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2011-2012 BDU Board: Last Wednesday, BDU had elections for next year. Check this board out. MMM.

President: Ari Bar-Mashiah

Outreach: Jacob Tobia

Publicity: Matt Barnett

Treasurer: Patrick Oathout

Blog Editor: Risa Isard

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Speaking of Religion... Anne Brown, producer of "Incompatible with Christian Teachings," will be joining us for a screening of her movie and a Q&A session tomorrow night at 5 in the Center. The documentary details the stories of clergy and laity, and LGBT and straight allies. Dinner will be served! More information here.

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LGBTQ Discussion Group Tonight! Hey all. Just a quick reminder that we're meeting tonight in the Center at 6:30. After looking at the results of the poll, we'll be talking about dealing with family. Even if this is not something that you struggle with or want to know more about, come to share how you've dealt with this in the past (successfully or not). Let's do this!

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Transgender Discussion Group: The Center now has a trans discussion group, and I thought I'd spread the good news! Can you believe this is happening, Seniors? High-fives and all around.

From the LGBT Center website:

Are you Transgender? Are you Genderqueer? Do you consider yourself transsexual? Are you female, but do not conform to gender norms? Are you male, but do not conform to gender norms? Do you believe you are a different sex than the one you were assigned at birth? Are you not sure where you fall in the gender spectrum? Do you dislike the gender spectrum? Are you annoyed by being forced to check the M or F boxes on applications? Did you answer yes to any of these questions? Do you feel we should be asking more questions?

The Center for LGBT Life is forming a group for all individuals who do not conform to gender norms or embrace the sex they were assigned at birth, including those who identify as transgender, genderqueer, transsexual, intersex, gender questioning, or are reading this blurb and getting excited that there might be a place for you on campus.

This group is for Duke students only. If you would be interested in attending this group, please email LGBT Center Program Coordinator Jess Evans at jess.evans@duke.edu

Blog Meeting Tonight!

There'll be a This Blog Meeting tonight in my room (Kilgo J210) at 9. While new writers are more than welcome, anyone who just wants to help out or has ideas to share should come! Everyone's invited. These are also consistently just The Most Fun.

See you tonight!

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A Couple Quick Reminders About Today: Hey y'all. So the World AIDS Day human ribbon is being photographed at 1 today in front of the Chapel (details here). Aaaand then tonight, BDU has its last meeting of the semester at 6 in the Griffith Board Room inside OSAF inside the BC.

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LGBTQA Discussion Group Tomorrow Night at 7: For the first two discussion groups, we just threw out possible topics and let the group decide where the discussion went. And this sort of worked! I've really enjoyed the dialogue and I love how many people (!) came to both. Some feedback we got though, was that the topic should be predetermined in order to give attendees an opportunity to think about it beforehand. So let's try that!

The discussion group is branded as a real-life extension of This Blog (hence its title "Our Lives: Up Close & Personal") that has the same sort of topics but allows a dimension of face-to-face dialogue that This Blog cannot offer. It's the conversations We All are having in the comments sections but in person. With this in mind, it is kind of a duh decision to have this next discussion be about sexism in the LGBTQ community.

This week's anonymous posts post (no, there really is no better way to say this, I've tried) that included an entry about sexism in the LGBTQ community got the most comments (32) any post has ever gotten since we went live over a year ago. (There was also an anonymous post that alluded to suicide that probably should have gotten more attention it did. Just saying.) And there's been, like, a billion gender summits and discussions and such on campus in the past three weeks. I feel like this is an opportunity for us to explore how this is a different and/or same phenomenon among LGBTQ students. This has potential to hit on so many topics, from double (and in many cases triple) disadvantage to the tendency (I'm understating) for gay men to feel the need to suppress any feminine qualities and defy stereotype. "I'm not one of those gays, and I don't want to associate with them. I mean, I can name the 40-man roster of the New York Yankees!" - Me, my first year, because hegemonic sexism and compensatory masculinity (lol @ First Year Me a little very bit).

This is just one way it can go! So yeah. I'm excited about this! I'm excited about this. It's sure to be a more than lively discussion. See you tomorrow at 7 in The Center? :)

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A Message From Janie Long, Director of the Center for LGBT Life:

If you have been the recipient of a bias or hate incident this semester, I ask that you e-mail me with details. This could be a flag torn down, a taunt, a remark made in class directed at you, a non-responsive person in charge, etc. I want to report these incidents to others so that they might be fully informed. I talk with many of you each week who have experienced some form of negativity by someone on campus whether it is another student or a staff member. One little incident may not seem like much but when they are put all together they can speak volumes. So, please e-mail me (janie.long@duke.edu) today. I want to hear from each of you who has had one of these experiences even if you have told me before!

