Robert does EuroPride Thursday: a personal reflection in two parts. Or something.
I spent the afternoon at the Intergender Cafe, a sort of seminar/discussion/social event at the EuroPride Conference Centre. What was I doing there? Good question, answer later. We must have been about fifty people, using up all the chairs in Södermalm School's dining hall. A nice cross-section of different gender identities and sexualities, inasmuch as one can judge such things. Bee Sundin, clearly the doyenne of the Swedish trans movement, filled us in on transgender history from both a world and Swedish perspective. She's a thoughtful, entertaining and informative speaker. It became quite clear that the legal and political situation for trans folk in Sweden is pretty miserable, and the national organisation RFTS is very short of resources, specially compared to RFSL. Among the cafe guests was RFSL chair Christine Gilljam, who reiterated the federation's commitment to look into trans people's situation, both within RFSL and in general. RFSL kind of have a reputation for not being particularly trans-friendly - in fact each RFSL branch has its own constitution, and some do have a commitment to work for trans rights as well as for traditionally-gendered GLB folks.
After a break, we had what you might call a plenary discussion. Starting from the words some of the participants use to identify their own particular gender identity. The huge variety in experience became obvious pretty soon, as did the terrible difficulties we humans have with definitions of words. Sure, we all had that humanity in common, but how much else? Cross-dressers, pre- and post-op transexuals, transgendered people, homosexual folks who don't seem to have quite the usual set of inclinations (Petra, for example, and maybe me), and one self-confessed nelly queen. It's hard to sum up the exchange of views, which was lively and fascinating. I felt that not everyone had realised just how much the way we think about gender and sexuality is shaped by the grossly normal heterosexual, two-gendered society we live in. And that behind a lot of what we think of as quite harmless statements about equality lie sexism and homophobia. It's far easier to be, or appear to be a man than a woman, it's easier to appear to be straight than gay, and it's easier to appear to be definitely either a man or a woman. If there's anything we share, it's that we're all both the oppressed and the oppressors, in different situations. But we are asking a lot of the right questions, and listening to each other, maybe for the first time, and that's great. It was fun to meet people, and not for the last time, I hope.
Being me, I expressed my own idiosyncratic preferences buy rushing back to PridePark to catch Poikatyttöt (The Girlboys) playing live. And they were just as good as I'd hoped they'd be. A tough rock band, playing what I think they call emocore, and singing about lesbian sex in Finnish. Easily the most interesting and best music at PridePark so far. Like I said, I like butch lesbian things and I don't care what people think about it. As if to confirm all my darkest suspicions, I complimented Helena Westin on her rather wonderful denim hat, and was informed that I was the first gay bloke to appreciate it. And that all the dykes thought it was great. :-o
Then followed another warm, cheery social evening in PridePark under a darkening but always blue sky. Two unexpected kisses to round it off. Thank you!
Visar inlägg med etikett trans. Visa alla inlägg
Visar inlägg med etikett trans. Visa alla inlägg
2008-07-24
2008-07-23
Thursday 23 July 1998, 11.00
When it rains all through the Gay Games, I'm going to get masses of hate email from Holland for telling you (again) just how marvellously sunny it is today. Actually, yesterday's Expressen forecasted rain for Saturday, but we'll put that down to mild homophobia and plan for sun.
Today's look is Robert as beach twink (well, about as close to beach twink as I'll ever get), probably in another desperate attempt to get the attention of the guy I mentioned earlier in the week. Anyone who's met me at PridePark knows who I mean. Whether he does is another matter entirely...
Today I'd like to go to the Intergender Café at the EuroPride Conference Centre, and indeed I'm going to be there anyway for some of this afternoon. So maybe the beach twink get-up wasn't such a good idea, but hell, some people have been getting the mistaken idea that I know something about trans issues, so the less credible I look, the better. Actually I just want to see Charlotte Eliasson as Dick Drake. Or so I tell myself.
Today is also the unfortunately-named 'Ethnic' day at PridePark, which means Miss Latin Gay, courtesy of GLIS (Castellano phrasebook packed and ready), and at least one of the Finnish lesbian bands. Though not the famous Iisi 17, I'm informed. Then I have to get back here and to bed early, so I won't be challenging the gender controls at the Girls' Party tonight.
