11/10: Passing!

This week in GSA, we discussed the concept of passing and how it applies to the LGBT community, as well as other marginalized groups. Passing is an important concept to understand, as it shows up in all kinds of places--including as an important factor in understanding the conflict between Professor X and Magneto in Marvel Comics’s X-Men.

Passing is the ability of a person to be regarded as a member of a social group other than one’s own, generally with the person aiming to gain social acceptance and/or access to external aspects of privilege. In order to understand this, it is necessary to understand that there are two types of privilege: an internal type that deals primarily with things like self-perception and identifying with what is represented in media (ie watching a TV show and seeing a white male character if you yourself are a white male), and an external type that deals with all other types of privilege (ie a man being taken more seriously than a woman, etc).

People attempt to pass for many different reasons; safety often factors into it. If a person of color can pass as white in an area where their race might put them in danger of harassment or assault, it seems to their advantage to pass. Being taken more seriously as a cisgender person might be a reason a trans* person would try to pass. Wolverine fights cage matches without his claws out because of the harassment he receives when others know he is a mutant (see the first X-Men movie for a visual example of this).

Understanding passing is important to understanding that it can be impossible to really know who is around you; it might be easier in a smaller community like WRA where we seem know everything about one another, but you can’t ‘tell’ gay kids from straight kids, trans* kids from cisgender kids, or mutant kids from human kids. Being careful with our language isn’t just important around people we know to be members of non-privileged groups, it’s important at all times. We also should understand that passing can divide groups, and that access to privilege can affect the way those without access privilege perceive those with the access to privilege; for example, if you look at most of the mutants who joined up with Magneto in the X-Men movies, many cannot pass as humans and so would not be able to have access to being accepted as humans the way many of those who are on Xavier’s side might.

There is also the concept of ‘being passed’, wherein a person passes without the intent of passing; that is, they are seen as a member of another group without trying to. While this may sound like it could be beneficial, if one, for example, doesn’t know that they are being read as a man and they walk into a women’s restroom, complications could arise.

Next week in GSA, we’re going to talk about trans* people, giving you the basics of the complicated and wonderful mess that is gender identity! If you have any questions, you can bring them to the meeting and ask them anonymously (similar to the Q+A sessions we did back in September). We’re also going to be making ribbons to wear on Friday for Transgender Day of Remembrance, so bring your crafty selves! We look forward to seeing you!

11/3: Blood Donations!

This week in GSA we held a discussion about the policies of the American Red Cross and other blood donation organizations in dealing with MSM (men who have sex with men), and women who have had sex with a man who has had sex with men. In 22 countries, including the United States, the MSM community cannot donate blood and are immediately given a permanent deferral, meaning they cannot donate blood. Some countries have a range of time (anywhere from six months to five years) after which, if a man has not had sex with a man in that time, he may donate blood. There are four countries who used to defer the MSM community, but no longer use MSM as part of their criteria for deferrals.

The reasoning for this primarily is the higher risk MSM have of getting HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The MSM community who have had sex after 1977 have a prevalence of HIV infection that is 60 times higher than the rest of the population, and the chance of infection if you are exposed to infected blood in a blood transfusion is 99%. Although all blood donations are screened, HIV can remain dormant and undetected in a person’s body for anywhere from several weeks to several years.

The general consensus of those who attended the meeting was that the policy of permanent deferral of the MSM community was fairly reasonable until HIV testing could be more accurate. But then Doc Rob pointed out that blood donations are really just contingent on trusting that people answer the questions truthfully. So a member of the MSM community could lie on the questionnaire to donate blood. The American Red Cross is also frequently in a state of emergency regarding the amount of donated blood. So is it right to eliminate an entire group of the population when they need the blood and test all blood received anyway? Leave a comment below with your opinion, or send us an email at gsa.wra@gmail.com!

This weekend, the GSA leadership had the opportunity to attend GLSEN of Northeast Ohio’s Youth Conference. We learned a lot and are excited about the opportunity to join up with other GSAs in our area.

On another note, we finally have a date set for our cabaret of songs by LGBT artists! It will be Saturday, February 25th. Because we want you to have plenty of time to rehearse, we would like your song selections by November 30th, after Thanksgiving break. If you need some ideas for a song, you can email us for a list of LGBT artists, or google ‘list of LGBT musicians’ (or something along those lines). We look forward to hearing from you about your selections, and we hope to see you at next week’s meeting, when we are discussing the concept of passing!

10/27: Famous Gay People!

As part of the last week of LGBT History Month, this week in our GSA meeting, we discussed famous people past and present who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. We compiled a massive list--we found we could come up with nearly fifty names just off the tops of our heads without trying very hard. Some of the names we could come up with include:
- Ellen DeGeneres, comedian and actor
- King James I, king of England
- Harvey Milk, politician and activist
- Truman Capote, writer
- Zachary Quinto, actor (and recently out--within the past two weeks!)
- Rosie O’Donnell, comedian
- Langston Hughes, poet
- RuPaul, TV personality
- Rachel Maddow, news anchor/political commentator
- Kate Bornstein, trans* activist

As you can see, our group was incredibly diverse, with people from all walks of life--actors, politicians, writers, activists. And this list is just a small sampling of the list we came up with of famous people. LGBTQ-identified people exist in all walks of life; they aren’t just all artists or writers or activists. Literally anyone in any walk of life can be gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender or pansexual or any other non-heterosexual, non-cisgender identity.

