March for pride

By GRACE REED contributing writer

Among the roughly 450 people at “Dukes for Pride” last Wednesday in support of the LGBTQ+ community in response to conservative political commentator Liz Wheeler’s lecture the same evening on “The Ideology of Transgenderism,” the large gathering hit home even more for a select few.

JMU junior Alex Moskal, freshman Max Ford and a junior student who requested anonymity due to nonacceptance of their identity from their family shared their experiences being part of the LGBTQ+ community and suggested changes the community could make to be more transgender-inclusive.

Moskal, one of several guest speakers at “Dukes for Pride” and the accessibility coordinator for the event, ensured the walking route from the Quad to the Festival Conference and Student Center was wheelchair accessible and is a nonbinary transfer student who’s been an LGBTQ+ activist for over a decade.

“The start of me being an activist was, like, highkey me at 12 years old when I wasn’t allowed to have social media and logging on to tumblr.com to call my [state government] representatives,” Moskal said. “So starting at, like 12 years old, because someone on the internet said to, I started calling my representatives about legalizing same sex marriage.”

Now, Moskal focuses on activism in the form of educating others on LGBTQ+ rights. They refer to gender and identity as a “sandbox” where someone can “choose how to play in it.”

Moskal noticed the tendency for slurs against the LGBTQ+ community being used at JMU without anyone speaking up.

“If you hear a slur, ask them, ‘Hey, what do you mean? Can you explain that? Why are you using that language? Do you think that represents JMU values?’,” they said. “But for that, we’d have to update JMU values to include diversity, equity and inclusion.”

Moskal, however, was impressed with the ease of changing preferred names at JMU on student IDs through MyMadison, to which they said they give JMU “100% props” for. Moskal said they occasionally get emails from staff referring to them with a name other than their preferred name, but Moskal said they believe the name-change feature is “a huge step in the right direction.”

In the classroom, Moskal applauds professors who encourage students to introduce themselves with their pronouns, saying it “creates an amount of safety that they’re acknowledging I exist. They’re acknowledging that, even for cisgender students, we might look in a way that doesn’t conform to the expectations of ourselves.”

Moskal said it’s important not to misgender someone based on their appearance, adding that it’s just as bad to misgender a cis-person as it is to do it to a trans-person. They also said if professors were to encourage the inclusion of pronouns in introductions, it would be beneficial to the trans community.

For transgender allies who’ve recently become involved or are afraid to step in, Moskal said it’s not a bad thing to only just starting to be an ally.

“What matters is that you want to help,” Moskal said. “And you can help every day by introducing yourself with your pronouns, and by telling your friends that you will support them no matter what.”

Moskal said there’s a lot of issues currently with gender expression not matching gender identity, and gender presentation not matching gender identity and, therefore, they face discrimination over both issues. Moskal said they’ve received criticism because they “don’t look nonbinary enough.”

“Since I look like I’m close enough to my assigned gender, I am given the privilege of a cis person,” Moskal said. “I am given a little bit of privilege that is immediately taken away because I am openly non-binary and I do not hide my pronouns or my identity regardless of how I dress.”

Moskal said they want to make sure allies understand gender expression doesn’t equal gender identity.

For the transgender community, Moskal’s experienced frustration with acceptance, saying, “People looking at me now go, ‘They haven’t been through transition yet and so they don’t know what it’s like to be transgender.’” But, Moskal said they’ve avoided these comments after learning that as long as people are willing to surround themselves with the right people — as Moskal said, “if you put in the work to supercurate your surroundings” — they don’t have to deal with transphobia in their day-to-day lives. However, Moskal added it’s not as easy as it sounds.

A place to be themselves

Max Ford, freshman executive member for Madison Equality who attended Dukes for Pride, said he knew since sixth grade that he wanted to stand up for himself and his friends to help with transgender and LGBTQ+ rights. Ford said the first time he realized change was happening in the LGBTQ+ community was about two years ago when he attended his first Pride event.

Once he got to JMU, Ford said joining Madison Equality helped him at the beginning of the school year.

“I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to find my group of people where I can, like, be myself,’” Ford said. “But finding Madison Equality really helped me know that I was going to be okay and know that there were people to take care of me.”

Ford said he believes transgender rights shouldn’t be political. It’s somebody’s rights, he said, and “if you disagree with somebody having rights, it’s more a reflection on the way that you perceive the world. That’s somebody’s life.”

Ford said he recommends to anyone with religious objections to try their best to be helpful and kind to people they meet, and if they don’t agree with the way someone chooses to represent themselves, then try to understand their perspective — as Ford said, “Try to see what they’re going through so that you can do better.”

Regarding “Dukes for Pride” last Wednesday, Ford said he was “very happy” to see the number of people who came, adding he wasn’t expecting to see roughly 450.

“It was just uplifting to see people that I knew there that I didn’t expect … to be there, like teachers or just people in the community that aren’t LGBTQ,” Ford said. “It felt like, even though they’re not in the community, they support me and all of my friends.”

Ford mentioned that although some speeches were about the difficulties of being transgender, it relieved him to know the speakers experienced similar feelings.

Learning from the past

An anonymous student who identifies as gender-fluid said they loved that a drag queen hosted “Dukes for Pride.”

“I loved that it was a celebration of queer joy,” the student said. “It’s an important thing to see in the community.”

The student, a junior transfer, volunteered to speak at “Dukes for Pride” and mentioned finding difficulty in belonging in the community.

The student, who got their associates degree in four years from Northern Virginia Community College and started at JMU at 25, said JMU students seemed to be mostly between the ages of 18 to 23. They were, however, able to establish a community with JMU’s fencing club.

The student expressed their struggle with coming out in a Catholic household, mentioning they “had to come out a number of times.” They recalled they were asexual when they were 17, and that caused an upset within their family.

“I had to come out to my parents because they kept putting me back in the closet,” the student said. “It wasn’t actually until 2020 that I was able to come out and stay out.”

The student could stay out when their immunocompromised mother and them couldn’t live in the same house. The separation allowed the student to “stay strong” and honestly say they’re queer: “You can’t tell me that I’m not,” they added.

The student shares the belief of many transgender allies on campus.

“I believe that every single person is deserving of being respected as a human,” the student said. “I believe in humanity’s ability to grow and change and develop and push past old prejudices. And I believe in JMU, as a community, that it will develop beyond that, that it will hear us say, ‘This is not OK.’ And it will learn from the mistakes of the administration and hopefully be able to move past this.”

CONTACT Grace Reed at reedlg@dukes.jmu.edu. For more on the culture, arts and lifestyle of the JMU and Harrisonburg communities, follow the culture desk on Twitter and Instagram @Breeze_Culture.