Okay. So my school's GSA club is starting this wednesday, but they're not going to call it that. According to a friend of mine who's on student council (and gay) he says its because the school first off doesn't want a club with the word 'gay' in its name, and secondly because they don't think as many people will come to meetings, anyways. He says they're going to call it 'celebrating diversity' club or something like that, which I think it stupid. The original purpose of the club is for people in the LBGT community to have a safe place to be themselves! Just because we live in the most conservative place inColorado, doesn't mean that the administration should be afraid to use 'the g word'..... Thoughts? Did your school do this? Did you try to do anything about it?
I hate it when they do that. Don't beat around the bush. It is what it is, and just call it that. Giving it a euphemistic spin isn't going to change that it's a GSA. I've heard of other schools giving their GSAs an obscure name, but fortunately, in my high school, it was just GSA. However, nobody attended it though. There were like the 5 council members who ran the club, and they were pretty much the only attendees. I was too scared to join :icon_redf Now in college, we have two clubs: one is E.G.A.Y. (which stands for Everything Great About You) and the other is QA (Queer Alliance). That's pretty straightforward. If you feel strongly enough about it and have the guts to do something about it, then I say go for it.
I would press them. It is important to have safe spaces, but I don't think mixed safe spaces are a good idea, because they have a tendency to dilute the premise of providing a safe space for the group in question. Getting other groups in there requires people to be more and more educated and enlightened, which will just not happen. It's also a good way to get into really messy political battles since the more disparate the groups are, the more some group or another will "feel unsafe" because they have to be nice to queer people as opposed to "speaking the truth about homosexuality" or some nonsense. Basically, safe spaces have to be pretty narrow in order to work. You should figure out if it's because the administration does not want to allow the club to exist as a support group for queer students, in which case you need to bring down the ACLU Hammer, or if it's because they want to be inclusive. This sounds pretty stupid to me, but you have to understand that most stupidity comes about because school administration positions are essentially political and people are more worried about their own jobs than protecting you. They may be thinking that the conservative parents in your community will want their heads. They may also be thinking that "gay" is inherently a bad word, or that they "don't want to promote sex in school." Both of these are wrong and piss-poor reasons for having a club but disallowing it from actually being a queer-straight alliance.
Except.....You're NOT just there for the gay kids, right? Aren't you there for the whole umbrella? At our high school here they call it the Rainbow Club.
A lot of colleges use the phrase "Queer-Straight Alliance" because "queer" is technically a more inclusive term than "gay" (which tends to emphasize men over women or transgender people). As for calling a GSA a "Celebrating Diversity Club," that is really vague. You might as well call it Geography Club. Plus diversity refers to a lot more than sexuality and gender identity, so that wouldn't be the most accurate title to begin with. If the administration is that adamant about not using the word "gay," some other options include "Rainbow Alliance," or "H.U.G.S." (Humans Uniting Gays & Straights). At least that way the student body would have an idea of what that club is even for. It's stupid that they won't allow "GSA."
LOL, diversity. My HS have a long-running Asia Club that is filled with East Asian, South Asian, and some "westerners" who are interested. (which half the time i think half the members just hangout within themselves) If your club is going to be diverse, might as well go for that lol. but yeah, if you want it to be LGBT, but avoid using gay, as someone said, the term queer might be more proper?
We already had a club at my college called GSA (I think it was something to do with student government), so we were 'Safe Zones', which I think is a little better than 'Celebrating Diversity', and it's also different in terms of reasons why the name was changed. I think your school's reasoning is a little out of whack. How can somebody support a club that is centered around helping LGBT students, but at the same time be telling those same students that it's something that shouldn't be publicized. I don't get it!!
My guess is the "Celebrating Diversity" name is a bullshit cover for the administration not wanting to deal with bigoted parents. I agree that it's stupid, and people won't know what the hell it's for. I'd press them to go with GSA, Rainbow Alliance, or something like that. Older people (and religious bigots) are generally turned off by use of the word "queer" so that might not be the best choice politically. If you get push back, it may be worth a call to the ACLU; such resistance usually magically evaporates once somebody gets a call from the ACLU.
I'd go if it were called the GSA or something similar, but if it was anything regarding rainbows I would avoid it completely. I'm gay, I don't like rainbows whatsoever.
It's bullocks in my opinion. Here such a thing, if it were happening in a public school would probably be overruled by a judge. I think that's one of the problems of countries that don't have national LGBT laws yet. Also agree with Lewisss, no rainbows for me please.
That's a funny argument. At my college, the Pride director tried to to change the name of the Pride Collective to say something more about equality and not just about queers, and the college wouldn't let her.
