{"id":3083,"date":"2015-02-01T18:03:39","date_gmt":"2015-02-01T18:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/?p=3083"},"modified":"2015-02-02T18:34:01","modified_gmt":"2015-02-02T18:34:01","slug":"annual-qsa-assembly-everyone-gay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/2015\/02\/annual-qsa-assembly-everyone-gay\/","title":{"rendered":"Annual QSA Assembly: “Everyone is Gay”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>
Photo by Jacob Cader: \u201cEveryone is Gay\u201d co-founders Dannielle Owens-Reid and Kristin Russo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to co-founders Dannielle Owens-Reid and Kristin Russo, \u201cEveryone is Gay\u201d is not your average, everyday website. Similarly, the highly anticipated annual Queer Straight Alliance Club Assembly, which took place on Thursday, January 7th, was definitely not your average assembly.<\/p>\n

To begin the assembly, Charlotte Blackman (V), Lilly Sterenberg (V) and Roma Murphy (V) took the stage to educate the school on why the club transitioned from being the Gay Straight Alliance to the Queer Straight Alliance. The overarching principle behind this shift is inclusiveness. Charlotte explained that \u201cqueer is an umbrella term for everything that is not straight or cisgendered.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another goal of the assembly was to educate the student body on how to be an ally. Lilly listed four ways to be an ally: \u201cUnderstand your privilege, listen and do your homework, speak up but not over, and ally is a verb.\u201d Calling yourself an ally is not enough, she said.<\/p>\n

Mr. Anhalt, faculty advisor of the QSA, and Diversity Coordinator Randy Slaughter elaborated on the privileges that come with certain identities. Mr. Anhalt, though silenced and excluded during his youth as a gay male, also recognized that \u201cI have my own identities that I carry around with me every day.\u201d It took him a long time to recognize his own privileges as a cisgendered, white, able-bodied man. In terms of ally-ship, Mr. Anhalt encouraged an \u201cactive effort to be respectful of others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cordelia Bellinson (IV) wittily answered the \u201cFAQs of Gender,\u201d with the context of \u201csex is physical and gender is a social construct.\u201d When answering questions about LGBTQ+ pronouns, she made the argument that \u201cyou don\u2019t have to memorize all of the pronouns\u2014just ask \u2014 it\u2019s like asking someone their name when you first meet them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cordelia was followed by a heartfelt and hilarious speech by Noah Parnes (IV), in which he came out as gay to the Upper School community.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople aren\u2019t surprised if at least one student comes out on stage every year,\u201d Parnes said. \u201cWhat does it mean that people expect it and why did I expect that I would be doing it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Noah described his journey to coming out on stage. He was inspired by the stories of other students in years past, such as Dena Miller (VI) who came out her freshman year.<\/p>\n

Guest speakers Reid and Russo came up to speak next. Reid and Russo began by performing a choreographed dance to \u201cBoom Boom Pow\u201d by the Black Eyed Peas. It was clear from their presentation that humor is a part of everything that the duo does. Reid founded \u201cLesbianswholooklikejustinbeiber.com,\u201d in the spirit of humor, yet received some negative feedback from the LGBTQ+ community on the basis that she was stereotyping lesbians.<\/p>\n

Reid met Russo, a gender studies major, and they decided to start an advice website. On the site, Reid explained, you can ask questions anonymously about anything from \u201cfalling in love with your best friend to coming out to your parents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, five years since beginning Everyone is Gay, the duo has two new projects: a book called \u201cThis is a Book for Parents of Gay Kids,\u201d meant to answer all of the overwhelming and burdening questions that parents might have when their kid comes out, and \u201cThe Parents Project,\u201d a major project for the parents of LGBTQ+ kids with 40+ writers involved.<\/p>\n

Quincy Confoy (V) moderated a conversation with Reid and Russo about many of the topics that members of the QSA club had previously brought up, such as labels, pronouns, and coming out.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen do you think, if ever, that labels are necessary or not?\u201d Quincy asked.<\/p>\n

Reid replied that, \u201cpeople find labels to create community and not feel alone.\u201d Explaining the negative nature of labels, Russo said that sometimes when one chooses a label they believe their behavior must correspond accordingly with the associated stereotypes.<\/p>\n

\u201cLabels aren\u2019t meant to be policed and [used to] push each other away,\u201d Russo said. \u201cThe reason that the acronym exists is to bring a community together that feels the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

With regards to ally-ship, a major part of Reid and Russo\u2019s work with the \u201cEveryone is Gay\u201d movement, Russo addressed the Upper School by asking the students to use their skills.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs you continue forward in your life,\u201d she said, \u201calways think of how you can use your skills to be an ally.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to co-founders Dannielle Owens-Reid and Kristin Russo, \u201cEveryone is Gay\u201d is not your average, everyday website. Similarly, the highly anticipated annual Queer Straight Alliance Club Assembly, which took place on Thursday, January 7th, was definitely not your average assembly. To begin the assembly, Charlotte Blackman (V), Lilly Sterenberg (V) and Roma Murphy (V) took the stage to educate the school on why the club transitioned from being the Gay Straight Alliance to the Queer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":3118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"coauthors":[94],"class_list":["post-3083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-slider"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/everygay.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3083"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3119,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3083\/revisions\/3119"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3083"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}