Pride Drag Show Fundraiser: Defying Gravity
For the uninitiated, drag performance may come off as shocking, over-the-top, dripping with innuendo, and sometimes downright crass. That is by design! Drag performance has a long history in the LGBTQ community, first being performed by trans women and gay men in small bars and at extravagant balls across the country since at least the early 20th century. Drag is purposefully transgressive, pushing the envelope in order to satirize what is acceptable to normative society. Drag kings and queens seek to expose the ridiculousness of gender roles and sexual repression through their performances.
Pride on the Plaza
Free and open to the public.
OUTGrads is the official sponsor of the 2025 Oxford Pride on the Plaza.
2025 Oxford Pride Parade
This year, we are “Defying Gravity” as we stroll through Oxford.
OUTGrads and UM Pride Network are the official sponsors of the 2025 Oxford Pride Parade.
Pride in the Valley
Various LGBTQ+-owned businesses in Water Valley will be open and celebrating Pride (and offering discounts) before the Parade.
Performance and Book Signing with Sherry Cothren
Cool Dog Sound, Violet Valley Bookstore, and This is Noteworthy present author Sherry Cothren for a celebration of her debut book, Gadfly: A Lifetime of Writing.
POSTPONED: Sexual Wellness & Healthy Relationships
Tonight's event hosted by QPOC has been postponed to the fall due to last-minute scheduling conflicts.
Sponsored by QPOC.
Southtalk: “A Crowded Table”
Heidi Siegrist’s book, All Y’all: Queering Southernness in US Fiction, 1980–2020, explores the boundaries of negotiating place and sexuality by using the concept of “southernness,” a purposefully fluid idea of the South that extends beyond simple geography and eschews familiar ideas of the southern canon. In her SouthTalk, Siegrist will explore literature that imagines building queer southern community through food.
Lavender Graduation
Please join us for the 9th annual Lavender Graduation ceremony at the University of Mississippi. Established at the University of Michigan in 1995, Lavender Graduation honors graduating LGBTQ+ students and the people who have supported them through their degree programs, including allies, friends, family, and faculty who have maintained a sense of acceptance and belonging for all students on campus.
Lyric Concert: Julien Baker & Torres
Send A Prayer My Way Tour
Ticket Required.
General admission, standing room only
7pm Doors | 8pm Support | 9pm Julien Baker and TORRES
https://julienbakerandtorres.com/
https://uproxx.com/indie/julien-baker-torres-dirt/
Poster Making Night
Join us for an evening of poster making for the Pride parade. Chicory Market will be providing refreshments.
Sponsored by UM Pride Network
A Very Wicked Screening
Join us for a special Pride Week screening of Wicked (2024). Sponsored by OutGrads.
Free and open to the public.
Refreshments provided.
Pride in the Park
Join our community gathering for fellowship and a fun kick-off to Pride Week. Additional details coming.
“Queerly Beloved: Pride Celebration”
Join our minister, Rev. Sarah at UUCO to celebrate the beginning of Pride Week with a Drag Queen Time for All Ages, a Glitter Blessing, and a Candlelit Vigil of remembrance as we joyously honor inclusion & the LGBTQIA+ community. All are welcome.
Pride Drag Show Fundraiser: May the Pride be with You!
For the uninitiated, drag performance may come off as shocking, over-the-top, dripping with innuendo, and sometimes downright crass. That is by design! Drag performance has a long history in the LGBTQ community, first being performed by trans women and gay men in small bars and at extravagant balls across the country since at least the early 20th century. Drag is purposefully transgressive, pushing the envelope in order to satirize what is acceptable to normative society. Drag kings and queens seek to expose the ridiculousness of gender roles and sexual repression through their performances.
Lavender Graduation
Please join us for the 9th annual Lavender Graduation ceremony at the University of Mississippi. Established at the University of Michigan in 1995, Lavender Graduation honors graduating LGBTQ+ students and the people who have supported them through their degree programs, including allies, friends, family, and faculty who have maintained a sense of acceptance and belonging for all students on campus.
SouthTalks: “Faulkner’s Enduring Queerness”
Phillip “Pip” Gordon, UM visiting assistant professor of gender studies in the Sarah Isom Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, discusses “Faulkner’s Enduring Queerness” at noon May 1.
Drag Panel and Q &A hosted by Lambda.
Join Lambda for an opportunity to meet and talk to drag queens in the Oxford area. Panelists include Blake Summers, Vivica Vanity, Lady Pluto, Atheria, and Simone Striker.
