Graphic by Zoe Mauerhan –Gay Gay-Secret Jungle | Cover Art by Nicolomo + Navin Jayasekera
Hello Glassies!
Wow, it’s here already! Our very own RAINBOW GLASS! My name is Max, and I’m one of the VicePresidents (Gender and Sexuality) of the QUT Guild in 2019, homo-in-chief.
Publishing a special, queer edition of GLASS was something we wanted to achieve for no other reason than because we have stories to tell. Queer identities and stories are unique, valid, and worthy of printing in a beautiful hard copy magazine, and GLASS is here to express that.
In the recent past, there’s been very little word on the gay agenda at QUT, which is a shame. That’s why in addition to a Queer GLASS, this year there’s also a $5,000 funding injection for
the Queer Collective, which is being formally re-established this year after Guild Council unanimously passed a motion at the Annual General Meeting committing to do so.
Thanks for reading this nifty little mag. Keep submitting your work to GLASS, we love what you’ve done with the place.
With love from your Homo-in-chief, QUT Guild Vice President (Gender & Sexuality)
Max Fox
Two roads diverged in a gendered wood And I, sad I could not travel down both Nor forge a new path between them Said ‘fuck it’ and sat down
Many a soul would pass me by Each of them choosing a lane Some of them would take longer than others But they all chose and were on their way
Some would travel down one road And stay the course for quite a while Before returning to the junction They followed the call of truth now
After a millennium I was approached By a being with eyes cold and burning It told me that I would have to move That my protest must come to an end
So... I marched headlong into the wilderness and I haven’t looked back
I remember the advent of attraction.
Her.
Staring, unable to look away. Jeans and a t-shirt, effortlessly cool. A unicorn in a one-horse town. Who was she?
I remember curiosity and fear and longing and youthful ignorance turning attraction into admiration.
I remember eager denial. My mother catching me staring, asking if I knew her. I didn’t. But I wanted to.
I remember the emergence of love. Him.
Tall, tall, tall with hands so soft and a smile so kind. An exception to the rule, masculine without intimidation. A lifetime overridden. Not my father. Not a threat.
He makes me feel safe. He makes me feel like I’m home.
Looking at me like I’ll give him the stars. He’s looking at me like I exist.
~ Sophie Farmer ~I remember realising, Slowly. Slipping into it like slipping into a dream. A final piece clicking into place. The word having meaning, The meaning having me. Bisexual. I remember looking at him, Smiling. Speaking those words that I was only just discovering. Nothing but love. Nothing but acceptance. Nothing wrong with me. Finally.
I remember comfort. Her, Him, Both.
~ J.A. Lightfoot ~
You are worthy.
You are worthy of love.
You are worthy of your love. You are loved.
You are loved and worthy.
You are loved and worthy and cherished.
You are stronger.
You are stronger than you think. You are stronger than you think or feel. It is not weakness.
Your love is not weakness.
Your love for yourself is not weakness.
You exist.
Go on and exist.
Go on and exist in a way that feels real. You are real.
You are real and valid. You are real and valid and beautiful.
You are beautiful.
Your scars are beautiful.
Your scars aren’t flaws, they’re just beautiful. You can cry.
If it hurts, you can cry.
If it all hurts too much, you can cry.
The world is brighter.
The world is brighter with you in it.
The world is brighter with what you put in it.
I’d like to thank you.
I’d like to thank you for being you.
I’d like to thank you for being this excellent you.
You are worthy.
You are worthy of love.
You are worthy of loving who you love. Be loved.
May you be loved.
May you be loved how you want to be loved.
You are worthy of so much more than you think, and you are deserving of love.
You are worthy of so much, and you are deserving of love.
You are worthy and you are deserving of love.
You are worthy of love. You are worthy. You.
Free RAPID STI testing will be available for QUT students weekly in semester two, confirms QUT Guild Vice-President (Gender and Sexuality) after meetings with the university medical centre resulted in a 50/50 cost share agreement between the medical centre and the Guild.
“Our survey data shows that nearly three-quarters (71%) of students prefer RAPID to other forms of getting tested. 48% of students who engaged with the service in Week 12 had never been tested before, and a further 21% had gone more than 12 months without a test,” said Mr Fox.
“Sexual health should be a priority for everyone, and I’m really proud that by getting the university and RAPID on board we can make it easier than ever for students to know their status.”
