Popingay

People Who Don’t Suck™

One primary struggle of our queer community has nothing to do with rights, violence, or society: it’s what in the hell we’re going to call ourselves. The community runs the gamut of sexual and gender expressions and orientations, and it seems like every day there’s a new label to toss on that pile, and quite frankly I’m tired of eating alphabet soup. Right now, we’re looking down the barrel of LGBTTTTQQAAKPGGO in all its permutations depending on whom you ask:

L - Lesbian
G - Gay
B - Bisexual
T - Transgender
T - Transsexual
T - Transvestite
T - Two-Spirited
Q - Queer
Q - Questioning
A - Ally
A - Asexual
K - Kinky
P - Polyamorous
G - Gender non-conforming
G - Genderqueer
O - Omnisexual

And like a bad infomercial, just wait: there’s more! Everyone has some newfangled label to add to the mix, and I can barely remember just the basics.

As a community, we’ve tried going the route of queer as an umbrella term: something that I linguistically and socio-culturally defend, but not everyone is comfortable with the term, and it’s a source of controversy itself, even with the Popingay Stamp of Approval™.

I, personally, still advocate the use of FABGLITTER as the term we use to refer to our community. It hasn’t really taken off, but you try saying FABGLITTER out loud without clapping your hands in child-like glee.

The problem is that our community encompasses the veritable rainbow of sexual and gender expressions, and everyone wants a bite. And I am a huge proponent that we include allies in our community’s descriptor as a key part of our rainbow. And no matter what you label yourself as, there’s really only one group left when we umbrella-ize our community: heterosexual people who suck.

Being that our community word is a kind of negative definition (defined by what it’s not) in this case, then I propose a new, all-inclusive rainbow word to encompass our community in its entirety:

People Who Don’t Suck™

What better descriptor do we have for our group? When the only people not in the group are heterosexual people who suck, I think it’s only fair to refer to ourselves as the Community of People Who Don’t Suck™.

The end-game of our fight for rights and inclusion is that we will not have to define ourselves as a community of outsiders any longer, and everyone will just be People Who Don’t Suck™, but the next time someone asks you, “what do you think about XYZ in the queer/LGBT(etc.)/FABGLITTER community?”, I suggest you tell them you much prefer being referred to under the umbrella of People Who Don’t Suck™, and let the inevitable satisfaction wash over you.

So, who’s with me on the long, winding road to not sucking?

Gossip Guy: Lethbridge: Too Queer?

Since my arrival here in Lethbridge back in September 2007 (gosh—have I been here that long already?) I have been witness to a few trends in this great city; but trends are meant to be, and should be replaced with ideas of new aren’t they? Aren’t political powers supposed to change and mold with the times instead of remaining powerfully seated back in yesteryears? Shouldn’t we be removing past terms of hate and discrimination after moving forward for so many years?

When I first arrived in Alberta I was taken back a further 4.5 years into my past, to the point where I moved from my hometown of Wasaga Beach, Ontario to Toronto for school. I had finally left that redneck area where high school was sometimes like torture, and the attitudes were those of the ship yards; that’s what the area was developed for back during the World Wars. I had arrived in a new place, and taken up residence near Ryerson University, where I was to attend, but also directly in the middle of the gay village. The shackles of my former life were released from my ankles; I was in a place where I could truly just be me.

I was simply amazed at how progressive Toronto was vs. where I had come from. The simple things; holding hands, being affectionate, they weren’t only out on display between same sex couples, but also widely accepted. The rights I never thought I’d have back home were already available to me, just not there, but here. It was then I made a realization: it’s not rights we are fighting for right now, but acceptance of the people within our own country! We already have the rights we want; others back home and around the country who haven’t heard or been exposed to the news just think that we didn’t.

That singular thought is ringing back in my head today as I continually hear and see what our smaller city Albertan LGBTQ leaders are doing within Lethbridge. Compared to what I saw back in Toronto, these people have grown up within the ideals of those who have not yet accepted the rest of our country’s progressiveness. So even though we have those same rights, we are just fighting to educate our local communities now to accept them along with the rest of the major cities. It almost seems like a time lapse is continually expanding outward from the LGBTQ neighborhoods of our great cities, slowly expanding out like a bubble of tolerance and acceptance.

Unfortunately, this time lapse effect has also affected our LGBTQ leaders and how they continue to conduct themselves at public events. The notion that Lethbridge last year had its first “Anti-Hate Rally” in response to a University student becoming the victim of another student’s dislike for his sexual preferences is absurd. Reactively, the local gay community groups banded together in a demonstration targeted towards sending a message to the city, when in fact it was the actions of one individual that should have been the target. The ideals our leaders carry are those of reactive activists and not of politicians as they blamed our city for the attack when it wasn’t a mob of citizens; but just one man misconducting himself (I guess he hadn’t heard the news). Lethbridge was not at fault here. I believe in my rumble opinion that a singular isolated hate crime should have spurred a proactive plan being developed to prevent it from happening again; instead our community leaders reacted with a rally that appeared to drive a message to all of the population that we’re angry at them.

