The Queer Look

An exploration of LGBTQIA+ Identity through Fashion

[the-queer-look]

Fun Drawer

Name: Rachel Age: 24 Occupation: consultancy researcher Location: Marrickville Gender: Female Sexuality: Lesbian

I would say I present traditionally feminine on a day to day basis. I’m a big fan of glitter and fun outfits, I’ve got a full “fun drawer” in my wardrobe full of glitter and fishnet or sequined outfits. I’ve been trying to integrate that more into my day to day life.. I used to only dress up like that on special occasions but I figure why not? Why cant I dress like that every day?

I’ve got a twin sister, and when we were younger our mother would dress us up in the same outfits, but different colours, if you look back at the pictures, she always dressed my sister in the more “traditionally feminine” colours, and me in the more “traditionally masculine colours” so I like to joke with her that she made me gay by putting me in blue as a baby. When I first came out I felt pressure to present more masculine because that’s the view you see of lesbians. I got stretchers, I got an undercut, I wore plaid and baseball caps, and then realised that the only reason I was doing that was for validation and to be perceived as queer rather than enjoying the way I presented.

I can’t remember not knowing that I liked girls. There’s some classic gay moments for me, like seeing that tATu “all the things she said” music video, and I remember being very intrigued and wanting to see more. I had a huge crush on Belle from Beauty and the Beast, which other people thought meant that I wanted to be her, but I very emphatically liked her. As it came to puberty and dating boys, they always just felt like friends who I enjoyed hanging out with and going on dates with, but I’d always dread the end of the date where it would be socially expected for us to kiss. When I was thirteen I got my first online girlfriend and then very nonchalantly came out a year later by just bringing a girl home and saying “yeah this is my girlfriend, whatever”. In retrospect that was probably a lot for my parents, but I guess some part of me figured that if I never verbalised it, I wouldn’t have to deal with other people saying things.

The term Queer, to me, resembles community and support, and those who don’t align to the mainstream in regards to gender or sexuality. But then again I also studied the theory at university so that might just be the academic answer. Queer is very much a wider description of whatever does not fit the mainstream – within my day to day life that means me and my friends and the sense of community amongst the LGBTQIA+ scene.

I came out when I was thirteen or fourteen, and group chats weren’t a thing yet, but there were group texts where you’d send out the one text, but it would text everyone individually. My sister and I shared a room, so I was about to send this text while we were in our beds and I just realised that I could just tell her. “Just letting you know that I’m about to send you a text letting you know that I think I might be bi.” The initial response I got both from my sister, and all of my friends individually was very supportive and validating, just their showing interest and support, and wanting to know about those queer aspects of my life. It helped so much to have my friends all support me when I then came out more publicly.

I think I was more involved with the queer community during my university years. It’s much easier when theres so many options on your doorstep to be a part of specific societies, as opposed to having to seek them out yourself as an adult. I did my first two years of university at home in Scotland, and my third abroad over here, and at both universities I was very active in the LGBTQIA+ societies, especially back in Glasgow. I’m definitely very involved in the queer social nightlife here as well as just most of my entire friend group being extremely queer. Through this I feel very connected to the queer community. My sense of belonging here has evolved so much over time. Initially I was very excited to see the specific queer lesbian clubs that you have here, which just doesn’t exist back in Scotland. It was super exciting that there were primarily lesbian focused scenes here like Birdcage, or Girlthing, which gives you a much more distilled sense of the specific subculture that you wouldn’t get in a more all inclusive queer space. It’s a growing pain that I’m coming to realise that some of these more niche clubs by their nature are not as inclusive and accepting of other members of the LGBTQIA+ community as I wish they could be.

I’ve noticed, since entering corporate life here in Australia, when people talk about their significant other, the go to is to refer to them as their partner. Initially I thought there were a lot more queer people than I thought, but it’s just using more deliberately inclusive language. It was also weird to come here before marriage equality was a thing, when I’d already taken part in the marches in Scotland to allow same sex marriage. So twice in my life, before the age of twenty one I was campaigning for equal marriage in two different countries. Any future kids I have are going to think I grew up in such a backwards world. It was such a harsh reaction from people who were voting no, especially when it was only a 60% majority?

There aren’t many queer spaces that don’t revolve around alcohol, which is an issue we really need to attack, for so many reasons. Having queer spaces revolving around alcohol can and does negatively impact people in terms of alcohol abuse, and drives queer people who dont want to drink, or are trying to resolve those substance abuse issues away from the queer community. Further, it restricts access to the queer community to adults – the way so many of us find our queer family is through queer clubs, and to get in you need to be over eighteen, and being a minor trying to figure yourself out and find your people can be a very trying, isolating time. Not to mention having so much of queer society behind this age barrier lends credence to this idea that being queer isn’t something to teach our kids about, and that it is only adults who are gay, or bi, or pan, or trans, or whatever.

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[the-queer-look]

Queer Uber Fund

Name: Gloria Demillo Age: 25 Location: Melbourne Occupation: Digital Copywriter/Poet Sexual Orientation: Pansexual Gender: Non-Binary

I used to really care about how I presented, especially in the workplace because I work in both a corporate environment, and in art spaces, people expect you to look a certain way if your gender is a certain way. Sometimes I think people expect me to be more masc, which I find strange in art spaces, I said I was Non-Binary, not that I was masc y’know? People will send me audition callouts for acting with “identifies as trans-masc” on them which is always weird. Honestly I just wear what I feel comfortable in, or for the weather, which is a statement in and of itself. Before I realised I was non-binary it was very performative – I really did dress for other people, or how they perceive me, or how I want them to perceive me. But now I just don’t care, as long as they perceive me as hot.

I’ve always had a feeling about not being straight, but I’ve never had the language for it because I grew up in a very conservative christian church. It was like “gay is bad” but all of the language around it was centred on men, with nothing to say about women being with women, or both. Like… what’s the grey area there? I was raised and socialised as a woman so… was this only a male centric sin? I started to have a language for it at uni, which helped because I found ways to discuss something I’d always felt, but didn’t know how to explain. When I look back at my childhood and how I expressed myself it just… makes sense. I had this favourite shirt, just a really dark shirt with a lion on it, and I’d always wear it with these little pink shoes with pom poms on it, and that aesthetic of really daggy clothes with really nice shoes is really the modern queer aesthetic.

It was mid 2019 when I realised I was non-binary and then I came out in October of that year, but there was such a long process. I was thinking about gender in uni, and then when I was experimenting more with how I presented myself and letting go of a lot of the ways in which I was socialised to behave. Being socialised as a woman was really violent for me – I don’t know how else to describe it – I had a lot of expectations put on me about my body, and how I should act, and how I should be in relationships, and when I was dealing with all of that gender stuff, it was very freeing to no longer have to live up to this arbitrary standard that was forced upon me. It was also much easier for me to talk about it because I was surrounded by so many lovely trans and non-binary friends, but of course talking to my cis friends about it was very… ugh...

I think when I found the language for my sexuality not much changed in the way I presented myself, it wasn’t until I found the language to express my gender as non-binary that there was a change in the way I thought about myself and how I was being perceived my relationship with my body. I really felt it, It was such a different transformation, I was so genuinely happier in my body, and stopped caring about how other people perceived me, and whether or not my presentation made sense to other people. I’ve stopped wearing clothes that are really tight. I don’t know why, but everything I had before coming out about being non-binary was very tight, very fitted, and now everything is very loose and flowy. It isn’t that I don’t like my body, I love my body, but now mostly what I wear is loose and billowy and doesn’t hug me so tightly.

To me the term Queer encompasses a description of my gender and sexuality that isn’t just one thing because its such a broad label. The way it was introduced to me was like a very radical and subversive way to refer to ones gender and sexuality, and I love that it’s been reclaimed by the community as a whole, though I completely understand those parts of the community that are uncomfortable with the term being used at all due to the way it was used in derogatory ways for so long, especially when used by persons outside the community. I’m sure that there’s going to be a generation coming up that will have no negative associations with that word, in the same way that I have younger queer friends that refer to each other using the F slur as a term of endearment, when I wouldn’t use it with most people.

I’ve always had a lot of queer friends, but I don’t think I started going to a lot of queer specific parties until the last three or for years. Queer events too, drag shows, musicians, poets and artists and other queer specific events. It hit a point where I just didn’t want to go to another straight club. They don’t feel safe, and I cannot just sit there and listen to another Ed Sheeran or Drake song when I want to dance y’know? I’m not a huge fan of the fact that queer events always focus around a party or something, I just want a quiet queer event like a queer book club or something. I’m going to join a queer climbing club or something, just be more involved.

I love being around other queer people, but there’s also a lot of racists around. Just because the event is queer does not mean the event is safe. You’d think that we would have dealt with intersectionality by now. Genderqueer people are more aware because we live on the margins of society and have for like… ever. But I find it really frustrating when people create queer events that aren’t accessible – people with different sensory needs, comfortable for people of colour, accessible for people with physical difficulties etc. I remember the first time I went to a queer club event with a quiet room and I lost my mind, like I wanna be at the club for six hours, but I want to sit down and have a break with just a little noise for a while y’know? It was so beautiful and safe.

K: What challenges do you see still facing the queer community today? Gloria: Racism

There are so many things, being trans-non-binary and a POC I get to see it all but like. People within the community that just straight up hate trans people? The phobia is coming from inside the house! Unlearn that shit queers! Some people in the community get rights? Like they can get married, get recognised, and then they turn around and say “us? we’re the good gays” shut the fuck up. Yeah, internalised phobias within the community? We need to unlearn that as a group, that’s a group effort.