RAPID will be available every Wednesday in Semester 2, in addition to two week-long blasts in Week 1 and Week 10.
For more information about this service, visit qutguild.com/rapid.
At our Annual General Meeting, Guild Council unanimously committed to formally re-establishing the QUT Queer Collective as part of the QUT Guild, and allocating $5,000 for the Queer Collective to use as it sees fit. Any member of the Queer Collective is entitled to apply for funding, and we’d like to encourage you to access this funding to advance the objectives of the collective.
We’re proud to support the QUT Queer Collective. All members of the QUT community who identify as LGBTIQA+ are welcome to join, and allies are welcome at public events.
The Queer Collective facilitates social events, political activism and provides a place to meet people just like you.
Take charge of your passion projects and get involved below by joining the Queer collective or follow us on Instagram to keep up to date with some of the great projects that are sure to flourish.
Mum’s eyes flicked. Road to dash clock. “We’re going to be late.”
“I told you it takes thirty minutes to get there.” I gazed past the glass. Trees swept beside us on the highway. Branches curled inward in the wind.
“No, you didn’t.”
“I told you yesterday. When we were making the almond swee–”
“I don’t remember.” Her fingers hit the wheel. Two times. “Do you have the gift?” I rustled through the bag at my feet. There was a box with shiny wrapping. It glinted once. Plain silver one minute and then a kaleidoscope of colour.
“Good.” My phone chirped in the cup holder: Turn right. Indicator ticked. Afternoon sun sunk behind trees. Maybe we would be late.
“So, have you packed?” Mum stared straight. “Uh. Not yet. We’re still trying to figure out the roommate situation…”
“You’re having a roommate? I thought you and–I thought you two were living alone.”
“Me and Alina?” I took a breath. The toothpaste smell of the car air freshener. It made me sick. “She’s my girlfriend, Mum. You have to get used to saying it.”
“It’s not easy for me. How we were brought up…
It was a different time.” Mum slammed the brake. Red light. Car jerked. She winced. “What?” I asked. “There were no gay people when you were growing up?”
“No–” Mum bit the word. She shrugged off my look. “I don’t know. We didn’t know any.” I gripped the seat. Coarse fabric abraded my skin.
When Mum had said she was fine with me moving out, I finally thought she was getting used to the idea. She’d started going through the dishes draw yesterday, pulling out unused rice cookers and tiffins that she said she’d kept for when I had my own place. For your glory box, she’d told me. I’d laughed at the olden days term.
“I didn’t mean to upset you.” She glanced down. “How long does it say now?”
“We need another roommate to split the rent with. The city’s expensive. Alina has a high school friend who might be interested. Her lease is finishing and her old roommate is moving back home.”
“Is she also…?”
“So what if she is?” No reply.
“Her friend’s not gay.” I sighed. “The GPS says two more minutes.”
“It said that five minutes ago. That thing never gets it right.”
“I’ve tried the other app. This one’s better.”
“I don’t know. I don’t trust it. I liked the old one.”
“Hmm-hmm.” I dialled down the air. My arms were cold. Highway shed its hollow skin into suburban colour. We drove in quiet.
“I told you to wear a jacket. And to wear something nice,” Mum added. “It’s their housewarming.”
“I am wearing something nice. I thought you liked this dress?”
“I did.” Her hands turned the wheel. New street. “It’s Aunty Jackie’s day. Don’t upset anything. Now’s not the time to share any news.”
The car slowed. It paused. A long gravel driveway. A house of old brick and tile. Music leaked faintly from inside and out into the autumn air and the wind had died down into a nothing hush.
I checked the clock. Not late.
“Do you understand?” Mum asked.
Her profile was hard. Hard to pin down. Clamped lips. Soft brown cheek. Hair pulled back to straighten out the frizz. There was a twinge in the back of my throat.
If now was a colour it would be teeth-aching toffee. Glazed over, too sweet.
A constant poison that had always filled me with venom, my mind had regularly betrayed me. I was as much of a patient there as anyone else, but in the beginning, I had moxie. Group therapy sessions were always difficult, and I introduced myself with an admission of terrible anxiety, and an apology for any future incidents that I might cause. My own darkness and chronic depression were simply things that I filed away in my stay there, that deep sea of unhappiness, never knowing how to swim.
I had constructed somewhat of a boat, you see—made from words and thoughts that were shared in the sessions. I was trying to steer it in the direction of the doorway, but I never quite made it.
