LGBT & Fashion: New Ideas….Pushing Limits!

The LGBT community has influence over pop culture including fashion. From the androgynous runway model Andrej Pejic, style icon and t.v. talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres to creative fashion designers such as Tom Ford, and Christian Siriano the Fashion Industry has been able to make leaps and bounds regarding femininity and masculinity.

Andrej Pejic

American women in the twenty to thirty age group appear to push the envelope in regards to style versus older generations, by finding inspiration from “boyfriends” clothes whether it’s accessories, pants, or an over-sized tee-shirt.

From February 9th through the 16th, New York will host Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. The fashion world will display upcoming trends for 2012. Expect to see more gender-pushing styles such as short suits, color-block, abstract tees and bottoms.

Queer Comics = Queer Comic Book Movies?

Ever wondered about LGBT comic books or characters? There is a potential spoiler alert, though!

The Lavender Graduation Application is open!

Hello Ospreys!

The LGBT Resource Center is putting out a call to all graduates from the 2010/2011 school year! If you graduated in Summer 2010, Fall 2010, Spring 2011, or Summer 2011, you are eligible to participate in the Lavender Graduation Ceremony.

This ceremony started here at the University of North Florida and is now celebrated at colleges and universities across the nation. Our application is online and the deadline to apply as a graduating honoree is Friday, March 11 at midnight.

The RSVP deadline is Friday, March 18 at midnight.

The applications can be found at the following links:

Lavender Graduation Application

Lavender Graduation RSVP Application

Graduates MUST fill out both surveys to ensure that everyone is invited, and that enough food will be ordered for each person.

Community members and LGBT Resource Center Patrons are asked to only fill out the RSVP application.

Links to both applications will be available on the Blog, the Website, and Facebook.

-Michael

Creating Change adventure

Finally back from the Creating Change Conference in cold Minneapolis, MN. It was: amazing, exciting, thrilling, empowering, enlightening, celebrating, learning, and of course, exhausting. So here’s the brief summation of how my 3 days and 3 nights went.

Wednesday night:

• Arrived to single-digit temperatures, snow, dry skin, and static electricity
• Had dinner with my cohort (Ryan Miller) and one of his colleagues to an extremely busy hotel restaurant jam-packed with LGBTQA leaders, youth, advocates from across the nation. You could feel the energy of excited people exchanging ideas, expectations, and resources
• Called it a night in my 20th floor suite, which happened to be on the same floor as the POC (people of color) hospitality suite

Thursday:

• I was so excited about being there I decided to hit the gym… at 7am! I am NOT a morning person but I just could not stay asleep so I hit the gym and of course, everybody’s hogging the cardio machines. Good thing I prefer free weights anyway. Did some circuit training, went back to my room, showered, and dressed in my usual shirt/tie combo.
• Started a full day of LGBT campus administrators sessions from 9am – 6pm. A great ice-breaker of sorts and mingles makes me realize that not only do I NOT fit in the gender binary but I also do not fit in the Mac vs PC binary (I use both). I guess I am pre-destined to forever be in the middle
• During the day-long session I broke off into a POC group and found it both welcoming but also frustrating. Welcoming because I was no longer the 1 non-white person there. Frustrating because of all the horror stories that come with being both queer and a minority. I still walked away with a sense that there’s a purpose for everything.
• Went out afterwords to have dinner and explore COLD downtown. Thankfully, all establishments in the city of Minneapolis prohibit smoking – in other words, if a person wanted to smoke a cigarette, you’d have to go outside and freeze (if that’s not incentive to quit, I don’t know what is).

Friday:

• Session 1 (9-10:30am) — Woke up early again, still not feeling tired, but man my skin’s super dry! I forgot how much winter wreaks havoc on skin. There are more 25 (1.5 hr) sessions I can choose from or I could go to one of 6 academy workshops (3 hrs). I go for the sessions, unfortunately I picked one that I didn’t like (info was too specific and dis-heartening). I almost wanted to demand a refund of my morning.
• Session 2 (10:45am-12:15pm) — went to an AMAZING session on guerilla marketing. The facilitator was very knowledgeable brought relevant examples, and was humorous/entertaining. I hope to get her sources soon via email.
• Lunch (12:15-1:30pm) — went walking around in the Skyway (human-sized hamster tunnels) and found a subway.
• Plenary (1:30-2:45pm) — State of the movement Address from Rea Carey. I didn’t stay for the whole thing but I did catch that we need to advocate for Social Security. Many people rely on social security for their main source of income and she drove the point home with “if our parents no longer have social security, and have no other financial means, they will end up moving back in with us!”. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people running to sign up to send a letter to their senators.
• Session 3 (3-4:30pm) — Learned how to be a board star. Man this is a lot harder than I thought since I am on the board for both OUT Jacksonville and OASIS.
• Session 4 (4:45-6:15pm) — More board related stuff, learning how to ask for money. Also very important and very good.
• Caucus 1 (6:30-7:30pm) — Ryan and I facilitate a Southeastern US session on the issues that LGBTQ populations face in the southeast region: racism, heterosexism, gender binary, HIV infection rates, poverty, religion, lack of trans resources, etc. The only unfortunate part about the timing of this caucus is that it’s also during POC caucuses and we were lacking in both trans and POC representation.
• Evening events — Decided to go out and explore Hell’s Kitchen (which by the way, is NOT named after the TV show). Awesome restaurant that turns into a great night club/bar/hot spot. It not only gets packed but what was great was that several people and I had a really in-depth conversation about what it meant to be queer, young, and a person of color. It was great to have that conversation just for the hell of it.