Racism, ablism etc, we need to get rid of those because intersectionality is a thing. I also think that there’s so many laws that are trying to literally kill people in the community so like… I don’t know if we need to crowd fund some community lawyers or something, but we need to get some protections from these people who are out here doing their most to keep us down. I also think that cishet people really need to do better, even the ones that say they’re all about allyship will say that they’re on your side and then take you right to a straight club and like hey, what’re we doing here? I think cishet people don’t understand that there are certain spaces that, for non cishet people, are just inherently unsafe y’know? There isn’t any thought as to how their queer friends are safe going somewhere, or how they’re presenting is safe. When cishet people come into spaces that are meant for queer people yeah it’s just a party and a grand old time, but queer people don’t have that same privilege or concept of space y’know? At a straight club I could just disappear because some homophobe clocks me as queer and has a problem and what would y’all do about that? Cishet people walk around like life is this RPG that they’ve unlocked all parts of, and are free to go anywhere, and just don’t realise that there are places that they perceive as totally safe that are completely unsafe for any queer person to be in. We can’t even go to certain countries? We can’t live in certain suburbs of Sydney! People get bashed in fucking Newtown for being gay. Cishet people, especially if you say you’re an ally, or go into our spaces to have fun, why don’t you take a few seconds to think about the safety of your queer friends? Why don’t you pay for our Ubers and shit, make sure we get home? don’t just text me “are you home safe?” be about it!

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[the-queer-look]

Couple Theory

Name: Lucy Age: 24 Location: Glebe Occupation: Bush Regenerator Sexual Orientation: Lesbian Gender: Female

Name: Aisling Age: 21 Location: Glebe Occupation: Customer Service Sexual Orientation: Queer Gender: Female

Lucy – I feel like I’m still figuring out how I’m comfortable presenting because I didn’t come out till I was twenty, which was quite a time after I realised I was gay at sixteen. When I moved to Sydney I really wanted to show people that I was queer, and with much of my influence being from the internet, I wore a lot of the stereotypical lesbian clothing I saw on there – mostly sporty sorts of clothing – but as I’ve gone through, whenever I find something that I don’t hate myself in I wear it over and over again until something new comes along. Recently I’ve been vibing with the look of boots, singlet tops, and making my tattoos very visible. I make myself look somewhat unapproachable with my resting face being a frown, and my outfits being if not aggressive, then non-welcoming, but if people do actually come up to me I really want people to like me, so it all falls away.

Aisling – My daily presentation is just the easy T-shirts and jeans, lots of bouldering merch, maybe a button up if I’m being a little fancy, just a classic chapstick lesbian.

Lucy – Where did your inspo for that come from?

Aisling – What? Jeans and a shirt? Does that need inspiration? I guess I tuck my shirt in to make sure its queer? I have a lot of Vans, and a milk crate full of socks I guess. I used to save up money when I was in high school to put towards my first pair of Vans and I was so excited. I think I have twenty pairs now? Lots of converse, runners, and climbing shoes as well. Colourful socks and shoes are my thing I guess.

Lucy – I remember I was sixteen when I realised I liked girls, but I don’t know what triggered it. I think it was something on TV? I think it was an NCIS episode and they had a really awful portrayal of lesbians, who were identified as gay because at the end of the episode they held hands, and that triggered some kind of twinge in my chest that I’d never felt before.

Ailing – That was your gay bone

Lucy – My gay bone?

K – Yeah, your sternum is your gay bone

Ailing – I’ve torn that twice from being too gay

K – you need to remember to stretch before going out and being gay all night.

Lucy – It was a really weird feeling, I didn’t know what it was. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I went and found out about the episode, and it was of course one of those “oh no homosexuals are evil” sorts of plots. I think that negative portrayal contributed to my negative feelings about being gay, and being so scared to come out. I don’t know where else that would have come from because my parents never expressed any opinion about homosexuality. Those feelings were confirmed when I had my first crush on a girl in my school. I was nauseous more than anything when I realised it, and I just ignored that feeling for years which isn’t healthy. What helped me overcome it though, as I’m sure helped a lot of people from small towns with not much queer representation was the internet, and YouTubers, The Legend of Korra, and Tumblr. (The ending of Legend of Korra) was ust so beautiful, and so revolutionary as well. I remember seeing the ship of Korra and Asami come up on my tumblr, but it was years before the end fo the show, when it actually happened. I remember watching it on a family holiday trip and had to leave the dining table and I was shaking and crying because it was such a huge, beautiful moment that was probably one of the most significant moments of accepting myself. Looking back I definitely associate that final image of them holding hands before going to the spirit world together with my final stage of accepting who I am.

Moving to Sydney was my time to finally come out and explore. I came out to one of my Canadian exchange friends who was here, and they took me to Birdcage (lesbian nightclub in Sydney) where I met some of my friends. My first time in a queer club was like being surrounded by a family who I felt like I knew even though I hadn’t met any of them. That was also the year that the marriage equality vote was passed, So I took that opportunity to find out what my parents thought about homosexuality by asking them what they were voting for. They both said they were voting yes, which made me feel comfortable enough to come out to them the next week.

I’m still learning what are the most appropriate ways to describe myself and my relationship with myself, and how to present myself to the world. The more I learn, the more I will change the way I present myself, and there is a lot more of myself to explore.

Aisling – I think I was around thirteen or fourteen when I saw the show “faking it” - a show about a girl in high school figuring out her sexuality – and I just noticed that I was relating to every situation that the character was going through, and suddenly realised I was questioning my sexuality. I mentioned it to one of my friends that I used to walk to school with, and she would just keep egging me on with “come on just say it, just say you’re gay its fine”. I came out to her as bi at one stage, but I didn’t like that term, I didn’t like the term lesbian either, and still don’t, I prefer to think of myself as queer, or just gay.

When I actually came out two or so years later, I remember telling my close friend group that I was bi… and then later that week just said “nah I’m gay actually”. It was about 7:30pm, on a Wednesday night, after basketball, in the shower talking to myself saying “im gonna do this, im gonna do this”. Just me and my dad home, I psyched myself up for ages and then walked in and out of the kitchen about five times before going “Dad, I have something to tell you” sweating bullets “Dad, I’m gay la di da.”

Lucy – La di da?

Aisling – yes, Father, it’s la di da for me I’m afraid

Lucy – please put my sexuality down as la di da

Aisling – The first thing he said to me was “yeah I always thought you had a bigger obsession with the female tennis players than the men.” and yeah damn he had me there. I hate that I remember the day and everything… like the first of September 2016?

I moved out from my mum to my dad’s mostly because my mum’s partner at the time was very homophobic, and any dinner conversation would turn to him deriding gay marriage, or coming out with some racist shit. Eventually I decided “this bothers me too much, I’m going to have to say something” and it was… really upsetting when he didn’t agree. So of course I came out to my dad first and made him tell mum, which was then an interesting conversation…

“Your father tells me you’ve told him you’re gay?”

“yep, that’s it”

She contacted my school supervisor that night and told all of my teachers to look out for any homophobic acts towards me, letting them know that I was gay and to look out for me.

Lucy – I feel like together we tick a lot of stereotypes

Aisling – We really do

Lucy – We moved in together really quickly

Aisling – We own a cat together

Lucy – Theres that Subaru…

Aisling – I also had a lot of influence from those same queer YouTubers, and seeing their coming out videos and how free they felt afterwards made me really want to share it.

Immediately after I came out everyone at school was very supportive, like they already knew and assumed I was gay because I was just that sporty chick, so being gay just sorta went with it?

Lucy – I think I looked for validation from my parents. When I came out to mum there was no huge deal made about it, butI think validation from them comes in small snippets. Every time mum sends me something, like recently she arranged her coloured chopping boards into a rainbow and sent me a picture with “these are for you!” it’s very small, but its very significant. When I had a really big hickey on my neck, my dad said

“oh who gave you that on your neck? Does he sleep in a coffin?”

“it was a she actually”

“oh does she sleep in a coffin then?”

he just wanted to channel it into a dad joke, but it was a weird way to come out to him actually.

Aisling – To me the term Queer means “everyone included” even just an ally of the community, or a parent of an LGBT person doing your best to make them feel safe and welcome, you’re welcome in the community you know? By properly supporting something, you become a part of it.

Lucy – For me it’s very similar with those lines of community and family. It can be a label, but I feel that its evolving more into a term that indicates embracing all people. I use it sometimes to refer to a collective group of… well queer people. I refer to my close friends as my queer family.

Aisling – It feels better to use than assuming someone’s sexuality or gender without knowing the specifics.

Lucy – Individually I wouldn’t refer to any of my friends as queer. I know one friend refers to himself specifically as a bisexual, man, rather than a queer person. So I definitely like its a more family, community term, rather than a specific label, though It can still be used as one.

Aisling – I like the term because when I first came out I identified as bi, then gay, then bi, then gay, than they? And it feels more appropriate to use for myself because I’m still working it out, and it can cover a lot. For example I don’t think of myself as completely feminine, but I also don’t like the term non-binary to refer to myself, but the idea of “They” still, rather than just being she/her, I like the idea of she/they. And referring to myself as queer feels more of an accurate description.

Lucy – Ever since moving to Sydney and coming out and going to that first club night I’ve always thrown myself into as many queer events as I possibly could. I want to be able to contribute more to the community rather than just be involved in it, a lot of my friends are very engaged in the queer community, and I feel like I don’t have that level of involvement. I love that I’m never scared or intimidated to go to queer events, by myself or with my friends. Whilst I feel very connected to the queer community, I wish I could be more involved. I’m scared that since my friend group is all finishing university and looking to the future, that I’ll lose that sense of connection as everyone moves away, even though I’m sure we’ll all stay in touch.

Aisling – I feel little to no involvement in the queer community at the moment because I’m focusing so hard on my training. I’m involved with Queer Climbers Sydney though, and am looking to get more involved in the future, as soon as I have the time to do stuff.