You can surely make a list of your own! The list we presented here is only the tip of the iceberg that we could come up with in a thirty minute period. How many people can you think of in that time?

Next week in GSA, in light of the recent blood drive here at WRA, we’re going to talk about blood donation and the Red Cross’s policies relating to gay men. As we’ve discussed before, gay men are not allowed to donate blood if they have had sexual relations with another man since 1977. We’ll talk about why and moves that are being made to change those policies. Happy Halloween and we hope to see you on Thursday!

10/20: Ally Week Workshop!

This week in GSA, instead of our regular Thursday-activities-period meeting, we held an hour-long workshop in honor of Ally Week. The purpose of the workshop was to learn what an ally is and how to be a better ally to the LGBT community, though the lessons we learned are applicable outside that community.

We began the workshop by asking questions about language people had heard around campus and whether or not we had seen harassment or known someone who was harassed for their perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. Everyone in the room had heard phrases like “that’s so gay” and “no homo”, and everyone knew at least one person who had been harassed. Have you heard or seen these kinds of things? What do you think this means about the current climate at WRA?

Next we took a very difficult quiz about our knowledge of how to be a trans*/intersex ally. The quiz was very difficult, but brings to light how little is often presented for allies about the transgender and intersex communities. Hopefully we all learned something from taking the quiz!

The next activity we did was to quiz those attending about a poll taken by GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) about harassment in schools. Did you know that:
- 85% of LGBT teens have been verbally harassed at school because of their sexual orientation
- 64 percent of students have been verbally harassed because of their gender expression
- 40% of students have been physically harassed at school because of their sexual orientation
- 27 percent of students have been physically harassed at school because of their gender expression
- 30 % of LGBT students missed an entire day of school because they felt unsafe at school (that’s four times more than their straight, cisgender counterparts)
- 62 percent of students who were assaulted in school did not report the incident to school staff

How do these statistics make you feel? Some people expressed surprise at the high number of kids who reported being physically harassed because of their sexual orientation. How does WRA compare to these statistics? We heard from people who thought that WRA was much better and we heard from people who thought the situation at WRA was just as bad. What do you think?

Next we did an exercise those who attended GSA last year might be familiar with--we discussed ways to call people out on their inappropriate language; phrases like “that test raped me”, “that’s so gay” or “he’s such a faggot”. We’ve discussed calling people out before on the blog, but we’ll reiterate the quick rules for calling people out: if you feel unsafe, don’t risk it. Get a teacher or someone else you know to be an ally. If you do feel okay calling someone out, say things like “Hey can you not use language like that around me? It makes me really uncomfortable.” Make it about you, not them, and you may be more effective. And while it is often awkward to call someone out on inappropriate language, that’s one of the best ways allies can show their support on campus.

Finally we split up into small groups and created definitions for what an ally is. There were several great ideas, and after the evening was over the co-presidents compiled them into the following definition, which was read at Morning Meeting: “An ally is a friend who overtly supports others, who actively advocates for those without a voice, and who works to ensure people have a safe environment in which to live and work.”

We’d like to thank those who came out to the event and made it such a wonderful, productive workshop. The name of the club, after all, is the Gay Straight Alliance, and allies are an integral part of the community. Your roles as allies is key to supporting those who most need it, and we’re glad to see such a diverse community of allies here at WRA.

10/13: Privilege, Power and Identity

Hello everyone! We hope you are having a great break. As part of our ongoing attempts to uphold our mission statement (“to promote awareness about LGBTQ culture and to foster understanding, acceptance, and tolerance through education and activism”), this week we discussed the concept of privilege. Privilege is a difficult topic to wrap one’s head around, so if you have any questions after reading this post, feel free to email us questions at gsa.wra@gmail.com, or ask questions in the comment section below!

Before we begin, we want you to say the following several times: privilege is not personal. Got it? Privilege, in the sense in which we are speaking, is not related to personal accomplishment--you don’t earn the privilege we’re talking about. These types of privilege merely exist in culture.

So what is privilege? Anti-racist activist and academic Peggy McIntosh explains that privilege exists when one group has something of value that is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to, rather than because of anything they’ve done or failed to do. Privilege affects people differently depending on the intersections of oppression that they experience; oppression is the flip side of privilege, where a group is denied access to something because they do not belong to a certain group. To further explore these ideas of privilege, we put several types of privilege up on the board and asked those that attended the meeting to pick one and we could talk about the ways those privileges interact with us in our every day lives. Below are the ones we discussed on Thursday.

Native English Speaker: As a native English speaker, one is guaranteed to understand all signs posted here in the United States. The Internet is written primarily for English speakers, and a huge amount of literature is either written in English or translated into English. Native English speakers also have the advantage of going to practically any country in the world and being able to find someone able to speak at least rudimentary English in that country--these are all privileges non-native English speakers don’t have in their native languages.