Slouched in the cold aluminium chair, polystyrene cup of water in hand, I stared at my dirty grey cotton socks. That hue came from pacing halls that many people and objects travelled back and forth along every minute of every day. Crash carts and pathology trolleys, patients, visitors… they always call it names like ward, but I know better. Time is always marked by portioning of meals, medications, meeting rooms, cold thermometers. The status of being able to wear your own clothes wasn’t ever afforded to anyone like me. Masses wandered the wide corridors in off-white gowns that never quite tied up at the back. The furniture that wasn’t hard aluminium or plastic didn’t ever exist here.
The water made tiny waves. He sat across from me, rapping his fingers on the table. Three. Four times. I kept my eyes on my socks.
“How do you feel this week?”
“No different.”
I felt much worse. Like I was falling. Always deeper and deeper into a bottomless ravine.
I have no rights here. Nothing. I can’t leave, I can’t choose when to rise or when to lay in bed—there is always a schedule to everything. Always a nurse for everyone. My body is a cage. I can’t refuse the pills that make my mind slow and my speech drawl. If I try, they hold me down, sedate me, and force them down my throat. Only people with electronic identity cards can open doors. There is no rest from screams from inside isolation rooms. There isn’t one person who doesn’t fear me at least a little, after I broke that pencil in half and stabbed my arm’s main artery with it so I could make sure I still bled thick red blood. Crazy is as crazy does.
When they don’t know what to do with you, they put you in here. The prison for the sick. They take your dignity along with your clothes, speak to you as though you are a challenged child and always feed you mush from packets in tiny grey portions, so that if you ever may actually have an appetite, you lose it instantly.
They watch you. Always. They record you. Always. They make note of any negative response or emotion you show, and praise passive behaviour. Always.
He pressed me.
“What say you try and tell me what exactly is wrong?” he blinked.
I explained that I can’t keep food down. I can’t sleep. There was no joy anymore.
I didn’t tell him how good it felt to use my broken pencil to open my thick blue vein just long enough. Because there isn’t one word that wouldn’t be taken as insane.
My existence was scrutinized, emotion taken as a sign of imbalance.
In the place of locked doors and barred windows time was ever so slow.
I glanced at the door.
All the time we’d been sitting in discussion there, my father sat outside by himself.
Perched on a plastic chair, he stared at his feet.
“Would you like me to fetch your father?”
He didn’t wait for a response, stood up and went to open the door. They shook hands, then both walked inside.
“I’m considering a few more weeks and a few more shock treatments, Mr. Campbell. We can only expect a positive result after we have endured some unpleasantness.”
My father’s face relaxed.
“So, we can expect some improvement soon…?”
“Oh, I’m quite sure of it.”
It takes a special kind of strange, she thinks, to be this useless.
Ava wraps her fingers around the coffee mug and considers her options. There, two rows in front and three chairs to the left, is the girl she’d been meaning to talk to. It’s an easily crossed distance. Ava’s even sitting near-ish to the aisle so it’s easy to get out from her seat and go sit with Caitlyn. She could even be a badass about it and go over the seats to plop down beside her. Easy as. Two big steps down and it’s done.
Alternatively, she comes to realise, as she registers that her travel mug is long empty, she could just sit here for the entire lecture without doing anything. Smart. A good use of time. Does exactly zero help to the planet-sized dilemma that she’d been agonising over. The lecturer notices he’s gone five minutes overtime, speed-talks through the last slide so quickly nobody catches it, ends the lecture. People are snapping laptops shut, standing, starting to talk. Ava’s missing her chance.
She shoves her laptop and the travel mug in her bag and bolts for the stairs, feeling distantly guilty when she pushes in front of someone to catch up to Caitlyn, who’s thankfully alone and not chatting with a friend or something like that. Ava bustles right up to her and then stops, abruptly lost for words. Damn, she thinks. She’d been planning for this the entire lecture instead of taking notes, and now she’s botching it.
“You alright there?” Caitlyn asks, raising an eyebrow, and Ava wonders if she’s read too far into their interactions at mutual friends’ parties and bar-crawls. It’s entirely possible she’s about to take a shot at someone who isn’t remotely interested.
