Why we need pride organizations on campus
Our campus supports a slew of identity clubs, many of which come together in locations such as the Multicultural center, the MOSAIC room, or the Lavender Lounge. Spaces such as these are vital in order to create a designated safe-space and community of support and acknowledgement for persons of diverse and/or intersectional identities. One of these on-campus clubs that works to increase the visibility of marginalized voices, specifically LGBTQIA+ identities, is the Pride Alliance club here at SUNY Geneseo.
The Pride Alliance hosts two notable events a semester, along with a variety of other, smaller events as well. These big events are the Drag Ball and the Second-Chance Prom, both of which are adored and supported by many of the queer-idenitifying members on campus, and those outside of the community. These events are fun, inclusive, and in-tune with the modern struggles faced by members of the LGBTQIA+ while still maintaining timelessness. Being visibly queer is not always safe or comfortable, and a campus environment should provide a haven for queerness of all expressions.
In the Drag Ball, we see the exploration of gender expression and the ways in which, to many queer people, gender is not only an identity-marker, but an art form. Being able to fluidly adapt to the classically idealized aspects of hyper-femininity or hyper-masculinity is a mode through which queer people can make fun of certain societal norms that binary gender and sexuality pedals. It also allows for the drag performer, and the watcher to a lesser extent, to indulge in gender in ways that they might not feel compelled to in their typical dress, but have an appreciation of and a longing for. For example, some drag queens cite immediate or extended female family members playing with dolls or wearing heels around the house as the places in which this love and yearning for more feminine modes of expression comes from. Through drag, these desires can be actualized in bite-sized, but to-the-max outlets, like the laborious, careful, satirical, and artistic elements of popularized drag.
Providing a campus event for students to interact with a very specific, and at times costly, art form that has the ability to enthrall and redefine can be very powerful for gender-nonconforming individuals and/or transgender persons. It also creates a space for conversation between people on campus who come from places that did not have much LGBTQIA+ representation to see the ways in which queer people make spaces for themselves in the lived world in a very real way.
Then, there is the Second Chance Prom, which just occurred this semester. Prom is an exciting landmark event for many American teenagers, but can be one that causes extreme discomfort, nerves, and dysphoria for LGBTQIA+ members that are both in the closet as well as out. For those in the closet, it can be hard to decide who to attend prom with, or whether they should have any date at all. This is further complicated when someone who is closeted is in a queer relationship that the public might be largely, if not completely, unaware of. For gender-nonconforming and trans people, it can cause mass amounts of gender dysphoria, seeing as the typical outfits for such formal events are heavily and binarily gendered. It can be hard, for example, for transmen who are not yet out to feel pressured societally or familially to attend prom in a dress with their hair and makeup done in hyper-feminine ways. This can leave these people seeing these sorts of events as a public showcase, or something they have to put a face on for and simply get through.
Second Chance Prom then provides a medium through which LGBTQIA+ identities attending college (a place where many queer people finally feel more comfortable coming out) to experience prom in ways which they might not have been able to during high school. It takes an event that can be nerve-wracking, performative, and even traumatic into something closer to that coming-of-age night of celebration. The Second Chance Prom is even cognizant of many of the hallmark features of prom, such as a theme. For example, this semester the prom theme was Barbenheimer, and it is frequent that these themes are related to interests that tend to be particularly popular amongst LGBTQIA+ or are just very culturally relevant instead of the cliched themes connected to proms of yore.
Supporting identity clubs on campus is more important than ever as we move towards making a more conscious effort to become more knowledgeable and aware of the lived experiences of all persons around us and acknowledge the ways in which groups of people have been routinely marginalized and subjugated throughout history, as well as today; clubs such as Pride Alliance work to not only acknowledge the difficulties that members of the queer community face, but to highlight queer joy and belonging. With this, I encourage you to attend one of these events at some point during your college experience and make sure to stop by and support Pride Alliance if you ever see them tabling in the Union.
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