USC celebrates LGBTQ+ History Month

Students will be able to break out their rainbow flags October 20 for Pride-Fest in celebration of LGBTQ+ History Month for the first time since the pandemic.

The three-hour event taking place at McCarthy Quad will feature student drag performers, a gender-affirming clothing swap and the drag troupe United Queendom. This event is being held by the LGBTQ+ Student Center in collaboration with USC Queer and Ally Student Assembly for International Pronouns Day for the first time since its inaugural festival in 2018.

“All the L.A. USC campuses will be doing a unified effort to raise awareness about how just using pronouns can have a positive impact on queer, trans and non-binary communities,” said a.b. Monzón, a supervisor at the USC LGBTQ+ Student Center.

The event is part of USC’s festivities for LGBTQ+ History Month, which dates back to 1994 when Rodney Wilson, the first openly gay K-12 teacher in Missouri, decided to dedicate an entire month to celebrating LGBTQ+ history.

The month was set in October to include the pre-existing October 11 National Coming Out Day and the anniversaries of the first two marches on Washington for LGBTQ+ rights. Another reason October was selected that’s especially important to students is that it falls within the academic school year.

“A lot of folks are not here during Pride Month when a lot of the different organizations are able to provide visibility and community building opportunities,” Monzón said. “For us, it is a chance to not only learn our history but to have a little bit of that private moment on campus during a time when all of our students are here.”

These events provide an opportunity for students to meet other members of the LGBTQ+ community and learn more about its history in a safe environment, an experience they might not have had access to before coming to college.

“When I was a freshman, knowing those spaces were created was such a beautiful thing,” Sophie Hall, co-artistic director of the Dorothy’s Friends Theater Company, “Finding people in those places can feel very safe,”

The Dorothy’s Friends Theater Company, stylized as “dftc,” works to promote positive queer representation and stories in theater at USC. Its name stems from the phrase “friend of Dorothy,” which was used as a way for members of the LGBTQ+ community to safely identify and communicate with each other.

Dftc is working through this month on the show “Collective Rage,” which is about the experiences of queer-identifying people and will be opening the first week of November.

“We seek the ability to produce queer joy where students can see themselves being joyful, and Queer History Month is an extension of that,” Hall said.

This month’s on-campus festivities include social events like Drag Bingo hosted by Roxy Wood at Tommy’s Place Friday, as well as educational events like a virtual overview of the history of gender-affirming care October 14 with Dr. Roberto Travieso, surgical director of the Keck Gender-Affirming Care Program.

According to Monzón, this month “is a reminder of the history of activism and resistance and resilience that the LGBTQ+ community has had and the way that has informed the rights and the privileges that we have now.”