Gay straight alliances

GSAs also often conduct student and teacher sensitivity training, and typically see a decrease in slurs, name-calling, and harassment following their advocacy efforts. Intersectionality is the simultaneous experience of more than one kind of oppression. A gay–straight alliance, gender–sexuality alliance (GSA) or queer–straight alliance (QSA) is a student-led or community-based organization, found in middle schools, high schools, colleges, and universities.

Students can share and discuss their identities and experiences. Genders & Sexualities Alliances, or GSAs for short, are student-run organizations that unite LGBTQ+ and gay straight alliances youth to build community and organize around issues impacting them in their schools and communities. A Gay-Straight Alliance, or GSA, is a youth-led school or community group organized for the purpose of supporting LGBTQ youth and straight allies through discussion, action, friendship, and advocacy.

Gay-straight alliances (GSAs) and queer-straight alliances (QSAs) promote welcoming, caring, respectful and safe schools for LGBTQ2S+ students and their allies. While each GSA is unique, there is never an expectation that students disclose their sexual or gender identity. A Gay-Straight Alliance, or GSA, is a youth-led school or community group organized for the purpose of supporting LGBTQ youth and straight allies through discussion, action, friendship, and advocacy.

A Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA), Genders and Sexualities Alliance (GSA), Queer-Straight Alliance (QSA), Sexuality and Gender Acceptance (SAGA), Queer Intersectional Alliance (QIA), Rainbow, or Pride Club is a student-run club, typically in a high school or middle school, which provides a safe place for students to meet, support each other, talk. Some also educate themselves and the broader school community about sexual orientation, sexual identity, gender identity, gender expression and create awareness about the effects of and how to challenge sexist stereotypes, homophobia and transphobia.

In this way, GSAs help to reduce feelings of isolation, and to increase self-esteem in all members. For this reason, an intersectional approach is vital to GSAs so that students have a safe space from all of the kinds of discrimination they face. These groups may also support students in accessing their rights such as the rights of trans students, on which the TDSB has specific guidelines. GSAs provide a safe, supportive environment for students of diverse genders and sexualities to meet, discuss sexual orientation and gender identity issues, and form community.

GSAs also welcome straight, cisgender ally youth. By facilitating student-run clubs, students have the opportunity to learn about running groups, planning social, spiritual, political or academic activities, and working with others. Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) clubs are student groups that unite youth who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, two-spirit, and all other non-normative gender and sexual identities, such as non-binary (LGBTQ2+).

Student-run discussions, social events, and political organizing are safe and fulfilling ways to explore identity and community and impact their school. A gay–straight alliance, gender–sexuality alliance (GSA) or queer–straight alliance (QSA) is a student-led or community-based organization, found in middle schools, high schools, colleges, and universities. Genders & Sexualities Alliances, or GSAs for short, are student-run organizations that unite LGBTQ+ and allied youth to build community and organize around issues impacting them in their schools and communities.

Many spaces in the queer community can continue to be racist, sexist, ableist, or to perpetuate oppression in other ways. GSAs create safe spaces for students to meet and socialize. GSAs can also be places of advocacy against all forms of oppression that the students in them face. GSAs provide a space for two-spirit, queer, trans, and ally youth to form community and connections with each other and beyond the school.

The first Gay-Straight Alliance Club emerged in when Kevin Jennings—a history teacher at Concord Academy (a private, coeducational boarding and day school for high school aged students) in Massachusetts—who had just come out as gay, was approached by a student at the school who was straight but was upset by the treatment of gay.

While some two-spirit, trans, and queer youth find community online, a school GSA is a space for in-person community and affirmation. GSAs help to foster queer community in schools. This includes homophobia and transphobia, but can also include racism, sexism, ableism, religious discrimination, and more.

Many straight, cisgender youth are involved because they recognize that ending homophobia and transphobia are important civil rights and human rights issues. The term was invented by Dr. It has since been expanded to refer to any instance of overlapping oppression. Just because a group of people experience one kind of oppression does not mean that they do not discriminate in other ways.