Where else were the queers at Homecoming? By Lindsay Caplan Up and down, reaffirming their (appropriate) sexuality, your (hetero)sexuality, the (hyper)masculinity, the love of the game. The game. The fun of it all, really. When the Queerleaders took the field at Homecoming, we were sexy. Yeah we were. Why else would you be so angry? When the sexuality we expressed, the sexuality that was our politics, our selves, was the basis of our questioning, who? You. In your “Amherst spits, Williams swallows” t-shirt, your restricted sexuality, your fear of desire, your damnation of the physical, the range of the pleasurable, in essence, the fun of it all. You in the stands, innocently by-standing the public displays of what is acceptable and what is not, the public displays of a limited public. Homecoming. Where were the queers at Homecoming? Where was the queerness? Our absence is not surprising. We have never been a community that Wesleyan has prided itself on nurturing. It is shameful to support such things as Queer Studies. Sexuality like mine belongs in the bedroom. To myself. Not in the classroom. Not on the sidewalk. Not on an all-American icon. The football field. There was no room for sexuality in the classroom. We made it. There was no place for my gender outside. I put it out there. There was no place for me at the football game. I rushed the field. I rushed the field and expressed myself to the public I knew was there. The invisible public. The other queer Wesleyan students. The queer alumni. The queer pre-frosh. The parents who have queer kids and think they are the only ones in the world. Your 13-year-old sister who is struggling to come out and certainly can not look to you for a role model. I am not in this to get the same right to repress my sexuality like everyone else. I am in this to re-appropriate my desire and any space it runs me into. My sex is my sexuality is my politics is my self is my fight is my art is my place, my understanding of the world. It is easy to say that this expression is inappropriate, is vulgar, regardless of sexuality. It is easy to legitimate erasing chalkings when you say that you would erase any. It is easy to say that you’d punish the Queerleaders even if they weren’t queer. But the Queerleaders being queer is not incidental. It is critical. It makes our action at once an intervention into the real world, the world of football. The performers of the game. Performing. For once we were not performing for the converted. For once we reached the ears of others than the queers on campus, off-campus, the ears of parents who don’t understand because they have never been asked to. The students who think that reality only includes them. Question. What is missing from your picture? Who is missing from your performance? What are your politics in the fun of it all? Caplan is a member of the class of 2002.

editorial letters “rageragerageragerage ” Marcus ‘thanks’ MacDonald The art of transcending reason  Posters display culture not sexism Some athletes misrepresented  Administration must state policies on chalkings Cheerleading entertains but does queerleading offend? Hate transparent in Wespeaks Newsflash: C.J. misses the point Where else were the queers at Homecoming? Winning Candidate Works With Campus Greens Drilling for oil in Alaska: learn history’s lesson Meat-eaters can be converted You’re wrong, Miller Vegan “convert” responds The birth of a vegan The birth of a vegetarian Three offered courses are not acceptable Contextualize with care

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