On Wednesday, April 17, 2024, members of the Kansas State community came together for an afternoon of community, joy, and support for the LGBTQIA2S+ community.
The K-State English Department came out to this event in full force!
Together, we attended “An Evening of Resilience: Nurturing Queer and Trans Joy” organized by the Sexuality and Gender Alliance (SAGA), the Social Justice Alliance, the Staley School of Leadership, and Students for Cultivating Change.
At this event, we listened to powerful speakers, danced to music, and experienced a safe and brave space for LGBTQIA2S+ joy and acceptance.
Below, you can find thoughts and experiences from our some of our departmental attendees:
Professor Michele Janette reflected on the power of celebration:
This celebration of queer and trans joy was just what I think we all needed at this moment when DEI support structures and investments are facing challenge and erosion, and queer and trans experience is facing renewed threats. I am grateful to be allied with the vibrant, rich, resilient trans and queer community in Manhattan, and delighted to have been part of Wednesday’s manifestation of a world I want to live in.
Instructor and graduate alumnus Hunter Scott (MA ’23) explored the importance of coming together:
True its name, last week’s “Queer and Trans Joy and Resilience Event,” was, indeed, a joy, as the smiles, laughter, dancing, and overall ebullience of the people there all attested. And while the titular joy was the certainly the saveur du jour, what I was most moved by was the power of the overlooked conjunctions twice appearing in the event’s title: “and.”
“And” brings things together; it’s a linking word that creates bridges of unity across difference. Looking around the event, I couldn’t help but notice the inclusivity of ands being celebrated. Speakers of different ages and ability and gender and sexual identities and organizations all came together to speak on our diverse community’s inherent value. I got to celebrate with and be celebrated by my colleagues and friends and students — both former and present! — across the English and Social Transformation departments and the First-Year Program and Spectrum Center and beyond. The plurality of people there — all the many ands coming joyously together — embodied what so many of the speakers touched on: that diversity really is our strength and joy is best when shared with others.
Sarah Morgan (MA ’24) was moved by the amount of support for queer and trans folks at K-State:
It is always important to celebrate queer and trans joy and resilience, but it is especially necessary now to celebrate queerness with the Kansas State community. An Evening of Resilience: Nurturing Queer and Trans Joy was a beautiful evening of queer celebration and unity. We sang, laughed, and waved flags in support of the LGBTQIA+ community. This event was a reminder that a large part of the K-State community loves and supports queer students, staff, and faculty. It is a comfort to know that queer and trans students belong at Kansas State, especially during a time of anti-trans and anti-queer legislation and rhetoric.
Jon Olsen (MA ’24) reminded of us that joy is also a site of resistance:
Although the event’s title mentioned “nurturing queer joy,” I was interestingly most moved by the Rev. Dr. Isabel Call’s words regarding “sacred rage.” Call–a Manhattan community member and minister of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Manhattan–spoke of the importance of acknowledging and offering collective support for the experiences of pain and anger felt by the queer community and its allies within and beyond K-State. I very much appreciated Call’s expansive imagining of nurturing queer joy as fostering space for a variety of emotions as we came together as a community. Looking at both this event and my personal experience of queer community on campus, I have gained some of the most edifying and impactful support through being given space to affirm and vent painful, frustrating experiences. I applaud the student, university, and community organizations that hosted the event in recognizing that making space for queer community members and allies to come together in anger, grief, determination, exuberance, and otherwise is in itself a joyful act of resistance.
Ainsley Trunkhill (BS ’25, English Secondary Education) emphasized our collective power:
When living in a red state and when transphobic chalk drawings appear on campus, it is easy to forget the immediate communities around you that support diversity and equity. The Queer and Trans Joy and Resilience gathering reminded me — and all that attended — of the beauty and resilience that surrounds us and the hope we have for our future. The numbers alone of people who showed up to celebrate this beauty would have been incredible, but those who put on the event exceeded that. Each speaker’s personal testimony was deeply moving and profoundly important. The warmth at that event was radiating; every single person there was loved and welcomed. Toddlers, students, professors, and elders all sat together across a green lawn as one community in solidarity with voices others have so adamantly attempted to stomp out. It wasn’t just a response to hate, but a display of love. We have to keep showing up to these events, organizing, and making our voices heard; as one speaker stated, we possess a collective power to promote positive change, and this event was a step towards doing just that.
Kinsley Searles (BA ’22, MA ’24) found power in numbers and in loved ones:
You know an event is good when they start running out of merch. Walking down the hill towards the leadership studies amphitheater, I was in total shock by the amount of people I saw gathered to celebrate queer and trans joy and resilience. Recently, I have found it difficult to remember that there is support for LGBTQIA2S+ folks on campus. This event, though, served as a powerful reminder that there is a strong force to love and support the community. Even more important to me than the large crowd, though, was the smaller group I found myself in. In our small corner of the amphitheater, I was surrounded by friends and loved ones that, in that moment, felt a little bit more like family. I cannot tell you how joyful it felt to sing and dance to Chappell Roan (of course they played her music — how could they not?), share a hug with a friend when the speakers made me a little teary-eyed, and clap and cheer for the speakers next to my best friends. Everyone there —whether a member of the community or an ally — made me feel so loved and supported. So, even if I was a little bummed that they ran out of bisexual pride flags for me to wave, it felt nice to know that I was surrounded by people like me and people who made an active effort to stand in solidarity with the community.
Margo Losier (MA ’25) remembered that they are not alone:
Going to this Queer and Trans Joy event, I wasn’t sure who I was going to sit with—which may seem silly, but it’s the sort of thing that had me resigned to bathroom stalls in middle school at lunchtime, too, riddled with anxiety to step out of isolation. I ended up running after Sarah and Kinsley as they left ECS, and they invited me to walk with them. It was my first reminder of the day that I am not alone here. We went over to the event, and I was surprised at the amount of faces I recognized; while the English department certainly had high attendance numbers (reminder #2–so many queer folks and allies in ECS), I found myself still scanning the crowd after I spotted our cohort in the grass. I was searching for people: those I’d met at parties, out in Aggieville, on campus, at past events. I was looking for people I had never even spoken to, and they were looking for me; I introduced myself to more than one person who I already knew, who already knew me too. It’s a typical practice for me as a queer person, looking for my family in just about every room I enter. You get accustomed to exchanging knowing glances with strangers who aren’t really strangers at all. They are walking with you and rooting for you and loving you through all of the noise, telling you to be as you are when others ask you to change. I remind myself a third time that I am not alone here—if anything, I am so not alone here that it scares me. I have so much family inside and outside of the doors of ECS, so many faces looking for mine in classrooms, at the Union, across the corners of K-State. I hope that they know how often I think of them, and that the sheer joy of seeing them all together last week humbled me.
We’ll end our reflections with a beautiful poem about the event written by our very own Lillianna Lamagna (BA ’25):
“Gaudere”
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”
-Walt Whitman
Surrounding color signals joy
beyond Wednesday evening wind,
beyond beckoning sky. Song
falls into our laps and our hands—
carry it into the open. Light
shines into laughter, the sun
burns long for resilience. Gathered in each
softened blade of grass,
a recognition of where we stand.
And in every mirrored heart, space for more
you.
Before dusk is upon
us, softening day into our skin,
we sing once more.
— Kinsley Searles (MA ’24)
K-State English 