Even when I don't feel gay I'm still proud to be queer!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lR3ffBsMTc

The British Police are the best in the world
I don't believe one of these stories I've heard
'Bout them raiding our pubs for no reason at all
Lining the customers up by the wall
Picking out people and knocking them down
Resisting arrest as they're kicked on the ground
Searching their houses and calling them queer
I don't believe that sort of thing happens here

Sing if you're glad to be gay
Sing if you're happy that way

Pictures of naked young women are fun
In Titbits and Playboy, page three of The Sun
There's no nudes in xxx News our one magazine
But they still find excuses to call it obscene
Read how disgusting we are in the press
Telegraphs, people and Sunday Express
Molesters of children, corruptors of youth
It's there in the paper, it must be the truth

Sing if you're glad to be gay
Sing if you're happy that way

Don't try to kid us that if you're discreet
You're perfectly safe as you walk down the street
You don't have to mince or make bitchy remarks
To get beaten unconscious and left in the dark
I had a friend who was gentle and short
He was lonely one evening and went for a walk
Queerbashers caught him and kicked in his teeth
He was only hospitalised for a week

Sing if you're glad to be gay
Sing if you're happy that way

So sit back and watch as they close all our clubs
Arrest us for meeting and raid all our pubs
Make sure your boyfriend's at least 21
So only your friends and your brothers get done
Lie to your workmates, lie to your folks
Put down the queens and tell anti-queer jokes
Gay Lib's ridiculous, join their laughter
'The buggers are legal now, what more are they after?'

Sing if you're glad to be gay
Sing if you're happy that way

PRESS RELEASE

ECOSOS Council vote grants consultative status to ILGA

Geneva, 25 July 2011

With 30 votes in favour (India, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Malta, Mexico, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Norway, Peru, Republic of Korea, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Venezuela, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary), 13 against (Iraq, Morocco, Namibia, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Bangladesh, Cameroon, China, Egypt, Ghana) and 6 abstentions (Guatemala, Mauritius, Philipines, Rwanda, Bahamas, Ivory
Coast) the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) granted today consultative status to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA). ECOSOC consultative status allows NGOs to attend UN conferences and meetings, submit written statements and reports, make oral interventions, and host panels in UN buildings, thus representing a fundamental tool for an NGO like ILGA with more than 700 member organisations in all continents to do work on LGBTI human rights within
the UN system.

ILGA was the first international LGBTI organisation to get ECOSOC consultative status in 1993, but lost it the following year due to the presence of groups advocating the abolition of laws of consent. ILGA has applied to regain the status ever since, following the expulsion of the above mentioned groups from its membership and after amending its constitution to state clearly its commitment against child abuse, but a small group of countries sponsoring homophobia had been able to influence the votes in the UN NGO Committee examining the applications for a long time. In the meantime, many ILGA members like LBL Denmark, COC The Netherlands, FELGT Spain, LSVD Germany, ABGLT Brazil, IGLHRC US, and Ilga-Europe were able to obtain the status by having the negative recommendation of the NGO Committee overturned in the ECOSOC Council, as it has happened in the case of ILGA today.

"This is a historic day for our organisation, which heals a 17-year-old wound said co-Secretary General Renato Sabbadini, in Geneva for the occasion and we want to thank all, really all UN Members who voted in our favour, they all deserve indeed to be named fully: India, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Malta, Mexico, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Norway, Peru, Republic of Korea, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Venezuela, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary.
A special thanks goes to Belgium, for its relentless efforts in building a consensus around us, together with the United States and Argentina. We would like to thank also our member organisations which successfully lobbied their Governments on this occasion and all our allies for their support, in particular Arc-International in Geneva."

"Today we are celebrating said co-Secretary General Gloria Careaga from Mexico City but we are aware that there is a lot of work to do for us in the coming months. But we are looking forward to working together with all our members, particularly those which also have the status, and our allies to advance LGBTI human rights in the UN bodies in the coming years, taking advantage of the very positive developments opened by the resolution presented by South Africa in the UN Human Rights Council last June."

Pedro Paradiso Sottile, Regional Secretary for ILGA LAC (Latin America and the Caribbean), also in Geneva for the occasion, said: "Granting ILGA consultative status is an act of justice and a reason for pride for the international community working for a world where human rights are truly trespected without any discrimination. Our voices and our struggle for equality and freedom must reach every corner of the world, for differences in sexual orientation, gender identity and expression to be respected and
protected by all States. We believe that the ECOSOC status will help all our activists around the world in this endeavour.

