Sivagami Subbaraman has come to Georgetown from the University of Maryland to be the first director of the newly opened LGBTQ Resource Center on campus. Subbaraman understands that the LGBTQ community is as diverse and complex as our larger community and is eager to lead the new resource center in creating a place of dialogue and understanding on Georgetown’s campus.

How did you get involved in LGBTQ advocacy?

Mostly I have been doing work around diversity, particularly around gender and race, and for me, sexual identity is part of the work around diversity. And although sexual orientation and gender identity is evoked as diversity, I don’t really think people see it as central to diversity, and so I have come to it after over 20 years of gender-diversity work. My own personal journey has been very long. I came to this country to do a Ph.D. in English and women’s studies. I was married to a man for very many years and so my own process of coming to terms with who I was took a very long time. I felt I needed to use all of my understandings around gender to work around this.

You came to the United States 26 years ago from India to do graduate work. How have you seen the LGBTQ movement transform in that time?

Oh, my good grief. In the early ’80s, there was nothing. People now forget that it is a very young movement; Stonewall [riots] happened, but in terms of visibility, including the academic world, it wasn’t very high. I went to school at the University of Illinois, for women’s studies, and in 1981, there was no women’s studies programs. In general, LGBTQ issues have become more visible, more understood as diversity issues. Part of my problem was that all the women I met were white women who were gay; I never met a woman of color who was gay for many, many years. I think there is a lot of racism in the LGBTQ community, unfortunately. I think there is a dominant image that the LGTBQ community means first white men, and then white women, and people of color tend to be somewhat invisible.

How would you describe the racism that exists within the LGBTQ community?

I think just because we are LGBTQ, doesn’t mean we are free of other prejudices. We are ourselves a very diverse group and community; we have our own issues that we have to deal with, in terms of race, in terms of ability. We are a microcosm of the greater world. Often, it acts as if it is a monolithic world, and it isn’t.

You came to Georgetown from the University of Maryland; what are the biggest differences you foresee between your old job and your new job?

I think Georgetown is a completely different place, not only because it is a private school, but because of its Jesuit/Catholic identity. I think its location in D.C. is a big difference — if Georgetown ceases, the whole world pays attention. I think it is a very different place. I think, at this point in time, because the institution has made this commitment, I think the challenge for me initially is going to be to keep up the momentum that started last year with the working groups and the student activism, and build on that energy. We need to build the infrastructure to keep the work going.

How do you foresee the LGBTQ Resource Center growing over the year?

I think my approach to the center is that the center is for everyone on the campus. I would hope that students, regardless of their sexual orientation, would feel like they could come to the center to have conversations with us about whatever it is that interests them. I am open to having students come in who want to talk about religion. I would like for people to come in and talk about homophobia and sexism in athletics, if that is what they want. I am open to LGBTQ students coming to talk about issues in their community. I am very much hoping that students of color will see this as a place to come so they do not have to choose between being gay and being a person of color, which is a lot of my experience. I hope that the center is a place where all people can come together and we can come together as an LGBTQ community. It is my mission to prove that we are not just gay, we are also South Asians, Latina, we are black, we are white, we are tall and we are short. We are intelligent, we are athletes, we are not athletes, we have all diversities amongst us.

What would you want the whole Georgetown student body to know about the resource center?

What I would most want them to know is that they should not marginalize the center as only being for the gay kids or only for GU Pride. I think if they see it like that, then it is a way for them to marginalize it and not take it seriously. I would really hope that the community would look at its own heterosexual privilege and understand that the other side of homophobia is heterosexual privilege. It is not enough to address homophobia; you have to understand what it means to have heterosexual privilege.

What do you think is the biggest obstacle the LGBTQ community faces at Georgetown?

I have not been here long enough to really answer that, so my answer will be based on my general observations of everywhere I have worked. I think that it is that people have certain stereotypes and images of what gay people are. They do not see the variety. Even I used to be like that. When I first thought of what a gay person was, the image that came to mind was a woman with short cropped hair, wearing a leather jacket, blue jeans, a flannel shirt and high boots. I looked at that person and thought, that isn’t me. I think people still have that. People think gay people have to look a certain way, be a certain way. Therefore they don’t allow for variety in LGBTQ people, and I think that can be a huge obstacle in getting to know the community for who we are.

How would you describe the diversity that you see at Georgetown?

I have been walking around, I went to the New Student Convocation and I was here for the parent orientation. It is a little more diverse then I expected, in terms of race, in gender and in LGBTQ. For the open house, we had about 200 people — we were completely swamped in this place. A variety of people came. It seems that at Georgetown, from day one, students are made aware of their privilege. It seems Georgetown students come in knowing that they are privileged. My question is, how do I work with this understanding to ask, OK, what are you going to do with privilege? That is why I brought up the issue of heterosexual privilege. I think that when students think of privilege they think of it in socioeconomic terms, or race or gender. But they are not thinking about it in terms of sexual orientation.

Who are your personal role models?

The person who most inspired me was Audre Lorde, the poet, who passed away. I studied under her. She always insisted, “I am black, I am a lesbian, I am a poet, I am a mother,” and all of them at the same time. She really inspired me to understand all of who I am. To understand sexual orientation, we must understand sexual orientation within the rest of our identity.

What is one good piece of advice that you have received that you would want to pass along?

I think the best piece of advice I received was from my father, who said that fear and love are both equally powerful emotions that motivate human beings, and people do as much out of love as they do out of fear.