tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/mardi-gras-15208/articlesMardi Gras – The Conversation2024-03-01T02:56:27Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2246332024-03-01T02:56:27Z2024-03-01T02:56:27ZThe policing of LGBTQ+ people casts a long, dark shadow. Marching at Mardi Gras must be backed up with real change<p>Public trust and confidence in NSW Police has been sorely tested in the past two weeks. The charging of a police officer with the murders of a Sydney gay couple, Jesse Baird and Luke Davies, has seen shock turn to grief <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/feb/27/a-lot-of-hurt-and-anger-how-the-queer-community-feels-let-down-by-nsw-police">and then anger</a>. </p>
<p>NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb’s framing of the case as a “crime of passion” downplayed the alleged culpability of the accused, and overlooked the murders as possible <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/police-face-backlash-for-using-the-term-crime-of-passion-heres-why-its-irresponsible/b81xl9k0g">domestic violence</a>. The commissioner’s gratitude to the accused for leading police to the location of the remains of the deceased drew further ire. </p>
<p>Yet the most heated debate has been about the appropriateness of the police force’s presence in the 2024 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade. This focus has brought to the surface a spectrum of viewpoints on diversity and inclusion. Much of this focus has ignored the reasons why there is growing dissatisfaction with NSW police among many LGBTQ+ people. This is amid <a href="https://www.pc.gov.au/ongoing/report-on-government-services/2024/justice/rogs-2024-partc-overview-and-sections.pdf">ten-year lows</a> of public perceptions of police integrity nationally. Emotions have been running high. </p>
<p>But these recent events are part of a long and complicated history of the policing of LGBTQ+ people, and of Mardi Gras in particular.</p>
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<h2>The ongoing stigma of criminalisation</h2>
<p>The first Mardi Gras in 1978 was a protest that <a href="https://www.mardigras.org.au/history-of-sydney-mardi-gras/">ended with violence</a> between the police and protesters, and the beating of many of the 53 arrestees while in police custody. The damage was exacerbated by the publication in The Sydney Morning Herald of the names, addresses and professions of those arrested. </p>
<p>The first Mardi Gras was held six years before the decriminalisation of homosexuality in NSW in 1984. That was a time when public attitudes were becoming more accepting of homosexuality. But coming out could still lead to you losing your job, and <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/karen-says-she-was-fired-by-a-christian-school-due-to-her-sexuality-shes-not-alone/155fd7f8v">still can</a>. Acting on your same-sex desire could also get you <a href="https://www.nsw.gov.au/departments-and-agencies/the-cabinet-office/resources/special-commissions-of-inquiry/lgbtiq-hate-crimes">killed</a>. </p>
<p>The deeper background to the policing of homosexuality in the 1970s was the expansion of laws and penalties against homosexuality amid increased vilification and discrimination against gays and lesbians after the second world war. The legacy of criminalisation continues through stigma that targets gay men, drag queens and <a href="https://theconversation.com/our-hybrid-media-system-has-emboldened-anti-lgbtq-hate-what-can-we-do-about-it-205028">transgender women</a> as “child groomers”. </p>
<p>It continues through so-called “conversion” therapies that seek to “correct” same-sex desire, often with <a href="https://ilga.org/Conversion-therapy-report-ILGA-World-Curbing-Deception">catastrophic consequences</a>. </p>
<h2>Community responses to the policing of Mardi Gras</h2>
<p>A viral video of police’s excessive force at the 2013 Mardi Gras parade resulted in <a href="https://www.acon.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Policing-Advocacy-document.pdf">LGBTQ+ community action</a>, and a 2014 <a href="https://www.starobserver.com.au/news/mardi-gras-police-premier-sign-new-mardi-gras-festival-accord/118358">memorandum of understanding</a> between Mardi Gras and NSW Police. </p>
<p>Central to that agreement was that Mardi Gras should be policed in a way that is safe and welcoming for all participants and spectators. </p>
<p>The issues with drug detection dogs were documented <a href="https://www.ombo.nsw.gov.au/Find-a-publication/publications/reports-to-parliament/police/review-of-the-police-powers-drug-detection-dogs-act-2001">comprehensively</a> by the NSW Ombudsman in 2006, yet NSW Police continues to use them at Mardi Gras and other festivals. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/theres-a-growing-gap-between-countries-advancing-lgbtq-rights-and-those-going-backwards-203329">There's a growing gap between countries advancing LGBTQ+ rights, and those going backwards</a>
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<p>This is despite the NSW coroner in 2019 recommending <a href="https://coroners.nsw.gov.au/documents/findings/2019/Music_Festival_Redacted_findings_in_the_joint_inquest_into_deaths_arising_at_music_festivals_.pdf">stopping the use</a> of drug detection dogs at music festivals in NSW. This is because, among other things, the presence of the dogs can cause panic ingestion of drugs by party-goers. </p>
<p>NSW Law Enforcement Conduct Commission investigations into strip searches conducted by NSW police officers found that many of the searches <a href="https://www.lecc.nsw.gov.au/news-and-publications/publications/final-report-an-inquiry-into-nsw-police-force-strip-search-practices-15-december-2020.pdf">were unlawful</a>. </p>
<h2>Apologies only go so far</h2>
<p>There have been apologies to the LGBTQ+ community over the years from politicians, police and the media, mainly about the treatment of the “78ers” who marched in the first Mardi Gras. </p>
<p>The most recent apology has come from the NSW police commissioner. The commissioner has apologised to the families of gay hate crime victims whose deaths were not properly investigated by NSW police over four decades from 1970 to 2010. </p>
<p>That apology was foregrounded by Justice John Sackar, who led the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry into LGBTIQ+ hate crimes in NSW. It handed down its findings in late 2023. </p>
<p>The police commissioner has come under fire for the time and placement of the apology, which was issued as an exclusive to The Sunday Telegraph as the search for Baird and Davies continued. Further, NSW police has <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/police-yet-to-accept-gay-hate-crime-inquiry-recommendations-despite-apology-20240225-p5f7n1.html">not officially responded</a> to the special commission’s recommendations. </p>
<p>Justice Sackar’s <a href="https://www.nsw.gov.au/departments-and-agencies/the-cabinet-office/resources/special-commissions-of-inquiry/lgbtiq-hate-crimes">overall impression</a> was that “in significant respects”, NSW Police’s engagement with the inquiry was “adversarial or unnecessarily defensive”. The judge noted that police strike forces Macnamir (2013), Parrabell (2015) and Neiwand (2015) failed in their assessment of hate as a motivator in historical homicides of gay men.</p>
<p>Two of these inquiries occurred after the Mardi Gras and NSW Police Force memorandum was established. In 2023, about two-thirds of the Mardi Gras membership voted to withdraw from it.</p>
<h2>Community taking back ownership</h2>
<p>Mardi Gras is a member-based organisation that champions LGBTQ+ social issues through leveraging the power of arts, culture, partnerships and celebration. </p>
<p>NSW police-branded pride paraphernalia at the festival sits in stark contrast with its invasive and harmful drug detection dog operations, aggressive policing, and ambivalence about addressing historic wrongs. </p>
<p>For many viewers of the Mardi Gras parade, the presence of the police in uniform may suggest the relationship between the LGBTQ+ community and NSW Police is a positive one. This is partly true.</p>
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<p>The force’s negative reaction to Mardi Gras’ request not to march in the 2024 parade illustrates the symbolic significance to police of marching in the parade, and its public relations value. </p>
<p>Mardi Gras members, and the Mardi Gras board, have decided that police force participation in the event is <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-26/sydney-mardi-gras-request-nsw-police-not-march-parade/103514440">conditional</a>. Police will now march, but out of uniform. </p>
<p>It remains to be seen whether NSW Police will deliver on greater transparency and accountability. If it decides to do so, the benefits will be realised well beyond LGBTQ+ communities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224633/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole L. Asquith is the Convener of the Australian Hate Crime Network, and in that role was contracted by the Special Commission of Inquiry into LGBTIQ Hate Crimes to provide paid, expert testimony.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin Ellis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s easy to assume the latest opposition to NSW police taking part in the annual festival is a response to recent events. Really, it’s the result of a long, painful history.Justin Ellis, Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Newcastle, University of NewcastleNicole L. Asquith, Director, Tasmanian Institute of Law Enforcement Studies, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2033292023-04-11T06:25:27Z2023-04-11T06:25:27ZThere’s a growing gap between countries advancing LGBTQ+ rights, and those going backwards<p>Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong joined 50,000 people to march in support of queer rights across the Sydney Harbour Bridge for World Pride in early March. A week earlier, Albanese became the first sitting prime minister to march in Sydney’s Mardi Gras, something he’s done over several decades.</p>
<p>And yet at the same time, in another part of the world, Uganda’s parliament passed <a href="https://theconversation.com/ugandas-new-anti-lgbtq-law-could-lead-to-death-penalty-for-same-sex-offences-202376">a string of draconian measures</a> against homosexuality, including possible death sentences for “aggravated homosexuality”. Any “promotion” of homosexuality is also outlawed.</p>
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<p>Seven years ago, I co-wrote a book with Jonathan Symons called Queer Wars. Back then, we suggested there was <a href="https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/queer-wars-the-new-global-polarization-over-gay-rights">a growing gap</a> between countries in which sexual and gender diversity was becoming more acceptable, and those where repression was increasing. </p>
<p>Sadly, that analysis seems even more relevant today.</p>
<h2>A growing gap</h2>
<p>Some countries have been unwinding criminal sanctions around homosexuality, which are often the legacy of colonialism. This includes, in recent years, former British colonies <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/08/22/singapore-decriminalize-gay-sex">Singapore</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/06/indian-supreme-court-decriminalises-homosexuality">India</a>.</p>
<p>But others have been imposing new and more vicious penalties for any deviation from stereotypical assumptions of heterosexual masculine superiority (what Australian sociologist Raewyn Connell <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0891243205278639">terms</a> “hegemonic masculinity”).</p>
<p>Anti-gay legislation is currently pending in Ghana, which led US Vice President Kamala Harris to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-43822234">express concerns</a> on a recent visit.</p>
<p>These moves echo the deep homophobia of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has <a href="https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/putins-anti-gay-war-on-ukraine/">bizarrely linked</a> intervention in Ukraine to protecting traditional values against LGBTQ+ infiltration.</p>
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<p>Meanwhile, reports from Afghanistan suggest that anyone identified as “LGBT” is <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/01/26/afghanistan-taliban-target-lgbt-afghans">in danger of being killed</a>.</p>
<p>Indonesia recently passed legislation <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/06/indonesia-passes-legislation-banning-sex-outside-marriage">penalising all sex outside marriage</a>. This follows <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13639811.2022.2038871">years of anti-queer rhetoric</a> from Indonesian leaders and crackdowns in regional areas.</p>
<p>And while the Biden administration is supportive of queer rights globally, the extraordinary hysteria <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/07/cpac-anti-trans-rhetoric">around trans issues in the Republican Party</a> reminds us the West has no inherent claim to moral superiority.</p>
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<h2>Where to next?</h2>
<p>Speaking at the World Pride Human Rights Conference, both Wong and Attorney General Mark Dreyfus made it clear Australia would press for recognition of sexuality and gender identity as deserving protection, as part of <a href="https://www.foreignminister.gov.au/minister/penny-wong/speech/sydney-worldpride-human-rights-conference-opening-statement">our commitment to human rights</a>.</p>
<p>Wong also announced a <a href="https://www.themandarin.com.au/213443-wong-announces-international-fund-for-lgbt-rights/">new Inclusion and Equality Fund</a> to support queer community organisations within our region.</p>
<p>Australian governments have usually been wary of loud assertions of support for queer rights. This is partly due to a reasonable fear this merely reinforces the perception that such language reflects <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/african-studies-review/article/abs/locating-neocolonialism-tradition-and-human-rights-in-ugandas-gay-death-penalty/33A06F4F33CF586E20E208BE790E71E0">a sense of Western superiority</a>, unwilling to acknowledge other societies may have very different attitudes towards gender and sexuality.</p>
<p>Australia is part of the Equal Rights Coalition, an intergovernmental body of 42 countries dedicated to the protection of the rights of LGBTQ+ people, and has supported sexual and gender rights in the <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/rights-and-freedoms/australias-second-universal-periodic-review-human-rights">country reviews</a> undertaken by the United Nations Human Rights Commission.</p>
<p>Australia has a minimal presence in Uganda, and direct representations are unlikely to have much effect. Uganda is a member of the Commonwealth, as are Ghana, Kenya and Zambia, where official homophobia appears to be increasing. But there’s little evidence the Australian government sees this as a significant foreign policy forum, or is prepared to push for sexual rights through its institutions.</p>
<p>As persecution on the basis of sexuality and gender identity increases, more people will seek to flee their countries. Queer refugees face double jeopardy: they’re not safe at home, but they’re often equally unsafe in their diasporic communities, which have inherited the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/01/lgbt-refugees-untold-story/">deep prejudices of their homelands</a>.</p>
<p>The UN’s refugee agency <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/lgbtiq-persons.html">reports</a> that most people seeking asylum because of their sexuality are unwilling to disclose this, because of discrimination within their own ethnic communities. This makes it impossible to have accurate numbers. But a clear signal from Australia would be a powerful statement of support – that it understands the situation and welcomes people who need flee because of their sexuality or gender expression.</p>
<p>An official Canadian government document <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/refugees/canada-role/2slgbtqi-plus.html">states</a>: </p>
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<p>Canada has a proud history of providing protection to and helping to resettle the world’s most vulnerable groups. That includes those in the Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and additional sexually and gender diverse community.</p>
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<p>Theirs is a model worth following.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203329/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dennis Altman is Patron of the Pride Foundation, which supports queer refugees and asylum seekers.</span></em></p>In March, Albanese joined 50,000 people to march in support of queer rights. At the same time, in another part of the world, Uganda passed a string of draconian anti-gay laws.Dennis Altman, VC Fellow LaTrobe University, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2007132023-02-28T03:01:05Z2023-02-28T03:01:05ZLidia Thorpe’s Mardi Gras disruption is the latest in an ongoing debate about acceptable forms of protest at Pride<p>Independent senator for Victoria Lidia Thorpe’s temporary blocking of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade on Saturday night has again brought to the surface discussion on the role of protest and police discretion. </p>
<p>Amplification through media is one way of hopefully raising awareness of intractable social issues, such as Indigenous rates of incarceration and the role of police in that process. Peaceful protest, such as temporarily blocking the parade, might be a way to gain rare exposure in a cluttered 24-7 news cycle. </p>
<p>Highlighting of a range of messages through the media has been integral to the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade’s evolution. From a local protest in 1978 connected to the international gay and lesbian liberation movement, it’s become an international event in its own right. </p>
<p>The parade was central to raising awareness of the issues facing gay men and lesbians in the 1970s. Not least among these issues were the criminalisation of consensual same-sex conduct in New South Wales until 1984, and in Tasmania until 1997. The legacies of criminalisation have continued long after those reforms.</p>
<p>The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade since that time has raised awareness about the stigma facing people with HIV/AIDS, the fight for marriage equality, and the wider issues facing LGBTIQ+ peoples. Yet the parade as a vehicle for disruption to amplify awareness about intractable social issues can be at odds with the broader, ordered, public relations objective of the Mardi Gras. This is only amplified in the global context of Sydney hosting World Pride in 2023. </p>
<h2>The evolving role of protest-turned-pride events</h2>
<p>The role of the police at Mardi Gras is complex. The inaugural parade in 1978 ended with violence between the police and protesters, 53 arrests, and the beating of many of those people arrested while in police custody. </p>
<p>Exemplary of the relationship between mainstream news media and the police, The Sydney Morning Herald published the names, addresses and professions of those arrested. There have been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/mar/04/police-apologise-to-original-sydney-mardi-gras-marchers-of-1978">apologies</a> to the 78ers from politicians, police and media since then. </p>
<p>Investigations into possible bias motivated attacks have culminated in the current <a href="https://www.specialcommission.nsw.gov.au/">NSW Special Commission of Inquiry into LGBTIQ hate crimes</a>. One aspect of that commission is to look at the ways the NSW police have approached issues relating to “bias crime” or “hate crime” from 1970 to the present. </p>
<p>The policing of the 2013 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras gained global attention after a bystander video of police excessive force against a spectator <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jun/04/police-took-three-years-to-make-finding-against-officer-who-slammed-teen-to-ground-at-2013-sydney-mardi-gras">went viral</a>.</p>
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<p>The policing of, and police participation in Mardi Gras events, remains contentious for these and other reasons, and formed part of the basis for Senator Thorpe’s temporary blocking of the parade. Senator Thorpe was marching with the No Pride in Genocide float, organised by <a href="https://www.news.com.au/national/politics/lidia-thorpe-to-march-in-mardi-gras-for-indigenous-lgbtqia-float/news-story/3b6201d0cbe1646def44f5a422041c0a">Pride in Protest</a>. Pride in Protest seeks to bring back the radical roots of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras to bring about social justice change. </p>
<p>Taken from a tweet, Senator Thorpe’s narrower focus is to raise awareness of the role that Black and brown trans women have played in effecting change through protest against police violence. </p>
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<p>One of the outcomes from the contentious policing of the 2013 Mardi Gras Festival was stronger inter-agency dialogue with police. That dialogue sought to emphasise the celebratory nature of Mardi Gras, and proportionate policing that reflected community values. Communities that have been over-policed through being criminalised, and potentially underprotected because of stigma, are particularly <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0011128720974309">sensitive to police interference</a>. As such, police within those communities need to <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-73519-7">prioritise engagement</a> through policing strategies that recognise the values of those communities. This requires reasonable justification of police practices from police, and community acknowledgement of the necessity of those practices.</p>
<p>Issues over the use and efficacy of drug detection dogs, the use of searches, and the scale of police presence at Mardi Gras events, remain contentious.</p>
<h2>The medium is the message</h2>
<p>Within this complex history, Thorpe’s temporary blocking of the parade forms part of an ongoing conversation between LGBTIQ+ communities, politicians and police about what are acceptable and unacceptable forms of protest. </p>
<p>The NSW Police Force has stated that it will not charge Thorpe. The broader reaction has been mixed – for some, her disruption of the protest is part of a continued fight for visibility of policing issues in Indigenous, queer and refugee communities. For others, Thorpe’s message was out of place at what has become a broader celebration of diversity and inclusion. </p>