Janie

[Ed. Note: Janie wouldn't ask for this unless it was important, Readers, so let's do it. Remember, incidents big and small count. If you want to make this as anonymous as possible (AAAP), you can use our anonymous posts link to respond and I'll relay your message to Janie (without posting it next Monday unless you explicitly tell me to).]

Blog Meeting Tonight!

If you don't think that making these posters is the best part of my week, then you clearly don't know me. This one is my appeal to the more artsy crowd (Ari), so I'm hoping my pointed advertising works.

Anyway! It's already been a week since there was a trillion people in my room for the last meeting. That was so many people! Things got a little squeezed in here and we had to get a little comfortable with one another. With this in mind, I've decided to have the meeting here again this week because duh, that is how families should be.

Maybe bring blankets and pillows and stuff? I don't know.

Tonight we'll be going over a lot more concrete things - setting up people to write, when they're writing, what they're writing, etc. A timeline for advertisements and such.

Again, no matter what you're involvement's been so far or what you want it to be in the future, you're more than welcome. Come visit!

My Room

Kilgo J210

Tonight, 9PM

Womyn Wednesday!

WOMYN magazine is excited to announce that we will be featuring polls from our community in the magazine! We want to hear what you have to say about LGBT issues, queer women, Duke, and a combination of the three! To this end, we're going to post a weekly poll here on the blog so that we hear everyone's voice in the magazine. The general goal of WOMYN magazine is to increase the visiblity of queer women on this campus, and we can't think of a better way to reach our community and beyond than the BDU blog. A special thank-you to Chris Perry, the editor of the BDU blog, who is letting us post a weekly poll!

Our first WOMYN poll is:

Who is your favorite out, queer, woman-identified celebrity role-model?

Click here to take the first WOMYN poll.

Want to view the results? Check out the UPB newstands when WOMYN is realesed on campus in late October!

Why are there so many options to choose from? The honest truth is that, we (Jack, Jess McD., Summer, Brandy, and Michelle) had difficulty providing just the 11 names (well, its technically 12, unless you want to count Tegan and Sarah as a unit). At one point we had a list of 15-16 women. It was actually a pretty powerful exercise to work on and realize the countless LGBTQ-identified women who have so profoundly impacted our culture. We picked 11 names but there are so many others that we're missing, so we also added a "submit your own" field if you have a different favorite.

And don't forget - submissions are now being accepted for the magazine! Click here to look at some ideas of what to submit. (Remember, submissions are rolling, which means that you have a better chance of getting your piece published if you send it in earlier, and it's less work for us!) Contact WOMYN by emailing us (womynatduke@gmail.com) or by visiting our website.

Glee Party Tonight On The Blog!

The Glee season finale is tonight at 9, Everybody. This is going to be an epic event because we are so not certain about what is going to happen! Will New Directions almost definitely without a doubt win regionals?! We just don't know! (We know.) Will Quinn give birth at the end of the episode, going into labor at regionals?! MAYBE. (Yes.) Glee is an emotional roller-coaster and is sure to have some surprises up its sleeve! Maybe we'll get the rest of the songs that should have been in the Gaga episode.

Anyhow. Let's all treat the blog like Kilgo commons and meet here for it. That way we can more efficiently discuss the CRAZY things that will be happening.

*Note: To those not on the East Coast, be careful of spoilers, but you are invited, too! Come whenever! Parttyyyyyyy.

* * *

[8:52] Ok. Vivster and Michelle will be here momentarily. So ready for this.

[8:59] Wasting no time with Schuester being annoyingly overdramatic. I. Will. Not. Let. You. Do. This.

[9:03] I'm not already crying.

[9:04] Um yeah we miss her, too. Where HAS Emma been all of these episodes?

[9:05] Matthew Morrison: Best. Actor. Ever.

[9:07] lmfao Look at Professor Hyperbole, over here. What, do they go to Hyperbole High?

Gaga's Alejandro Video OR The Debut of The Machine Gun Bra

Wow.

That is sort of a lot to process and I cannot wait for Ari to Pop Up Video me through it with factoids and gagasymbolism. "That snow was also used in the Sound of Music" -Ari, probably.

