AMANDA DEDIE
Staff Writer
Queer Fredonia: An Interactive Performance Project is, according to its flyer, “a performance that focuses on the lives of queer students on campus — featuring poetry and monologues.” On May 2, the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and Pride Alliance co-sponsored the event, hoping to bring awareness to the Fredonia campus of the daily struggles facing queer students.
Queer Fredonia takes a page out of the book of “The Vagina Monologues,” an event at which women can get up in front of the audience and talk about personal experiences and body positivity.
Ronan Cichelli, a senior majoring in visual arts and new media, said “We realized that [The Vagina Monologues] didn’t have a lot of room for queer people, especially of the trans community, so my friend Tito decided to make a place for queer people to share their stories through monologues or poems.”
“I believe we need more knowledge of queer identities and issues at Fredonia and in our culture more broadly,” said Dr. Jeffry Iovannone, program coordinator of the WGST program. “I saw this project as having the potential to educate about queer issues and give voice to the experiences of our queer students in an engaging and accessible way.”
Ernesto “Tito” Mercado-Irizarry, a freshman double majoring in women and gender studies and psychology, came up with the idea for this event last semester, which ended up being the brainchild of a final project for his Introduction to Latino History and Culture class.
“We had to do a project in which we apply what we learned in that class and use it as a tool to help others in the community,” Mercado-Irizarry explained.
The students performing in the project have many messages, struggles and point of views that they want to convey to the audience to try to get them to understand — and hopefully even sympathize — with the struggles the queer community faces on and off campus.
“Personally, I am going to perform a slam poem about coming out and being a trans person at this school and the challenges I face everyday as a person who is seen as ‘deviant’ towards this society,” said Cichelli. “I have passing privilege as a man for the most part, until people figure out my identity based on my public identification cards. The challenges that I face that I’m going to be talking about are about how yes, I have privilege in some aspects compared to some trans men, but I don’t in other aspects.”
Above all, the participating members hope that the project will be an educational experience for those in attendance.
“The most basic things are all of the terms, and the proper way to converse with someone in the queer community, like the language you should be using around them. Some people can be oppressive through their language without even realizing it. I hope that they will just understand where we are coming from when we do get upset within our activism,” said Cichelli.
“A lot of times, people don’t understand why we get upset so quickly instead of just sitting down and educating people,” Cichelli said. “I think that if they listen to people’s stories and the struggles they go through on a daily basis, they’ll understand that they’re not the first person to ask us those questions that we’re asked on a daily basis, so it gets frustrating.”
Mercado-Irizarry attributes his passion for representing the queer community to the fact that he is what he calls a “double minority.” Despite that, he wishes to convey that, despite his internal and physical differences, he is not so different from the people surrounding him every day.
“I’m gay and I come from Puerto Rico, so I’m a double minority. I want to use what I know as someone who comes from another country and someone who comes from a different sexuality to educate others to either let them know that they’re not alone and there are people like them, and to [educate] those that do not understand or are not exactly comfortable with people who are different than them that we are normal people, and we’re just like anybody else. There is more to a person than just their color or their sexuality,” Mercado-Irizarry said.
Not only will the event better the education of the non-queer community, it will also take part in breaking down stereotypes surrounding the various definitions of “queer.”
“If you relate to it, that means you can be aware that [queer people] are normal people,” said Mercado-Irizarry. “They’re just like anyone else, and you will hopefully understand more of how to interact with them and how to basically just go on with your life, knowing that people from the queer community are around you, and they face the same problems as you do.”
It is hoped that the experience ends up being an educational and eye-opening experience to the non-queer population of the campus, and provides validity, comfort and a more open identity to the queer community on campus.
“I think this event is important for everyone, not just the queer community. Queer people exist, and our stories and experiences are valuable and important,” said Iovannone. “The more students know about diverse populations, the better they will be able to be responsible global citizens and professionals, both during their time at Fredonia and following graduation.”