Lucy – Challenges facing the queer community here isn Sydney… I feel like we need to create a wider variety of safer spaces in more areas. There’re certain areas of Sydney where queer people I know just don’t feel as comfortable. And the ones we do have are always pubs and clubs. Not to detract from queer nightlife; but having so much of queer culture based around adult only areas reinforces the idea that being gay, or trans, or whatever is an adult thing, and makes it easier for people to excuse restricting education about it to kids, which can be so harmful growing up and not having the education to understand yourself.

Aisling – I feel like theres more acceptance towards gay, lesbian, and bi people. But there’s less of an acceptance of trans people, like they can understand being gay, but they cant seem to understand what a trans person even is, much less how to approach them. Probably need more education about it in schools. More comprehensive sex ed instead of just how to put a condom on a fucking banana.

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Queer Limelight

Name: Anton Age: 59 Location: Redfern Occupation: News Presenter Sexual Orientation: Gay Gender: Male

I’ve been a news presenter for the past twenty five years, and I’ve spend just over twenty two with SBS, in the presenters chair since 1999. I identify as a gay man. Of all the labels you could apply to yourself in life that would be the one that most defines who I am. I would describe myself as being quite conventional in the way I present in terms of gender, and fashion forwardness. I don’t think I’m particularly adventurous when it comes to fashion, I like to look smart and presentable, but because there is a public version of me and a private version of me, I tend to keep the two fairly seperate. For professional events, appearances, and broadcasts there is a very specific way that I am required to dress, and it’s quite constrained. When I’m not in that mode, just walking the dog, hanging out with my partner, or doing sports it’s much more dressed down than even just meeting someone like I’m meeting you today where I would want to be along that line of smart and comfortable. In terms of presenting gender wise I present as very male. I come from a generation of gay men where there was a very strong divide between flamboyant men, and masculine men, and no one wanted to be the flamboyant man who was easily identified as gay – It was a time when you wouldn’t want to be easily recognised as gay, luckily times have changed, but I still feel that that sense of who I am is leaning to that masculine side. Given I’m not a particularly masculine personality, the way I present is definitely leaning in that direction.

A lot of people say that it (realising your sexuality) happened very young for them. High school for me was the turning point where I realised that there was an attraction that I felt. The way that my guy friends were getting crushes on girls, I was getting crushes on boys. Initially you just think “oh thats just a phase I’m going through, don’t worry about it.” but by the time I reached high school I realised that’s a feeling that isn’t going away and that it felt very natural. It’s a fairly agonising time, realising that that’s part of who you are, and not just something that you’re going through and will grow out of.

I am more assertive as a gay man, There is a burden that is lifted from you when you come out, and thirty five years ago it was a very different process coming out compared to what it is today. It manifests in smaller things like… would a man wear a scarf? There was a time when I wouldn’t do that because it felt too flamboyant, too obvious. Now though I feel much more comfortable, I’ll wear statement pieces, I wear an ear stud on camera – there was a time that would have been completely unacceptable for being too gay. Today? No one gives a stuff, News presenter is wearing an ear stud? So what? I’ve had it in since 1982, it’s not a new thing, but I can now feel comfortable having it in and presenting a part of my personality. I used to have to take it out and replace it with one of those blank studs for the news, its so much easier now!

I’m originally from South Africa, which was a fairly repressive society, and there was a lot of pressure to conform. I was outed by a newspaper reporter who just ambushed me saying “I just found out this information, would you like to comment on this story? I’m going to publish it anyway.” I was outed and not sure where it would leave my television career, but it was also like a liberation, I didn’t have to hide anymore. From there I became active in sports administration, gay and lesbian sport specifically. That was a big validation for me, it was like finding a home to be where I felt comfortable. We were actually campaigning for change, acceptance, and awareness. We had media campaigns going, local and international sports events going and that was a big turning point for me in terms of feeling comfortable as a gay man.

It was both empowering but at the same time those were the early nineties. It was a time of great transition for all of South Africa. Apartheid was being broken down, all of that negotiation was going on and it felt like the gay community… we weren’t the main game, but there was an opportunity for the community to say “hey, don’t forget about us, there are all these major political reforms, new constitution and everything, and we are a part of the deal.” It was quite empowering – I wasn’t a part of the process, that was for all of the advocates, lawyers, campaigners, and activists, who were doing all of the negotiating, but it was quite exciting to be a part of something new – to go from a system of great repression to a model constitution that was a world leading document that included a bill of rights that specifically included no discrimination on the basis of age, gender, sexual orientation, ableism and so on. It felt like being a part of history.

It was interesting to come to Australia from that, a whole different environment that was completely unknown. I came into a media market where I had zero experience and just lucked out at finding any employment. In about 2002 there was a thing in “The Good Weekend” called “Just The Two Of Us.” where they just interview two people about their relationship. They called me up and asked me to take part and I didn’t think for one second whether I should consider the implications, or consult my employer, and it was like a second coming out, just here in Australia. I outed myself as a gay man to a national publication. Luckily I work for quite a progressive network where that sort of thing has never been an issue.

I’m quite positive about the term “Queer”, I’m very much in the camp that says “That’s out word to use in whatever positive and constructive way that we want”. There was obviously a time in my life when that was used as an insult, and you couldn’t speak back against that because that was just the way society was set up in those days. There was the “establishment” the state, the church, community leaders, psychologists, everyone was on one side, and you were the exception, the outsider, the rule breaker, the disruptor, and the establishment could use all of these weapons to beat you down and try to make you conform, and that was one of the words that they used in those days to try and force you to be something you were not. I celebrate the fact that nowadays we can take a word like that and say this is our word, this word is for us and we have the right to shape how it is used.

I thin it’s very important to keep some pressure on all media to keep everyone honest. We all have a place in all of those platforms, and you need to keep reminding them that cant have an all white newsroom, and all white presenting team, and all heterosexual presenting team, or an all non-indigenous group. We need that diversity, and we need to keep reminding people when they fall down on the job. There are organisations like Media Diversity run by Antoinette Lattouf from Chanel Ten, and it’s really important to have organisations like that to support people trying to get opportunities in the media, whatever little support and advocacy you can get as a minority is always welcome and needed.

I always try in whatever small way I can to support organisations, individuals, campaigns that try to present a positive image of the larger gay and lesbian community. I’m not sure if that counts as being completely engaged in the queer community, I’m not an activist or advocate, but I try to support the community whenever I can.I feel absolutely connected with gay and lesbian people in the wider community. It is very much a part of who I am and how I see myself. I’m proud to be a part of that community, it isn’t something that was thrust upon me, it’s something I embrace. You don’t want to be pigeonholed as the “something” person within the media landscape – I don’t want to be labelled as the gay news presenter, or the brown skinned, or the migrant. We are many things in many situations, but my connection to the gay community is a key part of who I am.

I think that, like it or not, those of us that have a public profile have a sense of having to be better just to be good enough. You cant be just another person. There aren’t enough queer people in the media in order to just disappear and not make an impression and not make a positive impression on the airwaves. I don’t regard myself as a role model, but whatever positive presence I can present I can, and if I’m here then there’s room for other people like me to be here as well, and if that’s the only message that I can put out there then I’m happy with that.

We’ve come such a long way, but I would like to reach a point where it becomes more ordinary. We shouldn’t just be noticed when it’s Mardi Gras, or have someone be noted as our first gay something or other. I don’t want my gayness to be the main thing that people define me by. I want to reach a point where a person’s gender or sexuality is present, but unremarkable.

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Perceive me as Art

Name: Jess Age: 23 Location: Rosebery Occupation: Administrator Sexual Orientation: Bisexual Gender: Non-Binary

I’m usually in long, black clothing. Something that accentuates the paleness of my skin and my tattoos, whatever makes me look as spooky as possible with as little colour as possible. I’m not a big colour person, I like to accentuate more with accessories and makeup than coloured fabric, not for any real reason, I just think that black is a lot more fun. I used to be more into very fitted clothing, but I’m not experimented with different shapes and cuts of things to see how they work on me. I used to try to fit into a very specific mould when I was younger, but now I’m experimenting with things that are more fun and edgy.

When I was thirteen I was enrolled into an all girls school and I realised pretty quickly that I didn’t think about boys the same way that others did. I wasn’t interested in them, I was more taken with how beautiful women were, and just just assumed that everyone had these thoughts. I thought I’d just grow out of it, but I never did, and eventually had to face the fact that I was definitely romantically, or at least sexually inclined towards women. It was something I’d never considered before, having come from a very conservative household; so being not straight made me feel like everything was going to fall apart if I came out to them, so I kept it quiet for a few years.

It took a long time between coming out and actually going to queer events, because I was so insecure about it. I didn’t want to be anything but straight; being straight felt like the easiest route through life – my parents were straight and had a safe, happy life – I was worried that by coming out as bisexual I was opening myself up to rejection from my peers. I was only once I started actively looking into queer culture and speaking to other people who identified as bisexual, or were also questioning their sexuality that I began to relax about it. It was nice to start not giving a shit about being conventionally attractive to straight people – being attractive to queer people is like a rebellion. I’m not going to be this perfect heterosexual person, I’m going to start dressing gay and acting gay because I’m tired of pretending to be this perfect caricature of a woman for someone to look at.

Once I came out I became much more vocal about being gay, and more firm in my stance of being bisexual. I realised that I didn’t not like men, I just wasn’t as attracted to them at the time as I was to women. I’ve come to appreciate men now but there’s a bit of “you’re either straight or you’re gay” no in between, especially when I was first coming out. I really wanted to feel that I belonged somewhere, but these people who were so supportive to hear that I was into women, would turn on a dime when I said that I was bisexual and just say that I was confused, or that bisexuality doesn’t exist. It was jarring to find the reactions that I expected from my parents to instead come from the queer community.

