University of Birmingham LGBTQ Association » aaronyeah

FRESHER'S FIRST DV8

aaronyeah — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:21:40 +0000

Thursday 2nd October, 8pm Joes Bar, then onto DV8

DV8 is Birmingham’s most notorious gay club with the most notorious student night ‘Skint’ taking place every Thursday. You pay £7 to get in and then the bar’s free until 2am… though don’t expect the drinks to be nice. Be prepared for Girl’s Aloud medleys, Gogo Dancers, spontaneous strip competitions and everyone’s favourite Nightclub Manager Mandy. Ha. All in all a pretty rad night out, though don’t expect to make your lectures the next day.

Oh and you’ll get to meet the famous ‘Sid’ and ‘Twiggy’ too.

We’ll meet in Joes at about 8.00 to neck a few for dutch courage (drink reponsibly etc etc) and then we’ll catch da bus into town. Fresh.

If you haven’t been to an event before, don’t worry, we’ll introduce you all, as loads of people are still turning up as it’s so early into term. Don’t worry about coming alone, we’ll make sure you have a great time. Everyone Welcome – all years- post grad, undergrad etc etc.

Welcome!

aaronyeah — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 07:30:47 +0000

Your LGBTQ Association welcomes all new and returning students.

We’re very excited that Welcome Week is finally here! In honour of the occasion we have included a lovely picture of a lady with ‘open arms’. This is obviously very important and symbolic and represents the friendly, accepting nature of your LGBTQ Association etc etc. We would analyse it further but it may get complicated, but we’re sure you’ll agree that she is quite lovely and does not look like a tit at all.

This week we’ll be making our way around halls to try and introduce ourselves to as many of you as possible. If anyone should have any problems with flatmates regarding homophobia (though that is very very very very rare – so don’t get scared) please let us know so we can help you out.

As well as visiting halls we’ll be at the ‘Change Your World’ and ‘Societies’ Fairs on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday of this week, which are in the Deb Hall and Welcome Week Marquee, both in the Guild of Students.

University’s a great, and common, time to come out but if any of you are worried, nervous or simply a bit shy then take advantage of our ‘Befriending Scheme’ and come and meet a couple of us, privately and confidentially, for a chat so you know a few faces before coming to an event. Just email us to arrange a time and a place.

Speaking of events… this Thursday we have our MEGA barcrawl and on Saturday we have our Meet ‘N’ Greet, so check the Events page for more details and make sure you don’t miss out. If the barcrawl clashes with a Fresher’s Fest or Postgrad event, sell your ticket and come with us instead. It’ll blatantly be much better.

Finally, don’t forget to join our Facebook group and mailing list. The Facebook group link is on the right of this page and you can sign up to the confidential mailing list by emailing us or signing up at one of the fairs or events. We take confidentialiality very seriously and can guarantee the safety of your details not being handed out.

We look forward to meeting you all soon and wish everyone a great Welcome Week ‘08.

LGBTQ Film Night: 'Party Monster'

aaronyeah — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:34:36 +0000

Sunday October 5th, 7.30pm, Thompson Training Suite, Guild of Students

Every Sunday night at 7.30pm in the Guild of Student’s ‘Thompson Training Suite’ we host our popular LGBTQ Film Group. Each week we show a different LGBTQ related film projected onto a big screen. The film group is open to everyone who wants to come along, with a regular turn out of around 40 students. Like 99% of our events admission is free. It’s a great event for newcomers to meet some people in a relaxed and friendly environment and it’s also pretty damn good for anyone who loves film. We show a varied selection of movies that you won’t necessarily of heard of, from mainstream Hollywood to foreign arthouse. Past films have included Mulholland Drive, Mysterious Skin, Shortbus, Monster, The Watermelon Woman, Boys Don’t Cry, Y Tu Mama Tambien, La Mala Education and many many others. This year Film night will Start on Sunday 5th October.

After much deliberation and a few trips to A & E we finally decided that the first film to show would be ‘Party Monster’. It was a tough call… we didn’t want the first film to be too controversial, too fabulous, too disturbing, too intellectual etc etc so what better than Macaulay Culkin in a dress?!

Queerest Album Ever?

aaronyeah — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:09:53 +0000

Out.com have unveiled their list of the ‘100 gayest records of all time’, presumably because they have nothing better to do? BUt anyway, appearances from Abba, Cher, The Smiths and Madonna (several times) come as no shock but some of the choices really will surprise you. David Bowie tops the chart with his album ‘Ziggy Stardust…’. After reading their analysis it seems that i really should be paying more attention to lyrics, with some surprising groups seeming to show hidden agendas, and no, i don’t mean the Scissor Sisters.

In fact i’m surprised as to how many of the albums I own; Le Tigre (pictured), Bowie, The Velvet Underground, Bjork, The Beatles, Anthony and the Johnsons, The Magnetic Fields (69 Love Songs… if you don’t own it, go and buy it now) Lou Reed, and countless others. Go check out the full list and analysis now on the following link…

http://www.out.com/detail.asp?id=24081

How many do you own? Have they missed any?

Tutu- Closet Case? Well, it's a pretty camp name.

aaronyeah — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 21:45:50 +0000

“Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said that the Church has an ‘obsession’ with sexuality when it should be focusing on issues such as poverty.

