October 2014 Volume 9 Issue 2
From The LGBT Resource Center
LGBT History Month
Celebrating the Achievements made in the LGBTQ+ Community over the years
Table Of Contents Page 3- Out Falcons Interview Pages 4 &5-LGBT History Month Pages 7-9A Brief History of: • • • •
Bear Culture Asexuality Queer Theology Intersectionality
Page 10- Save the Date!
OUT FALCONS!
An Interview withVern Cooper
What is Out Falcons?
Out Falcons is an LGBT*Q+ visibility initiative sponsored by the LGBT Resource Center. The idea was to ask people on campus—faculty, staff, administrators, and students—to volunteer to have their image appear in a yearbook-style poster series. Alongside their image is information about where they work or what they’re studying and how they identity, either within the LGBT*Q+ initialization spectrum or as an ally.
Where can this project be found?
The poster series will appear all over campus in celebration of LGBT History Month and Coming Out Week festivities, which surround National Coming Out Day.
What is the goal of this project ?
Here at BGSU, we work hard to maintain safe spaces for underrepresented minorities on campus. LGBT*Q students are among these. While this is essential work, we hope the Out Falcons initiative will work to blur the line between those carefully, maintained spaces and the greater campus.
Why do people need to be displayed on this project?
People are what change is made of. If our ultimate goal is to increase LGBT*Q visibility, we must be willing to take those initial steps toward it. Being the first to do something like this—to step out and be visible— on a college campus, or anywhere for that matter, takes guts, and I’m so grateful for and proud of all the support we’ve received on this project.
LGBT History Month by Malcolm McAlpine
October is LGBT History Month and here at the resource center we are trying to celebrate such an event by acknowledging some of the great things done by those in the community. As we could not possibly go through all of the accomplishments of the community we chose to highlight a few members of the community who have done great things for the community.
The information in these bios comes from research done for various projects and over time for more information on sources of info email me at malcolm@bgsu.edu
LGBT History Month
Janet Mock
Janet Mock is a Trans* women and an activist in the community. One of her first notable contributions to the community was the article for Marie Claire on her a few aspects of her life and how she felt growing up. Another notable item would be her series of interviews with Piers Morgan where she had to explain her distates of how the original interview took place and placed the tagline “was a boy till 18� underneath her while she spoke. Finally her most current and prominent act would be her release of her book Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood,
Identity, Love & So Much More
For more information on Janet visit her website janetmock.com
Bayard Rustin ( March 12 ,1912- Aug 24th,1987) was a social movements activist who focused on various aspects of life including civil rights and LGBT rights throughout his life. He was involved in many movements and protests throughout his life and would be attacked by opposing political groups for being a gay male, which during the time homosexuality was considered a criminal act in some states. At one point he refused arrest for homosexual act in 1953. Bayard Rustin
LGBT History Month
Laverne Cox is an actress and Trans* activist. Popular for her role in the Netflix series Orange is the New Black as Sophia Burset. Laverne has also appeared for a numerous amount of interviews two prominent interviews would be the one she did for TIME magazine and her televison interview with Katie Couric where she made sure to address Couric’s interest in her anatomy and not the issues that surround being a Trans* person
Laverne Cox for more information visit her website lavernecox.com
Harvey Milk
Harvey Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an american polititian that was the first openly gay person elected to a position in public office(San Francisco Board of Supervisors.). Serving almost 11months in office he managed to get a gay rights ordinance passed through for the city of San Fransisco. Milk was murdered while in office. Today there is now the Harvey Milk foundation which has a goal to empower organizations to do change the world like Milk did. There is also a Harvey Milk Day which celebrates his life for more info on Harvey Milk Day go to harveymilkday. co
A Brief History
This section of the Queer Query will highlight the histories of various communities and aspects of the LGBT community. All articles for this section are student and or faculty and staff submissions.
Asexuality
by Victoria Johnson Asexuality is defined as a sexual orientation where one does not experience sexual attraction. To be clear this is a short history of the community that identifies as asexual not asexuality itself. The asexual community has been growing exponentially recently with their increase in education and visibility. Now, the community is branching off into real world meet ups and conferences, but is primarily based online. Before the internet there were very few people identifying as asexual. The first official online community was created in the comment section of an article entitled “My life as an amoeba” by Zoe O’Reilly in 1997. This was a huge breakthrough for the community, being able to not only share experiences with others but also share and create an ongoing discussion and community. In October of 2000, this community continued to grow when Haven for the Human Amoeba was founded. This was an email list discussion that had an ongoing conversation with regular members interacting on the email list daily for about a
year. One member of Haven for the Human Amoeba was David Jay. Jay is seen by many as the face of the asexual community today, and created the latest community interactive website entitled Asexual Visibility and Education Network or for short AVEN. This website differed from the email list because it created a place to branch off into separate conversations and create more in depth relationships within the community, while still being online. AVEN had its struggles, creating a sex-negative environment. After about a year of this environment AVEN went under construction in 2002 to become more inclusive, in order to honor everyone who identifies as asexual no matter how present their sex-drive may or may not be. Today, the national community is still is very active online but is also starting to get together as much as possible, as well as hosting an Asexual conference. The main efforts of this community is to educate and create a community where there may otherwise may never be in order to allow those who identify as asexual to feel as if they do belong in this seemingly over sexualized society.
