Hello again! Our apologies once again for the delay in posting this; we're determined to get back on track as soon as we possibly can. In the meantime, we're going to go backwards in time two weeks to the meeting we held about call outs.
The call out is something we've discussed before in GSA; when you hear inappropriate language or slurs being used in a conversation, you step in and make it known at the very least that you don't think that language is appropriate. For example, someone might say something is 'gay' to mean bad or stupid; in that case you might step in and say "Hey, calling things 'gay' when you mean it's stupid isn't cool". Some people in GSA expressed that they felt very uncomfortable calling people out, while others explained they had no problem with it. It's important to keep in mind that if calling others out is going to create a situation where you are at risk of being harmed, you do not have to call anyone out, but the best way to make hurtful language stop here is to call someone out. If you really don't think you can do it, get someone who can; any member of the GSA leadership team is willing to call people out, as are many members of the club. You can also tell a faculty member and they can help you handle the situation.
One way to politely call people out is to make the conversation about your feelings; if you say "Sorry guys, but can you not use that kind of language around me? It makes me really uncomfortable," you've made the conversation about you rather than about what exactly they said. In the meeting, we split up into small groups to practice calling one another out. One metaphor for the call out is that calling people out is like being on fire--you know in theory that you need to stop, drop and roll when you're on fire, but in the moment what ultimately needs to happen is muscle memory. Calling others out is similar--you know you should call people out, but in the surprise of the moment, muscle memory has to take over. We'll probably practice calling others out again, at our upcoming Ally Workshop (brought back by popular demand!).
This past week we watched the following trailer for an upcoming documentary about the gay rights movement [trigger warning for homophobic and possibly hateful speech, particularly towards the beginning]:
We spoke about the footage at the beginning of that video, made up of specials done on homosexuality in the 1950s and 1960s--more of that footage can be found in a documentary called Stonewall Uprising, which can be checked out from the Ong Library. In addition, Mr. Ong offered up a film entitled For the Bible Tells Me So, which can be found on Netflix streaming as well as on DVD. The trailer is as follows [trigger warning for homophobic and hateful language, as well as some statements that could be see as an attack on fundamentalist Christianity]:
We hope to have more movie nights in the future, and are working with the Ong Library to expand the film collection to include films about and related to the LGBTQ+ community. We're going to have a movie night sometime soon in conjunction with the Diversity Club to watch the film Prayers for Bobby, about a young man who kills himself after his mother rejects his homosexuality, and the mother's journey to reconcile her religion with her son's sexuality. Keep tuned for upcoming news about that!
Next week we'll be talking about some exciting legal developments in California. Have a good week before Mid-Winter Break, and we'll see you on Thursday!
Sunday, January 29
Sunday, January 15
1/12: Welcome Back!
Welcome back from WRA's Gay-Straight Alliance! You're probably all wondering what the heck happened to the blog in the month of December. Although we had many meetings, in the crunch to study for exams and (for Ai) finish college application, the blog unfortunately became not a top priority. Luckily, we got a lot of rest over the winter break and are charged and ready to make this a great semester for GSA!
This week we welcomed everyone back from their breaks and introduced some exciting things for the upcoming months. The first of these is a video project to create a PSA so we can reach out to the entire school community and not just GSA members. Our treasurer/resident video expert, Irene, is going to be in charge of that, so if you're interested in writing or being a part of the production team for that, please contact her at lii [at] wra[dot]net!
Secondly, the week after next is going to be No Name-Calling Week! We held this event last year and are hoping to hold it again this year to great success. If you want to go ahead and make a poster for the week, please feel free to do so! We'll have more information coming up, so keep your eyes peeled for that.
This Wednesday is Community Service Day--you may have noticed an option to work with GSA on that day. We're hoping to get some planning done for No Name-Calling Week, as well as lay some groundwork for a future workshop similar to the one we held in the fall (but with different activities, obviously). If you're interested, please sign up and we'll see you Wednesday!
Finally, in reviewing the surveys you took before break, we noticed a request to not simply have Max and Ai do all of the meetings. We think it's a great idea to get other people up there talking about issues and ways that GSA members can help our community. If you would like to volunteer to moderate a meeting, please email any of the club officers; if you need an idea, we're compiling a list of topic ideas, so get in contact with us! We'd love to hear from you.
That's about it! Next week we plan to do a mini-workshop during the meeting on how to successfully call others out when they use harmful language around you--get excited! Welcome back, and we hope you have a great semester!
This week we welcomed everyone back from their breaks and introduced some exciting things for the upcoming months. The first of these is a video project to create a PSA so we can reach out to the entire school community and not just GSA members. Our treasurer/resident video expert, Irene, is going to be in charge of that, so if you're interested in writing or being a part of the production team for that, please contact her at lii [at] wra[dot]net!
Secondly, the week after next is going to be No Name-Calling Week! We held this event last year and are hoping to hold it again this year to great success. If you want to go ahead and make a poster for the week, please feel free to do so! We'll have more information coming up, so keep your eyes peeled for that.
This Wednesday is Community Service Day--you may have noticed an option to work with GSA on that day. We're hoping to get some planning done for No Name-Calling Week, as well as lay some groundwork for a future workshop similar to the one we held in the fall (but with different activities, obviously). If you're interested, please sign up and we'll see you Wednesday!
Finally, in reviewing the surveys you took before break, we noticed a request to not simply have Max and Ai do all of the meetings. We think it's a great idea to get other people up there talking about issues and ways that GSA members can help our community. If you would like to volunteer to moderate a meeting, please email any of the club officers; if you need an idea, we're compiling a list of topic ideas, so get in contact with us! We'd love to hear from you.
That's about it! Next week we plan to do a mini-workshop during the meeting on how to successfully call others out when they use harmful language around you--get excited! Welcome back, and we hope you have a great semester!
Sunday, November 13
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!
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!
Sunday, November 6
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!
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!
Friday, October 28
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!
- 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!
Friday, October 21
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.
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.
Sunday, October 16
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!
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!
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