IT’S THE GAY DEBATERS!
Ted Kerr / ted@vueweekly.com
It may not have appeared that way to others, but my friend Angie and I were self-defined exiles in high school. It was how we felt and so how we interacted with the world. We joined the speech and debate club as a way to be heard and express ourselves. We competed in the duo acting category and we were surprisingly good at it considering we only practiced when we should have been in math class.
The height of our success came at the regional championships, where we blew the competition away, qualifying that day for another round where we would have to write a speech and present in front of all the judges, competitors and parents.
I can’t remember what Angie spoke about, but I remember delivering a speech about lessons in hard work that my first boss, Stan, had taught me. It was met with rousing heart-felt applause. Even as the moderator was announcing that we would be taking a short break to tally up the scores people were beginning to gather around to congratulate me. It was ridiculous, but I felt on top of the world.
One woman, a parent, watched me intently my whole speech. I remember her face because it was so fixated on mine. As she pushed through the crowd, I could see her mouth begin to form with a question. I begin to feign humbleness in anticipated response.
“Are you boy or are you girl?” she asked, a relieved smile filling her face like she had just gotten something off her chest or had the best poop of her life.
“What?” I choked out, the assembled crowd ready for the punch line.
“The whole time you were speaking I was trying to figure it out, are you a boy or a girl?”
People silently and quickly began to leave the scene. My face went from the rose of victory to the scarlet of shame and confusion as I began to consider the possibility that she wasn’t the only one with the same question. “Boy,” I mumbled, my voice cracking as I said it.
“Oh,” she said, not fully convinced or satisfied.
Soon I was standing there with only Angie at my side feeling my heart racing. It wasn’t being mistaken for a girl that was the issue, it was not being seen for who I truly was that was bothering me.
That day was the first time I had ever had to come out about my gender, but it would not be the last. It reached its peak in the years after high school while I was working retail. The cashier would ask a customer, “Was there a salesperson helping you?” to which the response was often, “Yes, that nice girl over there,” while pointing at me.
At first I was confused, I don’t look like a girl and even through I have feminine mannerisms, so does Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy, but no one confuses him with Hannah Montana. It is only in the last few years that I have realized it is not how I look but other people’s definition of gender that makes me appear womanly in their eyes. It is my softness, the fact I wear scarves and my urge to partake in seemingly girly activities that cues people to label me female.
I was reminded of the speech and debate incident last week while in Toronto for Inside Out, a Lesbian and Gay film festival where I had the privilege of attending the Queer Here/Queer Now symposium. The two-day event presented by V-Tape and Inside Out was an opportunity to focus on “current social-political themes in queer media art production, presentation and dissemination” with contributions from writers, thinkers and artists like Thomas Waugh, Allyson Mitchell, Tom Kalin, Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan.
One of the most heated moments was a discussion around gender representation on film and the use of labels and pronouns. Two main camps were represented in the discussion; The “call it as I see it“ group, which felt they will call people by the pronoun they feel fits, and the ”I will call you what you want” group. Throughout the discussion, which for one small moment became verbally violent, there were peacekeepers in the room who attempted to conjure up the positive momentum of late ‘90s queer post-identity politics. In the glow of the New Queer Wave in Cinema and gigantic strides forward in the AIDS movement there was optimism that suggested that despite our differences all homosexuals could move forward under the happy umbrella of queer. Groups like Queer Nation emerged as heir apparent to the perceivably now unneeded anger of ACT-UP.
The peacekeepers brought up post-identity politics as a way of suggesting that a framework in which we could move beyond labels already existed, that we needn’t discuss how to talk about each other but instead conceive of a way to talk about people without labels.
While I was initially on board with the peacekeepers, one person said what was for me a productive statement: “post-identity politics might be a solution for those who have already had their identities recognized but for those who haven’t, post isn’t an option.”
As our rights and acceptance has increased, so too has our shared queer complexity. No longer divided by just a binary gender divide, we now also negotiate social, political, multiple gender, racial, spiritual and economic considerations as well.
As was felt at the symposium, we as sexual and gender minorities are entering exciting times where once again the euphoria of gained ground and the reality of those not yet heard are coming to a head. As Shawna Dempsey suggested on the first day of the symposium, we as a community are at our best when we are fighting.