He told the BBC’s Robert Pigott that he is ashamed of homophobia within the Church.”

Check out the interview at the link below…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7602535.stm

Guy’s got a point.

Welcome Week Meet n' Greet

aaronyeah — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:20:12 +0000

Come and meet your LGBTQ Committee and other LGBTQ students

Saturday, September 27th, 3pm-7pm

Beorma Bar, Guild of Students

There’s never anything to do during the day in Fresher’s Week, especially on the first weekend. So, being the opportunists that we are, it seemed like a good idea to have a slightly ‘calmer’ event than the barcrawl. But don’t worry; we’re not expecting you to get up early…

We’ve hired out the Beorma Bar, which is on the first floor in the Guild of Students. The Bar will be open so you’ll be able to grab a coffee, or something stronger, and sit back for the afternoon and meet some new people. We’ll have DJ AAWON AN’ EVE, bringing their unique brand of ‘class’ to the event as well as our very exciting MUSICAL BINGO (songs instead of numbers… shit prizes instead of good ones), a few nibbles, a chance to learn who your committee are and perhaps even a few cheesy icebreakers so that you get to meet everyone. If you come to the barcrawl it’ll be a good time to piece your memories of the evening back together with the help of others too, if you didn’t it’ll be a good chance to meet people in a quieter environment. So yeah, head down anytime between 3 and 7, and we promise they’ll be something entertaining going on. Bring friends… everyone welcome.

Welcome Week Gay Village Bar Crawl- September 2008

aaronyeah — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:10:54 +0000

A sophisticated evening of conversation and canapes (aka – not).

Thursday 25^th September, 7pm

Meet in Joes Bar, Guild of Students

The annual LGBTQ Welcome Week Bar Crawl (or fresher’s barcrawl as most people call it) is one of the most notorious nights on our calender and certainly not to be missed.

Take a break from your Fresher’s Fest events (if it clashes – sell your ticket… guaranteed profit) to come and make friends as your LGBTQ committee manically tries to introduce everyone to everyone else (so don’t worry about coming on your own) before introducing you to Birmingham’s famous gay village.

We’ll head into town from 8pm onwards and whilst we obviously encourage responsible drinking, it’s usually a case of ‘last one standing’… because you’ll obviously be all too exhausted from the dancing to stand anymore…

Birmingham’s gay village has quite a few venues, so we’ll only realistically be able to go to a few on the barcrawl -but don’t worry over the first few weeks of term, we’ll try and introduce you to them all. For this first barcrawl (i imagine they’ll be many more) due to the offer of drinks promotions and having the capacity to fit all of us in we’ve decided to go on a slightly different route this year encompassing Missing, The Fox and then heading onto Nightingales later . (We’ll take you to Birmingham’s other big gay club the following Thursday)

TICKET INFO:

Whilst we like to keep all our events free we will be selling tickets for this event. However this ticket price is to cover entrance into Nightingales who charge an entry fee on Thursdays, by ticketing the event in advance you won’t have to pay on the door, and therefore there shouldn’t be much of a queue. Also we’re negotiating to get some stuff thrown in along the way and have already got free shots and free jugs of cocktail in The Fox. We’ll let you know once we’ve confirmed further deals, but the ticket price won’t exceed £4 pounds.

If this doesn’t sound like your thing… not to worry; we’ll confirm details of our other events soon.

LGBTQ Events

aaronyeah — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 14:57:43 +0000

I too would like to discuss the events of last week. It was great to see so many differing faces at both the evening with Rikki Beadle-Blair and the Big LGBTQ Debate. The feedback i’ve had has been great, and it was really refreshing to finally not shy away from overtly political topics and be able to sit down, discuss, suggest, interrogate and actually communicate face to face.

I know Rikki inspired a lot of people so hopefully we’ll see more of you taking an active interest in the future. As for the debate, it was far more subdued than i thought it was going to be, and I actually think some greater disagreements wouldn’t have been a bad thing. Though it was really interesting to see how much we all agreed on, considering that the people in the room supposedly had seriously conflicting political opinions.

However i disagree with the conclusions Gaz speculates that we reached. Whilst it was nice to have a bit of a Tory bash i don’t think there was a general consensus that we’ve achieved loads of great things since 1997 (i think Gaz’z Labour leanings may be putting a rather rosey tint on things). In fact i think we concluded that there is still a very long way to go and that a number of the things achieved over the past decade actually count for very little and will do nothing in changing attitudes and values of the general public towards the LGBTQ community. I think we decided that in fact the achievements, if any help at all, only help(ed) those looking to assimilate into a no fuss ‘this is ‘equal’ enough for me’ kind of lifestyle.

I think Emma O’Dwyer’s recent campaign tagline ‘Liberation with no apologies’ is great… so many people, even at the debate seem to think we’re being pedantic in our quest for liberation, that we should be happy with what the heterosexuals have given us and when they give us a new right we should be eternally grateful for the good deed they’ve done… which i obviously find completely laughable

Obviously i’m sure many of us could have debated all night, so i’ll save some thoughts back for the next debate which i hope there will be many more of.