This partially arises from an obscure state law aimed at discerning whether students at said institutions are getting enough services, including counselling. But, according to The Los Angeles Times, there are concerns about privacy.

Since 2006, the University of California (UC) has asked about students’ sexual orientation in an annual informal poll about campus life – but without using student names.

The shift comes in response to a law signed by Governor Jerry Brown last autumn which called for educational institutions to adopt policies discouraging bullying of LGBT students. The law also asks – but does not require – state campuses to allow students to state their sexual orientation.

Jesse Bernal, the University of California’s diversity coordinator said: “It would be useful to know if we are underserving the population.” He added that giving students the opportunity to answer such questions, “sends a positive message of inclusiveness to LGBT students and creates an environment that is inclusive and welcoming of diverse populations.”

UC Berkeley student Andrew Albright, who is gay and a student government activist, said some LGBT students might initially be nervous about how their responses would be used. He added, however, that he believed most would participate if the potential benefits – such as increased services – were made clear and if the UC kept its promises to only use the information confidentially and in aggregates.

“I think in general it’s a good thing”, said Mr Albright. “Beyond counseling services, professors might alter approaches to various lectures if they know a sizable percentage of the class is gay or lesbian.”

Source: Pink News

Yahoo is blocking profiles containing the word “sexual,” and labelling them spam. This includes the words pansexual, transsexual and bisexual.

Xtra first learned about this from a blog post. Although the writer of "Just Some Guy" has been unavailable for comment, the blog details his frustrating experience.

“I just made a new Yahoo account and I was filling out my profile information. I finished, hit save, and was told I had infringed upon the terms of use and my information couldn’t be saved. The only explanation given was simply the word ‘spam.’ Then I removed the word ‘bisexual’ and it saved properly.”

Like MSN and Gmail, Yahoo profiles allow users to include a brief description of themselves. Profiles are used to “connect to friends, post information about yourself, and manage updates,” Yahoo states.

When Xtra created a profile with words containing the suffix “sexual,"  the profile was also blocked and flagged as “spam.”

“The content was not saved since it infringes on Yahoo! Terms of use (Spam),” it stated.

Shane Thomas, director of Yahoo Pride, says the company is working on trying to fix the problem. “It was not an intentional move on behalf of Yahoo to censor,” he says. 

“Based on our initial examination of this, it appears to be a glitch in the system. We are trying to sort out how to fix that glitch. We are actively seeking out a solution.”

Thomas says he received a call from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) last week about the issue.

“GLAAD also found that when you write bisexual, transsexual and transgender, profiles are being categorized as spam,” Thomas says. “It is going to be fixed.”

GLAAD did not return Xtra’s requests for comment.

Thomas says he does not know if the problem is new or has just gone undetected until now. He does not know when it will be amended. 

A screen capture of the original blog.

Xtra reporter Andrea Houston tries to make a profile, but is also blocked.

Source: Xtra

As countries in South Asia take strides toward legalizing homosexuality and even same-sex marriage, queer South Asians in Canada say their community continues to face a unique set of issues.

“There are many challenges that aren’t fully addressed in the mainstream — double and sometimes triple intersections of discrimination,” says Alex Sangha, the founder of Sher Vancouver, a British Columbia-based social and support group for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex South Asian people and their allies.

“There’s so much stigma, there’s so much shame, there's so much work that needs to be done in terms of raising awareness and creating a healthy environment for gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender youths and minorities to come out.”

Sangha’s own coming out experience was difficult, which he attributes in part to internalized homophobia and in part to familial and cultural pressure.

“It's very hard to come out. I came out to my mom when I was 20, and it was actually my mom who asked me, ‘Are you gay?’ And I said I was bisexual because I was too embarrassed to be gay,” says Sangha.

El-Farouk Khaki, a gay and Muslim Toronto immigration lawyer who has been recognized for his work against racial discrimination in the queer community, and homophobia in the Muslim community, also found the experience difficult.

“A really big issue in many traditional cultures is giving your parents grandchildren. It's a cultural expectation and it's not just South Asians, it’s not just Muslims, and so being an only child made it particularly difficult for me,” says Khaki, who came out in his late teens and early 20s.

