mqff is upon us! prepare for queer cinema!

The Melbourne Queer Film Festival starts next week, and as always I'm super excited! I missed out on the Festival last year (because China), and I'm really looking forward to this year's festival.

I volunteer every year, which is something I recommend for anyone who is in to films, is in to queer films, or wants to support their queer community. It's a great festival, everyone is always really lovely and there's a great feeling around it.

Also, this year, there are vegan lollies available for sale! Which is pretty awesome, please feel free to thank your local vegan for the idea (me) and everyone at MQFF who let me suggest it and then just Did It. I love when people accomodate dietary requirements, I hope there's no gluten in the lollies hmm. And there's an app for iPhone and Android, and most of the movies screen at ACMI which as you know (Melbourne) is one of the best cinemas and spaces ever.

Here is my short list, in screening order:

When Hainan Meets Teochew (当海南遇上潮州) (Saturday 16 March, 16:00)

When Hainan Meets Teochew tells a unique story about love between a butch and a femme woman. The two meet in the most unusual circumstances (involving a falling bra), become enemies in the most unpredictable situation and become friends in the most unforgettable manner. Just as they gradually develop feelings for each other, Hainan’s ex-girlfriend appears and puts their relationship under the most challenging test. The ensuing love triangle results in much misunderstanding and hilarity. What will become of Hainan and Teochew’s romance, and who is the owner of the falling bra?

 

Oz Docs (Monday 18 March, 18:00)

This is a series of Australian documentaries, including 'The La La Road' on Chinese lesbians, and the Aquaporko Documentary, featuring a whole lot of awesome, fat, queer ladies of my acquaintance.

Cockpit (Thursday 21 March, 18:30)

Mrs. Doubtfire meets Tootsie, meets Some Like it Hot - 10,000m up, in this over-the-top comedy of mistaken identities from Sweden. After losing his job as an airline pilot when his company downsizes, Valle is thrown out by his materialistic wife, who takes the kids with her and immediately begins a new relationship with a wealthy elderly man. After countless knock backs by airlines, he hears that Silver airlines are looking for a female captain. In desperation, and with little in the way of a plan, Valle dons a pair of high heels, borrows his staunchly feminist and queer friendly sister’s identity and transforms himself into attractive Maria and wins himself a pilot’s job. The plan begins to unravel when his lesbian airline colleague Cecilia starts to fall for him/her, and a narrowly averted plane crash, lands Maria all over the news.

Queens! Destiny of Dance (Friday 22 March, 20:30)

Guru Amma presides over a community of hijras (male to female transgenders) inside a huge palace, with love and severity in equal measure. The apple of her eye is the talented Mukta who is the best dancer among them and also the potential next leader of the community. Mukta adores Guru Amma with all her heart, to the point of worshipping her. One day, a beautiful young girl turns up at their door without any explanation. Awed by her beauty, Amma takes the mysterious girl under her wings and names her Nandini.

Soon, Nandini becomes the centre of attraction for the other hijras and for Amma as well, thereby sidelining Mukta. Mukta’s jealousy soon turns to paranoia about Nandini, and Mukta leaves the community after threatening Amma. But Mukta soon realises that she will never be taken back into her house or the community. Determined to set things right, Mukta returns to Amma and the community, but behaves kindly towards Nandini this time around, until enough is enough and events unfold leading to a shocking climax.

True to the essence of Bollywood films, Queens! is chock full of colourful characters, and fantastic dance scenes.

Strange Frame: Love and Sax (Saturday 23 March, 14:00)

The first lesbian, science fiction, rock ‘n’ roll animated film is here! Hold on tight as we head off into the 29th Century.

200 years after the human race has left a decimated Earth behind, life on Ganymede, one of Saturn’s moons, is a world of space pirates, indentured slaves and genetic mutations. Parker, a saxophonist, meets a gutsy singer, Naia, who’s a ‘debt slave’, and the two quickly fall in love and form a band. Gaining cult notoriety, the band catches the eye of the authorities, and Naia is recaptured. As Parker begins a desperate search for her love, Naia is repackaged by ‘the man’ as a generic rock star and achieves immense fame. Will Naia be saved before her soul is forever destroyed?

