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Princess Harmony Rodriguez to speak on campus Wednesday about sexual violence on college campuses. 

Princess Harmony Rodriguez to speak on campus for Hispanic Heritage Month and LGBT History Month

An Afro-Latina transgender activist will come to Ohio University to speak about fighting against sexual violence on college campuses.

Princess Harmony Rodriguez is a transgender woman of color, and a survivor of and vocal activist in the fight against sexual violence and transphobia. She will be speaking Wednesday at Galbreath Chapel at 6 p.m. The event will teach the audience about not only her experiences, but how her activism can bring about awareness and change to college campuses, M. Geneva Murray, the director of the Women’s Center, said.

“Princess came to our attention because of her writing for Black Girl Dangerous, which is an online kind of blog,” Murray said. “We found some of her discussions there and then we followed her over to the interview she did with Know Your IX.”

Know Your IX is an organization that aims to bring sexual and dating violence prevention and education to college campuses, according to its website. The organization also brings attention to the rights outlined in Title IX, a law that bans sex-based discrimination, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s website.

Rodriguez filed a Title IX complaint against her college after they failed to investigate multiple incidents in which her rights were violated, including her being raped, according to Know Your IX’s website.

“She is able to speak about not only being a trans person, but also of being a Latina, being a survivor, being a person in recovery,” delfin bautista, the director of the LGBT Center, said. “We felt that she embodied a lot of the perspectives and issues and identities that we wanted to lift up.”

Rodriguez’s activism has greatly been shaped by her experience with transphobia, of which she has written an article on for Know Your IX, explaining that transgender people are in fact protected by Title IX. Education administrations are now legally obligated to follow this expansion of the law after it was reinterpreted this year to be much more inclusive, bautista, who uses they/them pronouns and the lowercase spelling of their name, said.

“It is an opportunity to showcase what is going on within a community,” Winsome Chunnu-Brayda, the strategic director for diversity and inclusion and multicultural programs and initiatives at the Multicultural Center, said. “It is a chance to show challenges people are still facing.”

Rodriguez is the Hispanic Heritage Month and LGBT History Month keynote speaker. Coming from an Afro-Latina background, she is able to speak about both of those aspects of her identity, and how each are connected and have affected her life, Chunnu-Brayda said.

“I think it is an event that very clearly recognizes that you are not one or the other,” Murray said. “It will be really worthwhile for the students on campus who are interested in preventing sexual violence, as well as people who can identify with different aspects of Princess Harmony Rodriguez’s identity.”

Mae Yen Yap contributed to this report.

kv266915@ohio.edu

@katherineemaria

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