calling Oxford queers...

[sebastienne]

Are you, or have you ever been, an Oxford queer? (As any kind of member of the university, staff or student; and as any kind of queer, from the flaming to the mildly non-heteronormative)

Edit: I'm also interested in feedback from non-Oxford people, and non-queer-identified people, that has relevance to the issue at hand.

On Monday I'm consulting with the university about its LGBT policy, and I'd really like to do that armed with as many experiences, anecdotes, feelings, and opinions as possible. Any time that you take to respond to this post will be appreciated, both by me, and by the Oxford queers who follow us.



Some questions that I hope might trigger interesting responses:

How did being queer affect your experience of Oxford?

Have you ever felt excluded - explicitly, because of homophobia / transphobia, or implicitly, because of heteronormativity - from any aspect of University life?

How could the university have helped you better achieve your potential?



But please, don't limit yourselves to just answering these questions. Many thanks for any help you can offer.

Anonymous commenting is enabled.

Comments

[chiasmata]

Oh, yay you! (If this is what I think it is, I was involved in the initial setting-it-up meetings with my Chair of the Queers hat on. Glad to see it's had responses!)

I'll give you a proper answer when I'm not at work...

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

Gack! No time to get back to you properly.

Often felt excluded as a lesbian in LGB events - impression of too many privildged posh boys. Countered this frequently by running all women DVD nights in my rooms at Magdalen on the same nights that LGB drinks were there - made some very good friends this way.

Long distance relationship issues - a lot of the LGB scene implicitly was about pulling. Would have been happier with more politics and less parties - but I know others disagree.

[deathbyshinies.livejournal.com]

Long distance relationship issues - a lot of the LGB scene implicitly was about pulling.

WORD. In fact, I'd like to second that entire comment, with the added caveat that I do honestly think the 'B' in lots of college LGB groups - particularly mine - is almost entirely cosmetic. Do feel free to tell the story about how I went to the first Graduate ChCh LGB drinks of the year in first year, and was set upon by two gay men asking 'But if you were on a desert island, would you choose to be stranded with a man, or a woman?'. I've had much more luck meeting the Oxford bi and bi-friendly folk through the Goth and drama scenes than through any LGB society, which is a bit sad and telling, I think.

On the other hand, I realise that this is mostly a critique of student-run clubs and societies rather than of the University itself, so there may not be that much that the university can do about it.

[slasheuse.livejournal.com]

Would you like me to repost this link/direct a few people to it? I have some recent-ish graduates of Ox on my flist, if that helps.

Some points (a bit scattered):

- I think it's harder to be a gay woman than a gay man at Oxford.
- I think that the LGBTsoc gets a lot of unflair flak for not being a political society when there IS a political society that people can join, esp since what it ALSO does is provide quite a lot of welfare hello.
- I think that gradually there's a growing L/B group of girls who socialise together, which is nice.
- Actually, the only time I've been made to feel uncomfortable about the gay is the BLOODY CU. Catholics, Protestants etc. have always been either too polite or too intelligent to make me feel at all uncomfortable.
- The pissing uni should be more accommodating about hosting gay events - YES, they involve the selling of alcohol but we have YET TO DESTROY THE ORIEL and the gayness of quaffers is not a bigger risk.
- I would really love it - and of course nobody's obliged to be my role model IN ANY WAY - if there were some visibly gay/politically motivated female dons who might be persuaded to provide leadership. There are so many gay male dons, which is awesome, but yes. But I knew NO female dons personally until third year, apart from Mads. That's probably more gender than sexuality.
- I can count the number of LGBTsoc-going bisexuals I know on both hands. ...I don't know what to DO about this.

[vampire-kitten.livejournal.com]

The first time I turned up to LGB I was made to kiss Jessie to prove I was queer. I mean, there are worse things, but it was quite annoying.

I'd have been happier with more politics and less parties, but mostly I'd have been content if there had been more events that weren't come get drunk and hope to pull.

[logmplus1.livejournal.com]

Seconded regarding the CU. I'm not queer, but I've felt uncomfortable on occasion with their homophobia.

