week eight semester two 2013
Where (some) shit is
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OUT AND PROUD
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QUEER ANARCHISM
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INVENTION OF SEXUALITY
Johannah Lowe
Brigitte Garozzo
Melanie Jayne
AND 10 MARRIAGEIFMSA EQUALITY Benjamin Veness
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Bec Eames and Laurel Parker
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IN MEMORY OF AMBER MAXWELL
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POETRY AND ART
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QUEER HIP HOP
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SATIRE: THE DEPUTY’S SPEECH
QUEER HISTORY
Oscar Monaghan
Why Queer Honi? Tony Abbott has happened. A new era of conservatism has dawned upon this land. It is difficult to fully appreciate the danger that this new era poses to queers. Conservatism, by its nature, strives for a world in which social relations are frozen. Abbott, a henchman of conservatism, has set out to create an Australia in which the maintenance of the status quo is an imperative. In Abbott’s Australia, those who are white, cisgender, straight, and able-bodied are “normal”, and it is their proper place to make the big decisions. In some ways, it is an incongruous crusade. The Abbott government will seek to be a friend to business, and business trumpets the liberalism of capitalism. The market, it is said, welcomes the “pink dollar”. Yet Abbott stands squarely in the way of marriage equality, which is often said to be a font of the pink dollar. The explanation lay, quite simply, in queerphobia. Queerphobia is deeply rooted in history, and has defied the advent of capitalism, which otherwise tends to tear asunder the social relationships of the past. Throughout this edition, we search for the silenced queer voices of history.
Blythe Worthy
Editorial Collective: Edward McMahon, Fahad Ali, Eleanor Barz, Brigitte Garozzo, Elsa Kohane, Bec Eames, Priyanka Ray, Angelus Morningstar, Alex Daly. Contributors: Eloise Layard, Johannah Lowe, Alexandra Mildenhall, Edward McMahon, Bec Eames, Nadia Bracegirdle, Haiden Aitken, Michael Day, Jun Ming, Benjamin Veness, Sarah Jamieson, Nadine Wagstaff, Jack London, Michael Leadbetter, Laurel Parker, Melanie Jayne, Tim Scriven, Patrick Madden, Anna Robinson, Thomas Murphy, Mira Scholsberg, Andy, Oscar Monaghan, Lane Sainty, Laurie Hopkins, Brigitte Garazzo, Gabby Rei Tiatia, Jem Nockles, Blythe Worthy, Hannah Smith Cover Image: Alexandra Mildenhall Ticker tape: Cameron Smith Email us at queerhoni2013@gmail.com (this edition) or editors@honisoit.com (regular editors)
The editors of Honi Soit and the SRC acknowledge the traditional owners of this land, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. Honi Soit is written, printed, and distributed on Aboriginal land. If you are reading this, you are standing on Aboriginal land. Please recognise and respect this. Want to place an advertisement in Honi Soit ? Contact Amanda LeMay & Jess Henderson publications.manager@src.usyd.edu.au Honi Soit is published by the Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney, Level 1 Wentworth Building, City Road, University of Sydney, NSW, 2006. The SRC’s operation costs, space and administrative support are financed by the University of Sydney. Honi Soit is printed under the auspices of the SRC’s Directors of Student Publications: Clare Angel-Auld, Adam Chalmers, Bebe D’Souza, Brigitte Garozzo, James O’Doherty, Lane Sainty. All expressions are published on the basis that they are not to be regarded as the opinions of the SRC unless specifically stated. The Council accepts no responsibility for the accuracy of any of the opinions or information contained within this newspaper, nor does it endorse any of the advertisements and insertions. Printed by MPD, Unit E1 46-62 Maddox St. Alexandria NSW 2015.
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Anyone can write for Honi Soit ! Email all letters and submissions to: editors@honisoit.com
We also search for the silenced queer voices of today. We attempt to facilitate the expression of voices and stories that continue to be ignored by the mainstream. In this way, Queer Honi continues the long-running struggle against ignorance, intolerance, and hate. Our feature pages, 12 and 13, consider a queer historiography. Read about the “counterfeit husbands” of seventeenth century Britain and the saucy encounters of Marie Antoinette with the ladies at Court. Join us as we explore the nature of sexuality, coming out, and living queer. The issues that will be encountered include topics as diverse as clothing, religion, diet, music, and how we relate to politics. Of course, it would not be Queer Honi without the occasional reference to Grindr, too. Beginning at page 16, we exhibit poetry, art, short stories, photographs, and pieces dealing with popular culture. These pages present an amazing opportunity to gain an insight into the lives and experiences of queer students, with sometimes amusing and oftentimes moving clarity.
newspaper, we seek to canvas the opinions, news, art, creativity, humour, and assorted diversity of queer Australia in defiance of this conservative era. We welcome you to our paper, and to our community. Enjoy!
Editorial Collective In this issue of our great student
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE NEWLY ELECTED PRIME MINISTER! *(On homosexuality:) “I’d probably feel a bit threatened...” *(On homosexuality:) “Well, there is no doubt that it challenges, if you like, orthodox notions of the right order of things…” *(On lesbians:) “Grim faced, overall-clad, hard, strident, often lustfully embracing in a counterfeit of love...” *From SRC Executive Minutes, dated 27/06/78: That the Executive condemns the unprovoked and unnecessary police violence against those involved in the Mardi Gras on June 24th at Kings Cross. That this SRC actively supports and promotes equal rights for all lesbians and male homosexuals.
CARRIED UNANIMOUSLY (Abbott was out of room)
That this motion be conveyed to the Premier and Attorney-General. CARRIED (Abbott dissenting)
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A few words from your Queer Officers...
It’s been a huge year for the queer community on campus. From the first official University of Sydney Mardi Gras float, to the huge DIY Rainbows on Eastern Ave, and now the inaugural University of Sydney Union Pride Festival, this year has been full of colour and excitement. This year has seen increased cooperation between QuAC, SHADES, Queer Revue, and the USU, the establishment of the Queer Women’s Network, and the introduction of affirmative action for non cis-men in the SRC. We hope that the queer community will continue to build on these achievements in the coming year. We’ve been honoured to serve as your Queer Officers for 2013, and we’d like to thank everyone in the Queer Action Collective for making this one of the best experiences of our time at Sydney. It’s been truly wonderful working with you, and we wish next year’s Queer Officers all the best. With love, Fahad and Eleanor
Letters to the Editorial Collective We received only a small number of letters this week, all of dubious quality, so we’ve pushed them into a corner. Dear “Queer Honi”, I was terrified to learn of your disgusting little rag. My secretary told me that it was coming out and I felt immediately disgusted. You must not print such a paper. It will surely lead to unspeakable sins, like polyamory and sex with badgers. In the name of the LORD, stop! Dear God, just stop. If you print your filthy sin sheet I will introduce legislation into Parliament outlawing badgers in this country. Yours Truly, Tory Bernadi Dear Honi Soit,
Repent! Repent! Burn Vagina Soit and abolish Queer Honi. Repent! Repent or be doomed. I have been doing rain dances since the first Mardi Gras in 1978 to great effect. If Queer Honi is not stopped I will dance down Eastern Avenue and all the way to my Arq opposite Taylor Square. Then you’ll see. Your Obedient Servant, Alfred Nile. Dear Horni, I don’t like it. No Regards, Paulene Handsdown.
welcome
Polyamory: FAQ
Anonymous answers some enquiries about polyamory
So what exactly is Polyamory? From the Greek “poly” meaning many, or several, and the Latin “amor” for love. It’s about loving, or being romantically involved with more than a single person. For different people and different relationships this may manifest itself in different ways. For some people it’s an active pursuit of becoming involved in multiple, overlapping romantic relationships, for others it’s simply a state of mind, or an attitude of skepticism towards the narrative of relationships prescribed by society. Isn’t that cheating? Honesty, open negotiation and making sure everyone has the same expectations are paramount when undertaking functional polyamorous relationships. Society often portrays having more than one partner as being wrong; this is conflating “multiple relationships” with “cheating”. This holds true for mono-amorous relationships, as there is an expectation within your relationship that you won’t be involved with another partner. Therefore the act of involving yourself with another would be a direct violation of the expectations and trust within the relationship. The essence of cheating is doing something fraudulent, deceitful or undermining the trust within a relationship, or breaking the relationship’s contract (whether explicitly agreed upon or inferred). In polyamorous relationships, cheating still amounts to breaking the rules, by acting deliberately or carelessly against the expectations, trust, and agreements that have been established with all the people one is involved with. The point of polyamory is to have successful and healthy relationships with multiple partners through open communication and effective negotiation. Polyamory isn’t about having a secret partner on the side, it’s about everyone being on the same page and making it work together. How is polyamory different to swinging? Swinging can be a type of polyamory, but the emphasis is on recreational sex and multiple sexual partners. Polyamory tends to focus on multiple, meaningful relationships (but sex can be fun too!). Many people also find that the two (sex and relationships) are inseparable. What about jealousy? This differs from person to person. Some people don’t feel jealousy at all. This often manifests itself as compersion, which is a fancy way of saying that you feel excitement (or even arousal) towards other’s successes. Compersive people vicariously enjoy their partner’s (or partners’) other relationships, even if they’re not involved. Some polyamorous people do get jealous, but see it as something they have to manage, just like nervousness. Polyamorous people see jealousy not as a failure, but as a natural part of the experience. “Primaries” and “secondaries” Some people who are polyamorous organise their relationships into hierarchies according to how strongly participants are bonded to each other. Primary relationships tend to be with someone (or someones) who have a very strong and committed relationship with one another. Secondary relationships describe a transient relationship, or a relationship with (an agreed upon) lesser emphasis on commitment. This is not the only way to organise multiple relationships. There is plenty of “polyjargon” that describes the different geometries (different shapes that are analogous to how people are involved) and hierarchies of relationships: vees, triangles, quads, and so on. Other people within the polyamorous community find that these categories or geometries do not sufficiently describe their relationships, or are uncomfortable organising their relationships into hierarchies of importance. So, relationships may be organised in terms of the specific (or general) roles that they have within each other’s lives. Some people extend this concept to all relationships within their life (be they romantic, sexual, collegial, platonic, just acquainted or some intersection thereof), and treat all their relationships as a continuous space defined by lots of different properties. How does polyamory interact with sexuality? Polyamory isn’t necessarily related to sexual orientation at all, and for this reason there is some controversy over whether or not it should be considered part of the queer community. Anyone can be poly – straight, pansexual, or asexual. There’s a lot of potential with poly for ‘queering’ the scripts of conventional relationships and thereby disrupting expectations of heteronormativity. Is there a secret handshake? It’s too complicated to explain here, but it involves lots of open communication.
Did you know...
