American University creates space for students to discuss religious and gender identities

American University students in Washington, D.C. compare and contrast religious

 communities and the LGBT community on Tuesday Oct. 21. (Photo by Rebeca Berger)  

There is a new discussion group at American University that combines two ongoing hot topics that affect many students in one way or another: religious identity and gender identity. Eleven students gathered in the Hatch in Leonard Hall Tuesday Oct. 21 for their third semi-weekly meeting. This group is led by two students from American University Hillel, and is meant to welcome people of all religious faiths, students in the LGBT community, and allies.

The meeting began by everyone introducing him/herself. The discussion leaders made a point to tell everyone that this was a “safe space” to share thoughts and stories. We were asked to share our name, year, area of study, and what pronouns we preferred to go by.

I asked Rebecca Goldstein, (CAS ’14) one of the discussion leaders, what the main goal or mission of this organization was. “[I wanted to] create the space to have conversations that people want to and are ready to have, but there’s not [currently] space for,” she said.

The theme for Tuesday night’s discussion was stereotypes, specifically defying “Jewish and queer stereotypes”. When is stereotyping okay? When is it appropriate to go public and reveal one’s religious or gender identity? The first thing that came up was the fact that AU is too-often called “Gay-Jew”, referring to the fact that AU has a large Jewish and LGBT student body, with several students identifying with both of these communities.

Next the group talked about different situations as to when it is or is not okay to reveal their religious or gender identity. Several members of the group said that they are cautious of saying, “I’m Jewish”. One girl said that she has over six different levels of privacy settings on Facebook so that she can explicitly control who can see that she is a lesbian. Someone mentioned how he always takes off the Jewish jewelry he wears every day whenever he walks into an Arab hookah bar. Someone else talked about a poor experience she had after requesting a kosher meal during a flight to Greece. Another member brought up the question of walking into a hotel with someone of the same sex and asking for a queen or king bed versus two double beds. Then, we all shared our experiences in talking about gender and religious identities during job interviews, especially since most of our resumes included past experiences that clearly revealed our preferences.

Then I asked two students who identified as bisexual what the differences were in their connection with their religious community and the LGBT community. One sophomore (SPA ’17) said he didn’t feel that connected to the LGBT community, but felt very connected to Judaism. “Being bisexual is not that important to me. [I’m] politically an advocate, [but] we’re all just people. I don’t identify any more with gays than other people,” he said.

Another student named Kayla (KSB ’17) said she had no religious identity and jokingly called herself a “recovering Catholic”. She said, “Religion leads to the suppression of rights, [and] now I’m atheist and agnostic. I am new to the bisexual community, and a lot of people in my religion are not okay with [my sexual orientation]. It’s more important to me to be the truest version of myself than to hide who I am.”

The conversation wound down with a general discussion of what it means to be in the minority. “We want to find people like us. We’re judging them based off of what we want,” a student said (CAS ’18). It’s all about fitting people into a scheme of the world we live in. But, there is a very fine line between people separating into communities with which they identify and putting them into boxes that are filled with stereotypes.

In future meetings, The Jewish LGBT discussion group plans to discuss coming out in a high-profile setting, coming out to a very religious family, Jewish LGBT communities around the world, and the differences between being a “Gay Jew” or a “Jew who happens to be gay”. The group meets every other Tuesday in the Hatch in Leonard Hall at 8:30 p.m.