'But you don't look gay!'

First of all, happy National Coming Out Day! This is an awareness-raising day for people who feel comfortable doing so to be visible and proud of who their are, regardless of sexuality or gender-identity. In the spirit of the day, I thought I'd share one of my experiences recently of being a visible LGBT+ presence on campus.

I'm not the campest of men and so I often can 'pass' for straight, which has made the past few weeks interesting when introducing myself to new people as the LGBT+ officer. The reactions are either positive ('Ah, cool!') confused ('What does that mean?') or, what's been most shocking, surprised. I've been told on at least 3 occasions 'Oh, but you don't look gay!' or 'You're the straightest gay man I know!' I've found this a very odd reaction, but not wholly incomprehensible.

Even now most people's perception of what LGBT+ people are (or should be) is coloured by the long-standing stereotypes of dandies and butches. Non-het(erosexual) men are assumed to be femmes, like Quentin Crisp, one of the "stately homos of England"; whilst our women counterparts are assumed to be short, spiky-haired, pierced kings.

I thought at least in a place which has had 40 years since legalisation and some of the most vibrant LGBT+ communities in the world would have moved pass the antique stereotypes. We now have a (fairly) diverse group of out celebrities (from Neil Patrick Harris and Ellen DeGeneres to Derren Brown and Freddie Mercury). The days have passed when the only portrayals of gay and lesbian (never bi or trans) characters were as caricatures. Surely it's time to move on and accept that LGBT+ identities do not necessitate crude pastiches of long worn-out clichés.

So, happy Coming Out Day, whatever your identities and whoever you are.

World Mental Health Awareness Day

Our beloved VP Communications and Campaigns has already written an excellent blog on World Mental Health Awareness Day - wherein he talks about the importance of talking about mental illness, and the creation of a space in which people can talk about it casually, as well as in an indepth fashion, and a space that is safe enough that people don't feel they have to discuss it to feel safe.

Yetanotherlefty wrote a blog about the expectation to talk in order to solve the stigma mentally ill people face, then posted some valuable resources for people to contact. I'm going to replicate that here (with his permission), and add some more Holloway specific ones.

So, from him (national UK organisations)

The Samaritans 08457 909090 or jo@samaritans.org
NHS Direct Mental Health symptom checker
MIND
SANE

And some more Holloway specific ones

The SU Advice and Support Centre is incredible (in my opinion) and has a lot of useful welfare advice

And the confidentiality policy covering discussions with them is easy to find

There's  also support organised by the University. Remember all of these people should have a confidentiality policy (and will appreciate you asking about that if you feel the need to) and are there if you need them.
Here's their main page

The Health Centre (the on campus surgery) has a whole team of people there to support people with mental health problems, and if you make an appointment there you can discuss your options for accessing support

Student Counselling offer various types of counselling support to students, and are obviously completely free. They tend to offer an initial assessment  reasonably quickly as well.

At night and at weekends the Residential Support Advisors can be contacted if you live in halls, for almost any practical or welfare related concern. Just go to Founders' Reception or the Hub to access them


Some useful phone numbers on campus:
College Security 01784 443 063
Health Centre 01784 443 131

Outside of college, there is also Nightline (which is staffed by student volunteers from a number of University of London universities, and open to take calls from students on crises happening at night) 020 7631 0101

My thoughts and ideas this morning..

It is early morning and I have not been able to sleep for the past couple of hours so I thought: "What better time to update my blog?". A lot has been happening and the final preparations for Black History Month are on schedule. I have found leasing with people and organisations harder than what I had initially thought. Even when representing someone it doesn't necessarily mean that I will have their support. On a very positive note however, I have received lots of enthusiastic support by a few people here and there: I have had a couple of meetings with someone, who's name I won't reveal just yet, and this person may very well become a member of my subcommittee *fingers crossed*. Another person has approached me through facebook, offering to help in anyway. Other people have come forward, offering to collaborate with my projects. The Hindu and Sikh societies' presidents seem particularly on board and together with the Afro Caribbean society and hopefully other societies I will be working on organising events and workshops to increase cultural education, representation and inclusivity on campus. Other people in offices and organisations within and outside the university. It is indeed rather difficult to have to do the job of a committee on my own for the moment, organising, leasing, planning, tweeting! and keeping up with my academic work. Nevertheless this is the first year we have the BME officer position and I am confident in my work to get the support and cooperation I need so that what is built this year is solid, durable and of quality standards. 
Some ideas I have planned for the year:

1. Photo Campaign on diversity of backgrounds: many people have a very rich and diverse heritage in their family tree, and I would like to show that we all have a different story, even when we are superficially classed in the same category.
2. CONTROVERSIAL TALKS: cultural fashion such as the Hijab, the existence of a black history month, the attainment gap.
3. Focus Group with Cultural Socs presidents: ask them to get feedback from their members on their experiences as students and take it from there.
4. CULTURAL SKILL-SHARE workshops, were people can come and learn traditional customs of whatever culture will be, and where we can embrace our cultures.
5. EXTENDING THE MARKET TO AFRO-CARIBBEAN SUPPLIERS
6. Finding a way to make it compulsory that lecturers include BME contributions in their lectures during Black History Month
7. Organise TRIPS TO CONFERENCES, EVENTS and INVITE EXTERNAL organisations to inspire, address and discuss issues, hold careers advice workshops and such.

So it's now time for me to run to my lecture, an I won't have time to proof read this, so be merciful if I made any typos or grammar errors!
Will keep you posted on the developments for the BHM events!