When I was still pretending to be straight I had very long hair, I wore very fitted clothing, deep plunge necklines, just accentuating the fact that I had boobs and a bum. I was always insecure about being so tall and muscular compared to my very petite friends, which had me feeling like a giantess, leaving me feeling very unattractive. Once I came out I started getting more bold, experimenting with makeup more, wearing bigger eyeliner, cutting my hair different and dressing more androgynously. I’m wearing boots, converse, pants, I’m prone to wearing a band tee and being an interesting and dynamic person to look at rather than something for someone to fuck. I want to be perceived as an art piece.

I’ve felt connected to androgyny a lot when I was younger – I never really liked girly things, I never vibed with princesses and ponies, I was instead into monsters and grungy things. I loved Baphomet as a kid because it was this frightening demon that wasn’t male or female, no human or beast, but something in between and I loved it. I started thinking about my gender and I’ve never felt that my body doesn’t fit me, but I felt that within myself I ma not fully female. I’m somewhere somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, mucking about with pronouns to see what fits. Whilst I like femininity, and I like performing it and am appreciative of feminine energy, I don’t feel that I am not fully connected with it. I’m a step removed from feminine.

Being queer, for me, is a way to express myself freely without feeling like I have to fit into a mould. When I was younger I was very focussed on being the straight down the middle, normal heterosexual girl. When I realised that I couldn’t be straight, and I couldn’t live my life in the closet I decided to embrace it. Luckily I had a very supportive family – I never actually came out to them properly, I just let it slip one day. Being queer is being fully yourself without the pressure to be or act a certain way. It’s a very low pressure, loving community as long as you are being communicative. Queer people seek to understand you rather than pressure you into being a certain way. I feel rescued by the queer community.

I was at a party recently and had only just come to the conclusion that I was non-binary, and let it slip to someone “Hey, I think I’m non-binary, but I don’t really know how to tell anyone.” They said “Babe, don’t even worry about it, you don’t need to tell anyone anything, you know who you are, you tell me what you want me to call you and I will do it because I know that whatever it is that you’re feeling you’ve thought about, you know in your heart and I want to support you.” - I was so touched by it because it was someone I’d never met before and she was so sweet to me.

While I love the queer community and partying with them, I don’t feel super involved. I feel very connected with the queer community though, the warmth and acceptance that you feel walking into a queer event is so invigorating.

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Queer Means Family

Name: Malaika Age: 25 Location: Glebe Occupation: Musician Sexual Orientation: Queer Gender: Non-Binary

I spend most of my days working on music from home, my solo work as Malaika, and my Boy and Bucket work. Boy and Bucket being the band where I am Boy, and my friend Guy is Bucket, it’s a fun gender play thing where I get to be a bit more masculine as Boy. As Malaika, and in my personal life I identify as Non-Binary, but it’s fun to take my gender play a step further and identifying as he/him on stage, wearing more traditionally masculine things etc. My pronouns are They/Them, but when I am Boy I’d He/Him.

When I’m at home, so most of the last year, I’m in my pyjamas, but when I go out I wear a binder which helps with the gender dysphoria. I only get dysphoria around my chest these days, I addressed the dysphoria I used to have around my vocals through learning to lower my voice. I tend to wear activist tee’s, collared shirts, ripped jeans, and big boots because I am that lesbian.

About three years ago I was in a relationship with a cis man for four years, then I moved to Sydney and started to get much more involved with activism and music and the things I am really passionate about when I started to realise that I was probably bisexual. I went back to Singapore and told my boyfriend that I was bi. We stayed together for a little while longer, but not much, I needed to explore myself etcetera. I met a woman the next night and simply as like “yes please, this is the vibe.” And I haven’t dated a cis man since. Everything happened very quickly after that, I dated more and more women, and then a few years ago I started questioning my gender identity. I never though I was going to come out or be public about my gender and that it would just be something which existed in my personal life only. But after my partner died it became increasingly apparent to me how important it was for me to live my truth. There’s simply too much pain going on for me to not live my truth.

It gets complicated being half Tanzanian – it’s illegal to be gay back home, let alone discussing the gender politics of it all, so I haven’t done much about coming out to my family. I simply shove myself back into the closet when I go home, and then come back out when I get back to Sydney where it’s safe.

When I was living in Singapore, where it is also very illegal to be gay, I was very much conforming to stereotypical heteronormativity and still reeling from a childhood of being a tomboy and clothes that I wanted to wear being thrown out. So I thought it would be easier to conform and just wear dresses or whatever which made me very uncomfortable. When I came out I felt that I could dress more how I wanted to, doubly so with coming out as non-binary; I cut my hair, shaved my head, I wear a binder and just wear clothes that make me feel good all the time.

I would describe myself as highly involved in the queer community. My sister and I have been running a queer house for a few years now, so pretty much everyone we live with is queer and/or POC. I spend a lot of time just going to places and being queer, it’s like a full time job. I do a lot of queer activism, going to the rallies, talking about it in my work, I worked on an album about it called “sex and politics” about normalising queer relationships. Unfortunately my partner, Yasmin, passed away and I found that I couldn’t perform those songs anymore, as so much of the memory of writing those songs was tied up with memories of her, and all of the love songs were about her. I’ve written a whole new EP called “Yasmin” in memory of her, full of women loving women content, and I feel that it’s very important. I love to hear songs about queer relationships, I feel normalising queer relationships as opposed to heteronormative relationships we actually create that positive change in society. We do that with Boy and Bucket, there are a lot of love songs, but also just music about friendship. I am a believer in that platonic love and friendship should be the centre of what we believe to be the point of life, and is equally if not more important than romantic love.

Before my partner passed I had lots of different friendship groups – my black friends, my queer friends, my bartender friends – but after she passed, and then the pandemic… We’d already all become so close because we were grieving, and with the pandemic we just became even closer so my best friends are all queer. It is difficult to reconcile with that because they’re all so white due to the way that heteronormativity rears its ugly head in those of us who are raised with even more shame. It’s hard to find POC queers, show yourselves! * laugher * It can be hard some times, especially when BLM was so central in culture and I was just so angry. My friends were asking what they could do to help and I just didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

For mine and my twin sister’s birthday a few years ago when I’d just started talking about being non-binary, my sister bought me a bunch of sports bras to flatten my chest somewhat and it was so uplifting, and a step in the right direction.

Queer means freedom. I was raised all over the world, so finding a sense of self is complicated. When you move from school to school to school you could recreate yourself every time. What being queer means to me is less of a fleeting nomadic life jumping between people, countries, continents; But actually just being with a community no matter where yo are. I could go to a queer club in Mexico and say “hello family” and be at home. Being black and queer, when I find those other POC queers I just hold onto them so tightly! Queer means family, community, honesty, and just so much love.

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Gender F*ck

Name: Salem Age: 25 Location: Enmore Occupation: Performer (comedian, burlesque performer, event organiser) Sexual Orientation: Bisexual Gender: Non-Binary/Genderqueer/Transmasculine

I feel like there’s about seventeen different gender terms that would apply to me, but the ones that I traditionally use are non-binary, genderqueer, and transmasculine. I definitely have an affinity with manhood, and I am a boy, but I am also nothing, and identify strongly with non gendered identities. I really also like “gender fuck” as a term because I am not just passive about my gender, I am very active about twisting and manipulating my gender from day to day.

I like themed dressing, bringing a bit of theatre and costume to the way that I present myself every day. I don’t like to be too binary about it, but I do have both femme and masc days. I’ve found that I personally am very vain and care a lot about how I look on a daily basis, it sin’t about anyone else, it’s just about how I want to look for myself.

I know exactly the moment that I realised I was bisexual. It was post orgasm, and I had come to the idea of girls kissing again. I had this minute long conversation with myself about how impactful the idea of being with a girl was on my orgasm, and then whether I’d actually date a girl and I came to the realisation that yeah I definitely would date a girl and that in no way effected how I felt about boys. It was a lightbulb moment of just “oh yeah I am 100% bisexual”. It was may 23rd, I wrote in my diary in massive letters “I’M GOING TO THE FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE CONCERT… and also I’m probably bi.”

I realised that I was non-binary over the course of several years. It was like a bathtub slowly filling with water until it was spilling everywhere. It wasn’t a linear lightbulb moment, it was confusing and I fought against it a lot more. I felt like I was taking up space, I didn’t want to be trans and deal with everything which that entailed. But you can only run from yourself for so long. It wasn’t until I went to university and was in queer spaces and saw the broad range of non-binary trans people and the way that they presented that everything sort of clicked into place. I found an understanding of non-binary presentation and identity that I hadn’t known and just clicked with it.

Queerness is and was a big part of my life, I directed Queer Revue in 2015 and 2017, I went to queer uni, I went to queer collaborations and conferences which was probably where I realised really. I went to workshops and I saw all of these out and proud, complicated, nuanced people that weren’t just gay men and lesbians, but they were trans a kinky and poly and non-binary, and people of different genders and sexualities of different cultures rather than just white people. I started to learn about the history of gender variance, of hijra, and two spirit, and stuff and I realised that there’d always been gender variance in human civilisation. Whilst a lot of western cultures are very binary and patriarchal, there’s just always been variance. Trans men being accepted in the wild west for example. Learning about history has helped me learn about myself and my relation to gender. For example, “gay” wasn’t a thing in ancient Rome, but it was top/bottom. Which destabilises the idea of the hetero-patriarchy being the normal, natural way for things to be. It isn’t natural, it’s just a symptom of our current political climate.

I freaked out to be honest. I was getting by before realising I was non-binary on having big tits, crop tops and long hair. And then all of a sudden I felt like I had to present as a boy? I had no fucking clue what to do, I didn’t know how to deal with my curves or anything. My brother is a style influence on me, because I would just steal his clothes and take cues on masculinity from him.