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opinion
@honi_soit
Out and Proud Johannah Lowe sticks it to the bigots, loud and proud It has taken me quite a while to wrap my head around the phrase “out and proud”. I always used to think of being gay as something that was a natural part of you, so that being proud of it made just about as much sense to me as being proud of having blue eyes. Recent events, however, have given me a bit more insight. After over a year and a half of shifting from straight to bi to gay and back again, last month I decided I am, after all, gay. Luckily for me, unlike many people struggling with their sexuality, my friends and family have been completely supportive of me. They have not, however, always known exactly what to say, and their responses to me sharing the news with them are one of the funnier things to have come out of this experience. For example, my mum responded with: “Ah well, I still have two other shots at having grandchildren”. When I told my dad that I had decided that I was, after all, definitely gay, he changed the subject fairly quickly. When I questioned him on this, he explained that it was only because he didn’t have much more to say on the matter, except “I agree”. But my favourite response of all was from one of my more conservative close friends: “A few years ago I wouldn’t have known what to say… but now I’m just really, really happy for you.” This all left me feeling fairly optimistic, if not a bit bemused, about the situation. Everyone I cared about had responded well. Sometimes in a slightly laughable way, sometimes with a few words of wisdom, but on the whole I felt pretty supported. However, despite all of this, I find myself increasingly feeling that I am part of a group who are very much marginalised by society as a whole. We know that gay and lesbian teens are the highest risk group for suicide, and are more likely to become homeless than their heterosexual peers. I am not saying that being homosexual was the only factor causing these people to take their own lives or feel that they had to leave their homes.
However, I think it is vitally important for society to recognize the role of persecution based on sexuality in these issues. As someone who identifies as gay themselves, it is a small step to go from recognizing the persecution others face to feeling that to come out to the people around me would be to risk facing such persecution myself. Thus, while I have been able to open up to friends and family who I have known and trusted for years, I find it much harder to tell people whose stance on homosexuality I am not already fairly sure of. After breaking things off with the guy I was seeing I decided that from that point forth I was going to be completely openly gay. However, less than a week later, I found myself vaguely saying that things hadn’t worked out when the topic of love lives came up with a group of girls from my course, one of whom I had yet to come out to.
One of the reasons I find this so hard is that I feel strangers automatically assume that everyone they come across will be straight. Even the phrase “coming out” reinforces the idea of straight until proven otherwise. Far more worryingly, some people still seem to assume most people will hold the same homophobic views they do. The worst thing I have ever had said to me on this topic was by a woman I have only met once, whom I am sure assumed I and everyone else she was talking to was straight.
I met this woman last year when I was on my gap year, working in a women’s clothing store to save up some money for overseas travel. I had been helping one customer for about twenty minutes. It was a long and complicated transaction which gave her plenty of time to tell me her views on immigration, Tony Abbot, marriage equality and the rights of same-sex couples to adopt. In short, a fair portion of the list of subjects I would usually avoid talking about with customers, or with anyone in my workplace. After a range of bizarre comments (“And now Tony Abbot’s sister is gay all women suddenly love him.” Um, no, actually she has spoken out against his policy…) she moved on to the topic of whether same sex couples should legally be able to adopt. “Well, I have no problem with them marrying, they can do whatever they want, but I don’t think they should bring kids into it.” My co-worker and I kept our faces in a polite pose that neither spoke of agreement or disagreement. A classic in the customer assistance handbook. “We all know that when the little boy turns five and his dick pops up and he goes to his dads to explain it they’ll invite him into their bed on a Sunday morning and say ‘here son, we’ll tell you all about it.’” Shocked by the sudden vulgarity and absolute wrongness of her statement, I didn’t respond. By this time my coworker had taken over the transaction (this women was a regular and notoriously difficult customer) and so I was able to move away under the pretence of tidying racks, and try to avoid bursting into tears. At first I was horrified that someone could come into my workplace and feel they could say whatever they wanted to me. I have often felt angry at the inequality of the customer-retail assistant relationship, in which the customer can say whatever they want to you and must still
be treated with respect. I was also angry that this woman clearly assumed that most people would agree with her view and that she felt it was an acceptable thing to say to anyone, let alone to strangers in a public space. Lastly, I was upset with myself for not having the courage to say something to her. Since then I’ve gone over many possible responses in my head, from “I’m happy to continue helping you but I’m going to have to ask you to either choose a more appropriate subject matter or leave the store” to the more inflammatory, but also far more satisfying “what exactly are you trying to imply about my Dads?” My point is that there are many people who go around assuming that the people they interact with are straight, that their homophobic views are normal and acceptable, and that they have the right to share them with anyone they meet. But I wonder if part of the reason these people think it is acceptable to say things like that is because they have never been called out on it before. I am not in any way saying that the blame lies with the bystander. But I do think the best way to show someone their behaviour is unacceptable is by not accepting it. So now I have a deeper understanding of the difficulties so many people face in coming out and being openly gay or lesbian. I have incredible respect for those people who have already achieved this, and empathy for those who, like myself, have struggled with this step. I still believe that differences in sexuality are as natural as differences in eye colour. The step to being open about one’s sexuality, however, continues to require courage. By making your sexuality visible, you immediately defy people’s view that everyone around them is straight, as well as challenging the stereotypes and prejudices they may hold. At the same time, you lend a little courage to those who are still struggling to take the plunge. And that is certainly something to be proud about.
that happens. Sending messages to friends and generally using them like Facebook is interesting and perhaps I would be more keen to use them as such if they did not contain a GPS feature, thereby giving me the existentialist dread of directly visualising the gay web of death within a five kilometre radius. Using these apps to safely meet people without having to interact with them is appealing, especially for those of the introverted persuasion. However, I personally think it’s a good thing for people like me to actually try and have a conversation with people face to face, or at least stare wistfully at the guys walking
down Eastern Avenue in their skinny leg jeans and beautiful hair, imagining what it would be like to go up and talk to them. For now I’ll content myself with the not inconsiderable talent that exists here at USyd at least until Siri can tell me accurately which ones are likely to be complete dbags.
Are you for Siri? Hayden Aitken loves to grind, as long as it’s not online Smartphones are smart. At least that’s what Siri tells me. You can use them to read the collected works of Dickens, take “artistic” photos of your food, and even search for the safest way to cook chicken using galvanised nails, copper wire and a potato.* Some people even use smart phones for talking to people, people they have never met and would be highly unlikely to meet under everyday circumstances. Siri tells me that they don’t know what I mean by “Grinder” but that a web search might be illuminating. I have never had such a social media app. This is not because I have a moral objection towards such apps, it’s just
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that I feel that I get along without one. Unfortunately this means I miss out on some of the experiences that go along with using these apps but then again, I am also quite content to go along in life without having a strong opinion about One Direction, unable to quote Mean Girls verbatim or any other of the slightly derogatory gay stereotypes. I’m going to stop trying to make it happen, it’s not going to happen. Some people tell me that apps like Grindr, Jack’d and Hornet are more than hilariously named, that they in fact contribute a whole string of social interactions aside from the obvious ‘grinding’
Studies have shown straight men tend to have smaller penises than gay men.
*The safest way being by not using the potato as a battery but actually bartering them for the use of a hairdryer.
C
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opinion
Misogynistic T-Shirts: Hot or Not? Eloise Layard asks the age old question Not. Absolutely Not. Except, just maybe, they’re hot if a queer girl wears them*. A double standard? Well I’m not sure. Let me explain. Last year I was walking down the street when I saw this charming shirt in a window:
Obviously this is a pretty gross t-shirt, and the way it fetishises lesbianism disgusts me. It’s an attitude I’m pretty familiar with as a bisexual girl: there’ve been times when, after telling a guy that I date girls too, their eyes glaze over, they tell
me “that’s kinda awesome” and just like that I’ve stopped being a person in their eyes and started being an extra from a crappy porno. So basically I would puke all over any guy I saw wearing this shirt. But then I realised how hot I’d find it if I saw a girl wearing the same thing. I started looking at more misogynistic tees and applying the ‘would I find it hot if I saw a girl wearing this?’ test and:
Yep. Oops? So is this just a blatant double stan-
dard? Am I being a complete hypocrite? Maybe. However I tend to think there’s more to it than that. On men, these shirts objectify women, they reaffirm misogyny and let men pat themselves on the back and laugh about their own shitty views. Worn by queer women however, the same shirt can subvert these messages. They are radical in that they force the public to be confronted with a marginalised and fetishised sexuality, presenting it a brave and assertive way. Sure, if a girl wears a shirt like this she might be a little gross, but I’d say that it’s a lot more likely that she’s bravely out, with a tongue in cheek sense of humour. Plus it’s a pretty easy way to tell she’s into girls, which in my book is always a plus. *In the process of looking for shirts to test my theory I unfortunately came across a bunch of shirts which would never be okay on anyone ever.
Consent is sexy And so is Patrick Madden
I always thought I was good at the whole casual-sex consent thing. I’d make out with someone in a club, we’d go home together, I’d use the bathroom (totally necessary but totally not sexy) and then we’d climb into bed together. Fun times. Unfortunately, I’ve had a couple of sexual partners who I’ve had to have “the talk” with. It went something like this: just because I consent to be sexually intimate with you does not mean that I have consented to do anything (or everything) you desire. For example, it is quite a common experience on the Sydney
clubbing scene to make out with total strangers in the corner of popular entertainment venues (read: Stonewall). Sadly, it is also quite common that your fling thinks it is a good idea to slide their hand down the front of your pants to feel your (they assume) aroused genitalia. Personally, I would find it far more arousing if they were to gently whisper into my ear: “I’m really enjoying making out with you and I would like to slide my hand down the front of your pants to feel your hard cock. Is that OK with you? Feel free to say no if it’s not”. Has this ever happened? Nup.
The best sex I’ve ever had was in December last year (and not just because sex on a lazy Summer afternoon is tops). Before we even got to the bedroom he asked me what the “game plan” was. I went first, sequentially describing what I would like to happen. I detailed everything, from how I liked to be kissed to how I enjoyed climaxing. He then articulated his preferences and together we devised a mindblowing “game plan”. It was incredibly sexy and acted as an extremely erotic form of foreplay. But most importantly, we went into our encounter knowing exactly what the
other did and didn’t feel comfortable doing. In saying this, one should always remember that consent is ongoing and continuous and that if someone wanted to end the “game plan” early or not do something they had previously agreed on then their wishes must obviously be respected. I recommend everyone develop a “game plan” with their sexual partner(s). There is nothing sexier than safe, consensual sex.
that may prevent you from becoming infected if you’ve been exposed to HIV. To be effective, it must be commeced within 72 hours from exposure. If you think you have been exposed to HIV, call the 24-hour PEP Hotline as soon as possible: 1800 PEP NOW or 1800 737 669 (inside NSW).
ACON and a[TEST] ACON now provides a[TEST], a free rapid HIV and STI testing service for gay men. To find out more about a[TEST] and how we can end HIV for good, visit endinghiv.org.au
HIV facts and statistics
HIV In Sydney, the average prevalence of HIV infection in gay men is about 12.5%. This increases to about 15% in some inner city areas (meaning that one in six gay men in the inner city are HIV posititve). In addition, there is a slow but steady increase in newly acquired HIV infection in Australia; in NSW, the
number of newly acquired infections increased by 33.9% beteween 2010 and 2011. HIV remains a risk, so safe sex and condom use continue to be reccomended. PEP PEP (Post Exposure Prophylaxis) is a four-week course of medication
Approximately 1 million children in the U.S. are being raised by same-sex couples.
