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Whatchamacallit 93: Safe Zone Magnet from the University of Wyoming

Safe Zone magnet

Back during the 1997-98 academic year at the University of Wyoming, I did something brave and, for Wyoming, cutting edge: I took Safe Zone training.

I tried to do it on the sly, but outside the conference room I remember that I ran into a friend and somehow had to explain what I was doing.

At this point in time I cannot remember anything that I learned during the Safe Zone training session and my only evidence of the training is this magnet – featuring the pink triangle inside a green circle.

Strangely I think that the only place I have ever seen this symbol in use is in contexts that relate to Laramie and the University of Wyoming.

After the training, sometime in Spring 1998, I ended up talking to an asshole professor…

…wait, let me digress here: “asshole professor” is not a term I apply lightly, but he once spectacularly yelled at every student in the classroom at full volume about how stupid we were (in front of the university’s ex-president) and he lied to everybody in the class about their final grades (I ended up having a conversation the summer after graduation with his department chairman about grades in that particular course because another student complained)…

The asshole professor was somebody who, depending upon which class you were taking, could be entirely popular and awesome (I took that particular class a year before) or a jerk of such incredible magnitude that every other professor in his department despised him.

Regardless, despite being in the forum where he was an asshole, we had a moment where he expressed incredible compassion and openness to the LGBTQIA+ community.

Actually, as I write this, I can think of him expressing this sentiment in an indirect way during the class where he was popular and awesome: in the context he was talking about how powerful, Harley-Davidson, motorcycles were perceived by the gay community as a way to message about large, powerful cocks (this was not the phrasing he used, but this was the point) – I remember looking around the classroom and seeing a male student, surrounded by his friends, turn bright red in embarrassment.

Sorry… that’s another digression – but all of this comes from thinking about the UW Safe Zone magnet.


During the Covid-19 crisis, I am going to try and make a point of writing a blog post about an object in my home.

We’ll see how long this lasts.

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