I like to define queerness as not simply an identity but a political stance. It’s about being in opposition to norms about sexuality, gender, morality – not just theoretically, but putting it into practice – queerness is creative antagonism. I have met conservagays and I do not consider them a part of my family, I do not consider them queer. You can be homo-normative, you can gentrify neighbourhoods and hurt poor people when you’re a gay man or a lesbian, but you cannot be queer while you do that. You may be a part of the LGBT community, but you are not queer. Queer is an umbrella term that for me connects my sexuality, to my gender, to my expression, to my polyamory, to my kink, to my experiences with asexuality. That isn’t to say that I think that cishet poly people are queer, but that for me, my polyamory is linked to my queerness. Queer is the way that I move, and the way that I fuck, and the way that I talk, and the way that I present myself.

Healthcare in the queer community is mostly community based. We have to warn each other about nefarious doctors, which ones are going to harm or gate keep us. We essentially create databases and health guides to keep each other safe. Community healthcare is so important and has been going on forever in our community.

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Bi mad about it

Name: Riley Age: 26 Location: Ashfield Occupation: Legal sector, policy and campaigns Sexual Orientation: Bisexual Gender: Non-Binary/Genderfluid

I think I like some (cisgendered, heterosexual) men for validation because men are easy, and having sexy with men is easy, so if I need to feel validated and pretty, that’s a way to feel better about myself. Once I realised that I began to reevaluate myself and my reasons for being with men, and I feel that while I’m asking myself those questions, I shouldn’t be dating men, because it may be for the wrong reasons.

My presentation and aesthetic has shifted a lot over the last couple of years – shifting out of teenager-ness and young adulthood – and as I’ve gotten more involved in queer spaces and more secure in other areas of my life, particularly around work and study, I’ve felt more secure to present in a way that feels good to me rather than what I perceive to be conventionally attractive. A few years ago, my aesthetic was very feminine – long blonde hair, cutesy dresses, and skirts, and crop tops and glitter – That was definitely a vibe of mine for a long time, but probably starting from cutting all of my hair off in 2017/18, I started pushing to dress and present much more androgynous. I no longer often present particularly feminine. Not because of any particular political statement, or because it disgusts me, but because it doesn’t fit me for who I am. Makeup is very much a sometimes thing now, whereas I used to find that I couldn’t feel attractive unless I was wearing enough makeup.

I genuinely don’t remember ever thinking that I was straight. Not in a “I am queer way” just that there was no point at which I ever went “ah yes, I am a gay now.” I think that a big part of that was having lesbian parents who had no expectations about my being straight. It was funny when I had my first partner at fourteen and my mum said “I’m disappointed that I have such a heterosexual daughter.” very much as a joke, but it did make me wonder if I was heterosexual or not. I knew that I liked kissing that boy, but I wasn’t able to properly think about my sexuality. Then when my mum found out that I’d been hooking up with my best female friend a year or two later, she started yelling out “oohhh the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree now does it?” also very much as a joke, but I was very much aware at that point that I was probably not straight. My mum eventually just settled into accepting that I’d be dating someone at some point and that gender wasn’t relevant to my dating choices.

There are people who feel like a man or a woman, but when I ask myself what it is that makes me feel like a woman I realise that I feel no connection at all to femininity, but I definitely don’t vibe with being a man. Being non-binary for me is a lack of attachment to the idea of any particular gender, and pleasant feelings at fluidity, androgyny, and the ability to be and present myself as I feel. I do still dress femininely sometimes, but it feels more like drag now. I very much vibe with comfy dude clothes and snapbacks now, I will wear a snapback whenever and wherever I can get away with it.

There are different areas of queer community and I feel connected to some more than others. I’m obviously not keen on the conserva-gays, that’s not my vibe at all, and I’m no longer really vibing with the clubbing/partying queer network. Queer activism can be great, but also incredibly toxic and can have a lot of drama that can take an incredible toll, so it’s nice to have queer community connections that aren’t necessarily contingent on organising spaces. It’s refreshing to have friends who are queer, and on board with my radical leftist politics, but also aren’t involved with all of those spaces.

To me queer means fucking with the gender binary, and fucking with capitalist ideas of the nuclear family. You can be homosexual and not be queer, and conserva-gays can die made about it, but having sex with someone of the same gender, or being transgender does not inherently make you queer, to be queer, I believe that you need to have some level of political analysis and awareness. It’s fine for someone to be a dude who likes dudes and live your life that way, those sorts of people are perfectly valid, but I don’t think that simply existing as an LGBT person entitles you to call yourself queer, I think queerness comes in when you have some analysis of Identity, the structures that we are within, and trying to make them better for the broader community. Like you can be gay and queer, but you can also be gay or queer.

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Queer and Sparkly

Name: Hayden Age: 26 Location: Inner Western Sydney Occupation: Advocate/Activist Sexual Orientation: Queer Gender: Brotherboy

“A Brotherboy is someone who is a First Nations person to so called Australia, who was assigned female at birth, but who has a boy spirit, and lives their life through that boy spirit, and conducts their male cultural activities. That does not mean that they are a binary trans man, though there are Brotherboys who are, you can be anywhere on the gender/sexuality spectrum both in self identification, and in outward presentation. A Sistergirl is a female equivalent.” - Hayden

For a more complete definition of Brotherboy, read Hayden’s article on Junkee https://junkee.com/brotherboy-sistergirl-decolonise-gender/262222

I do like to make sure that people know that I may not present the way that they are expecting. As a trans-masculine person, people may expect me to present in a traditionally masculine way, but I wear high heels, I wear makeup, I have quite long hair. But I still am a trans-masculine person, I still use he/they pronouns, I just love looking queer as fuck, and being sparkly. I like to break down the gender binary and people’s understandings and assumptions of what people should look like.

When I was quite young I knew that I was a boy and would tell everyone around me that I was a boy. Going through puberty was very difficult for me, but I didn’t understand why. I knew quite early on that I was attracted to women, but I was about sixteen when I began to hear and understand the terms for that, which is when I started identifying as bisexual. When I was about eighteen I learnt what being transgender meant, but didn’t quite connect all the dots aside from knowing that somehow I identified with the concept until the proper realisation at twenty one. I began my transition at twenty three. I use the terms bisexual, queer, and pansexual for myself, but I more frequently use the term queer, as a way to use a term that I can identify with, and that other people can use without the incorrect preconceptions they may have with other labels.

When I realised I was transgender, but wasn’t ready to come out I overdid femininity in order to hide the fact that I identified as transgender. When I did finally decide to come out as trans, I went too far for my own comfort in the other direction. I presented super masculine, I did the leg spreading thing constantly, I only wore dark colours. I was very not me, but I felt that I had to in order for people to gender me correctly, which they still didn’t. It was this weird phase of trying to prove myself at the same time as getting comfortable with my gender. The more comfortable I came with who I am, and surrounded myself with people who made the effort to gender me correctly, and treat me with respect, the more comfortable I felt presenting myself in a more authentic way. And that’s where you see me now, wearing the colours that I like, and wearing makeup and high heels, and growing my hair out again. It was a case of “I want long hair, I am a guy, the people I know will respect me for that, so why am I going to change my appearance to suit a society that needs to progress?”.

To me being queer means pride, and comfort, and familiarity. It means having a community and a chosen family around me who support me and who I can identify with. Being queer is being myself and not having to hide anything about who I am as a person. Being queer is automatically political, because we live in a society that treats us as lesser, which is why I do so much activist work, to try and make the world a safer place for people like me.

I take my activism wherever I go. Originally I started being an activist for general queer and trans rights, and took that into the Irish dancing community where I fought to change the official policy to allow trans dancers to compete as themselves. Originally when I started transitioning, I was not going to be allowed to compete in the mens, which was not great. I also run workshops with workplaces to help their workplaces be safer for disabled and LGBTQIA+ people. Working with organisations, working with individuals, generally doing everything I can to make the world a better place for the LGBTQIA+ community, and somehow being a weird kind of semi-public figure.

Being a semi-public figure means that a lot of people recognise me, and I get greeted at queer events. Because people know who I am, they will go straight to me, or if something happens in the community I am many people’s first port of call. But I love it, I wouldn’t be doing everything to speak for and support my community if I didn’t love it.

A lot of the really affirming moments for me happened at my university because of the environment, Sydney Uni is quite conservative, so when people there are affirming, it meant a lot more. There was a barbeque being held for first nations students to get to know each other and I’d literally come out as trans the week before and had only come out to a few people. One of the support workers who I’d come out to introduced me to some first years by the name I’d given her a few days beforehand. Just the phrase “This is Hayden, He’s in third year...” it was the first time on campus that someone had introduced me by the appropriate name and pronouns. It sticks out so much in my mind because the environment of Sydney Uni is so conservative.

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Just Ace

Name: Liam Age: 21 Location: Gordon Occupation: Student (Media) Sexual Orientation: Asexual Gender: Cis Male

I’m into dudes more than girls, and came out as gay to most people when I was sixteen. I had a clue that I was asexual, and clocked into it fairly quickly. I said to my teacher “I like guys, but I don’t want to sleep with them, I just want to be around them.” Since there’s such little representation of asexual people out there, there’s no preconceived notions of how an ace person should look or act. I’ve definitely found a behavioural shift since coming to terms with my identity. I don’t feel the need to be a certain person anymore, it’s freedom, I don’t need to be “that dude” anymore. A lot of my friends are first generation asian immigrants, with close ties to their parents, and hold – or are at least raised with – conservative values which are typically against the idea of queer culture. And I was the same, but now I don’t feel obliged to act accordingly.