Showing posts with label queer; sex. Show all posts
Showing posts with label queer; sex. Show all posts
Saturday, June 7, 2008
QUEERMONTON Week of April 17, 2008, Issue #652
WELCOME TO QUEERMONTON, VRIENDBERTA, CANADA
TED KERR / ted@vueweekly.com
In my last article I suggested that there have been three waves of queer activism: standing up/standing proud, gaining our rights and living our rights. I think we are currently at the beginning of the third wave, which I see categorized by the personal being recognized as political in regards to queer lives, animating the rights gained during the second wave through everyday living, and expression being used and recognized as a form of activism.
This week I want to discuss how Edmonton became an illustration, if not a thriving example, of the third wave in action.
Edmonton is the perfect storm; it is North America’s only Human Rights City and it has a creative, connected queer community working both independently and collectively on rigorously created work and events that are inspired or informed by an authority to rail against (the provincial government) and a supportive local community to work and live in (Edmonton).
The last few years Edmonton has been home to a silent queer renaissance that is beginning to be heard. It is no coincidence that it has happened when the city has a forward thinking, informed, if not strategic-minded, mayor.
Being a fan of Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class, Mayor Mandel has embraced Florida’s hypothesis that a city flourishes when brimming with creativity and diversity. He has put Florida’s ideas into action by being a champion of the arts and the queer community. His endorsement of these not-mutually-exclusive communities has created stability and a sense of esteem that has allowed both to be bold, feel supported and think long term.
Edmonton is increasingly becoming home to artists who are queer that feel able to show their queer work, and institutions like Latitude 53 and Northern Lights Theatre that feel confident to program queer work.
Last year saw the arrival of Exposure: Edmonton’s Queer Arts and Culture Festival, which aims to bring queer artists to new audiences and new audiences to queer work. In the process they are raising the bar of queer art in Edmonton and casting Edmonton as a leader in queer expression on the Canadian art stage.
Edmonton is also home to Camp fYrefly—Canada’s largest LGBTTQA art-centric youth leadership camp founded by the University of Alberta’s Dr Andre Grace and PhD candidate Kris Wells. They are also behind the newly announced Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services, which within two years will be offering North America’s only minor in sexual minority studies. All this just reinforces the national rumour that the U of A’s english and film studies department is the queerest in Canada.
Being an artist myself, I don’t subscribe to the notion that artists have to be tortured to create. But as Edmonton-based writers and actors Chris Craddock and Nathan Cuckow, concede, “living in Alberta adds more fuel to the fire.” And that fire leads to award winning, politically and emotionally charged work.
Last month their hip-hop musical Bash’d received a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding NY Theatre. Their show, which debuted at the Roost and will soon begin its commercial run in New York City, is set against the backdrop of the same-sex marriage debate in Canada, during which hate crimes against homos spiked in Alberta.
Compared to the liberal, open atmosphere the Edmonton municipal government provides, the Province of Alberta has been unsupportive and judged by the highest court in the land to be legally negligent of queer human rights.
The historic Vriend v Alberta case had its home in Edmonton when Delwin Vriend was fired from his job for being gay. Seven years of legal battles later, and a decade ago last week, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the case that the province let down its population by not protecting Vriend from being fired, and decided that sexual orientation should be covered in human rights legislation across the country. Many provinces have already begun to rewrite legislation as a result of the ruling, but Alberta still has not.
By not changing the legislation, the government is allowing a culture of discrimination to fester and is communicating to the people of the province that the rights of the LGBTTQ community don’t matter—and so the rights of minorities in general don’t matter.
Lindsay Blackett, the new Conservative culture minister, would only comment that before action was taken he would need to review the entire act. While I do respect that he is a new minister who deserves the benefit of a doubt, this kind of “possibly” rhetoric is what queers have been hearing in this province for decades. The PC’s unwillingness to write protections for sexual orientation into legislation shows a lack of leadership on equality and has cultivated a culture where hatred is tolerated. It has also created tension, and thus fuel for artists to work both against and towards.
As the third wave develops, we see that having rights granted and rulings written in are only one part of activism. It is how queer people exist in culture and impact the world around them that has an affect on attitudes and actions towards queers.
“All this talk of rights won’t necessarily stop you from getting a punch in the head,“ says Edmonton writer and musician Marshall Watson, a member of the gaysian invasion band Spreepark. “Laws can only do so much, they don’t change social behaviour the way we can on a personal level.”
