Spring Break
Mini-museum brings LGBT awareness
Emily Brauer/Staff Reporter
Issue date: 10/27/09 Section: News
|
The displays featured famous LGBT singers, actors and authors, such as Jodie Foster, Anne Frank and Patty Bouvier of "The Simpsons."
Hundreds of movies that dealt with homosexuality were listed like "Fried Green Tomatoes" and "Under the Tuscan Sun."
LGBT lingo was explained along with symbols and flags. The four different flags include leather, transgender, rainbow and bisexual flag.
The leather pride flag, designed in 1989, represents the gay leather community, and is a black and white striped flag with a single white stripe down the middle and a red heart in the corner. The Greek letter Lambda is used as a universal symbol to identify LGBT people.
The museum also identified many LGBT myths.
"Being gay is just a phase," and "all lesbians are masculine, and all gays are feminine," are just some stereotypes listed on display boards.
With myths comes name-calling. Transgender is an "umbrella term" for transsexual, and genderqueer.
Genderqueer is when a person feels a mix of female and male, and occasionally a third gender too. People who are genderqueer sometimes prefer pronouns like "ze," "hir" or a singular "they."
According to one display, nine out of 10 LGBT students are verbally, sexually or physically harassed. These safety issues were instrumental in creating "The Day of Silence."
Pride explained that taking a vow of silence for a day brings attention to name-calling, and bullying.
The next Day of Silence will be from 12 a.m. to 11:55 p.m. April 16, 2010. Anyone can participate by remaining silence and wearing black.
Pride puts on an informational every year; but this year, they are producing more informationals and displays than before. The group also holds panels where LGBT students sit and answer any questions from the audience.
The annual Diva Drag Show will be at 8 p.m. Nov. 16 in the Grand Ballroom of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union. Tickets will be $4. This is Pride's only funding for the year.
Pride has 20 to 30 members this year, "which is large compared to previous years," said Justin Sudkamp, a senior English major and Pride member.
Pride meets at 8 p.m. every Monday night in the Effingham Room in the Union.
Emily Brauer can be reached at 581-7942 or at DENnewsdesk@gmail.com.
The Daily Eastern News encourages on-topic, civil discussion on its articles posted online. It is our policy not to screen comments before they are posted or edit them after they are posted. However, we reserve the right to remove comments that are off-topic, malicious, libelous or include excessive foul language. The DEN also reserves the right to turn off all comments on any story it deems necessary.
Comments violating copyright law will also be removed.
Users who repeatedly violate this policy will be banned from commenting.
If you have any questions on our comment policy or wish to report a comment that you feel violates these standards, please e-mail a link to the article to our Online Editor at DENNews.com@gmail.com.
Be the first to comment on this story