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opinion
@honi_soit
Queer Theory, Anarchism, and Polyamory Brigitte Garazzo joins her partners and fucks the state
For many of us, the label “queer” evokes an image of different sorts of relationship – ones that reject normative roles in favour of the contractless and stateless nature of radical political ideology. Many use the term “queer” not just to describe their sexuality, but also as a political label. In the political sense, the word “queer” implies a resistance to the “normal” or “natural”. Resistance, I would say, is a central feature of the radical queer movement. In our movement we resist heteronormativity- the social norms that dictate that “natural” excludes all but heterosexual and monogamous relationships between men and women, because these norms exclude us. We also resist homonormativity- the social norms slightly expanded to include monogamous homosexuals, because these norms exclude many of us too. Non-heterosexual relationships don’t always mirror heteronormative ones. We’re not all monogamous, cis-gendered, and in the possession of a partner, and as radical queers we resist the oppressive expectation that we should be. Feminist theory paved the way for queer theory, with its assertion that gender is socially, not biologically, constructed and therefore not innate, inevitable or
unchanging. Instead, gender is a product of social norms and institutional power. Queer theory has taken this notion and developed the proposition that sexuality and sexual practices are similarly socially constructed. Queer theory aims to undermine the assumption that hierarchies of sexuality, gender, and political control are somehow ‘natural’. In this way (and in others), its goals overlap with anarchism, a movement that seeks to challenge all oppressive hierarchies. For the anarchist, and indeed for many anti-capitalist ideologies, queer theory is therefore an invaluable tool. Traditionally, anarchist analyses assesses the relationships of power between the individual, capitalism and the state. By considering queer theory alongside this traditional anarchist approach, we are able to understand ourselves as disrupting the norms of gender and sexuality in the same way anarchists seek to disrupt relations of production, exploitation and state violence. In the same way the anarchist imagines new forms of society that defies supposedly natural hierarchies of the state and capitalism, the radical queer theorist can imagine new forms of relationship that defy supposedly natural hierarchies and reject sex and gender
normativity and the patriarchy. The radical queer can go beyond the gay/straight dichotomy, and examine all that beyond it, including (but not limited to) consensual polyamory, sex work and BDSM practices. We should be free to embrace these and other sexual practices, but it should not be by setting them up to be new ‘norms’ of our sexuality and gender, as that would be simply repeat the same mistakes. Instead, we should encourage and defend a multiplicity of practices and experiences existing both inside and outside the boundaries of normative gender and sexuality. Queers, having already abandoned heteronormative expectations, have also (it would seem) much more readily abandoned other normative expectations, including the expectation of strict monogamy. Polyamory, the acceptance of a plethora of consensual relationship structures involving more than two partners (including open relationships, primary/secondary structures, triads or an infinite number of other relationship forms), is rife in the queer community. It is a queer issue, and also an anarchist one. An anarchist will tell you that under capitalism, the state violently maintains the
sanctity of private property to secure the power of the propertied class to exploit the unpropertied. Strict monogamy, as I see it, is little more than the private ownership over another’s love-life, and no less exploitative. The anarchist would tell you again that nobody should have any right over something they do not need or have not made themselves. Well, nobody needs to be the sole lover of another (as any poly grouping could tell you), and it’s tyrannical to force people to give up what could be quite beautiful, fulfilling relationships to satisfy this normative expectation. So fuck compulsory monogamy – the future is sexual anarchy, where the rules and the labels are disposed of and relationships are built in whatever form one desires through consent, negotiation, communication and love. The poly relationship is a step toward that future. As Susan Song has written, “practicing these relationship forms alone does not make one a revolutionary”. But through them we can all learn how to rethink our social relations, challenge socialisation, and smash society’s hierarchical culture. So let the anarcho-queer be born, in all its glory!
Don’t Wanna Say “Fuck You” To Abbott? That’s Fucked. One activist proudly says “fuck you” to the Prime Minister Elect. With the bigoted Liberals and Abbott now in power, the struggle for LGBTI equality is more pressing than ever. Abbott’s victory is a kick in the pants to progressives who were unwilling to fight against a right-wing Labor government. The marriage equality campaign has seen its whole life under a homophobic Labor government, but such an openly hateful leadership as Abbott’s will spur more people to anger and action. So quite rightly, the next equal marriage protest in Sydney is titled “Fuck You, Abbott – Marriage Equality Now!”. “Fuck you” just about sums up what we want to say to a Liberal government that offers only devastation for our diverse community. However, conservative sections of the queer movement argue that such language is divisive and alienates marriage equality supporters who vote Liberal or moderates who oppose bad words. This is shameful. Not only has such a sentiment been incredibly well received, by queers and allies alike, but pandering to the homophobic, transphobic Liberals or being soft on them is exactly the opposite to what we should be doing. That rare specimen that is a Liberal supporting marriage equality will oppose tackling other important issues for LGBTI people, like housing, employment and health. Not only that, it should be clear that Liberals are scum and attacking them draws far more people into our movement than accommodating to their racist, homophobic, antiworker policies. Abbott is homophobia embodied, and ordinary, progressive people want to vent their
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anger at him and his party. “Fuck Tony Abbott” t-shirts are worn with pride by left-wing activists and are selling like hot cakes around the country. It’s a fantastic talisman against bigots, and I receive nothing but praise when wearing it around Sydney. Shamefully, members of Socialist Alternative at Macquarie Uni campaigning against homophobia were forced off campus by security for wearing the shirts. Those in our movement who condemn this powerful language against Abbott are playing into the hands of anti-democratic, authoritative forces silencing our right to free speech. If we want to organise people into action against this bastard, we have to be at the forefront, helping to raise the political climate and encouraging people’s anger and determination. That does not mean worrying about people offended more by the word “Fuck” than by queer oppression. That means crystallising and concentrating our energy into action in the real world, building the campaign, organising protests and finding the next person who hates Tony Abbott and everything he stands for. So come to the next rally for equal marriage rights on 12th October, 1pm at Town Hall, and yell (or wear) proudly: FUCK TONY ABBOTT!
In 2012 Russian airline Aeroflot forced a gay steward to marry a woman in order to keep his job.
opinion
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I’m A Life, Not A Product Edward McMahon considers the similarities between an abbatoir and an oxford street bar There are times when, and circumstances in which, the eating of flesh is necessary. At other times, and in other places, though, it is simply immoral. In an industrialised nation under capitalism at the dawn of the third millennium, and absent special dietary need, the immorality is plain. Meat, in our society, is commodified death. Of course, meat inevitably presupposes death. Yet it is different in our society. Historically, the slaughter of animals was attended by a solemn sense of occasion. People regretted the killing but, confronted with the necessity of survival, reluctantly committed the deed. Perhaps the common ceremonial component was an exercise in conscience healing. Today, any component of conscience is lost as animals are slaughtered wholesale. Their deaths are traumatic-
for costs must be minimized- but their suffering is invisible. The taking of life occurs up the chain of production, and the consumer’s conscience is spared. On the killing floor, though, workers suffer a remarkably high incidence of mental illness in exchange for a pittance of a wage. The workers, like the animals they are forced to murder, are not treated as miraculous vessels of life, but as raw materials of the modern economy. The diminishment of life on Earthplant, animal, and human- is a common thread in the capitalist economy. As queers, we are acutely exposed to this process. Too often, the precious progress that we have won is attributed, not to moral enlightenment, but to the market. The dollar, it is said, does not discriminate. The same argument is often mounted in favour of marriage equality. The reform, so the argument goes,
would unleash the “pink dollar” and thus reveal untapped economic opportunities. Indeed, untapped economic opportunities have largely defined the way in which our community has been understood and received by the mainstream. Freddy Mercury, glitter, drag, fashion, tight pink undies, rainbow flags, the Rocky Horror Picture Show, show tunes; these are but some instances of the, admittedly fabulous, commodification of queer. But we are not a product. Our lives are not a means to an end of profit. Of course, we are not made to die for profit. Though we are fundamentally demeaned when we are reduced to consumable stereotypes as a precondition of social acceptance. It is a phenomenon that undermines moral premise that ostensibly underpins our society: life is an end in itself. Perhaps the most surprising outcome
of my experience of queerness has been the development of several, unexpected existential positions. Amongst them is a resolve that the commodification of life is morally indefensible. It is a process that actively destroys the possibility of a world in which each individual’s actions are determined by their impact on others, rather than a moral sleight of the invisible hand.
Queering the Refugee Activist Movement Gabby Pei Tiatia looks at the refugee movement through a queer lens Refugee advocates around Australia were distraught by the announcement of the PNG ‘Solution’ in mid-July under the newly lead, Rudd government. It was a massive blow to the movement, and the ALP’s lurch to the right was not taken lightly. Asylum seekers arriving by boat were to be deported, processed and resettled in Papua New Guinea (PNG)– a country where roughly 50% live on less than $2 a day, where women and children have a disturbingly high chance of being sexually assaulted, and with an average life expectancy in the mid-60s. When I further learned that being open with one’s sexuality in PNG could land one in gaol for up to 14 years, it became even clearer that the government was justifying its policy on faux humanitarian grounds. For me, the refugee movement became more personal than ever. Not only was I fighting for basic human rights for the world’s most vulnerable people, I was now fighting for some of the most vulnerable members of the community that I proudly belong to. It solidified my resolve as a queer-identifying refugee activist. Queer refugees should not have to repress their sexuality in their resettled country. Yet this is the direct consequence of the Australian government’s perpetual use of racism as the foundation of creating its refugee policy. Despite being demoralised by the policy, the uproar from the LGBTIQ community was incredibly inspiring. Since its announcement, the queer presence at refugee rallies has been more visible
and stronger than ever. QuAC’s initiative of making pink triangle patches for all LGBTIQ peoples to wear at refugee rallies sent a strong message to all that the blatant mistreatment of queer refugees was not going to be accepted. The Rudd Government’s lurch to the right paved a way for the recently elected LNP to increase the inhumanity and racism of its refugee policy. The incoming government has confirmed that it will keep most of the PNG ‘Solution’ in place. On top of this, the LNP are bringing back Temporary Protection Visas, getting rid of the Refugee Review Tribunal and want to carry out the dangerous operation of ‘towing back’ the boats. With the incoming homophobic PM arrogantly and ignorantly calling support for marriage equality the “fashion of the moment”, it’s clear that queer refugees will be made to suffer under the Coalition’s reign. It has never been a more important for those of the queer community, and our allies, to stand in solidarity with all queer asylum seekers who wish to live a life not lead by fear of persecution. Strengthening the broader political campaign outside of parliament can do this. There’s many ways to get involved in the movement. The campus Anti-Racism Collective meets every Wednesday at 11am on the New Law Lawns, and the Refugee Action Coalition holds meetings every Monday at 6pm at Teachers Fed, Surry Hills. The fight for refugee rights is a fight for queer liberation.