--
Renato Sabbadini
co-Secretary General, ILGA
The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association
rue de la Charit 17
1210 Brussels
tel. +3225022471
fax +32 2 22 34820
email: renato@ilga.org
web: www.ilga.org

My latest nerdy crush.

So I've finally gotten around to watching Farscape recently and pretty quickly developed a nerdy crush type fascination with, what can be seen as the only punk character in the show. This is Chiana, a hot individualistic Nebari who respects no authority and values her freedom more than anything or anyone else. She comes across in the show as quite promiscuous, kinky and street smart, and these traits, coupled with a strange speech patterns and a habit of crouching on objects rather than sitting, kinda make me droool and squirm a bit... Chiana is played by a cool actor/performer from Perth named Gigi Edgley.

Gigi does a fantastic job in Farscape and she's in some other stuff too, including Secret Life Of Us. Her official site is here. Yay!

Yet another reason to love Chumbawamba

Up behind the Bus-stop in the toilets off the streets
There are traces of a killing on the floor beneath your feet
Mixed up with the piss and beer are bloodstains on the floor
From the boy who got his head kicked in a night or two before

Homophobia
The worst disease

you can´t love who you want to love in times like these

Homophobia
The worst disease

you can´t love who you want to love in times like these

In the pubs, clubs and burgerbars breeding pens for pigs
Alcohol, testosterone and ignorance and fists
Packs of hunting animals roam across the town
They find an easy victim and they punch him to the ground

Homophobia
The worst disease
you can´t love who you want to love in times like these

Homophobia
The worst disease
you can´t love who you want to love in times like these

The siren of the ambulance, the deadpan of the cops
Chalk to mark the outline where the boy first droppes
Beware the holy trinity - church and state and law
For every death the virus gets more deadly then before

Homophobia
The worst disease
you can´t love who you want to love in times like these

Video here (includes some interview footage)

Pinkwashing and the Gay International

From Electronic Intifada

The International Gay and Lesbian Youth Organization (IGLYO) announced this week that it will host its upcoming General Assembly in Israel with direct Israeli government financial sponsorship. Since March, activists have appealed to the IGLYO board of directors, but IGLYO clearly intend to violate the Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions.

In their announcement, they acknowledge the dilemma of hosting their international events in Israel but deny that direct government sponsorship of their event interferes with their human rights mission.

IGLYO fundamentally disagrees with any violations of human rights and does not prioritise human rights or any particular group during any of our work. The concern has been raised that by hosting an event in Israel and accepting funding through government departments IGLYO support various political views of that government. IGLYO believe this to be untrue.

Although this event will be given some level of financial support by the Israeli government, this will in no way censor our debates and discussions.

The General Assembly will be hosted by Israeli Gay Youth (IGY). This organization

was established in 2002 … in order to provide social support net to LGBT and questioning teens. … IGY operates different leadership and outreach programs, designed to empower our teens, and train them to be the future leaders of not only the gay community, but the entire Israeli society.

Encouraging LGBT youth to serve in the military

On 12 December 2010 at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center (the IDC), two IGY leaders participated in a 5 member panel discussion about gender and sexual orientation in the Israeli army.

The purpose of the panel is to raise awareness of the issue of the difficulties and coping of gay and lesbian youth in the military framework in the IDF and to recruit volunteers who will serve as mentor/escorts for youths within the ‘mentor/escort before recruitment’ project, with the goal of allaying their concerns with regard to their military service.

IGY’s ongoing “empowerment group” to support young gay men provides yet another example of the organization’s effort promote military service among gay youth:

This group started out as a group for gay soldiers who were coping both with military service and with their early days as independent civilians, and later developed into a group that investigates the meaning of gay life in the adult world. Participants deal - among other things - with issues of becoming independent, meeting people, relationships, family, and more.

Palestinian Queers for BDS (PQBDS) noted these links between the Israeli military and Israeli Gay Youth when they wrote to IGLYO to ask them to reconsider the locale of the 2011 General Assembly.

IGY is one of the main LGBTQ youth organizations in Israel; unfortunately, not only is it complicit with Israel’s policies, but it also systematically promotes and proactively supports the same structures that oppress and discriminate against Palestinians. As we have already mentioned in our first letter, IGY works closely with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in recruiting young queers to the army – a clear proof that IGY is not only a gay organization, but a homonationalist one that plays an active role in maintaining the same oppressive political system that we are working hard to resist. IGY’s leadership proudly serves in the army, and organizationally recruits LGBTQ youth to serve openly in the IDF. Their “unique” program includes soldiers who work to support LGBT youth pre/during service.