“You free Saturday?” Ava manages, and Caitlyn gives a long, slow blink of bewilderment as she pushes open the door to the hall and they’re free of the crowd of students. Ava can see the second that Caitlyn puts the pieces together in her head, the way her eyebrows suddenly jerk upwards and her mouth opens a little.
“Oh,” she says, and for a split second Ava is reeling but then Caitlyn continues, “sure, I guess? What did you want to do?”
Ava blanches. She… hadn’t actually thought that far ahead. Caitlyn must read it on her face because the taller woman barks a laugh and hitches her laptop bag higher on her shoulder. “Just wanted to hang out? That’s cool, I guess. We could probably get dinner or something,”
It’s a relief that, as annoying as Ava finds the cliche, lifts a weight off her shoulders. Quite literally, she finds herself suddenly aware of her hunched posture and moves to correct it, shifting her own bag around.
“That sounds, uh, really good?” She laughs awkwardly, hoping her face isn’t, like, red or anything stupid like that.
“Great! You have anywhere in mind?” Caitlyn starts walking airily towards the exit and Ava hurries to keep up, trying to think.
“Uh,”
Caitlyn sniggers, lifting a hand to shove her hair behind her ear. “Got it, you have no clue, right?”
“Aw, cut me some slack,” Ava finds herself saying, an embarrassed grin on her face as her voice instinctively pitches higher. “I’m a useless lesbian, okay? I dunno anything,”
“Aren’t all lesbians kinda useless?” Caitlyn shoves the door out of their way lightly and the sun immediately lances into Ava’s eyes. “Like, that’s kind of our whole deal, isn’t it?”
“I dunno, I dream of being a useful lesbian. But I guess that’s one of those, like, no-gay-can-doall-five things. Otherwise we’d be too powerful,”
“That’s exactly how it works, yeah. All our energy has to go to sitting properly, you know?”
Ava barks a laugh as her mind completely fails to find any useful rebuttal to the oft-repeated sitting joke.
“At least I can drive,” she says instead, and Caitlyn snorts.
“I’ll have to try and find somewhere to go, anyway,” she shrugs. “I’ll let you know by Friday?”
“That- that sounds great?” Ava trips over the sentence a little but finds her verbal feet again, beaming. Holy shit. She’d actually managed to un-useless herself for once. And that was a proper date. “I have no idea when the last time I even went on a date was.”
“Mood,” Caitlyn’s quick retort seemed almost instinctive, and she hastily elaborated. “I mean, not like I date that many people. Being single is cheap, too,”
“Well,” Ava’s mouth is stupidly dry. “We can fix that? And drink to the pain of our wallets?”
“That’s something to drink to, if anything,” Caitlyn agrees. They round the corner and she stops, clearly wanting to head down the opposite branch to Ava. “See you Saturday? We don’t share any other classes, do we?”
“Nah,” Ava nods. “Saturday it is.”
“Neat. See you then!” Caitlyn gives a little wave and strides off.
And, well, if Ava’s a bit louder and bouncier than usual, her roommates at least have the good sense not to point it out.
Dust motes sail softly through the strained sunlight illuminating my bedroom. A fan whirs, pushing the unkept curls across my forehead in regular intervals. The unmistakeable smell of burnt toast comes from downstairs, and my aunt swears. Her wife’s musical laughter follows. I don’t need to be in front of them to know that a pair of arms are being wrapped around Lisa’s waist, a kiss placed gently on her cheek.
As I walk down the hallway towards the bathroom, I hear my aunt say goodbye to Allie as she leaves for work. Cold water raining down wakes me up more than a cup of coffee would. When I’m clean, I step out of the shower and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My naked body stares back at me. I quickly pull a binder over my chest, its colour several shades lighter than my brown skin. It digs uncomfortably into my shoulders, but the physical pain is worth it for the relief of the relentless dysphoria that has been my companion for several years. I put on The Charlie Uniform of blue jeans and an old hoodie, allowing the world to see me as a ‘boy’ until the badge stuck on my now flat chest informs them that I’m not.
Lisa convinces me to take a piece of toast with me and it’s not even 10am when I’m walking towards the bus stop to get into town. This has gotta be a new record for me.
The sun relentlessly burns my skin and the bus shows no sign of showing up soon. Defeated, I sit beneath a tree and being to search my backpack for my earphones when a chipper voice grabs my attention.
“Charlotte?”
A small girl in a pink flowy dress smiles down at me. I look around, praying there was someone next to me she was talking to, but it appears we are alone. My stomach sinks.
