OUTSaskatoon hosted its annual block party and community fair just outside its Saskatoon headquarters Wednesday.

Welcome to the Gaybourhood is an annual event that serves up free burgers and entertainment, but for OUT Saskatoon executive director Rachel Loewen Walker, it's an event that also serves up visibility for her organization and the LGBT community at large.

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The Beardy’s and Okemasis First Nation set a precedent by officially announcing that Two Spirit people are not only included in the community, but integral to it.

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A law, not just a policy, is needed to protect high school students wanting to create a “gay-straight alliance,” says one organizer of an upcoming conference on the issue. It’s especially important to help rural students, who often face even more barriers than their urban counterparts, said Amanda Guthrie of OUT Saskatoon.

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A group of youth in Saskatoon is getting a crash course in the world of performing in drag.

OUT Saskatoon has declared February its drag month, offering workshops to members of the organization's youth group, Rainbow Coffee. At the end of the workshops, the young students, ranging in ages from 12 to 19, will show off their new moves in a final youth drag show. 

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It's going to be a special holiday for Daniel Despins. For the first time in years, he's going to have Christmas dinner at home in Saskatoon.

"I'm very anxious to see my family," said Despins.

Born a woman, the 18-year old transgender teen has struggled since he revealed his sexual identity to his mother four years ago.

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The paper, out this week in the journal Social Science & Medicine, looked at a sample of 312 gay men with an average age of 61; a team of researchers led by Richard G. Wight asked the men the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with statements like “aging is especially hard for me because I am a gay man,” and “as I get older, I feel more invisible when I am with other gay men.”

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Amanda Guthrie is the youth and education coordinator at OUTSaskatoon, Saskatchewan’s queer resource centre. She tells Daily Xtra having queer students’ rights enshrined in legislation, rather than just in Ministry of Education policy, is key.

“We need to have legislation,” she says. “We need hard guidelines.”

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The Star Phoenix posted an article about the importance of Transgender Awareness Week, Remembrance Day and Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women Awareness Week.  

Check out the article here.

OUTSaskatoon is thrilled to post this wonderful thesis by local scholar, Sean Waldbillig.  Waldbillig's powerful work discusses the intersections between trans identities and activism.  

Please follow this link to the downloadable PDF.

Over the last six years, we’ve worked with countless organizations to educate on asexuality and ace experiences. Since 2012, Trevor Project has integrated materials about asexuality into their trainings and services. And our work as a community isn’t done yet. Last year, the University of California system took demographic information from among its undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and staff and found that 4.6% of that population identifies as asexual. 

Please find the rest of this powerful blog post here.