embargo May 18th

STUDENTS SEIZE TOILETS TO FIGHT PREJUDICE
[Quotes from MUSU queer officer Alex Ettling]



University students from all around Australia will seize a boy’s toilet today in a radical attempt to get people questioning the role gender plays in modern Australian society.



‘As part of a national campaign to see the introduction of ‘pan’ toilets, students regardless of their gender, will be occupying and partying in cubicles together.’ It is all part of a bid to get university administrations to provide permanent non-gender specific toilet spaces.

The toilets we demand are called ‘pan’ rather than ‘unisex’ because we want to get the message across that gender is moveable and not fixed to our biological sex, as is commonly thought.

‘The pan toilets are open to girls, boys, people who are in-between, and people who even reject the whole gender system.’

Seizing the toilet is part of a day of events run through National Genderf*#k Day. University students will also enjoy non-phallic bbqs, attend trans awareness seminars, drag king workshops, with the days events culminating in all universities partying at Abode, Melbourne’s first pansexual nightclub.

Organisation of the events has run through queer Departments in university student unions. queer organising has taken a radical shift since the days of gay liberation. We now emphasise the role of socialisation in how everybody, including heterosexuals, view their gender and sexuality. We like to say it’s in between the ears, not between the legs.

‘We deliberately spell queer without the capital ‘Q’, because queer is a label that rejects all fixed identities – from gay, to straight, to man, to woman. We are more than the boxes that society places us into, so we encourage everyone to mess around with them a little – just to remind us all.’

queer Departments around the country are focussing on the many varieties of gender and sexuality in an attempt to highlight the particular disadvantage that trans, intersex and genderqueer people still experience in Australian society. According to the Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby, 38% of trans people experience abuse in the education system.

‘It’s a figure that is way too high. We want to see the government doing something about this appalling discrimination. The first thing they can do is to provide safe toilets for everyone who wants to get an education. The second thing they can do is to amend anti-vilification laws to fully include trans people.’

Genderf*#k Day is only the start of an effort by student unions to put a new form of feminism back on to the Australian social agenda. It is part of the build up to the annual ‘queer Collaborations’ this year being held in Perth during July. Students are mobilising for the largest queer student conference in Australian history with the belief that it is likely to be the last conference if the federal government passes Voluntary Student Unionism. The legislation has the result of limiting the funding that supports queer Departments and other student activities.

***
[Ed: Just heard back again from the Harvard collective - they're running a fair bit of publicity on GenderF*#k! Also they're seeing some (very) recent positive changes in the way of training on trans issues at some of the units on campus. Won't say more as I've been advised this hasn't even been officially released yet. Still - how rad is that!]


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