“Uh hey,” I mumble. Recognition flickers in my mind.
“I’m Shari, remember? We had math class together with that old witch, Jones.” Unfortunately, I know exactly who she is. The girl who cheated on her boyfriend with another girl at a party and claimed it didn’t count because she ‘isn’t’ into girls like that’.
“It feels like so long since we graduated, doesn’t it?”
She beings to chatter mindlessly about her new boyfriend and the other things I don’t care about. I’m barely paying attention and struggling to nod and laugh at the right moments. When the bus finally rounds the corner, I’m praying she finds someone else to annoy.
I tap my go card and greet the driver as Shari calls someone else’s name behind me.
“Luke! Oh my God, it’s like a reunion in this bus! Charlotte, come over here!”
He smirks at me as I turn. The bus moves forward and I cling to a pole. Shari’s eyes beg me to join them, but every inch of my being is desperate to leave.
“Aw, no, don’t call him Charlotte. He’ll go cry in the bathrooms again.”
My stomach sinks. A smile grows across his face, revelling in the discomfort that grips me stronger than an alcoholic holds a beer can. Shari’s confusion is humiliating.
“My name is Charlie.” I mumble, sitting in the chair beside the pole. Sweat covers the palms of my hands and I spread them over my jeans, trying to get the texture of the denim beneath my fingertips to keep the tears away. Their judgement feels like a flame and I’m standing too close. I can’t move away even though it slowly burns my skin through my clothes. The desire to move away is instinctual and persistent, but my body won’t move. As I begin to count my breaths, the girl and boy begin to laugh.
My hand fumbles for the stop button. The beating inside my chest is too fast. I need to get out of here.
The bus pulls over. The doors open. My legs jolt upwards and I slam my card against the reader. I jump out, landing in a piled heap on the concrete. As the bus pulls away, I see them in the window. She’s laughing and he wears a cruel grin.
Sobs begin to rack through me. Cars go past but no one stops. I clutch my knees to my chest and keep repeating the one thought that will keep me alive. My name is Charlie and I am non-binary.
~ Tyler Smith ~
Two people lie together alone on a queen-size bed, its top sheet twisted and discarded near their feet. They are cast in shades of grey by the ambient glow of a suburban street outside. Their bodies are a detailed silhouette to the eye adjusted to darkness, while the far corner of the room shows only vague outlines of a door half-opened and never closed. There is silence but from the bodies and breath of the two people. One breathes more heavily than the other. The rotating slashes of a ceiling fan swing lazily through the air above them. A coolness brushes their faces in the dark, sign of a gentle breeze wafted in from outside and accelerated by the turbulence in the room.
My senses are focused entirely in my hand. I am not blind, but there is little to see. I am not deaf, but I hear only breathing and a faint rustling. My mind is filled with the shifting feelings of pressure and warmth from the tips of my fingers to the palm of my hand. A part of me can still question just what we are doing and what will come next. For a moment, my thoughts shift in that direction and I slip in my precise movements. I return to my hand, focusing there until I’ve seen this through.
The silhouette splits. One figure falls flat, and a slight tremor runs through it with an accompanying exhalation. Above, the other figure holds its breath, afraid to break the tension. The lights of a vehicle pass by the window. As the sound of its wheels fade from the room, the figure slumps down beside its partner. They roll away, curling into a denser shadow in the darkness.
‘Are you alright?’
-
‘Are you going to speak to me?’
‘I don’t know what there is to say.’
The words come slowly, as if each one is its own battle. ‘You think I do?’
-
I reach out to unfurl the figure beside me. But it does not budge.
‘Shouldn’t we talk about this?’
‘I think it’s pretty clear.’ ‘What is?’
‘You want me to say it?’ ‘Yes!’
-
‘That we can do that. And, it works.’-
‘Oh.’
I lie on my back alone, looking up at the ceiling as they begin to cry.
~ Daniel Brown ~
The flight from Brisbane to Perth takes about five hours. The seats are uncomfortable, the movies are pretty good, and the vegetarian meals are hit or miss. I take this flight pretty often to visit my family, so it’s become a halfway house of sorts for me.
You meet some pretty interesting characters on these flights, plenty of people going home and plenty leaving it. You meet all sorts of people and with five hours next to each other you can’t go too long without learning a thing or two about your seatmates. The two men who sat down next to me on the last trip were nice enough, they were into motocross and one of them helped me with my carry-on luggage in the overhead locker. We settled in for a cross country trip and everything was fine. Until the dinner service.