Food will be provided. RSVP here!
Pride in the Park
Join our community gathering for fellowship and a fun kick-off to Pride Week. Additional details coming.
Open Dialogue: Faith, Spirituality, and LGBTQIA+ Connection
The Oxford Pride Events Committee invites people of all faiths to join us for an open dialogue about the intersections of faith, spirituality, and sexuality. The theme for this year’s discussion is “Listening to Understand.”
The event is open to all.
"An Interesting Tension": Contextualizing the Emergence of Queer Subjectivity in Rural Mississippi
Presented by Ian Whalen, UM Alum (2015 and 2017) and Sociology Ph.D. Candidate, University of Colorado-Boulder.
About the Presentation:
It is impossible to ignore the acceleration in legislation explicitly targeting transgender individuals in contemporary society. Legislation in other states and at home (“Don’t Say Gay Bill”-FL 1 Gender Affirming Care Ban—FL 2 & MS 3 ) demands us to take the growing specter of fascism seriously. Mississippi is no different. Just this year alone, a staggering 31 house bills were introduced and debated in committee review. The aims of these bills are clear in their motivation and goal—to criminalize and ban transgender healthcare and their public existence. 4 Regardless of the success such legislation has, they nonetheless exemplify the growing influence of governing silence(s) in the everyday lives of LGBTQ+ Mississippians. This talk will engage data drawn from the Queer Mississippi Oral History Project and explore how governing silences are negotiated and resisted by LGBTQ+ Mississippians.
About Ian:
Ian is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research interests include men and masculinities, queer theory, and LGBTQ Studies. He completed his BA in History (2015) and his MA in Sociology (2017) at the University of Mississippi. His previous research has examined the social construction of gender and its intersections with sexuality and technology. He has also collaborated on research that examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the gendered division of labor within family households. His dissertation engages archival data and life history interviews to interrogate the social processes that influence the formation of queer selfhood in rural contexts.
Hosted by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.
Let Me Be Perfectly Queer: An Evening of LGBTQIA+ Poetry
In honor of one of this year’s honorary grand marshals, Colby Kullman, we are offering a night of queer poetry. The evening will begin with a reception that will offer food and drinks and the opportunity to get a book (or books) signed by our featured readers.
Featuring Readings by:
T.K. Lee
C.T. Salazar
Maggie Graber
Additionally, a number of audience members will be randomly selected to read as part of the event. If you are interested in reading some of your original work or reading your favorite poem by a queer poet, please click the button above to sign up.
Free and Open to the Public!
Pride Parade Sign Making Party
Lambda and Justice for Jay Lee invite you to join them for a sign making party before the Oxford Pride Parade. Some supplies will be available. Bring your creativity!
CICCE Film Screening: Framing Agnes
ABOUT THE FILM
LOGLINE
After discovering case files from a 1950s gender clinic, a cast of trans actors turn a talk show inside out to confront the legacy of a young trans woman forced to choose between honesty and access.
SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL SYNOPSIS
Agnes, the pioneering, pseudonymized, transgender woman who participated in Harold Garfinkel’s gender health research at UCLA in the 1960s, has long stood as a figurehead of trans history.
In this rigorous cinematic exercise that blends fiction and nonfiction, director Chase Joynt explores where and how her platform has become a pigeonhole. Framing Agnes endeavors to widen the frame through which trans history is viewed — one that has remained too narrow to capture the multiplicity of experiences eclipsed by Agnes’.
Through a collaborative practice of reimagination, an impressive lineup of trans stars take on vividly rendered, impeccably vintage reenactments, bringing to life groundbreaking artifacts of trans healthcare.
Joynt’s signature form-rupturing style radically reenvisions the imposition of the frame on the cultural memory of transness through his brilliantly crafted, communally-driven excavation. This reclamation tears away with remarkable precision the myth of isolation as the mode of existence of transgender history-makers, breathing new life into a lineage of collaborators and conspirators who have been forgotten for far too long.
OUTGrads Pride in the Park
Join our community gathering for fellowship and a fun beginning to Pride Week featuring a kickball game and family-friendly potluck picnic and cookout. Awards for this year’s Outstanding Allies and Advocates will be presented.
Valley Pride with S. Bear Bergman and Tyler Gillespie
Come visit Mississippi's only queer feminist bookstore, the morning before Oxford's Pride Parade. Bear Bergman will sign copies of his new book at 10am, and offer free advice at his "Ask Bear" table outside the bookstore. At 11am, Tyler Gillespie will read from his book, The Thing about Florida.