One of Hitlers closest friends, Ernst Röhm, a fellow founder of the Nazi party, was openly gay.
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The invention of sexuality Melanie Jayne explores the delicious (and scalding) alphabet soup of sexuality From the L to the B to the P to the A, I have spent many, many years of my adolescence and young adulthood swinging to-and-fro almost every single letter of the queer alphabet. “Lord, she is so beautiful. Yup, I’m definitely a lesbian. Oh, no. Ryan Gosling is someone that exists. Bisexual! But… I don’t want to be confined to this! Fuck it, just EVERYBODY STOP BEING SO HOT. I am pansexual. Um, actually, I don’t really feel like having sex with anyone right now. Asexual? Naaah…” The LGTBQIA alphabet expands at a rate almost as fast as the universe and has proven to be the most mind-numbing bowl of alphabet soup I’ve ever eaten out. Albeit the most delicious! Everything and everyone must fit into nice, neat, little categories. And when they don’t? People freak out.
The invention of sexuality is an oppressive cultural product. By creating sexual categories we have developed sexual difference, creating an avenue to separate what is normal from what is abnormal, as well as reducing something as complex as sexuality to simplistic categories. The groupings of ‘heterosexual’ and ‘homosexual’ are modern inventions. The terminology was coined by Austrian-born journalist Karl-Maria Kertbeny in 1869 and only came into popular usage in the twentieth century. In his
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defence, he was trying to do us a favour by negating the time’s more fashionable term of ‘sodomite’ and uphold the idea that homosexuality is a natural condition.
“Sexuality cannot be calculated. It cannot be quantified. And it very rarely can be accurately defined. It simply is what it is. Please stop caring so much.” That’s not to claim contemporary sexual terminology is solely at fault for marking queer behaviour as deviant, but these terms have provided a clear and understandable divide between two different types of sexual behaviour. And where there’s a division, that opens an opportunity to elevate one category above the other as being superior. Thankfully, as our alphabet indicates, we have progressed far beyond the heterohomo dichotomy, but it is still the most popular and acceptable way of interpreting the sexual world. If you forget about all the problems it has created for those who identify only as homosexual, these distinctions have created just as many, if not more, difficulties for those that fall somewhere inside or out of the binary. It’s why bisexuals are apparently ‘gay, straight or lying.’ It’s why people assume that asexuals ‘just haven’t met the right person yet.’ Separating the world into black and white, male and female, good and bad, straight and gay is the easiest, but most unsophisticated, way of coming to understand the human experience and ignores everything that comes in between. While the ever-expanding queer alphabet accommodates for those who exist outside of our conventional understandings of sexuality, it will never be wholly inclusive of those who just cannot decide where exactly they fit. And that is because you need to fit somewhere under the rainbow. The first commandment of the unwritten Bible of Sexuality is that you must be a match with one letter of the alphabet. We don’t get to pick who we’re attracted to, but what we do decide is how we classify ourselves.
Choose wisely. Once you have made your selection, you need to commit to it. Whenever someone who is understood to be straight begins experiencing samesex attraction, it’s too often identified as being some form of sexual identity crisis (emphasis on the absurdity of crisis). Perhaps an even greater scandal is the inverted closet scenario: an exclusively homosexual identifying person engages in a legitimate heterosexual experience (meaning, not just hooking up with your straight friends for fun), something that’s considered the greatest taboo to certain members of the gay and lesbian communities. To discover, understand and accept a particular sexual identity and then come to the realisation that it actually doesn’t completely fit you can be a horribly unsettling experience. And I wish it wasn’t. Trust me, I’ve experienced it far too many times in my queer alphabethopping escapades. Sexual identification can be an important part of profound self-understanding and actualisation, but I can’t help but wonder if these categories have created far more problems than they’ve solved. What if sexuality didn’t exist? What if, in the immortal words of Nicki Minaj, you could just ‘fuck who you want and fuck who you like,’ (or don’t!) and dance all night because there’s no sexual orientations in sight? What if we dispensed with sexual identities, there was no straight, there was no gay, there was no bisexual, there was no pansexual and there was no asexual? What if there were just people, who existed and enjoyed one or more of the following with or without gendered preferences: a) sex, b) romance, c) none of the above? There wouldn’t be gay marriage; there would just be marriage. There wouldn’t be same-sex adoption; there would just be adoption. There wouldn’t be homosexual relationships; there would just be love. ‘But… without sexual classifications, there would also be no queer culture!’ That’s right, fictitious feature article persona. The list of things we would lose includes, but is not limited to: Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras, gay clubs
(NOOOO!!!!), our community and yes, even Queer Honi (uh-oh). The products of the queer community have primarily developed as a response to our community’s extensive history of prejudice and discrimination. Under the Naïve Sexual Utopia I’ve proposed, there would simply be no need for queer culture. (Bonus Bigot Tip! That’s why there’s no ‘Straight Pride Month.’ That’s on every month.) The resilience of our community means, however, that queer culture has developed beyond merely harvesting a safe space for its members from the big, bad world, but to say: ‘Fuck you. We’re going to have some fun.’ If we’re not invited to your party, we’ll throw our own and it will be fucking fabulous.
The invention of sexuality has more than likely caused the majority of us a fair amount of grief at some stage in our lives, although I’m thankful we’ve used these sexual categories to create some nice things for us queer folk. No matter. The fixation on classifying sexual identity is a trivial pursuit. To complicate the matter of identification even more, it’s worthwhile nothing that although sexual and romantic attractions are mostly discussed interchangeably, they often do operate separately from one another. I’ve wasted far too much energy on trying to make sense of something that I just can’t. Now, I’m beyond the point of giving a fuck. Sexuality cannot be calculated. It cannot be quantified. And it very rarely can be accurately defined. It simply is what it is. Please stop caring so much.
Hugh Hefner advocated for gay rights in the 1950s, when he published a fictional short story about a world where gays were the majority.
opinion
A gay Christian’s dilemma Anonymous is caught between a cross and a hard place I was on a hot date. A few nights ago, a charming gentleman invited me to dinner at one of Sydney’s finest restaurants. Not only was he a solid 10, he was intelligent, cultured and witty. Although. that didn’t last long. Upon hearing that I was a Christian, his jaw dropped, and his fork crashed to the table, it’s clink resonated through the whole restaurant. He quickly paid the bill and we went our separate ways. There’s no shortage of idiots in this world. Let’s face it, between Reverend and politician Fred Nile’s purported loathsome comments of homosexuality being “immoral, unnatural and abnormal” and Archbishop Jensen’s laughable assertions that homosexuality is a “lifestyle” disease – it’s enough to make you think the entirety of Christendom is against you! Then it clicked: these words weren’t just a one-off example of the bigotry plaguing Christian circles. It was the latest symptom of it. In fact, exposure to subtle and covert anti-LGBTI sentiments begins in the formative years of primary schooling. Not only were we repeatedly told that it was ‘unnatural’ to love a person of the same sex – but our Christian Studies teacher used such choice adjectives as ‘disgusting’ and ‘heinous’ (I chuckled at the similarity with ‘anus’) to articulate his point. Coincidentally, he turned out to be an exorcist. But that’s another story. Don’t shed a tear for me, but recognise nevertheless that the realisation that, supposedly, your God had abandoned you was a hard one to come to terms with – particularly at the impressionable age of 16. It’s hardly surprising that SameSame.com revealed, in their Wear It Purple campaign, that around 30% of gay Australian teenagers will attempt suicide. Hold your horses. Before we beat on the Christians, let’s take a look at ourselves. I recently attended a rally for Marriage Equality at Town Hall and was proudly waving the rainbow flag above…until a speaker at the event lumped in ‘bigots’, ‘homophobes’ and ‘Christians’ into the same basket. One could have been mistaken in thinking they had stumbled on an anti-Christian rally rather then one demonstrating solidarity with progressive social policy. As a Christian, I again found myself alienated by the very same community in which I found my greatest support. While the Westborough Baptist Church will forever remain a skid mark on the moral fabric of society, we definitely aren’t doing ourselves any favors in ostracising Christians in the LGBTI community.
This very same sentiment is, on a regular basis, echoed in conversation with my friends in the LGBTI community, who are gob-smacked that I go to ARQ on a Saturday, and Youth Group on a Sunday. This double-standard is harmful; it creates a precedent by which a theo-normative stereotype of the ‘atheist queer’ is ingrained in the community. Put simply, we’re discriminating against ourselves. By now, I’m sure many of you are wondering ‘how can he be simultaneously a Christian, and gay?’ Well, I reconcile it like this: My faith is nobody else’s business, and you aren’t welcome to third-wheel my relationship with God. Secondly, the Bible tells me to love my God and my neighbor and I intend to do exactly that regardless of gender.
Lastly, if you believe that God created the Heavens and the Earth and all the majesties of the universe, then I find it very difficult to swallow that the very same God would condemn me to eternal death and suffering for something as infinitesimal as my in-built preference for other men. Do not allow yourself to be a hypocrite and discriminate against Christians in our community. Otherwise you are placing us in a compromising position, forcing us to make an impossible decision between our identity, sexuality and religion. I implore you to embody the love and tolerance on which our community prides itself – because, God damn it, bigotry and discrimination is never acceptable in our community. Perhaps both the LGBTI and Christian communities could benefit from some mutual enlightenment. And that enlightenment can only come from those of us in both camps – the proud and loud gays, lesbians, bisexuals and trans* people - who despite the omnipresent discrimination have retained their core values concerning their sexual and religious identity. I genuinely see a future where gay and lesbian scripture teachers permeate our schooling system… A future where Archbishop Jensen’s homophobic words are ridiculed by a clergy, composed in part of LGBTI ministers. And who knows? One day we may even see Priests on podiums at ARQ.
The sex lives of male giraffes are predominantly homosexual.
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Medical students worldwide unite behind Australians in call for marriage equality Benjamin Veness reports on the IFMSA conference
“In the lead-up to the plenary, members of the Australian delegation had casually discussed the policy with other delegates” A tall brunette purposefully approached me. “I’m Miriam, from Spain,” she said, offering her hand. “We want to help you.” For a week, Baltimore’s City Centre Sheraton Hotel was teeming with medical students from every continent of the world. Brought together by the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations (IFMSA), representatives from each National Member Organization (NMO) would stay working until minutes before midnight, debating policies and, more tediously, by-laws, in the hotel’s ballroom. Never one to shy from a fight, the Australian delegation proudly brought from home not only a flag, Tim Tams, and Vegemite (for the infamous National Food and Drink night), but also an adapted version of our Marriage Equality and Health policy. In the lead-up to the plenary, members of the Australian delegation had casually discussed the policy with other delegates, and in just a couple of days it would be debated. Given the broad membership of the IFMSA, and the significant hurdle of a two-thirds majority required to adopt new policy statements, there would be delegates of many countries to convince.
