From jweins@u.washington.edu Wed Apr 24 12:43:47 1996 Received: from homer07.u.washington.edu by lists.u.washington.edu (5.65+UW96.04/UW-NDC Revision: 2.33 ) id AA16804; Wed, 24 Apr 96 12:43:45 -0700 Received: from localhost by homer07.u.washington.edu (5.65+UW96.04/UW-NDC Revision: 2.33 ) id AA115648; Wed, 24 Apr 96 12:43:44 -0700 Date: Wed, 24 Apr 1996 12:43:43 -0700 (PDT) From: Jacqueline Weinstock Reply-To: Jacqueline Weinstock To: uwtpride@u.washington.edu Subject: notes from 4/23/96 meeting Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The Pride Coalition met to take care of some business details and to talk about issues of being out, coming out, being outed, and all the related personal and political implications for each. [I missed the first ten minutes so someone please add anything I missed.] Business first: 1. Suzanne will get thank you cards for Harris, Giles, and our own Trish. 2. Patty will try her hand at a new Pride Corner (topic flowing from our discussion, summarized below); Jackie will help, and/or do the next one. 3. Two new members/attendees were present. 4. Patty will work on organizing an off-campus social event. 5. We all talked about participating in, or at least going together to watch, the Pride Parade (what is it called here); someone please add the details to this for everyone--I didn't get them. 6. We are continuing to contact related groups and organizations so as to build a broader coalition. THE DISCUSSION It stemmed from the beginning discussion on the email list, in response to the posting of the article by Rosa Maria Pegueros (sp?). Much of the focus was on the question of who should get to decide whether one is out or not, but we also addressed the costs of being in the closet and of being out. Suzanne made the point about the difference between privacy and secrecy; the former implies that one has a choice while the latter suggests that one is forced to be in the closet. We all agreed that not saying something/not doing anything is political and has political consequences. Yet there remained disagreement on the rights of individuals to decide their outness level for themselves, and in fact people's right to be a part of the problem if that's what they need to do. The disagreement was strongest with respect to public figures who some of us perceived to be in a different position with respect to privilege, and who therefore have more responsibility to the issues of discrimination and oppression of lgbts. We'd love to see this kind of discussion continue, here or in other meetings. While there was disagreement on the issues, all felt it was good to be able to talk about these things. I hope these summary notes help to keep the conversation going... Jackie Weinstock .