PQBDS also notes that “a few of IGY’s leaders were part of the [IGLYO] committee that was in charge of taking this very unfortunate decision.” In fact, last year IGY and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosted IGLYO board members on a trip to Tel Aviv Pride.

Pinkwashing is a failure

In recent years, Israel has promoted itself in Europe and North America as a haven for LGBT rights and freedoms. Israeli government ministries and NGOs are participating in this public relations and marketing effort. Activists have named this campaign “pinkwashing” because it’s a distraction from the fundamental problems of the Israeli occupation: ongoing and systematic violation of Palestinian human rights, and discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Now even the democratic revolutions in the Arab world are presented as a threat to LGBTQ people in the Arab world, but the pinkwashing critique is also catching on. A Gay Girl in Damascus writes:

We’ve gotten used to being used rhetorically by the advocates of war, occupation, dispossession, and apartheid as ‘evidence’ that the primitive sand-people don’t deserve anything other than killing by the enlightened children of the West; we’ve seen this story used to advocate murder of Afghan villagers, Palestinian refugees, Iraqis and so on. …

Which of course is crazy. And like any tool of oppression needs to be opposed.

Israel’s pinkwashing campaign has serious and apparent contradictions. Israel’s most vocal and enthusiastic base of support in the U.S. is the “religious right,” which has always opposed LGBTQ political causes. It’s hard to see how Israel can simultaneously promote itself as LGBTQ-friendly while enjoying financial and political support from these powerful friends in the United States who are so notoriously LGBTQ-hostile.

Thanks to Dena Shunra for providing translation.

By Benjamin Doherty

Read Benjamin's blog here: http://electronicintifada.net/blog/benjamin-doherty

Update:

Palestinian Queers for BDS has issued a Call for Action: Tell IGLYO to Get Out of Israel.

“The purpose of demonstrating gender differences is to “prove” the validity of traditional gender roles, which serve to preserve patriarchal power dynamics. This purpose is achieved by generalizing and communicating scientific research in a way that obscures certain realities. The research itself may be sound or not, but the way it is expressed is based on several typical fallacies. The first is to confuse genetics with a blueprint for social engineering. Human beings exhibit the potential for countless genetically influenced behavioural tendencies. Any given society may decide some of these tendencies to be desirable, and others to be undesirable. If scientists discovered certain people to be genetically predisposed to commit murders, society would not hand them Get Out of Jail Free cards, but that is exactly what is expected in the case of potentially destructive patriarchal behaviours. Our society will only normalize and encourage genetically predisposed behaviours in men and women if we choose to; however, corporate media portrays the patriarchy’s active and conscious self-preservation as accordance with an objective science. Furthermore, such an evolutionary conservatism misses the very point of evolution. We evolve to adapt to circumstances as they exist now. Even if gender roles provided some useful survival mechanism in the Paleolithic, we would be foolish to preserve such roles, based as they are on conditions that are no longer present. Just the sheer violence, primarily against women, children, and queer people, that is necessary to hold the patriarchy together is enough reason to evolve into more relaxed gender distinctions.”

~ Peter Gelderloos (The Patriarchal Science of the Corporate Media. 2004)

Feminist Futures Conference Melbourne 28th-29th May 2011

The conference page, for more info, is here: http://www.mfc.org.au/conference.html
Feel free to drop past facebook page/event here: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?ei ... 6844001769


I'm really pissed about the organising collective's choice of panelists. Some really fucked up, anti-sex work, anti-trans* and even anti-abortion, speakers in there including, but not excluded to:

* Sheila Jeffreys: Aggressively anti-sex work (sex work is rape), anti-trans* (trans reproduces oppressive gender roles, is false consciousness and reassignment surgery is mutilation), sadomashochism is male supremacist. Also has written that dildos are evil, penetrative sex is evil, and other bizarre bullshit. Sheila has a big voice and basically practices hate speech towards trans* and sex workers.

* Melinda Tankard Reist: Views abortion as part of the oppression of womyn. Supported the ban on the RU486 abortion drug. Is also vehemently anti-sex work and anti-porn.

* Kathleen Maltzan: Greens Candidate for Richmond Victoria. Those of you in Victoria might be familiar with her. She is anti-sex work and also famous as a (extremely ill-informed) anti-trafficking campaigner. Kathleen was subject to a viral campaign by many Aussies last year around election time as a result of her history of anti-sex feminism and anti-sexwork politics. The primary aim of the campaign was to "encourage" the Greens to never run anti-sex work campaigners as candidates.