“In the South Asian community, which has become more conservative rather than opening up, you're dealing then with language issues, religious issues, and then there's racism and xenophobia,” says Khaki. “There remains this marginalization process within Canada as well, which does affect the coming out process and the integration of LGBT people from South Asia and other racialized minority communities.”

These cultural expectations, along with others that Sangha says include heterosexual marriage, children, respect, and family honour, can impede on individual personal freedoms. However, Khaki stresses that these expectations are not unique to South Asian queer people.

One of the most effective ways of combating traditionalism is through awareness. While the possible solutions are multi-faceted, inter-community interaction is key.

“When people came from traditional backgrounds, they may not know very many queer folk. So where is that point of reconciliation, and how and where and when does that come about? Particularly in North America, fostering interactions between communities is really important,” says Khaki.

One of the ways to do that is through community groups. Khaki is the founder of Salaam, a social and support group for queer Muslim people that has opened conversations about the intersection of race and sexuality.

“I started Salaam as a queer Muslim,” says Khaki. “I was often alone when it came to being one of the few people of colour within a queer crowd, and certainly within Muslim crowds nobody was out, so there was nobody else I could really connect or identify with. When I moved to Toronto in 1989, I started to meet for the first time other LGBT-identified Muslims, and even though intellectually I knew I was not the only one, it had never translated into a sense of community or a social space before.”

As a way of creating and sharing community, Khaki has hosted the Salaam/Peace Iftar dinner during Ramadan since 2003. The dinner, which is attended by queer and straight Muslims and non-Muslims and has grown from 130 participants to over 300, is an opportunity for such interaction.

“It's a bridge builder, and people get to know other people and get to shed their prejudices and get to break bread with people who they wouldn't normally have broken bread with. I think events like that create these points of engagement,” says Khaki.

Community outreach, particularly for youths, is also important. Sher Vancouver runs the Dosti Project, through which outreach workers visit schools to speak about being gay and South Asian. Though the project is no longer funded by the federal government and currently operates on a reduced scale, Sangha says the response from students has been positive.

“They were incredibly supportive, and I see a big change happening in the next generation and the generation after that because I'm already seeing it in this generation. It's good for people to come out and speak about these issues because it helps reduce the stigma, the discrimination, the alienation, the isolation that South Asians who are gay and lesbian face,” says Sangha.

Another way to create engagement and spread awareness is through art. Farzana Doctor, a Toronto-based social worker and author of the novels Stealing Nasreen and Six Metres of Pavement, says that art provides a means of discussing topics that might be off-limits otherwise.

“I think that creative expression can be a powerful way of talking about queer and trans identities in any community, a way of bringing to light taboo subjects and stigmatized identities,” says Doctor. “These discussions make visible what is so often invisible. This is particularly important for younger or closeted people in our communities who might not know that queer and trans South Asians exist. It's important that those of us who are privileged enough to come out, to write, make films and music about queer and trans life, do so. We need many more people to take up these conversations. I especially feel that trans issues need to be discussed more in South Asian communities, as well as other communities.”

Doctor’s work addresses disaporic South Asian people, immigration, sexuality, loss, and redemption. However, while she notes that her personal experiences influence her focus, they are not the sole force behind it.

“My personal experiences definitely influence these themes, because all of my writing is filtered through me. I'm a child of immigrants, queer, South Asian. I've suffered loss in my life. I've wanted to write stories that matter to me, and to other people like me. On the other hand, many of these themes are fairly universal, and I think non-queer and non-South Asian people can relate as well,” says Doctor.

Joshua Vettivelu, a Toronto-based artist, also uses art as a lens for his experiences. His work appeared in Khush: A Show of Love, an exhibition at the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives last summer that focused on Khush, an organization that supported queer South Asian people in Toronto from 1987 to 1992. In Vettivelu’s performance piece, he covered his face with hot wax and tried to rip it off, and washed his hands in glitter to highlight how multiple identities intersect.

“It's about the intersection of race and desire and sexuality as a kind of identity,” says Vettivelu. “I think that when you're put in a non-normative body, you're given a worldview that you know is different than a dominant one. For me, it's a natural evolution to turn to art and to turn to theory like this to talk about my experiences because it's one medium in which there isn't a dominant way of speaking, so you can break away from language linked to oppression.”

Source: Xtra