Educating students on the Disjunctive Queer Modernity and Critical Regionality Model, the Ateneo Libulan Circle (ALC) conducted a lecture-forum entitled “Queer Resilience: Persisting Creativity and Innovation in Southeast Asia” at Conference Room D, 3/F Ricci Hall, Community Center last Friday.

Lecture key speaker Mr. Jesus Montajes from the Ateneo Culture and Arts Cluster emphasized that the event aims to spread not only awareness, but also an advocacy to change people’s mind set about the LGBTQ community through the cultivation of the arts, rather than political agenda.

“The best way that their (the LGBTQ) agenda will be heard and shared to the rest of the country is simply to persist on creativity which is the arts, to be innovative in their ways of expression [in visual arts, in media, etc.], and even to promote SOGIE,” he said.

ALC President Mavi Lerio hopes that the forum initiated by the organization will “re-educate people a certain perspective of embracing the true meaning of gender equalism.”

The lecture-forum was attended by members of the ALC and the Ateneo Sidlak Performing Arts Collective, as well as several students and professors from the Ateneo de Davao SHS and college department, Davao Doctors College, Inc., and Holy Cross of Davao College.

With the Ateneo de Davao University already known in the country for embracing its own LGBTQ community, the lecture-forum served as a way for both students and professionals of the Ateneo to connect with other academic institutions around Davao to support inclusivity and pluralism.

Article by Brian Steve Garay