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

Mentoring at the University of North Carolina

Students at the University of North Carolina plan to start a mentor program with local high school students during the 2004-2005 school year. They will have a lot of support available to them from adults including administrators and community activists.

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.

Getting Organized at Miami University of Ohio

At Miami University of Ohio, GenderPAC members are strategizing to identify the best ways to organize on a very conservative campus. They fear that the campus isn't ready for the message they are trying to bring. Everything related to sexuality, sexual orientation and gender identity on campus is funneled through an umbrella organization called SPECTRUM, so they are feeling overwhelmed. They have worked on putting together meetings with organizations of students of color, but that fell through, since no one came. They have no yet looked into coordinating with feminist or women's groups on campus, but they will and are considering building a coalition with them. Plans for the future involve meeting with their college's president to discuss adopting inclusive EEO policies.

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.

Diversifying gender expression from Barrett Floore at Miami University of Ohio

We are having a gender expression visibility day where SPECTRUM members will be going to class dressed in clothing that does not conform to the socially constructed gender norms (sadly, it's come to be called "men in skirts day," but it's more than that). We are compiling testimonials from our gender minority population and those that participate in the expression day as a means of showing Garland that this is a problem.

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.