Oh, and I think my camera is finally disintegrating after almost fifty years in service. Which is the most gay-friendly camera shop in town? At this most photographic of Pride events, that shouldn't be too hard a question to answer.
Today's look is Robert as beach twink (well, about as close to beach twink as I'll ever get), probably in another desperate attempt to get the attention of the guy I mentioned earlier in the week. Anyone who's met me at PridePark knows who I mean. Whether he does is another matter entirely...
Today I'd like to go to the Intergender Café at the EuroPride Conference Centre, and indeed I'm going to be there anyway for some of this afternoon. So maybe the beach twink get-up wasn't such a good idea, but hell, some people have been getting the mistaken idea that I know something about trans issues, so the less credible I look, the better. Actually I just want to see Charlotte Eliasson as Dick Drake. Or so I tell myself.
Today is also the unfortunately-named 'Ethnic' day at PridePark, which means Miss Latin Gay, courtesy of GLIS (Castellano phrasebook packed and ready), and at least one of the Finnish lesbian bands. Though not the famous Iisi 17, I'm informed. Then I have to get back here and to bed early, so I won't be challenging the gender controls at the Girls' Party tonight.
Oh, and I think my camera is finally disintegrating after almost fifty years in service. Which is the most gay-friendly camera shop in town? At this most photographic of Pride events, that shouldn't be too hard a question to answer.
2008-07-22
Wednesday 22 July 1998, 11.50
This report is going to be short, cos I have to get the next train into town and get to the Ecce Homo exhibition in time to volunteer for a couple of hours...
Yesterday then. Well the reason I got up so late (FSVO) was the QX Party Factory's Rai and Latino night, which was kinda quiet but fun. DJ Christer Broman didn't play anything like long enough before Vera from Oslo got going on her wonderful latin stuff. He reckons Stockholm is still not ready for rai dance music (I mean, like just how long has Cheb Khaled been around?). Mind you, a year ago the whole idea would have been pretty much unthinkable. This is something I'm liking about EuroPride, the way minority tastes in all sorts of thing can have a moment of glory.
Sunny PridePark. Again. This time with even more people, many newly-arrived to check out the schlager evening. Which was fun - Håkan and I played with the rainbow flag (it's hard to raise it at just the right point in the chorus, we discovered). Nanne Grönvall was just excellent. Who needs drag queens, one wonders for about half an hour?
Less exciting were the Amnesty demo at Sergels Torg (the poor woman from TV3 news had clearly been expecting a showdown with the neonazis or something, rather than 20 people with placards and speeches) and the Elbowroom art exhibition. But maybe I was just in the wrong frame of mind for it.
Oh, and a chat with the nice people at the National Federation for Transexuals reveals that the SLM leather club does not let in female-to-male transgendered folks. Time for some discussion guys?
Yesterday then. Well the reason I got up so late (FSVO) was the QX Party Factory's Rai and Latino night, which was kinda quiet but fun. DJ Christer Broman didn't play anything like long enough before Vera from Oslo got going on her wonderful latin stuff. He reckons Stockholm is still not ready for rai dance music (I mean, like just how long has Cheb Khaled been around?). Mind you, a year ago the whole idea would have been pretty much unthinkable. This is something I'm liking about EuroPride, the way minority tastes in all sorts of thing can have a moment of glory.
Sunny PridePark. Again. This time with even more people, many newly-arrived to check out the schlager evening. Which was fun - Håkan and I played with the rainbow flag (it's hard to raise it at just the right point in the chorus, we discovered). Nanne Grönvall was just excellent. Who needs drag queens, one wonders for about half an hour?
Less exciting were the Amnesty demo at Sergels Torg (the poor woman from TV3 news had clearly been expecting a showdown with the neonazis or something, rather than 20 people with placards and speeches) and the Elbowroom art exhibition. But maybe I was just in the wrong frame of mind for it.
Oh, and a chat with the nice people at the National Federation for Transexuals reveals that the SLM leather club does not let in female-to-male transgendered folks. Time for some discussion guys?