White: White people are less likely to be arrested than people of color, and have access to higher quality goods; ghettos and inner-city spaces are more likely to be considered “food deserts” (low access to nutritious food), for example. White people can choose whether or not to acknowledge the fact that they are white, and they have a much higher amount of representation in different types of media; for example, we could count on one hand the number of people of color in the Harry Potter series. White people are more likely to control conversations, and what is said by a white person is more acceptable--in some cases, a white person could repeat the exact same idea as a person of color, but where the person of color might be ignored, the white person would be paid attention to. This might be because white people have created the dominant culture and virtually erased the histories of other groups in the process. White privilege is a privilege that intersects heavily with other types of privilege, and is one of the privileges we encourage particularly increased awareness of.

Monoracial: People with monoracial privilege--that is, people whose parents are both of the same race--are guaranteed to almost always have their race represented on forms. They never have to worry, if there is no “multiracial/other” option, about which box to tick. Even when there is a “multiracial/other” category, the proximity of “multiracial” to “other” immediately makes those who are multiracial feel like “others” or outsiders.

Male: Men are more likely to dominate a conversation, and have what they say taken seriously. They are less likely to be harassed or sexually assaulted than women; although men are victims of sexual assault, likely in higher numbers than reported, the estimated number is still significantly lower than attacks made on women. They earn much more money than women, and are much more likely to hold positions of power. Their success and achievements are not written as a success for men; this is rarely true for women. If a man fails in some pursuit, his failure will not be chalked up to the fact that he is a man--the same cannot be said for women.

These are just a few examples of privilege. Other types we’ll discuss later include heteroseuxal privilege, cisgender privilege, and Christian privilege. Do you have any of the types of privilege we discussed here? Which ones? How do they impact your daily life? Think about it--examine the ways privilege touches your life and the lives of those around you.

In other news, THIS THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20TH, from 6:30 - 7:45 pm, in Wilson Reading Room, GSA is hosting an ALLY WEEK WORKSHOP. This will be instead of our weekly meeting. We will be playing games, distributing prizes, and there may be sweet treats and something to drink! Please come out, as this is our first big event of the year and it would be a great opportunity to show your support. Bring a friend! We promise it will be a fun and educational experience. You can RSVP to the event here.

We hope the rest of your midfall break is fun and safe, and we look forward to seeing you all Thursday evening!

10/6: The first gay pride was a riot!

Happy LGBT History Month from WRA’s GSA! In honor of this month, GSA held a meeting about the Stonewall riots that began on June 28, 1969. We have already posted a blog about the oppressions faced by gay people before the riots, so this post will focus instead on the riots themselves.

For most of our information, we watched the documentary Stonewall Uprising, a great resource that explains the situation through interviews with historians and writers, and oral histories from gay people who were at the Stonewall Inn the night of the riots. Click the link if you’d like to check it out--the DVD is also in the Ong Library, if you’d like to watch it on a bigger screen!

The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar located on Christoper Street in New York City, smack in the middle of where the gay community tended to congregate at the time. It attracted people from all walks of gay life--people in business, academia, as well as middle-class people, but it was most popular with the young, homeless crowd and with many drag queens; it was described as a “refuge” by a man in the documentary. Because one homosexual on the premises classified an establishment as “disorderly”, the New York State Liquor Authority would revoke or deny a liquor license to a bar that served gay people. Seeing an opportunity to make money, the Mafia bought up the Stonewall among other bars and sold incredibly cheap, watered-down beer that was often stolen. Although they often paid off police, raids were still frequent, and in fact, the Stonewall Inn had been raided earlier that week.

Due to the upcoming mayoral elections, there was a police crackdown on gay bars, and during peak hours on the evening of June 28, 1969, police arrived with paddy wagons to make their usual arrests of those found to be in violation of any number of laws that discriminated against gay people and the gender-variant. But as they began to handcuff people and take them out to the paddy wagons, a crowd began to gather around the Stonewall, and many of those arrested were not going quietly. People began to throw pennies at the police, calling them coppers. Sensing the tense mood, the police retreated back inside the Stonewall, along with a reporter from The Village Voice, the newspaper that had its offices just up the street. The crowd began to get more and more violent; in some cases, incendiary devices were reported as being thrown, and at least one group of drag queens wrestled a parking meter from the ground and used it as a battering ram while the police frantically tried to call for backup. When that backup finally arrived, the crowd was briefly driven back but soon pushed forward again. Violent behavior increased, but the riots also took a different form: several people recall a group of drag queens singing songs while doing a kick-line in front of the police.

The riots continued for several days afterwards, with people from all sorts of backgrounds joining in; although they had begun with the drag queens and the poor street kids, representatives from almost every walk of life showed up to show their support. Out of this coming-together arose the gay rights movement; a year later, they would reunite to hold the first Pride Parade, which made its way from Christopher Street to Central Park despite bomb threats and other fears of violence. The event was so momentous around the world that in Germany, gay pride events are referred to as Christopher Street Day. For the first time, gay people from all walks of life stood together against the oppression that had kept them quite for so long.

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Next week we’ll be talking about privilege and how it affects all of our lives! What do you think about the Stonewall uprising? Do you have any suggestions about meeting ideas? Email us at gsa.wra@gmail.com! Also keep your eyes peeled for information about an upcoming workshop we have in honor of Ally Week! Good luck with the week before midfall break!

9/29: Q&A Redux!

