Last of the Back to School Resolutions
I will try to be as OUT as I can be in the university context. Not "out as possible" since it’s hard to work sexual orientation into every conversation, I don’t like wearing buttons, and I’m a shy sort of person to start.
This year was my first year in the local Pride march and I marched under the Pride Western banner along with grad students from the English department working in the field of queer theory. In a lovely guesture which tied academic work with the Pride event they handed out photocopied snippets of queer literature. I was struck though that there were no other faculty members there. Even if the banners hadn’t read "Queers and Allies" I still know lots of people who could’ve marched. One faculty member said he didn’t want to make a spectacle of himself though I saw him cardiganed and bespectacled on the sidewalk waving in support. I’ve been in Pride events before, Toronto mostly, but here it’s small and conservative enough that I think quiet bisexual me can make a difference. Hell, there were protestors. At four or five points along the parade route. And some of their signs actually connected to themes that I care about in my academic work. I had just organized a conference on alternative family values and so the protestors with signs that read "Stay Away from Our Children" struck home. I thought after I could have said, "Yes, if you stay away from mine." Once again, I suffer from esprit de l’escalier. There was also a completely ridiculous banner with a photo of an angelic baby and then two families, one white, happy, het mom and pop; the other two hairy gay men in small amounts of leather and nothing else. The text read, "Who would make better parents for this child?" Who knows? Maybe the bear couple are elementary teachers having a wild night out. Maybe the het parents are pedophiles. Who knows really without more information?
So I will try to get involved with the student Pride organizations even if we won’t quite know what to make of each other. Some of them strike me as very conversative. Business students, law students with bright careers ahead of them, they don’t want to be involved in anything too militant. Some of them think the word "queer" is off-putting. Personally I think Pride Western sounds like the name of the alumni asociation. But nevermind. They also wonder why I care when I am involved in a heterosexual relationship. I correct them. "If you mean a relationship between two heterosexuals, then mine isn’t a heterosexual relationship." Maybe I should start a faculty/staff/student bisexuality group on campus. It would be odd, though perhaps not unexpected, if ours turned out to be the wilder campus organization.