2008-07-21
Tuesday 21 July 1998, 11.50
OK, I'm back. Coffee. Good. Where was I?
After 'Gender Benders', the Dykeye closing party. The atmosphere before, during and after the film show was relaxed and fun - quite the most enjoyable company I've had at a film showing for some time.
I got a beer and chatted to Camilla Haglund and Cecilia Neant-Falk about the current Transgender Debate (TM). Cecilia agreed with my original feeling about Don Kulick's condemnation of the TS-excluding women's groups on Saturday. Just another guy telling the women what to do, basically. Of course, the situation is complicated, but at least there's some sort of open debate among the women's groups. What policy do SLM have for female-to-male transgender people? Can you get into an SLM event without a dick? The tranny guys in 'Pansexual Public Porn' got what they wanted out in the bushes - can Sweden's F2Ms get what they want?
Then me and Camilla talked about how different things are in Finland, where the trans community is well integrated into SETA, the national organisation for GLBT rights, and gradually got on to comparing notes about what was cute about butch dykes, and guys, and what a gay man thinks when he guesses wrong about a butch woman's gender, and it was all fun and liberating and Cafeteatern is such a brilliant place for a party like that.
I have given up feeling guilty about liking lesbian films. Something in me recognises something in the butch dyke/trans guy/drag king experience. I don't know what it is, but it's unusual and it's good. Any other gay guys out there feel the same? Sometimes I think I'm having fun with masculinity in just the same way as the drag kings are. And it's serious in a way, too. The apotheosis of Robert the male lesbian. :-)
Ann came out of the last film looking stunning in a dark pinstriped jacket. We chewed the fat as the party gradually picked up steam - DJs Agnieszka and Josefin playing the most fantastic slow industrial synth ethno techno mix of stuff. Get these women into the mainstream gay clubs NOW!
And yes, the few men who turn up at a dyke festival really are cuter than the average. You know who you are. ;-)
Off to PridePark with the dungarees on! Today I'm gonna be BUTCH.
After 'Gender Benders', the Dykeye closing party. The atmosphere before, during and after the film show was relaxed and fun - quite the most enjoyable company I've had at a film showing for some time.
I got a beer and chatted to Camilla Haglund and Cecilia Neant-Falk about the current Transgender Debate (TM). Cecilia agreed with my original feeling about Don Kulick's condemnation of the TS-excluding women's groups on Saturday. Just another guy telling the women what to do, basically. Of course, the situation is complicated, but at least there's some sort of open debate among the women's groups. What policy do SLM have for female-to-male transgender people? Can you get into an SLM event without a dick? The tranny guys in 'Pansexual Public Porn' got what they wanted out in the bushes - can Sweden's F2Ms get what they want?
Then me and Camilla talked about how different things are in Finland, where the trans community is well integrated into SETA, the national organisation for GLBT rights, and gradually got on to comparing notes about what was cute about butch dykes, and guys, and what a gay man thinks when he guesses wrong about a butch woman's gender, and it was all fun and liberating and Cafeteatern is such a brilliant place for a party like that.
I have given up feeling guilty about liking lesbian films. Something in me recognises something in the butch dyke/trans guy/drag king experience. I don't know what it is, but it's unusual and it's good. Any other gay guys out there feel the same? Sometimes I think I'm having fun with masculinity in just the same way as the drag kings are. And it's serious in a way, too. The apotheosis of Robert the male lesbian. :-)
Ann came out of the last film looking stunning in a dark pinstriped jacket. We chewed the fat as the party gradually picked up steam - DJs Agnieszka and Josefin playing the most fantastic slow industrial synth ethno techno mix of stuff. Get these women into the mainstream gay clubs NOW!
And yes, the few men who turn up at a dyke festival really are cuter than the average. You know who you are. ;-)
Off to PridePark with the dungarees on! Today I'm gonna be BUTCH.
Tuesday 21 July 1998, 10.40
Sunburn! Sunshine! In PridePark! More of these silly sentences with exclamation marks! Sorry!
Lunch at PridePark with Phillip and Agop and his mate. Another relaxed PridePark afternoon, Mrs Green doing her stuff outside Chokladkoppen and, well, All's Right With the World, doncha know. Excellent idea to have drag queens doing live commentary at a cafe.