Asexuality is jus the lack of sexual urge. For me when it comes to sexuality my brain just… doesnt. There’s this weird disconnect in that I understand that people have sex, and that I could have sex, but I feel like there’s better things to do with someone than have sex. I’ve never been in a relationship, but I’ve also never had that craving. Being ace for me is a freedom, there are no preconceived notions of what ace people are like so no one expects things of me, but theres also no preconceived notions of what ace people are like, so I find myself being unsure of how to be. Am I making a good representation for myself and other asexual people? Am I going to drag our name through the mud? It’s worrying

Even though I’ve been out for five years, I’m still bothered by the pressure to just give up and be all of the straight person things that society wants me to be. And not having much out there representing asexual people means I think I could very easily just fade back into being straight and no one would say anything. It’d be so easy, but it would hurt too much.

I feel very uninvolved with the queer community, aside from my sister, there aren’t many queer people in my social circles, and I’ve never really felt the push to go out in search of them. I’m a very “keep to myself” person, and I feel like my continued existence as a queer person is enough of an involvement in the queer community for me.

I was talking with a friend who acknowledged my asexuality by… we were having this conversation about preferences, ideal partners and such, and he asked me “what sort of person would you like to spend large amounts of time with” and it was nice to have someone acknowledge that I’m not the same as them, but that it isn’t a bad thing. I didn’t say anything at the time, but I messaged them afterwards to let them know how grateful I was that they acknowledged that this was a difference and an actual thing, that it’s not some meme, but an actual, serious part of my life. Having someone acknowledge that this is who I am, and accept this part of my identity is a nice thing to have. It’s not super frequent that people validate me like that, so when it does happen, it means a lot.

Without the internet I wouldn’t even know that I was asexual. The internet as of now is already very important, it’s where I met the majority of my queer friends. The best representation I’ve seen of asexuality was in Todd from Bojack Horseman, it was good representation because it was just a part of his overall character rather than his defining trait.

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Nothing Rhymes With David

Name: David James Age: 30 Location: Wollongong Occupation: freelance music journalist/podcaster Sexual Orientation: Bisexual Gender: Cis Male

Without the hair and the beard I look like Augustus Gloop in Wonka’s chocolate factory, so as soon as I was able, I started growing all this out. I haven’t had a hair cut in eight years, and the beard really does it for me, so I’m set like this. Of course now I’m getting grey streaks and thats a whole thing to deal with, but I’m thirty, I can just deal with that. I have well over a hundred band shirts, five pairs of shoes, and three pairs of pants, so some variation of this is what you’ll see on me from day to day, just a constant rotation of band and wrestling shirts. Like Kevin Smith said “If you’re fat, you wear black, and you wear layers.” and he was right. I’ve never gone for his jorts, but I respect his dedication to the craft. Over time they seemed to get wider and wider until it got real distracting. Kevin Smith has as many and varied hockey jerseys as I have band shirts, and I respect that hustle.

I realised I was bisexual when I was fifteen, it was the video for “Make Damn Sure” by “Taking Back Sunday” and I remember Adam Lazzara being cute as hell. At first I thought that I thought he was just really cool and I wanted to be like him, but I then realised “Oh no this is more of an infatuation sort of thing like when I was watching Angeline Jolie or whatever” and I just sort of put two and two together and realised that there must be a thing for that. Basically when I find out something new about myself I just add it to the list of things I know about me; Like realising that I was a bit straight edge, once I had the words to describe it, it just became a part of who I was. Having the words to be able to describe myself like that is very comforting y’know? Like I was diagnosed with Aspergers’ as a kid, but didn’t get told about it until I was a teen, and finding out just made a lot of things make sense. There was no change in the way I presented myself, I was fifteen, Mum mum bought my clothes for me!

I don’t know what being queer means to me, I’ve never felt that I really fit in with all that. You know when you’re a kid and see those signs saying “you must be this tall to ride?” I feel like when I look at queer stuff that if I want to be involved I’m going to see a sign saying “you must be this queer to enter” and I don’t know if I’d measure up. I just feel like I’m caught in the middle, and I’m just not cool enough or queer enough to be included in those conversations. Being queer is as much a part of my life as being right handed or left handed, its one part of the puzzle that makes up me.

I don’t think that anyone in my community, and in my scene knew any any trans people before Laura Jane Grace. To the best of my knowledge that had never happened in such a public way in the modern punk or hardcore scene. There were a few gay people - we were kids when Rob Haldford came out and he was in his mid forties when he finally came out in 1998, long after people had stopped caring about Judas Priest, and frankly that’s what brought them back into the mainstream. So there was a few queer people in the heavy music scene, but Laura Jane Grace was the first time that we learnt about trans people and transitioning, and learning about proper pronouns, and seeing it all happen very publicly. It was a huge thing to see, and the closest we’d come to was fictionalised stuff like Hedwig and the Angry Inch, or the Crying Game or something, we’d never seen it be so real and so open. They weren’t the first trans punk person, but they were the first big name performer in the punk scene to do this. On a smaller scale? there’s a musician from Newcastle called Rachel Maria Cox who came out as Non Binary a few years ago, and we’d never heard of that stuff. I grew up in Nowra, I didn’t know about this stuff, I didn’t meet another openly queer person until I was nineteen and came up to Sydney for a show, and even then in terms of people who weren’t Cis I wouldn’t be able to tell you shit. To find out what non binary was, and what transitioning was, it was incredible for me. That opened up a whole spectrum where people were way more comfortable explaining who they were, and no I have a whole load of non binary friends. That dialogue has become so much more open, and I attribute that to people like Rachel, and Laura who really blazed the trail really.

I feel like we need more positivity for larger men. When it comes to a positive role model for a fat guy like me I get… DJ Khaled? No thanks really. There aren’t really any fat, queer dude that you can look to and see as an aesthetic role model. Which is a problem inherent to queer society as well, is this big push of these gorgeous, slimmer people. As much as there’s this push for body positivity, especially for women, I so rarely see larger men being held up as positive examples of queer masculine aesthetic.

you can follow David on:

davidjamesyoung.com

Podcasts:

all my friends are in bar bands hottest 100s & 1000s The big show show show

David’s band

“Nothing Rhymes with David”

Instagram:

@DJYWrites @notforprintpods @XNRWD @hottest100s

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[the-queer-look]

People Think I’m Fancy

Name: Lila Age: 30 Location: Newtown Occupation: Theatre Technician Sexual Orientation: Queer Gender: Cis Female

I feel like I never see the term “Queer” used pejoratively anymore, and only ever used in a positive context, which is nice. I think we’re taking it back.

I have a bit of an internet presence, which make it look like I am a fancy person; The truth is that I’m not. Being a freelancer and doing live events, I am almost always working. What this means is that almost every day I am wearing some variation on cargo pants, big combat boots to give me a precious few inches because I’m four foot ten, and a black T-shirt of tank top. It used to be that in high school and college I only wore mens clothing so that I could be perceived as tough, but as time has gone on, I mix it up and let myself be cute.

Up until I was fourteen or fifteen I was never really attracted to anyone, and didn’t get why anyone would want to be with someone like that, and then… I never really had a moment, I just always sort of thought that both guys and girls were cute, and being queer was never really a big piece of my identity. Gender was always an issue for me in that I had a twin brother, and it used to piss me off super hard growing up that people would treat us differently. They’d treat him one way because he was a boy, and treat me one way because I was a girl, and that’s why in high school I cut my hair short and only wore boys clothes, because I wanted people to treat me like they treated him. Maybe that was a part of the confusing part, I never knew when looking at anyone whether I wanted to be them, or look like them, and that was true of ladies and dudes, and it was just never something that I thought about that hard.

If anything I started trying to be more comfortable with dressing feminine about the time that I came to terms with my sexuality, in my early twenties. I definitely knew before then, but if anyone asked me, I don’t think I would have answered. Nowadays I actually wear womens clothes, when I didn’t before.

I was in Singapore a few years ago, working on a show, and there’s this really interesting thing where Singapore has a really conservative religious majority that doesn’t like queer culture, and they have a Christian right movement that rails against queerness. But the interesting thing about Singapore is that it’s so fashion forward and so much of that fashion is so obviously pulled from Queer fashion from all genders, cute tomboy clothes for female presenting people, and slick masculine clothing that I’d always associated with cis gay dudes, and despite no one admitting to having that identity, a lot of people were dressing like that because it was the fashion. It felt sad because there was a lack of acknowledgement of where those fashion styles had originated. Here though, in Sydney, and elsewhere where Queer fashion has become significantly more mainstream, I think it’s fucking great. It feels like a fast track to societal acceptance in a sense. Also look at the mullet – Queer people love mullets, across the gender spectrum, mullets are in, mullets are transgressive, and now mullets are back with everyone. A mullet is not necessarily aesthetically pleasing, but for a lot of people having a mullet is a way of saying “Fuck the system and your fashion trends” - and the mullet, I feel, is a stand in for a lot of modern queer fashion, you see people fucking with gender norms and traditional ideas of beauty.

I’ve found a lot of fun in the organisation “Unicorns” - when I first came to Sydney, I was very excited about Mardi Gras and how it was billed as “Pride, but better!” but once I got here I began to think that Sydney’s queer scene was very targeted to just queer men. I couldn’t find the diversity I craved, because I was new here and didn’t know the area. Unicorns is cool because they’re an organisation that is very much an umbrella group for queer culture. Before finding them, I felt that there wasn’t that much space for queerness outside of a very narrow sliver of queer culture. Of course that’s different now that I’ve been here a while and know where my people are, but for someone who’d just arrived, “Unicorns” was a life saver. I don’t normally go clubbing as a rule. I don’t think I’m that cool Note, you are very cool – K and I’m usually working at the times that people are clubbing, or I’m even just working at the club that people are partying at, but I make an exception for unicorns.

