Gender and Sexuality Center celebrates coming out month

As part of Coming Out month, the Gender and Sexuality Center chose to screen the film “The Way He Looks” last Monday night.

Coming Out month is a celebration that the center puts together every year, in order to show every member of the URI community that they are welcome. After brainstorming multiple options for the celebration, the staff decided on screening “The Way He Looks.”

“We like to do a variety of events,” Annie Russell, the director of the Gender and Sexuality Center, said. “Anything from a keynote lecture to big fun events. We had all kinds of fun things going on that were more social in nature to more educational, but also interesting ways of engaging and I think films can do that.”

“The Way He Looks” regards the coming of age of queer characters in a Brazilian film that was released in 2014. The staff decided that this film would connect with students the best. Russell aimed to have students discuss the film and its themes afterward, so ensuring that students would relate to it was a must.

“It’s about a young blind boy having his first love experience, falling in love with one of his friends,” Ciara Linden, a staff member at the Gender and Sexuality Center, said. “It’s really sweet and realistic, in that it’s not over done. It feels like a story that you could actually see playing out in real life. There are parts you see the struggles he’s going through, both being blind but also realizing his sexuality, but it’s just a real sweet movie.”

Along with the film, there was a discussion held afterwards. Linden assisted Russell in putting together questions to enhance the event and have students be able to speak their minds. All staff members want the students of URI to feel welcome to be able to share their thoughts with others and possibly create new friendships at the Gender and Sexuality Center.

In order to open up their building to everyone on campus, the staff has created a plethora of events during not just Coming Out Month but Trans-Awareness Month as well. The staff aims to have all the events they plan to be a positive experience for all students. One event that also recently occurred, was a fashion field trip.

“A lot of times people may not realize that being LGBTQ and going shopping for clothes, and things like that, can be sometimes difficult,” Russell said, “Having a group of folks that you can go with and being able to try things on and have that feedback and have that be a positive experience.”

Russell and Linden enjoy putting together events at the Gender and Sexuality Center and want to be able to share this experience with members of the community. Russell also stressed that no matter how one identifies themselves, any student is welcome to attend the events and stop by the Gender and Sexuality Center to relax and meet new people. There are plenty of events that are still planned for the rest of October and for Trans-Awareness Month in November that any URI student is welcome to attend.