“Is it OK if we make a speech?” Miriam Blanco asked, her dark eyes fixed on mine. “On behalf of NMOs in Europe.” I was taken aback. What an ingenious proposal. “Of course!” I replied, thrilled that this stranger shared our passion and had taken such initiative. “I’d love you to.” As the idea percolated, its potential to help our policy grew. What if other blocs followed suit? Students from North and South America had already expressed support; the USA was seconding our policy. Maybe Asia? We didn’t know where they would stand. The Middle East and Africa would certainly be challenging. The five countries in the world that still have a death penalty for homosexuality are Mauritania, Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. (Parts of Nigeria and Somalia do, too.) The vote was scheduled for Tuesday night, March 12. Pop star Rihanna had coincidentally contracted laryngitis and cancelled her concert in the nearby 1st Mariner Arena, which a lot of students had planned to attend. Even though just one student is the designated voter for each NMO, the ballroom was filling up, as everyone had heard about the marriage equality policy. Lines of supporters congregated around the plenary table, an area usually reserved for the voting students. Standing above a red maple leaf flag that draped over the front row, Charles Marois peered through his spectacles at his computer screen. His articulate
and lightly accented voice matched his elegant Montréal style. Microphone in hand, and with a brief toss of his neatly parted coiffure, on behalf of North America, Charles gave a passionate call in favour of the policy. Speakers from Colombia, Lebanon, and Taiwan also expressed support. Asia,
it turned out, is apparently well-aligned and its delegates were extremely helpful. A Taiwanese student later told me how grand their annual pride march has become. In contrast, Malaysia (having gone so far as to ban the television programme Glee because of its homosexual characters), was a notable non-African signatory to the Sudanese delegate’s polite but firmly oppositional speech. Meanwhile, Miriam had been hard at work earlier in the day at the European regional meeting. At the outset of her address, she listed all the NMOs on whose behalf she spoke: Austria,
“Lines of supporters congregated around the plenary table, an area usually reserved for the voting students.”
Belgium, Catalonia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. “As an international federation we believe in achieving acceptance and equality for everyone: everyone in this plenary, every IFMSA member, and everyone in the world,” Miriam urged. The room was unusually quiet as her words hung in the air. “We strongly believe that this policy statement is one of the few, but necessary steps that remain towards progress, evolution and freedom,” she concluded, as students sprang forth in a standing ovation. In the end, Miriam’s belief was shared. 59 votes were cast: 40 for, 11 against, and 8 abstentions. With a cheeky proclamation from the Chair, medical students around the world joined AMSA in our call for marriage equality. Benjamin Veness is the President of the Australian Medical Students’ Association (AMSA) and is studying medicine and a Master of Public Health at Sydney Medical School. Follow on Twitter @venessb. A version of this article appeared earlier this year in the AMA’s Australian Medicine magazine: https://ama.com.au/ausmed/ node/4570
Photo courtesy of Benjamin Veness
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In 1995, lesbians Khav Sokha and Pum Eth were allowed to legally marriy in Cambodia because Khav already had children
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Sex and the (Univer)City Sarah Jamieson and Nadine Wagstaff on being pansexual and single
Despite being in many (one) of my lesbian friends’ sex dreams, I have never kissed a girl. I find this alarming on many levels, but before I get too far ahead of myself, let me tell you a little about life as a pansexual. I arrived here by default. I am a naturally indecisive individual and have not done enough research to pick a gender because I am a chronic victim of my own laziness. It is like researching for the federal election - I intend to do it every time, but when push comes to shove I just close my eyes and hope for the best (incidentally, this is a great analogy for my sex life). I have traversed the planes of casual dating (known oh so well to the emotionally stunted but still mildly attractive) only to find that all paths lead to singledom. I cannot pick up women because I look too straight, but I am indisposed to rectify this because I am incapacitated by laziness. Okay, I realise how self-inflicted this problem is, but it is the largest contributing factor to my terminal singledom! You see, no girl will hit on me because I look too straight, but hiking out to a gay bar to pick up a lesbian seems like too much effort. My complacency in singledom, coupled with my laziness means I inevitably end up looking like the chaperone to my gay male and virgin-whohad-sex-in-the-evangelical-tent friends. But every time I find myself teetering on precipice of self-pity, I remind myself that surely, surely there must be
other sexually starved individuals just waiting for salvation. Then it hits me my friends! Friend One has the ability to make my sex life seem exciting by comparison. She is currently suffering through a self-inflicted dry spell of sex and as a result , sex dreams have become
“I cannot pick up women because I look too straight, but I am indisposed to rectify this because I am incapacitated by laziness.”
vivid and frequent. An innocent commuter/bystander could give you the full details of these dreams, given the almost exponential increase of volume and frequency of whinging. Luckily, Friend the Second is well equipped to deal with these complaints. Two is a self-confessed, borderline
shameless version of Charlotte from Sex and the City, and as such is a fantastic give-and-take companion for sexless complaint sessions. Despite the nearperfect state of Twos current relationship, hurdles do exist between Two’s current position and a blissful marriage (the least of which being current legislation). The hurdles can be summarised in one unanswerable question: “Why hasn’t he texted me?” (Never mind that she hadn’t texted him in the first place). The prospect of impending marital bliss is impeded by Two’s inability to initiate a conversation. Friend Three, who regularly retells sexual adventures akin to any porno is both a blessing and a curse. Three’s stories make me feel humoured (and, let’s not lie, a little superior) by their obvious falsity, but but at the same time they make me feel sexually inadequate. Does spooning my hot water bottle on the couch on Saturday count as a date? Three is a self-proclaimed sex god, and yet probable virgin (as I constantly reassure myself).Curse you and your ridiculous sex life, Three. I would dedicate this paragraph to friend number Four (in order to maintain the ‘Sex and the City’ reference), but I don’t have a friend number Four. I am sure that by now you are wondering why you have taken five minutes out of your busy life to read this article (which you won’t get back. Ever.) And the answer is because you were sucked
into this discursive trap by the lure of a self-proclaimed human wreck. We all do it — who doesn’t want to read a little bit about good old Lindsay or The Kardashians? So now I leave you with this rhetorical question, unsuspecting reader(s): Why do we, as humans, enjoy the comedic and glorious failures of
The hurdles can be summarised in one unanswerable question: “Why hasn’t he texted me?”
others? Just kidding, this isn’t rhetorical. It’s because deep down we’re all just a little bit shit. *Commonly replaced with “singledoom” by spell check. Not even joking..
In 2009 3 men from Lesbos lost a lawsuit against the Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece for using the word ‘lesbian’
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Queering history HAPPILY EVER AFTER, UNDER COVER Bec Eames attempts to uncover the “cover marriages” of 18th Centrury Britain, and finds a dildo along the way.
Stories about “female husbands”, “counterfeit bridegrooms”, and “cover marriages” began to emerge in Britain as early as 1680. Such unions involved people assigned female at birth (AFAB) living and dressing as men in order to marry women, sometimes for love and sometimes, allegedly, for money. Although “lesbian”, “transgender” and “transvestite” were not established identities in the eighteenth century, it is clear that these people represented some kind of queer antecedence. There are no surviving sources written by the people involved, so it is impossible to know how they identified. They may have been transgender men, or they may have been cisgender women disguising themselves as men in order to access male privilege. For this reason, this article will use gender-neutral pronouns to describe such individuals.
Steel”. In 1739 an apprentice in London who “always appear’d in Man’s Apparel” fell pregnant and was discovered, thus ending their engagement to a young woman in Leadenhall Street.
In the case of James How, a.k.a Mary East, an old acquaintance blackmailed the married couple by threatening to reveal the “truth” of How’s sex, and the story came out in the courts after How’s wife died. Surprisingly in this case it was not How that was prosecuted for fraud; rather it was the blackmailer that was punished. A newspaper article in 1766 describing the case was largely sympathetic towards How, perhaps because they were eventually forced by circumstance into feminine clothing again. The article described How as “our heroine”, although it conceded that they were “peculiar”, and it commented The counterfeit bridegrooms that on the “unblemished Character” of we know about are the ones who James How after they returned to were discovered. Their existence was feminine dress. Unfortunately not recorded in sensationalised newsevery counterfeit husband escaped paper articles, legal records, and censure so easily. independently published pamphlets and broadsheets. Many counterfeit Female-female eroticism occuhusbands were only discovered after pied a strange space in British their deaths, as in the cases of John law. Although on the Continent (a.k.a. Margery) Young and James lesbianism was often considered Allen. Young was reported in the as reprehensible as sodomy (and Tatler as a “Woman that practis’d was therefore equally punishPhysick in Man’s Clothes; and after able, sometimes by death), the law having had Two Wives, and several condemning buggery in Britain Children, died about a Month since” did not include relations between in 1710. The Times wrote about the women. This did not mean that “extraordinary circumstances” of everyone other than cis men were “the body of an individual, called free to do as they pleased. CounJames Allen, whose sex remained terfeit husbands were usually undiscovered for many years, alprosecuted for fraud, sometimes though married to a woman upquite harshly. In the case of George wards of 21 years ago, during which (a.k.a. Mary) Hamilton, brought period the deceased assumed the to court for having married Mary garb of man”. Price, prosecutors struggled with finding a law to condemn them, Some records in marriage registries and eventually tried Hamilton have survived; an edited marriage under a clause in the Vagrant Act. entry from 1757 states: “N.B. The This case became the basis for a above Person who called himself fictionalised and heavily moralisJohn Brown was afterwards proved ing pamphlet published by Henry a Woman dressed in Man’s apparel, Fielding in 1746. The pamphlet deand of Course separated from Ann scribes how Hamilton “was by the
court sentenced to be publickly and severely whipt four several times, in four market towns within the county of Somerset, to wit, once in each market town, and to be imprisoned, &c”. In July 1777 Ann Marrow was convicted “for going in a man’s cloaths, and being married to three different women by a fictitious name, and for defrauding them of money and effects”. Marrow’s sentence was harsher than some, though it is not clear what distinguished their case from others; they were sentenced to the pillory, and attacked so viciously by the attending crowd that they were blinded.
Contemporary sources usually painted counterfeit husbands as acting out of purely selfish motives. A broadsheet dating from 1701 describes a mother who is so desperate to have her daughter married that she offers 200 pounds to the potential spouse, at which point the daughter “by a strange mistake, married a young Woman in Man’s Apparel, who having got her Portion of 200 pounds left her in the lurch”. The story is treated as a comedic curiosity, eagerly describing the naïveté of the bride and the conniving nature of her suitor, called a “Devil in Britches”. If love was ever considered as a motive, it was usually treated with disdain or amazement. In the case of the deceived wife of Samuel Bundy, a.k.a. Sarah Paul, a London Chronicle article reluctantly admitted that “there seems a strong love, or friendship, on the other side, as she keeps the prisoner company in her confinement”. Indeed since Bundy’s wife refused to appear in court, Bundy could not be pros-
ecuted, and all the judge could do was warn them to “never more to appear in that character”. It would appear that, at least in some cases, love was the primary motive for cover marriages, though the contemporary public of England was unwilling to acknowledge it. Relationships between women (or AFAB people) were not seen as threatening until they involved marriage or sex. The source of these anxieties seems to be a fear of women disrupting or stealing male bodies, roles, and identities. The use of dildos as a form of disguise was a particular source of fascination and euphemism. Fielding describes “something of too vile, wicked and scandalous a nature, which was found in the Doctor’s trunk, having been produced in evidence against her.” Such accounts seem to be almost pornographic in intent, though Fielding insists that he only writes in order to warn impressionable young women away from similar pursuits. Although the crime itself was apparently fraud, Fielding constantly describes it in sexual terms. Intense love and respect between women could be tolerated, it seems, but only up until it began to infringe on male power structures. The contemporary British public often did not know what to make of cover marriages. They were generally represented as freakish and somehow lesser to normative heterosexual relationships. They were dismissed as a form of fraud or theft. This conception discounts the feelings and perceptions of the people involved, in favour of supporting an unstable “truth” about sex and about gender relations.
