A group of students spread out around the Quad last week, and, with chalk in hand, made the cement a little more colorful as part of an event for Coming Out Month.

“Bi and Blessed,” read one message. “Ace and Awesome,” read another. Passersby stopped to take pictures or just to have a look. Some approached the students to ask what they were doing.

The students were participating in the Coming Out Stories and Chalk the Quad event, organized by the LGBT Resource Center as an event for Coming Out Month, which is Syracuse University and very few other universities’ month-long take on National Coming Out Day, which was Sunday.

Coming Out Month was initially Coming Out Week, which was organized by the LGBT Resource Center’s director at the time. Abby Fite, an administrative specialist for the LGBT Resource Center, said SU started celebrating the event for a whole month only a couple years ago.

Fite defined it as a month that is intended to spark conversation on and off campus about marginalized genders and sexual identities, which are usually disregarded by society.

“Coming Out Month is a really important time in the LGBTQ+ community here at Syracuse,” said Elizabeth Sedore, the public relations director of SU Pride Union, in an email. “So we plan events where people can tell their stories, build a sense of community, meet other LGBTQ+ people and if they’re thinking about coming out, offering support for that.”

Other events for Coming Out Month include the keynote event, “Dear Straight People,” a poetry slam that will entail four queer and transgender spoken word poets sharing their poems with SU students on Oct. 27 in Hendricks Chapel. The poets — Alix Olson, Danez Smith, Yazmin Monet Watkins and Kit Yan — are also each writing a poem titled “Dear Straight People” in honor of the event.

 The keynote format is different from previous years’ keynotes, which have usually entailed a speaker lecturing at the university. Fite said the reason for the change is that the lecturer last year was transgender actress Laverne Cox.

“We were thinking, ‘How do we top Laverne Cox?’ and then we said, ‘We can’t,’” Fite said.

Another event called Queer and Trans Yoga will take place on Friday. The session will be a mix of standard yoga with justice and liberation that enables the participants to liberate their body, soul and mind, Fite said. She said she hopes that through these events, people will become more familiar with the LGBT Resource Center.

In addition to Coming Out Month, the resource center has a library and three discussion groups called Embody, Fusion and New 2 ‘Quse that meet throughout the academic year.

“The space itself is also a resource,” Fite said. “We want to be an environment where people can just come to chill, read, do homework or have a conversation. People just come in and hang out at our lounge.”

Pedro DiPietro, an assistant professor in the women’s and gender studies department, expressed some concerns about the month. He said while Coming Out Month enables greater and more positive visibility for those struggling to express their gender identities and sexualities, it could be an attempt to “over-normalize” marginalized genders and sexualities, and that would be dangerous.

“It may be a way of using visibility in order to prove that we are as normal as middle class, straight white folks,” he said. “If we are only focused with this goal, a portion of the LGBT community will be left out.”

Published on October 11, 2015 at 10:24 pm

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