<p>The longer-term question about the efficacy of this particular protest, and who benefits from it in the public relations space, remains to be seen. At the same time, the capacity of the Mardi Gras parade to balance activist perspectives with broader advocacy and allyship is very much grounded in what LGBTIQ+ peoples and their allies define as the driving issues of the day, the prioritisation of resources to that end, and what kind of exposure might best secure results. </p>
<p>Most recently, the more than a decade long campaign to secure marriage equality in Australia is a clear example of the organising capacity of LGBTIQ+ communities to effect law reform on important issues, and to maximise the use of social media networks and public relations to achieve those ends. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/can-a-polite-sign-lead-to-political-change-what-kinds-of-protest-work-166023">Can a polite sign lead to political change? What kinds of protest work?</a>
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<p>The corporatisation of the Mardi Gras parade through major sponsorships, and major corporation participation in the parade, rankles with some because of the commodification of sexuality and gender identity that this represents. There is seemingly a distance between the visible grass roots activism of 1978, and the less visible, day-to-day, behind the scenes work that might go into securing a proportionate police presence at the Mardi Gras parade and related events.</p>
<p>Yet, these two approaches are not mutually exclusive. Pride parades across the globe are used as vehicles for awareness-raising and protest against a range of police conduct. But at the same time, the rise of anti-LGBTIQ+ extremism means that LGBTIQ+ events might need a security presence to keep participants and audiences safe. </p>
<p>The message of protest, its delivery, and harnessing of a broader call to action, are just as important as securing the media exposure in the first place to effect longer-term positive outcomes. Outcomes that in some instances may only really be measured at the ballot box, and through community prioritisation and resourcing of the issues most important to them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200713/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin Ellis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Lidia Thorpe’s temporary blocking of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade on Saturday night has again brought to the surface discussion on the role of protest and police discretion.Justin Ellis, Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Newcastle, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2005332023-02-27T19:15:50Z2023-02-27T19:15:50ZFor some LGBTQ+ older people, events like World Pride can be isolating – we need to better understand how to support them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512322/original/file-20230227-4956-xbycv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=39%2C7%2C5224%2C3496&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Steven Saphore/ AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://sydneyworldpride.com/">World Pride</a> has come to Sydney, with the annual <a href="https://sydneyworldpride.com/events/mardi-gras-parade/">Mardi Gras Parade</a> on Saturday having returned to its Oxford Street home for the first time in three years. </p>
<p>The 17-day festival is expected to host 500,000 participants over more than 300 events. It is an opportunity to celebrate all things queer, and a good time to take stock of the changes LGBTQ+ older people have experienced, and the challenges they continue to face. </p>
<p>LGBTQ+ people aged in their 70s, 80s and 90s have witnessed extraordinary social change regarding gender and sexual diversity. For example, in Australia, same-sex marriage is now legal, <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/where-transgender-is-no-longer-a-diagnosis/">Gender Identity Disorder</a> has been removed as a clinical diagnosis, and all states have an equal age of consent for homosexual and heterosexual sex. </p>
<p>These have been hard-fought gains after many years of adversity and advocacy on the part of LGBTQ+ older people, among others. </p>
<p>Each year, the <a href="https://www.78ers.org.au/">78ers</a> – who were involved in the Sydney marches and protests between June and August 1978 – take pride of place towards the front of the parade. </p>
<h2>Loneliness and social isolation</h2>
<p>Despite these achievements, the consequences of living most of one’s life in a homophobic and transphobic society have been considerable, particularly in terms of mental illness and social isolation. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00918369.2021.2005999?journalCode=wjhm20">Australian</a> and <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34326557/">US</a> research indicates loneliness is more common among lesbian, gay and bisexual older people than the general population. This is particularly so for those who live alone and are not in a relationship. Similar findings are reported in relation to <a href="https://www.lgbtagingcenter.org/resources/pdfs/LGBT%20Aging%20and%20Health%20Report_final.pdf">transgender older people</a>, although more research is needed. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00918369.2021.2005999?journalCode=wjhm20">Loneliness</a> is also more common among lesbian and gay older people who are disconnected from LGBTQ+ communities and who hold negative attitudes towards their own same-sex attraction. </p>
<p>For LGBTQ+ older people experiencing social isolation and loneliness, what might be their experience of watching World Pride from a distance? What might it be like navigating rainbow paraphernalia while shopping at <a href="https://www.coles.com.au/about/sustainability/better-together/our-team/pride">Coles</a> (a World Pride partner)? How might they perceive the glitz and glamour of the Mardi Gras Parade?</p>
<p>World Pride may be challenging for those who don’t feel an attachment to LGBTQ+ communities or who feel negative about their own sexuality. And this may reinforce a sense of disconnection. </p>
<p>But some may gain comfort from witnessing the sense of community on display. It may even strengthen their perceived connection to other LGBTQ+ people. And, for those who are not open about their sexuality or authentic gender, it may support their journey to “come out” later in life. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/blessed-union-puts-queer-families-centre-stage-with-hilarity-and-heartbreak-198778">Blessed Union puts queer families centre stage, with hilarity and heartbreak</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>The impact of discrimination</h2>
<p>For many LGBTQ+ older people, the experience of discrimination remains very real in their lives. <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33770516/">Past and recent discrimination</a> leads to delays seeking treatment and support, simply because people expect to be discriminated against when accessing services. </p>
<p>In Australia, previous discrimination has been found to predict <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00918369.2021.2005999?journalCode=wjhm20">loneliness</a> and <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ageing-and-society/article/abs/recent-versus-lifetime-experiences-of-discrimination-and-the-mental-and-physical-health-of-older-lesbian-women-and-gay-men/90988215582414EA0AB7936B6384FC97">lower mental health</a> among older lesbian and gay people. In the US, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6779303/">microaggressions</a> – small everyday interactions that reinforce the experience of being “other” – have predicted greater impairment, higher rates of depression and lower quality of life among LGBTQ+ people aged 80 and over. </p>
<p>There remain major gaps in evidence on the issues faced by LGBTQ+ older people, particularly for bisexual, queer, transgender and nonbinary older people. This is mainly due to the failure to systematically collect inclusive data on gender and sexual diversity, through variables such as those recommended by the <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/standards/standard-sex-gender-variations-sex-characteristics-and-sexual-orientation-variables/latest-release">Australian Bureau of Statistics</a>. </p>
<h2>Strengths and resilience</h2>
<p>This year, older people seemed to occupy a more prominent place in the Mardi Gras Parade. Perhaps this is because of the natural ageing of our community activists. Older people were also represented in the wider World Pride festival, such as in the theatre production <a href="https://sydneyworldpride.com/events/all-the-sex-ive-ever-had/">All the Sex I’ve Ever Had</a>, in which older Sydney residents reflect on the evolution of their sexuality over the course of their lives. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512358/original/file-20230227-3068-y6f9j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512358/original/file-20230227-3068-y6f9j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512358/original/file-20230227-3068-y6f9j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512358/original/file-20230227-3068-y6f9j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512358/original/file-20230227-3068-y6f9j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512358/original/file-20230227-3068-y6f9j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512358/original/file-20230227-3068-y6f9j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512358/original/file-20230227-3068-y6f9j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Guests hit the dance floor at The Coming Back Out Ball, a spectacular social event in Melbourne celebrating Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex elders.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bryony Jackson/ Coming Back Out Ball</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A festival like World Pride showcases the strengths and resilience of LGBTQ+ people and communities. The organisation of such an event should not be underestimated. This reflects LGBTQ+ people’s high level of civic engagement and commitment to giving back to society, as demonstrated by their greater likelihood of being <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0312407X.2021.1899256">volunteers</a> and <a href="https://www.caregiving.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/2015_CaregivingintheUS_Final-Report-June-4_WEB.pdf">caregivers</a>. And the contribution of volunteers and caregivers during the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s and ‘90s is not forgotten. </p>
<p>LGBTQ+ older people generally are <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5241752/">resilient and maintain good health</a>. Many report increased <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13178-021-00653-z">confidence and self-esteem</a>, compared with when they were younger. And many have created their own families – their families of choice – to support each other in later life. </p>
<p>But we don’t know enough about their needs and how to provide them with inclusive services as they get older. World Pride is an opportunity to reflect on the hard-won gains but not ignore the challenges ahead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200533/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Hughes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Loneliness is more common among lesbian and gay older people who are disconnected from LGBTQ+ communities.Mark Hughes, Professor of Social Work, Southern Cross UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1991812023-02-20T01:06:26Z2023-02-20T01:06:26ZIllegal Sydney warehouse parties, lives lost to AIDS, and gay liberation: photographer William Yang captured it all<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510797/original/file-20230217-24-ivzg3s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2995%2C2766&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Men at Ken’s Karate Klub, Kensington in 1977.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">William Yang</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: William Yang’s Sydneyphiles Reimagined, State Library of New South Wales.</em></p>
<p>We are all photographers now, since the advent of smartphones and the selfie. So it may seem strange to be writing a review of an exhibition of photographs when, in their digital form, they are both ubiquitous and at the same time largely redundant.</p>
<p>William Yang’s photographs in Sydneyphiles offer the complete opposite of the selfie. Instead of the throwaway image, he offers carefully framed and curated portraits. </p>
<p>In his famous slideshow performances, he narrates the events behind the pictures and names the subjects so they are not forgotten or discarded. In doing this, Yang also ensures he is still part of the picture, just as he is a part of the community of artists and gay radicals he has lived among and photographed. He brings the pictures back into the present moment.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tenderness-desire-and-politics-william-yangs-work-is-a-portrait-of-a-life-well-lived-158413">Tenderness, desire and politics: William Yang's work is a portrait of a life well lived</a>
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<h2>Alternative Sydney up close</h2>
<p>William Yang (pronounced Young but he says he doesn’t care anymore) is 80 this year. He has seen the alternative cultures of Sydney up close, in a way few people alive have. </p>
<p>He never goes far without his cameras, shooting social events over the past 50 years for the social pages of newspapers and fashion magazines.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510793/original/file-20230217-16-kwzkku.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510793/original/file-20230217-16-kwzkku.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510793/original/file-20230217-16-kwzkku.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510793/original/file-20230217-16-kwzkku.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510793/original/file-20230217-16-kwzkku.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510793/original/file-20230217-16-kwzkku.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510793/original/file-20230217-16-kwzkku.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510793/original/file-20230217-16-kwzkku.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Linda Jackson, 1976.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William Yang</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yang has an extensive visual record of Sydney cultural life, beginning with his first ever exhibition of photographs, Sydneyphiles. Sydneyphiles was shown at the then ACP gallery in Oxford Street, Paddington in 1977, documenting the mainstream Sydney social scene and the then illegal gay party scene in the years since his arrival in Sydney in 1969.</p>
<p>It is a priceless resource, as the State Library of NSW has recognised having purchased the collection. It has now been remounted in its entirety as a part of Sydney World Pride 2023. Pride’s theme, Mana Nangamai Djuralli, means “Gather, Dream, Amplify” in Gadigal language. It is an especially apt theme for this exhibition.</p>
<h2>Portraits and private parties</h2>
<p>More than 200 images, mostly portraits, are on display: celebrities such as Brett Whiteley, Kate Fitzpatrick, Jackie Weaver, Penelope Seidler, Robyn Nevin among many others alongside candid shots with titles such as “Men Fucking” and “Gary Injecting Junk”. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511003/original/file-20230220-28-o55iic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Men sleeping on mattresses after a house party" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511003/original/file-20230220-28-o55iic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511003/original/file-20230220-28-o55iic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511003/original/file-20230220-28-o55iic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511003/original/file-20230220-28-o55iic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511003/original/file-20230220-28-o55iic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511003/original/file-20230220-28-o55iic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511003/original/file-20230220-28-o55iic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sleeping men.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William Yang</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Others with captions such as “Untitled no 1 (men sleeping)” reveal two naked young men spooning in post-coital slumber in the basement of a house party. Another image “<a href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/events/doris-fish-queen-queens">Doris Fish</a> with man in bondage gear” shows the eponymous drag queen Doris performing fellatio on the man – viewers get much more than the label suggests.</p>
<p>Many are shots taken at private parties such as those held by <a href="https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/newslocal/manly-daily/madame-lash-was-a-character-i-created-but-when-i-dressed-as-her-everything-was-possible/news-story/957a3497b55cac9ec213386731c68394">Madame Lash</a> in her warehouse. These pictures feature guests tied to a rack surrounded by crowds of party-goers. It is a part of Sydney’s recent cultural history that few people still alive have witnessed. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510795/original/file-20230217-22-njl1qq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510795/original/file-20230217-22-njl1qq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510795/original/file-20230217-22-njl1qq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510795/original/file-20230217-22-njl1qq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510795/original/file-20230217-22-njl1qq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510795/original/file-20230217-22-njl1qq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510795/original/file-20230217-22-njl1qq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510795/original/file-20230217-22-njl1qq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Madam Lash’s rack party, 1977.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William Yang</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many of Yang’s subjects were lost to the AIDS epidemic, powerfully captured in his photographs and performances in unforgettably moving works such as Sadness and Friends of Dorothy. That’s what makes this an important exhibition for Sydney in this year of World Pride.</p>
<h2>Gay liberation</h2>
<p>Yang’s work also features in <a href="https://artdesign.unsw.edu.au/unsw-galleries/party">The Party</a> currently at UNSW Galleries, another significant exhibition of Sydney gay visual culture for Sydney World Pride. </p>
<p>This covers the years beginning with the inaugural Mardi Gras in 1978, a protest march for gay rights that <a href="https://www.mardigras.org.au/history-of-sydney-mardi-gras/">became infamous for the brutality of the NSW police</a>, to now. </p>
<p>The changes could not be more stark. Mardi Gras is now and has been for some time (for those living under a rock) a celebration and affirmation of LGBTQI culture and identity with the NSW Police participating. </p>
<p>Yang refers to these as the years of “gay liberation” and is justly proud of his role in recording this extraordinary transition of gay life from illegality to recognition and celebration.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-hidden-in-plain-sight-australian-queer-men-and-women-before-gay-liberation-155964">Friday essay: hidden in plain sight — Australian queer men and women before gay liberation</a>
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</p>
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<h2>Open hearts and minds</h2>
<p>It was a treat to see him present the photographs to a packed house at a one-off recital at the State Library on February 10.</p>
<p>He has performed his quiet storytelling alongside his pictures since 1989 and was recently awarded a Life Time Achievement Award by the Sydney Theatre Critics Circle. The power of these simple shows, as Helena Grehan and I <a href="https://unsw.press/books/william-yang/">wrote about them</a> some years ago, is that they open onto “vast as well as minute landscapes of grief, love, loss and friendship”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510792/original/file-20230217-2564-brcvgt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510792/original/file-20230217-2564-brcvgt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510792/original/file-20230217-2564-brcvgt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510792/original/file-20230217-2564-brcvgt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510792/original/file-20230217-2564-brcvgt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510792/original/file-20230217-2564-brcvgt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510792/original/file-20230217-2564-brcvgt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510792/original/file-20230217-2564-brcvgt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Stiletto Oscars’ party at Kingo’s (Peter Kingston), 1976.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William Yang</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In presenting Sydneyphiles, the slideshow, he evinced a new level of quiet defiance and a newly stated sense of purpose for his work. He expressed “no regrets or apologies” for the radical lifestyle he so eloquently captures and an assertiveness of the value of his work in making the gay and lesbian community of that time visible. </p>
<p>He offers a valuable reminder of a time when these gatherings had to be held in secret. His work stands as a contestation and a refusal of this – and a softly spoken demand that our societies, hearts and minds remain open.</p>