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Things Got Hot Before The Revolution Laurel Parker takes a look at the life of Marie Antoinette and her suffering, not at the hands of revolutionaries, but under heteronormative patricarchy. Speculation about a person’s sexuality does not sit well with me, but it is essentially what Queer History is all about. Before the Wom*n’s History movement was able to examine the experience and influence of women in History, it first had to uncover their existence. This is about the stage we are at with Queer History.
er, that Marie was engaged in decadent, pastel-silked, high-femme embraces with the ladies at court. Her close and intimate relationships with certain ladies, particularly Madame de Polignac and Princess de Lamballe, were the subject of rumour and gossip throughout her lifetime. Marie’s lesbian inclinations have been hinted at in Radcylffe Hall’s 1928 lesbian classic The Well of Loneliess, and more recently The victors write history, and there in Farewell My Queen (2013), directed by is no denying that the biggest winner Benoit Jacquot. of all has been heteronormativity. So the first task for the queer historian is The Well of Loneliness (spoilers!) takes to demonstrate that queer sexualities place as news of the Storming of the have existed through time. Due to the Bastille reaches Versailles, and follows limited availability of sources providing the intimate relationship between Marie insight into female sexuality and sexual Antoinette and de Lamballe, who was the agency (see: patriarchy), it is even more Queen’s favourite at the time. The film difficult, and unlikely, to uncover a depicts de Lamballe’s escape from France Queer Wom*n’s History*. before the Revolution and the overthrow of the monarchy. What the film does not Marie Antoinette is best known for depict is the gruesome death of de Poligsaying, in the face of a French peas- nac at the hands of the mob, involving antry starved of bread, “let them a symbolic removal and display of her eat cake.” The truth of the legend is genitalia. The murder was a direct result doubtful. It is far more likely, howev- of the rumoured lesbian love affair.
Dirt, Dust and Ruins
During her reign as Queen Marie Antoinette, Marie was often accused and depicted in pamphlets by her enemies as engaging in the “German Vice” (code: super dyke). These may, after all, have simply been rumours, as most heterosexual historians would argue. It is clear, though, that the rumours were based on the intimate, and perhaps suspicious relationships Marie cultivated with particular women. During the well known seven-year gap between their marriage and their first child, Marie gathered about her a tight-knit group of friends, including the de Lamballe and de Polignac, and retreated from court as much as possible to spend time with them. Prior to their intimate relationships with Marie, neither de Lamballe nor de Polignac was influential at court. De Polignac was named Superintendent to the Queen’s House, and de Lamballe Governess to France’s Children (the royal children), ensuring their continual, intimate access to the Queen.
commonly been blamed on Louis XVI, who is frequently charged with impotence, disinterest, and awkwardness. What has not been explored, however, is the role that Marie played in delaying her marital obligations for as long as possible. Both de Polignac and de Lamballe were not without their marital problems either. There is a common argument that de Lamballe could not have been engaging in a sexual or emotionally romantic relationship with Marie because she was “prudish”, even with her husband. I don’t know about you, but she sounds super gay to me. So was Marie Antoinette a lesbian? Obviously substantial evidence is scarce, but if there is even the slightest chance that this femme dreamboat was one of us, I’m sure going to claim it. *This author recognises that the Queer Histories of POC, Trans* and Intersex, the lower classes, and other oppressed persons are even more difficult to substantiate due to increased invisibilities.
The long, barren marital period has
“II’ll eat what I want” - Editorial Collective Member
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IN MEMORY OF
Amber Maxwell The national network of marriage equality activists would like to acknowledge the passing of one of the campaign’s firebrands. Amber Maxwell was a Perth activist involved in Equal Love WA and was committed to seeing an end not only to the ban on same-sex marriage rights, but to LGBTI oppression in its entirety. She was a determined fighter. She spoke out about all injustice, and was known for giving fiery speeches against the government’s latest attempt to dodge the demands of the LGBTI community for civil rights. She never shied away from the ground work necessary for the building of a movement, spending many hours travelling from her accommodation to put up posters at university campuses she didn’t attend. She truly was humble, never wanting nor expecting personal glory for her committment and activism. In a recent article, Amber spoke about the difficulties she faced as a trans woman. In a sadly portentous summary of her experience she wrote: “Life as a transgender or gender diverse person is often characterised by difficulty and discrimination. Family rejection, homelessness, depression, attempted suicide – these are a regular part of our existence. There are, however, rays of hope. The campaign for equal marriage rights provides both a source of inspiration and a platform from which other issues faced by LGBTI people can be addressed.” The struggle against homophobia and transphobia will continue without her. She would not only have wanted this, she would have expected it. It will be in her honour and memory that we will continue to speak out and raise our fists to demand a better world, a world where the terrible personal suffering she had to endure will have faded into history.
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Andy
The total yearly number of homeless LGBT kids in America in 2012 was around 6 to 12 times the population of Greenland.
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I stand on a high rock Tim Scriven
Alexandra Mildenhall
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HAIKU: misogynist shit / homophobic and racist / fuck Tony Abbott
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Topsy-Turvey Michael Day examines the ‘top ot bottom’ binary
I
belong to a queer subgroup that some would say doesn’t exist. They say that I just haven’t properly realised it yet; they say I’m still ‘experimenting’; they say that I’m hiding from the truth. They say that claiming to ‘go both ways’ only saves me from the shame or stigma of a label. But the truth is I am no longer learning, or experimenting or hiding from any truths. And as for shame or stigma? Honey I’m way too much of a narcissist for that! No, the truth is I-do-both. Yes reader’s of Queer Honi I’m proud to declare to you that I go both ways! Yup, that’s right - I’m vers. Unlike some who claim this, I am not a ‘straight acting’ grindr torso covering for being a primed and ready power bottom. Nor am I that shy guy sitting opposite you on our first date, scared that I’ll give you the ‘wrong’ answer. Nor am I some twinkalicious slut saying anything to get laid (well, that’s at least half true). At this point you may thinking that this is all well and good, but why should you dear x care? Or more so, why should I, the handsome writer, care so much about making you care about how I fuck?
Even when I’m not cruising Paddington’s dark alleys, it seems I can’t escape this binary’s ugly face. Whether it’s one friend’s declaration that he’s a bottom, so he can only have a guy with big shoulders and a big dick, or hearing another’s sincere admission that he loves his boyfriend so much, that he would even bottom for him. We insist on giving our sexuality a 1950’s gender politic. Isn’t the
whole point of being modern ‘liberated’ queers rejecting gender and sex straightjackets? And I get that some genuinely prefer one over the other - I don’t intend to criticise authentic preference. But I hate the exclusivity. I hate the pride with which guys announce that they’re the top. And I hate that these phoney masc/ fem breeder stereotypes have infiltrated
my bed. We have the superior taste, the superior home wares and the superior sex lives - why can’t we have the superior identity categories too? After all, like my mother never said, versatility is the spice of (gay) life!
“Are you a top or a bottom?” First of all, what can I say, I really hate pigeon holing (a pun as disgusting as it is unintentional). But secondly and more importantly, what really pains me (among other things) is to see that there is this stupid macho dichotomy still pervading gay relationships. Admittedly, I expect it a bit from the unenlightened breeders. We’ve all endured that Abbott-esque question ‘so which one’s the man in the relationship?’ You cringe a smile as they chuckle at their oh so clever observation, but in your head you want to shout something like ‘THEY’RE GAY, THEY’RE BOTH THE MAN! THAT’S THE POINT OF BEING GAY!’ The worst of it, though, is that this is how we endemically think of ourselves. ‘Are you a top or a bottom?’ How very, very sick I am of this question (admittedly, if every guy you’re talking to is asking you this, you probably need to get off grindr and into the real world). To this question I can only answer with another question - do you really really need to know that bad? Is my personality so boring that you can’t wait for our bedroom chemistry to give you an answer? Must I be so diminished to an ill fitting label? But don’t stress, if you ask me this question, chances are I will not be sleeping with you anyway.
Mitt Romney legalised gay marriage in his role as Governor of Massachusetts.
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A vastly inadequate and incomplete list of LGBTQ hip hop artists and rappers of colour you should know about Oscar Monaghan Homohop, gayhop, queerhop: these are all terms used to describe a vibrant subgenre within hip-hop that has its roots in the work of artists who have been producing music for decades. Not to generalise, but they are all extremely cute, and were all being queer and saying queer things in the hip hop and rap scenes long before Macklemore came along.
RoxXxan
The only UK-based rapper in this list, RoxXxan spits about loving and fucking women with lyrics that pop with an energetic wit. Her sound borders on harsh and is unsettling at moments; RoxXxan takes no prisoners with her gritty and raw beats, with her raps touching on topics like queer culture, politics, and music.
Angel
Haze
Pansexual and proud, Angel Haze’s tomboyish presence is increasingly making her mark in rap. Lyrically impressive, she uses rap to talk about her experiences as a rape survivor, and her experiences of being a queer woman of colour. Check out both her freestyle tracks, as well as her phenomenal covers of songs like Cleaning Out My Closet, and Bitch Bad.
Deep Dickollective
Considered a grandfather of queerhop, Tori Fixx has been around since the mid-90s. His songs range from the personal to the explicitly political; his 2004 album Marry Me included songs that expressly argued against the antigay politics that dominated in the early 2000s, as well as tracks that detailed the domestic life he shared with his partner at the time.
Deep Dickollective are no longer making music together, but their influence in homo hop has been wide-ranging. Founded by Juba Kalamka, Tim’m T. West, and Phillip Atibta Goff, the group formed after West struggled to get gigs when proprietors learnt that he was gay. Their political poetics touched upon issues of race, sexuality, and the construction of hyper-masculinised subjects in hip-hop.
Le1f Both as a rapper and producer, he is known for unorthodox production styles. He attained initial fame for his work with Das Racist, but gained recognition for his solo work with the release of his mixtape Dark York last year, which experiments with elements of house and techno. He runs the hip hop label Camp & Street, the name of which should give you some idea about his adherence to hegemonic masculinity. He also hilariously tweeted about Macklemore’s white, heteronormative privilege.
