Last post of the day, I promise. Well, okay, I don't promise, but I'll cross my fingers on your behalf.
I sometimes get a little annoyed at the LGB community for forgetting the T's and us Q's. Q's--generally accepted as "Queer," sometimes stated as "Questioning"--don't really fit in the fairly binary boxes of L, G, or B. Likewise with T's, but as an outsider, I don't feel qualified to speak on their behalf today.
Anyway, that's really just a side rant.
In Queer news, I wanted to share a couple of links here.
First, a post from Offbeat Bride on the crossroads between heteronormative expectations and Queer identity in the wedding planning process. As a Queer female who married a Queer male, and who was pronounced married by Luke Skywalker in front of an abandoned building while dressed as Mr. and Ms. Pac Man, I totally get this. My partner and I wanted to break from the normative politics of a traditional wedding. Mostly, though, we wanted to have fun.
Still, we were pressured into paying for catering rather than having a pot luck or going Dutch, guilted into sending paper invites by expectations of some attendees, and instructed to have a gift registry (we hadn't wanted gifts, but figured we could have the option of charitable donations). Moreover, as the wedding got closer, the stress of planning a "real" wedding started to hit. This wedding was supposed to be fun, like having a party; why had that changed?
Anyway, it's worth a read, and made me think a lot about Queer identity and the way it can be hard to reconcile with the institution of marriage. Which we already knew, but despite our feelings on marriage--and especially on the lack of marriage rights for all--US immigration laws wouldn't acknowledge our partnership without a certificate. So, anyway, we figured we'd make a big old Queer spectacle of it and try to preserve our own values while still honoring the commitment asked of us.
Bit I digress...
The second link is just a pretty awesome link someone shared with me about an international Queer film festival in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. I really appreciate the way foreign films tend to deal with LGBTQ issues more intricately, and with less stereotyping, and I'm excited to see how many of these films I can find on Netflix and online.
2 comments:
We'll make sure that the Mario/Princess follow-up is stress free :P
It did turn out a lot more stressful than we realised, but I think a big part of that was down how little time we had to get things done together when I got over there! (plus a lot of the organising that we'd already done falling apart through no fault of our own!)
Still, I think its success can be measured by my great-uncle's initial uneasiness about the whole thing, to saying at the end of the day that it was one of the happiest weddings he'd ever been to!
That's great! Uncle Joe ftw!
Also, very true. I didn't think we'd have things unravel quite so thoroughly. My classmate had warned me that I'd need some stress relief, but I kind of looked at her cockeyed initially. Oh, was she right.
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