<p><em>Sydneyphiles is at State Library of NSW until June 4.</em></p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-10-photography-exhibitions-that-defined-australia-166755">Friday essay: 10 photography exhibitions that defined Australia</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199181/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edward Scheer works for UNSW.</span></em></p>Sydneyphiles remounts Yang’s 1977 exhibition, documenting mainstream Sydney and the illegal gay party scene.Edward Scheer, Professor of Performance and Visual Culture, Head of School of Art and Design, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1718202022-02-21T19:07:23Z2022-02-21T19:07:23ZHomage, pilgrimage and protest: why Sydney’s Mardi Gras parade should go back to the streets<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445553/original/file-20220210-15-1ovxj93.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4533%2C3012&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dan Himbrechts/ AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1985, calls for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade to be cancelled in response to concerns about HIV/AIDS were successfully countered by the organisers. The parade is now recognised as an important way of creating awareness of safe-sex practices, reducing the social stigma of HIV/AIDS and being a living memorial to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14616680902827092">those who died from it</a>.</p>
<p>In 2020, like many other major events, the Mardi Gras parade became a victim of another virus: COVID-19. In consultation with public health experts, the parade <a href="https://www.starobserver.com.au/news/gay-and-lesbian-mardi-gras-will-return-to-sydney-cricket-ground-in-2022/206354">moved to the Sydney Cricket Ground in 2021 and will again take place there in 2022</a>. </p>
<p>This radical decision is a testament to the resilience and spirit of Mardi Gras that, despite calls for its cancellation at various points within its 43-year history, the show continues. </p>
<p>But at what cost? Taking it away from its homeland on Oxford street, and containing it within the boundaries of the SCG challenges its status as a protest, reducing its ability to disrupt. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445556/original/file-20220210-26283-aug9qh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445556/original/file-20220210-26283-aug9qh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445556/original/file-20220210-26283-aug9qh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445556/original/file-20220210-26283-aug9qh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445556/original/file-20220210-26283-aug9qh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445556/original/file-20220210-26283-aug9qh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445556/original/file-20220210-26283-aug9qh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445556/original/file-20220210-26283-aug9qh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 43rd annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade took place at the SCG in Sydney in 2021, due to COVID-19.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dan Himbrechts/ AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A pilgrimage</h2>
<p>Since 1978, the parade has followed roughly the same route on Oxford Street in the heart of Sydney’s “Gaybourhood”. That first parade ended in <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-04/nsw-police-apologise-to-mardi-gras-78ers/7219996">a brutal riot instigated by police</a>. By following the route of that first night, the parade pays homage to the brave people who created that first parade, now known as the 78ers. </p>
<p>For some, the parade acts as a form of pilgrimage and a place to express and affirm one’s sexual and/or gender orientation. It is a moment in time when a minority is publicly celebrated and when differences are embraced, albeit temporarily.</p>
<p>For others who may not be out, the parade provides a visual representation of what being LGBTIQ+ is. It helps break down barriers that prevent LGBTIQ+ people from living their authentic lives, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19407963.2022.2037623">displaying a community that will embrace them</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445567/original/file-20220210-19-1lg7gyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445567/original/file-20220210-19-1lg7gyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445567/original/file-20220210-19-1lg7gyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445567/original/file-20220210-19-1lg7gyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445567/original/file-20220210-19-1lg7gyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445567/original/file-20220210-19-1lg7gyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445567/original/file-20220210-19-1lg7gyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445567/original/file-20220210-19-1lg7gyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Mardi Gras parade pays homage to the brave people who created that first parade, now known as the 78ers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The success of the parade has <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02614367.2020.1831043">inspired similar ones in other regional communities around Australia </a>.</p>
<p>These public displays challenge mainstream expectations of sexuality and gender, drawing attention to the diversity of LGBTIQ+ communities. Oxford Street provides the parade and its exuberant participants with a connection to what is arguably Australia’s LGBTIQ+ imagined homeland – and the struggles and celebrations of past generations.</p>
<h2>The shift to the Cricket Ground</h2>
<p>It is not surprising the shift to the Sydney Cricket Ground in 2021 was not accepted by all LGBTIQ+ people. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/05/mardi-gras-protest-march-to-go-ahead-in-sydney-after-last-minute-covid-exemption-granted">Several hundred people marched down Oxford Street</a> following an exemption granted by the NSW Minister for Health. </p>
<p>Apart from honouring the 78ers, people marched to protest contemporary issues like the religious freedom discrimination bill and Black deaths in custody. They felt protest could not be effective within the walls of the SCG.</p>
<p>The importance of Oxford Street relates then not only to the origin of the parade but to the fact that it disrupts public space and, by doing so, garners public attention for important issues. </p>
<p>Indeed, a protest is only a protest if it disrupts the everyday routines of public life. The blocked roads and traffic diversions expose the public to the parade, regardless of whether they intend to participate. These disruptions help remind the public of the LGBTQIQ+ communities and their place in Australian society.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445562/original/file-20220210-23-9wmstl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445562/original/file-20220210-23-9wmstl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445562/original/file-20220210-23-9wmstl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445562/original/file-20220210-23-9wmstl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445562/original/file-20220210-23-9wmstl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445562/original/file-20220210-23-9wmstl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445562/original/file-20220210-23-9wmstl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445562/original/file-20220210-23-9wmstl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Mardi Gras parade has important functions as a public protest.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ann Marie Calilhanna/ Mardi Gras</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The shift to the SCG changes the nature of the parade and its relationship with onlookers. It becomes a ticketed event, and those attending can no longer maintain the anonymity afforded on a crowded street. Ticketing limits access to the event to Mardi Gras members (who each receive two free tickets); those who can afford tickets; and those lucky to get one of a limited number of spots. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-on-the-sydney-mardi-gras-march-of-1978-54337">Friday essay: on the Sydney Mardi Gras march of 1978</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Lastly, the SCG, with its fencing and security, is spatially contained within boundaries that prevent the public gaze on the street, potentially consigning the politics of Pride away from the public sphere to within a private space. </p>
<p>The fact that the Mardi Gras Parade has been able to take place each year across its 43-year history, in the face of protests from some religious groups, ill-founded concerns about HIV transmission, horrible weather and now, COVID-19, is a show of defiance and strength. </p>
<p>However, shifting the parade from the street where it emerged, with such strong historical connections to the development of LGBTQI+ Pride does come with some costs. </p>
<p>It remains to be seen what happens in the future with <a href="https://sydneyworldpride.com/">World Pride 2023</a> set to be hosted in Sydney. </p>
<p>Will the parade come out of the stadium as planned? Will it still call people out of the bars and onto the streets? Or will it morph into an entertainment spectacle, sanitised and contained within the boundaries of the SCG?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171820/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Rather than a sanitised spectacle at the SCG, the Mardis Gras Parade works best when disrupting everyday routines.Clifford Lewis, Senior lecturer, Charles Sturt UniversityKevin Markwell, Adjunct Professor, Southern Cross UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1559642021-03-04T19:23:57Z2021-03-04T19:23:57ZFriday essay: hidden in plain sight — Australian queer men and women before gay liberation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387127/original/file-20210302-13-1a4ucaj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C0%2C797%2C824&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A mug shot of Neville McQuade (aged 18) and Lewis Stanley Keith (aged 19), taken at North Sydney Police Station in June 1942.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sydney Living Museums</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s Sydney Lesbian and Gay Mardi Gras festival time. LGBTQI people are enjoying what some call “gay or lesbian Christmas”. It’s not quite the same in the era of COVID, but <a href="https://www.mardigras.org.au/events/parade">a contained version of the famous street parade</a> will be beamed into living rooms on Saturday. </p>
<p>The public face of Mardi Gras, which began in 1978 with a protest parade, is remarkable in a nation that has been deeply prejudiced toward gay and lesbian people. Part of the power of Mardi Gras for older generations was that it removed queer sexualities from the “secret” confines of semi-legal bar and club locations and private parties to the public street. Being on the front page of the newspaper no longer meant you might be going to jail.</p>
<p>Still, Australian queer people did not suddenly emerge in the 1960s and 70s, the years of gay liberation. Where were they before and how can they be identified? Because male homosexuality was criminalised, much can be discovered from the press and crime reports. Letters, memoirs, diaries, art, photographs and the memories of gay, lesbian, and transgender people also provide clues. </p>
<h2>From the bush to the boudoir</h2>
<p>The Australian colonies were marked by a shortage of women and the dominance of homosocial environments. Francis Forbes, former Chief Justice in the colony, when questioned at the so-called <a href="https://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/convict-sydney/molsworth-report">Molesworth inquiry into convict transportation in the 1830s</a>, had to admit Sydney <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27508924?seq=1">“had been called a Sodom”</a>. Sodomy in the Tasmanian coal mines was also <a href="https://www.monash.edu/arts/philosophical-historical-international-studies/eras/past-editions/edition-six-2004-november/space-sexuality-and-convict-resistance-in-van-diemens-land-the-limits-of-repression">the subject of a British government inquiry</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/debauchery-on-the-fatal-shore-the-sex-lives-of-australias-convicts-88321">Debauchery on the fatal shore: the sex lives of Australia's convicts</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386963/original/file-20210301-17-ehog2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386963/original/file-20210301-17-ehog2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386963/original/file-20210301-17-ehog2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386963/original/file-20210301-17-ehog2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386963/original/file-20210301-17-ehog2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386963/original/file-20210301-17-ehog2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386963/original/file-20210301-17-ehog2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386963/original/file-20210301-17-ehog2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Andrew George Scott, alias Captain Moonlite.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is evidence of what historian Robert Aldrich calls “conjoined” same-sex male couples in 19th-century Australia, including the famous bushranger <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2015/november/1446296400/jeff-sparrow/queer-bushranger#mtr">Captain Moonlite</a> (Andrew George Scott). As he waited to be hanged in Darlinghurst Jail in 1880, he wrote of his fellow ranger James Nesbitt: “We were one in heart and soul, he died in my arms and I long to join him …”</p>
<p>Homosexuality was often associated with foreigners and cosmopolitan affectation. George Francis Alexander Seymour, future Marquess of Hertford, lived in Queensland briefly around 1895. Likely inspired by international dance sensation <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loie_Fuller">Loie Fuller</a>, he shocked locals by wearing sequins and a veil for “skirt dancing” performances in front of “kanakas” (South Pacific men coerced to work in the canefields). </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387615/original/file-20210303-21-1bm30wv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387615/original/file-20210303-21-1bm30wv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387615/original/file-20210303-21-1bm30wv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387615/original/file-20210303-21-1bm30wv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387615/original/file-20210303-21-1bm30wv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387615/original/file-20210303-21-1bm30wv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387615/original/file-20210303-21-1bm30wv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387615/original/file-20210303-21-1bm30wv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George Francis Alexander Seymour, future Marquess of Hertford, dancing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Australia.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/beauchamp-seventh-earl-5174">William Lygon</a>, later 7th Earl Beauchamp — the governor of New South Wales for a short time from 1899 — travelled with a retinue of good-looking footmen and lavished praise on the natural grace of Australian athletes and lifesavers. </p>
<p>He was disgraced as a homosexual by his brother-in-law in 1931 and became the subject of the famous statement by King George V: “I thought people like that always shot themselves.”</p>
<p>He <a href="https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/lgbtq-history/walmer-castle-and-homosexuality/">subsequently inspired</a> the famous novel by Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited.</p>
<h2>Interwar life: fashion and fancy</h2>
<p>In the inter-war years, there was a marked queer presence in the worlds of Australian art, design, entertainment and retail. This was the period of art deco and Australian “genteel modernism”. Art Deco (called moderne or futurist style at the time) was inseparable from fashion and fantasy and frequently derided as an effeminate style — it has even been called the “International Style in drag”. </p>
<p>Cultural nationalist and the director of Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria from 1936–1941, J. S. MacDonald, claimed this type of art and design had been promoted by women and “pansies”, meaning homosexual men.</p>
<p>Smith’s Weekly, The Bulletin and the New Triad mocked the “wasp waists” and “goo goo boys” who worked in retail and enjoyed theatre. </p>
<p>Some queers worked as entertainers or drag queens. In NSW this was a summary offence of indecency (still used by police in the 1970s). Drag queens and cross-dressers had to wear male underwear or else risk arrest. </p>
<p>Cross-dressing was also associated at the time with <a href="https://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/exhibitions/city-shadows">street prostitution</a>. A police mugshot from 1942 shows two cross-dressed male sex workers wearing women’s coats, one with huge rabbit-fur-trimmed sleeves, as well as a turban and makeup. The men still look very male and defiant, suggesting a part of their sexual charge came from precisely this lack of ambiguity; it was clear they were not women.</p>
<p>Clearly annoyed, one of the pair remarked to the tabloid Truth:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We were bundled out of the police cell, and snapped immediately. My friend and I had no chance to fix our hair or arrange our make-up. We were half asleep and my turban was on the wrong side.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Gay male artists and commercial designers in Sydney lived their queer lives discreetly on moderate incomes. The flower painter <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/feint-adrian-george-10161">Adrian Feint</a>, who lived in Elizabeth Bay, produced many bookplates depicting languid young men with a queer mood. </p>
<p>His disguised self-portrait etching of a dandy entitled The Collector (1925) carried the suggestion of eye and lip makeup, depicting archaic Edwardian dress, a top hat, a cane, plaid suit and cape.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386958/original/file-20210301-14-geq1e6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386958/original/file-20210301-14-geq1e6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386958/original/file-20210301-14-geq1e6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386958/original/file-20210301-14-geq1e6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386958/original/file-20210301-14-geq1e6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386958/original/file-20210301-14-geq1e6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386958/original/file-20210301-14-geq1e6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386958/original/file-20210301-14-geq1e6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Adrian Feint’s disguised self portrait.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His remarkable cover for the upmarket magazine The Home (July 1929) featured a “Rum Corps” officer whom Feint transformed into a languid, heavily made-up beauty, recalling both the Ballets Russes, who were touring Australia, and the famous queer movie star Rudolph Valentino. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386960/original/file-20210301-14-3yltvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386960/original/file-20210301-14-3yltvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386960/original/file-20210301-14-3yltvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386960/original/file-20210301-14-3yltvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386960/original/file-20210301-14-3yltvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386960/original/file-20210301-14-3yltvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386960/original/file-20210301-14-3yltvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386960/original/file-20210301-14-3yltvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cover of The Home journal, Volume 7 No.10. July 1 1929, designed by Adrian Feint.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The culture of hedonism, promiscuity, heavy drinking, pub life and mixed-class socialising that characterised life in the colonies pervaded Australian gay life until recently. Pubs and clubs were crude, brash and fun. Bohemian ideas were also important. All sorts of behaviour were excused at the <a href="http://melbourneblogger.blogspot.com/2013/10/lascivious-artists-balls-1900-1939.html">Artists’ Balls</a>, which were held in Sydney from the 1920s until 1964. Gay balls were often accompanied by a blind orchestra (not unusual at the time due to war injuries) so the goings on could not be observed.</p>
<p>A 1925 sketch by Mandi McCrae of one such ball in The Home, September 1925, delineates a transsexual, two men with arms akimbo, and several gender-indeterminate figures. The press loved running stories of cross-dressed men whose dresses were so large they had to arrive in delivery vans. One told of a live bird in a cage worn as a Marie Antoinette-style headdress.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387614/original/file-20210303-13-fshizu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387614/original/file-20210303-13-fshizu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387614/original/file-20210303-13-fshizu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387614/original/file-20210303-13-fshizu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387614/original/file-20210303-13-fshizu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387614/original/file-20210303-13-fshizu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387614/original/file-20210303-13-fshizu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387614/original/file-20210303-13-fshizu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A sketch of an Artist’s Ball from The Home, September 1925.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Urban subcultures</h2>
<p>In the interwar years, a queer urban subculture coalesced for the first time in Sydney around art deco sites and buildings: city hotels, the Archibald Fountain by night for cruising, and the new high-density housing of Kings Cross, Potts Point, Darlinghurst and East Sydney. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387600/original/file-20210303-19-r6u2f1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387600/original/file-20210303-19-r6u2f1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387600/original/file-20210303-19-r6u2f1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387600/original/file-20210303-19-r6u2f1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387600/original/file-20210303-19-r6u2f1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387600/original/file-20210303-19-r6u2f1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387600/original/file-20210303-19-r6u2f1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387600/original/file-20210303-19-r6u2f1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">High density housing helped foster the bachelor life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peter McNeil</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Boonara, a middle-class block of flats in Woollahra, built by a widow and a “spinster” in 1918, was let only to women and one male artist, <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lister-william-lister-604">William Lister Lister</a>. Restaurants catering to a homosexual clientele included Madame Pura’s Latin Cafe in the now demolished Royal Arcade. </p>
