Features

Maybe you’ve experienced that awkward moment when you return from winter break and ask someone, “How was your Christmas?” and they tell you they don’t celebrate it.

"This year I’m asking for a ‘Banana Phone.’ It’s a foam cover and it’s in the shape of a banana. I really want it. I hope I get it.” -Alanna Gray, first-year political science student (Blue Long Sleeve, Café)

Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and queer: most of us have heard these words before, but when it comes to the GLBTQ community, things become more complicated than these five simple labels.

For example, the term bisexual assumes there are only two genders. However, Renée Yoxon, a fifth-year physics student at Carleton, said it comes down to more than just a binary between the two sexes. Instead, she said she likes to use the word “pansexual” because it doesn’t put limits on how people identify themselves.

1) Khnumhotep/Niankhkhnum – ancient Egypt, around 2400 BC

“Do you feel it?”

I have a flexible copper band between my fingers, a bracelet removed from the wrist of Rick Duhr, an instructor at the Ottawa Pagan Schola. Duhr is a no-nonsense kind of guy and he’s staring at me expectantly, waiting for my response.

It’s a busy Sunday morning, and I’m sitting in a corner of a crowded Starbucks in the St. Laurent shopping centre, trying intently to feel an electric current Duhr says is running counter clockwise through my body.