Act OUT, the Lesbian Avengers, and the New Queer

As the '90s began to take on its own distinctively queer flavor, Bloomington residents and Indiana University students founded several organizations that reflected the confrontational, counter-cultural approach to queerness and queer activism that prevailed in the US between the years 1992 and 2001.

Act OUT and Kiss-in: Queer Spectacles

By 1992, IU students had coalesced into several new gay and lesbian activist organizations, including Act OUT, the newly-formed action-oriented branch of the campus queer group OUT.

On October 12th, 1992, Act OUT organized a "kiss-in" outside Ballantine Hall, a heavily trafficked building on the Indiana University campus. The event proved to be a "surprising wake-up call" for the students walking to class at 9AM, and the individuals involved in the kiss-in worked to actively engage with and confront the assumptions that made the sight as shocking as it was, shouting "We're here! We're queer! Get used to it!", among other proscriptive and accusatory phrases.

This event, and the similar ones that Act OUT engaged in during its existence, exemplify the sensibilities that ruled the Queer Moment: a self-righteous, self-assured, and loud rejection of the oppressions that characterized homosexual life experiences.

The Lesbian Avengers

In October of 1994, an IU grad student, Carol Guess, organized a Lesbian Avengers chapter in Bloomington. The group engaged in activism along with OUT and the campus group QUEST (Queers United for Equal Social Treatment); along with Act OUT and QUEST, the Lesbian Avengers took a confrontational approach to activism in line with most of the organization's other chapters. When protesting the administrative decision to use private rather than university funds for the soon-to-be-established GLB student services office, one Lesbian Avenger member carried a sign declaring "Hey Myles [Brand, then-president of the University], wake up and smell the queers".