(quotes are from the mqff programme)

I always keep my short list short, because I burn out fast during festivals, but others I wouldn't mind seeing eventually are:
Gayby
My Best Day
The Mermaids
Speechless (无言)

queering beijing

When I was preparing to come to China, at training (provided by the Australian government) it was made clear that coming out as queer in China was probably not a thing that I should do.

At work I say 'my partner' and the singular 'they' in English; in Mandarin 她 (she) is pronounced the same as 他 (he), so I just don't correct people. Someone (a native English speaker) heard my slip up one time in English, saying 'she'; they took me aside later, and told me not to come out at work, because 'they' (my Chinese colleagues) just wouldn't understand, and maybe I should consider actively using 'he' in English. I feel crappy enough as it is hiding my queerness for the first time in a long time, there's no way I'm using the pronoun he to refer to my wonderful beautiful girlfriend.

Incidentally, the verb for coming out is the same: 出柜, or 'to go out of the closet'.

Despite these warnings I've received from Westerners living or who have lived in China, however, what I see doesn't necessarily match up with what I've been told. There's a local lesbian centre (the only reason I haven't visited it is because it's a bit of a distance from where I live), and a number of queer bars, and regular events with queer authors and movie makers, and I know these links are to expat sites but it's not only expats who are involved in these things. And then last week Anthony Wong came out, and it was all good!

I came out to my Chinese tutor (she's about the same age as me), and she didn't seem to care.

My warnings came from older expats, being given directly to me, a young decadent Westerner working a cushy office job in an international organisation, and I wonder if there's a reason for that. I recognise things would be different if I worked in a different kind of situation, or if I wasn't from Australia, and didn't have this assumed right to privacy (or not privacy), as I see it, that we have in Australia (another post for another time, the difference between privacy in China and privacy in Australia).

I haven't quite been brave enough to come out at work yet, and I mean, I'm not going to take out an announcement or anything but last week a colleague asked me if I had a boyfriend back home and I said no, which is technically true, and left it at that.

queer australian teevee

I’m not watching much Australian television at the moment, because I’m in China and sadly ABC iview isn’t available outside of Australia, but I have been making an effort to watch two shows: Outland and The Newtown Girls. Coincidentally, these are both humourous shows about Australian Queers.

Outland is a six-part series that just finished on ABC1. It's a comedy about a gay science fiction club in Melbourne. I’ve been watching it via iTunes (AUD2.99 an episode; AUD16 for the lot).

The Newtown Girls is a ten-part webseries, a dramedy about the dating lols that accompany "returning to the scene." I didn't realise dressing up as Xena counted as a part of returning to the scene but it's all good. I’ve been watching it on the website (no cost).

Both of these shows are not only Australian and set in queer communities, but my favourite characters on both are queer ladies of colour. This makes me so happy.

Rae is an Indigenous sci-fi fan in a wheel chair. She wears awesome clothes and is a little insecure about her body but she’s not afraid of calling bullshit when it hits her. She’s played by Christine Anu, who is a super awesome TSI with a twitter.

Alex is a young Asian woman living it up in Newtown. She’s addicted to coffee (looks like an espresso) and she’s cheerful and forthright and she wears awesome clothes. She’s played by Renee Lim, who is an Asian actress from Perth who is a doctor in her spare time.

How could I not love them? I love them.

It took me a long time to become comfortable with being a queer Australian woman of an Asian background, and sometimes it’s still something I have to fight with other people about (more on that later), but it is my identity and I love it. And I’m so happy that there are two queer Australian women of a not-white ethnicity on my television (well, on my laptop), who speak like me and are portrayed by actresses I already liked and also one of whom is a science fiction fan like meeeee.

queer chinese things!

Zooming in on LGBT issues, about a program in Beijing designed to train lesbian, trans, bi and gay people in creating documentaries about their queer lives.

An article kind of about fear, homophobia and expectations in Chinese culture: Wives of gay men: not an easy job in China.