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

The spreading of this meme would be very appreciated, thanks.

And you are so, so right about the gender balances / bi-visibility stuff. Am glad to have it backed up that these aren't just my perceptions of things!

[chiasmata]

- I would really love it - and of course nobody's obliged to be my role model IN ANY WAY - if there were some visibly gay/politically motivated female dons who might be persuaded to provide leadership. There are so many gay male dons, which is awesome, but yes. But I knew NO female dons personally until third year, apart from Mads. That's probably more gender than sexuality.

You know, I'm on the LGBT academics mailing list, as I'm a graduate. I wonder whether asking the list if a female don would be willing to come and talk at LGBTQ Council would be regarded as acceptable...

[slasheuse.livejournal.com]

It would be nice - I mean, I know there ARE lesbian academics.

[chiasmata]

It's something I'd half thought of before, before I went away. I'll see what I can do...

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

You know, I think that would be wonderful. I occasionally want to see that there are "grown-up" queer women out there - i.e., it's not just me and my friends, people are queer in the real world too.

[chiasmata]

The list moderator is a Very Nice Man who was lovely to me at a scary meeting, so I'll drop him a line and ask whether he thinks it's an appropriate question for The List. Fingers crossed!

[foreverdirt.livejournal.com]

I agree with comments below about queer women being less visible both within student events and as academic role models -- and about this lack of visibility being off-putting.

One thing that comes to mind is at my old college, the bar would do a Valentine's Day special: one free shot if you kiss someone in front of the bar, two free shots if that someone is same gender, three if they're a bartender, four if they're a bartender of the same gender.

Little examples like that of the hilarious novelty of queers made me uncomfortable in college life in a way that's, y'know, like many things: that example on its own could be read in many ways, some even queer positive, but instances like that all the time just build up and up.

Good luck with this!

[foreverdirt.livejournal.com]

For "below" read "above". Heh.

[deathbyshinies.livejournal.com]

Also: am bringing you home a copy of [OH], allegedly queer-friendly lifestyle magazine thingy, where someone refers to bisexuals as 'morally superior fuckwits'. In a creative writing piece, admittedly, but it's still rather Special and Charming.

[mentalfirewall.livejournal.com]

That said I used to *be* an occasional member of CU and felt uncomfortable about their homophobic attitude.

er...

[sashagoblin.livejournal.com]

...i'm realy hesitant about posting this, bc i'm not particularly queer and so don't feel i necessarily have any right to barge in. Plus i'm not sure if it's anythin alterable except by deliberately getting people in. But one thin I noticed moving to oxford from London isthat queer studies is just *dead*. I tried to bring queer points up in seminars, official and unofficial, and was treated with reactions ranging from distaste to mild amazement that anyone would think that relevant. The one time somebody ave an even-vaguely queer reading, a visiting American, the Ox faculty virtually took it in turns laying into his approach as irrelevant. And frankly that was hard for *me*, relatively heteronormative - it must be so much harder for everybody who actually *is* queer. Now that may just have been my period/faculty. But talking to [insert tutor's name], she was very open about how down on queer studies generally Ox could be.So one thing about getting queer professors in is that it might give people, undergrads in particular, some sense that there's a world out there with *entire disciplines* devoted to teh queer..

..i dunno. Maybe Ox undergrad lets you do queer studies. Maybe that's just postgrad. Or i was unlucky. but it *was* my experience, and i haveto say i do feel so much better in a world where there is an entire *course* on literary representation and the history of homosexuality...

Re: er...

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

No, thank you, this is most incredibly relevant. I'm going to change the post to reflect that I'm interested in anything that might affect queer people in Oxford; whether or not the person bringing it to my attention happens to be queer, or Oxonian.