The choice of panelists has created a space that is not safe or inclusive.

Hoping that i can make it down from Sodomcity, and hoping to see a strong anarchopunk, riotgrrl, fempunk, queerpunk, whore (sex worker), kinkster, sadomasochist, slut, ISGD (Intersex, Sex & Gender Diverse), queer and sex-positive feminist presence.

“In latrines and underneath piers

I have enjoyed pleasures that are made sweeter

by the contempt I know they bestow on me

in the eyes of the respectable world I abhor.”

~ Christos Tsiolkas (Loaded. 1998)

Climb inside
our sweet channeling.
Move apart outward
directional into ghost.

Nothing now to stop me
inviting you in.
Use me, I beg of you, seduce me!
Evolve me impaled,
pinned down for sordid love extract inspection.

Everything to gain,
when you ascend to take me down.
Delivered into deeper desires
by democratic domination.
Please dont stop here.

Your temporary ownership
fast track to complete me,
everything i want to give,
your needs fulfill me.

Drive me to your pleasure,
territorialise my innermost vulnerabilities.
This soul will yield as you conquer
and I'll beg.

"Come inside this temple,
spray the walls purple,
reconfigure exposed, hardwired,
bonded, orchestral organic circuitry."

In a haze of soft wood,
mothers milk mixing
metaphysical machismo,
you found me by the lake.

Fell onto my feet
when sunlight kissed my eye.
Opened up my chest,
now craving your serious smile.

~ Audry Autonomy
(scrawled in a notebook sometime in 2009 in reference to a certain amazing humyn. no one of us really took a role in the ways that this poem seems to suggest. mad love, switchiness and diversity in sex/sexuality prevailed!)

Paneroticism: The Dance of Life

"Chaos is a dance, a flowing dance of life, and this dance is erotic. Civilization
hates chaos and, therefore, also hates Eros. Even in supposedly
sexually free times, civilization represses the erotic. It teaches that orgasms
are events that happen only in a few small parts of our bodies
and only through the correct manipulation of those parts. It squeezes
Eros into the armor of Mars, making sex into a competitive, achievementcentered
job rather than joyful, innocent play.

Yet even in the midst of such repression, Eros refuses to accept this
mold. His joyful, dancing form breaks through Mars’ armor here and
there. As blinded as we are by our civilized existence, the dance of life
keeps seeping into our awareness in little ways. We look at a sunset,
stand in the midst of the forest, climb on a mountain, hear a bird song,
walk barefoot on a beach, and we start to feel a certain elation, a sense
of awe and joy. It is the beginning of an orgasm of the entire body, one
not limited to civilization’s so-called “erogenous zones”, but civilization
never lets the feeling fulfill itself. Otherwise, we’d realize that everything
that is not a product of civilization is alive and joyfully erotic.
But a few of us are slowly awakening from the anesthesia of civilization.
We are becoming aware that every stone, every tree, every river,
every animal, every being in the universe is not only just as alive, but at
present is more alive than we who are civilized beings. This awareness is not just intellectual. It can’t be or civilization will just turn into another
academic theory. We are feeling it. We have heard the love-songs of
rivers and mountains and have seen the dances of trees. We no longer
want to use them as dead things, since they are very much alive. We
want to be their lovers, to join in their beautiful, erotic dance. It scares us.
The death-dance of civilization freezes every cell, every muscle within
us. We know we will be clumsy dancers and clumsy lovers. We will be
fools. But our freedom lies in our foolishness. If we can be fools, we
have begun to break civilizations chains, we have begun to lose our need
to achieve. With no need to achieve, we have time to learn the dance
of life; we have time to become lovers of trees and rocks and rivers. Or,
more accurately, time cease to exist for us; the dance becomes our lives
as we learn to love all that lives. And unless we learn to dance the dance
of life, all our resistance to civilization will be useless. Since it will still
govern within us, we will just re-create it.


So let’s dance the dance of life. Let’s dance clumsily without shame,
for which of us civilized people isn’t clumsy? Let’s make love to rivers,
to trees, to mountains with our eyes, our toes, our hands, our ears. Let
every part of our bodies awaken to the erotic ecstasy of life’s dance. We’ll
fly. We’ll dance. We’ll heal. We’ll find that our imaginations are strong ,
that they are part of the erotic dance that can create the world we desire.


~ Feral Faun

1851: The Sydney sailors' riot

A history of the violent clash between Australian sailors and police after officers attempted to arrest a man dressed as a woman.

