housing and dining shenanigans, OR why the fuck doesn't the "gay-friendly" school care about queer people?

good luck keeping your advocate college ranking....

Dear Loser (Chris), [points for anyone who gets that]

I learned yesterday of Housing and Dining’s decision not to allow mixed-sex rooms within the Intersections of Gender and Sexuality floor next year. I would just like to register my distaste and, quite frankly, incredible anger about this continued policy of sexual segregation. Let me tell you a little about myself. I’m a freshman who in the past year has come out as genderqueer. I was first called a faggot in the second grade, before the realm of sexual desire had ever crossed my mind, even fleetingly. I was not a faggot because I liked boys (I didn’t at the time) but mostly because I enjoyed spending my time with the girls in my class more than the boys. We had the same interests, and they were certainly nicer to me. Since then I have experienced tenfold this level of queerphobia from male-bodied individuals. I came to a college that I thought would embrace my differences and my uniqueness as a gender non-conforming persyn, and thought that the administration, with their reputation for being queer-friendly, would go out of their way to make all spaces on this campus safe and comfortable. With yesterday’s conversation that all changed.

The decision to ban opposite sex living with the Intersections RCC is institutional violence against gender non-conforming and trans students at AU. In general, the policy seems to draw upon the heteronormative assumption that it is “unproper” for those of different sexes to live with each other. This marginalizes my lived experience as a gender-nonconforming persyn, and privileges those normative students who have been socialized to associate as friends with members of the same sex. Essentially, this policy is the AU administration calling me a faggot all over again. True, it is in less harsh terms, but the sting is the same, and expressly sends the message that my gender identity is less important to American University administration than other, normatively gendered students. It is unacceptable, and it is discrimination, no more and no less. In a setting in which students are supposed to be learning about the gender and sexuality, this discrimination is even more pronounced as it reifies anatomical sex as “natural” markers of gender, rolling back the hard work of feminists and queer people who have given their lives to the fight against this kind of discrimination and certainly making our learning experience about gender and sexuality seem like a joke. I certainly hope that Housing and Dining will consider these kinds of matters when making choices about the continued implementation of a sexually segregated housing policy and the light in which these policies show American University.

Sincerely,

DL

but since when has writing letter changed shit?

this blog exists now

so yeah, vomit up your rainbow is all up in yo internet. the name refers to a catchy little slogan that gay shame (look them up!) came up with which i like to think of as a natural reaction to all of the mainstream gay culture that queer people have been force fed to the detriment of our own identities and diverse life experiences. so let's resist assimilation together and perhaps raise a little hell along the way <3<3<3

dl