TED KERR / ted@vueweekly.com
In my last article I suggested that there have been three waves of queer activism: standing up/standing proud, gaining our rights and living our rights. I think we are currently at the beginning of the third wave, which I see categorized by the personal being recognized as political in regards to queer lives, animating the rights gained during the second wave through everyday living, and expression being used and recognized as a form of activism.
This week I want to discuss how Edmonton became an illustration, if not a thriving example, of the third wave in action.
Edmonton is the perfect storm; it is North America’s only Human Rights City and it has a creative, connected queer community working both independently and collectively on rigorously created work and events that are inspired or informed by an authority to rail against (the provincial government) and a supportive local community to work and live in (Edmonton).
The last few years Edmonton has been home to a silent queer renaissance that is beginning to be heard. It is no coincidence that it has happened when the city has a forward thinking, informed, if not strategic-minded, mayor.
Being a fan of Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class, Mayor Mandel has embraced Florida’s hypothesis that a city flourishes when brimming with creativity and diversity. He has put Florida’s ideas into action by being a champion of the arts and the queer community. His endorsement of these not-mutually-exclusive communities has created stability and a sense of esteem that has allowed both to be bold, feel supported and think long term.
Edmonton is increasingly becoming home to artists who are queer that feel able to show their queer work, and institutions like Latitude 53 and Northern Lights Theatre that feel confident to program queer work.
Last year saw the arrival of Exposure: Edmonton’s Queer Arts and Culture Festival, which aims to bring queer artists to new audiences and new audiences to queer work. In the process they are raising the bar of queer art in Edmonton and casting Edmonton as a leader in queer expression on the Canadian art stage.
Edmonton is also home to Camp fYrefly—Canada’s largest LGBTTQA art-centric youth leadership camp founded by the University of Alberta’s Dr Andre Grace and PhD candidate Kris Wells. They are also behind the newly announced Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services, which within two years will be offering North America’s only minor in sexual minority studies. All this just reinforces the national rumour that the U of A’s english and film studies department is the queerest in Canada.
Being an artist myself, I don’t subscribe to the notion that artists have to be tortured to create. But as Edmonton-based writers and actors Chris Craddock and Nathan Cuckow, concede, “living in Alberta adds more fuel to the fire.” And that fire leads to award winning, politically and emotionally charged work.
Last month their hip-hop musical Bash’d received a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding NY Theatre. Their show, which debuted at the Roost and will soon begin its commercial run in New York City, is set against the backdrop of the same-sex marriage debate in Canada, during which hate crimes against homos spiked in Alberta.
Compared to the liberal, open atmosphere the Edmonton municipal government provides, the Province of Alberta has been unsupportive and judged by the highest court in the land to be legally negligent of queer human rights.
The historic Vriend v Alberta case had its home in Edmonton when Delwin Vriend was fired from his job for being gay. Seven years of legal battles later, and a decade ago last week, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the case that the province let down its population by not protecting Vriend from being fired, and decided that sexual orientation should be covered in human rights legislation across the country. Many provinces have already begun to rewrite legislation as a result of the ruling, but Alberta still has not.
By not changing the legislation, the government is allowing a culture of discrimination to fester and is communicating to the people of the province that the rights of the LGBTTQ community don’t matter—and so the rights of minorities in general don’t matter.
Lindsay Blackett, the new Conservative culture minister, would only comment that before action was taken he would need to review the entire act. While I do respect that he is a new minister who deserves the benefit of a doubt, this kind of “possibly” rhetoric is what queers have been hearing in this province for decades. The PC’s unwillingness to write protections for sexual orientation into legislation shows a lack of leadership on equality and has cultivated a culture where hatred is tolerated. It has also created tension, and thus fuel for artists to work both against and towards.
As the third wave develops, we see that having rights granted and rulings written in are only one part of activism. It is how queer people exist in culture and impact the world around them that has an affect on attitudes and actions towards queers.
“All this talk of rights won’t necessarily stop you from getting a punch in the head,“ says Edmonton writer and musician Marshall Watson, a member of the gaysian invasion band Spreepark. “Laws can only do so much, they don’t change social behaviour the way we can on a personal level.”
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