Word: queering
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Gina De Vries is only 14 and lives a continent away from Legare, in San Francisco, but perhaps not quite a world apart. Having come out to her parents and schoolmates at age 12, she now calls herself "a queer youth activist"--an identification she uses effortlessly, as though she were saying "ninth grader" or "aspiring poet," other terms that describe her. Articulate beyond her years, De Vries' work with a gay youth group led to her appointment to an advisory committee of the city's Human Rights Commission. She is, by more than a decade, the committee's youngest...
Apparently, I am not alone in my preoccupation. Schaefer argues against queer activism stating, "Most of Harvard is not homosexual, and most of Harvard doesn't care if you are." For a mantra against gay and lesbian activism, such an argument hardly holds water. In fact, the entire issue of The Salient disproves such a claim of apathy with its three articles lobbying repetitively against gay and lesbian equality and visibility. Queer activism is necessary on this campus and in the world until attitudes like those expressed in The Salient disappear entirely...
...Harvard especially, we know the value of the ivy closet. Many of us are conservative politically. Many of us believe that getting ahead is most important. A Harvard student may choose not to write a term paper with a queer theme to accommodate a professor's homophobia. A Harvard student may choose tactfully omit a pronoun to avoid revealing the gender of a lover. A Harvard queer knows when and how to pass as straight--we know what to say, how to smile and how to dress. We can slip in and out from subculture to mainstream and back again...
...that I am as out as Harvard students come. I discussed the inclusion of gender identity in the University-wide non-discrimination clause and tabled for National Coming Out Day, even making it onto The Peninsula's Enemies List for my activism. My academic ally, my coursework has involved queer themes from Jane Eyre to the Bible, and my thesis is openly lesbian. In my personal life, I no longer use ambiguous pronouns nor do I lower my voice to say words like gay in the dining hall. I am unwilling to sacrifice my identity for much of anything right...
Since I'm sure that's what the editors want to do anyway, I hope you'll start making steps to correct this policy of using "gay" as a toned down code word for "queer." It is wrong factually, as well as limiting, backwards and reductive. --Gowri Ramachandran, GSAS