[gin-gerkitten.livejournal.com]

In a not-very structured way:

- Being a lesbian made me vastly out-numbered, and there were usually ten times as many men as women at the LGBSoc (as it was) events I attended.
- My year as a twinky gender-uncertain girl in a set of gay male friends was tremendous fun, apart from them sending me up over my sex, my gender-queer, and whomever I was atracted to that week. Mostly, that was 'all good fun' mockery, but some was relly nasty. I ran across more misogyny off the gay men I knew than from anyone else.
- My year on LGB (sic) committee was made bloody difficult by the anti-bi attitudes I ran across. Our president at the time was a bit of a lesbian purist, had never questioned her sexuality, had never even kissed a boy, etc. Which is, of course, fine, but there was no need to impose her view on me. She found it very disturbing that I was quite happily attracted to men as well as women Her attitude was genuinely bi-phobic - had a straight president of a society acted towards a gay comittee memeber in the same way, I suspect all hell would have broken loose. I agree with the commenters above, that bisexuality is largely ignored by most of Oxford. Certainly, being snarked at for being bi was the worst discrimination I've run across while in Oxford.
- One of the things committee never managed to do, either the year before I was on it (when it was 12 gay men and a token lesbian to do Female Welfare) or the year I was doing Female Entz, was put the goddamn T into LGBT. Various spurious arguments were put forward for this - from 'It's insulting to transpeople to lump them in with the gays' to 'We can't change the website, it's too difficult.' The change was eventually made after I left committee.
In retrospect, this irritates me vastly more than it did at the time. Having not consciously identified as trans until quite recently, I took more of an academic interest in including the T than a personal one. But there is no other society that I'm aware of that has even considerd transpeople to exist in Oxford, and LGBSoc, however ill-fitted to fill that role, had a welfare remit, and could and should have been doing everything possible to include transpeople.
- Committee also, despite the best of intentions, never mananged to break the mould of 'drinks events where you pull'. And we did try, we had pizza nights, ice-cream fests, Welfare teas, picnics. The snag was that Drinks was what made the money. We made a loss on almost everything else we ran. Faced with this, we stayed with doing what was selling.
- With regard to trans-stuff - I am not the best person to ask, because for me it has been a learning process that started after Finals. I don't think, given my college (Hilda's) and the dodgy relationship I had with the authorities, I would have dared to come out as trans as a student, even if I had been ready to. I have no idea how they would have dealt with it if I had, given their all-female status (now, alas, no more) which was something I entirely supported. The logical conclusion to my transitioning while an undergraduate would have been for me to move college, and that is practically unheard of. I wouldn't like to speculate about how well the University might have dealt with that.
- As far as I'm concerned, the University itself had very little influence on my experiences as queer - I cetainly never felt actively excluded, although on occasion it did seem that my queer experiences were a little invisible.
The student societies I was in had much more of an influence on my experiences.

Sorry, this go a bit waffly. Hope it helps!
GKxx

[slasheuse.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to come back after reading gin_gerkitten's comments about non-alcohol based events/B and T visibility/committee stuff (not in disagreement at all)

