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cantaloupe's picture

gay at a women's college

I am similarly interested in if Bryn Mawr is radical or not like the post two below me.  I think that we aren't anymore.  We are a college that is obsessed with academics.  As far as I can tell, Mawrters are really committed to their studies.  It varies, of course, there are those of us who don't invest all of our time into academics.  But with the people who don't commit themselves to academics, I feel like they are the "partying" kind...going to Haverford, Swat parties etc.  It might be a gross overgeneralizations, but with the people I know here, that is what I've observed.  There are people who are maybe "radical."  They want to create change, but I'm not sure any of us really do make any change.  There definately isn't an overriding theme to the campus.  I don't feel like we are all commited to one goal.  We have May Day and "death to the patriarchy" but I think that has become just a tradition.  We think the May Hole is funny and joke about it.  It isn't a serious thing that we are committed to anymore like I imagine it once was.  

There is one thing that we haven't really talked about at all that I think is important to Bryn Mawr: it is really gay.  There are a lot of gay women at Bryn Mawr, and sometimes I think we down play that because we don't just want to be a "gay college."  When I decided to come to Bryn Mawr I was already out and all my friends at home poked fun at me saying that I am just going to a women's college for the women.  People who aren't out as gay get poked fun at by people saying that they will become gay because it is a women's college.  And people who start dating women here get poked fun at by people saying that the women's college "made them gay."  There is no possible sexuality that avoids the comment.  Despite what the general public thinks about women's colleges and their gayness, being gay at Bryn Mawr is really empowering.  There are a lot of us and I think it's amazing that we have created a comfortable space for ourselves.  That being said, we don't really do anything radical in our gayness, we just are.  The only gay groups on campus (I think) are support groups.  There isn't any kind of movement here that promotes change in the world in regards to gay issues, like marriage.

 
 

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