Article ignored the LGBTQ community here at UNC

TO THE EDITOR:

Over the past three days, a lot of attention has been brought to The New York Times article on the gender gap at UNC.

Although the comments to this article have discussed the implications associated with the outdated, sexist thinking that assumes all women are looking for men (and that all men are only looking to “hook up”), little attention has been brought to the LGBTQ community on campus.

What the article fails to mention is that male-female relationships are not the only types of relationships people enter into.

The only attempt (that I’ve seen) to include any type of minority into the discussion was in the “Online reader responses” section in Wednesday’s DTH.

But even these comments failed to mention specific minorities and therefore still left attention on heterosexual individuals.

By completely ignoring the fact that many students on campus do identify as LGBTQ, the article, along with the responses, are continuing to sustain a society where heterosexism is acceptable and minority populations are completely ignored. This also reinforces the male/masculine female/feminine binaries that are pervasive in our culture and leads to discrimination against anyone who rejects these gender binaries.

Brandy Starling
Junior
Communication Studies