<p>Many Australian artists and writers became expatriate in this period to escape wowserism, censorship and the anti-art tenor of Australian society. They included Nobel winning novelist Patrick White, who conducted one of the great same-sex love affairs with Manoly Lascaris from 1941 until White’s death in 1990. White spent his youth in England, writing from a desk designed by the queer interior decorator and later famed artist Francis Bacon.</p>
<p>Back home in the 1940s, a group of queer artists, dancers and designers lived in Merioola, a run-down mansion in Edgecliff known then as “Buggery Barn”. They included artists <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/friend-donald-stuart-leslie-12516">Donald Friend</a> and <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/justin-obrien/">Justin O'Brien</a>, acclaimed costume designer <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/sainthill-loudon-11602">Loudon Sainthill</a> and his partner, the theatre critic and gallery director <a href="http://www.elisarolle.com/queerplaces/fghij/Harry%20Tatlock%20Miller.html">Harry Tatlock Miller</a>. The landlady was the butch looking <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-136208998/view">Chica Lowe</a>. She provided a set-like stage on which residents performed their counter-cultural lives.</p>
<p>Wealthier queers conducted their lives at private dinners, where ironic cross-dressing provided entertainment. They used camp girls’ names such as Connie, Simone, Zena and Maude. Cross-dressing was a popular diversion for groups of gay friends, who hired country and beach houses for private parties around the country. </p>
<p>A queer sensibility can tell us as much as a queer identification at a time when non-binary sexuality could lead to financial ruin for both women and men. </p>
<p>Australia’s first interior decorator, Margaret Jaye, was almost certainly a lesbian, and one of the nation’s first industrial designers, Molly Grey, was photographed in 1935 with a Sapphic hairstyle and severe dress of oversize mannish collar, bow tie, and cuffs. Interior design, being connected to domesticity and the home, was one of the few professions where married women and gay men could work undisturbed.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387122/original/file-20210302-17-1q2wnyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387122/original/file-20210302-17-1q2wnyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387122/original/file-20210302-17-1q2wnyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387122/original/file-20210302-17-1q2wnyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387122/original/file-20210302-17-1q2wnyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387122/original/file-20210302-17-1q2wnyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387122/original/file-20210302-17-1q2wnyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387122/original/file-20210302-17-1q2wnyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Molly Grey photographed in Potts Point Sydney by Harold Cazneaux circa 1935.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of New South Wales</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The author <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/langley-eve-10784">Eve Langley</a> (who changed her name to Oscar Wilde by deed poll in 1954) and her sister June cross-dressed in country Gippsland when young, where they were known as the “trouser women”. Eve continued to wear mannish attire in her old age in the Blue Mountains.</p>
<h2>Sydney: from port to gay city</h2>
<p>World War II was a watershed for Australian queer identity. <a href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/blogs/garry-wotherspoon-oral-history-interviews-gay-men-1980-1988-have-been-released-librarys-oral">Historians such as Garry Wotherspoon</a> have noted how port cities such as Sydney and San Francisco threw large numbers of young men together, away from their families, in new types of housing such as bachelor flats. These cities were the ones that later developed the first large homosexual communities, often in neglected inner-city areas, in the 1960s and 1970s. </p>
<p>World War II also threw into the mix female impersonators who performed for the forces. The Australian armed forces had 20 concert party groups and gave 12,000 shows in Australia, the Middle East and the Pacific. The Kiwi (New Zealand) Concert Party wore drag made from muslin, dishcloths and silver paper as well as real fashions. They continued to perform for nine years after the war ended. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387123/original/file-20210302-13-vxx0mh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387123/original/file-20210302-13-vxx0mh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387123/original/file-20210302-13-vxx0mh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387123/original/file-20210302-13-vxx0mh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387123/original/file-20210302-13-vxx0mh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387123/original/file-20210302-13-vxx0mh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387123/original/file-20210302-13-vxx0mh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387123/original/file-20210302-13-vxx0mh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Official war artist Roy Hodgkinson captured a moment of revelry among Australian military forces at a New Guinea Concert Party in 1942.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memorial</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Academic Chris Brickell has made <a href="https://www.brickell.nz/home/index.php/publications/books/mates-and-lovers">the important point</a> that although many of the performers pretended to be co-opted for their roles, most were more than willing. Their drag acts “drew from, and subsequently inspired, gay civilians’ own drag performances”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387432/original/file-20210303-22-10nw2sl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387432/original/file-20210303-22-10nw2sl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387432/original/file-20210303-22-10nw2sl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387432/original/file-20210303-22-10nw2sl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387432/original/file-20210303-22-10nw2sl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387432/original/file-20210303-22-10nw2sl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387432/original/file-20210303-22-10nw2sl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387432/original/file-20210303-22-10nw2sl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lance-Corporal J. C. Robinson adjusting the wig of Private G. J. Buckham, female impersonator in the dressing room of the Kookaroos Concert Party, Torokina, Bougainville, 1945.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memorial</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-didnt-know-that-world-existed-how-lesbian-women-found-a-life-in-the-armed-forces-88943">'I didn't know that world existed': how lesbian women found a life in the armed forces</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>1950s Australia saw an increasing witch hunt around queer sexuality, fuelled by the churches, the demands of the police and Cold War anxiety about Communist inflitration. The tabloid press continued earlier sensational reporting: (“Degenerate Dressed up as a Doll … St Kilda Sensation—Man-Woman Masquerader”) with headlines such as “Police War on this Nest of Perverts”. Even the famed 1950s American <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/physique-magazines-and-photographs">muscle culture magazines</a> were banned under strict censorship here. </p>
<p>Lesbian butch and femme subcultures had emerged by this time, in which one partner was styled in a hyper-feminine way, the other donning trousers and shorter hair. Writer Gavin Harris notes that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_May_Armfield">Lillian Armfield</a>, NSW’s first policewoman, claimed department stores blacklisted lesbians who were trying to “recruit” from among their “innocent” customers. </p>
<h2>Blak and queer</h2>
<p>Queer Indigenous people have been prominent for several decades in art forms such as dance, where they contribute to new formulations of ideas of “blak beauty,” blak being a term consciously deployed by contemporary queer visual artists, including <a href="http://www.artdes.monash.edu.au/globe/issue10/batxt.html">Brook Andrew</a>.</p>
<p>The biography and survival story of Indigenous dancer and choreographer Noel Tovey (born 1934) charts a trajectory from abandonment and abuse to a life as a successful actor and dancer in London in the 1960s. Here Tovey mixed with gay circles and gained resilience and self-esteem. </p>
<p>Tovey described in his autobiography <a href="https://www.bookdepository.com/Little-Black-Bastard-Noel-Tovey/9780733619472">Little Black Bastard</a> the Artist’s Ball in Melbourne as “the only night of the year when the police turned a blind eye to the number of drag queens looking for a cab”. Characters who might turn up there included “Puss in Boots” or a reclusive “Greta Garbo”: the latter refused to talk to anyone all night. Tovey was later involved with the spectacular Awakenings opening dance sequence at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games </p>
<h2>From blending to assertion</h2>
<p>William Yang has been photographing queer Brisbane and Sydney <a href="https://www.mca.com.au/artists-works/artists/william-yang/">since 1969</a>. In that year, he photographed David Williams, or Beatrice, who performed in drag at the Purple Onion Club, Sydney (opened 1962), singing “The Sound of Mucus” and “A Streetcar Named Beatrice”. The clothes matched the crude titles: synthetic crinolines and huge feather hats. </p>
<p>Yang also photographed gays who wished to blend, whose clothes appear very ordinary, with a slight edge that can only be read through the focus on casual softness. </p>
<p>Calls for an end to the criminalisation of homosexuality in Australia appeared by the early 1960s, following the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfenden_report#:%7E:text=The%20Report%20of%20the%20Departmental,Montagu%20of%20Beaulieu%2C%20Michael%20Pitt%2D">UK Wolfenden Committee report of 1957</a>, which recommended decriminalisation. The concept of “gay liberation” spread from activism in Sydney with the formation of CAMP Inc group in 1970, and at the University of Melbourne in 1971, into the wider public domain. </p>
<p>Sydney’s notorious street protest, the first Sydney Gay Mardi Gras (later Gay and Lesbian), took <a href="https://www.mardigras.org.au/history">place in 1978</a>. The first march was notorious for the arrests and the violence directed at the participants at the old Darlinghurst Police Station (now closed) and created a catalyst for further activism. Many more bars, clubs and community organisations opened and provided relatively safe spaces for LGBTQI to gather.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-on-the-sydney-mardi-gras-march-of-1978-54337">Friday essay: on the Sydney Mardi Gras march of 1978</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In recent decades we have witnessed a massive shift from situational, private and criminalised sexualities to open, liberationist and perhaps also commodified ones. </p>
<p>But there are gays and lesbians everywhere if you look carefully in the past, even if not all were as striking or spectacular as the ones outlined here.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155964/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter McNeil consults for Alphawood Exhibitions LLC in the Unites States of America. </span></em></p>From the “goo goo” boys mocked for their love of theatre to cross-dressing troops and “trouser women”, Australia has a rich queer history.Peter McNeil, Distinguished Professor of Design History, UTS, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1533762021-01-25T13:30:41Z2021-01-25T13:30:41ZStrange costumes of Capitol rioters echo the early days of the Ku Klux Klan - before the white sheets<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380221/original/file-20210122-13-1bfdan7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C20%2C4537%2C2984&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fringe groups have long understood that capturing the public's attention is the best way to spread their views.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/piece-of-graffiti-art-depicting-the-washington-capitol-news-photo/1295805725?adppopup=true">Karwai Tang/WireImage via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After the riots at the Capitol, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/capitol-rioter-horned-hat-gloats-feds-work-identify-suspects-n1253392">images</a> of Jacob Chansley, who’s been dubbed the “QAnon Shaman,” were <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/us/insurrection-capitol-extremist-groups-invs/index.html">splashed across news</a> outlets.</p>
<p>Chansley’s outlandish costume – consisting of American flag-themed face paint, a hat made of bison horns and coyote skins, a shirtless, tattooed torso and brown pants – was met with fascination and ridicule. </p>
<p>Given the outrageous nature of his garb, it might be easy to dismiss Chansley and the others wearing costumes or uniforms at the Capitol as silly or unhinged outliers. </p>
<p>However, after spending the last decade <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vvv4XfkAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">studying the rhetoric</a> of organized racist groups in the United States, I know how outfits that look harmless and eccentric can actually have an insidious effect. In fact, costumes and uniforms have played a central role in the appeal of extremist groups throughout the history of the country.</p>
<h2>The triumph of the spectacle</h2>
<p>For many extremist groups, a primary goal is to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2012.01415.x">spread their group’s ideology</a> to the mainstream public. In order to accomplish this, groups need to gain as much widespread recognition as they can. </p>
<p>Costumes and uniforms are a form of spectacle that attract attention.</p>
<p>While most people recognize the infamous hood and white robes of the 1920s Klan, early Klan costumes were homemade, individualized and much more bizarre. </p>
<p>In the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Fiery_Cross.html?id=6O_XYBMhNYAC">imagination was encouraged</a>” in the creation of costumes by members, who competed to create the most “outrageous outfit.” </p>
<p>Historian Elaine Parsons notes that early Klan costumes <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Ku_Klux/Gl60CAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=the+birth+of+the+klan+during+reconstruction&printsec=frontcover">were composed of</a> animal skins, horns, conical hats and gowns featuring a range of colors and patterns. Modeled after garb from carnivals and Mardi Gras traditions, the spectacle and performance of early Klan costumes helped to spur the <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/3659969">swift growth of the group</a>, which an 1884 history of the Klan described as “<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31819">a wave of excitement, spreading by contagions</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An 1871 engraving depicts a group of Klansmen surrounding a man on his knees with a rope around his neck." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380219/original/file-20210122-19-19dy2i3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380219/original/file-20210122-19-19dy2i3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380219/original/file-20210122-19-19dy2i3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380219/original/file-20210122-19-19dy2i3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380219/original/file-20210122-19-19dy2i3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380219/original/file-20210122-19-19dy2i3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380219/original/file-20210122-19-19dy2i3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Early Ku Klux Klan outfits had a carnival-like quality to them.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/political-cartoon-in-which-ku-klux-klansmen-threaten-to-news-photo/640486525?adppopup=true">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And it is no coincidence that the revival of the Klan in the 1920s <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/08/383279630/100-years-later-whats-the-legacy-of-birth-of-a-nation">was in part popularized</a> by the costumed Klansmen portrayed in the blockbuster film “Birth of a Nation.” </p>
<p>Like the early Ku Klux Klan, the <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/10/27/what-you-need-know-about-qanon">viral spread of the QAnon conspiracy theory</a> has been driven through spectacle. Chansley admitted as much. He has commented that his costume <a href="https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2021/01/06/arizona-qanon-supporter-jake-angeli-joins-storming-u-s-capitol/6568513002/">gets people’s attention</a>, which then gives him the opportunity to spread the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-is-qanon.html">tenets of the conspiracy theory</a>: that the world’s governments and banks are run by secret rings of Satan-worshiping pedophiles that manage child sex-trafficking organizations. </p>
<p>Other members of the movement are keenly aware of how their clothing can work to influence others. </p>
<p>Doug Jensen, the man seen in <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/10/politics/doug-jensen-capitol-hill-police-officer/index.html">a viral video</a> at the head of a mob chasing a police officer through the Capitol building, <a href="https://cbs2iowa.com/news/local/iowa-man-charged-in-capitol-riot-says-he-chased-officer-so-qanon-would-get-the-credit">said in an interview</a> that he purposefully positioned himself leading the charge wearing a “Q” shirt so that “Q” could “get the credit.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Jensen in a black hat and black t-shirt leads a mob of riotors." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380224/original/file-20210122-13-1drg3py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380224/original/file-20210122-13-1drg3py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380224/original/file-20210122-13-1drg3py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380224/original/file-20210122-13-1drg3py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380224/original/file-20210122-13-1drg3py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380224/original/file-20210122-13-1drg3py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380224/original/file-20210122-13-1drg3py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Douglas Jensen confronts police in the U.S. Capitol wearing a ‘Q’ shirt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/PicturesoftheWeekPhotoGallery-NorthAmerica/5213ab83f87f407ca74c1c84500ad43b/photo?Query=capitol%20AND%20breach&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=1239&currentItemNo=95">Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Costumes and community</h2>
<p>Costumes and uniforms in extremist movements serve a second purpose: fostering community among members. </p>
<p>While Klan costumes became more homogeneous in the early 20th century, the white hood and robes did more than conceal the wearer’s identity. They also created a sense of “<a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631493690">magnetism and prestige</a>” through group secrecy. One ritual of membership involved other members lifting their masks after new recruits joined.</p>
<p>In the era of the internet, costumes and uniforms help groups construct community in a different way. </p>
<p>Most organized extremist groups in the United States primarily communicate in anonymous online spaces, and members are often separated geographically. </p>
<p>For these reasons, costumes, uniforms and symbols on clothing can act as physical indicators of group unity. This can work to <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2021/01/decoding-hate-symbols-seen-at-capitol-insurrection/">bring divergent groups together</a> – such as via a MAGA hat – or to denote a belief in a specific ideology, like patches with the QAnon motto “WWG1WGA,” an abbreviation for “Where We Go One, We Go All.”</p>
<p>To be sure, there are ways in which costumes and uniforms do more than simply operate as identifiers. </p>
<p>Hitler’s Nazi party believed that mass gatherings gave attendees a “<a href="https://search.proquest.com/docview/1291660995?fromopenview=true&pq-origsite=gscholar">sense of being protectively surrounded by a movement</a>,” with the uniformed guard creating “a tendency to place the center of authority in the Nazi party.” In other words, because people often associate uniforms with legitimacy or power, the use of uniforms can help extremist groups persuade people that they should be trusted. </p>
<h2>A higher cause</h2>
<p>With its costumes, the Reconstruction-era Klan liked to perpetuate the legend that its members were <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Fiery_Cross/6O_XYBMhNYAC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=the+fiery+cross&printsec=frontcover">the ghosts of Confederate soldiers</a>. However, the Klan of the 1920s drew heavily upon religion in framing its mission as a holy cause. </p>
<p>One of the most violent Mississippi chapters of the Ku Klux Klan believed their members were chosen by God to conduct a <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvs32rk6">holy war</a> against the civil rights movement. Psychologist Wyn Craig Wade has noted how the “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Fiery_Cross.html?id=6O_XYBMhNYAC">act of donning the costume was often recounted as ‘a holy experience’</a>” by members of the Ku Klux Klan.</p>
