A long entry
I thought i would give my two cents on the matter. After getting a sample of questions raised in regards to this issue, i thought i would try to do my best to answer some of them.
I would like to start by quoting my geography lecturer Priya Rangan:
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
What i mean by this is that i don't think ANYONE has intentionally tried to hurt anyone else. But as people are, stubborness and an inability to listen to other people has always made the smallest of problems an endless drama.
1. "This space should only focus on queer issues."
I disagree. The purpose of the queer department is to fight against discrimination against queers. This is not just social discrimination, whereby someone calls you a fag, dyke (in a derogative sense), but structural discrimination within the campus as well. To turn a blind eye towards other forms of harmful prejudices and discrimination and not to speak out against them is to be a hypocrite. You can't pick and choose what forms of discriminations you want to put up with, and discard the rest.
There are queer women, there are ethnic queers, disabled queers, jewish queers and the list goes on. And for those of us who fall into more than one category of discrimination, we find it hard to prioritise one over the other. And understandably so.
2. "What are racial issues got to do with queer issues anyway?"
This question is slightly different from the first one. The issue here is not focus, but relevance.
Here are some things to think about:
a) Ethnic queers depending on the group, upon coming out, can face bashings and ostracism by their own relatives in the name of honour.
b) Ethnic queers who have migrated from overseas put off coming out, in order to protect their families from copping abuse from the rest of the community. For many immigrants who come here, connection to culture groups are important because in many cases, they are your only family. If the culture is conservative, then ethnic queers sometimes choose not to come out in order for the family to retain their links to their cultural heritage. It isn't about being kicked out of home. Parents of these families, can be very supportive of their queer children, but the rest of the community may ostracise the family for that choice.
c) Ethnic queers can potentially be more isolated from the the gay community and their own culture group. Ever heard of the Pakistani boy who liked dancing to Britney and Christine Aguilera and hated doing Pakistani male things like talk about business, property, playing cricket but at the same time never was able to find a place in the gay community because the twink group was mostly skinny white boys into skinny white boys and he was just not into bears or leather?
That was me and a great many of my friends who happened to be international students.
You people already know about not fitting in.
(Of course this happens to white people to, but often these things are institutionalised and legitimised within some cultures making them worse than a social stigma by itself.)
3. "I don't want to see anything on the walls that is too confronting."
Queers by definition are "too confronting" for a lot of people. Parents move their kids away, people look at us in disgust and you know it gets infintely worse.
Racism is equally bad. Now i can't talk about colonial privileges that white people get over me, because i'm not an indigenous person. What i can talk about is the war on terror.
Do you know what it's like to be bomb tested purely on the basis of my skin colour? I do. It is humiliating, it is upsetting, and it is really really infuriating, because if you say anything, you get fined.
Do you know what it's like to get on a train on your way home from uni and have a big backpack and have people look at you like as if you have a bomb?
I do. It's like, i'm no longer an Australian, but some foreign guy who's out to get everyone. All this on the basis of skin colour.
And i'm one of the lucky ones. Because i'm Christian. If i was culturally required to wear a turban and grow my beard, i would be in an infintely worse position for not assimilating into Australian culture (blue singlet and stubby shorts).
4. This lounge shouldn't be a political space.
Well, fair enough. Today, everything that was deemed political or to have come from the political aspects of the queer lounge has been removed. I hope you enjoy your social space.
Also, all posters have been removed, since we can't agree on what should go up on the walls. These are only temporary measures until we get a few things sorted out.
____________________________________________
Slave and i have discussed the poster that she put up and we both agreed that the sentiment, "i feel empowered by belittling white men" was negative and counter productive.
Having said that, the next time that you guys fly to QC or wherever with me, for any reason, please take note that you will not get bomb tested. I will. And this is what i refer to as, "white privilege".
Please note that if you're not an international student who can't speak proper english and coming to the queer lounge for the first time in an attempt to fit into a culture that might be more accepting than their own ethnic culture, you might be privileged not because of your skin colour but because you're part of the dominant Australian culture.
And when you put up motions that call for equal genders to be up in order to decide postering policy and exclude race, disability, ethnicity and everything else, then you can be considered bigots by people like me.
Equality is not about treating everyone equally. It is about recognising differences between people and accomodating for those differences.
On a final note, the above is not meant to guilt trip anyone into feeling sorry for me. That doesn't make me happy. All i want is a acknowledgement from my white friends that some things in life you take for granted that people like me don't. Because, we have had to fight for them. It's not that some people got lucky and some didn't. Nor is it "just the way the world is". Things got to be this way because of a lot of history. But three things come to my mind. Colonialism, the Cold War and the War on Terror.
