reached that except for a few small changes, the current form and system does a good job of placing freshmen, allowing them to present concerns, and not outting anyone. Any questions, comments, ideas, suggestions, etc.– feel free to contact Fran Koerting (fkoerting@wesleyan.edu).

2. Queer Intern Katy not on Endless Acronym listserv?!

3. QRC: Katy’s alphabetizing books and some decorations have been put up.

4. We discuss events we might want to put on this semester. Izzy will bring event planning sheets next week so everyone can get planning and putting on events.

5. Queer Prom update: both Eclectic and Psi U will be discussing allowing us to have Queer Prom at their houses at their chapter meetings on Sunday. JOEL JOINS QUEER PROM COMMITTEE. MAYBE AMELIA DID TOO?!

6. Hedwig and the Angry Inch: musical or rock opera? Musical, we think. Michael’s bringing it to the film series, at any rate.

Anyhow, come next week for snacks and specific tasks for events and such. Bring a friend!

<3, QueerWes

Gay Men Hating Other Gay Men

I stumbled upon this video while on Reddit. It was a very interesting video to me because I did agree with some of what was said, but there were also things that were said that challenged the way I thought about gender expression in the gay community. I’m not even sure how to respond to it because I’m so conflicted and not sure where I stand. I don’t feel that I am “hating” on others because of what I am not attracted to them, but it does feel sometimes that I am hating on the “archetype sort of gay”. And by archetype I mean stereotypical. Overall, I like what Ken and Cole had to say. In addition, one of the people in the video say that gay men tend to hate gay men, and what they mean is they hate a certain type of person. This is a point that makes me uncomfortable. In my head I say I don’t care, but it bothers me. I still to this day cannot figure out what is it that bothers me so much about that “type of person”.

Another person in the video said something that hit close to home in certain ways. They said that the only thing that binds us together as a community is our queerness (and of course the experience that comes with that), but not much else. And for the longest time I just haven’t been able to identify with the queer community. I can identify with my other identities but not with my queerness in the same way.

What are your reactions to this? I’m really curious.

Queer Conference Needs Your Help!

Devyn Manibo of Hampshire sez: “Twelve more days to raise $5,500 for the Queer Conference! Every dollar counts, and if you can’t contribute monetarily, please please please spread the word.” Please support!

Gay in the NFL

Thoughts?

Also, anyone else conjuring up memories of that episode of Law and Order: SVU involving this subject?

Being a Transgirl in a Cisnormative World

Okay so now here comes Delilah’s rant on gender in society and how it’s not even remotely okay how people understand and perceive gender roles and expectations.

First, let’s lay some groundwork

As I’m sure many queer people are aware of, the transgender community is a highly neglected and misrepresented group of people in society as a whole, but this is also applicable within the queer community itself.

I was born male, and only until the past few years have I accepted that I identify as female and I no longer want to be perceived as a male. There’s a myriad of issues that have come into my life because of this part of my identity, but we don’t need to get into to heavy detail, at least not now. I promise you I’ll be talking a lot about gender and trans* experiences in my posts.

So let’s get one thing straight.

Sexuality does not equal gender, and vice versa. More importantly, they are both spectrums, not binaries.

These are some important distinctions to make. I’m not going to go into sexuality in this post, because that’s too much to talk about at once. I just wanted to make the distinction between that and gender.

So, yeah, the gender spectrum. I kinda forgot to mention something else.

Gender identity and biological sex are not the same thing.

Your gender identity is whatever part of the gender spectrum you fall on, whether that’s masculine, feminine, androgynous, what have you. I myself don’t even fall 100% on the feminine side, I’m like 70-80% there I’d say. And that’s okay!

Your biological sex is what’s going on your pants. It’s no one’s right but yours to know what’s going on down there, at least until you get your sexy time on with a partner, and even then, it shouldn’t be anyone’s right to judge for what you were born with. I mean, you can’t even control that!

So now let’s talk about how being trans* affects all this stuff

Okay, so now that we’ve made some distinctions about what gender entails, I’m going to jump into my experience as a transgirl.

I actually haven’t met anyone else who identifies the same way I do. Which makes me very, very, very lonely. Very lonely. As I mentioned before, transgender people are ostracized even within the queer community. I’m not going to lie, going to QueerWes meetings and what not always bring a little anxiety with it because I feel awkward talking so much about trans* issues when it doesn’t apply to like 80-90% of people in the room, and it definitely doesn’t apply to anyone in the way it applies to me… (Although, I suppose that’s an inherent truth about any given person).

I don’t really know how to talk about my issues. I’ve been on hormone replacement therapy (i.e., taking testosterone blockers and straight up estrogen) for nearly two months now and yet for some reason I’m still terrified to go out and present female in public. Why is that? Perhaps we can blame cisnormativity and the fact that society ostracizes and even harms people who don’t conform to gender roles. Perhaps I’m scared that I won’t be “enough of a girl,” whatever that means. As in, maybe I feel that in order for people to accept me, I need to actually enforce female stereotypes in regards to my personality, choice of clothing, etc., in order for people to accept me.

Why should I care so much about what other people think of me?

I don’t know. I really, really don’t want to. But I do. And that’s because I’m terrified of alienating the people I love and becoming alone, and no one wants that to happen to them.

Being transgender, especially male-to-female, which brings in so many issues regarding society’s messed up views on masculinity, in a cisnormative world means a lot of things.

• I don’t have the comfort of using the bathroom without feeling safe.
• I don’t have the opportunity of securing a job without the risk of being fired for my gender identity.
• I don’t have the luxury of not having to explain to my romantic and/or sexual partner that I have male parts.
• Hell, once I finally start presenting female, I won’t even have the ability to just go to lunch without feeling scared that I’ll get ostracized.

Okay, well that’s enough for now

That’s just barely scratching the surface. Okay, this post has gone on way too long already, and there will be much more, trust me, on all the crazy feelings I have and lots more gender-related things and what not. Look forward to them. Sorry if I came off as a whiny, crazy, radical queer. I really don’t like to get angry about my life situation, in fact I like it’s given me opportunity to be an open-minded, loving person.

Come say hi to me in real life, I’m actually a fairly bubbly, friendly, warm, and loving person. At least I hope I am! Thanks for reading this rant of mine and I hope it’s offered some food for thought.

– Delilah Luna Seligman