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Queers Read This!

Birthday wishes? [reply]

Hi, Halloweenies! We are back from a busy O4U weekend and can’t wait to see you again! Halloweekend is around the corner and everyone’s in their nerd emoji cosplay rushing to make it to…our GMM, right? Sorry for the late email, I’m still a bit jet lagged (I lost one hour).

This Week

Join us this Friday (October 27) for our fourth general member meeting from 5-6 pm at Douglass 407! We’ll be joined by our friends from the university’s Health Promotion Office who will be discussing healthcare resources focusing on queer needs. Afterwards, we will be celebrating our chapter’s first birthday: the oSTEM Birthday Bash!! We’ll bring cake, you bring good vibes! <3

Coming Up

oSTEM

- Website

Browse through our CCC website to take advantage of our compiled Resources & Opportunities (scholarships, conferences, etc.), read more about our iconic E-Board, and find other general oSTEM links. The website is regularly updated, if you spot any issues or know of an R&O we haven’t included, our Feedback Form is always open!

University

- International LGBTQ+ Student Group
   International queers! Join our besties at the International LGBTQ+ Student Group for their weekly Wednesday meetings at the BIC from 6-7 pm. Their next meeting will be on November 1, you can find more details and contact info through this flyer.
- Misc LGBTQ+ Fall Events
   Hallo-Queer: Free pumpkins to paint, candy apples, donuts, cider, apples, and Halloween candy on Sunday, October 29th – you can drop in 12-5 pm! Register here by Friday, Oct. 27.
   Queer Scarf Knitting: We provide the supplies and you follow along with instructor, Liam Kusmierek! The event is on November 3, at 7 pm. Register here by Friday, Oct. 27.

In The News

• Rochester at O4U: oSTEM IG
This past weekend, we were at the O4U Engineering Conference, don’t know if you’ve heard that by now. Check our IG stories where we shared what we were up to and proved why we hype up all O4U conferences. Also, here’s a picture of us during the Gayla with our new RIT friends! Also also, I had a couple of cameos in O4U’s post here!!

My Words to Victor Frankenstein: Reclaiming Gender Monstrosity

“Monsters, like angels, functioned as messengers and heralds of the extraordinary. They served to announce impending revelation, saying, in effect, “Pay attention; something of profound importance is happening.” Hearken unto me, fellow creatures. I who have dwelt in a form unmatched with my desire, I whose flesh has become an assemblage of incongruous anatomical parts, I who achieve the similitude of a natural body only through an unnatural process, I offer you this warning: the Nature you bedevil me with is a lie. Do not trust it to protect you from what I represent, for it is a fabrication that cloaks the groundlessness of the privilege you seek to maintain for yourself at my expense. You are as constructed as me; the same anarchic womb has birthed us both.”

- Susan Stryker, My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix (link)

   Author, Susan Stryker deconstructs transphobic parallels between trans existance and Mary Shelley's literary monster (Dr. Victor Frankenstein's monster) in her essay My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix. Through her analysis, Stryker works to reclaim the abject category of "monstrosity" for trans people, especially trans women, who are being marginalized and oppressed even within queer and feminist movements.
   Despite a shared sense of alienation enabling queer connections with Frankenstein’s monster, Stryker analyzes the additional alienation distancing her as a trans woman from her other queer, gay/lesbian siblings. Responding to lesbian (separatist) feminists’s use of trans pathologization in attributing the monster’s status as an unnatural creation to transness, Stryker points out the metaphor’s secondary implication: gender is a performed social construct. She is hoping to reclaim images like Frankenstein’s monster by embracing the failure designation and trivializing its stigma. Jack Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure and Sara Ahmed’s What’s the Use? review this strategy further employed by queer activism and through everyday use for queer survival (re: NL 6 + NL 7).

   I should note that Stryker’s essay was published in 1994 and uses outdated terminology, so while Stryker does at times specify post-op trans experiences, she broadens her analysis to gender failures as a whole. I’m sorry the email was sent so late, I really wanted to include Stryker’s work but not rush through the dense material. Idk, I hope ppl read these things, and I hope to see u this Friday even more!

See u later, alligator!