Let's talk about Womyn.

You are an 18 year-old female, and you’ve just been accepted by Duke University. It’s the morning of Blue Devil Days, and you’ve somehow managed to escape your parents for a few moments. (Success!) And hey, just for fun, let’s throw in something else to make this story a little more interesting-you also happen to identify as a bisexual woman.

So, you’re on the Main Quad, and you look around you. This place is awesome. Wow, it’s Duke! You’re still shocked that you even got accepted (or at least, I certainly was). You decide to go inside Perkins library and check out the Duke Chronicle to see what’s going on at campus this weekend. After flipping through a few of the pages, you determine that you really need to look up LDOC on urbandictionary.com when you get home. You set the Chronicle back in the newsstand and start to walk away.

And that’s when it catches your eye.

“WOMYN: An undergraduate publication for queer women at Duke.”

Your heart stops. Could it even be possible?

Yes, it is absolutely possible! And it is happening this Fall! The idea to do a publication was Janie’s, the namesake was Michelle’s, but the publication is ours. There are two rules to the publication. The first, is that every piece submitted needs to have a queer women’s focus. (And also, that it’s nonfiction. So no unicorns.) We’ll accept anonymous submissions, but hopefully most students will recognize the importance of using their full name. The second “rule” is that anybody can submit a piece! Faculty, university staff, graduate students, undergraduate students, women and men alike-submit your voices! Whether that is your personal testimony, photograph, poem, essay, or straight-allied support, we want to hear about it from you.

We would love to see this publication become embraced by the University. Let’s put ourselves back into the Keds of that prospective freshman. She would see the Womyn publication as she passed the newsstands on her tour of Duke, but this is not the only thing that she sees. She would also see a larger, confident, and powerful queer women’s presence at Duke. She would feel empowered, because she would know that all of her belongs at Duke, not just part of her. It would be revolutionary.

And this doesn’t affect just queer women either; what if I’m a gay man who sees this publication? Or maybe a straight woman? A straight man? How do I change? Maybe I realize I’m free to be me as well? Or maybe I just find that kind of honesty and confident openness a breath of fresh air at Duke.

Or, to take a different example, think about how Womyn might affect closeted queer women at Duke. Let’s say I’m in a sorority, and I happen to be straight. But I’ve recently picked up on the fact that my “Little” probably isn’t. What do I tell her? I want her to know that I love her just the way she is. We, as a sorority, love her just the way she is. But she’s afraid to come out. She isn’t ready yet-she needs something to affirm her. So, I pick up my pen and I write an article to Womyn: “I know one of my sorority sisters is gay, and I just wish she would know that it wouldn’t change a thing if she came out. We love her, and we’d always love her. I hope she knows she has our support.”

The excitement for this project is almost hard to contain-the examples from above are just a few of the things we’d like to accomplish. Come August, we’ll start soliciting for submissions, selecting pieces for the upcoming issue, and working on the publication of the very first edition of Womyn. =) On the listserv, we’re going to email with scheduled meetings and ways we can all help!

Feel free to contact our managing editor, Jack Grote (jack.grote@duke.edu), myself (megan.weinand@duke.edu) or Summer Puente, our Senior Layout Editor (summer.puente@duke.edu) for more information. Also, if you’re in the area this summer, Jack, Summer and I will be working here in Durham to hit the ground running in August with layout, ideas, etc! Stop by the Center or email if you’re interested in making Summer 2010 the summer of Womyn (to quote Ms. Puente).

Interested? Me too.

Let’s make queer women an integral part of Duke.