Co-President article from London Student. - http://www.london-student.net/2010/01/19/coming-in-from-outside/

“Come on in, from the outside” the cast of Boy George’s musical Taboo, implores the audience during the finale of the gayest thing to hit the stage since, well, musical theatre. My name is Art, and I’m a giggling, make-up wearing theatre-queen who often misses out on entire conversations because the soundtrack of Evita is blaring far too loudly in my head

Someone once described me as, not just gay, but the gay, the gay to which all other homosexuals are measured. I came out to my friends, my parents, grandparents and my hamster “Britney (after the tragic Ms Spears)”, to a chorus of, “yes, we already know Art” in my early teens. And, although at the time, I probably wasn’t gay, I was too innocent to even know what gay was, I was evidently too camp to be straight, and so, as a result, I came out.

And then it happened. I fell in love. Maxxie and I both emerged from a tiny homophobic town, and together we listened to musicals, watched every gay-film (however bad) that I could lay my chipped nail-varnished hands on and through each other we mapped out our sexual identity and our sexual tastes through porn, fooling around and drunken conversations over the cheapest cider we could find. Maxxie made me who I am today.

Despite the fact I left the north to study in London, I have never forgotten about Maxxie. I think about him every hour, of every day without fail, and have never been able to feel the intensity I continue to feel for him. To all intents and purpose to everyone, I was and am, as gay as you could ever get. Although, slowly but surely, a creeping suspicion took over my mind in its quieter moments, that I may just be sexually attracted to girls.

A chance encounter with a holidaying beautiful and audacious girl who decided to kiss me in June of last year, led to a long distance relationship. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute I spent with her and although it eventually ended because of a number of reasons, I suspect my “homosexuality” played a part in its cessation. The seeds of doubt however were planted, and I suddenly began to see women in a new way. Such as when I recently developed a massive giggling school-girl crush on a girl, who of course in the typical melodrama which is my life, was a lesbian and once again continues to pain my already crumpled heart.

When I stood in front of my grandma, struck a pose, and defiantly labelled myself with that 3-letter ‘g’ word, things began to happen. As many gay men will attest to, straight men become really uncomfortable, women become overly comfortable, (I have now seen so many women undressing in front of me, because I am gay, and “it doesn’t matter”) and once defined, that label sticks. My grandma cried, not because I am gay, but because I recently informed her that I was bisexual, and she didn’t like that I was not ‘one or t’other’, my mother who merely shakes her head whilst proclaiming ‘I just don’t understand it’, and my friends, to whom the idea of me and woman together is potentially the most abstract and existentialist idea that I or Sartre could ever have come up with. It’s an interesting void to find myself in.

As the beautiful and iconic SuBo sings in her uplifting song, Who I Was Born to Be, “Though I may not know the answers, I can finally say I am free, and if the questions led me here, then, I am who I was born to me”. If I am honest, this void I have found myself in is rather liberating.

Part of me fears that this re-discovery is moving me away from the “me” that Maxxie helped create, or that what people like about me, the bubbly, bouncing cabaret act that is my life will be lost. As such, the rest of my identity, which is admittedly almost entirely based on my sexuality, will irretrievably crumble. Its not a heterophobic or biphobic fear, but a fear of having a lack of identity. For now, I will sit quietly pining for the lesbian-love of my life, and/or Maxxie, and try to decide where on the spectrum of these two figures I will stake my brand-spanking new, self-defined identity for all to see.

Whilst writing this, I’m put on another layer of lippie and dashing out the door to go see a matinee of La Cage Aux Folles. At this performance, nestled in amongst the countless queens and their faghags, will be me, wondering how many people realise the closet doors can swing both ways, and that people can “come on in, from the outside.”

HUGE SOAS GBLT SOCIETY EVENT TONIGHT!

The night has come, the SOAS GBLT Society event is TONIGHT TONIGHT TONIGHT.

The SOAS Centre for Gender Studies and the SOAS GLBT Society Jointly Present:

Technologies of Violence and Control:

Performing Arab Queer Communities Online

This colloquium seeks to examine the formation of Arab queercollectivities, challenging traditional modes of identity politics and embodiment. Taking cyberspace as a site of analysis, Noor Al-Qasimiand Barrak Alzaid examine the ways in which various organizations and institutions that purport to advance sexual democracy produce a form of identity politics that effectively engenders violence and control.