<p>It should be no surprise, then, that today’s racist and extremist groups have also used this tactic. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22d6tRXxVeg">In describing the meaning of his costume</a>, Chansley notes QAnon is engaged in a “war of a spiritual nature” and that his costume represents his status as a “light occultic force of the side of God” necessary to defeat an unseen, omnipotent force of evil. Some contemporary neo-Nazi and racist groups incorporate <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/world/europe/vikings-sweden-paganism-neonazis.html">Norse symbolism and mythology</a>, while others, following the Klan, use Christianity to frame their racist ideology as righteous or divine.</p>
<p>Although costumes cannot tell us the entire story of a group or movement, they can provide a window into understanding how the groups and movements form and how their ideologies are spread. </p>
<p>While they never need to be entertained, neither should they be ignored.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153376/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kenneth Ladenburg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For many extremist groups, a primary goal is to spread their ideology. Costumes and uniforms – even ridiculous ones – are a form of spectacle that can garner attention and interest.Kenneth Ladenburg, Instructor of English, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1115602019-03-05T11:36:49Z2019-03-05T11:36:49ZLe mariage burlesque: Carnival cross-dressing in the French Caribbean<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261880/original/file-20190304-110137-1jefp1a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C56%2C2516%2C1650&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The mariage burlesque of the Plastic System Band carnival group in Lamentin,
Martinique, 2012.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Charlotte Hammond</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Anyone in the French Caribbean islands of Martinique or Guadeloupe during the carnival festivities will witness a unique and wonderfully subversive tradition: <em>le mariage burlesque</em>.</p>
<p>As a legacy of the refusal to assimilate into a French model of marriage and family, <em>le mariage burlesque</em> parodies the idealised fiction of a heterosexual nuclear family unit. Each year on lundi gras (the first Monday of the carnival) men and women perform each other’s conjugal role by cross-dressing as their gendered other. So the man masquerades as the (often pregnant) wife and – to a lesser extent – the woman dresses and performs as the husband. The happy couple is followed by a wedding procession and are “married” by a registrar and a priest along the carnival route.</p>
<p>The late Martinican theorist <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KlJ7AAAAMAAJ&q=glissant+discours+antillais&dq=glissant+discours+antillais&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjfqIaToK_gAhXS8OAKHYXlBeoQ6AEIKDAA">Édouard Glissant</a> described the tradition as a critique of the family structure imposed by the colonising French republic. He wrote: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is an occasion in Martinique in which men and women both agree to give a performance of their relationship. This is the tradition of the burlesque marriage during carnival, a critique of family structure. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In recent years there have been <a href="https://theconversation.com/liberte-egalite-fraternite-france-and-the-gay-marriage-debate-14852">debates</a> on the traditional role of family in France. A universalist notion prevails – the model of family promoted by the French Republic is made up of a heterosexual couple who live together, whether married or not, with children born of (or adopted by) the two parents. </p>
<p>Controversy around alternative forms of conjugal union, including legislation to enable <a href="https://www.liberation.fr/debats/2018/04/23/le-mariage-pour-tous-et-ses-ennemis_1645281">same-sex marriage</a>, gay adoption and <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/droitcultures/3566">surrogacy</a>, have prompted fierce debates on the continued relevance of this traditional model. And, given that recent changes in legislation apply to France’s overseas territories, these debates have questioned the continued relevance of the French values of marriage and family in Guadeloupe and Martinique.</p>
<h2>Family after slavery</h2>
<p>French colonial discourse <a href="https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=http://scholar.google.co.uk/&httpsredir=1&article=3330&context=cq">related marriage to “civilisation”</a>. According to this racist logic, the African – who was considered subordinate – was unsuited to marriage. In the French Caribbean, unions between enslaved men and women of the same plantation were encouraged as they would produce another generation of slaves for the profit of the owner. Marriage between slaves (with the permission of their master) <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zKXdXLKyIR4C&pg=PA194&dq=soeurs+de+solitude&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjW7brhzKfgAhW7VRUIHXeLAk0Q6AEINzAC#v=onepage&q=soeurs%20de%20solitude&f=false">became legal from 1664</a> – but, in reality, the plantation system constrained the development of strong family units which would often be broken up when slaves were sold on to other plantations. This tended to disrupt the pure parent-child line of descendance or “filiation” promoted by the French state.</p>
<p>Following the abolition of slavery in 1848, French policies of assimilation (into <em>la grande famille nationale</em>) reinforced a desire for official marriage among its “daughters”, or <em>les filles</em>, as Guadeloupe and Martinique were disparagingly known. The extended family, in which grandparents, aunts, nannies and godparents are as likely to raise children as mothers, therefore came to signify not only resistance to a dominant social order of family imposed by slave owners, but also its imposition on French Caribbean territories during the aftermath of slavery. </p>
<p>In 1946, the islands voted to become overseas <em>départements</em>, granting them a distinct political status in relation to mainland France that promised full integration into the French Republic. However, this status has resulted in many <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=HdtoCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=yarimar+bonilla&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj_4fbpwangAhWqQRUIHVkrDH0Q6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=yarimar%20bonilla&f=false">social and economic disparities</a> including severe unemployment, high cost of living and persistent racial discrimination.</p>
<p>As researchers in the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YPDHXd0fOroC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Interrogating+Caribbean+Masculinities:&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjAi4_71afgAhUxtXEKHVpYAJYQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=Interrogating%20Caribbean%20Masculinities%3A&f=false">social sciences have shown</a>, family in this context – as the product of both African kinship traditions and its restructure during slavery – did not conform neatly to the model of family promoted by the French Republic.</p>
<p>Traditionally, <em>le mariage burlesque</em> was a ritual (with both European and African roots) to promote the birth of new unions during the festival period in the run up to Lent. Men would often adopt women’s roles during carnival through male-to-female cross-dressing. Today some <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UFMpAAAAYAAJ&q=david+ab+murray+opacity&dq=david+ab+murray+opacity&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjq5bzn2KfgAhWZSxUIHc4aCO4Q6AEIKDAA">gender studies scholars</a> have argued that cross-dressing in the context of Caribbean carnivals merely reaffirms gender difference and masculine domination. </p>
<p>Yet in this context, where Eurocentric understandings of sexuality and gender are so often cut and pasted without attention to local histories and traditions, <em>le mariage burlesque</em> represents the contradiction imposed on French Caribbean citizens who continue to uphold a European (and heterosexual) model of marriage and family as the norm despite the co-existence of alternative family structures. </p>
<p>The “lesser” presence of women during <em>le mariage burlesque</em> has been addressed directly in the work of Martinique-based artists Annabel Guérédrat and Henri Tauliaut. In 2016 Guérédrat and Tauliaut performed the Marcel Duchamp-inspired <em>La Mariée mise à nu par son célibataire même</em> (The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelor) during the <em>mariage burlesque</em> parade of Fort-de-France, Martinique.</p>
<p>Guérédrat, dressed as a dominatrix bride in white and cradling a black dildo, sheds an oversized wedding veil and leads Tauliaut, in full gimp mask and black gown, along the carnival route. This commanding female performance subverts normative gender relations in a Martinican society which remains largely macho and a carnival space where male-authored representations of women dominate.</p>
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<p>The tableaux concludes with the couple departing on a boat against a tropical Caribbean landscape in the background. This parody of tourist brochure clichés that depict the Caribbean as a honeymoon paradise destination evokes the inequities of a global tourism industry that often replicates an uneven master/slave dynamic. </p>
<p>Each year carnival in Guadeloupe and Martinique attracts tourists from France and the rest of the world who come to enjoy this vibrant theatre of the street. For both visitors and locals the <em>mariage burlesque</em> masquerade ensures a collective memory of the cultural and political transvestism of the overseas departments, dressed up to resemble France and its universalist values. It is an embodied reminder of the enduring one-sided marriage between the islands and France.</p>
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<header>Charlotte Hammond is the author of:</header>
<p><a href="https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/id/43064/">Entangled Otherness: Cross-gender Fabrications in the Francophone Caribbean</a></p>
<footer>Liverpool University Press provides funding as a content partner of The Conversation UK</footer>
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</section>
</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111560/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charlotte Hammond received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to carry out this research. </span></em></p>The annual Carnival rituals subvert traditional French notions of family and sexuality.Charlotte Hammond, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, School of Modern Languages, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1016612018-08-30T18:54:14Z2018-08-30T18:54:14ZMore than just lip service: done right, awareness-raising days can pack a punch<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233034/original/file-20180822-149487-u5u08i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The first Sydney Mardi Gras in 1978 was a defining moment in the history of LGBTIQ rights in Australia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Through the year there are now countless awareness-raising days for a range of causes. Whether you’re sending your child to school with a gold coin for <a href="https://rednoseday.com.au/">Red Nose Day</a> or wearing a pink ribbon on your lapel to work for <a href="https://canceraustralia.gov.au/healthy-living/campaigns-events/breast-cancer-awareness-month">Breast Cancer Awareness Month</a>, these initiatives are now common in Australian daily life. But what’s the purpose of these events and do they actually work? </p>
<p>In a time of social media “<a href="https://theconversation.com/slacktivism-that-works-small-changes-matter-69271">slacktivism</a>” from behind computer screens, there has been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/may/22/why-awareness-raising-campaigns-backfire">much criticism</a> of the practical ability of awareness-raising campaigns to bring about real social change beyond superficial <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/health/breast-cancer-awareness-pink.html">feel-good politics</a>. </p>
<p>There’s no hard data to suggest days such as <a href="http://wearitpurple.org/">Wear It Purple Day</a> this week actually have a long-term effect. But there is some evidence similar events provide important visibility for complex social issues and can create social change. </p>
<h2>Wear It Purple</h2>
<p>Wear It Purple Day is celebrated on the last Friday in August each year. It’s an annual event to raise awareness about same-sex attracted and gender diverse young people’s experiences of bullying and harassment, particularly at school. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/making-schools-safer-and-more-welcoming-for-lgbtqi-students-39858">Making schools safer and more welcoming for LGBTQI students</a>
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<p>Wear It Purple was founded in 2010 in response to high rates of young people taking their lives as a result of homophobic bullying. This event is now an international movement. Many Australian workplaces and schools will host bake sales and encourage staff and students to wear purple clothes to support their lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) peers. </p>
<p>The Queensland Police Service have even issued officers and staff with <a href="https://www.qnews.com.au/queensland-police-officers-to-lace-up-for-wear-it-purple-day-2018/">purple bootlaces</a> to wear on the day. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1026700602758164480"}"></div></p>
<p>But while these celebrations of diversity and inclusion send an important message, it’s unlikely they’ll have any real effect if they don’t give people practical things they can do to help the cause, or if they don’t engage the broader community in a meaningful way.</p>
<h2>R U OK? Day</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.ruok.org.au/">R U OK?</a> Day, held annually in September, is dedicated to reminding people to ask others “are you OK?”, in terms of their mental health. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623730.2016.1209423">Researchers from across Australia</a> used a population survey to find out what impact this event was having in the community. They found people who were aware of R U OK? Day were more willing to talk with others about their troubles and to hear the troubles of others. </p>
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<p>Melbourne-based researchers reviewed suicide prevention media campaigns more broadly and found they create positive impacts in the community, including <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29190128">boosting help-seeking behaviours</a> and improvements in attitudes about suicide. </p>
<h2>White Ribbon Day</h2>
<p>White Ribbon Day has become a global movement to end violence against women. Its <a href="https://www.whiteribbon.org.au/about/our-history/">history in Australia</a> is one example of how an awareness-raising day can be the platform for building a broader movement. Starting as an annual White Ribbon Day on November 25, the organisation now delivers education programs and bystander initiatives. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/Bb3LmTPjrUe/?hl=en\u0026taken-by=whiteribbonaust","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>Although it continues to attract <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com.ezproxy.utas.edu.au/doi/10.1177/0004865817722187">critics</a>, White Ribbon Day demonstrates the potential for one-off awareness-raising days to have a broader social impact when expanded into an ongoing movement, organisation, or initiative.</p>
<h2>Mardi Gras</h2>
<p>This year marked the 40th anniversary of the first <a href="http://www.mardigras.org.au/history">Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras</a> march in Sydney. It began in 1978 as a protest against police brutality of gay men. The 1978 Sydney Mardi Gras became a defining moment in the history of LGBTIQ rights in Australia and remains symbolic for the LGBTIQ community. The Sydney Mardi Gras marches put <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616680902827092">Sydney on the map</a> as an <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/glq/article/8/1-2/81/69408/MARDI-GRAS-TOURISM-AND-THE-CONSTRUCTION-OF-SYDNEY">international gay and lesbian city</a>. </p>
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<p>A <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/089124101030004003">study</a> found Pride marches such as Mardi Gras are important for raising awareness of social injustice for event participants. They also enhance participants’ sense of identity in everyday life through collective experiences of resistance and the shared identity. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-histories-of-mardi-gras-and-gay-tourism-in-australia-are-intertwined-92733">How the histories of Mardi Gras and gay tourism in Australia are intertwined</a>
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<h2>More than just lip service</h2>
<p>Taken together, these examples show how raising awareness is only the first step in creating social change. The impact of awareness-raising days is in their power to start conversations about important issues and provide visibility to causes that might otherwise be absent in the public sphere. </p>
<p>While there is a real danger of equity and diversity days reducing the issue to a local or individual concern, there’s also the potential for such events to create dramatic change in policy if communities get behind the cause. </p>
<p>Practical strategies that help give awareness-raising days momentum include having a clear call for action, such as R U OK? Day, which aims to promote conversation between individuals and raise awareness of mental health. Or by leveraging the passionate people invested in the cause, similar to Mardi Gras. Or to work strategically with key stakeholders to build longer term awareness-raising programs into organisations, such is the work of White Ribbon.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101661/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ruby Grant receives funding from the University of Tasmania's Institute for the Study of Social Change.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kim Beasy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Research shows awareness-raising days can have long-term impact if they have a clear call to action, leverage the passion of those involved, or target policy-makers.Kim Beasy, Lecturer in Curriculum and Pedagogy (Equity and Diversity), University of TasmaniaRuby Grant, PhD Candidate in Sociology, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/927332018-03-02T02:12:22Z2018-03-02T02:12:22ZHow the histories of Mardi Gras and gay tourism in Australia are intertwined<p>Today, Mardi Gras is framed, at least in part, within a global gay and lesbian tourism industry that craves a bigger and better parade each year. It’s unlikely that any of the heroic individuals caught up in <a href="http://www.mardigras.org.au/history">the brutal riot on the night of 24 June, 1978</a> would have had much of an inkling that Mardi Gras would become one of the world’s most spectacular and enduring gay pride parades.</p>
<p>Nor would they have likely imagined that the parade and the festival would attract thousands of tourists from across Australia and the world making it one of the most attended annually occurring special events in the country.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/essays-on-air-on-the-sydney-mardi-gras-march-of-1978-91905">Essays On Air: On the Sydney Mardi Gras march of 1978</a>
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<p>In the late 1970s gays and lesbians were a marginalised and oppressed community struggling for law reform and social acceptance. We were still a decade or so away from becoming <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=89595&page=1">a recognisable market segment</a> to be strategically targeted by companies selling top-shelf alcohol, boutique holidays and hair remover. </p>
<p>Yet within a little more than a decade following the 1978 riot, the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival and Parade nourished the emergence of a budding gay and lesbian tourism industry, paralleling the emergence of the “gay consumer”. Mardi Gras has played a crucial role in the emergence of Australia, and, in particular, Sydney, as an internationally recognised <a href="http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:1420">gay and lesbian tourist destination</a>. This led to the successful bid, and hosting, of the International Gay Games in 2002. </p>
<h2>How the festival inspired others</h2>
<p>In 1999, Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Ltd, which was the entity organising the festival at the time, launched its own gay and lesbian travel agency - Mardi Gras Travel. This development, although short lived, nevertheless strengthened the sometimes contradictory connection between Mardi Gras as a grassroots community festival and the tourism industry with its overtly commercial preoccupations. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.iglta.org/unwto-report">United Nations World Tourism Organisation report on LGBT tourism</a> describes the market as robust and resilient, comprising relatively cashed up consumers with deep pockets and a strong desire to travel. And who like to party.</p>
<p><a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/10584161?selectedversion=NBD10334771">A study from the early 1990s</a> estimated the economic impact of Mardi Gras to Sydney to be around A$30 million. Acknowledging its significant social, cultural and economic impact, the City of Sydney recognised Mardi Gras as a hallmark event in the early 1990s. </p>
<p>These hallmark events and festivals are <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616680902827092">powerful drivers for LGBT tourism</a>. LGBT destinations are linked globally by an extensive calendar that includes more than 1,000 pride events, film festivals, circuit-parties, International Gay Games, and the <a href="https://www.gaydays.com/">Gay Day phenomenon</a>. This is where gays, lesbians and their friends descend on theme parks, the largest being GayDayS Orlando which is now a seven day “vacation experience” attracting <a href="https://www.gaydays.com/guide-to-gay-days">about 180,000 participants</a>. </p>