About 80 per cent of homosexuals in China get married to avoid social pressure. Their wives, who number about 24 million, are not having it easy, but they have started organising themselves.

A talk in London: Activist and film maker talks on gay life in modern China

Gay activist and film maker Xiaogang Wei will be giving a talk in London on how queer activism is changing the face of modern China.

"i have seen firsthand the devastation and misery and death that result from homosexual and bisexual practices"

Following the removal of the RipNRoll ads from Adshel shelters, and the reinstatement today, I spent this afternoon reading the complaints and loling big time. They are an excellent read (seriously amazing stuff), and (unsurprisingly) reading the complaints brings me even more questions. They are freeform for you below!

Adshel has cited being unaware that the complaints were coordinated by the ACL as the major reason why they agreed to pull the ads, thinking they were coming from a wide range across society. Looking at this sample of letters, a number of them are word for word identical, down to the SHOUTING CAPITALISATION, which makes me wonder how closely ad companies (or adshel at least) look at this stuff.

A number of the complainants appear to think that condoms are only required for gay sex, which is making me wonder about the levels of safe sex amongst other groups.

It is apparently all about the children! And also the Christians ("Please, for the sake of all Christians and children"). Which, uh, do people not want their children to know about safe sex? IT IS A GOOD THING. Also apparently many parents don't want to explain things to their children ("Also it is something that children shouldn't see or enquire about" ARE YOU KIDDING ME?). The complaints also reveal that it is all about not owning up to one's own bigotry. All the comments are about the children, and filled with 'it's too PC' and 'I'm not against homosexuals' sort of comments.

JUST SAY IT.

YOU DON'T LIKE TEH GAYS.

ALSO YOU LIKE PEARL CLUTCHING.

Seriously the complaints are amazing.

idaho invisible t day

Today is IDAHO(T), the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia! But the T is invisible. Because the T is always invisible. Which is cool, you know, because the T can totally afford to be invisible. Because transphobia is one of those issues that everyone knows about and that everyone totally understands and nobody ever dies because of it.

There is allegedly a flashmob going on in the Melbourne CBD this evening for IDAHO(T), which I hope is cool.

This seems like an excellent time to remind you of the two WA trans men heading to the high court and that you can help fund them (do it!).

Some links (mostly older):
Bob Jensen, Lierre Keith et al. : The Rabid, Transphobic Hate-Mongering of the Anti-Pornography Movement by Joelle
Push(back) at the Intersections: I Think You Dropped Your 'T' by s.e. smith at bitch magazine, on depictions of trans folk in pop culture
Intent! It's Fucking Magic! by Genderbitch, at Questioning Transphobia; a great post on intent.
On tumblr, Some politics around supporting trans women’s access to surgery, mostly on transphobia around surgery.
Who’s allowed to reclaim the night? by 3P published at The Scavenger, on transmisogyny at Melbourne's 2010 event.
Also at the Scavenger, Mercedes Allen writes on Advocating for trans people if you’re not trans (I have a few issues with appropriation in this article but overall it's an okay illustration).

"Gay marriage against my upbringing" I just I don't even

PM Julia Gillard: Gay marriage against my upbringing

Ms Gillard said she was "on the conservative side" of the gay marriage issue "because of the way our society is and how we got here".

"I think that there are some important things from our past that need to continue to be part of our present and part of our future," she said. "If I was in a different walk of life, if I'd continued in the law and was partner of a law firm now, I would express the same view, that I think for our culture, for our heritage, the Marriage Act and marriage being between a man and a woman has a special status.

"Now, I know people might look at me and think that's something that they wouldn't necessarily expect me to say, but that is what I believe.

"I'm on the record as saying things like I think it's important for people to understand their Bible stories, not because I'm an advocate of religion - clearly, I'm not - but once again, what comes from the Bible has formed such an important part of our culture."

Ms Gillard said she had a "pro-union, pro-Labor upbringing in a quite conservative family, in the sense of personal values".