Set off for Ecce Homo, visiting Södra Teatern on the way and a long conversation about masses of things with Katarina J. Catering by King Catering, as yesterday.
So, there we were, in the bedrock under Sofia Church, and there were all of our Elisabeth's pictures. Straight and non-straight visitors, moving silently and talking quietly.
It's hard to describe the impact of the pictures. Scenes from Christ's life, populated with us, with my family, the Stockholm (for want of a better word) queer community in all its variety, all its tenderness, all its pain. Other people have tried to express who we are and how we love and how we suffer, but has anyone done it like Elisabeth, our Elisabeth? That she's done it in the context of Christianity, of my home religion and the one that told me time after time after time not to be who I am, is nothing short of astonishing. Go and see Ecce Homo. Demand that it be shown where you live.
And so, after still more hanging out in PridePark, back to Dykeye. This time to the documentary programme 'Gender Benders'. We were a group of seven, what's more - interest for trans things is higher among my friends than I'd ever thought. Cool. Anyway, what an excellent bunch of stuff! Leslie Feinberg, finally making me understand what the word 'transgender' means. The glorious 'Scent uVa Butch', a smörgåsbord of interviews with dykes who identify as butch, the whole spectrum from women with actually kinda long hair to dildo-wearing trouser-packers. Funny and moving and joyful, and so many moments when I wanted to applaud and yell 'Yes! Yes! Yes!'. Robert the male lesbian again, or something else going on? Del LaGrace's astonishing 'Pansexual public porn' showed a bunch of English female-to-male guys cruising gay men. And having sex. Boy, was this hot stuff. Not so much fuck as mindfuck, of the confusing-liberating variety, and, well, umm, with a certain effect on my all-too-male equipment... To finish off, two Drag King shorts - immensely funny and empowering.
Did I say 'empowering'? *gulp*
More on this later, I'm gonna collapse if I don't go and have breakfast.
Lunch at PridePark with Phillip and Agop and his mate. Another relaxed PridePark afternoon, Mrs Green doing her stuff outside Chokladkoppen and, well, All's Right With the World, doncha know. Excellent idea to have drag queens doing live commentary at a cafe.
Set off for Ecce Homo, visiting Södra Teatern on the way and a long conversation about masses of things with Katarina J. Catering by King Catering, as yesterday.
So, there we were, in the bedrock under Sofia Church, and there were all of our Elisabeth's pictures. Straight and non-straight visitors, moving silently and talking quietly.
It's hard to describe the impact of the pictures. Scenes from Christ's life, populated with us, with my family, the Stockholm (for want of a better word) queer community in all its variety, all its tenderness, all its pain. Other people have tried to express who we are and how we love and how we suffer, but has anyone done it like Elisabeth, our Elisabeth? That she's done it in the context of Christianity, of my home religion and the one that told me time after time after time not to be who I am, is nothing short of astonishing. Go and see Ecce Homo. Demand that it be shown where you live.
And so, after still more hanging out in PridePark, back to Dykeye. This time to the documentary programme 'Gender Benders'. We were a group of seven, what's more - interest for trans things is higher among my friends than I'd ever thought. Cool. Anyway, what an excellent bunch of stuff! Leslie Feinberg, finally making me understand what the word 'transgender' means. The glorious 'Scent uVa Butch', a smörgåsbord of interviews with dykes who identify as butch, the whole spectrum from women with actually kinda long hair to dildo-wearing trouser-packers. Funny and moving and joyful, and so many moments when I wanted to applaud and yell 'Yes! Yes! Yes!'. Robert the male lesbian again, or something else going on? Del LaGrace's astonishing 'Pansexual public porn' showed a bunch of English female-to-male guys cruising gay men. And having sex. Boy, was this hot stuff. Not so much fuck as mindfuck, of the confusing-liberating variety, and, well, umm, with a certain effect on my all-too-male equipment... To finish off, two Drag King shorts - immensely funny and empowering.
Did I say 'empowering'? *gulp*
More on this later, I'm gonna collapse if I don't go and have breakfast.
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