<p>Festivals and events can also be significant tools in regional economic and community development. If intelligently managed, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517798800162">festivals attract substantial</a> numbers of LGBT tourists to regional and rural destinations, injecting additional income into the local economies. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sustainable-shopping-take-the-litter-out-of-glitter-91063">Sustainable shopping: take the 'litter' out of glitter</a>
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<p>The success of Mardi Gras as a distinctly Australian LGBT festival has spawned similar, if smaller festivals, in most of Australia’s capital cities and a range of regional areas as well. </p>
<p>LGBT festivals of varying scales now take place in <a href="http://www.chilloutfestival.com.au/">Daylesford</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/cairnstropicalpride/">Cairns</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AliceSpringsPrideCarnivale">Alice Springs</a>, <a href="https://pokolbinpride.com.au/">Hunter Valley</a>, and <a href="https://tropicalfruits.org.au/nye/whats-on">Lismore</a>. The newest of these is the <a href="https://www.bhfestival.com">Broken Heel Festival</a>, a homage to the film, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, hosted in Broken Hill. In fact, it seems almost all tourist accommodation <a href="https://www.wotif.com/Hotel-Search?#&destination=Broken%20Hill%2C%20NSW%2C%20Australia%20(BHQ)&startDate=07/09/2018&endDate=09/09/2018&regionId=5326914&latLong=-31.999342,141.471291&adults=2,2,2">has already sold out</a> there for early September, when the Heel festival occurs. </p>
<p>The growth of peer-to-peer accommodation platforms, such as Airbnb, and the gay men’s equivalent, <a href="https://www.misterbandb.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIlK7t8qjM2QIVwhWPCh1abQd6EAAYASAAEgKexvD_BwE">misterb&b</a>, diversify accommodation options, further increasing the appeal of these regional places to LGBT travellers. </p>
<p>For the past 40 years, the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade has meandered its glittering way up Oxford Street, Sydney, captivating the thousands of onlookers lining the route. Simultaneously, defiant and celebratory, the parade and the festival that has grown up around it have been pivotal in shaping and reshaping relationships between the LGBTQI community and the broader Australian community.</p>
<p>The demonstration of Mardi Gras, and of LGBT tourism, to contribute significantly to the nation’s economy I think has been a useful strategy to advance social and political “acceptance” of the LGBT community. But Mardi Gras contributes far beyond economic benefit and the social, cultural and political impacts have been profoundly important in the construction of LGBT identities in Australia.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92733/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin Markwell received funding from the Australian Research Council in 2004-7 for an ARC Discovery Project DPO 342731 titled 'Rethinking social intolerance: lessons from the suspension of homophobia at public gay and lesbian events.' </span></em></p>If intelligently managed, festivals attract substantial numbers of LGBT tourists to regional and rural destinations, injecting additional income into the local economies.Kevin Markwell, Professor in Tourism, Southern Cross UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/919052018-02-22T06:39:18Z2018-02-22T06:39:18ZEssays On Air: On the Sydney Mardi Gras march of 1978<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206486/original/file-20180215-124899-1db4bz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Marchers at the 1978 Mardi Gras parade. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sally Colechin/The Pride History Group</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On a cold Saturday night in Sydney on June 24, 1978, a number of gay men, lesbians and transgender people marched into the pages of Australian social history. I was one of them.</p>
<p>On today’s episode of <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/essays-on-air-48405">Essays On Air</a>, the audio version of The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/friday-essay-22955">Friday essay</a> series, Conversation editor Lucinda Beaman is reading <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-on-the-sydney-mardi-gras-march-of-1978-54337">my essay on the Sydney Mardi Gras march of 1978.</a></p>
<p>On the eve of the 40th anniversary of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, it’s worth revisiting the events of that night and reflecting on the remarkable lesson that, for oppressed minorities, there comes a time when enough is enough. </p>
<p>Much has been achieved, but it would be a major mistake to relax and assume that history is progressively improving.</p>
<p>Join us as we read to you here at Essays On Air, a podcast from The Conversation.</p>
<p>Find us and subscribe in <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/essays-on-air/id1333743838?mt=2">Apple Podcasts</a>, in <a href="https://play.pocketcasts.com/">Pocket Casts</a> or wherever you get your podcasts.</p>
<p><em>Today’s episode was edited by Sybilla Gross.</em></p>
<h2>Additional audio</h2>
<p>Snow by <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/David_Szesztay/Cinematic/Snow">David Szesztay</a></p>
<p>Tom Robinson, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxaSGdVUdV4">Glad to be gay</a>.</p>
<p>Mavis Staples, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcDpmzQh3YU">We shall not be moved</a></p>
<p>Podington Bear, Memory Wind, from <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Podington_Bear/Fathomless_-_Ambient/Memory_Wind">Free Music Archive</a></p>
<p>David Szesztay, Flash, from <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/David_Szesztay/">Free Music Archive</a></p>
<p>David Szesztay, Looking Back, from <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/David_Szesztay/20170730112627760/Looking_Back">Free Music Archive</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91905/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Gillespie is affiliated with The '78ers</span></em></p>On a cold Saturday night in Sydney on June 24, 1978, a number of gay men, lesbians and transgender people marched into the pages of Australian social history. I was one of them.Mark Gillespie, English for Academic Purposes Specialist, Anthropologist, Centre for English Teaching, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/910632018-02-01T17:57:42Z2018-02-01T17:57:42ZSustainable shopping: take the ‘litter’ out of glitter<p><em>Shopping can be confusing at the best of times, and trying to find environmentally friendly options makes it even more difficult. Welcome to our <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/sustainable-shopping-38407">Sustainable Shopping</a> series, in which we ask experts to provide easy eco-friendly guides to purchases big and small. Send us your suggestions for future articles <a href="mailto:michael.hopkin@theconversation.edu.au">here</a>.</em></p>
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<p>Scientists often get a bad rap as party poopers. As a case in point, my colleagues and I have provided data on the impacts of balloon releases on marine wildlife.</p>
<p>So when glitter – a highly visible and easily obtained microplastic – <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2018/jan/21/losing-its-sparkle-the-dark-side-of-glitter">comes under the microscope</a>, you might be tempted to groan. The good news is that we’re not out to ruin the fun: with Mardi Gras around the corner (bringing a ubiquity of sparkling Instagrams), here’s how to find ecologically friendly glitter.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mixing-glitter-and-protest-to-support-lgbtq-rights-74026">Mixing glitter and protest to support LGBTQ rights</a>
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<h2>All glitter goes to the ocean</h2>
<p>When something fun or common is revealed to be destructive it should be a point of pride in our society that we adjust, adapt and move on to safer alternatives. </p>
<p>It therefore makes sense to investigate what data exist for glitter, and to consider whether it’s time for a change in attitude. So, what is glitter? </p>
<p>Glitter is typically made from polyethylene, the same plastic found in plastic bags and a host of other products. Despite glitter’s popularity in everything from cosmetics and toothpaste to crafts and clothes, remarkably little is known about the distribution or impacts of glitter on our environment. As a scientist, that worries me. Glitter is incorporated into consumer products without any real knowledge of its safety. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ten-stealth-microplastics-to-avoid-if-you-want-to-save-the-oceans-90063">Ten 'stealth microplastics' to avoid if you want to save the oceans</a>
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<p>In contrast, there are dozens of scientific papers on micro-bead scrubbers (tiny plastic beads), which originate from many of the same products (such as cosmetics and toothpaste). </p>
<p>Research on micro-beads suggests that around <a href="http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.5b03909">8 trillion beads</a> are released into aquatic habitats every day in the United States alone. </p>
<p>Data for glitter are not available, but given its widespread use the situation is likely to be similarly alarming. It’s far too small for waste treatment facilities to capture, so glitter goes straight into your local river and out into the ocean. Because glitter particles are typically 1 millimetre in size or smaller, they can be ingested by a range of creatures, <a href="http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.2307/1538129">including mussels</a>. </p>
<p>Again, data on micro-beads can tell us why we should be worried about this: a <a href="http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5b06280">recent study from Australia</a> showed that toxic chemicals associated with micro-beads can “leach” into the tissues of marine creatures, contaminating their bodies. If mussels, fish and other animals are ingesting glitter and micro-beads, these contaminants likely also <a href="http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5b01090">pose a risk to humans</a> that consume them.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/eight-million-tonnes-of-plastic-are-going-into-the-ocean-each-year-37521">Eight million tonnes of plastic are going into the ocean each year</a>
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<p>Thankfully, science is here to help. A range of compostable, vegan, 100% plastic-free “bio-glitters” have been created and are readily available online. So, at your next event, you can celebrate in glorious, sparkly style while also educating passers-by about ocean conservation. (I assure you, this is very popular; I do it all the time and I’m the life of the party.)</p>
<h2>What to look for</h2>
<p>Mica, a naturally occurring sparkling mineral, is often offered as a non-plastic alternative to glitter. However, some brands, such as Lush, are now using “<a href="https://au.lush.com/article/all-glitters-0">synthetic mica</a>” (made in a lab) because mica mining has been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/may/08/india-to-legalise-mica-mining-bid-tackle-endemic-child-labour-guardian-investigations">associated with child labour</a>, especially in India. </p>
<p>Some plastics labelled “bio-degradable” will only break down in <a href="https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/7468/-Biodegradable_Plastics_and_Marine_Litter_Misconceptions,_concerns_and_impacts_on_marine_environments-2015BiodegradablePlasticsAndMarineLitter.pdf.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y">industrial composting units</a>, at temperatures over 50°C. This is very unlikely to happen in the ocean, so look for terms like “compostable” and “organic” instead. (For more information on the difference between bio-degradable, compostable and everything in between, this <a href="https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/7468/-Biodegradable_Plastics_and_Marine_Litter_Misconceptions,_concerns_and_impacts_on_marine_environments-2015BiodegradablePlasticsAndMarineLitter.pdf.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y">United Nations report</a> is very comprehensive – just read the summary if you’re in a hurry).</p>
<p>Fortunately, eco-friendly glitter is becoming much easier to find around the world, and more suppliers are turning to cellulose and other plant-derived bases for their product. <a href="https://wildglitter.com/pages/about">Wild Glitter</a>’s founder, like many in the industry, cites “watching a weekend’s worth of plastic glitter wash down the plughole after a festival” as the impetus to sell an “ethical, eco-friendly, cruelty-free way to sparkle”.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ecoglitterfun.com/">Eco Glitter Fun</a> is a member of the Plastics Ocean Foundation, a global non-profit; <a href="https://glotatts.com/pages/story">Glo Tatts</a> makes beautiful temporary glitter tattoos; and, for an Australian twist, <a href="http://www.threemamas.com.au/shop/eco-glitter">Eco Glitter</a> make their product from Eucalyptus cellulose.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/film-review-a-plastic-ocean-shows-us-a-world-awash-with-rubbish-74534">Film review: A Plastic Ocean shows us a world awash with rubbish</a>
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<p>Bio-glitter can be incorporated into any product. Tasmanian soap maker <a href="https://veronicafoaleessentials.com.au/">Veronica Foale</a> switched to bio-glitter last year and hasn’t looked back – if a small business in a rural area can do it, you can too!</p>
<p>This is the key to success in the battle against litter: not all changes are difficult and affordable alternatives do exist. Once you’ve mastered bio-glitter, embrace the next challenge – a <a href="https://www.floraandfauna.com.au/bamboo-toothbrushes/">bamboo toothbrush</a> perhaps, or reusable <a href="http://www.twohandsproject.org/store/#!/Onya-Weigh-5-Reusable-Produce-Bags/p/23812482/category=8311209">Onya produce bags</a>? Never stop learning. Go forth and sparkle responsibly.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91063/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Lavers (Métis Nation ᓲᐊᐧᐦᑫᔨᐤ) does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Every festival in Australia sends countless bits of glitter down the drain (and into the ocean). But you can still shine on – in bio-glitter.Jennifer Lavers (Métis Nation ᓲᐊᐧᐦᑫᔨᐤ), Research Scientist, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/716572017-02-24T16:37:31Z2017-02-24T16:37:31ZThe destructive life of a Mardi Gras bead<p>Shiny, colorful bead necklaces, also known as “throws,” are now synonymous with Mardi Gras. </p>
<p>Even if you’ve never been to the Carnival celebrations, you probably know the typical scene that plays out on New Orleans’ Bourbon Street every year: Revelers line up along the parade route to collect beads tossed from floats. Many try to collect as many as possible, and some drunken revelers will even expose themselves in exchange for the plastic trinkets. </p>
<p>But the celebratory atmosphere couldn’t be more different from the grim factories in the Fujian province of China, where teenage girls work around the clock making and stringing together the green, purple and gold beads. </p>
<p>I’ve spent several years researching the circulation of these plastic beads, and their life doesn’t begin and end that one week in New Orleans. Beneath the sheen of the beads <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Beads-Bodies-and-Trash-Public-Sex-Global-Labor-and-the-Disposability/Redmon/p/book/9780415525404">is a story that’s far more complex</a> – one that takes place in the Middle East, China and the United States, and is symptomatic of a consumer culture built on waste, exploitation and toxic chemicals.</p>
<h2>‘The same thing over and over’</h2>
<p>The Mardi Gras bead originates in Middle Eastern oil fields. There, under the protection of military forces, companies mine the oil and petroleum, before transforming them into polystyrene and polyethelene – the main ingredients in all plastics. </p>
<p>The plastic is then shipped to China to be fashioned into necklaces – to factories where American companies are able to take advantage of inexpensive labor, lax workplace regulations and a lack of environmental oversight.</p>
<p>I traveled to several Mardi Gras bead factories in China to witness the working conditions firsthand. There, I met numerous teenagers, many of whom agreed to participate in the making of my documentary, “<a href="http://beadsbodiesandtrash.com/">Mardi Gras: Made in China</a>.”</p>
<p>Among them was 15-year-old Qui Bia. When I interviewed her, she sat next to a three-foot-high pile of beads, staring at a coworker who sat across from her.</p>
<p>I asked her what she was thinking about.</p>
<p>“Nothing – just how I can work faster than her to make more money,” she replied, pointing to the young woman across from her. “What is there to think about? I just do the same thing over and over again.”</p>
<p>I then asked her how many necklaces she was expected to make each day.</p>
<p>“The quota is 200, but I can only make close to 100. If I make a mistake, then the boss will fine me. It’s important to concentrate because I don’t want to get fined.”</p>
<p>At that point the manager assured me, “They work hard. Our rules are in place so they can make more money. Otherwise, they won’t work as fast.”</p>
<p>It seemed as if the bead workers were treated as mules, with the forces of the market their masters.</p>
<h2>Hidden dangers</h2>
<p>In America, the necklaces appear innocent enough, and Mardi Gras revelers seem to love them; in fact, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/15/nation/la-na-mardi-gras-beads-20120216">25 million pounds</a> get distributed each year. Yet they pose a danger to people and the environment.</p>
<p>In the 1970s, an environmental scientist named Dr. Howard Mielke was directly involved in the legal efforts to phase out lead in gasoline. Today, at Tulane University’s Department of Pharmacology, he researches the links between lead, the environment and skin absorption in New Orleans.</p>
<p>Howard mapped the levels of lead in various parts of the city, and discovered that the majority of lead in the soil <a href="http://dhh.louisiana.gov/assets/oph/Center-PHCH/Center-PH/genetic/LEAD/NewsandUpdates/MardigrassBookmarkLeadPoisoning.pdf">is located directly alongside the Mardi Gras parade routes</a>, where krewes (the revelers who ride on the floats) toss plastic beads into the crowds. </p>
<p>Howard’s concern is the collective impact of the beads thrown each carnival season, which translates to almost 4,000 pounds of lead hitting the streets.</p>
<p>“If children pick up the beads, they will become exposed to a fine dusting of lead,” Howard told me. “Beads obviously attract people, and they’re designed to be touched, coveted.” </p>
<p>And then there are the beads that don’t get taken home. By the time Mardi Gras is over, thousands of shiny necklaces litter the streets, and partiers <a href="http://nola.curbed.com/2017/1/19/14325568/nola-seeks-temporary-workers-mardi-gras-sanitation-trash-clean-up-2017">have collectively produced roughly 150 tons of waste</a> – a concoction of puke, toxins and trash.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ecocenter.org/healthy-stuff/article/news-ecolink-press-releases/holiday-and-mardi-gras-beads-found-contain-lead-and-hazardous">Independent research</a> on beads collected from New Orleans parades has found toxic levels of lead, bromine, arsenic, phthalate plasticizers, halogens, cadmium, chromium, mercury and chlorine on and inside the beads. It’s estimated that up to 920,000 pounds of mixed chlorinated and brominated flame retardants were in the beads.</p>
<h2>A thriving waste culture</h2>
<p>How did we get to the point where 25 million pounds of toxic beads get dumped on a city’s streets every year? Sure, Mardi Gras is a celebration ingrained in New Orleans’ culture. But plastic beads weren’t always a part of Mardi Gras; they were introduced only in the late 1970s. </p>
<p>From a sociological perspective, leisure, consumption and desire all interact to create a complex ecology of social behavior. During the 1960s and 1970s in the United States, self-expression <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Beads-Bodies-and-Trash-Public-Sex-Global-Labor-and-the-Disposability/Redmon/p/book/9780415525404">became the rage</a>, with more and more people using their bodies to experience or communicate pleasure. Revelers in New Orleans started flashing each other in return for Mardi Gras beads at the same time the free love movement became popular in the U.S.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157749/original/image-20170221-18627-1otnhq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157749/original/image-20170221-18627-1otnhq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157749/original/image-20170221-18627-1otnhq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157749/original/image-20170221-18627-1otnhq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157749/original/image-20170221-18627-1otnhq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157749/original/image-20170221-18627-1otnhq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157749/original/image-20170221-18627-1otnhq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157749/original/image-20170221-18627-1otnhq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The aftermath.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/neaththetwilightsky/234952280/">Jaime/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The culture of consumption and ethos of self-expression <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Beads-Bodies-and-Trash-Public-Sex-Global-Labor-and-the-Disposability/Redmon/p/book/9780415525404">merged perfectly with the production of cheap plastic in China</a>, which was used to manufacture disposable commodities. Americans could now instantly (and cheaply) express themselves, discard the objects and later replace them with new ones. </p>
<p>When looking at the entire story – from the Middle East, to China, to New Orleans – a new picture comes into focus: a cycle of environmental degradation, worker exploitation and irreparable health consequences. No one is spared; the child on the streets of New Orleans innocently sucking on his new necklace and young factory workers like Qui Bia are both exposed to the same neurotoxic chemicals.</p>
<p>How can this cycle be broken? Is there any way out? </p>