Wednesday 13 January, 7-9pm, SOAS, Khalili lecture Theatre

How to Do Things With Violence: The Transmission of Affect and Production of Politicized Queer Identities

Barrak Alzaid’s paper investigates the interplay between digital media and violence to create communities rooted in LGBT identity formations through an analysis of the Iraqi LGBT website, and the close reading of one embedded video depicting the torture of a trans person in Iraq. The paper employs a methodology that combines a reflexive analysis of the author's process of witnessing and translation of the author's, coupled with a performative analysis of the work the video enacts.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boyahs and Girls: Uploading Transnational Queer Subjectivities in the United Arab Emirates

Al-Qasimi’s paper focuses on how queer narratives on social networking sites (namely, Facebook) are accommodated and/or denied by laws pertaining to the governance of sexuality. Ultimately, she asks, to what extent does the Emirati national youth’s articulation of queerness transcend and transform collective sexual norms governed by the Emirati nationalist paradigm, allowing for the emergence of a transnational sexual politics that both destablizes sexual governance and reconstitutes the sovereignty of the nation state?

All Welcome!

SOAS Lesbian Film Festival

Hey everybody... further to the event listed below... which will be huge by the way, international academics are flying in, and this is being held with both the SOAS GBLT and SOAS Gender Studies Department hosting it, it will be great, and give everyone a lot to think about. SOAS GBLT is also providing refreshments as well, which should allow everyone to network, chit-chat and gossip over tea and coffee.

The week after that (17th-22nd January), we also have the SOAS Lesbian Film Festival, which we have been speaking about for months, and it has finally been arranged.
The films are:

Fire
World Unseen,
Sving Face,
Imagine Me and You
Aimee & Jaguar,

So we have an Indian, German, British, Chinese-American and South African film. A nice range and diverse culture me'thinks. Thanks for all the suggestions and e-mails about films, and maybe we can have a chance to show the other films at another time. Room bookings haven't been confirmed yet, but all there will be one film a night, for 5 nights, starting Monday 17th of January to Friday 22nd January, all starting at 5:30. The order of the films hasn't been confirmed yet, but we will do so shortly along with confirming the rooms!

All films will be shown with English subtitles, and hopefully, as with our previous film festivals, nibbles, drinks and friendship will be provided.

Shove the week in your diary, and we hope to see you there!!!

SOAS GBLT SOCIETY Event

The SOAS Centre for Gender Studies and the SOAS GLBT Society Jointly Present:

Technologies of Violence and Control:

Performing Arab Queer Communities Online

This colloquium seeks to examine the formation of Arab queer collectivities, challenging traditional modes of identity politics and embodiment. Taking cyberspace as a site of analysis, Noor Al-Qasimi and Barrak Alzaid examine the ways in which various organizations and institutions that purport to advance sexual democracy produce a form of identity politics that effectively engenders violence and control.

Wednesday 13 January, 7-9pm, SOAS, Khalili lecture Theatre

How to Do Things With Violence: The Transmission of Affect and Production of Politicized Queer Identities

Barrak Alzaid’s paper investigates the interplay between digital media and violence to create communities rooted in LGBT identity formations through an analysis of the Iraqi LGBT website, and the close reading of one embedded video depicting the torture of a trans person in Iraq. The paper employs a methodology that combines a reflexive analysis of the author's process of witnessing and translation of the author's, coupled with a performative analysis of the work the video enacts.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boyahs and Girls: Uploading Transnational Queer Subjectivities in the United Arab Emirates

Al-Qasimi’s paper focuses on how queer narratives on social networking sites (namely, Facebook) are accommodated and/or denied by laws pertaining to the governance of sexuality. Ultimately, she asks, to what extent does the Emirati national youth’s articulation of queerness transcend and transform collective sexual norms governed by the Emirati nationalist paradigm, allowing for the emergence of a transnational sexual politics that both destablizes sexual governance and reconstitutes the sovereignty of the nation state?

All Welcome!