This is like some sort of word salad, a mish mash of sentences randomly squished together in the hopes of confusing us, or distracting us, or something. I don't even know what this is.

Here is a list of possibilities:

• Erasure of every Australian who doesn't believe the bible
• Erasure of every Australian who wasn't brought up as a Christian
• Erasure of Australians who have a background which supports gay marriage
• Erasure of non-Australians who live here
• The most amazing toeing of the party line I've ever seen
• Perpetuation of the idea that culture is immutable and what has come before is what we should aim toward
• Really shitty

Please feel free to add to the list.

Also you know how "we" got "here"? Through things so gross we don't actually talk about them (though we should). So maybe 'denial of evvverything' should also go on that list.

So far my favourite responses have been on twitter:

Hannah Gadsby:

I had a conservative upbringing too, Julia Gillard. That's why I hated myself when I found out I was gay. You could help prevent this cycle.

and my friend Josie:

You can't fault the logic, marriage equality is not traditional. Neither are women prime ministers, so I expect her resignation post haste.

Now, in this time of our atheist PM reminding us to read our bibles, I'd like to remind everyone that there is an equal marriage rally in Melbourne this saturday at 1pm. You should go if you can. And I know it's not quite the same, but go see a movie whilst MQFF is on. Though I guess it's not a part of our culture, whatever that means.

on marriage

I am so grossed out by the hypocrisy of all of this. I am not like wooo marriage, but the ridiculousness of it all is just something.

Australians, do you live in the electorate of Gippsland? Please write to your federal MP, and tell him your thoughts on gay marriage (and that he's wrong), because:

Mr Chester says he speaks to Gippsland residents regularly and there is little support for gay marriage in the region.

"I don't need to do a survey to get a sense of where my community sits right now," he said.

"Like everyone, I've had emails and they are probably evenly divided. The ones within my community haven't been evenly divided. They've been quite strongly against the position of gay marriage.

"My community is one where I believe that I have a good sense of what it expects me to do and it expects me to stand up for the tradition of marriage as it stands today."

at the abc

A lot of people were upset by Penny Wong's apparent hypocrisy, what with her being gay and yet still toeing the party line, talking about how marriage is between a man and a woman, so it was intriguing to read in this article that maybe she was, in fact, part of some secret deal-making to set a timetable within the ALP for talking about/advancing the issue, and so her words were just a placeholder until she could effect change within the party. Certainly I am predisposed to always want to think better of her (like me, she is a queer Chinese-Malaysian and I one day want to be in parliament so we shall see), but it's an interesting thing to think about.

Yesterday there was lots of commentary (at least on twitter) about an opinion piece up at the Herald Sun that didn't make everyone really angry: Time for gay marriage to get the nod in Australia. It's not a bad read, and I wonder how much of the discourse has been about people having to say why they don't support it. And also, if supportive pieces are getting published in the Herald Sun, then surely it is obviously time for legislation to catch up.

More ridiculousness, also yesterday, an excerpt from Hansard, pg 97, of Phillip Ruddock's chatter in parliament:

All [the Marriage Act] does is recognise that marriage has always been seen to be different and that that basis ought to be kept, primarily because marriage deals with issues that arise when children can possibly be conceived.

People who cannot marry under this definition: Some people with disabilities. People who have gone through menopause. What about people who will have trouble conceiving, but could potentially conceive, but might be best if it was done with assistance like IVF? People who choose not to have children. People whose circumstances mean they can't have children. People for whom giving birth might cause severe injury. People who are infertile.

h/t to danni for finding the right page in Hansard and reading through Ruddock's rant.

crosspostering

So, I've missed crosslinking some posts of me about the place.

I've made two link posts about animal rights/ethics issues at the other blog: one and two; and at vegaroo I've blogged about vegan adventures in perth.

I went to a Greens' fundraiser on the weekend, and, though the Greens are an environmental political party, I was disappointed to see that there was a higher emphasis on 'happy meat' than on vegetarianism at the fundraiser.