What happens when you put an activist into a political leadership position? It’s like letting a bull into a china shop.

A survey conducted recently of Lethbridge’s LGBTQ population was calculated on how they identified themselves: 4% of those surveyed responded that “Queer” is their identifying orientation. Now the current leaderships of the OUT Reach Southern Alberta Society (formerly GALA/LA) and the ULSU Pride Board of Directors have adopted the term “Queer” during many of their public events to represent our vast community and use it like a lightning rod when speaking to describe our community. Who made this decision? I’m a part of Lethbridge’s population and its LGBTQ community, but I am not queer. I do not feel it’s appropriate to use this small segment of “LGBTQ” to describe us all, especially after they went through the pain of renaming GALA/LA to use a more encompassing and inclusive term that “they” thought was more appropriate.

ULSU Pride has hosted the OUTspoken Conference two years running now; bless their hearts. However, even the student groups have adopted this old derogatory terminology describing to the general population we’re all “Queer” with such workshop names as “Queer 101, Queer & Christian Panel, Queer History in Lethbridge”. What happened to the diversity that our community groups always speak of advocating for?

Are we to be forever branded as Queers in our community with our leader’s standing on soap boxes arranging rallies at every outrage shouting out the all too familiar “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re here to stay!!”? It definitely seems that way as our gay community groups have suddenly adopted this term to “label” us all again after advocating for inclusivity and changing the name of GALA/LA to do so. Why this absurd contradiction? Why is 96% of our community represented in that survey being misrepresented? Why are our leaders still reacting to events in our community like it’s the 1980’s? Why does it seem like we are moving backwards in time? Why do we all have to be queer because they say so? WHY?

Gossip Guy, you know you love me -xoxo

[Gossip Guy is your online resource for anything you want to talk about, but should expect the awful truth as a response. The purpose of Gossip Guy is to offer dating advice and advice to anonymous individuals to provide a valuable (if not sometimes comical) resource to the LGBTQ community.]

Art Can Be So Queer

There’s nothing quite like spending an evening surrounded by fabulous and talented queer artists to feel less-than. Between the visual artists, musicians, performers, and writers, I have never felt so inadequate, though I have the feeling my cultural diet of reality TV and gossip magazines might not help. I’ve also never felt so proud of my community.

Last Saturday, Fairy Tales hosted its first annual queer arts festival: Q The Arts here in Calgary. To be honest I didn’t really know what I was getting into when I decided to check out the event. The Fairy Tales Queer Film Fest is one of the major highlights of my year, so I imagined they’d pull out all the stops for this inaugural event.

Besides, this was the poster. You say no to that.

And they did. The event was an explosion of queer arts. It floated between an open gallery/discussion event, and staged performances from musicians, performers, and writers. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so gay in my life, and that includes walking in a pride parade in spangly gold booty-shorts. Granted, that’s a story for another time.

Q The Arts didn’t just let the audience observe the art, but participate. Which means nothing less than me running around like an over-stimulated child in an arts classroom. One display involved a canvas that encouraged participants to play with paints and markers to create a community mural/art piece. Since my artistic ability is limited to me spastically jabbing at paper with some ink-containing device, the best I could come up with was a Pacman-inspired commentary on queerness in popular culture, and the way Pacman and Ms. Pacman play with socio-cultural constructions of gender.

Oh, who am I kidding? I just can’t draw.

I also managed to smear red paint all across my hand, which refused to wash off with soap. The resultant stain was more or less like the blood of Art, which I murdered with that above atrocity.

Out, out damned spot.

That was only one of many fun activities. There was also a disembodied door where people could mark their heights and “queer age” (i.e., how long they’d been out). I neglected to take a picture of it, but it was pretty amazing. Also, I felt oddly tall when marking my height. Speaking of disembodied…

This collection of knit penises in jars made my inner-Jeffrey Dahmer very happy.

The performances leading up to the end of the night made me laugh hard enough to cry. Those tears were just from realizing I could never be that funny, but the performances were brilliant. By the time Light Fires came on to dissolve the audience into an electro-pop dance party, I’d felt pretty well introduced to our little enclave of queer arts.

Art brings people together. This kind of event gives us a chance to see our queer little world for its cultural and artistic significance. It wasn’t just a showcase of some brilliant artists, or a let’s-see-how-gay-we-can-be evening, but rather a chance for us all to engage with our cultural community.

When so much of queer culture is seen on TV, or in the dark, alcohol-stained corners of nightclubs, events like this really help to demonstrate the multifaceted nature of our community. We’re a talented bunch, though some of us (read: me) are just by proxy.

Go team. It just gives you the warm-fuzzies.