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.

Let's play bully!

Take a look at this:

This game is evidently scheduled for release in October.  Here’s the web site about the game: http://www.rockstargames.com/bully/

I AM VERY ANGRY!  Why would someone think up something like this game?  Oh right....it is about the "Benjamins!"  Already people are bullied everyday at schools leaving them physically and emotionally abused.  This country really needs to re-think its embracing of violence. It is so ridiculous that we have an easier time digesting violence over sex.  I was already upset about Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which allows suburbanites to voyeur into a barrio of LA and beat up and kill sex workers (tragically, a reality of street-based sex work). "Hey, I am a gangsta. I wanna beat some hoes!".....AHHH!

We already have a hard time eradicating arbitrary gender expectations and the violence that is caused by them.  Then this freaking game pops its ugly head.  The game only reinforces a culture of violence in schools.  When are Americans  going to stand up and say it is not okay to HURT people, because they are different or for any other reason (save self-defense).  Oh wait!  Some of are expendable...urgh!

While we have finished updating the DTL materials, I hope that in some way you incorporate this game into your campaign.  Tyrone

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

Northampton Gender Issues meeting

The gender issues event, sponsored by the Family Diversity Project and run by GenderPAC, was to be held on March 1st at the Jackson Street School in Northampton Massachusetts.
Slated to speak at the community meeting was 17 year old Jay M Gillespie, who has been discriminated against because of her appearance.
"Personally, I don't believe humans are male or female. It's a title we put on ourselves..." said Gillespie. 
Several other individuals were to speak about their experiences with gender discrimination. 
The event was canceled due to the inclement weather, and will be rescheduled for April.
GenderYOUTH is a national campaign that supports college activists in organizing their own initiatives and campaigns to fight gender-based bullying and violence on college campuses and in local high schools, through peer-to-peer outreach, grassroots organizing, and community education.

Read the complete article here

Connecticut College Students Push for Non-Discrimination Policy Expansion

Students from Connecticut College plan to approach administrators over the school's non-discrimination policy. They are campaigning to have gender identity and expression be included in their school's policy, but administrators have been resistent to the issue in the past. Sara, a student of Connecticut College, says: "when a student tried it a few years ago, the school's lawyer said it was already covered under sex and the President didn't want to have any "special" protections beyond what the federal government mandates." However, the GenderYOUTH Affiliate is partnering with their campus' organiation for racial and queer issues and they are planning to make the expansion of their school's policy a top priority, while educating the student body and school officials in the process. GenderPAC is committed to helping students like Sara educatied their schools about the importance of including gender identity and expression in their non-discrimination and equal opportunity employment (EEO) policies. More information, includings steps you can take to campaign your own school to list gender identity and gender expression as a protected right may be found at: http://www.gpac.org/workplace/wpf_packet_coll.html

GenderPAC wishes the students of Connecticut College good luck with their campaign! If any other students have stories to share about their own campaigns, feel free to post advice, tips or even funny stories to help other students along in their own campaigns.

Grassroots Gatherings

Link up with the national gender rights movement through the Grassroots Gatherings program! Grassroots Gatherings are parties that will take place on college campuses and in homes, restaurants, and other meeting places all across the United States on Saturday, September 25. Friends and neighbors will gather to enjoy each other's company and discuss gender rights issues. Then, at 7pm Eastern Standard Time, all the parties will dial in on a nationwide conference call with a speaker phone. The call will feature GenderPAC Executive Director Riki Wilchins and Youth Program Coordinator Kristin Effland. Partygoers will have a chance to ask the speakers questions after they give a short address. Attainable fundraising goals are set for each gathering. We invite you to sponsor a Gathering on your campus! For more information, conatact Laura at the GenderPAC office or email Laura.Figueroa@gpac.org.

University of Utah events

At the University of Utah, much of the organizing is done through the gender studies department. They hosted a GenderBOOT camp in which folks dressed up as a certain gender and visited the masculinity corner for some boxing. In a Digital Gender party, participants played different games and talked about the role of gender in the video games. They helped organize a gender studies sports team. At movie nights, participants watched films and discussed gender in the films, including the new Derrida documentary. They hosted a poetry slam and an inclusive breast monologues/dialogues where trans people presented too. They protested in response to a traditional wedding held on campus by a conservative group. They hosted a drag show with fraternities that included a pre-discussion. They proposed a weekly Queeries radio show on queer theory and queer issues that is scheduled to launch in September of 2004 and deal with issues of gender and identity.

Planning at UC Berkeley

Students at the University of California at Berkeley are creating an inclusive clothesline project to highlight violence against all people that is caused by gender steretypes). They are also looking to put together a more inclusive Vagina Monologues performance. As teachers and students themselves, some students at UC Berkeley prioritized the need to educate teachers adn empower students through their campaigns. Students are excited about starting a "coalition" (an umbrella group of members/leaders of many other organizations) that will operate as a GenderYOUTH Affiliate. Other interests include a conference for the Spring, a gender-neutral bathrooms campaign (with an explanation for why the signs are removed), and re-writing sex ed curricula as well as planning workshops for youth in high school as well as for younger children. Several students are also interested in intersex issues, including educating peers and community members about the need to end intersex genital mutilation.

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.

Thoughts on transgenderism from Tufts

In their March 2004 training, GenderROOTS members focused on the relationship between gender rights for men, women and transgender people. Some thoughts: If gender stereotypes affect all of us by attempting to place us all into restrictive boxes and creating narrow gender ideals, then they also hurt trans people. While the restrictive gender norms we (as non-tran men and women) experience may not cause us to seek to take steps to live as a gender that doesn't correspond with the sex into which we were born, we can look to our own personal understanding of the ways in which gender roles are narrowly conceived. Through this process, we may better understand why transgtender students might seek institutional commitment to treating them as fully human member of the student body who deserve full access to safe housing and facilities.