It’s not often discussed, but there is a lot of work that goes into making sure we have posters for the GSA in the halls. From trying to keep the posters on the walls, to trying to decipher what posters are even for GSA, it’s clear (at least to me) that this whole battle happening on our school walls is going under a lot of noses.

For those who don’t know, the GSA is the Genders & Sexualities Alliance. Although it’s an unofficial club at our school, they hold many activities and meetings every week. During March, the GSA spends some time together making posters to hang around the school.

The original goal of these posters is to raise awareness among queer students at the school, letting them know they are seen and appreciated. However, over the years, the GSA hung up these posters, and more motives emerged that turned this fun activity into a battle that lasted the rest of the school year. 

Unfortunately, Homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, and other forms of bigotry exist within our school. The direct cause of most of the posters being taken down has been from people who feel to spread the opposite of the poster message, that queer people don’t matter and aren’t appreciated in our school.

The rise of this antagonistic force against queer people and these posters put the GSA in a struggle, but not for very long. This year, the GSA had more ideas on the table that they have been executing in order to beat the bigots in this accidental game of awareness. A few of the ideas the GSA had were to scan their posters for mass printing, so if one went down, the GSA could grab some tape and hang it back up. The GSA also has permission from the school to determine when and who r emoved the posters using the cameras in our school. 

I can’t talk about the GSA flags without mentioning the “Luna Triangle”, it was a disgrace for me not to do that when originally writing this draft! Luna made three really cute posters that we accidentally used to claim territory with. That last sentence may not make sense at first read, but what happened was that when we first started hanging up these posters, we had all the tape and the posters out at the three-way intersection on the second floor, right in front of the doors between rooms 216 and 217. We hung up a bunch of these everywhere, but we mainly did a lot in this area because that’s where we kept returning.

I don’t remember who pointed out that Luna’s three posters formed a triangle, but we loved it. The other day, one of the posters went down, but we figured that as long as there is a poster on one of these walls, the triangle will remain. There are currently two Luna Triangles in the school as I am writing this; the other is across the gender-neutral bathrooms on the same floor as the first.

I have contributed to this battle by making posters that don’t look like it appreciates queer people, but do to those with context. I made two posters: one of the planet Jupiter in ultraviolet light, and the other is a very specific frame from the 2003 Christmas movie “Elf” starring Will Ferrell. 

The poster of Jupiter was taken from NASA, an actual photo of Jupiter alongside the other planets. The message stems from the fact that, in ultraviolet light, Jupiter resembles the transgender flag, with the caption “anything could be in ultraviolet”. The poster uses ultraviolet light and planets as a (pretty on-the-nose) metaphor for trans people, suggesting that trans people exist and can be anyone. Despite being pretty on-the-nose, I know that this poster is going over transphobic heads since I hung up one of these posters right outside Mr. Montone’s door, and it hasn’t been taken down for the two weeks the posters have been there.

The Elf screenshot was in the middle of a scene where the store owner is telling the customers, “Okay, people, tomorrow morning, 10 a.m., Santa’s coming to town!” Without context, this seems nonsensical and doesn’t convey any message. To queer people? Well, it’s not likely they would understand either, but this specific screenshot is a reference to a really stupid, low-quality, online meme cover of “THE WORLD REVOLVING” called “YTPMV Elf” using clips from the movie Elf (2003).

 In the video, the main rhythm of the song is a quick snippet of the store owner saying, “Okay, people!” It may just be the theming of the video, but the video undeniably tries to make it sound like he’s saying “Gay people” with the phrase looping in the video. The point is, the internet turned this part from elf into a queer-coated internet inside joke. Am I autistic as hell for hanging this up around the school in the hopes somebody goes “oh this is in support of gay people”? Absolutely, but this poster is helping fight back against homophobes despite that.

I know it’s a huge stretch for these two to work with telling students that queer people exist, but that’s because it’s the secondary goal. Bigots are far less likely to know these are in support of queer people, so they are more likely not to tear them down. Queer people may not even know they are in support of them, but their secret support will stay on the school walls for the rest of the school year.