Two activists - the co-founder of Queer Nation and an Academy Award winner who makes documentaries about battered women - spoke in a Senior Symposium program Friday night about changing their own apathy into activism.
Michael Signorile, columnist and co-founder of Queer Nation, an AIDS activist group, and Stacey Kabat, who is a filmmaker and human rights activist, spoke in a program titled "Activists: The Power of the Individual," which took place in Collis Common Ground. The event was part of this year's Senior Symposium, "Who Cares? Changing Apathy to Activism with Generation X."
Signorile, who spoke to about 100 people, recounted his transition from someone who helped construct a closet around himself and other homosexuals to someone who took an active part in bringing AIDS and homosexuality to the forefront of the media.
After his introduction by Trevor Burgess '94, the co-chair of the Dartmouth Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Organization, Signorile told the audience how he only told the gay community at his college that he was gay.
"You didn't show your face on television at that time unless you were some crazy activist," he said.
After college, Signorile said he worked for a public relations firm that reported about the personal lives of celebrities to newspaper gossip columns.
But the homosexual activity of many stars was never discussed, he said. Employees were "never supposed to talk about homosexuality," he said. "We were expected to help construct their closet."
Signorile said he was working for People magazine and writing a night life column for a New York weekly when he grew irritated with the media's refusal to acknowledge the homosexuality of public figures.
With the spread of AIDS, "more and more of us [gay men] were getting sick," Signorile said. He joined the media division of ACT-UP, the Aids Coalition to Unleash Power, to heighten public awareness about AIDS.
While writing for Out, a gay publication, Signorile originated a process dubbed by Time magazine as 'outing', the disclosure of a closeted person's homosexuality, he said.
He said he was "not gratuitously naming people," but said that "there are times when homosexuality becomes relevant for a larger story."
Kabat began the second demonstration with a screening of her film, "Defending Our Lives," a half-hour documentary that showcased the circumstances of four women who were jailed for killing their abusive husbands. The speech was sponsored by the Student Assembly.
In the documentary, the women discussed the brutal abuses their partners committed and their reasons for striking back.
An assistant district attorney quoted in the film said women who attack their abusive partners receive higher bails and harsher sentences than serial rapists and murderers.
Several of the women in the film called the police for protection from their husbands or boyfriends but police refused to intervene in a domestic disturbance.
After the film, Kabat stepped up to the podium and set her gleaming Oscar on the stand in front of about 200 listeners. She said she planned to use her Academy Award, which she won along with two other film makers who worked on the documentary, as a publicity tool to convey her message about the dangers of domestic violence.
Kabat emphasized the prevalence of domestic violence nationwide. "For the past seven years the Surgeon General has started telling us that domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women in the United States. Why?" she asked.
"Domestic violence isn't a women's issue - it's a human rights issue," she said.
She said there are three times as many animal shelters in America than battered women's shelters.
"Why is it on the back page of the paper? People don't realize it's this bad," she said.
Kabat said a woman is much more likely to be killed by a partner in a domestic dispute than to contract AIDS from them.