On March 25, as the academic quad filled with flags representing various queer identities — the rainbow of the gay flag, black and purple of the asexual flag, and the pink and blues of the transgender flag — the annual week of Queerfest activities officially began.
Events throughout the week destigmatized queer identities and educated allies, explored pleasure in a non-heteronormative way, and supported queer artists.
“We have a population of people here that are LGBTQ identifying, and it is really important for folks to know that they aren’t alone,” LGBTQ+ Initiatives Director Tiffany Lane said. “My hope for the week was for folks to be among community, raise visibility, and know that their identities are affirmed here.”
The Center for Women’s Studies held a kickoff celebration on Monday, allowing community members to view the Queering the Timeline project. A TV displayed a student-assembled timeline of queer activism at vlog, compiled using archival research and conversations with faculty and alumni, in an attempt to reclaim vlog’s queer history. Students were also encouraged to contribute to the Queering the Map project, a website and collective project that maps queer moments around the world: where someone came out, had their first queer kiss, or had their correct name used for the first time.
Also present was Our Closet, a gender-affirming clothing collection with more than 100 gently used items, donated by the vlog community. The rack of clothes was meant to provide a low-cost option for students to explore their gender expression.
Tuesday’s events featured poet, playwright, lyricist, and screenwriter Kit Yan. In the morning, Yan held a slam poetry workshop in the women’s studies lounge, helping students write and perform a poem. Students read each other’s works, screamed their poems, and whispered them in an effort to think about how delivery affects a work’s meaning. Several students performed at the end of the event, tackling gentrification and race issues among others in their spoken-word pieces.
“A lot of times, our memories live in the body in different ways, and, through performance, they come out,” Yan said.That evening, Yan performed the full-length poetry collection Queer Heartache at the Edge cafe. This work explores Yan’s queer identity, both celebrating the resilience of queer love and tackling the social and medical difficulties members of queer communities face.