Also I have a new tumblr. I am still using my original tumblr for social justice commentary and pretty pictures; but I am also tumbling at fuck yeah lgbt batman, about, you guessed it, lgbt happenings in the batverse, fannish or otherwise.

tuesday morning link town

Disclosure, Trans Panic, and Ciscentric Narratives of Honesty at Questioning Transphobia.

But I think this story touches on somewhat larger, more encompassing issues that trans people have to deal with. Thomas’ mother, for example, insists that her son didn’t know that Nikki was trans and separated from her shortly before his death, and that Nikki herself married Thomas for the money – that she’s a gold digger. Nikki, on the other hand, says that Thomas knew all along and was fine with it.
I believe Nikki’s telling the truth. I believe Thomas’ mother, Simona Longoria, is appealing to the narrative that will ultimately purchase cis sympathy for her plight. Simona’s claim makes Nikki out to be an opportunistic predator, a stealthy deceiver, a liar who wormed her way into Thomas’ life in order to not only feast on his assets while alive, but to cackle merrily on the way to the bank after his death. It is dependent upon (in addition to the Littleton precedent), painting Nikki as someone who deceived Thomas in order to not only get into his bed, but also into his life.
This is how many cis people love to paint trans women.

And also at QT; New York Times says Trans People are Ethically Required to Out Themselves on Dates.

Givenchy's Transgender Fall Campaign Model Posed Nude for French Vogue [NSFW] at NYMag. I can't decide (based on what I have been able to find out) if this shoot is all 'ooh, a trans woman!' or 'oh cool, a trans woman.' I link to it anyway. And the article, if you can read French.

Here's What White Privilege Sounds Like

Here’s what white privilege sounds like: I’m sitting in my University of Texas office, talking to a very bright and very conservative white student about affirmative action in college admissions, which he opposes and I support. The student says he wants a level playing field with no unearned advantages for anyone. I ask him whether he thinks that being white has advantages in the United States. Have either of us, I ask, ever benefited from being white in a world run mostly by white people? Yes, he concedes, there is something real and tangible we could call white privilege.

So, if we live in a world of white privilege – unearned white privilege - how does that affect your notion of a level playing field? I asked. He paused for a moment and said, “That really doesn’t matter.” That statement, I suggested to him, reveals the ultimate white privilege: The privilege to acknowledge that you have unearned privilege but to ignore what it means.

Free Advice: A Bargain at Double the Price

Too often Nice White People are far more interested in being perceived as non-racist than they are in actually working to do something that might address the structural inequities racist beliefs and assumptions are built from and reinforce.
I know because I’ve been that Nice White Person. I still have my moments of it.
The only way to stop being that Nice White Person — if you’re interested in actually stopping — is to start with acknowledging two things:

Geek feminism as opposed to mainstream feminism, at geekfeminism, on the differences and conflicts between "mainstream" feminism and geek feminism.

FacePainting, on white-washing in movies.

Doctor Treating Pregnant Women with Experimental Drug to Prevent Lesbianism. ?!?!

On Dismissing Sexual Violence Against Some Women as 'Cultural' at the Curvature.

Why are social inequalities reproduced online?

When creating online avatars, people reproduce the racist, sexist and ableist structures of real life, writes Dr Eve Shapiro.

Many early utopian theories of computer-mediated communication asserted that as people “moved online” they would cast off gender, race, class, and body limitations to exist as undifferentiated equals.

But the suggestion that race, gender, class, and nation or any other embodied characteristics will cease to matter online ignores the fact that biases such as racism, sexism, and ‘ableism’ are not only individual prejudices but also structural inequalities.

linkies of local stuff

"local" hee

Here are some links about things going on in Australia:

Aged care forcing gays 'back into the closet': Australia's homosexual population is being sorely neglected when it comes to aged care, according to new research.

Trans death in custody: inquiry demanded

A different indigenous death in custody: Aboriginal Legal Service 'flabbergasted' by death in custody decision

Deep in the heart of Adelaide with Tony Zappia, on street corner politics.

Is Mining Truly Good For Indigenous People?

Sleepless in Canberra, written pre-spill, on Rudd being a workaholic.