I feel like I’ve got a lot of queer friends, but I don’t feel that I’m particularly connected to the queer community. I feel like I should get more involved, possibly go to one of the events that “Sydney Gaymers” have, I think the stuff they do is cute, and I got really interested when I saw their booth at fair day, but then I left the country for a while, and when I came back, we were in lockdown so… It’s hard to be involved and connected at the moment.

I think that the cool thing of the internet, and self promotional tools like tiktok and instagram that people have used to become influencers give kids who maybe don’t see anyone like themselves the opportunity to see other people like themselves. Allowing anyone to promote themselves immediately provides representation for anyone who doesn’t feel that they can relate to anyone or have an appropriate role model. I think the internet is going to be hugely important for kids growing up who need that representation and just aren’t going to get it from the media at large.

You can follow Lila on instagram at

@notaprodigy

@prodigyeveryday

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[the-queer-look]

Kinky-Queer

Name: Amy Age: 25 Location: Waterloo Occupation: Artist Sexual Orientation: Pansexual Gender: Genderqueer

I run kink events- It all started with Sydney Fetish Ball, where I exhibit Australian fashion designers, performers, and provide a space where people can meet and mingle. It promotes a lot of smaller entrepreneurs within the scene, so if you want to buy a harness? Go to Sydney fetish ball and you’ll probably see one on the runway that you’ll like. Because fetish ball is only annual, I’m starting Reunion, which will be a quarterly even to give people a bit more of an opportunity to meet their like minded people and show their work. Outside of that, I am also an artist. A lot of my work is taking the pinup girl, which was an ideal of femininity that was designed for the male gaze, and re-contextualising it into a contemporary portrayal of femininity.

I’ve had some gender issues in the past, but I worked through those by developing an on stage persona “Adam Apple” for drag king shows. That character got me more comfortable with being masculine and connecting with masculine energy within myself and not feeling the need to be pretty all the damn time.

When I was in high school I was that overzealous ally of queer people, people would come out to me because I seemed as the safe person to test the waters with. Obviously later I figured out that I wasn’t straight, which explained why I was so invested in everyone else’s journeys, it’s because I shared their feelings and experiences, but wasn’t ready to admit it to myself yet. Once I left that heavily structured environment and got more comfortable in my own skin going to art school, I was a bit more forgiving to myself in accepting that I was into girls, and then recognising the difference between bi and pansexual, and not really believing in the gender binary.

Clubbing and partying for both the queer and kink communities is much more community driven and friendly. The reason that I started Reunion was because the Hellfire club closed, and someone needed to do it y’know? If no one else was going to do it, it was gonna be me. I have the experience, I’m ready, I know what needs to be done, and how it should be done. I found the kink scene through Hellfire, and if that’s not there, if there’s no friendly, safe, welcoming way into the community for new people, then how are people going to find their tribe? It’s not about a profit, it’s about providing that space for people.

I think that kink is such a platform for queerness in that it doesn’t matter how you identify, it’s about self discovery, and whatever you find is welcome so long as you do it in an ethical way and always obey the rules of consent.

The moment I realised I wasn’t straight… there was this girl, who has since transitioned to male but… at the time they were a very butch presenting dyke – mah favourite – and they were quite a shock to me, I was in a cishet relationship, but found myself developing these obsessive feelings for them and I couldn’t place what they were, I just wanted to be around them all the time, but of course I was in a relationship at the time. I realised soon that I would happily go down on her, and then just felt the straight privilege drain from my body as I had a mild identity crisis. I had the conversation with my boyfriend about potentially opening up the relationship so I could find myself more sexually with women, and he did not like that at all. I was also very upset at the thought of being caged like that, and being unable to explore my sexuality there in my early twenties.

When I finished my existential crisis, I immediately cut my hair real short because I didn’t feel gay enough. I just had to express it to people, I wanted other girls to know that I was into girls, and I was suddenly having this gender issue… and cutting my hair did it! All of a sudden everyone knew that I had big dyke energy. Yeah those sorts of visual cues are old and outdated, but they can still be very useful if you’re struggling to get your…. a-gender out there.

There’s a very fine line between representation and queer-baiting, and it’s a very difficult line to walk for a lot of media. It isn’t the easiest task for straight people, but you’d think that a simple market research survey would help right? Surely just ask the target audience what they want and do it? I think the consensus of the audience has been things like “Hey, maybe get a trans person to play a trans person?” I appreciate that they’re trying, but I refuse to simp to these capitalist pigs for the crumbs of representation that they’re throwing to our community.

The Queer scene is difficult for me; the main way that I interact with the queer scene is through the kink scene – I find that when I go to a queer party, the butch girls look at me like a threat, and the femme girls look at me… not at all, and so I don’t feel that I connect with people there as opposed to kink parties, where I feel so connected with people in that scene. There was a lot of contention this year about whether or not kink floats should be in pride, what with the whole “you can be into kink without being queer, therefore kink isn’t a queer identity.” but at the same time, I’ve never found more allies than in the kink scene, and that’s the platform through which I was able to discover my sexuality. It’s very accepting, and is governed by a strict code of ethics, so you can feel safe being experimental there. For example, if you just think you’re bicurious, that may just be social conditioning and you haven’t been able to engage with your queer side, and this provides a space where you can, without judgement, without fear, analyse and explore your own sexuality in a safe environment, with like minded people. I tell you though, it’s hard to find a straight girl in a kink club which I guess is the correlation between the two for me.

To find Amy’s art, check out

@the_recidivist recidivist.world sydney fetish ball reunion club

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[the-queer-look]

a new generational understanding

Be aware that the following interview touches on some topics and references terms that may be distressing to some readers, particularly of the transgender community

CW: slurs, references to forced sterilisation of transgender people in Japan

Name: Alicia Age: 21 Gender: Non-Binary Genderfluid Sexuality: Pansexual Location: Redfern

I live in Redfern, and I love it, definitely my favourite suburb of Sydney that I’ve lived in so far. I’m originally from Japan, and moved here when I was fifteen, so sometimes English doesn’t come super super naturally to me despite having a strong Australian accent from growing up learning English from my Australian speaking dad, I feel that just because someone is capable of sounding like they’re from a place, does not mean that they are. There are several friends of mine with very strong Japanese accents, who have much better masteries of the English language. As a result of both sounding very Australian, and being frequently mistaken for caucasian, I’ve taken to wearing nods to my heritage as a part of my “look” - I feel that as with gender identity, when it comes to racial and cultural backgrounds, it’s never safe to assume.

I feel that I’m very blessed to be born into this generation, and that it’s much easier to talk about concepts of gender and sexuality with people from this era. Even just ten years ago this probably wouldn’t have crossed my mind, or been an option that I’d have known about, I would’ve just felt like something was missing and thought that that’s what life was like. Even to my straight friends who aren’t particularly engaged in the queer community, these concepts are so much more out there now, that I can tell them that I’m Non-Binary and they know what I’m talking about. I feel like once I started to understand and accept my being Non-Binary, I started to embrace and experiment with my feminine side a bit more, whereas when I only identified as a Cisgendered Lesbian, I felt like I needed to dress much more masculine.

Since I was in Japan until I was fifteen, I wasn’t exposed to anything remotely close to queer culture until I moved to Australia, and started to sere things on TV and social media. That upbringing in Japan leads to my favourite joke “My gaydar is so bad I didn’t even know I was gay”. People are quite blessed here in Australia, but don’t realise it, so all those Aussies who don’t know how good they have it with freedom to be themselves, take a step into any truly conservative country, and you’ll be astounded at how lucky you are. The only household queer label that everyone would know and understand in Japan would be as a closest direct translation “tranny” and not specifically meaning crossdressing, but a very derogatory term to mean different sexuality, and an abnormal relationship with gender. Of course, It’s been a few years since I’ve been back, so hopefully things are different.*

I actually thought that the norm was that everyone was naturally bisexual. It’s very naive, but until I left high school, I thought that everyone was into everyone, but because people wanted to have kids, they just ended up with someone they could procreate with. It wasn’t until I actually mentioned this to someone and heard their reaction that I had a bit of a google and came to the conclusion that I was probably Bi. Then when I was eighteen I realised that my attraction to men was… underwhelming, and I started branding myself as a lesbian. It’s been a long time of self revelation, and discovery, but eventually I met my girlfriend, and we’ve been together for three years as of today. When I met her it was the romantic “music starts playing in the background and everything else falls out of focus” moment that you always dream about. I know that labels and identifiers give a lot of people a lot of power in themselves, but I feel that putting a label on myself would stunt my growth, so I just label myself as pansexual, even though girls are definitely prettier. (I’m honoured that you interrupted your anniversary to have this interview and photoshoot – K)

When I first realised that I was queer, I did every stereotypical butch lesbian thing that I could – the carabiner keys, the docs, shaved my head fully, but after a while I began to feel like I was putting on a mask rather than being my authentic self. I now rotate my presentation based on how I feel from day to day, but it’s overall much softer, much warmer.

I feel that my level of involvement in the queer community is… not as much as I’d like. I try to support queer artists, queer films, events and such, and always try to be involved with new projects when and if I find out about them. Regardless of my level of involvement, I do feel quite connected to the queer community at large. That being said, there are definitely parts of Sydney that are more focussed on specific areas of the community – I feel less welcome in Paddington than I do in Marrickvile for example, but there are always parts of Sydney where the vibe is much more intersectional than the rest.

I like that queer culture is being more positively represented in media these days, but at the same time I feel that the main purpose of those corporations that are providing that representation is just to make the maximum amount of money from it, whilst putting in the least amount of work to portray a nuanced understanding of the culture.