This week in GSA, we continued with our questions from last week, and managed to knock three more out in the twenty minutes we have each week. Before we get to the questions, though, we’re proud to announce that after working through six very good applications, the co-presidents have made a decision about club officers! Our financial officer is Irene Li, and our secretary is Alex Fellows! Congrats to them both! We’re excited to have them on board and see how they can contribute to the club from their new positions. And now, onto the questions!

Is it a reasonable aim to eventually eliminate derogatory phrases from my vocabulary and eventually [for] others to do so?
First we identified what phrases we still hear commonly on campus. These phrases and words included “That’s so gay”, “faggot” and “no homo”.

Mr. Davies mentioned that he had noticed that athletes in interviews, understanding that there would be backlash if they used the phrase “no homo”, now say “pause” instead, as in “I thought you looked really good out there today, pause.”

Many members at the meeting expressed that they thought it was pretty impossible to delete derogatory phrases from vocabulary entirely, but others said they think it is entirely possible to delete derogatory phrases from one’s personal vocabulary, and that the next step then is to try to make others aware of how their word and phrase choices might affect those around them. It’s not necessarily easy to make these changes, even within your own personal vocabulary, but we feel it’s very important to try.

When you’re talking to really super intolerant people, how do you stop from being horrible back?
We discussed several strategies for dealing with people who are unwilling to discuss issues in an open-minded or even respectful manner. Obviously, above all, your safety in such discussions is of the utmost importance, and we at GSA encourage you to remove yourself from such a discussion if you feel unsafe at any time. We also stress the point that by allying yourself with GSA, everything you say instantly comes under scrutiny--if you are an ally in GSA, you must be an ally in all areas of your life. This isn’t a universal truth, and it can weigh pretty heavily on a person, but it’s something to keep in mind when you’re having such a discussion; as unfair as it is, you are a representative of the club.

It was suggested in the meeting that having conversations with incredibly intolerant people is in fact a sort of waste of one’s time--that if they are truly not going to listen to you, you should save your energies for people you can convince. This led to an idea of “tolerance of intolerance”. We also talked about dealing with incredibly intolerant strangers in places like restaurants and on airplanes. In many of these cases, removing oneself from the situation might be of the best interest to all parties, particularly if you can get away.

But in the WRA community, Mr. Ong pointed out, we have a responsibility to better each other, and so having these discussions and calling others out on their behavior and language is absolutely something we should do--not just should do, but must do. This is why we do things like calling out workshops--to arm you all with the skills to go out into our community and make a difference. Yes, calling people out is very hard, but if we all step up to the plate more often, we’ll find not only that our peers have curbed their language, but we have other people around us who can step up too.

Can you explain the correct terms that people generally don’t understand or use correctly?
A lot of basic terms can be found at the Terms 101 post including ones like transgender and crossdresser/drag queen, etc. One specific set of terms we were asked to explain further that wasn’t on that list was the difference between the terms “sex” and “gender”.

In the case that’s being talked about here, “sex” refers primarily to physical body parts, both primary and secondary sex characteristics. In GSA, we’ll often use “gender assigned at birth” rather than talking about someone’s “sex”, because it implies that assigned gender is natural, and that to transition from one’s assigned gender is therefore unnatural. Sex, in this case, is often described as being “biological”.

Gender, on the other hand, is far more complicated and complex. A definition for gender that Ai has come up with is “a categorization denoting a performance of traits, often split up as “masculine” or “feminine”; gender is constructed by culture and then performed by people in that culture”. Long story short, gender is many things: self-identification, attribution, cultural roles. Digging through that mess can be very complicated and complex, so complicated that we ran out of time to properly discuss it, though we plan to have an entire meeting dedicated to sex/gender issues at a later date.

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Do you have any questions? Suggestions for meetings? Comments? Critiques? Email us at gsa.wra@gmail.com! Get ready for next week’s meeting as we dive into the history of the LGBTQ rights movement and discover why the first Pride was a riot!

9/22: Question and Answer!

This week’s meeting was very busy, as anyone who had to leave early could tell you. First we voted on the constitution, which was ratified with a unanimous vote by all present. If you’re curious to know the content of that document, feel free to check the previous blog post, where we have it in its entirety!

This week we did a basic question and answer session; upon arrival at the meeting, students and faculty were presented with slips of paper to write anonymous questions that were then selected at random to be discussed. Unfortunately, we ran out of time and could not to get all the questions, but we hope to continue the discussion this week! For right now, we’re going to post the questions we talked about on Thursday below, along with a brief outline of our discussion! Feel free to comment on this post with answers of your own.

1. Do you think that the LGBTQ community is accurately portrayed in TV or movies (take shows like Glee, for example)?
In the meeting, we discussed how representation in media does not necessarily equate positive representation; for example, in an episode of Family Guy, the character Quagmire’s father comes out as a trans woman. The trans* community generally responded negatively to the episode, much to creator Seth MacFarlane’s confusion.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that while there are in fact gay men like Kurt from Glee in the world, narratives are incredibly diverse; not every gay man is going to be like Kurt, nor is every lesbian experience going to be like it is portrayed on The L Word.

2. How is it fair that men can’t have sexual relations with other men and give blood? Shouldn’t anyone have to take an HIV test first?
HIV tests are actually standard for all blood donations, because they can’t be careful enough (if you are exposed to HIV-infected blood through a transfusion, there is a 90% chance you will contract the virus), so that answers the second part. As for the first part, we actually intend to answer this when WRA has its next blood drive! You should know the rule has been relaxed in the UK; if, as a man, you haven’t had sexual contact with another man in a year, you can donate blood.

