All Things Queer

(Above)

Good morning parents

I'm gay. I've wanted to tell you for a long time. I thought doing it this way would be a piece of cake. I hope you still love me. I mean, it's hard not to love someone who baked you a cake.

My first time, I was so extraordinarily nervous that afterward I could not remember much of what happened. I still don’t today. Entirely unexpectedly, I have actual amnesia. When I try to remember, I see flashes of images, I feel a few bursting emotions, and there are a handful of distinct thoughts that I can recall. But these span no more than a few seconds – brief moments that randomly intersperse those five minutes.

My debut performance as a drag king was terrifying, and I’d do anything to never experience that debilitating terror ever again. I’ve never really shared this, but honestly it was a disappointment for me the next day when I realized that perhaps I should not continue with it. I had thought I would fall in love with it in my first try, but the enjoyment simply did not measure up to the level of fear that overtook me.

However, I did continue, and I can earnestly say that I’m incredibly happy for that. Initially, I stayed because I simply wanted to avoid disappointing my new troupe brothers. I had made a commitment, one I would be ashamed to break. But with time, my anxieties toward performing fell to the side and I was able to begin embracing how amazing it is.

With Bros B4 Ho’s, I have performed about twenty shows (…wait, really? Is that it?), with most being at Bubbles Bar in Green Point. The rewards have been phenomenal. The choice to begin performing was one that drew from a desire to have the space to dress and behave openly as a man. The real outcome has far surpassed that though. To be publicly celebrated as a man, again and again, has proven exceptional to my budding sense of self. If only I could, in just words, express the magnitude of dragging’s impact on my ability to finally, FINALLY, allow myself to begin transitioning to male. After nine years of knowing who I am meant to be, I finally feel as though I finally have the courage to begin the process to becoming that person.

In response to the recent Gay Men Will Marry Your Girlfriends video.

URGENT: SIGN AND SHARE

A bill proposing that gay and lesbian Ugandans be executed is coming back to Uganda's Parliament - it could pass at any moment.

President Museveni once promised that he would not sign this bill into law. With pressure mounting on him to support the bill, only a massive global outcry - along with our friends in Uganda - will make him keep his promise.

Last year, we stopped this bill in its tracks last year. We need to do it again.

One of the better gay rights campaigns I've seen in a while..

For more from Oh, Her got to: www.kellyncoetzee.com

A past couple of months I blogged about almost seven murders of LGBTI people, and today I find myself writing about yet another murder of a young lesbian woman in Cape Town. Saturday morning (10/11/2012) I received a call from Ndumie Funda the founder and Director of Lulekisizwe a project that nurses, supports and feeds the lesbian bisexual and trans woman (LBT) in townships who are victims and survivors of “corrective rape”, whom I had just seen the day before and we were just talking about the current situation facing the LGBTI community in Cape Town especially in the townships. Funda sounded stressed and in shock over the phone when she asked me to get the word out about the murder of Sihle Skotshi (19) who was an active member of Lulekisizwe. Later I met up with Funda and  had an opportunity to interview the two survivors of the attack who were with Sihle when she died.

I know many people who think marriage is an outdated, conservative, downright needy idea. Why do gay people want to marry? they ask. Not even straight people should marry. Marriage is irrelevant. It is a club for the insecure. The opposite of independence. If you’re really in love, you don’t need a piece of paper.

Fair enough; you don’t need a piece of paper to prove that you love someone. But you need intention, and commitment represents that. Loving only in the present is not enough. The most powerful love reaches into the past and stretches into the future. It keeps up its rhythm of caring when the circumstances are rough, hard, bad, confusing. Love delivers loving actions when the feelings are rebelling. And that is when a promise becomes so important. It is the glue that holds you together when you are weak, tired, human.

Commitment is not the opposite of freedom. Marriage becomes really relevant precisely when it nurtures your independence; helps you grow as your own person. I was in bondage in relationships where the love was weak; it was in a strong love that I found myself able to move, stretch, test my limits.

Rapunzel cut all her hair off and everyone was totally into it but one unexpected consequence was that she kept getting hit on by women.

After like the tenth time it happened she wanted to say to the girl, “Is this still a thing, that only lesbians have short hair? Can’t pretty much anyone have short hair now?” But then she was like, Eh, yolo, and they made out.

via fairytalesfor20somethings.tumblr.com

It’s a different point in time for every person, when one realises just what has happened. I realised when I was searching for your things in my room. I stood in front of my dresser straining my mind to remember what was not mine, and it occurred to me that you were like that pair of pants I offered to repair for you and the cosy socks you loaned me after an impromptu sleepover at yours. They were never meant to belong to me; they were only a loan. Except that I’d become so accustomed to their casual presence that I’d eventually accepted them as a part of my life and stopped believing they would ever leave. The pants, the socks, and you.