1. There ARE some non-alcohol-based events; there are welfare teas. I ran them. NOBODY COMES, despite everyone knowing about them. The people who complain about lack of booze-based events don't come. They just don't. They happen roughly three times a term. Pizza & wine has booze but is emphatically not at all booze-based - there's lots of juice. This happens roughly twice a term, is very sitting-about-chatting. Is popular. Drinks is MORE popular, though, and makes money. Society finances are ENDLESSLY DEPRESSING.
2. I wish, I really wish that more people supported [undefined] and acknowledged the separate roles of LGBTsoc and [undefined]. Becuse LGBTsoc DOES work for a lot of people.
3. The problem with the female queer community in Oxford is that it exists in three separate spheres; Our Lot (i.e. alternative types with thespy links - I know this is a shit way to describe it but we know what I'm getting at - our various friends and lovers), The Scene (comprising the lesbian aristocracy, people who go to Drinks, their various friends and lovers) and Sporty Lesbians (there are SO MANY girl queers who do/have partners ENTIRELY BASED in a sporty enclave). Blokes = much more centralised (and sometimes I'm honestly tempted to say that this is because they are more promiscuous, because in my personal experience, if you want to know how Union!Gay knows Thesp!Gay knows RandomPostgrad!Gay, the link will be sex/scene).
4. I don't know what to do about biphobia. I THINK it is getting better in the Ox queer scene. Okay, fine, I am going to start wailing in anguish: I know SO MANY awesome bisexuals, but they're not active in the visible queer community of Oxford and of course they DON'T HAVE TO BE, I DO KNOW THIS, but the thing is that then okay, I HAVE been visible, but I am a lesbian and I can't change biphobia SINGLE-HANDEDLY, it would be much better if there were MORE BISEXUALS about. I think it's a bit better now we've had much much more female visibility on the committee.
5. Quite a lot of what g_g said re: misogyny etc ran true for my committee experience EXCEPT that MY GOD, did those girls hate the BOYS on committee, and I was a bit spawn-of-the-devil regarded because I adored them.
6. Innate problem of expecting social society to solve political problems (THE UNI SHOULD BE MORE LEADERSHIPPY, our fucking Senior Member doens't even do anything), innate problem of bloody committee chosen from people yoked only by sexual orientations (e.g. being a queer, being a popular queer even, doesn't make you a good leader). Lesbian purist K describes undoubtledy bad in terms of biphobia but fucking awesome on organisational front, basically saved society finances which nice bisexual president subsequently destroyed. Is all dreadful. Sea-change of ideas needed before improves. Now are two bisexuals on committee. Should point out that most positions are elected unopposed, if bisexuals not elected, probably means they're not standing. Wish more bisexuals happy as part of LGBT community. Was the men who didn't want us to go T.

Sorry. For all of this. Just ohgod we do TRY. And I am NOT DEF - I am totally defending LGBTsoc and would just like to point out the impossible job it has to do, completely without university support.

[countess-rezia.livejournal.com]

Oh Christ Church LGB! I found it not particularly bi-friendly or girl friendly in fact. But the biggest issue I had was that it was so much of a closed group. A friend of mine came back from a year abroad and was surprised I didn't really know a a particular person in college very well, because he was gay - and therefore "ought" to be my friend. He didn't seem to understand why I might feel I had more in common with straight and bi female friends than I did with the core of gay men.

That said, I didn't try to change it. I didn't see it as worth it then. But like you, I found a lot of bisexual friends, a couple of flings, my uni girlfirend and (indirectly) two post-uni relationships through student theatre.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, It's stronglight but I've lost my log-in.

I never went to LGBT events, even college based ones, because I felt that you weren't really welcome at them unless you'd *decided*. I spoke to a few people at freshers fair, etc. I didn't feel able to go and say "well, I think I might quite like women I think they're pretty, but I don't really know because I haven't been out with one yet so I don't know whether it would work for me or not." I've always felt that this would be quite derided, and similarly, I've felt that if I were to say the conclusion I've finally come to, which is that I'm sort of an 80-20 split, I can and have fallen for women but I mainly tend to fall for men, I get the impression that that wouldn't "count".

I don't know if these are actual *problems* with the society/scene, I'm not sure that they are. But these are just my feelings about it, which you're welcome to use if they are useful.

[the-whybird.livejournal.com]

I suspect that these are not the answers you're looking for, but they are -- to the greatest extent I can think of -- the truth about my experience at Oxford.

How did being queer affect your experience of Oxford?

It meant that I got to hang around with people who were considerably more interesting than the people who would have otherwise been my peer group.

Have you ever felt excluded - explicitly, because of homophobia / transphobia, or implicitly, because of heteronormativity - from any aspect of University life?

No; the social group I gravitated to (OURPGsoc) was very queer-friendly and open-minded.

[the-whybird.livejournal.com]

...except that I would like to echo stronglight's comment on LGBT groups; they definitely did not feel like they were "for" me. I felt more like they were for people who were Out and Proud and Shouty and Political about it, rather than people like me (who just enjoyed men from time to time). Whether this is a consequence of my own heteronormativity and stereotyping of gay groups or a consequence of LGBTsoc's advertising / reputation I'm unsure.