3. Do you think sexuality is permanent? In other words, how would you explain a married man realizing he’s gay after living a “straight life”?

There are two camps with two different theories on this topic. On the one hand, some argue sexuality is fluid, and so to go from being attracted mostly to men to being attracted mostly to women is not out of the question. This is especially prevalent in the bisexual community, and studies have been done into the fluidity of sexuality particularly among women.

On the other hand, in the hypothetical situation, the other camp would argue that due to the stigma of being a gay man, the man in the situation could just have been repressing his sexuality, or not realized it. What do you guys think about it?

4. Will we learn anything about the relation between chemical balances of the brain and how they affect people’s personalities/sexualities?
Um... we can add it to the list! This wasn’t something that was on our radar, but we can look into it for a meeting sometime this year. It sounds very scientific, which is not something that is Ai’s particular forte, but if you have found any information about it that has sparked your interest, please send it to gsa.wra@gmail.com!

5. When do we plan on once again holding/beginning to work on Broadway Backwards?
As soon as we can get the administration to work with us on a date! We hope to begin rehearsals sometime shortly after winter break. In the meantime, think about what you might be willing to perform for a possible winter cabaret! We will keep you posted on upcoming dates for that.

6. We all know that we should address behavior that slights another--racism, sexism, ageism--but how do we encourage a more welcoming, educated community in general--adults, administrators, neighbors, parents, faculty spouses?
This question is a very difficult one. In GSA, we’ve talked extensively how to call someone out when they’ve said something offensive or hurtful, but how do we as a community prevent such behavior before it even starts?

Education is incredibly important. Being able to talk about LGBTQ issues openly and including such issues in the curriculum, or even as a part of our daily lives, spreads understanding.

In the meeting, it was suggested that visibility is incredibly important--that GSA get up at Morning Meeting and make ourselves as known as we can, to give the signal to new students about the nature of respect in our community. But at GSA we also have to walk a fine line between being visible and being accused of shoving our views down others’ throats. The importance of straight allies here is practically beyond words. Part of why GSA exists is so after the club educates its members, the members can then go out and educate other students. We don’t mean just calling people out; we mean being openly supportive every day of the week. Bringing up issues in class (when appropriate), talking about it in the dining hall, being aware on the practice fields or at Morning Meeting... part of being a global citizen is being able to implement your respect in every day ways, and at GSA we really think leading by example is the best way to bring out others’ respect.

GSA hopes to provide the opportunity and tools for education and acceptance, but in the end, the members of the community must be open to embracing new ideas.

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What do you all think? Do you have any other questions? Feel free to comment below, or come to this week’s GSA meeting--we’’ll be answering more questions!

The Constitution

Here is the soon-to-be constitution of the club. We are ratifying it this Thursday, so everyone should come and show their support. Enjoy!


Constitution of The Gay-Straight Alliance of
Western Reserve Academy


ARTICLE I - Name
     Section 1 - The name of this club will be The Gay-Straight Alliance of Western Reserve Academy,       further referenced as WRA GSA or GSA.

ARTICLE II - Mission
     Section 1 - The mission of this club is to promote awareness about LGBTQ culture and to foster understanding, acceptance, and tolerance through education and activism. Ultimately, GSA strives to make Western Reserve Academy a safe environment: one that is free of harassment and that offers respect to all members of the community, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity.

ARTICLE III - Affiliations
     Section 1 - GSA will abide by all policies of Western Reserve Academy; the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN); and the Gay-Straight Alliance Network International (GSANI).

ARTICLE IV - Membership
     Section 1 - All members of WRA GSA must be current students, staff or faculty of Western Reserve Academy.
     Section 2 - No one shall be denied admittance to the club based upon race, religion, ability, sex, gender identity, and/or sexual orientation.

ARTICLE V - Voting
     Section 1 - All members who have attended at least three (3) meetings have the right to an equal vote.
     Section 2 - All votes must take place during a GSA meeting, with at least fifteen (15) voting members present at the time, by a count of hands
          Clause i - or if unable to attend, voting members may send in votes via email within twenty-four (24) hours of the end of the meeting.
     Section 3 - The Majority is defined as more than half (1/2), and the Super Majority as more than three fourths (3/4), of all votes cast, including abstentions.

ARTICLE VI - Officers
     Section 1 - The executive power of the club always rests in two (2) co-presidents who,
          Clause i - upon graduation or resignation, will monitor an open application process culminating in an all-club vote for a replacement, requiring a Majority for a new co-president to be named;
          Clause ii - may call for a vote of impeachment requiring a Super Majority, if the others co-president’s conduct is improper for a club official. The remaining co-president can then nominate a new co-president who is elected with ⅔ Majority;
          Clause iii - and have the power to select, unanimously, club officers as well as remove them from office if it is proper to do so.
     Section 2 - The Secretary is responsible for
          Clause i - organising a calendar of events throughout the year and aiding in their execution;
          Clause ii - taking minutes and attendance and counting votes during meetings;
          Clause iii - and upkeep of the WRA GSA Facebook page.
     Section 3 - The financial officer is responsible for
          Clause i - managing all monetary transactions and safekeeping of the treasury;
          Clause ii - and overseeing all fundraising events and grant opportunities.