Letter From The Editor: Anonymous Columnists

I think a major strength of our site, and something that differentiates it from its predecessor is complete absence of anonymity of our staff writers. When redesigning the blog in the Fall, we decided that the use of pseudonyms connoted that there was sense of fear among Us, and that couldn't be further from the truth. To reiterate our mission statement, we are not afraid, and we feel safe here. We've gotten so much positive feedback from people that have commended the openness of the writers, and this comment is pretty much Sentence Of The Year for me. The Out Community is blowing up on campus, and I feel as if all of these pictures and full names effectively convey that.

We were not so stupid, though, to think that everyone would be willing to be so visible. Our goal is to effectively and honestly capture what life at Duke and in America is like for LGBTQA students, and this cannot be done without also providing a podium for our closeted peers or those who just could not be as open were they writing under their full name. We set up the anonymous posting system to address this, and it's been hugely successful. 65 entries since November 9 is so many entries!

But! But. I think we may've overlooked a major possibility - that some of our out friends in BDU, more than willing to display their full name and picture, would not be able to out of fear of repercussions at home. A quick Google search of a columnist's name+"Duke" would lead here, and could very well mean a cutting off of tuition funds by parents for some or a revoking of scholarship by ROTC for others. As valued, awesome and all-the-more important as their visibility on the blog would be, it would not be worth being disowned or financially cut off. I know some that would argue otherwise and I understand their point of view, but I'm going to stick by this one.

At the last blog meeting, though, we all agreed that we should find a way to include the voices of those who were still willing to be regular columnists. Our current anonymous posting structure is not conducive to the frequency or length of columns, and I personally don't like the connotation of putting longer entries in a separate post like I did last week. So from now on (starting today) we will have some anonymous columnists.

Here's what I'm worried about. I don't want Readers to assume that anonymous columnists are not sharing their name out of fear of being out on campus. This is no doubt the case for many Duke students, and may even be the case for some anonymous staffers in the future, but I urge y'all to recognize that the choice to not identify one's self is not necessarily a reflection of campus culture (however discouraging campus culture can be). More often, I'm finding, this is a testament to what life's like back home.

Anyhow! While this seems like an obvious solution, it was a decision and precedent we had to discuss quite a bit. Like I said, pseudonyms didn't work too well on the old blog, but I'm confident that we will differ in our huge volume of identified writers that'll be right alongside :)

Okay! Let's do this!

Special BDU Meeting Tonight

8:30 PM, Duke Center for LGBT Life

By now, most people have read this or this and are outraged. In order to channel this energy into constructive, informed discussion, BDU is holding a meeting tonight at 8:30pm in the Center for LGBT Life . Please come, ask questions, and discuss.

Day of Silence at Duke Today

Duke University participates annually in the Day of Silence, a nationwide annual day of action wherein students take a vow of silence in support of the LGBT persons and their allies who have felt silenced by intolerance or injustice. This year, the Day of Silence is on Friday, April 16th.

"Please understand my reasons for not speaking today. I am participating in the Day of Silence (DOS), a national youth movement bringing attention to the silence faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their allies. My deliberate silence echoes that silence, which is caused by anti-LGBT bullying, name-calling, and harassment. I believe that ending the silence is the first step toward building awareness and making a commitment to address these injustices. Think about the voices you are not hearing today"

One again, Matt Lyons has organized a MASSIVE poster campaign, and has photographed 60 students and faculty, including Summer's shown above. The rest of the posters can be seen here! #35 is a personal favorite :)

Blog Meeting Tomorrow Night!

BDU Blog Meeting, Tomorrow Night

Wed. April 7 at 6PM

Kilgo J216

All are welcome!

I know I originally said that the meeting would be tonight, but I sort of forgot it'd be my birthday? Yeah. But! We're on for tomorrow in my room. Also, it's three hours earlier, People On Central!

hate speech hurts. no homo(phobia).

IT'S HERE! BDU'S ANTI-HATE SPEECH CAMPAIGN IS THIS WEEK, AT LAST!

Our slogan is "hate speech hurts. No Homo(phobia)".

Cause, let's face it. Hate speech sucks and homophobia is stupid.

The point of the campaign is to raise awareness about hate speech. So many people use it without thinking about what they're saying--who they might be offending, the hate they're perpetuating and normalizing, what it really means. BDU is calling those individuals out.

We will be sponsoring various events through out the week.

