LGBT Co-op expands meaning of pride

BY ARIANA FALK

MARISA BASS/YH

Next week marks Yale's officially relocated Lesbian, Gay, Bi, and Trans Pride Week, a festival featuring distinguished guests, creative performances, and open discussions, all organized by the Yale LGBT Co-Op. Pride Week Coordinator Laura Horak, CC '03, has been working with other members of the Co-op since early in the fall to raise funds and land prestigious speakers and performers. In all, Pride Week features three or four events each day from Fri., Mar 23 to Sat., Mar. 31, including film screenings every night, the wildly popular Co-Op dance on the 31st, and a variety show named "CaberGAY" and that features a drag group whimsically named the "Backdoor Boys."

Pride Week (officially in June, but moved to March by the Co-Op in order to fit into student schedules) was created to commemorate the Stonewall Rebellion, a gay uprising in June 1969. A police raid on The Stonewall Inn, a dance bar in Greenwich Village, sparked the conflict, and the homosexual community responded with several days of fighting and protest. At Yale, though, Pride Week has faltered in recent years—in fact, it didn't happen at all last year. This year, looking through old Co-op posters, its members were struck by the richness and frequency of the events that the organization had organized in earlier years. "We decided we should do something fabulous," Horak said.

Fabulous, of course, is easier said than done, and Horak and her colleagues in the Co-Op have toiled for the last several months to create appealing events, bring top lecturers to campus and, of course, find the funding to pay for it all. Unlike many schools, which confer on the major LGBT Co-Op-type organization the status and funding of a cultural house, Yale's Administration views the Co-Op as just another student organization. That translates into the same $550 per semester as any other student organization—nowhere near the thousands of dollars that many big-name speakers demand for campus appearances. The coordinators sought funding from alumni, local businesses, Masters' offices, and eventually the President's and Dean's Discretionary Fund.

Mickey Dobbs, TC '92, who lives in New York City and is the head of the Gay and Lesbian Alumni Association, worked with the student coordinators to raise Pride Week funding. "Fortunately, many of the speakers we contacted about making appearances were so enthusiastic—they agreed to come for free, or for a fraction of their regular fees," Dobbs said. In fact, only four of the 15 guest speakers, many of whom are among the most prestigious and well-known in their fields, are asking for significant compensation. Dobbs said he was glad to see Pride Week resuscitated, especially given the more relaxed atmosphere he feels Yale's gay community has acquired. "Many of the events, for example the nightly film festival, will be really enjoyable for both gay and straight students," Dobbs said.

The goal of many of the events is to appeal to a wide audience by diversifying the kinds of speakers and performers. "We want to show a huge diversity of people, issues, interests, and lives of queer people," Horak said. Besides scholars like famous lesbian historian Lillian Faderman and Yale professor Jonathan Weinberg, the week features panels of student, faculty and guest speakers on subjects like "Out in Academia" or "Out in Your Career," featuring a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times Journalist. The coordinators have tried to reach out wider than the Yale student body: on Tues., Mar. 27, for example, Pride Week will sponsor a High School GSA Coffee Night, and Pride Week publicity has gone out to neighboring colleges and local high schools.

Perhaps the biggest name among the guest speakers is Kate Bornstein, an activist, theorist, and performance artist. Born a man, Bornstein is the author of several books, including Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, & the Rest of Us. She will speak as well as perform the premiere of her new show, Too Tall Blondes In Love, on Sat., Mar. 24. "She's one of the few people causing a ruckus today," Pride Week Co-Coordinator Maya Gideon, MC '02, said. Gideon, who coordinated the effort to bring Bornstein to campus, said she'd heard Bornstein was exciting at conferences, and contacted her early in the year. "I'm really, really excited— she's dynamic, funny, down-to-earth, and really supportive, unlike many famous people," Horak said.

Gideon has also organized an initially eyebrow-raising event called "Bondage, Domination, and S/M 101." She emphasizes that the presentation, reportedly packed with curious students in years past, operates under the slogan, "Safe, sane, and consensual." The talk (yes, it's a talk, not a dem-onstration) will revolve a-round myths of S&M, notions of abuse, safety, and power play. "People have this notion—and I think it's probably true—that gay and lesbian people are more sexually liberated," Gideon said. "I think S&M 101 fits into the rest of the week's events because we're talking about people who should feel comfortable with their sexual lifestyle, but don't."

Another of Pride Week's biggest names is Tom Shepard, a filmmaker whose documentary Scout's Honor recently won two awards at the Sundance Film Festival: the Freedom of Expression award and the Audience Documentary award.

Simon Stern, LAW '02, who coordinated Shepard's appearance at Yale on Mon., Mar. 25, said Scout's Honor deals with a particularly interesting aspect of contemporary American culture: the controversy over homosexuality among the Boy Scouts. "The Boy Scouts have traditionally been associated with a kind of Norman Rockwell-esque vision of America—a vision that has often been taken to exclude gay people as a matter of course," Stern wrote in an e-mail. "On the one hand, it's interesting that only recently has the Boy Scouts of America felt compelled to articulate explicitly its exclusion of gays. On the other hand, that need has arisen at the same time that greater numbers of Scouts have emphasized their allegiance to scouting while being open about their sexual orientation."

The pride week organizers are ambitious enough to push into one of the final frontiers of gay acceptance: varsity athletics. A panel called "Out in Athletics" is planned for noon on Tues., Mar. 27. Coordinated by JC Reindl, BK '03, the panel will feature discussions with several of the few openly gay athletes at Yale about their experiences and advice to others. The poster for the "Out in Athletics" panel is particularly striking—two handsome, glistening athletes stand near each other, arms almost touching, in an Abercrombie & Fitch ad. Few people know that one major Abercrombie photographer is gay, Reindl said, and he liked the tension under the surface the ad brings out.

Reindl, a varsity track and cross-country runner who came out in high school, said he knows of only three openly gay male varsity athletes at Yale—a statistic that is striking but not surprising, given the taboo nature of homosexuality among athletes. "Yale is one of the most accepting schools around, and yet many athletes are still afraid to come out—there's this masculinity thing, this fear that you'll no longer be `one of the guys,'" Reindl said. When he heard about pride week, Reindl said he saw a fantastic opportunity to offer a perspective that is rarely, if ever, heard in the locker room. "Right now, there's really no one present in the scene," he said. "It's the taboo topic—but we want people to know they're not alone." The panel will address a diverse field: gay and straight, varsity, JV and club athletes, and even IM players. "Well of course we can't just gear the panel toward openly gay varsity athletes—we'd be talking to an empty room," Reindl said.

All in all, the coordinators said they want to emphasize the breadth and openness of the Pride Week events. "Gay pride isn't just `I'm gay and proud' anymore. We want to allow for other identities to be highlighted," Horak said. And if the red posters are any indication, Pride Week is certainly set to do just that.

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