ARTICLE VII - Amendments
     Section 1 - Co-presidents may amend Articles following agreement of the Super Majority, but no Article may be removed in its entirety.
     Section 2 - Officers may introduce new Amendments following agreement of the Majority.

ARTICLE VIII - Ratification
     Section 1 - This Constitution is binding upon ratification by both co-presidents and a Super Majority.

9/15: DADT!

This week we discussed the history of the US military’s policy known as Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT), and the upcoming repeal of said policy. Before going into what was said at the meeting, here’s a quick rundown of important dates in the history of DADT.

1778- the first soldier of the US military (Lt. Gotthold Frederick Enslin) is dishonorably discharged for sodomy
1942- “homosexuals” are differentiated from “normal people” in military training and recruiting manuals; by this time, psychiatric screening is commonplace during the recruiting process. Homosexuality is considered a symptom of psychopathy, and thus gay people are denied entrance into the military
1986- homosexuality removed as a mental illness from the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), raising more questions among gay rights activists about the exclusion of gay people from the military
1992- US presidential election in which then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton promises to overturn the ban
1993- rather than overturning the ban, Clinton compromises with members of Congress to create Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
2008- then-presidential candidate Barack Obama promises to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
December 22, 2010- Congress passes bill allowing for repeal, provided the Pentagon does a study on the affects of such an action and the President, Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff approve the study
July 22, 2011- President Obama, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and Admiral Michael Mullen (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs) approve a study provided by the Pentagon which says the repeal would have no long-lasting negligable effects on the US military
September 20, 2011- DADT is officially repealed

DADT is offically known as Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue, Don’t Harass. In essence, the military no longer asks in interviews if a person is gay, and those service members who are gay are obligated to remain in the closet. They will not be outed unless a fellow service member has “credible information”, and the military will not tolerate any harassment. The policy has worked over the past seventeen years with varying levels of success; in fact, Don’t Harass wasn’t added until 1999, after the death of PFC Barry Winchell, who was dating a trans woman at the time of his brutal murder by a member of his unit.

While the repeal of DADT is clearly a celebration for the gay, lesbian and bisexual community, it also raises several questions about how the military will deal with several issues. One argument against the repeal deals with unit cohesion; opponents argue that a unit cannot bond together if there is fear that the person in the bunk next to them is thinking about them sexually. The safety of out service members is also a question that was raised in the meetings. One possible solution was to separate units between accepting and non-accepting members, to create as little friction as possible, but several questions about unit cohesion arose from this as well. Either way it will be interesting to see how the military handles the transition after this week.

Do you have any comments? Questions? How do you think the military should handle this transition? Comment below or email us at gsa.wra@gmail.com with your thoughts!

REMINDERS
- The deadline for leadership opportunities within GSA has been EXTENDED to MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, at 3:15 PM, with your application turned into either of the co-presidents’ open mailboxes in Seymour or emailed to gsa.wra@gmail.com. If you are interested in applying but have not yet received an application from us, PLEASE EMAIL AI MILLER ASAP at millerm@wra.net.
- This might be a little redundant, but make sure you’re checking the Facebook page and the blog as frequently as possible to receive updates about upcoming meetings and recaps about meetings you may have missed!

9/8: LGBTQ 101!

This week, we did a basic rundown of terms. The terms fall into four categories: sexuality, slurs, gender and “other.” Below we’ve taken all the terms we talked about and defined each of them!

Sexuality
- gay: identifies a person who experiences same-gender attraction
- lesbian: identifies a female-identified person who experiences same-gender attraction
- bisexual: identifies a person who experiences attraction to two genders (NOT necessarily male and female)
- pansexual: identifies a person who experiences attraction to others regardless of gender
- asexual (ace): a person who experiences little to no attraction to others

Slurs
- faggot: a slur describing feminine or gay men
- dyke: a slur (sometimes also used as a self-identifier) to describe a lesbian or a masculine woman
- whore/slut: slurs referring to a sexually promiscuous person, primarily those who are female-identified
- tranny: a slur referring primarily to trans women; occasionally used as a self-identifier by trans*-identified people
- breeder: an obscure slur used in reference to straight people

Gender
- gender binary: the concept of gender as only two genders, male and female
- transgender: identifies those not comfortable living with their assigned gender
- trans man/trans woman: a man or woman who is trans; trans men were female-identified at birth but self-identify as men, while trans women were identified as male at birth but self-identify as women
- non-binary/genderqueer: refers to those who identify outside the binary or as a mix of both male and female
- cisgender: refers to those comfortable living as their gender assigned at birth

Other
- intersex: refers to a person whose genetic/chromosomal/physical makeup does not clearly fit societal standards of male or female
- queer: an umbrella term to describe non-straight or non-cisgender people; can be used as a slur by non-queer-identified people
- crossdressing/drag queen/drag king: crossdressing is the wearing of clothes associated with a gender that is seen as different than the one ususally presented by the dresser; drag is recognized as performance-based crossdressing
- passing: the ability to present oneself, and be accepted as, a member of a different social group
- ally: ALL OF YOU!

Hopefully that was helpful! All of these terms are very important to know and we will be building on them, so make sure you have them down. If you have any questions, feel free to email us a question at gsa.wra@gmail.com.