3/22 MONDAY: If you want to help with the campaign, we're going to be having a work party today, Monday, at 6pm in the BC. Following that, come to bridge painting at 8pm.


3/23 TUESDAY: We're going to be spreading our brilliant posters around campus starting at 10AM. You can meet in the LGBT center to pick up supplies! We also will have representatives tabling on the plaza from 11:00 to 3:00. Tabling on the plaza includes making spray paint t-shirts, serving rainbow cupcakes, and getting people to take a pledge not to use hate-speech and speak up when they hear it in return for a rainbow ribbon!

2/25 THURSDAY: More tabling on the plaza from 11-3! (see above, 3/23 Tuesday for details about tabling).

We need people to sign up to help with tabling! Please visit the doodle poll and sign up. Even if you've never done anything with BDU, come by the table, make friends and lend a hand. In all honesty, tabling for last year's Day of Silence was my first real BDU event--so don't be shy. Tabling is a great way to get to know people and help change the world!!

To sum it all up...BDU's anti-hate speech campaign includes:
1. AMAZING/gorgeous posters w/ snarky, in-your-face messages!
2. Pledge-signing!
3. Banners!
4. RAINBOW CUPCAKES!!!
5. Ribbons!
6. To-die-for t-shirts! (Seriously, you'll want one, they're awesome!)

Questions? Email me, Risa, at rfi@duke.edu.

I effing hate hate speech, but I LOVE BDU!!

Anti-Hate Speech Campaign Photo Shoot!!

Calling all BDUers or LGBT and Ally Identified Students at Duke!!

You may know that a committee of BDU has been working on an anti-hate speech campaign. Well, we've got it mostly figured out. And now we need your help to make it come to fruition!

We've chosen to use black/gray scale and purple (cause purple is just the best color, is there any question about that?). We'll have three different posters (see below). The campaign tag line is: Hate speech hurts. No homo(phobia).

Poster 1) Some posters will be modeled after GLSEN's "Think B4 You Speak" Campaign. We'll be using the definition theme. We've chosed to create posters for "fag" and "dyke." GLSEN's definition posters are pictured below:

Poster 2) Some posters will feature two people with talking bubbles. Person A's talking bubble says "oh dude nice shoes...no homo" and Person B's talking bubble says "yeah, that ignorance really brings out your eyes."

Poster 3) Some posters will feature students like YOU. They will be formatted like GLSEN's (see picture below), but the text will say: "I'm gay. Your homework isn't." or "I'm gay. Your test isn't."

THE PHOTO SHOOT FOR THE ABOVE POSTER IS TODAY. AFTER THE BDU MEETING. AT THE CENTER FOR LGBT LIFE (02 WEST UNION).

PLEASE WEAR A PURPLE SHIRT AND JEANS. IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A PURPLE SHIRT PLEASE WEAR A BLACK ONE.

THANK YOU,

Brandy, Cody, Matt, Aliza, Risa, and Alyssa

Blog Meeting Tonight!

BDU Blog Meeting, Tonight at 9PM

Kilgo J216

All are welcome!

See You Soon! Directions On How To Use The Blog For The Next Month Or So

Today is officially the first day of winter break for Duke students. You may not be able to see me smiling right now wearing pajamas in bed at 1 PM on a Monday, but make no mistake: I am smiling right now wearing my pajamas in bed at 1PM on a Monday. Last week was finals week on campus, which is a time when engineering students pore over textbooks and notes in order to master the derivation and application of several centuries worth of scientific progress and theory in order to even have an infinitesimal chance at passing their exams while the arts and sciences kids procrastinate their papers on topics like "Philosophy of the Alphabet" ("But how does the letter T feel?") and "My Breakfast This Morning: A Closer Look at My Breakfast This Morning." The bottom line is that this is what was behind our lack of columns and features last week (besides Summer's interview with Ari, because she's a baller like that).

The Blog Staff is now on break until next semester, though by no means does that mean that this blog will be dead until then. I will definitely continue to post anonymous entries every Monday as I get them. If someone sends in a coming out story (using the link on the side bar or by emailing us at bluedevilsunited@gmail.com) I'll also post that the following Wednesday. I would also stay tuned for news updates, and wouldn't count out the random appearance of a column or two.

This is also a great opportunity to go through any of the 124 previous posts that you may have missed or want to read again. Especially those that you forgot to comment on. Remember when you forgot to comment on that post? Me too. Take care of that!

A list of links to all non-news posts for your convenience after the jump...