Being Queer to me, is to be fully and truly my authentic self. It is about being this ever-evolving, fluid person that is content and proud of who they are, at any gender or sexuality. Not to mention the queer community is literally full of the best people I’ve ever met in my life, so being queer means I get to be a part of that family, which is just so amazing.

*at the time of transcribing this interview, transgender people in Japan are still forced to undergo sterilisation

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[the-queer-look]

we were all straight once

Name: Steff Age: 27 Gender: Non-Binary Sexuality: Bisexual Location: Summer Hill Occupation: Nursing Student

I got married when I was eighteen… I was straight once… we were all straight once. I didn’t think about it at the time, being with a boy was just the done thing. I met a boy online who was being very nice to me and I just… I dont know, married him? Turns out that I wasn’t keen on being married to a man, so I got out of that, and came across the queer community online and was just shocked by the revelation that there were girls out there who didn’t like boys. I was on tinder at the time and figured I’d give dating women a go and found that I liked it so much that I started labelling myself as a lesbian. All of my friends were confused when I suddenly started dating men again, but I’ve been coming to terms more and more with actually accepting my bisexuality, and a big part of that has been my partner of the last two and a half years, who is also bisexual, sort of helping me with it and letting me chat about it.

Straight is such an... aesthetic… I’m really glad that I don’t have that look anymore. I used to have the long hair, the really feminine clothing. I didnt like the femme clothing, but everyone kinda peer pressured me into it, showering me with compliments about my appearance the more feminine my clothing choices were, even though I was incredibly uncomfortable wearing them. It eventually hit a point where I just didn’t care about their opinions anymore, and just stopped dressing to please and wore what I wanted. I’ve gone through a few different styles since then, but I’ve sort of settled on this loose, baggy clothing that hides my body type a bit, and doesn’t immediately gender me.

I don’t really know how the realisation that I was Non-Binary came about, but I guess it would have had something to do with exposure to non gender conforming people at university and then reflecting on my own childhood. Realising that I’d never really been keen on the whole “being a girl thing”. I do feel weird about identifying as Non-Binary, because I’m still very binary in my thinking; I’m not a girl because I don’t like feminine things, I’m not a boy because I don’t like masculine things, but those things aren’t actually ascribed to those genders anyway so its kinda like I’ve found the place where I feel comfortable, and now I’m just learning about this space I’ve found myself in.

I think I give less fucks about things now. If I want to dye my hair I will, if I want a tattoo I’ll get one. It seems like the queerer I get, the more tattoos I’ll get. Weirdly, if I think about straight people, I don’t tend to think about tattoos that much, it feels like a very queer identity in my mind. Then again, there are some tattoos which are very straight.

I feel that to a certain extent, there are “queer points” that people feel like they need to accumulate when they present themselves to be accepted. For example, when I first went to the queer space at my university, I was still presenting as fairly straight, and fairly femme, and when I walked into the queer space there was just dead silence, and felt really out of place.

I feel that the majority of portrayals of Queer people in mainstream media is as an object, rather than a subject. I don’t feel like I see Queer characters as characters in most media, they’re simply “the Queer one” and then not given any substance, tropes and plot devices rather than people. Despite the position that media is in to be able to help shape future Queer culture, all I see if corporations seeking to extract profit from us rather than attempt to be inclusive and uplift the community.

I’ve never really felt disconnected from the Queer community, there’re always people willing to talk about things that you’re going through, as long as you now that you can seek out other Queer people, either in person communities, or online groups and forums. At the moment it can be hard to be involved in the Queer community. Last year I was the Queer officer at Sydney University which was very good, and had me connected with a lot of different organisations. Most of what I was doing as the Queer officer was finding baby queers and connecting them to resources and the greater queer community.

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live outside the box

Name: Samarah Age: 24 Gender: Cis Female Sexuality: Queer/Bisexual Location: Petersham Occupation: Teacher

I’m currently living in inner western Sydney, but I grew up in Rural New South Wales, and moved to Sydney to study when I was nineteen. I didnt realise that I was queer until I moved to Sydney because I didnt know anyone queer while growing up, and the representation I did have wasn’t particularly diverse, and was fairly gay male orientated.

I initially came out as Bisexual, but I find it more comfortable to identify to other LGBT people as Queer because I think that I’ve come to understand my sexuality in a different way since coming out, though I do still feel quite strong ties to that identity. Bisexual as a term is more accessible to people outside of the community, so it makes that an easier identifier for parents and such.

For me, to be “Queer” is to live outside of the box that society wants to put people in. Having the confidence in yourself to see the box and be able to live outside of it instead of doing everything possible to fit in it. Queer as a term also encompasses the whole diversity of gender and sexuality, rather than being very focussed on one aspect of the community.

I moved to Sydney in 2015, and despite having a boyfriend, my best friend would take me out to clubs, where I would find myself just staring at women. Towards the end of the year I began to think “oh I think there might be something more to this” - and as I’ve grown to understand myself more as a queer person I realised that I’d been staring at girls in that way my whole life and just hadn’t had the means to understand myself. Looking back, I also had very intense crushes on girls while growing up, but just assumed that they were very jealous friendships. Like I would get really upset when they would get a boyfriend, and not understand why I wasn’t happy for them.

For a while, because it took me so long to realise I was Queer, I also felt that it wasn’t valid for me to be a part of the community, specifically because it took me so long to realise it. I felt that I needed to exaggerate my queerness in order to feel like I belonged, like making up for lost time. But now I dont feel the pressure to play up my Queer identity, but I’m still going to continue to be annoyingly gay because why not?

I’ve always liked dressing up – growing up doing ballet, I’ve always been in costumes, and I still go all out at costume parties. I kind of realised in the last few years that I could dull down that instinct, and then make every day a low key dress up day. I’ve been raiding my grandmother’s closet for old vintage things that she no longer wears, and have been going thrift shopping with her and my granddad, which has made me realise how much I like finding older clothes and being able to put them into new outfits. I’m definitely going through a coat phase, and I love it so much.

The more I’ve grown into my queerness, the more I’ve felt comfortable curating my wardrobe to better suit an expression of myself that feels authentic. Branching out into not just buying clothes and accessories from the womens section of big retailers, but saying to hell with gender, and mixing and matching to make it all my own is very liberating.

Anyone who sees a straight white man on tv doesn’t automatically assume that all straight white men are like that one character, because straight white men are so heavily represented in media. But you get one Queer person on the screen, and suddenly because there is so little representation for whatever identity is held by that Queer character, people who dont tend to interact with the LGBTQIA+ community will assume that this one representation of a Queer character is representative of the entire community. The reason that portraying Queer people as villains in media is dangerous for the Queer community is specifically because that lack of representation makes the “evil because Queer” character stand out.

Historically a lot of representation in media has been distilling complex Queer identities to be digestible and understandable for straight people. Boiling such a diverse range of identities down to “the gay best friend” or “the horny bisexual” or “militant no-fun lesbian” which is useful for a television format, but is ultimately reductive of these identities, and instead of providing representation, they’re providing caricatures.

I make it a big priority to go to Queer organised events, primarily because events that are marked as Queer run and Queer organised always feel much safer. And it’s a place that I can go with my girlfriend and feel comfortable showing affection without feeling unwelcome or objectified.

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minority within a minority

Name: Liz Age: 22 Gender: Cis Female Sexuality: Lesbian Location: Petersham Occupation: Retail

I was born and raised in Indonesia, but came to Australia to study. I recently finished my studies, and have been here in Sydney for the last four years.

I think I realised that I was gay when I was fourteen or fifteen, back home in Indonesia, watching Titanic for the first time and Kate Winslet just… oh damn, but then because it was in Indonesia, the nudity and sex scene were cut out. And then just last year I was watching it again with my girlfriend and that scene came on, which I’d never realised was a part of the film and it just blew my mind. But even without that, it was a pivotal moment of realising my sexuality.

I tend to dress fairly masculine, I never shop in the womens section, because clothing from the mens section is just so much more comfortable. I wear a lot of shorts, and oversized shirts, so very… Hawaiian shirt chic.

I feel like I’ve always been a tomboy, but I think I also realised I was gay well before I had any sort of fashion identity, so I dont know if I was dressing up as a tomboy or realising I was gay first. I can definitely say that I identify most with women who dress up in more tomboyish ways, but don’t necessarily identify as butch.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen fashion stereotypes around queer culture as a bad thing, but it might be because I fit so well into that stereotype so I’m okay with it? Since I’ve always fit so well into that stereotype and found it quite comfortable, I guess I’ve never really thought about its effect on people who don’t easily conform to it.

I feel that I’ve never relied on the mainstream media for my queer representation, but then I grew up in Indonesia, where there was no queer representation in the media, unless being shown people being jailed for exercising queerness. But I can say that the representation in mainstream media is definitely getting more diverse, and young people today have better channels to find that representation. That being said though, to be Queer is to exist outside the norm, so you cannot rely on established institutions to represent queerness. Even now as things are better than they have ever been in terms of representation of diversity, it is very much still stereotyped within the heteronormative sense, a lack of non binary characters for example, and characters still adhering to these gender norms. I welcome the rise of this increased representation, but I don’t think that Queer people should rely on that representation.

Because I’m not from Australia, and being here, I’m a minority within a minority. I identify very strongly with my queerness, but because I’m not out to every person I know, I dont use my queerness as my cultural touchstone. Queerness is a part of me, but I would identify as an Indonesian person before I mentioned my sexuality.

I think that by being in Sydney, I am very much more involved than I used to be. I have surrounded myself with queer people, and with ideologies and activism that relies on being marginalised and being queer as a part of that identity. So since living in Sydney I have definitely learned much more than I did before. So I would definitely describe myself as being very involved in the queer community here in Sydney, but it’s definitely a duality of things what with still being closeted back at home and all.

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