REMINDERS
- Officer applications are due Saturday (TOMORROW) at noon!

- TIE-DYEING is THIS SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11th, at the TENNIS COURTS, from 1-3 pm. Remember to bring $1. Boarders, if you need a t-shirt, email us using the GSA email account ASAP-- before noon tomorrow!

Thanks to all those who came to the meeting! Another special shout-out goes to Lindsey Johnson who brought rainbow cupcakes to Club Expo--they were a hit!

What is GSA Plotting for 2011-2012?

Before we get into the meat of this post, we’d just like to apologize for our apparent neglect of the blog. We certainly haven’t forgotten it and it will be used frequently in the upcoming year—we haven’t quite yet figured out how, but after an adjustment period it will probably be updated weekly at the very least.

The question is, of course, if we haven’t been working on writing blog posts, what exactly have we been doing? Have Max and Ai just given up on GSA? Certainly not, although things like jobs made our ability to get work done on GSA a little more difficult than it might otherwise be. In fact, it’s been quite the opposite. In the free time we could spare, we have written a constitution for the club—something we’re still tweaking but are hoping to reveal to you all sometime next month. We have also been working on a video project for the club, and hope to have the script tweaked and good to go by October at the latest.

Another part of our work for GSA has been focused on creating fun events for you (because let’s face it, sometimes we have to tell Ai to stop rambling about cissexism and have some fun!). We are in the process of setting a date for Broadway Backwards—an event that was wildly popular last year and one we hope to duplicate, or even improve upon! Check our Facebook page sometime in the next week, because we will post the date there as soon as we know it!

We’d also like to see movie nights/afternoons come back. Last year we watched RENT and Philadelphia, and although both films were moving, the movie nights weren’t particularly well-attended, and let’s face it: both films were kind of downers. We have both watched movies in all kinds of genres this summer with LGBTQ-identified characters or themes relating to the LGBTQ community, and we have permission this year to watch movies that are rated R (within some limitations, of course)! One film we’re looking to show is X-Men: First Class, among others—Ai is super excited to watch it with the club and talk about the concept of passing (because only Ai could take an action movie and talk about it in a sociological context).

But before we even get that far, we’re hoping to have a tie-dyeing event very early in the school year—keep your eyes peeled for more info about that. We’re going to try to move away a little bit from the barrage of emails and more into using Facebook so we can post more information without filling up your inboxes, so make sure to check that often! We also were hoping to have our first meeting before the Club Expo to talk about our goals this year as a club and get a sense of what you guys would like to talk about in our meetings this year.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns about GSA this year, feel free to talk to Max or Ai, or email us at gsa.wra@gmail.com. We’ll do our best to get back to you as soon as possible! We hope you’re even a tiny bit as excited as we are to be back at school and that you’re excited about GSA this year.

The Birth of a Movement

So now that we know why LGBTQ people need Pride, another question arises: how did we get from the oppressions of the past--when gay people were forced to remain in the closet or face institutionalization, beatings and arrests--to where we are today? Who paved the way for the gay rights movement of today? Who is the Rosa Parks of the gay rights movement?

Although there is no real equivalent figure to Rosa Parks, there is a specific day to which most people point as the beginning of the gay rights movement: June 28, 1969. It was on that day that the four day riots known to us today as the Stonewall Uprising began.

A movement existed before the Stonewall Uprising, though--groups known as homophile groups had contingencies all across the country. Two of the most famous groups include the Mattachine society and the Daughters of Bilitis. They held protests and served as the public face of gay people, on occasion going on TV. Interestingly enough, in one interview for a television special, a leader of the Mattachine society specifically stressed that gays weren’t looking for the right to marry one another (something especially fascinating with the recent win for gay marriage in New York).

In 1969, a mayoral election in New York City led to a crackdown on gay bars, as well as a significant increase in the number of violent vigilante attacks against gays. Up and down Christopher Street, widely-considered the center of the gay community in New York City, bars were raided and arrests made--in fact, the Stonewall Inn had been raided only a few nights before June 28th.

To quickly explain the story, here’s a video from hip-hip radio show host Jay Smooth [note: this video is a few years old and makes reference early in to an incident that happened in 2009. Stick it out a few seconds. Jay makes it worth it]:

Although there were three nights of riots, they received very little publicity; the New York Times merely printed a news brief about it, and it didn’t spread to any other papers. The Village Voice did print an actually story about it, but in the process became the focus of the first gay-rights rally as the newly-united community protested against the use of the word ‘fag’ in the article; from that point onward the Village Voice used the word ‘gay’ instead. Despite the limited publicity, however, the uprising changed the direction of the gay movement. A year from the start of the riots, the first parade was held in New York City, marching from Christopher Street to Central Park despite uncertain numbers and several bomb threats. Ultimately 2000 people marched in broad daylight, marking the birth of the gay rights movement. The incident was so decisive, Pride events in Germany are called ‘Christopher Street Days’. It is to the brave people who rioted at the Stonewall Inn that we owe the victory in New York, and indeed every victory won for LGBTQ people today.