Asexual Pride Flag
Da Bears! Bear Culture Then and Now by Dakota Patton
In many spaces, LGBTQIQA+ people refer to something called “mainstream gay culture”. Well what’s mainstream? That would typically consist of fit, young, white, middleclass (or upper-class), able bodied, gay men. If that constitutes as mainstream, then what else is there? There are entire communities within the LGBTQIAQA+ culture that have their own culture, and one of those is the Bear community. Typically “bears” are defined by their size, hairiness, age, and maturity. The International Bear Brotherhood Flag was created with inclusivity in mind. All of the colors are to represent colors of bear fur as a way to show the representation that the bear community holds across the world. The term ”bear” was made popular by Richard Bulger and his partner Chris Nelson, who passed away in 2006. The couple founded BEAR Magazine in 1987, but little did they know an entire culture would come to form. Originally the magazine was created to provide representation outside of what the mainstream gay culture considered attractive. Before the internet, BEAR Magazine published personals as a way for men to meet who identified with the bear culture. Through the last 20+ years the culture has changed and become something that is not easily defined. When looking at bear culture today, there are a number of identities that people claim. There are bears, cubs, polar bears, panda bears, chasers, otters, muscle bears, chubs, ewoks, daddies, chasers, and I am sure there are more that I have missed. Many people associate masculinity with leather men and BDSM, and while the look of bears might also be associated with masculinity,
that is not what the community as a whole is characterized by. How do men know which category they fall under? That’s a more complicated question than one might think. Originally the culture/community was more exclusive as to who could/would identify with it. Through the change in bear culture there has been an increase of openness and inclusion to more men who want to identify as part of the community. Of course there are still those groups of men who limit their social circles to masculine men who “act like men”, but some would argue that the larger community has grown to be accepting. For many men being a part of the bear community is about self-identifying as a part of the community and having a higher level of maturity. The complications with bear culture have never been greater than they are today. There are issues of who can identify as a “bear”, specific types of men simply being fetishized as opposed to seen as people, the number of labels is increasing, people are being classified by their body, and some people have issues with the celebration of being fat. For some men it is simple, the community provides a space for them to be themselves, feel attractive regardless of their body, and to meet other men who have similar interests and life experiences.
Bear Pride Flag
Queer Theology by Anna Voinovich
Walking around campus these past few weeks, it seems like each day there is a new person or group on our campus ready to share the thousands of reasons for why we will burn in hell. They claim that their Christian faith can be loving but yet they condemn anyone that isn’t them to hell. While their message of hate is inclusive of basically all college students in one way or another, they often emphasize the abomination that is the LGBTQ+ community. So is it true? Do spirituality and sexuality have to clash? Is there a place for queer folk in God’s kingdom? Though the voices of our hatemongering visitors yell no, I believe there is and I’m not alone in this belief. Groups like the Reconciling Ministries Network, Believe Out Loud, and Queer for Christ have been working to create safe spaces for LGBTQ+ people of faith. Some denominations including the Episcopal and Evangelical Lutheran Church of America both accept LGBTQ+ people into the life in ministry of their churches meaning that they may be married at these churches, have membership while being open about their sexual orientation, and even be ordained as pastors or other leaders of the church. Not only are there Christian people and institutions willing to acknowledge and affirm the dignity of all regardless of their sexual orientation or gender expression or identity, there’s a whole theology dedicated to this! Queer theology finds similarities between the radical love that
God demonstrated through the sacrifice of his son Jesus Christ and the radical love of LGBTQ+ folk that disregards the socially constructed boundaries of heteronormative societies. While queer theology emphasizes the affirmation of LGBTQ+ people Marcella Althaus-Reid, one of the early queer theologians, included in her definition of queer those who didn’t meet the societal norms as far as class, race, ethnicity or gender as well. Queer theology calls all of us to love each other radically and stand in solidarity with those who are oppressed. Christianity is not the only religion with movements of affirmation of all. Within Islam, the Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity works to connect LGBT Muslims and support them in their faith journeys. There are also a variety of branches of Judaism including Reform Judaism, Reconstructivist Judaism, and Humanistic Judaism. While many places of worship still have a long way to go in moving towards affirmation of all, there are places where LGBTQ+ people can worship freely. Though the loudest message on faith and sexuality on campus is one of conflict, remember that one does not have to be right to be loud. Spirituality and sexuality can coincide and even complement each other.
Save The Date Here you will find most of the information you would need to contact LGBT related orgs on campus for any additional information feel free to stop in the LGBT resource center or email the organization that you are trying to acquire information from.
LGBT Resource center
• Safe Zone Training 5:30 (Oct 15th)
Vision
WWLW
• Coming Out Week • Candlelight Walk 9:15pm Union Oval (Oct 13-18) (Oct 15th) • Coming Out in the Union Oval (Mon Oct 3th)
• LGBT Faculty and Staff Social 4pm
• Interfaith Panel 9pm 107 Hanna Hall (Oct 14th) • Not So Straight Skate 9pm (Oct 18th) • Queering Comedy (Oct 16th)
HUE
• Game Night at Cafe Havana (Oct 3rd) • General Body Meeting 8pm(Oct 7th)
TAG • General Body Meeting 8pm (Oct 14th)
• Java Jams 7pm Grounds for thought (Oct 17th)
UMS • General Body Meeting 8pm (Oct 21st)