GenderYOUTH Network

IUSB: Blurr zine calls for submissions

Call for submissions... on gender.

Greetings!

Gender Project is well underway at Indiana University of South Bend. We are a new, student organized, gender advocacy group on campus associated with GenderPAC.

Last month we distributed our first issue of Blurr, a new zine with a focus on gender. It was a great success here at IUSB and soon we hope to be able to share the zine with a much larger audience by making the publication available online.

In the meantime, we are currently compiling works for the second issue. We hope to begin printing in just a few short weeks.

This zine is a focus on all aspects of gender and how it crosses lines of socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, and more.

A call for submissions... more info below.

With as much diversity as we have among our students and faculty here at IUSB (and the larger community), I know there is just as wide a range of creativity. I would like to use these creative voices in order to educate and advocate the versatility and complications of gender as they are portrayed and interpreted in our society.

We're looking for artists, poets, essayists, personal stories, etc. -anything that can be related to gender, be it positive or negative.

Can you help or do you know someone who would be interested? If you would like to send us a submission or if you have questions, please contact us via e-mail.

Karrie Blevins
Coordinator, The Gender Project
Indiana University at South Bend

For submissions:
E-mail: blurr@iusb.edu

For questions:
E-mail: kblevins@iusb.edu

For snail mail:

The Gender Project
Indiana University South Bend
1700 Mishawaka Ave
South Bend, IN 46634

X-posted to relevant online communities including the GenderYOUTH Network on Yahoo.

RSS feed available via Livejournal.

IUSB: The Gender Project

Hey all! Hope everyone is enjoying their summer. I know I am
especially enjoying the 14509345823049 degree heat. Yum. :/

Right. Well, back to business....

"The Gender Project" will be the name of our GenderYOUTH group here
at IUSB, at least to start off with. We're working on a couple
things before classes start in the Fall.

A website is being developed and we plan to have it up and running
by mid-August.

We're also hoping to get the G-Zine printed around the same time.

As mentioned in our last post, we are looking for submissions that
would be topic related - drawings, poems, OpEds, etc.

As for the website, we welcome suggestions for information,
materials, etc. to be included.

Looking forward to hearing from many of you before school starts.

X-posted

For equality & diversity,
Karee

Zine: IUSB chapter calls for submissions...

We are working on putting a zine together for the beginning of the Fall semester here at IU-South Bend. This first issue will be geared towards incoming freshmen students and student organizations getting back into the swing of things. This is a call for submissions (or suggestions)... So, if you have some artistic talent that you'd like to share... along the lines of gender, stereotypes, labels, etc., let us hear 'em! Interesting articles, poems, or other written works would be greatly appreciated too. (Plus, we can send you a copy once its ready to distribute.) *Feel free to pass this message along to any person(s) or group(s) you feel might be interested. Karee B. e-mail: karee23@hotmail.com

UofWI-Eau Claire Adds Gender Expression/Identity Protection

One of our newest chapters at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
has successfully added Gender Expression or Identity to their
school's nondiscrimination policy. We should all send our congrats!
Just post to the blog and our Eau Claire chapter will get all
your wonderful messages.
To read the full story click here:

http://www.spectatornews.com/news/2005/02/17/CampusNews/Board.Of.Rege
nts.Grants.Transgender.Protection-867440.shtml.

To learn more about the leader of this chapter that pushed this
policy through click here:

http://www.spectatornews.com/news/2004/05/13/StudentLife/Transgendere
d.Student.Speaks.Out-681008.shtml.

Are you working on adding Gender Expression and Identity to your
school's nondiscrimination policy?

Do you have any advice or tips to share?

What problems, if any, are you running into?

What has gone well for you that you would like to share to help
students at other schools?

Do you need any help or resources?

Add a quick post to the blog and let other students know what you are up to or ask them for help!

Action ideas at Tufts

Event ideas and issue brainstorming notes:
-Choice: How can we challenge ideas of choice and how various choices are valued? For example, consider the choice to get breast implants compared with the removal of a second breast after one has been removed for cancer. Ads for penis enlargement are common, yet imagine possible reaction if someone asked for a penis reduction.
-Institutional culture: We'd like to encourage our school and other institutions to make a commitment to prevent incidences that could cause someone to feel uncomfortable in expressing their gender. These institutions should also be proactive in creating a space that is safe. This proactivity would avoid forcing students to out themselves to ensure there are some safe spaces available to them.
-Bathrooms: An idea emerged to take an inventory of all the single-gender restrooms and ask for these to be undesignated in an effort to increase safe space.

Tufts Update

As a GenderROOTS affiliate, we've have held many events through our queer groups and women's groups about gender. We had one on language, we had the GenderPAC person come, we dedicated our day of silence to get the school to include gender identity and expression in its anti-discrimination policy. We have changed the housing policy so we have a plan for trans identified students, and it is looking fairly positive that we will have single-stalled gender-free bathrooms around campus, and soon an anti-discrimination policy including gender identity and expression... it's been a good year. Student participation at campus events and activities is high. Of course it varies depending on the time of year and the event, but I would say every event had at least 20 people, if not more. Day of Silence, for example, gathered over 400 signatures to present to our president.

Petitioning against discrimination from Sam Crane at Swarthmore

We want to circulate a petition to get gender language included in the handbook and in anti-discrimination policies, and to increase awareness on campus about the harmful effects of gender-based harassment. Most likely, we'll accomplish that last bit through co-sponsoring discussions with already-existing groups, like The Ring (a group that sponsors open discussions on campus where people of differing opinions can talk about issues), the Queer Umbrella group, and, possibly, other groups like fraternities (we have no sororities), sports teams, ethnic/cultural organizations, and the Feminist groups.

From Laura Janowitch at Tufts

We met with the Vice President of Public Relations for the school about adding gender identity and expression into the anti-discrimination policy. She wanted me to find out some issues that have arisen at other schools when they added the policy. We already have a housing policy for tans-identified students and are working on having gender-free bathrooms. The next step, we think, is the policy.