This post is going to be a bit different from all of my other posts. This time, I need your help. Here is the deal:

This semester, I took geology. My instructor was a masters student at my university who also taught at the local high school, she's really a sweetheart and a great person. She's ok with me being late to class on Wednesdays because I have my volunteer office hours in our campus queer resource center (yea, we've got one of those. we're pretty bamf), and helps me with that class, since I can't comprehend science.
POINT IS, after class the other day I'm packing my stuff up and she come up to be and says "eddie, I'm a little nervous, and don't know what to do" which throws me off, because how often does an instructor admit to you that they don't know what they are doing? So I asked her what was going on, and she told me she had recently agreed to be the advisor for the high school GSA.

Apparently a student approched her one day and said that they needed an advisor. He told her how they lost their advisor 2 years ago and haven't been able to be a club since then, how she is the only teach who has written a student up for calling someone a "fag" and she is the only teacher who doesn't let kids say "that's so gay" in her classroom. So, she agreed, because she realized these kids need her. She said she didn't know where to begin, but she agreed to help.

She told me about these kids getting taunted in school. The GSA meetings are in secret locations, you have to go and ask the guidance counselor where and when they are! While my instructor knows that should change, she doesn't know what else to do.

So, what did your high school do to promote acceptance? Or, what do you WISH your high school had done?

My University GSA is pretty into special events. Not just little get-togethers for those that attend our meetings, but sweeping, campus-wide events that attract community members as well. These events give us positive visibility, because our fellow students are drawn to them and see that the gay community is a lot of fun, and not that different from their own circles. This, of course, promotes a fantastic atmosphere of acceptance. Here are some of the things do every year:

1) Drag Show
This year was our 13th Annual Drag Show. 18,000 people came to it, which is impressive, considering my campus only has 10,000 students! We had 7 queens, several of which hold titles such as Ms. Gay Universe, and an amateur show at the end which 6 acts entered. A drag show is a very "approachable" event. Everyone knows what it is, and it just seems like a bunch of fun and games, which it is, to a point. But, like every good queen should, our mistress of ceremonies will slip in little tidbits to help educate the audience, and by the end of the night some of the hick there for laughs were wondering why IS it that our state doesn't have protection for transpeople in the work place?

2) World Aids Day
December first was World Aids Day, and my campus had several event happening. The Black Student Union planned a Eucher Tournament that donated all entry fees to AIDS reserch, the dance department had a performance event to promote awareness, and I planned a dance. Patrons donated to attend, and we raffled off things donated by local businesses and send all fo the money to our local HIV/AIDS treatment and support center. No matter what you do for WAD, do something. It's not jsut a gay issue, it's an issue for anyone, so everyone can get behind it and help.

3) Documentaries
Every few months, we show a documentary. We are fortunate enough to have an awesome woman who works with us that can help us find and get the means to show these film, but for you it might be a bit harder. Generally if you contact whoever produces the movie and present yourself as a student group you can get permission to view it for free as an event on campus. If not, rent it from netflicks and invite the whole GSA over to someone's living room and at least show your group. Documentaries are incredibly educational, and intelligence breeds revolution, so that means the queers better get to learning! We've gotten permission to show things such as "trembling before God" and "transgeneration" that our student body found very interesting. One girl in our group used to always bring her mom along for the showings!

4) Coming Out Day / Transgender Day of Remembrance / Day of Silence.
These are national events that your campus should recognize. Here are links to official websites about these days, most of which had ideas on how to get involved.
http://www.hrc.org/issues/13476.htm
http://www.transgenderdor.org/?page_id=555
http://www.dayofsilence.org/index.cfm

5) Social Events
Alright, let's not sugar coat the facts: the campus GSA is totally a dating service, no matter how many times we swear up and down that it isn't. Really, what is so wrong with that being a function of it? Nothing. It's a place to make friends of a similar mindset, and if some of those friendships develop into something more, well good. So, that is why putting on dances, parties, movie nights, pot-lucks and field trips are important. For instance, our first meeting of every year is just walking the 6 blocks to Frosty Treat and eating some ice cream to get to know each other, and once a month we just hang out, talk, and play board games instead of having our weekly business meeting. Because we are in a small town with no gay bar, every so often we rent out a banquet room and make our own gay night club. Social events are how you keep your membership up, because no one will keep coming to a meeting unless they've got fiends to sit by!


While there are lots of other things I recommend you tackle, such as STI/HIV testing campaigns, fundraisers, weekly meetings, round-table discussions, events with other groups, and creating a resource center, I'll leave it at this for now. I can't give away all my ideas in one post, now can I?

What events does (or did, when you were in school) your student group put on? Or, does your school not have a group?

-eddie

Hello Queerish I'm Back Again To Give You A Little Of My Thoughts On Media.

As I see it, the real problem with media is reality. There are those who would claim that media isn't responsible for being realistic unless the medium has to do with news and factual information. However, I would have to report that those persons would be sadly mistaken. A person who views a heavy amount of television, views various films, and reads many articles doesn't have the same reality as the person who generally doesn't consume the same amount of media. It is proven that the first person described will have a view of reality that fits more with that of the media he/she consumes. So when a person sees a fictional character on television and he/she doesn't have much interaction with the type of person that character represents, he/she puts that character with other characters like it and forms their opinions about the group that person is meant to represent in reality.

Generally,  a person doesn't form his/her opinions from one experience in life, and so is the case with media, stereotypes are not absorbed in one instance. It takes multiple characters on multiple shows, motion pictures, and in novels to piece together an over-generalization which in turn becomes a stereotype. While we have television shows and films, generally written by LGBT people, there are more shows and films which have gay characters in minuscule roles. If I think back to the tiny roles for gay men in movies, they have been waiters and secretaries, white, rather short, little presence except for their gigantic amount of rudeness and attitude. Luckily there are a great amount of shows that have better representations of gay men than this, there is still a long way to go. LGBT people of color are near invisible and honestly, there are many other attitude types being ignored.

My question is why are we left with male, white and masculine or effeminate? Seems to me that a great deal of people are being missed since a majority of you may not have fallen neatly into these three categories.