Why We Need Pride

Often when people talk about Gay Pride events, a question comes up: “Why do gay people get their own parade? Why can’t straight people have a Pride Parade?” Questions like this are often asked by dominant groups about non-dominant groups; it’s a derailing tactic used to erase the history of oppression that non-dominant groups have experienced. People ask the same questions about Black History Month, and International Women’s Day.

Still, the question remains: why? Why do LGBTQ people get their own special day (and, as you’ll remember from our last post, a whole official month)? If we take a hop in the Way-Back Machine (and if you know what that is, you probably don’t have to read this post), we’ll see why.

Picture yourself in the 1960s. A lot of people say they would love to live during that time--with Woodstock and hippies and the peace movement. It was a time of social upheaval, with the Civil Rights Movement in full swing and the counterculture resisting the mainstream culture of the time. The women’s rights movement was also pushing for equality. It was a great time to be alive--a time of intense change, when life for people was getting better.

Except if you were gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. At the end of the decade, homosexuality was illegal in 49 states, with Illinois being the only state without such laws. Almost all medical authorities agreed that homosexuality was a mental defect, and many classified same-sex relationships as “sociopathic relationships”. It was thought that this ‘mental illness’ developed in the first three years of life, and if you were out, therapy for such an illness consisted of, according to one survivor, psychiatrists trying to convince the patient that they weren’t gay, and if that didn’t work, they would then turn to “aversion therapy”, in which the patient was shown pornographic images of people of their same gender, and then were electrically shocked to ‘re-train’ their brains.

If such ‘therapies’ didn’t work, a gay person could be committed to a psychiatric institution, such as Atascadero State Hospital, which became known as the ‘Dachau for queers’. At Atascardero, gay patients were experimented on, and in one case given a drug to simulate drowning--essentially medicalized water boarding. In other institutions, gay men were often sterilized or castrated, and many were given lobotomies. These were the lives led by gay people who confessed their sexuality to their families.

Oppression didn’t just come from the medical field. It also came from law enforcement. LGBTQ people had zero protection under law, and if arrested for “lewd, immoral behavior”, had to face their names, ages and home addresses being published in the local newspapers. Such an arrest in some cases made it practically impossible to get a job or housing. Numerous arrests were made because people weren’t wearing the “right clothes”--according to activist Leslie Feinberg, one had to be wearing three or more garments assigned to the “correct” sex in Buffalo, NY, in order to avoid arrest--and these laws were simply a few that openly discriminated against the gender-variant. Many who lived during the time explained that being out wasn’t an option, for obvious reasons, and those who were out faced harassment from almost every avenue of life.

The openly gay were often homeless and unemployed youth who were kicked out of their homes from their families--kids around high school age and a little older. The center of their communities were gay bars, but even here they weren’t safe. Police raided bars frequently, demanding IDs and making arrests. Anyone who resisted was often met with violence--this on top of violence from outside law enforcement. In some cases, beatings of gay, lesbian and trans people ended in memory loss or paralysis; in still more cases, the victims were murdered.

It seems almost unimaginable, to think about the way LGBTQ people were treated by other citizens, by doctors and by the police. And because of the nature of the attacks made on them, gay people had very little political voice. No one was willing to stand up for them, and perhaps most importantly, most of them weren’t standing up for themselves. Although many people who were at the Stonewall uprising were involved in the civil rights movement, they didn’t yet have the community to organize any formal protests. That would change after a series of riots in New York City in June 1969.

So when people ask the question why do gay people need Pride Parades? It’s because of the oppression they suffered at the hands of their families, their communities, medical professionals and the law. It’s because before the Stonewall riots, the lives of LGBTQ people were threatened every single day, just because of their sexuality. Gay marriage was generally not on these people’s minds--they just wanted protection from police brutality and the threat of murder.

Pride Month!

For those who don’t know, the month of June is officially recognized as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month! In honor of this important month, the WRA GSA is kicking off their blog with a three-part series of posts explaining the history and answering that one question people always seem to ask: why do gays and lesbians get their own Pride Parades?

The first Gay Pride Parades in the United States happened June 28th, 1970, exactly one year after the Stonewall Riots (more on this later). Subsequent parades held in New York City and Atlanta were called Gay Liberation Day; those held in San Francisco and Los Angeles were called Gay Freedom Day; by the time the 1980s rolled around, most events had been renamed Gay Pride Day. Parades spread across the country over the next thirty years.

In June of 2000, then-President Bill Clinton declared June to be Gay and Lesbian Pride Month in the United States, the first time the events had been officially recognized by the national government. So far in every year of his administration, President Barack Obama has recognized June to be Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month; you can see his official proclamation here.

If you can, look for Pride Events in cities around you; most cities will have them, from major metropolitan areas like Cleveland, San Francisco and New York, to smaller cities like Iowa City! Events vary by city, but there’s often music, a parade, booths where you can get a lot of great free swag, and information about services in your city! Finding a Pride event is as easy as googling the name of your city and the phrase “Gay Pride” (or any combination thereof).

Next week we’re going to take a look at some history and examine that question that you hear so often: why do gay people get their own Pride parades? Why do they have to show off their Pride? Keep your eyes peeled for a link from our Facebook page!

Welcome!

Hello all! Welcome to the blog for Western Reserve Academy's GSA! We're still a work in progress at the moment (perhaps especially because it's summer and we're no longer in school) but stick around and we may have some interesting content for you!

--Max and Ai