Issue 3 - Febraury 2017/March 2017 For Everything LGBT+ Under the Sun We’re Affiliated! Welcome to the latest edition of SOLAR. I am proud to say that PLEXUS became an officially affiliated Group within the Students Association on the 28th January 2017 by the Vice-President Administration ratifying our constitution – you can view the video here. It has been a busy couple of months for the whole Committee ensuring that the process of affiliation is complete and we are ready to move the next stage of our journey. What does affiliation mean? Put simply, we’re recognised by the OU Students Association within their operation as a support network for students who define as LGBT+ or not. We as a Group are proud of the fact we are inclusive and only restrict voting and policy making to LGBT+ Students of the Open University. Furthermore, PLEXUS will be provided with opportunities to sit on the Inclusion Committee, have an opportunity to observe a Central Executive Committee meeting and even have a space and exhibition at Conference. Although conference isn’t until June 2018 so we have some time. In this edition of SOLAR, we are going to celebrating the LGBT History Month and continuing throughout February, there will be discussion boards within the Forums so please check them out here and a couple of chats on our Facebook Page here. We’ve decided to look at our history and look at some of the positive steps the LGBT+ community has been able to achieve whilst recognising that some LGBT+ people are still persecuted just because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. While we are trying to keep this edition light, if you feel affected by any of the content, please do drop a message in the forums, or contact Switchboard on 0300 330 0630 or Nightline 020 7631 0101. The PLEXUS Committee will be attending National Student Pride in London between 24th and 26th February. This is a great opportunity for us to meet other students and start creating our network that will enable our members to participate in activity within a safe space in their local area. The Committee will also be hosting a meet up early evening on Saturday 25th February as part of the Association’s Big Feb Meet up, we’ll post the details soon. I hope you enjoy this edition of SOLAR and remember if you want to submit an article for the next edition we want to hear from you! A special Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to write for this edition. Graham Chair of PLEXUS SOLAR is a publication brought you by PLEXUS the LGBT+ Group of the OU Students Association. For any enquiries regarding the publication, please contact [email protected] LGBT+? Where to stop with the alphabet soup Meg-John Barker I was delighted to be asked to contribute to the special edition of SOLAR for LGBT History Month, and to be able to celebrate the newly formed OU student LGBT+ group. As an activist- academic who has dedicated much of my life to thinking and writing about gender and sexual diversity, I thought it might be interesting to reflect a bit on this acronym LGBT+. My excellent OU psychology colleague Prof Darren Langdridge often recalls his own involvement with student politics, and the huge battle he had to get the B included in the then LG student group. Back in the 1990s such biphobia amongst gay activists was sadly very common, meaning that many bi students had the experience of discrimination when they came out to straight friends, and then found just as much discrimination when they turned to the lesbian or gay community. Such double discrimination and bi erasure isn’t completely a thing of the past, although LGBT charities like Stonewall are doing much better at bi inclusion these days. With 43% of young people saying that they fall somewhere between ‘exclusively homosexual’ and ‘exclusively heterosexual’ according to YouGov it definitely needs to be a priority. What about the T? That was an even more recent addition to the acronym than the B, partly because of arguments over whether marginalised sexual and gender groups should be considered together or separately, and - again sadly - a good deal of transphobia from certain LG folk. There’s certainly a great deal of overlap between homophobia, biphobia and transphobia, with many LGB people being attacked for their gender expression as much as their sexuality. Trans itself is a big umbrella. For example, I’ve just finished working with some colleagues to produce guidance on how to be inclusive of non-binary staff and students here at OU. In recent years we’ve seen moves to add further initials to the LGBT list. A for asexual, I for intersex, Q for queer or questioning, U for unsure, or a plus sign to indicate all of these things and more. Some have argued for the umbrella term ‘queer’ to be used instead, or a less loaded term like GSRD (gender, sexual and relationship diversity). There’s no ‘right’ answer to these debates, but I think the queer concept of heteronormativity can be helpful here. According to this, our culture sees the ‘right, natural and normal’ way of being as being born male or female, remaining a man (if you’re male) or a woman (if you’re female), being attracted to the ‘opposite’ gender, and forming a coupled monogamous relationship with somebody of that gender, with whom you have PIV (penis-in-vagina) intercourse. In this way, anybody who falls out of that normativity is marginalised in our society, and could be included together in our acronym, which would then need to be: LGBTQQUIANB A (aromantic) NM (non-monogamous) BDSM (bondage and discipline, dominance and submission) and sadomasochism), S (single), +. Something to think about! Meg-John Barker is a central academic in the school of psychology who primarily writes self-help books and OU materials on counselling and psychotherapy. They’re the author of the comic book Queer: A Graphic History and The Bisexuality Report, among other things. Websites: www.rewriting-the-rules.com, www.megjohnandjustin.com. Twitter: @megjohnbarker. FLAGS OF PRIDE Within the LGBT+ community there are many variations of sexual and or gender identity. There are also, just like in the hetrosexual community different communities for example, ‘Bears’ and ‘Lipstick Lesbians’. As PLEXUS celebrates LGBT History Month, we wanted to share the story behind some of these. During the war a number of symbols were created by the Nazi’s to identify those who had imperfections just as disabilities, religion or sexual oritentation. Most famously are the yellow Star of David and inverted pink triangle. The original eight striped flag was created in 1978 by Gilbert Barker with each of the colours having a different meaning. The flag since been adapted to the remaining six colours with have today symbolising PRIDE and PEACE. LESBIAN BISEXUAL TRANSGENDER The rainbow flag has been traditionally Created in 1998 to provide the Created in 1999 symbolising associated with gay men, the lesbian Bisexual Community their own remembrance, transgender pride flag was created to demonstrate the symbol and sense of visability and diversity, it is commonly love and solitude of gay women or seen on Transgender Day of lesbians. A variation of the flag depict within the community and Remembrance in November lips for those who are ‘lipstick lesbains’ society as a whole. BEAR BROTHERHOOD ASEXUAL PANSEXUAL Unlike other flags within the Asexual people are those who have Sexual attraction is not a community the bear flag represents no or little sexual attraction to anyone. fluid as L, G or B. Pansexuals a subculture, specifically gay and Asexuality is not a form of celibacy as bisexual men who celebrate secondary those who are celibate are sexually have romantic attractions sexual attractions e.g. body and facial attracted their preference but choose and relationships to those of hair. The colours represnt the different not to engage different genders and sexualities ‘furs’ of animals There are a number of other flags that represent the LGBT+ Community, these are but a small selection LGBT HERO OR A SCIENTIST Dear Readers, Dr Turing. What can I say about Dr Turing? Genius? Father of Computer Science? Accidental LGBTQ Hero? Personally one of my heroes; I have a great amount of respect for him and his work. He is most famous for the work he undertook during the war at Bletchley Park (I must admit this is a fantastic place to visit, I can thoroughly recommend it and it is just a couple of miles away from the OU Campus). You often see photographs around the internet that say if you could meet any famous person from history who would it be? I can say without a doubt that it would be Dr Turing. Then there is the Turing test, I can guarantee that if you have ever filled in a web form you have passed the Turing test. Do you remember the annoying puzzles that prevent spam on website forms? Well this is called a CAPTCHA (this stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart). Remember every time you have to complete this annoying puzzle you can accredit to Dr Turing. But think about it, how many companies have been spared multiple false accounts created by “bots” because of Dr Turing. If you ever have the time, I recommend you read his Doctoral Thesis entitled “Systems of logic based on ordinals” (here is the link: http://www.dcc.fc.up.pt/~acm/turing-phd.pdf ).