I would like to start by quoting my geography lecturer Priya Rangan:
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
What i mean by this is that i don't think ANYONE has intentionally tried to hurt anyone else. But as people are, stubborness and an inability to listen to other people has always made the smallest of problems an endless drama.
1. "This space should only focus on queer issues."
I disagree. The purpose of the queer department is to fight against discrimination against queers. This is not just social discrimination, whereby someone calls you a fag, dyke (in a derogative sense), but structural discrimination within the campus as well. To turn a blind eye towards other forms of harmful prejudices and discrimination and not to speak out against them is to be a hypocrite. You can't pick and choose what forms of discriminations you want to put up with, and discard the rest.
There are queer women, there are ethnic queers, disabled queers, jewish queers and the list goes on. And for those of us who fall into more than one category of discrimination, we find it hard to prioritise one over the other. And understandably so.
2. "What are racial issues got to do with queer issues anyway?"
This question is slightly different from the first one. The issue here is not focus, but relevance.
Here are some things to think about:
a) Ethnic queers depending on the group, upon coming out, can face bashings and ostracism by their own relatives in the name of honour.
b) Ethnic queers who have migrated from overseas put off coming out, in order to protect their families from copping abuse from the rest of the community. For many immigrants who come here, connection to culture groups are important because in many cases, they are your only family. If the culture is conservative, then ethnic queers sometimes choose not to come out in order for the family to retain their links to their cultural heritage. It isn't about being kicked out of home. Parents of these families, can be very supportive of their queer children, but the rest of the community may ostracise the family for that choice.
c) Ethnic queers can potentially be more isolated from the the gay community and their own culture group. Ever heard of the Pakistani boy who liked dancing to Britney and Christine Aguilera and hated doing Pakistani male things like talk about business, property, playing cricket but at the same time never was able to find a place in the gay community because the twink group was mostly skinny white boys into skinny white boys and he was just not into bears or leather?
That was me and a great many of my friends who happened to be international students.
You people already know about not fitting in.
(Of course this happens to white people to, but often these things are institutionalised and legitimised within some cultures making them worse than a social stigma by itself.)
3. "I don't want to see anything on the walls that is too confronting."
Queers by definition are "too confronting" for a lot of people. Parents move their kids away, people look at us in disgust and you know it gets infintely worse.
Racism is equally bad. Now i can't talk about colonial privileges that white people get over me, because i'm not an indigenous person. What i can talk about is the war on terror.
Do you know what it's like to be bomb tested purely on the basis of my skin colour? I do. It is humiliating, it is upsetting, and it is really really infuriating, because if you say anything, you get fined.
Do you know what it's like to get on a train on your way home from uni and have a big backpack and have people look at you like as if you have a bomb?
I do. It's like, i'm no longer an Australian, but some foreign guy who's out to get everyone. All this on the basis of skin colour.
And i'm one of the lucky ones. Because i'm Christian. If i was culturally required to wear a turban and grow my beard, i would be in an infintely worse position for not assimilating into Australian culture (blue singlet and stubby shorts).
4. This lounge shouldn't be a political space.
Well, fair enough. Today, everything that was deemed political or to have come from the political aspects of the queer lounge has been removed. I hope you enjoy your social space.
Also, all posters have been removed, since we can't agree on what should go up on the walls. These are only temporary measures until we get a few things sorted out.
____________________________________________
Slave and i have discussed the poster that she put up and we both agreed that the sentiment, "i feel empowered by belittling white men" was negative and counter productive.
Having said that, the next time that you guys fly to QC or wherever with me, for any reason, please take note that you will not get bomb tested. I will. And this is what i refer to as, "white privilege".
Please note that if you're not an international student who can't speak proper english and coming to the queer lounge for the first time in an attempt to fit into a culture that might be more accepting than their own ethnic culture, you might be privileged not because of your skin colour but because you're part of the dominant Australian culture.
And when you put up motions that call for equal genders to be up in order to decide postering policy and exclude race, disability, ethnicity and everything else, then you can be considered bigots by people like me.
Equality is not about treating everyone equally. It is about recognising differences between people and accomodating for those differences.
On a final note, the above is not meant to guilt trip anyone into feeling sorry for me. That doesn't make me happy. All i want is a acknowledgement from my white friends that some things in life you take for granted that people like me don't. Because, we have had to fight for them. It's not that some people got lucky and some didn't. Nor is it "just the way the world is". Things got to be this way because of a lot of history. But three things come to my mind. Colonialism, the Cold War and the War on Terror.