notes from the desk Counter-productive Gaypril event baffles

Author: Andrew Throdahl

What could be duller than sexuality? Sure, it comes with its complications, like relationships, harassment and discrimination, but for most of the normal, well-educated students of Middlebury College, sex is tedious and predictable, nothing more than a lust that is occasionally entertained on weekends. In my mind, people who wear their sexuality on their sleeve are just bored by themselves, desperate for some type of minor thrill in their lives, some type of superficial scandal. They are lost in the maze of their own insecurities.

Last week, upon receiving an e-mail invitation to a "very exclusive"... "secret Queer party," sent out by the masterminds of "Gaypril" to all the "LGBTQs" on campus, it seemed too adolescent to be taken seriously. Having some type of party defined by the orientation of the partygoers gives sex more weight than it deserves. It was therefore no party I would ever want to attend.

The Middlebury Open Queer Alliance (MOQA) must be very thick to actually contrive segregation for its own trivial purposes. I can imagine the party-planners envisioning themselves uprooting flowers from an arid, heterosexual landscape.

To add insult to injury, the theme of the party was "Gay Cliché," (or shall I say, in keeping with the portmanteau "Gaypril," "Clichay?"). The invite suggested those attending be "creative and original." I was always under the impression that the gay cliché was a taut heterosexual invention, but perhaps I've overlooked something. A friend of mine joked that dressing as a Catholic priest would, technically, have correctly fallen under "Gay Cliché," although surely what the invite meant was "dress like a promiscuous churl." If the theme of the party had not been gay sex, but the consequences of sex (love and marriage) regardless of inclination, the whole thing may have been suitable - although probably not much of a party by college standards.

Some may scowl at my wagging finger and say, "Come now, Andrew, why does a silly thing like a party matter? Let your fellow queers party, and then you can all have a riotous rainbow orgy in front of the conservative suits." If changes are expected to take place in that aforementioned heterosexual landscape, then men and women, gay and straight, must coexist and work together, in work and in play. If MOQA - or gay activism in its entirety at that - intends to be constructive, "secret Queer parties" are disadvantageous.

Perhaps a more powerful statement would be to retract my disapproval entirely, because, as I hope one day the people behind MOQA understand, subverting something only reaffirms it. How ironic for Gaypril.

Andrew Throdahl is an Arts Editor from Allendale, N.J.