Tag: queer

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Footscray West Writers Fest

Poster for Footscray West Writers Fest in purple and yellow.

Oh hey it’s a new festival on the block! I’m doing a couple of things at the inaugural Footscray West Writers Fest, one filthy and one frugal. But which is which?

First Floor Fantasy
Saturday 29 March 2025
7:30 pm to 9:30 pm
Harley & Rose Upstairs
572 Barkly St, Footscray VIC 3012
(Please note: Access is via stairs)
Tickets $15, book here

Indulge in an evening of quickfire erotic storytelling by local authors, including Jinghua Qian, Thuy On, Rochelle Siemienowicz, Aud Pitch.

Poster for First Floor Fantasy.

Closing Night Event: Stories from the Belly of the West
Sunday 30 March 2025
4 pm to 10 pm
Harley & Rose
572 Barkly St, Footscray VIC 3012
Tickets $30, book here

Join us for the festival’s unforgettable closing night event, Stories from the Belly of the West, where six talented authors share brand-new site-specific works after taking up the most ramshackle writers-in-residence program imaginable. Jinghua Qian takes us to Savers, Emilie Collyer to Rex Hairdressing, Sam Elkin to WeFo Dog Park, Tina Cartwright to The South Road Coin Laundry, Alice Pung to Cheaper By Miles, and Rijn Collins takes us under the Westgate Bridge, with each tale offering a fresh perspective on the vibrant heart of the community. Don’t miss this celebration of place, creativity, and storytelling to mark the festival’s finale. Enjoy music from The Orbweavers during the event.

Check out the whole festival program, it’s a banger with events featuring Maxine Beneba Clarke, André Dao, Ernest Price, Liz Crash, Najma Sambul, Benjamin Millar, the students of Footscray High School, and basically all your fave westies. Amazing work from Jess, Donita and Reem!

* I buy all my leather from Savers so …

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ISO Temahahoi & </love> | Bleed 2024

Three people lean close to a ceramic wind instrument; each is blowing on a mouthpiece.

I recently met two artists who are currently showing at Arts House as part of Bleed 2024 and I was so chuffed to be commissioned for written responses because both their works are so relevant to my interests and predilections. I was particularly struck by how both works foreground desire and intentionality so I chose to write my responses in the style of Lex posts or personal ads, because I’m a bit obsessed with that form at the moment.

Ciwas Tahos/Anchi Lin 林安琪 is an Indigenous Taiwanese artist whose installation and durational performance work Finding Pathways to Temahahoi connects Atayal oral history with contemporary queer community. It’s very sensual and expansive. You can read my response, ISO Temahahoi, and watch our filmed artist talk here.

Jarra Karalinar Steel is a local Koori artist whose work anyone in Naarm would have seen on the Melbourne Art Tram. Her installation for Bleed 2024, love.exe, draws from video games and fandom to explore romantic love and social surrogacy in digital realms. Our artist talk is here along with my written response, </love>.

I am a bit bummed I only just met Jarra and Anchi now and not, say, on Livejournal in 2002, because I feel like we could’ve been great friends as teenagers.

Anyway if you’re in Melbourne, the installations are open until September 28 and there is also more digital work at the links above.

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Review: Loaded, Malthouse Theatre

For The Saturday Paper, I reviewed the long-awaited stage adaptation of Christos Tsiolkas’ Loaded which is playing at the Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne.

Danny Ball plays Ari in Malthouse Theatre’s 2023 production of Loaded. Photo: TS Pubicity / Tamarah Scott.

Ari’s casual assertion that he’s a wog, not white, scorns millennia of Western empires claiming Greek epistemology as an intellectual forebear while systemically deorientalising it. This feels particularly salient for how homoeroticism in Greek antiquity is absorbed into the lineage of anglophone gay culture today. That troubled relationship to history and lineage is also a recurring trope in migrant narratives, as the point of origin recedes into a romantic homeland fading into the horizon, or becomes a risk and a burden, a chorus of voices clamouring for tribute. Or a third thing: a ship with new parts but the same name.

