Monday, March 23, 2009

GSA Monday Topic: Harvard's BGLTSA becomes the Harvard QSA: Trading in "Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender" for "Queer"

Harvard's QSA Website Banner




Recent news:

Harvard's Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance voted unanimously to change the organization’s name to the Harvard College Queer Students and Allies.


Check out the full article here.
What would be the reaction if YOUR GSA became the QSA? If all the Gay Straight Alliance Clubs became the Queer Straight Alliance Clubs?

Would it help, or would it make things more difficult?

What do you think?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't think the name change should matter because it is what the organization stands for that really counts. However, the gay community began to reclaim the word "queer" nearly 20 years ago when the activist group Queer Nation was formed. Most college students today are too young to even remember the word ever being pejorative.
Which is kind of a unique thing in itself. Can you think of any other minority group that has embraced pejorative terms? I know of many once-acceptable words that later became offensive, such as "colored", but I'm not able to come up with a single one, outside the gay community that have gone from pejorative to accepted.