Cakes Da Killa
Meshell Ndegeocello
Last Offence
Sissy Nobby
Cakes wears flower crowns and for that alone, I am into him. As a rapper who sings a lot about having sex with guys, the 21 year old has been challenging the norms of rap since he released his first EP, Easy Bake Oven Vol. 1, in 2011. Invested in dismantling both the heterosexual, misogynistic, and ethos of hip-hop, and the mainstream de-sexualised representations of queer sexualities, Cakes Da Killa sings about queer lust and love with an accessible flow that is both loud and vivacious.
German-born, American, Meshell Ndgeheocello is an openly bisexual singer-songwriter, vocalist, rapper, and bassist. While Ndegeocello doesn’t call herself a hip-hop artist, claiming that the now white consumer-driven has lost its countercultural roots, her music incorporates hip hop, rap, funk, soul, R&B, and jazz elements that has given her a career that has spanned over a decade and ten studio albums.
Speaking of the masculine, where Deep Dickollective tended towards the lyrical and melodic, Last Offence, spits out the hard beats, rapping about fucking guys, and the institutional bigotry that sits at the intersection of race, and homosexuality. He frequently collaborates with other homohop artists (especially Bry’Nt and Nano Reyes).
Sissy Nobby emerged out of the New Orleans bounce scene, where he continues to make significant contributions, along with other sissy bounce and sissy rap artists. Sissy’s work fuses elements of bounce, electro, rock and hip hop into energetic tracks that both fuck with gender stereotypes and disrupt the hyper-masculinity of the genre. Along with Big Freedia (also queer), Sissy Nobby is one of the most popular and prolific artists on the bounce scene at the moment.
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Australia is now one of just two English speaking countries in the world that completely outlaws same-sex marriage.
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Fridays at the Florist On Friday night you miss another party because you’re working, but you don’t really care. It’s busy, and they have you cramped in the corner with the magnolia branches dead-heading a bucket of camellia. The petals are silky, and the stems make little cracking sounds when you pull them off the branch. Like all the oyster imagery in Tipping the Velvet, if you wrote a lesbian drama it would be full of flowers. Suggestive descriptions of petals and really obvious symbolism. Your girlfriend said you should write a romantic comedy where a businessman came to buy flowers for his wife and fell in love with you instead. In the end the twist would be that you were gay, and you and the wife would run off together. Now every time a businessman comes in you have to try so hard not to laugh. Once, right after you first started going out, they put you down the back unwrapping the phalaenopsis orchids. You had to tear them open at the seam down the side of the plastic, and every time you did you thought about the first time she unbuttoned her shirt in front of you. In your lesbian drama her skin would be the same pale cream colour as the orchids that trembled when you stripped the plastic off them. You didn’t even know if you were queer, and you spent months trying to seduce her. Then after she finally asked you out you were at work and your boss was talking to you about Rufus Wainwright. “I like his music, but I’m not such a big fan of his being flamingly homosexual. I mean, I’ll admit I’m homophobic enough to be a little repulsed by it.” It was getting dark, and raining, and you were bringing all the potted begonias back inside. Streams of rain were hanging down from the branches of the big gum tree by the door. Your boss was making up bunches of roses, snapping the rubber bands around them with his thick fingers and rambling on about the Wainwrights. And you were laughing to yourself because tomorrow you were going on a date with a girl. Mira Schlosberg
An intersex Virginian in 1629 was ordered by a court to wear items of both male and female clothing.
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The Deputy’s Speech Anthony Albanese, a seemingly confident man bent on leadership and control over the Labor party, has confessed he sourced a ‘QuAC’ speech therapist to help improve his image, hoping to attract support from the Queer community. The LGBTIQ group, being mostly registered as Greens voters, make up a large amount of the Grayndler electorate not yet wooed by Albanese. Labor political advisors have suggested that an image makeover, starting with the deputy’s abrasive manner of speaking, could improve support in this area. However, critics have railed against the Minister regarding his approach. Several sources have come forward, including Albanese’s previous “speech therapist”, a local queer actor named Alan Degradil, who freely admits he is a completely unqualified therapist. Degradil was hired by Albanese’s staffers in order to cater to the Minister’s belief that he must increase his popular support, a-la King George VI, a figure of inspiration for Albanese after a screening of The King’s Speech at a Labor policy reform party.
In response to Honi’s questions, Degradil said: “I really enjoyed working with Anthony. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but he was really enthusiastic. We had this great scene- I mean conversation- where he got all heated about Tony Abbott’s likeability because I sat in Kevin Rudd’s old caucus seat. I couldn’t really understand a lot of it because he speaks in this really jerky way. He accidentally spat on my face a few times. It just added to the drama.” “We needed to work intensely with Anthony, drilling lip exercises, enunciation and elocution, to teach him how to speak past his teeth instead of through them, encouraging him to use twitter and avoid making ANY public speeches whatsoever.” Said one staffer. “He wanted no one to know just how unapproachable and strange he sounded. He just wouldn’t shut up about that stupid fucking movie The King’s Speech. We never actually thought he’d make himself a star in his own weird movie.” Albanese, a notorious film buff, was also caught out last year in when he was found to be plagiarizing lines from the Michael Douglas film The President. Although the media fallout was considerable
Blythe Worthy
(according to Sunrise’s David ‘Koshie’ Koch), he did stick to his cabinet’s advice and tweeted a response instead of making a public apology. “We were really impressed.” A nameless/faceless informant said. “He messed up but he repaired it by not letting the public see how boring he truly was. He just tweeted a Simpson’s catchphrase and moved on. It was a popular decision.” Yesterday, Albanese defended himself via his blog, heeding the advice of those in his employ, hoping to brush over the entire incident. Albanese blogged: “It was difficult to find a wacky speech therapist like Geoffrey Rush, so I did actually have to hire an actor who both looked and could act with that cheerful offbeat sense of humour we as a nation have come to know and love from the iconic film star.” There hasn’t been an overly positive reaction from the Queer community here in Sydney, although it is understood that some appreciate the effort.
Interrelated
Michael Leadbetter explores how rainbows define us There are many physical markers of ‘being gay’: rainbow flags, Oxford Street Clubs and awkward sexual health posters. Physical aspects of culture, called ‘material culture’, are an important part of society as we use them to communicate with others. Material culture is also a by-product of our intangible social existence (e.g. conversations, dances and rituals). For example the Sydney queer community uses rainbow wristbands, the Sly Fox bar and the whole Darlinghurst district as physical markers of our culture. Some wrongly assume we create our environment in order to serve society, and that it is a physical manifestation of who we are. However, sometimes the opposite is true – our identity is constructed through the material around us. The anger that breaks out when manifestations of group identity are threatened became evident this year when transport minister Duncan Gay destroyed the rainbow crossing at Taylor Square. The GBLTQ and allies reacted to this destruction of an important identity marker by chalking rainbows across Sydney and around the world in protest.
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Here, a motif of identity doesn’t just tie a group together, it redefines ownership and presence within a civic space. The material of chalk and pavement ties together groups of people in a constructive act (creating rainbows), as well as signalling their presence to viewers, who may have stamped across them, poured water over them, uploaded photos onto online networks or proceded to create their own rainbows. All these behaviours come from different people’s interactions queer material culture. Thus the destruction of one rainbow resulted in more rainbows, impacting on how people behaved in the surrounding space. Just as our interactions with spaces were subtly changed by cultural markers, so too do other material signals create and perpetuate behaviours. A different example of this is Queer - particularly male - clubbing culture. Spaces such as Oxford street clubs influence what is important for gay male identity by linking gay male culture to tight clothes, LSD and lady Gaga. These become markers of identity based on the space in which people interact. This both perpetuates a behaviour and exacerbates its importance as a social activity that one must access to be a ‘normal’ part of the community.
So the intangible parts of social action are tied in with the physical environment we create, which then determines social behaviour. This also happens at impermanent social actions such as Mardi Gras or a protest. At a protest, whether one carries rainbow flags or a Nazi swastika makes all the difference in communicating intent and the identity to others. The social effect of material leads to the material being tied to actions. The more we use markers, the more concrete the meaning becomes, linking Queer identity to rainbows. Similarly at Mardi Gras, the largest, flashiest floats receive the most praise so that, over time, Mardi Gras becomes consistently grander in scale. The signals and social coding of identity become bigger and brighter to ensure each group’s distinctiveness. Here people are not just competing
with each other for attention, but the material itself becomes the justification for the increasing resources spent on the material. The material we produce creates identity, as well as creating shared patterns of meaning within a group. These markers are first employed to serve GBLTQ group identity, but over time begin to define and impact the group itself. Additionally, material influences society by creating behaviours associated with ever larger signals of identity. So disturbingly we begin to serve our environment. Our markers of identity are not defined by us, they define us. Photo by Michael Leadbetter
Russia recently set the riot squad on a rally to promote fitness and health after they mistook it for a pride march.
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Queerbaiting Jem Nockles investigates TV’s infuriating NO HOMO epidemic I watch a lot of tv. I sit in lectures obsessively organising my external hard drive both alphabetically and by genre. Give me a HBO show and I’ll tell you my favourite episode. I’m also into the ladies. And so I, and lots of other queer people, actively seek out shows where I can see a semblance of myself on screen. We demand media representa-
“Queerbaiting is when writers and actors get together and decide that there is going to be glaringly obvious rainbow subtext infused into every action of a particular character.” tion and to be honest it’s pretty thin on the ground, despite what One Million Moms keep on shaking their fists about (seriously, go read their campaign about The Fosters, an adorable show about kids with two mums). That’s why we’ve all sat through the fucking agony of The L Word and Queer as Folk. Because that’s all we’ve got. Queerbaiting is when writers and actors get together and decide that there
is going to be glaringly obvious rainbow subtext infused into every action of a particular character. They create someone that queer people can relate to, and then proceed to actively ignore it, often shoving them into hetero relationships when the gaydar reaches a tipping point. Essentially, they want to attract a queer audience (and queer dollars) without alienating the homophobes and conservative studio execs. What this does is tell queer people that their stories are not important enough to be told with a shred of dignity, that their stories are only acceptable if they operate in a heteronormative framework.
Shows such as Sherlock, Supernatural and Hannibal are all guilty of this, with glaring homoeroticism written in each episode, with Dean in Supernatural saying with flirty-ass eyes to Castiel “the last time someone looked at me like that I
got laid”. A problem for another article is that this these shows play into a tumblr dynamic of straight women fetishizing gay men as well as the standard fare queerbaiting (although I do have some queer ladyfriends who I happen to know write some ridiculously kinky destial fanfic) Another prime offender is crimedrama Rizzoli & Isles, where gruff voiced police officer Rizzoli and her brilliant blonde scientist buddy Isles spend approximately 78% of each episode aggressively flirting with each other. Lead actress Angie Harmon has openly admitted to “playing the tension”, adding on that “sometimes we’ll do a take for that demo”. We’re not a singular demographic that can be monetized by a spare take where you guys have passionate eyesex! Subtext is treated humorously, with a sly wink, and that doesn’t really cut it anymore. If Rizzoli & Isles existed in the real world, they would at least sit down and talk about the fact that they seem to not be able to wrench their eyes away from each other’s cleavage and that they spend A LOT of time reclining on satin sheets in Isles’ bed. “Besties that
could be lezzies” is a trope that is often played for a gag, and that microaggression is easy enough to ignore. But when you seriously base an entire show on it,
when you expect to get queer dollars but won’t actually acknowledge your actions, is where I get really mad. I can excuse it in 1995 with Xena and Gabrielle, but now? Fuck off. Ultimately, queer baiting in some ways is even more painful than simple erasure, because it dangles fair and equal representation in front of you, and then snatches it away.