It’s really interesting to see all the different iterations of this story (I also reviewed the audio play in 2020) and be pushed to tease apart my responses and figure out what’s in the work vs what’s changed in the world or the presentation context or my point of view. A good exercise as a critic!

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Beijing LGBT Center closes down; reporting on LGBTIQ+ issues

Disheartening news this week on the eve of IDAHOBIT that Beijing LGBT Center has been forced to shut. Beitong, as it was known in the community, was the leading NGO for queer advocacy and research in China, as well as providing important welfare and peer support services. Our paths crossed frequently over the years that I was reporting on LGBTIQ+ issues in China, so this loss feels quite devastating both personally and politically – the China I knew and loved is being eroded piece by piece.

A bright pink sanlunche draped with Pride flags in a Beijing hutong, 2016.
Beijing’s NGO community made such a big impression on me but a lot of what I remember is already gone. Q-Space, where this was taken, closed their physical space in 2020.

Foreign Policy has a good analysis of Beitong’s closure in the context of a natalist push for gender normativity, heterosexual marriage, and more babymaking to rebalance the country’s demographic woes. I’m quoted there, as well as in articles by the AFP and Bloomberg wires that have been syndicated pretty widely. I also gave NBC an interview for their story that should be out soon – I’ll add it to my press page when it’s published.

A few articles misgendered me, which I managed to get corrected, but it’s been interesting to see: I was rendered male in French and female in English, while a queer Italian media outlet not only got it right but taught me something new: the gender-inclusive suffix ə, which linguists and writers in Italy have popularised against strident opposition from many, including the national language watchdog.

Anyway, it’s pretty cool to go on a late-night tweet spree and then see it translated into half a dozen different languages, but disappointing that so many media outlets remain inattentive to gendered language, even when reporting an LGBTIQ+ story. My pronouns have been in my Twitter bio since I started the account, and in my website bio and email signature (ey/eir/em, they/their/them, 伊 or TA).

It’s ironic too, because what I’m most proud of from my time in China journalism was building up LGBTIQ+ and gender reporting into beats that were taken seriously and resourced appropriately, and integrating that area expertise into editorial processes, ethics and house style. Using the correct pronouns for someone is just one very small part of that but often revealing of broader priorities. It’s something that Beitong and their peers like Tongyu and BGHEI invested in, too, with media guidelines, training, analysis and awards. So I hope media outlets take stock and use events like IDAHOBIT and Pride as an opportunity to consider how they could improve their LGBTIQ+ reporting.

Articles mentioned:

LGBTQ spaces are shrinking in China, James Palmer, Foreign Policy, 16 May 2023.

Chinese LGBTQ Center Closes Down Abruptly Amid Xi Clampdown, Bloomberg, 16 May 2023.

Leading Chinese advocacy group Beijing LGBT Center closes down, citing ‘unpreventable circumstances’, AFP (syndicated in Hong Kong Free Press), 16 May 2023.

* IDAHOBIT is the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersex discrimination and Transphobia.

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Review: She and Her Pretty Friend by Danielle Scrimshaw

For The Saturday Paper, I reviewed She and Her Pretty Friend, an appealing and accessible history of queer women’s lives in Australia from roughly 1830 to 1980. There’s a lot I liked about it and a few things that bugged me too. As always, I can send a read link if you can’t access it through the paywall, just leave a comment.

Scrimshaw code-switches easily between the cautious register of the historian and the more colourful lexicon of chronically online queers, reading real events in relation to memes and fandom tropes such as “oh my god, they were roommates” and “be gay, do crime”. The effect is chatty and conspiratorial, like catching up with a friend who can’t wait to tell you about what she just read, and it’s endearing to witness her transparent disappointment when women treat each other badly or don’t get the life we feel they deserve.