Sydney Life

What do you get when you combine over 300 queer students from more than 20 universities across Australia, house them in one backpacker’s hostel for a week and host over 50 workshops, lectures and seminars on topics ranging from homophobia, religion, sex, art, politics, racism, coming out, identity, health, social change and relationships? Don’t forget to add to that, a 6-day packed social calendar, including an underground performance night in a back-alley warehouse, an art exhibition, a literary journal launch, a burlesque night in an old sandstone church and 3 parties just for the sake of it!

We’re talking about the annual mega long-awaited Queer Collaborations (QC) Conference 2006.

Above: The QC logo utilising the pink triangle; a symbol of queer pride appropriated from Nazi Germany where homosexual people were branded with upside-down triangles and put in concentration camps.

In 2006, the winner is still Sydney! Yes, that’s right, Sydney won the bid to hold the annual queer student conference this year. The conference, which is organised completely by students and supported by several student and community organisations – including the University of Sydney Union and SRC, is the largest conference of its kind in Australia.

This year the theme is “Terror Alert: Rainbow”. The theme is a spoof on the terrorism alert code hierarchy, with the level of alert being set to “Rainbow” – a traditional symbol of queer pride. Why?

For those that don’t know, in 2004 the Howard Government supported by the Labor opposition, passed a bill which reinforced the exclusion of same-sex couples from the right to marry. It doesn’t matter how long two people of the same-sex live together, love and care for each other or commit to a shared life together – they cannot get married in Australia.

In the lead up to the same-sex marriage ban in 2004, Australia’s Parliament House was used for a forum attended by politicians and conservative fundamentalists who made the claim that gays were the “moral terrorists of the 21st century”. To add to this insult, the recent anti-terrorism legislation, which strips terror suspects of long-held civil rights, such as the right against arbitrary detention, is one of the few federal acts to recognise same-sex partners as members of one’s “family”. Meanwhile, same-sex partners are not considered members of one’s family when it comes to Medicare, family law, social security and tax laws among others.

With lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex Australians dismissed as moral “threats” and denied their fundamental human rights, you can understand why the theme “Terror Alert: Rainbow” is so relevant.

I have been so inspired by the conference. I went to a seminar today on transgenderism. Transgender people, sometimes commonly known as transsexuals, are those people whose sex at birth doesn’t correspond with their gender identity (i.e. their feeling of being male or female). We don’t hear much about transgender people in our society, except for degrading mentions on shows like Jerry Springer and representations of transgenders as some sort of “freaks of nature”. At the seminar, four people who identified as transgender spoke about their experiences of coming to terms with their identities. They spoke about their difficulties, dilemmas, victories, hopes and desires.

For most of us who would usually never get the chance to actually meet a transgendered person (beyond the warped representations in the media), this was an incredibly humanising opportunity to learn and understand about real people with incredible courage. This is what university is all about: a real education not just a degree.

Apart from the seminars and lectures, on Tuesday night was an incredible performance night that was held in a random back-alley warehouse in Chippendale! The performance night included two Arab male bellydancers, poetry readings, music performances, stand-up comedy and a drag performance. The night was an amazing display of how enriching and fascinating diversity can be, and why listening to different points of view is so important in moving towards a more inclusive, and I believe, better society.

By the end of the week (which traditionally culminates in a protest/action of some sort) 300 people from across Australia will have learnt a little more about other people, will have shared stories about survival and struggle and will walk away with a touch more understanding, acceptance and valuing of diversity. Not to mention several hangovers, very little sleep and a dozen or so new welcoming friends conveniently located in all the hottest suburbs across Australia.

Rainbow terrorists? With so many vibrantly coloured, complex people in the world, why would you want to see the world in black and white anyway…