Gays were not officially recognised as victims of the holocaust by the German government until December 2000.
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USU Queer Events
USU SHADES
Every year the USU Queer Events Coordinators organise a series of events for queer students on campus. This year we have hosted games nights, afternoon teas, weekly drinks at Hermanns, a Golden Gaytime giveaway for the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, amongst other things.
After four short years on campus, SHADES has become an influential player within the Sydney University queer community. As the society has grown, it has become increasingly important to think candidly about the role of SHADES in this community, and the steps future executive members can take to ensure ongoing success. Prior to my election as SHADES President in May, I took the opportunity to speak. As the position was uncontested, this was not to convince the room, but, rather, to signpost my intentions for the presidency— namely, increased collaboration with other societies, and steps that could be taken to make SHADES more inclusive. I am pleased to report that the first of these aims has already been realized. This year, SHADES donated party profits to the Sydney University Queer Revue, and also ran a ‘SHADES Attends Queer Revue’ event on opening night. SHADES has supported off-campus queer groups in the past year, donating over $1000 from our Christmas party to youth charity Twenty10 and recently holding a BBQ to promote Wear It Purple Day. Our next joint event will be an erotic lesbian fiction reading night, held in conjunction with DarcySoc. This event relates directly to that second aim: making SHADES a more inclusive society. We currently await permission from the USU to make the erotic lesbian fiction night an
Lane Sainty
Priyanka Ray
There’s plenty more still coming up this year too. Look out this week for a movie screening of Witches, Faggots, Dykes and Poofters on Wednesday, with guest speakers from the first Mardi Gras in 1978, and a queer-women’s autonomous afternoon tea on Friday. Also, this October, for the very first time, we’ll be putting on Sydney University first ever queer ball, Glitter Gala, together with SHADES. If you’re just looking for somewhere where you can meet some new people, and learn some more about being queer in a safe and welcoming environment – come join us on Wednesday evenings at the Queerspace for Identity. Every year we run a series of workshops for anyone who is questioning their sexuality or gender, or just looking to get more involved in the queer community. On a personal note – this was one of my first events I went to when I finally admitted learn more about yourself, make new friends, and get a little more comfortable with the queer community. You can contact us at queerconvenors@usu.usyd.edu.au. It’s a big gay world out there. Hope to meet you all soon!
autonomous wom*n’s event. Whether or not we can do that, we respectfully ask that only people who identify as wom*n attend. Some point out that this request runs against the unofficial SHADES motto of “Everyone is welcome”. However, while SHADES aspires to be inclusive, the past few years have seen a consistent gender disparity at events, which has only marginally improved via such strategies as holding our parties in popular lesbian areas such as Newtown. This event is exclusive in name, but inclusive by nature; allowing the community of women in SHADES to thrive. This new direction might throw into question the ‘apolitical’ label bestowed upon SHADES by its creators in 2010— an already beleaguered line in the SHADES constitution. It is true that SHADES exists to hold non-political social events on campus— to cast differences of sexuality aside and enjoy life, no matter what ‘shade’ you are. This aim intended not to diminish the hard work of queer activists, but to acknowledge that one size does not fit all. This is perhaps the best aspect of the Sydney University queer community: that there are so many options on offer. We should not forget that this was not the case five years ago. The queer community on campus has grown immensely since then, aided by the prioritization of collaboration and inclusivity. We should continue to prize these things.
The USU Queer Coordinators present the inaugural
Thursday 10th October 7pm - midnight The Refectory, Holme Building ACCESS - $45 General Admission - $35 Tickets available from ACCESS Desk
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Russia recently set the riot squad on a rally to promote fitness and health after they mistook it for a pride march.
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Queer Officers’ Reports
queer.officers@src.usyd.edu.au
Eleanor Barz looks back on an exciting year in the collective and Fahad Ali reflects on the meaning of the word ‘queer’ The Queer Action Collective (QuAC) has been working hard all year to ensure that Sydney Uni is a great place to be queer. Our main goals are to represent the needs of LGBTIQ students, and to provide a safe, friendly environment for them to make new friends and engage in queer activism. In March we spent hours together building a cardboard Quadrangle, complete with a clock tower, to create the first official University of Sydney Mardi Gras float. Marching down Oxford Street in our lab coats and academic gowns was definitely one of the most exhilarating experiences that I have had this year, and was a wonderful way to begin my term as Queer Officer.
In 2013 we have been committed to queer women’s issues, working with the Women’s Collective the University of Sydney Union’s Women’s and Queer Events coordinators to establish a Queer Women’s Network. We started out in O-Week by stocking our stall with plenty of material from ACON’s Young Women’s Project. Last semester, we organised a movie night and an afternoon tea at Verge Gallery. Look out for the upcoming autonomous Queer Women’s Tea party (Part II), which will take place this Friday at 2 pm in the Manning Loggia as part of Pride Festival! Other social events this year included the fortnightly USU sponsored Queer Beers, a trip to the aquarium (‘Aquee-
rium’), bake sales, and more! As you probably know, this week is Pride Festival so be sure to check out the schedule to find out what’s on. But being a part of the collective isn’t just about making friends and supporting queer students. It’s also a major avenue for student activism. We have organised QuAC contingents at numerous rallies this year, including those against police brutality, the inhumane treatment of refugees, and of course the queerphobic laws banning marriage . In semester one, we collectively wrote a submission to the NSW Legislative Council inquiry into samesex marriage, which was published on the Parliament of NSW website and
even cited in the resulting report! Over the semester break, we sent almost thirty delegates to the annual Queer Collaborations conference for an intensive week of workshops, conference floor and political action. Nominations for the 2014 Queer Officer positions are currently open to anyone who is a current queer-identifying undergraduate student, and who has attended at least three QuAC meetings this year. If you have any questions about the role or how to nominate, then either email us or come to our meetings at 1 pm on Mondays in the Queerspace (Holme Building). As always, new members are more than welcome! Eleanor Barz
We are all queer by choice. There is a significant and under appreciated distinction between LGBTI and queer. Being LGBTI is an intrinsic, immutable property of the self—certainly subject to fluidity, but wholly involuntary. I am a gay man, and I understand this to mean (in the context of myself), that I am sexually and romantically attracted to people who are male-bodied. But, like my love for Lianne La Havas or my aversion to blue cheese, my identity as a homosexual really says more about what I’m into rather than who I am as a person—it doesn’t define me in the slightest. My identity as queer is something more substantial, and one that I am more proud of. Queer is a political identity, one that is defined in opposition to the heteropatriarchy and the structures that oppress us. Queer is resistance; it is a constant challenge to
the social hegemony that divides us into worthy and unworthy, accepted and estranged. In our context, our sexualities and our sexual and/or gender identities are constructed as ‘abnormal’. That is what lies at the heart of our identity as queer—it’s an affirmation of our existence as deviant and different. But we are an extraordinary community. It was political and activist mobilisation of the gay and lesbian community that effectively shattered widespread social stigma and oftenviolent homophobic prejudice and discrimination and suppressed the AIDS epidemic. An overview of the radical history of the gay liberation movement would be a lengthy piece in itself, but one does not need to look far to find authentication for the effectiveness of direct action in achieving social change. We have overcome so many chal-
lenges, some that at the time seemed insurmountable, but we now face the threat of social conservatism—an insidious, destructive force that is obsessed with immobilizing progress, restricting freedom, and limiting a heterogeneity of expression An absolute stasis of social structures is infeasible, which is why conservatives have excised the G, L, and the B from LGBTI, and extended an olive branch to a small circle of middle-class homosexuals who pose minimal threat to guarded social structures. But we must resist. We cannot allow ourselves to become subject to the whims of the social conservatives. Marriage equality will be won in the same way as the suffragette and civil rights movements: on the streets, with rallies, together as one community. It may even be delivered in the term of a conservative government, as it
was in Britain. But we must never make the mistake of supporting a conservative agenda, or going to lengths to appease these fundamentalists. The truth is that this virulent strain of faux-progressive conservatism affords equality to only part our community. What is to become of the poly, intersex, and sex and gender diverse communities? They will be left behind, excluded and oppressed. An injury to one is an injury to all—as long as there are people in the queer community who are being marginalised by prevailing social norms, I will continue to show solidarity with my fellow queers and challenge those structures that hold us down. The theme of this year’s Pride Festival is ‘pride, passion, power’. Let us take pride in our community, and remember that our passion and power will deliver us a better world, as long as we stand united. Fahad Ali
Wom*n’s Officers’ Report Given that both patriarchy and queerphobia are premised upon essentialist ideas about gender and sexuality, it would follow that feminism and queer activism would be profoundly interlinked and co-operative. However, this is not always the case. Indeed, queer people have often been marginalised in the women’s movement, and women have also been marginalised in the queer movement. Some of the queer identifying members of women’s collective have put together a manifesto of sorts that outlines ways in which queer activists can change their behaviour to create a more inclusive space for women. It is as follows: • Don’t assume it’s okay to touch women without their consent because “you aren’t attracted to them”. • Never justify making a joke about assaulting me by saying: “I’m gay,
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how could I rape you, haha?’’ Don’t think that because you’re a gay man it means you can’t be a misogynist. Don’t assume your oppression gives you an understanding of mine. Please stop saying vaginas are gross. Don’t tell femmes that they ‘aren’t really queer’. Don’t question my identity just because I’m currently dating a man. Do not assume heterosexuality because someone doesn’t embody camp/butch/femme/queer culture stereotypes. Don’t assume people of colour can’t be queer. Having your own breasts/butt doesn’t entitle you to touch mine. Don’t label bisexuality as ‘less queer’ or ‘transitional’.
usydwomenscollective@gmail.com • Don’t ask us how we fuck. • Don’t assume someone’s sex, sexuality, or gender identity on appearance/behaviour. • Respectfully ask for preferred pronouns. • Do not enforce queer stereotypes by assuming people’s sexuality with your ‘gaydar’. • Do not regard polyamorous relationships as less serious/ important/intense as monoamorous ones. • Don’t brag about ‘turning’ me. • Don’t make assumptions about my genitalia. Our movements can only be strengthened through co-operation and open discourses, so let’s start respecting each other.
But seriously, fuck Abbott.
Queer Women’s Network SMASH the Gaytriarchy! Join us for afternoon tea @ The Loggia Friday 20th Sept, 2pm. For more information: queer.officers@ src.usyd.edu.au
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