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SHOUT Wageningen is organizing Pink Week

SHOUT Wageningen, the society for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, will be organizing a Pink Week at Wageningen University. This will be in the week of Purple Friday, a national day on which people wear purple to protest against homophobia in education.

SHOUT is organizing Pink Week from 5 to 9 December to demand more attention for the LGBT community at the university. ‘There is openness within the university about homosexuality but it’s not very visible,’ says Rinske de Vries, in charge of PR at SHOUT. ‘I felt having the rainbow flag flown at Forum on Coming Out Day was a real milestone.’ She would like shorter lines of communication between SHOUT and the university. ‘I recently spoke to a dean who didn’t really know much about what we do. I also think the university could do more on transgender issues such as the toilets.’

That is why Pink Week will be beginning with a gender day. ‘Many people think you are either a man or a woman, but there are lots of variants in between. We want to talk to students about that. There will be two gender-neutral toilets in Forum for the whole week,’ says De Vries. On Tuesday, the Heerenstraat cinema will be showing a film about the transformation of a transgender teenager. On Wednesday, there will be a lunchtime debate in Impulse on what it is like to be an LGBT person at the university, and a pink pub quiz in the evening in The Spot. On Thursday the documentary Inside the Chinese Closet will be shown in Impulse. This film follows two LGBT people in China. ‘We chose this documentary because there are a lot of Chinese students in Wageningen, and the pressure many young Chinese feel from their parents to marry was a hot topic recently,’ says De Vries. On Purple Friday, SHOUT will be in Forum handing out purple wristbands that you can wear to show your support’.

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