The flight attendant, who I came to know as Simon, was a lovely man, friendly and sympathetic to a little boy a few rows ahead who wasn’t dealing well with the turbulence. He was tall, well-groomed and was beautiful in a very femme way. As he passed our seats with the drinks cart, the men next to me couldn’t stop staring, they looked at each other wide-eyed.
Then they started laughing.
“Look, it’s a tranny,” one said to the other, loud enough that the passengers in the seats around me looked up, looked at each other and then back to their movies and books and papers. The men didn’t let up, they kept loudly talking about the man’s appearance, the way his voice sounded and concerningly, his crotch. This wasn’t banter or lewd jokes; it was complete and utterly disgusting transphobia. (It’s worth noting that the flight attendant was not transgender, but the men had made their own assumptions based on what he looked like).
I sat there, stunned, not sure what to say. I wanted to tell them that they were sitting next to one of those ‘freaky queers,’ but I knew that it’s not always a good idea to confront people who are so unreserved and open about their bigotry. They kept going, slur after slur after slur. I thought about how furious I was, how unsafe I felt, how I had four more hours next to some of the most horrible people I’ve had the experience of encountering. I knew that I had a choice to make.
Gingerly, I stood up, walked to the
back of the plane and tapped Simon on the shoulder. I started talking, tripping over my words, telling him about the horrible things that had been said about him, avoiding the exact words. I also asked if it would be possible to move seats.
“Tell me what they said about me,” he said. “I’m sure I can handle it.”
I told him. No words spared. He told me to wait where I was at the back of the plane. He walked right up to the men in my row, leant down and launched right into them. I couldn’t hear, but I could see that Simon was not holding back. When he was done, he motioned to me, asking me to come down the plane and collect my things. The men’s faces were red and focussed on their screens. Simon found me a new seat for the remainder of the flight.
I’m no stranger to homophobia, I’ve copped a little bit of it for being queer myself, but I’ve never seen it so openly, so loudly and confidently spewed in my proximity. That plane ride was a lesson in combatting bigotry face to face. I’m good at it on Facebook, I’m good at it at rallies and amongst
friends but I’ve never come so close to it. I knew that being cisgender leant itself to me on that plane ride, and I leveraged that privilege to put a stop to it. What this plane ride taught me is that intolerance is alive and well, and it’s scary. However, no matter how scared, you’ve gotta fight the fear as much as you can, in whatever capacity you can manage.
After we landed, I talked to Simon at the back of the plane again. The tone of our conversation suggested that this was not his first brush with this kind of behaviour on the job. What he said at the end of our conversation stuck with me.
“Homophobia doesn’t stop when you ask nicely. It doesn’t wait for you to tell them off. It stops when we take the power back off of them, look them in the eyes, human to human and show them you aren’t going to take it. Welcome to Perth, enjoy your stay.”
~ Em Readman ~
A discussion by a twink.
“I’m gay but I’m not feminine”
“I’m gay but I like beer”
“I’m gay but I don’t let that define me”
That’s the one statement I just can’t reconcile.
Queer people have different stories, journeys, values, and generally speaking it’s wrong to generalise, but the “I’m [THIS] but I don’t let that define me” dialogue is not one which supports the individuality of the queer experience, it’s the final shard of internalised homo/queerphobia that gets left lodged deep, lingering well after the coming out, self-acceptance process.
“I’m gay but I don’t let that define me,” is someone adopting gay stereotypes and distancing themselves from them. Stereotypes and their implications are well-researched, but it’s no surprise social behavioural analysis doesn’t filter down into everyday conversation. At the human level, stereotypes let you self-categorise to form groups in society with people you identify with, which can be good. But if you belong to a member of a group by definition but not behaviour, like if you’re gay ‘but’ masculine, stereotypes work to marginalise, creating a call to reject a perception of the gay status quo and incubating the rot of prejudice within the community. Snubbing, rejecting traits that are ‘gay’ does nothing for us – it is used by our enemies against us.
