A Radical Queer Agenda

You took over as the second president of my time at Techfront, though you seem to have been running it from the shadows for a while before, the figurative and sometimes literal showrunner.

The previous president was your typical straight white nerd, alarmingly conservative considering the people he surrounded himself with. Yet our choice of subject matters became increasingly, subtly queer under his rule.

I remember when you came out; it was the day after you hosted a Techfront at your apartment over the summer – or could it have been a winter? All I remember is you tended to host over breaks. For whatever reason I felt guilty about misgendering you the night before, even though I obviously didn’t know until the following day. I had met plenty of transgender people by that point, but you were the first who I saw go through the coming out process.

I don’t think I began questioning myself until watching you navigate this territory. Despite my previous encounters, the idea of being transgender felt like this distant thing until that weekend.

We collectively jokes about there being a radical queer agenda taking over Techfront – but it wasn’t really a joke. It was an active effort on the part of several members. So many of us had tried out other nerdy clubs on campus and found ourselves out of place among largely straight and unfortunately unwashed men (though a few of our members were admittedly lacking in hygiene as well…). There were plenty of queer clubs on campus, but they carried it as a focus that similarly rubbed many of us the wrong way. We wanted a halfway point – a place to just chill on the weekend while carrying an actively accepting atmosphere.

So I joined Techfront when it was a general nerdy Saturday evening affair, but it’s your influence that really made Techfront what it is in my mind. It was so relieving to have a place that was queer but not about being queer.