Posted on 12/09/2002 1:05:49 PM PST by MikalM
Student group addresses sexuality, gender issues
Alison Pierce
Most Stanford students probably don’t spend time thinking about what it means to be “queer.” However, an increasingly visible and vocal queer community exists on campus, and a new student-run group called Querillas seeks to support it by increasing awareness about gender, sexuality and racial issues through activism, discussion and bimonthly meetings.
Querillas’ stated mission is “to create and sustain queer activism and to mobilize, educate and empower members of the Stanford community. This is to effect fundamental, long-lasting changes in the University’s structure to ensure a commitment to furthering queer liberation.”
Querillas borrowed its name from a group of female artists called the Guerilla Girls who protest the “maleness” and “whiteness” of the art world through “guerilla” tactics and art.
The group uses the word “queer” — which has been used as a pejorative term for homosexuals — in an academic sense. “Queer” is an identity category that was reclaimed partly as a political tool, the way African-Americans reclaimed the word “black” as a political identity. This perspective has been expressed by several academics, including Annamarie Jagose, a famous queer theorist.
“For me, ‘queer’ is a gender-neutral term with which I identify that also includes my Native American self-identification as being two-spirited in the context of a normative culture,” said sophomore Marlon Footracer, president of Querillas.
The group hopes to explore a wide range of issues like queers of color, homophobia in communities of color at Stanford, transgender issues and diversity with respect to sexual orientation. Other interests range from domestic partnership rights to the rape of gays in prisons. The group has several ideas for expanding its collective voice, such as establishing a Queer Studies Department at Stanford, building a coalition among the broader community, and connecting queer issues with other types of campus activism.
“The purpose of our group, in my view, is to raise the consciousness of how even the subtlest labeling of gender as good or bad disallows for safe and affirming spaces which should be a priority of the University,” Footracer said. “Gender affects everone, queer or otherwise.”
Querillas, now 60 students strong, started last spring with only a handful of people and has yet to secure school funding but is moving forward in the application process. Coordinators include Footracer, senior Shin-Ming Wong, and the group’s founder, a student who asked not to be named because it would jeopardize the founder’s scholarship.
“Besides, I don’t see myself as starting [Querillas] as much as I was merely helping to institutionalize a widespread and deeply felt discontent with the state of queer activism on this campus,” the group’s founder said. “I felt the discontent around me in my interaction with other queer people.”
In light of the recent murder of transgender youth Gwen Araujo in Newark, the group’s founder said the group sees more significance and urgency in its activities.
“It looks like we have a long way to go in making people feel comfortable with others who challenge their traditional notions of gender,” the group’s founder said.
Upcoming activities include a “guerilla” flyering campaign where the group will post unisex flyers over the original male / female bathroom door signs on campus.
“The purpose of unisex bathrooms is to both eliminate gender categories for people who do not fall into the strict male-female binary as well as to make the bathroom space safer and more welcoming for genderqueer (a term that relates to being neither ‘sharply’ male nor ‘sharply’ female) and trans folks,” the group’s founder said.
Querillas is also working on a demonstration next quarter against homophobic and sexist speech patterns that people use every day without considering their insensitivity towards queer people. The group will broadcast a string of homophobic yet commonly used phrases in White Plaza. The voice will be mechanical to symbolize how automatic these patterns are.
Some examples are “What’s up? I’m straight,” “That’s so gay,” “Damn you faggot,” and “What’s up guys?”
Querillas organizers said that the group also plans to hold queer sensitivity training workshops for communities of color and is working with the Stanford Coalition for Peace and Justice to protest military recruiting on campus in the spring because they believe the military discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation.
For more information or to join the group, subscribe to Stanford’s “queer-activists” mailing list. Membership in Querillas is open to everyone regardless of race, sexual orientation or gender.
Blacks didn't "reclaim" the word black, they chose it instead of sticking with Negro. This is pretty basic history. The word queer was "reclaimed;" it was originally a word created by the gays in order to describe themselves.
he group will broadcast a string of homophobic yet commonly used phrases in White Plaza. The voice will be mechanical to symbolize how automatic these patterns are.
Some examples are “What’s up? I’m straight,” “That’s so gay,” “Damn you faggot,” and “What’s up guys?”
“What’s up guys?” isn't homophobic--it's arguably anti-woman, if one was to say that to a mixed crowd of males and females, but it cannot be considered homophobic, even by the hairiest of feminists. It is, however, missing a comma. It's the job of the editors to insert those. The Stanford Daily has pretty shoddy editing, which isn't really surprising considering the editors are probably Stanford students. Student journalists, the pride and joy of the elite universities.... BARF
They want guerilla tactics, we'll show 'em how it's done!
Great word construct. Yours?
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