There are loads of stereotypes in the queer community: gay guys are just one of the girls, butch lesbians, fashion darling, promiscuity – I really don’t need to list more, we all know them well. Personally, I’m effeminate, have that gay voice, limp wrist, and so do a lot of my friends. If stereotypes are bad, and I conform to and accept them, has my own
self-identification been governed by correspondence bias? Who am I but a stereotype? Reconciling self-identification with the perception of others is a tale as old as time and isn’t limited to being gay, it’s common to all communities of the marginalised. It’s the same mechanism that solidifies my identification with stereotypes as makes someone want to reject them.
By no means do you have to conform to a stereotype, but saying you’re not letting your sexuality define you isn’t doing what you think it’s doing. No person’s sexuality defines them, regardless of whether they conform to any behavioural stereotypes. My sexuality doesn’t define me either, but it is a part of me, one that I embrace. I often describe the “I’m gay but I don’t let that define me,” trope as a phase. It’s a phase I went through from around 13 to 16, when the feminisation suppression machine of high school was operating at full speed. “I’m gay but I don’t let that define me” is the ultimate hurdle of self-acceptance, and all it takes is a change of perception. Let it go, and continue to be exactly who you want to be. Whether drag queen or mechanic, top, bottom or vers, masc or fem, our identities are valid and we all belong.
Words by Max Fox Photography by Danielle PocockLast year I realised something.
Last year, I realised and came to terms with something that completely and utterly changed the way I think. It changed the way I think about myself, it changed the way I think about others, and it changed the way I think about the world.
Early last year, I finally realised and came to terms with the fact that… I’m gay.
Now, I’m sure you don’t exactly need or want all the details, so I’ll spare you the novel.
But, throughout this process of “realisation”, there has been one thought which has consistently decided to rear its head; the thought of “It’s okay, I might still be bi.” Because, if I’m bisexual, that means I still have one more shot at living a “normal” life, with a wife, and kids and a “normal” home.
But why is being gay or liking just guys not okay?
It’s not right that I feel like I’m not allowed to just be gay, and it kills me
to think that so many other people feel the same.
But, somehow, I don’t think it would surprise you to know that people feel like this on a daily basis. People put themselves through torture and are put through hell by others. And that’s all just a result of the nature of the society around us.
I’m not the only person feeling this way, and that’s the sad reality – it is millions of people who are living on this Earth with us. Millions of people who struggle with being able to just be themselves.
The environment and society around us, and the media we’ve taken in since birth have suggested that the only way to have a successful future is if we’re part of a hetero-normative couple and family.
Trying to figure out who you are is difficult – as every single person who has ever walked this Earth would be able to tell you. So that just begs the question – why do we make it so much harder for some? When suicide contemplation in gay youth occurs at three times the rate of heterosexual youth, and when these kids are almost five times more likely to have actually attempted suicide, why do we continue to make it so much harder?
For me, this conjures thoughts about all those who are angry or unhappy about gay couples and the like in public, or in the media, or in TV shows that children will see because it will “make them gay”.
No! It won’t! It helps people who are feeling like that learn that it’s O.K.
It helps to make people who fight to be who they are feel noticed. They become aware that there are other people out there just like them – they are not alone.
When just a small minority of our members of parliament, or even the characters we see in books and on-screen are openly gay, we close the doors on a large number of our population, and open ourselves up to situations where our government asks an entire country of people to tell us who we’re allowed to love.
Representation, exposure and awareness do not have the power to completely change something that is a psychological and chemical component of a person. But, what it does have the power to do, is to encourage anyone and everyone, from the youngest of children, to the eldest in our community, to be comfortable with themselves if that’s how they’re feeling.
It’s toxic to only expose kids to one thing and suggest that this is the only thing that’s okay, and the only way you will ever… be… happy.
We know it’s not, but because that’s all we ever see, we feel that anything different is wrong or will always be just a little off, and growing up in an environment like that isn’t okay… for anyone.
This needs to change. So please, if you take nothing else from me today, I want you to at least leave this page with the knowledge that everyone has the power to change minds. We have direct access to the ideologies of those around us, and in
this period of great change for those marginalised by our wider community, we are afforded a power far greater than ever before to change minds, raise awareness, and improve tolerance, making our world a better place for all who inhabit it.
So please, leave this page, and use that power for good.
Because it’s seeing people who are different – people who feel and believe different things, or maybe look differently to their co-stars or to us on-screen and represented in a public light which is a crucial step in not just acceptance in general, but in people’s acceptance of themselves.
And the power to make that change… lies with you.
~ Josh Hansberry ~