CQA Movie Screening Tonight!

Movie Screening: En El Fuego

Please come to watch En El Fuego, a documentary, directed by Dante Alencastre, about transgender people from Lima, Peru, and their experiences with trans phobia.

When:  Wednesday, October 6, 7:15 PM

Where:  Lerner Cinema

Facebook Event:  http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=143224905722558&index=1

Cosponsored by Columbia Queer Alliance (CQA), Queer Awareness Month (QuAM), Latino Heritage Month (LHM), and the Organization of Latino American Students (OLAS)

Fred Who? Fred Karger’s Going Viral Wednesday!

Speaker Series: Gay Crazy?

Join the Columbia Queer Alliance as we continue our monthly Speaker Series with a panel discussion and Q&A focusing on LGBTQ health and health services on campus and around New York City.

Come hear our speakers discuss available LGBT health services in New York City, how changing times have led to a changing health-seeking LGBT population, the evolution of the AIDS crisis and its effect on LGBT health, the impact that the “exgay” movement has on LGBT mental health, and obstacles to a healthy LGBT community, within and without its own ranks.

Joining us for the panel discussion will be:

-Shirley Matthews from Columbia’s Couseling & Psychological Services
-Chris Paliouris from Barnard’s Furman Counseling Center
-Amy Liss from the Callen-Lorde Community Center
-Donovan Jones from NYU’s Center for Health, Identity, Behavior & Prevention Studies

Light refreshments will be served.

Constance McMillen invited to fake prom while “Real Prom” held elsewhere

So if you’ve been following the story of Constance McMillen– a small town Mississippi lesbian who wanted to bring her date, another girl, to her prom–you know that everyone in this Itawamba county is a complete asshat. It now appears that after struggling with the school board and the ACLU to go to a prom, Constance was essentially tricked into heading to a fake prom where only a few students attended, while other students were informed of the “real” prom elsewhere.

High school is hard enough as an LGBTQ student dealing with awful peers–I can’t imagine also having to deal with their equally awful parents.

McMillen went to the Itawamba Agricultural High School prom at the Fulton Country Club, but she was one of the few to attend the event. McMillen said she arrived at the dance an hour-and-a-half after it began and stayed for about 30 minutes. She said she saw six other students and several school officials while she was there. Meanwhile, many more Itawamba AHS students went to an event held at the community center in Evergreen, another community in Itawamba County. McMillen said she knew about that event but that when she asked another student if she was invited, the student told her, ‘the prom is at the country club.’ …  ’I took that as no,’ McMillen said. ‘If I wasn’t wanted there, I wasn’t going to go.

Best of luck to Constance with her scholarship and everything else being thrown her way. And best of luck to all the awful people in Fulton–may you develop a conscious at some point.

(via this and that)

IOC on Gender

Photo from NYT

The International Olympic Committee recently ruled that Caster Semenya, the South African runner who won the 800-metre gold at the World Athletics Championships this past summer, will be allowed to keep the medal, according to the Times. For those who haven’t been following Semenya’s story, her gender identity was called into question following the competition in Berlin, and the IOC was debating whether she was to be allowed to compete as a woman.

While I commend the IOC for affirming the athlete’s ability to compete based on her self-identified gender, I am abhorred that they view her condition as a “disorder” to be “diagnosed and treated”. I understand the necessity to assure that athletic competition is fair and equal, but I can’t reconcile the strict enforcement of binary gender endorsed by the IOC with self-identified gender and true, fluid, non-binary gender. What do you think?