CURRENT WORK

He Said, She Said, That I Said...

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"I cannot express how many times I have seen straight women kissing other women in order to get attention or to demonstrate their authentic sexuality in a fashion that will not inadvertently out their queer identity… because “she’s drunk, she’s just kissing girls because she’s drunk. It’s the alcohol.” Many straight women kiss other girls as a spectacle because the performative nature of acting queer turns many men on; they think it’s “hardcore shit” and if a woman is going to go that hard when performing with other women then she must be great in bed with men. Treating queer sensibility, whether it be for sexuality or gender, as a spectacle is degrading to the queer community: Imagine me, your resident queer, walking into a fraternity or bar and seeing men get off on straight girls acting gay. There is a normalized fetishization of queer women, and reinforcing that men are going to take advantage of the queer spectacle is dangerous to both straight and queer women, (Annalisa et al). How can we begin to keep queer women safe, when all around them their love, their identities, are being malformed into pornographic material for the enjoyment of others?

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Heteronormativity has been institutionalized within the Greek system on university campuses. I see this in how women and men are separated by gender within their houses. I see this in how women aren’t allowed to throw “afters”. How can we make sure that all genders feel welcome in a system that has been separating and reinforcing the gender binary for hundreds of years? There are so many different genders than the binary suggests. What of those who are trans? How can they safely join a sorority or fraternity? How can we make certain that the hazing process won’t objectify them? What of all the individuals who don’t identify as strictly a woman or a man: non-binary, agender, or genderfluid like me? Many sororities and fraternities use gendered language such as sisters and brothers. I don’t want to be a “sister”; I don’t feel as though that encapsulates who I am or could ever be. Non-binary individuals have mastered the neutralizing of language in order for it to be all-encompassing, the queer community has easily absorbed this new structure, yet it has been a large struggle for others to understand (Hansen)."

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A written TED Talk discussing how Greek Life negatively impacts the night life on college campuses, creating a dangerous environment for queer women and their straight counterparts.