Saturday

• Session 5 — Learned about community center resources, and a great survey and statistics of the state of CBO’s (community based organizations) and NPO’s (non-profit organizations).
• Session 6 — originally went to learn about interpersonal violence and campuses and it turned out to be something else. Disappointed, I ducked out as soon as I could and went upstairs to Kink, Race, and Class. It was a packed house of people discussing the issues of being a POC and how we’re sometimes tokenized, made to play a certain role, and how it can trigger safety issues and psychological reactions.
• Lunch at Hell’s Kitchen, which was insanely packed for not only weekend brunch, but people from the task force looking to get out of the hotel. It was warm, I walked around in a sport coat and I was fine, it was 25 degrees. Guess I’m still a mid-westerner at heart.
• Session 7 — went to learn about how to move swing voters but this was after a very full lunch and I had a hard time staying awake. Tried to look for coffee but since it’s the weekend everything (in downtown) is closed.
• Session 8 — HOORAY! A session on API (Asian Pacific Islanders) LGBT organizations! Jacksonville is severely lacking in queer API visibility. I got some ideas on how we could try to bring some visibility, but let’s see if it happens.
• Caucus 2 — had a HUGE space to talk about butch/femme issues. It was great to talk about all the issues and all the perspectives.
• Evening events – decided to stay in, pack, and study (the joys of being a grad student)

Sunday:

• Wandered around for a bit and said goodbye to the feeling of inclusion and celebration of all my identities. That and the great view of the city I had. Back to humid Jacksonville.

Can’t wait until next year!!!

Living with Pride: Queer Love

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and the LGBT Resource Center is getting into the spirit with the next installment of our Living with Pride discussion series.

Queer Love will focus on keeping your relationships healthy, both in body and mind, and also delve into some of the ways LGBTQ relationships differ from heterosexual relationships.

There will be food, fun, laughter, and great discussion so come out and join us on February 8 at 7:00 PM in the Student Union, room 3606. We hope to see you there!

Lavender Graduation Call for Graduates

Are you an LGBTQA UNF student graduating during the 2010/2011 academic year? Click here to read a blog post about a dinner designed to honor you!

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal could be around the corner

With the end of the 111th Congress drawing ever nearer, the fight to overturn Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has become an extremely contentious fight amongst the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the citizens of the United States to get the law overturned before the new (and arguably more conservative) congress is seated.

As I’m writing this blog post, I am listening to Senator Joe Lieberman discuss the fact that he has 62 and potentially a few more senators willing to support the motion. The only thing that could stop it is Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid refusing to bring it up until too late. This bill, which was separated from the overall defense bill as a bill all its own, was passed in the House earlier today. The bill was then sent to the senate with a special note, utilizing a special policy in Congress.

Now, there is a bit of a squabble right now about Senators being disgruntled over the possibility of working through Christmas, however Lieberman doesn’t see why it should be drawn out past tomorrow morning. We will keep everyone updated as news becomes available. Perhaps Congress will see the light and give American Citizens an awesome gift this holiday season: their civil rights as human beings.

-Michael

It’s time for a break!

Hello everyone!

The Fall semester has come to a close and on behalf of the LGBT Resource Center, I’d like to bid you all a happy and safe break. Congratulations to all who have graduated today! And congratulations, still, to those who were able to survive Finals Week with sanity intact.

We wish to remind everyone that we will still be open until December 22, 2010, observing reduced hours: 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Monday through Friday.

If you have any extraneous loans from our lending library, please be sure to get them back as soon as possible.

We look forward to seeing you in the Spring Semester! We have a lot of awesome events in the works and we know you’ll definitely enjoy them!

Have a safe and happy winter break!

-Michael

Being an Out Athlete

Today I just received news that the NCAA’s first ever transgender person, to publicly come out as a transgender male, will continue to play women’s Division I basketball for George Washington University. This is HUGE besides the people who don’t understand what it means to be transgendered, or the difference of sex vs gender, I am hopeful that this will get people thinking, talking, and advocating for something that it outside of the traditional gender binary.

He will go by male pronouns, he will hold off on hormone and surgical procedures, and will continue to play ball for not only a womens team, but a supportive womens team and school. I am ecstatic that not only are his teammates supportive of his process but his coach and school are on board as well.

Don’t get me wrong, this is going to be hard. The basketball season’s coming up and the NCAA, despite their best efforts, have a hard time of not only catching up on current issues but also enforcing their own policies. They already got their hands full with players going overseas for 1 year or only playing their freshman year of college ball just so they can get to the NBA. It’s ridiculous really, all the focus towards mens basketball, but that’s besides the point. The point is that Kye Allums is breaking ground and the NCAA will not only have to address his eligibility and rights, but they’ll have to address others who will (eventually) follow suit.

I’m a Jayhawk fan and alum, but you can bet that I’ll be keeping my eye on the womens tournament to see how GW and Kye Allums’ team is doing.

Thursday, November 18 is Transgender Day of Remembrance here at UNF. We will have a ceremony that includes a vigil, reading of names, (of transgender people who have passed) and a celebration of life ceremony immediately afterwards. Transgender awareness and advocacy, it’s important to include the entire human population, including those who do not fit the (gender) binary.

LGBT History Month Day 20: Annise Parker

In 1997, Annise Parker won a seat on the Houston City Council, making her Houston’s first out elected official.