<p>In recent years, a company called <a href="http://www.zombeads.biz/">Zombeads</a> have created throws with organic, biodegradable ingredients – some of which are designed and manufactured locally in Louisiana. That’s one step in the right direction. </p>
<p>What about going a step further and rewarding the factories that make these beads with tax breaks and federal and state subsidies, which would give them incentives to sustain operations, hire more people, pay them fair living wages, all while limiting environmental degradation? A scenario like this could reduce the rates of cancers caused by styrene, significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions and help create local manufacturing jobs in Louisiana.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, as Dr. Mielke explained to me, many either are unaware or refuse to admit that there’s a problem that needs to be dealt with.</p>
<p>“It’s part of the waste culture we have where materials pass briefly through our lives and then are dumped some place,” he said. In other words: out of sight, out of mind.</p>
<p>So why do so many of us eagerly participate in waste culture without care or concern? Dr. Mielke sees a parallel in the fantasy told to the Chinese factory worker and the fantasy of the American consumer.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The people in China are told these beads are valuable and given to important Americans, that beads are given to royalty. And of course [this narrative] all evaporates when you realize, ‘Oh yes, there’s royalty in Mardi Gras parades, there’s kings and queens, but it’s made up and it’s fictitious.’ Yet we carry on with these crazy events that we know are harmful.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In other words, most people, it seems, would rather retreat into the power of myth and fantasy than confront the consequences of hard truth.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71657/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Redmon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Each Mardi Gras, 25 million pounds of beads hit the streets of New Orleans. One researcher went to the Chinese factories that make them – and spoke to the workers who believe the beads will be given to royalty.David Redmon, Lecturer in Criminology, University of KentLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/557472016-03-08T02:09:22Z2016-03-08T02:09:22ZQueer wars: the best place to start promoting gay rights is at home<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/114176/original/image-20160307-31260-satndr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Australia detains asylum seekers in a country that criminalises homosexuality.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dan Himbrechts</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Austrian singer Conchita Wurst headlined the Mardi Gras afterparty <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3478702/Mardi-Gras-Party-Sydney-s-Hordern-Pavilion.html">on Saturday night</a> it seemed as though all of Sydney was celebrating. Yet Wurst’s message of <a href="http://www.eurovision.tv/page/news?id=conchita_wurst_tolerance_and_respect">“respect and tolerance”</a> continues to be controversial.</p>
<p>Wurst won the <a href="http://www.eurovision.tv/page/history/year/participant-profile/?song=32263">2014 Eurovision Song Contest</a> in the wake of Russia’s <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com.au/how-russia-took-crimea-2015-3?r=US&IR=T">annexation of Crimea</a>. Her victory became a cultural flashpoint. While Russians booed her performance, crowds in Copenhagen jeered the Russian contestants. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-12/eurovision-austria-conchita-wurst-bearded-lady-russia-condemn/5445338">tweeted</a> that Eurovision:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… showed supporters of European integration their European future: a bearded girl. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia has sought to establish leadership of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/russia-is-remaking-itself-as-the-leader-of-the-anti-western-world/2014/03/30/8461f548-b681-11e3-8cc3-d4bf596577eb_story.html">non-Western world</a> by defending “universal traditional values” against permissiveness and immorality. Putin has criminalised LGBT propaganda, turned a blind eye to vigilante attacks and supported international campaigns against sexual rights.</p>
<p>Advocates of “traditional values” are also mobilising in Australia. Former prime minister Tony Abbott recently <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/mar/01/tony-abbott-attacks-safe-schools-program-as-social-engineering">called for</a> the Safe Schools Coalition, an anti-bullying initiative focused on LGBTI youth, to be defunded.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Australian Christian Lobby has <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-16/same-sex-plebiscite-christian-group-anti-discrimination-override/7172988">requested an “override”</a> of anti-discrimination laws ahead of a coming plebiscite on whether Australia should legalise same-sex marriage. Although public support for same-sex marriage is <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-do-individuals-shape-their-views-on-same-sex-rights-42931">stronger than ever</a>, the plebiscite debate promises to be ugly.</p>
<p>Across the Timor Sea, another homophobic campaign is brewing. Indonesia has never criminalised homosexuality – excepting Aceh – and sexuality has rarely been prominent in public debate. However, public opinion is very negative. And there is a history of <a href="https://theconversation.com/onslaughts-against-gays-and-lesbians-challenge-indonesias-lgbt-rights-movement-54639">anti-queer violence</a> by radical Islamic youth groups. </p>
<p>Recent political interventions have targeted university counselling services and even banned same-sex emoticons. At least in the short term, this debate risks creating new dangers.</p>
<p>As more countries embrace formal equality, there is a countervailing trend. A slew of countries – such as Malawi, Nigeria and Brunei – have either extended legal penalties on homosexual acts or passed laws prohibiting the promotion of homosexuality.</p>
<h2>Why the growing controversy?</h2>
<p>In our new book, <a href="http://au.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0745698689.html">Queer Wars</a>, we ask why – as sexual and gender diversity has become more visible globally – have reactions become polarised? </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/114050/original/image-20160307-30473-1cndqeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/114050/original/image-20160307-30473-1cndqeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/114050/original/image-20160307-30473-1cndqeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114050/original/image-20160307-30473-1cndqeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114050/original/image-20160307-30473-1cndqeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114050/original/image-20160307-30473-1cndqeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114050/original/image-20160307-30473-1cndqeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114050/original/image-20160307-30473-1cndqeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Polity</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 1960s and 1970s the gay liberation movement challenged the dominant homophobic culture. The feminist movement began to connect women’s sexual freedom to human rights. In many countries the AIDS epidemic opened up possibilities for queer activism. International human rights law began to <a href="https://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/undocs/html/vws488.htm">prohibit discrimination</a> on the basis of sexual orientation.</p>
<p>Each of these developments faced fierce resistance.</p>
<p>US President Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009 gave conflict over sexuality a new global dimension. During the Bush administration, South American and European countries were the most prominent advocates of sexual freedom. But America’s advocacy of “LGBTI rights” under Obama allowed opposition to be portrayed as resistance to Western neocolonialism and immorality. </p>
<p>Internationally, Russia and the <a href="http://www.oic-oci.org/oicv2/home/?lan=en">Organisation of Islamic Co-operation</a> (made up of 57 countries) have led this resistance. However, political homophobia is an increasingly common strategy for authoritarian leaders everywhere.</p>
<p>The irony is most homophobic laws are a legacy of colonial legal systems. And defenders of “traditional values” typically deny the various forms of sexual and gender diversity in their own cultures. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/">Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a> never mentions sexual orientation. However, evolving interpretations mean human rights covenants now cover all people, regardless of their sexual orientation and gender identity. </p>
<p>A narrow majority of countries (including Australia) now support this view. However, opponents maintain that human rights must reflect traditional values – and that they have never consented to sexuality rights. </p>
<h2>What is to be done?</h2>
<p>When Hillary Clinton, as the then US secretary of state, <a href="http://www.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2011/12/178368.htm">promised</a> “LGBT people” threatened by oppressive regimes that “you have an ally in the United States”, she placed those who do not meet conventional sexual and gender expectations in an unfamiliar position. </p>
<p>We, who were for so long cast as internal enemies, are now rehabilitated as icons of Western progressive modernity. Where colonialism was once partially justified as a civilising response to sexual permissiveness, will protection of vulnerable queers now warrant further Western interference?</p>
<p>This reversal creates profound dilemmas. Is it possible for outsiders to promote acceptance of sexual diversity in communities of which they are not members? </p>
<p>People are rightly horrified when countries like Uganda or Brunei propose laws that threaten death for homosexuals. But is it justifiable to impose “gay rights” internationally? How can we best promote sexual freedom at home and around the world?</p>
<p>One approach has clearly failed. Western leaders like British Prime Minister David Cameron have linked aid to decriminalisation. In February 2014, the World Bank <a href="https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/global-homocapitalism">moved to delay</a> a $US90 million loan to Uganda in response to it passing the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uganda_Anti-Homosexuality_Act,_2014">Anti-Homosexuality Act</a>. </p>
<p>Such conditionality plays into the hands of repressive leaders. It frequently encourages scapegoating of queer activists.</p>
<p>The international campaign against Brunei when Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah introduced sharia (which provides for stoning of homosexuals) was also instructive. People in Brunei did not request this activism. There was no reason to believe that a response from the gay international community would be productive, and nothing to suggest that sexual minorities were the sultan’s target. Local women were likely to be the primary victims and most effective opponents of the new laws.</p>
<p>Western leaders and activists should show humility and allow local organisations to guide them if they wish to be effective. Human rights agreements can help protect people from prosecution and victimisation. However, utilising the standard mechanisms of international human rights practice is likely to be more productive than Western leaders’ public moralising.</p>
<p>Offering refuge to those fleeing persecution is perhaps the most obvious way to help. During the Cold War the West offered refuge to Soviet dissidents. Today, guarantees of refuge might give confidence to queer dissidents in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1568756995">Putin’s Russia</a> and other authoritarian countries. </p>
<p>Instead, Australia holds refugees in indefinite detention on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea – a country where homosexuality is criminalised. <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/gay-refugees-on-nauru-prisoners-in-their-home-as-australia-prepares-to-celebrate-mardi-gras-20160304-gnam2h.html">Recent reports</a> detail the harassment and violent attacks gay refugees face on Nauru. For Australians seeking ways to intervene in the global debate on sexual rights, there may be no better place to start.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Gillian Triggs, Dennis Altman and Jonathan Symons will discuss Queer Wars at Gleebooks in Sydney on <a href="https://gleebooks.worldsecuresystems.com/BookingRetrieve.aspx?ID=251950">Wednesday, March 9</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55747/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dennis Altman is an Ambassador for the Human Rights Law Centre.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Symons does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Western leaders and activists should show humility and allow themselves to be guided by local organisations if they wish to be effective in promoting same-sex rights.Jonathan Symons, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Macquarie UniversityDennis Altman, Professorial Fellow in Human Security, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/543372016-02-18T19:18:30Z2016-02-18T19:18:30ZFriday essay: on the Sydney Mardi Gras march of 1978<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111905/original/image-20160218-1261-1dalkbi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 1978 Mardi Gras started as a peaceful march and degenerated into a violent clash with police. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Pride History Group</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On April 27, 2015, Christine Foster, a Liberal Party councillor and the sister of the then Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, moved a motion at the Sydney City Council calling for a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/city-makes-unanimous-call-for-apology-to-those-named-and-shamed-in-mardi-gras-march-of-1978-20150430-1mxbcx.html">formal apology</a> to the original gay and lesbian Mardi Gras marchers. </p>
<p>It was passed unanimously. The NSW Parliament is expected to debate a <a href="http://www.starobserver.com.au/news/local-news/new-south-wales-news/pressure-grows-on-nsw-police-to-apologise-for-1978-mardi-gras-arrests/135597">motion to offer such an apology</a> in the first sitting of Parliament in 2016. </p>
<p>Is a formal apology warranted? </p>
<p>To answer this question, some understanding of the prevailing oppressive social conditions affecting the lives of sexual minorities (now termed GLBTIQ communities) in Australia in the 1960s and 70s is required.</p>
<p>What is needed, too, is a better knowledge of the actual, momentous events that took place in Sydney between June and August 1978, when violent social unrest and public protests on the streets erupted with far-reaching effects for Australia that can now be seen in historical context.</p>
<h2>The march of 78</h2>
<p>On a cold Saturday night in Sydney on June 24, 1978, a number of gay men, lesbians and transgender people marched into the pages of Australian social history. I was one of them. </p>
<p>Several protests and demonstrations were organised during June that year to commemorate the <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/introduction/stonewall-intro/">1969 Stonewall riot</a> in New York and to demand civil rights for Australian lesbians and gay men. </p>
<p>Gay activists in San Francisco had asked the Gay Solidarity Group in Sydney for support in their campaigns in California and the word had got out. At Taylor Square, where we assembled, I was impressed by the turnout (a report in The Australian estimated the crowd at about 1,000 people at this early stage of the night). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111892/original/image-20160218-1252-1ozj7fg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111892/original/image-20160218-1252-1ozj7fg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111892/original/image-20160218-1252-1ozj7fg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111892/original/image-20160218-1252-1ozj7fg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111892/original/image-20160218-1252-1ozj7fg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111892/original/image-20160218-1252-1ozj7fg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111892/original/image-20160218-1252-1ozj7fg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111892/original/image-20160218-1252-1ozj7fg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marchers at the 1978 Mardi Gras parade.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Pride History Group</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The early rainbow nature of the movement was evident, with transgender and Aboriginal people and people from migrant backgrounds all mixing in. We were a diverse and spirited group of a few hundred mostly younger men and women ready to march down Oxford Street to Hyde Park, along a strip that was becoming the centre of gay life in the city. </p>
<p>The atmosphere was more one of celebration than protest. Little did we know then that, by the end of the night, many of us would be traumatised and our lives changed forever.</p>
<p>As a young émigré in my twenties, from the Queensland bush, like many gay men and lesbians from the country in those days, I was, in effect, an internally displaced person. We were refugees in our own country. </p>
<p>Having arrived in Sydney seeking refuge from the <a href="https://theconversation.com/jacks-and-jokers-bjelke-petersen-and-queenslands-police-state-24700">never-ending police state of mind</a> that was life under the Joh Bjelke-Petersen Queensland government, I was renting a studio flat in Crown Street, Darlinghurst, at the time. </p>
<p>All through history, cities have offered people like me a measure of escape from oppression and persecution. But in 1978, even in a big city like Sydney, refuge and security could not always be found and, without even basic human rights, we were always vulnerable. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111891/original/image-20160218-1248-hf0r5e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111891/original/image-20160218-1248-hf0r5e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111891/original/image-20160218-1248-hf0r5e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111891/original/image-20160218-1248-hf0r5e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111891/original/image-20160218-1248-hf0r5e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111891/original/image-20160218-1248-hf0r5e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111891/original/image-20160218-1248-hf0r5e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111891/original/image-20160218-1248-hf0r5e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 1978 Mardi Gras parade.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Pride History Group</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a high school teacher working for the NSW Department of Education, “coming out” posed a major risk for me – it could mean the loss of my job. For the those who were <a href="http://camp.org.au/100-voices">subjected to electric shock treatment</a> in the 1970s at the old <a href="http://press.anu.edu.au/apps/bookworm/view/Movement,+Knowledge,+Emotion%3A+Gay+activism+and+HIV-AIDS+in+Australia/6291/Text/intro.html">Prince Henry Hospital</a> in Little Bay, it could even mean losing your mind. </p>
<p>Living a “double life” was a means of survival. Gay people’s lives were wrapped in stigma and shame. </p>
<p>The real unspoken tragedy of the times was the loss of the lives of so many wonderful young people who struggled with their sexual identities and, unable to deal with all the pain and shame inflicted on them, ended up committing suicide.</p>
<p>The Stonewall Riot, which had occurred nine years earlier, far away in Greenwich Village on Manhattan in New York, marks the modern era of “homosexual liberation”. This oft-quoted term was popularised as early as 1971 by <a href="http://blogs.crikey.com.au/liticism/2013/08/09/dennis-altmans-the-end-of-the-homosexual/">Dennis Altman</a>, the Australian academic who became a leading voice of the movement.</p>
<p>Altman <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18106848-the-end-of-the-homosexual">continues today</a> to chronicle and interpret the movement. The violence, unrest and resistance of the Sydney Mardi Gras of 1978 has <a href="http://alga.org.au/2011/791">clear parallels to Stonewall</a>.</p>
<h2>Back to the march</h2>
<p>We started off from Taylor Square in a festive mood. Chants rippled along the marchers, strangers joined hands and we sought to bring people out of the bars and into the streets to join us. Some did come out of the bars and joined us; others lined up and watched the parade but did not join in. </p>
<p>I heard the commonly used Australian put-down of those times, “poofters”, hurled at us. “Ratbag poofters”, too. When we reached Hyde Park we were denied entry. </p>
<p>Confusion reigned and an officer in authority appeared intent on breaking up the march. His derogatory tone of voice and the way he hurled insults and abuse angered <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/25163015?selectedversion=NBD43231705">all within earshot</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111896/original/image-20160218-1233-r04hu0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111896/original/image-20160218-1233-r04hu0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111896/original/image-20160218-1233-r04hu0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111896/original/image-20160218-1233-r04hu0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111896/original/image-20160218-1233-r04hu0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111896/original/image-20160218-1233-r04hu0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111896/original/image-20160218-1233-r04hu0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111896/original/image-20160218-1233-r04hu0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Police and marchers met in the 1978 Mardi Gras.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Pride History Group</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It soon became clear that our open-back truck that would have provided the disco music for a party and a platform for speeches in the park was to be forcefully confiscated and the driver arrested. We then realised it would be a mistake for us to enter Hyde Park at all.</p>