On Sunday August 23rd 1851 a hard fought riot broke out in Sydney. Whilst such disturbances were common place at the time this particular riot is interesting in that it was sparked by the arrest of a sailor for wearing women's clothing, was led by military men and involved attacks on a number of police watch-houses. Despite police and newspaper reports of the incidents being confused and often contradictory the riot tells us much about attitudes of Sydney's population towards cross dressing, police and the law....

...This series of incidents lead us to a number of interesting conclusions. Whilst little research in Australia has gone into the sexual mores and general attitudes of the sailors who visited these shores, it is clear that transgendered behaviour and anti-clericalism was condoned and indeed supported by them. It is also clear that they held civilian authorities and society in contempt and were willing to defy them to the point of freeing prisoners. It should also not be forgotten that a sizeable number of Sydney residents were also willing, and indeed, raring to get involved in such disturbances.

Scarlet Alliance, Australian Sex Workers Association

If you're a sex worker in Australia, you should know that you have a national peak body who is fighting for your rights, challenging your government and celebrating the achievements of whores everywhere!

I've been actively involved with Scarlet Alliance for a while now, and the benefits have been enormous. I encourage all other Aussie sex workers to join up and get involved.

Enough of my blathering though, you deserve a more professional introduction. This is taken from the website:

Scarlet Alliance, Australian Sex Workers Association, through our objectives, policies and programs, aims to achieve equality, social, legal, political, cultural and economic justice for past and present workers in the sex industry, in order for sex workers to be self-determining agents, building their own alliances and choosing where and how they work.

Scarlet Alliance works towards sex worker rights (legal, health, industrial, civil) and uses health promotion approaches to achieve this. The tools Scarlet Aliance recognises as best practices include peer education, community development, community engagement, advocacy etc.

The objectives for which Scarlet Alliance is established are:

(a) To promote the civil and human rights of past and present sex workers and to work toward ending all forms of discrimination against them;

(b) To lobby for legal and administrative frameworks which do not discriminate against sex workers;

(c) To challenge any government at any time when and where it implements legislation, regulations, rules, policies or law enforcement practices which are discriminatory and/or repressive to the rights and autonomy of sex workers;

(d) To actively promote the right of all sex workers to work in whatever area of their chosen occupation, including street, brothel, escort, private and opportunistic work;

(e) To actively work towards guaranteeing the right of all sex workers to optimum occupational health and safety provisions. This will promote conditions where safe sex and general health knowledge can be converted to safe work practices. Furthermore, challenge any legislation, policy or process which does not so promote the rights of the worker;

(f) To strive to eradicate sex worker stereotypes and stigmatisation in the popular consciousness and to communicate the diversity of ideas, opinions and aspirations of past and present sex workers;

(g) To liaise with international sex worker rights groups in the development of regional and international networks, programs and objectives;

(h) To support sex workers and sex worker organisations to become more politically active;

(i) To enhance the capacity of sex workers to participate in advancing their rights and build networks & organisations;

(j) To gather and disseminate sex industry related information to members;

(k) To play an active role in Australia’s response to HIV/AIDS;

(l) To provide training and education on issues relating to the Australian sex industry and the migration of sex workers into Australia; and

(m) To present up to date information on sex work issues at national and international forums.

These objects are undertaken in order to advance sex worker rights.

Sweden No Model For Sex Laws

Great article here by Elena Jeffreys regarding the Swedish Laws which criminalise the clients of sex workers. As a sex worker, I wholly agree with Elena's stance on this issue. Sex work is a legitimate form of work, and sex workers deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. The Swedish model has failed to improve the conditions faced by working people, it is an abhorrent form of state intervention and sex workers, and their representative organisations, are demanding to see it thrown out.

Please take the time to read this article, you wont be dissapointed.

I HATE STRAIGHT PEOPLE

I hate straight people who can't listen to queer anger without saying "hey, all straight people aren't like that. I'm straight too, you know," as if their egos don't get enough stroking or protection in this arrogant, heterosexist world. Why must we take care of them, in the midst of our just anger brought on by their fucked up society?! Why add the reassurance of "Of course, I don't mean you. You don't act that way." Let them figure out for themselves whether they deserve to be included in our anger.

But of course that would mean listening to our anger, which they almost never do. They deflect it, by saying "I'm not like that" or "Now look who's generalizing" or "You'll catch more flies with honey ... " or "If you focus on the negative you just give out more power" or "you're not the only one in the world who's suffering." They say "Don't yell at me, I'm on your side" or "I think you're overreacting" or "BOY, YOU'RE BITTER."

~ Anonymous Queers