The Gender Equity Center
The Gender Equity Center (GEC), under Student Diversity and Belonging in the Division of Student Affairs, welcomes people of all genders and experiences to cultivate a brave space where we can learn and grow together. Through social justice-based education, programming, and community-building, our work centers students who experience gendered marginalization, including those who are womxn, feminine-of-center, trans, and/or nonbinary. The GEC envisions a world liberated from the oppressive constraints of cis-hetero-patriarchy and the gender binary, where all genders are honored, validated, and celebrated.
Original Womxn’s Narratives
After years of producing The Vagina Monologues, we are now in the sixth year of the show created within the Gender Equity Center: Original Womxn’s Narratives (OWN), a production that continually works to be a radical vehicle for representation and diversity.
At the intersection of social justice and theatre, OWN explores how gender, race, ethnicity, culture, class, sexual orientation, body image, sexual violence, relationships, social justice, nation of origin, and other intersecting identities contribute to the various lived experiences of womxnhood. This student-run production is written, created, produced, and performed by members of the Cal Poly and San Luis Obispo community. We hope that OWN will help to expand our conceptualizations of womxnhood, gender, empowerment, and social justice through the arts here at Cal Poly and beyond.
​
The stories featured in OWN 2021 were written and submitted by current and past Cal Poly and San Luis Obispo community members. These performances and pieces were created by and for womxn and all those who have identities and life experiences that identify with, or otherwise align with womxnhood. Through writing, performance, and visual art, the pieces in this year’s OWN represent genuine, unique, and multi-faceted experiences of womxnhood. We recognize that there are more diverse and intersectional stories out there than we could not represent, and that it is impossible to truly encapsulate the countless multitudes of ways that individuals experience womxnhood through a single project. Our hope is only that you might find something here that does resonate with you and your truth in some way.
Why the “X”
We at the Gender Equity Center and those involved with Original Womxn’s Narratives believe in the importance of radical uses of language, be they written, oral, visual, artistic, or otherwise presented, to bring into question the histories and structures that seek to dictate lived experiences and to create marginalization.
Original Womxn’s Narratives has a lineage in radical disruption of harmful narratives about the experiences of womxnhood and marginalized genders. In keeping with our ongoing quest to push the bounds of what it means to be diverse and intersectional, the GEC utilizes the spelling “womxn” as a means for continuing the conversations around who can stake a claim within womxnhood, particularly as they relate to systematic exclusion and social marginalization. Our choice of language thus challenges who has historically and systemically been included, and excluded, from womxnhood.
“Womxn” has its own lineage. Many years ago, white feminists began to use “womyn” to disrupt the inherent linkage of patriarchy within womxnhood and the marginalization and misogyny therein. The white feminist narratives that created “womyn,” however, still excluded women of color, queer women, Trans* women, and nonbinary individuals who identify with femininity and womanhood, among others. From there, “womxn” came to be as a means for being radically intentional about the communities we build and the spaces we occupy.
You may wonder how to pronounce “womxn” or what use it has: that is part of the function, as it gives us pause to think about why some communities have been excluded, even within spaces made for marginalized identities. The “X” is not a magical panacea to solve all issues of equity within mainstream feminism. It is, however, an intentional and individual choice that represents the work of radical inclusion. The “X” opens up dialogues and possibilities where our communities can heal from ongoing exclusion and discrimination; it represents the unknown, the futures and imaginations that can exist beyond systemic oppression.
Our Pieces
We feature only the pieces that are submitted after intentional outreach to the campus and local community. As thus, we recognize that we have limitations in the identities and experiences that we are able to represent each year through OWN. If you did not feel that your story was seen this year, we invite you to get involved in next year’s production of OWN through the following channels:
Please email obtran@calpoly.edu with any additional questions.