<p>At the front of the march I remember a few split seconds of initial doubt that we would be able to do it, and then, in perfect, bold, spontaneous unison, at our success in breaking through the cordon of police across College Street, we shouted, “On to the Cross!” (Kings Cross).</p>
<p>With an exhilarating surge of energy we turned from College Street into William Street. Propelled onwards with hundreds joining in behind us, we turned left into Darlinghurst Road into the heart of Kings Cross. We were sick and tired of being criminalised, pathologised, demonised, of being made to hide who we were and having our rights to live as human beings denied. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111898/original/image-20160218-1276-vyjxeh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111898/original/image-20160218-1276-vyjxeh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111898/original/image-20160218-1276-vyjxeh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111898/original/image-20160218-1276-vyjxeh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111898/original/image-20160218-1276-vyjxeh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111898/original/image-20160218-1276-vyjxeh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111898/original/image-20160218-1276-vyjxeh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111898/original/image-20160218-1276-vyjxeh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 1978 Mardi Gras.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Pride History Group</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That night we were in the streets and we were determined to get our message to as many people as possible. After marching down Oxford Street and seeing our numbers swell as many people came out of the coffee shops, bars and hotels to join us, now we wanted to call on everybody in the Cross to listen to our chants and come out and support us as well. We chanted: “Out of the bars and into the streets!” </p>
<p>We wanted the whole world to hear our cries for freedom from the oppression that characterised our lives. In numbers, suddenly, wonderfully, we were unafraid. Here there was a direct parallel with Stonewall, for <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/98480.Stonewall">as with the NYPD</a>, the NSW police force faced an unexpected and vigorous resistance.</p>
<p>As determined as they were to put us back in our closets there was no stopping us. Now we were coming out. And now we had straight people willing to join in and support us. In Darlinghurst Road in Kings Cross we were cut off and ambushed with hundreds of police with dozens of wagons blocking us in front and from behind. </p>
<p>These were critical moments, because in truth the crowd would most likely have dispersed at this point.</p>
<p>Yet the real violence was about to begin. It was there in Darlinghurst Road that we faced the most brutal onslaught of the whole night. The police, arriving in numbers, took advantage of the semi darkness of the night, unleashing a reckless and ugly attack on the marchers. </p>
<p>They acted as if they had a licence to inflict as much injury as they could and I feared there would be dead bodies everywhere if they had guns in those paddy wagons and were to open fire. Despite that fear we did not run, we fought back, resisting arrest as the police wielded their heavy batons indiscriminately. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111895/original/image-20160218-1261-10ilt22.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111895/original/image-20160218-1261-10ilt22.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111895/original/image-20160218-1261-10ilt22.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111895/original/image-20160218-1261-10ilt22.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111895/original/image-20160218-1261-10ilt22.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111895/original/image-20160218-1261-10ilt22.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111895/original/image-20160218-1261-10ilt22.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111895/original/image-20160218-1261-10ilt22.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Pride History Group</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The more we were assaulted the more we resisted. The group-solidarity had taken hold as we tried to stand our ground, rescuing “brothers” and “sisters” from the clutches of the police as they were being forced into paddy-wagons. I distinctly remember the way that the police near the El Alamein Fountain targeted women for arrest, in particular, and the smaller and more vulnerable among us.</p>
<p>The first Mardi Gras is often <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/7554218?selectedversion=NBD13681626">described as a riot</a> but I didn’t see it that way. It was a very defiant act of resistance that proved a turning point. We were willing to stand up, to resist. We were people too; our sexualities may have been diverse and different but that did not make us any less human than others. </p>
<p>The discriminatory attitude of the police and the violence they meted out to us seemed to represent in highly symbolic and condensed form the very pain, humiliation and suffering that society as a whole constantly inflicted on us as lesbians and gay men.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111899/original/image-20160218-1252-zi1vd5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111899/original/image-20160218-1252-zi1vd5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111899/original/image-20160218-1252-zi1vd5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111899/original/image-20160218-1252-zi1vd5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111899/original/image-20160218-1252-zi1vd5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111899/original/image-20160218-1252-zi1vd5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111899/original/image-20160218-1252-zi1vd5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111899/original/image-20160218-1252-zi1vd5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 1978 Mardi Gras parade.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some 53 men and women were arrested, all of whom – unhelpfully – had their <a href="http://www.starobserver.com.au/news/local-news/new-south-wales-news/pressure-grows-on-nsw-police-to-apologise-for-1978-mardi-gras-arrests/135597">names and occupations subsequently published</a> in The Sydney Morning Herald. Many lost their jobs or housing as a result.</p>
<p>Gail Hewison, one of the women detained, described to me the whole experience of being locked-up without charge as one of shock and trauma. She had all her possessions taken away from her including her glasses. She told me she could hear the sounds of a man being horribly beaten in another cell. Then, after a while she also began to hear the supportive chants of the crowds gathering outside.</p>
<p>In front of the police station, close to Oxford Street and Taylor Square where the march had started hours earlier, battered and bruised, hundreds of us gathered in an enraged state shouting, “Let them free!”. We continued the refrains from our earlier chants: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Two four six eight, gay is just as good as straight! </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Looking out at the angry crowd the police inside the station must have been apprehensive about what would happen next. They were greatly outnumbered and for some moments as we inched closer and closer, you could sense an urge on the part of the crowd to takeover the police station, to demand the jailers keys and so to release our brothers and sisters. </p>
<p>Over the years I have often wondered why we didn’t storm the building then and there. Strangely after a short period of silence somebody started to sing the Afro-American spiritual “We shall not be moved” and the whole crowd joined in:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We shall not, we shall not be moved <br>
We shall not, we shall not be moved<br>
Just like a tree that’s standing by the water<br>
We shall not be moved<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Reflecting on this now I would like to think that, despite the provocation on that night itself and the centuries of violence that had been perpetrated upon us, we as a collective knew instinctively that violence was one of our main grievances and we had a mission to resist it and fight against violence using other means.</p>
<p>Someone in the crowd cried out, “I am a lawyer. Are there any other lawyers or solicitors here? We need to raise bail money!”. The campaign to win the legal battles was now well underway, culminating in 1984 when <a href="http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/V3Key/LC20140304059">homosexuality was decriminalised in the NSW Parliament</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111894/original/image-20160218-1269-1mwqxcz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111894/original/image-20160218-1269-1mwqxcz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111894/original/image-20160218-1269-1mwqxcz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111894/original/image-20160218-1269-1mwqxcz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111894/original/image-20160218-1269-1mwqxcz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111894/original/image-20160218-1269-1mwqxcz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111894/original/image-20160218-1269-1mwqxcz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111894/original/image-20160218-1269-1mwqxcz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 1978 Mardi Gras parade.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Pride History Group</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This brief narrative of the first Mardi Gras is told because the events of that night, their causes and repercussions can now be placed in clearer historical perspective and they help us to understand why keeping politics at the centre of the annual Mardi Gras is so important. </p>
<h2>Facing the HIV epidemic</h2>
<p>As Dennis Altman pointed out in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18106848-the-end-of-the-homosexual">The End of the Homosexual?</a> (2013), it was the precise timing of the Mardi Gras leading to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in NSW in 1984 that ultimately helped save thousands of Australian lives in the HIV epidemic that hit Sydney hard in 1985.</p>
<p>The epidemic could only have been handled as effectively as it was because decriminalisation and critical bi-partisan cross party political support resulted in more openness and less stigma.</p>
<p>The old days of identity politics are now gone and labels are eschewed in these times where the fluidity of sexuality is recognised and better understood. But the struggle is not over. In 2013 we witnessed the arrest of a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxtFtVfAee">young teenager at the Mardi Gras parade</a> who was assaulted and abused in ways reminiscent of 1978. Again the police were not held accountable for their actions. </p>
<p>Young people are still ending their lives because of the <a href="https://www.beyondblue.org.au/docs/default-source/default-document-library/bw0258-lgbti-mental-health-and-suicide-2013-2nd-edition.pdf?sfvrsn=2">pain and homophobia they experience</a>. If there is a timely lesson for the police here it is in the need for an authentic engagement with minority groups where honesty and respect replaces suspicion and contempt.</p>
<p>So at the same time we celebrate just how far GLBTQI people in NSW have come with dramatically improved community attitudes and we not only welcome but applaud a contingent of the NSW Police Service marching in the annual parade, we need to resist attempts to whitewash our history and we need to make sure we do not lose the memories of our earlier struggles. </p>
<p>The motion at Sydney Town Hall earlier in 2015, calling for an official apology to the 78ers for the violence of that June night in 1978, was strongly supported by out-lesbian elder and Deputy Lord Mayor Robyn Kemmis, who recently died. </p>
<p>We owe a debt to her work and that of people such as <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/mardi-gras-still-breaks-down-barriers-after-35-years-20130302-2fd7h.html">Steve Warren</a>, one of the original 78ers who has worked tirelessly for an apology. That Sydney City Council action has prompted a small bipartisan group of NSW State parliamentarians to take up the call for an official apology. </p>
<p>Sadly, any apology now is too late for so many who were present at that first Mardi Gras and are no longer with us. Many were cut down before their time in the HIV AIDS epidemic. </p>
<p>The efforts of these NSW parliamentarians, though, are important and mean a great deal to the 78ers that survive. Back in 1978 we called, in vain, for a Royal Commission into the police violence of that June night. We also called for an apology from Fairfax for publishing the names, occupations and addresses of all of the 53 people who were arrested that night. </p>
<p>Till this time no formal apology has been received from Fairfax. After nearly 38 years since the first Mardi Gras an apology by the NSW State parliament would help to heal the wounds.</p>
<p>So as an original 78er I welcome an apology by the NSW Parliament. But it needs to be a “living apology”. A living apology is one where Parliament affirms the need for ongoing vigilance so that the human rights of LGBTIQ people are respected and protected in law. </p>
<p>It also has to affirm the need for ongoing social investment in educational programs that create a more inclusive NSW community where differences are respected and where the power of diversity is celebrated.</p>
<p>We welcome anyone who participated in the 1978 Mardi Gras with an interest in the apology to contact the <a href="mailto:seventyeighters@gmail.com">78ers committee</a> or the <a href="https://web.facebook.com/pridehistory/">Pride History Group</a>. If you are in Sydney for the Fair Day in Victoria Park on Sunday February 21, come our tent and talk to us.</p>
<p>In the current international climate with the re-emergence of fascist threats from all sides there are too few places in the world that offer the hope of this kind of open society. Sydney, and Australia more broadly, could represent this kind of inclusive society. It will be a society where the role of the police shifts from suppressing the rights of minorities to protecting and even championing them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54337/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Gillespie is affiliated with The '78ers.
</span></em></p>Is a formal apology to the 1978 Mardi Gras marchers warranted? Some understanding of the oppressive social conditions affecting the lives of sexual minorities in Australia in that era is required.Mark Gillespie, English for Academic Purposes Specialist, Anthropologist, Centre for English Teaching, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/382852015-03-04T19:25:58Z2015-03-04T19:25:58ZDykes on Bikes and the long road to Mardi Gras<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/73767/original/image-20150304-7328-k21tq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dykes on Bikes have been opening the Sydney Mardi Gras since 1988.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Will Choi</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.mardigras.org.au/">Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras </a> festival is here again. </p>
<p>The festival’s pinnacle and most attended event, the Parade, will see hundreds of thousands flocking to Sydney’s Oxford Street this Saturday for a mix of politics, revealing costumes, buffed bodies, flamboyance and celebration. </p>
<p>As is tradition, the sounds of more than 100 Dykes on Bikes revving their engines and blasting their horns will mark the beginning of the party.</p>
<p>For the Queensland Dykes on Bikes, however, Mardi Gras is about more than leading the parade and attending parties.</p>
<p>Much interest in Mardi Gras is given to its historical legacy, to commodification and to questions of political identity. Seeking to build on these conversations, for the past three years I have been documenting the personal stories of those who travel vast distances each year to attend this event. </p>
<p>As part of this research, in a <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00049182.2014.986787#abstract">new article</a>, published in Australian Geographer, I sought to examine the complex relations between the Queensland Dykes on Bikes and the Mardi Gras Parade.</p>
<h2>Dykes on Bikes – a brief history</h2>
<p>Who are the Dykes on Bikes? And what is their connection to Mardi Gras?</p>
<p>The Dykes on Bikes is an international group for women who ride. </p>
<p>In a subculture dominated by masculine working-class identities, the Dykes on Bikes play with femininities and masculinities through motorcycle skills, dress and riding styles. These performances challenge dominant sexual and cultural expectations of what a woman is and what a woman can do. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/73559/original/image-20150303-15987-1majvxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/73559/original/image-20150303-15987-1majvxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73559/original/image-20150303-15987-1majvxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73559/original/image-20150303-15987-1majvxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73559/original/image-20150303-15987-1majvxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73559/original/image-20150303-15987-1majvxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73559/original/image-20150303-15987-1majvxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dykes on Bikes will start the Sydney Mardi Gras parade this weekend.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Will Choi/Flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In addition to dominant conceptualisations of motorbike riding as synonymous with freedom, escape and individuality, the Dykes on Bikes celebrate and value notions of a collective identity and a sense of belonging. These are forged through the enforced rules and codes of the Chapter, and ideas of sticking and riding together.</p>
<p>The Dykes on Bike identity is not felt through following codes of membership alone; becoming, and remaining, a Dyke on Bike also occurs through riding together and leading pride parades.</p>
<p>The Dykes on Bikes and pride parades are historically entangled. </p>
<p>The group first formed at the 1976 San Francisco Pride Parade when a small group of women motorbike riders informally came together to ride as part of the parade. One of these first riders is said to have coined the phrase “Dykes on Bikes”. Receiving traction in the media the group rode with the name. Growing in numbers the group became formally structured in the mid-1980s. </p>
<p>Today there are 22 chapters internationally, three of which are located in Australia (Queensland, Sydney and Melbourne); all of which are governed by the San Francisco Chapter. In 2003, the group changed its official name to the Women’s Motorcycle Contingent/ Dykes on Bikes. This move aimed to overcome simplistic understandings that all women who ride motorbikes are “dykes”.</p>
<p>Inspired by the original Dykes on Bikes leading of the 1987 San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Freedom Day Parade, the 1988 Mardi Gras Parade saw the arrival of the first Australian Dykes on Bikes.</p>
<h2>The road to Mardi Gras</h2>
<p>Today, around 20 Queensland Dykes on Bikes members ride annually from Brisbane to Sydney for Mardi Gras. The return journey is 1,800 kilometres. It takes four days – two each way. It entails more than 20 hours on the bike. </p>
<p>Riding a motorbike, in a group of 20, is not like driving a car. The body has to remain in the same position. The group has to remain in a choreographed formation. Each rider has to ride with their entire luggage. There are often heavy rains at this time of year; and lots of traffic. It’s challenging, tiring, yet characterised as incredibly enjoyable and rewarding by the group’s members.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/73563/original/image-20150303-15960-1vwx90j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/73563/original/image-20150303-15960-1vwx90j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/73563/original/image-20150303-15960-1vwx90j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73563/original/image-20150303-15960-1vwx90j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73563/original/image-20150303-15960-1vwx90j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73563/original/image-20150303-15960-1vwx90j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73563/original/image-20150303-15960-1vwx90j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73563/original/image-20150303-15960-1vwx90j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Will Choi/Flickr</span></span>
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<p>For some members of the Queensland Dykes on Bikes, riding to Mardi Gras is conceived as more pleasurable than the event itself. It provides a unique opportunity to learn the rules and codes of the Chapter, pick up riding skills from other members and collectively practice riding in a group formation – opportunities not available through the shorter, Sunday rides normally organised for once a month. </p>
<p>Riding to Mardi Gras is therefore crucial in sustaining a sense of collective belonging among group members and performing a shared Dyke on Bike identity.</p>
<p>The parade, conversely, was surprisingly a source of anxiety for some members. The combination of waiting, managing the bike and voyeuristic screaming crowds led some riders to don gas and surgical masks to enable anonymity and create boundaries – practises that inhibited feelings of connection and belonging.</p>
<p>While travel to Mardi Gras is crucial to the Dykes on Bikes it is not the parade itself, but rather the immense journey, that serves as a fundamental dimension in sustaining a collective sense of belonging among group members.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38285/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna de Jong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Dykes on Bikes have been starting Sydney’s Mardi Gras parade since 1988 – and many for many participants, the yearly ride to Sydney is as important as the parade itself.Anna de Jong, Human Geography PhD Student, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.