OUTRAGE posters anger some College Students

Two posters distributed around campus by members of OUTRAGE/oberlin last Thursday were meant to raise students' awareness of homophobia. For some, however, they inspired anger.

Members of OUTRAGE/oberlin, a charter-pending student organization that existed three years ago and resurfaced this year, designed and hung posters depicting graphic images of sex and intimacy among two members of the same sex.

Captions on the posters read, "Does this disgust you? And you thought you weren't homophobic" and "If lesbian love offends you, then your homophobia offends us."

"The poster campaign was not an attack, but a way to get people to realize their internalized homophobia. Everyone has to deal with homophobia, including queer people and OUTRAGE members," OUTRAGE Liaison senior David Lin said. "Even though we go to school in a 'queer mecca,' even though we claim to be queer friendly, we've all internalized heterosexist messages that society has conveyed to us."

"There's a definite political message behind the posters," first-year OUTRAGE member Kate Fischer said. "There aren't many images of gay sex and people don't often realize that gays have sex. We want to get that message out there. The idea is that if we don't do something shocking, it won't get noticed."

The posters definitely got noticed.

"I've been really offended. I don't have a problem with the event itself, but I think they've really been in our faces with portrayals of actual acts; they've made them dirty instead of just letting us be, and I'm really disgusted," Double Degree sophomore Noranne Toth said. "I'm going off-campus this weekend and I can't wait, because I just can't deal."

Anonymous protesters responded to OUTRAGE's posters by hanging signs of their own around the mailroom and Mudd Library last Friday. "These posters portrayed a woman giving a man oral sex, and they re-stated OUTRAGE's caption and added, 'Take your p.c. shock tactics and shove them' at the end," Lin said.

Students also quickly tore down OUTRAGE posters across campus.

"I think that was an effective protest . . . but I do hope those people who took down the posters go one step beyond their disgust, take their activism further and think about why they're disgusted. But honestly, I don't expect them to do so," Multicultural Resource Center (MRC) Community Coordinator Cara Wick, an OUTRAGE liaison, said.

Several student protesters decided to confront OUTRAGE members, if not their own disgust, at OUTRAGE's meeting last Sunday to express their disagreements.

"A good thing the posters did was to get people talking about them," Lin said. "We actually got people who came to the last meeting who didn't agree with the posters, and they got to voice their own opinions. There was a great dialogue between people with different opinions."

"I personally wouldn't call it negative feedback; some people approached me to ask if I was aware that these posters had been put up. Yes, I was aware. It was a student initiative and I had no part in the planning process, but I did support OUTRAGE in this effort," Wick said.

Arguments raised by people who objected to the posters included the concern that their graphic portrayals were too extreme or might be noticed by young children walking across campus, according to Lin.

"OUTRAGE in the past has been a radical group, too. I'm not sure about posters, but they did have some pretty in-your-face stickers, like 'Boy Scouts, take a hike,' that they used to distribute," Lin said in defense of OUTRAGE's graphic posters.

"I agree with the strategy they took," Wick said. "I do think they were radical in their poster strategy but in some ways it was the only thing to be done to start discussion on this campus, and they did succeed in that. They proved that contrary to popular theory, Oberlin students aren't apathetic," Wick said.