Queer Performance - Central Research and Creativity Online

DL: I also think that a point you’ve touched on a few times – this idea of
solidarity and collective responsibility – is really important. I hear the buzz of
lots of people saying ‘LGBTQ’ is a terrible bit of cheap journalism. Grow up!
It’s not that long an acronym. You can cope with five letters you cheap hack!
Secondly, of course individual sub-communities do fragment because in fact
gay men who like to go to the gym eventually realise they have nothing in
common with their lesbian sister who lives in Stoke Newington and owns a
cat; once you start defining yourself as a human being, one of sixty four
thousand million genders possibly, you start to see why these distinctions are
so silly. At the risk of sounding like tedious old Weimar historian, what you
learn from the Weimar period is that you could be very out and gay and there
were lots of gay clubs… it was actually a trend. There are songs from that
period actually making fun of the idea of everyone being so hermaphroditic
and gender fluid. This is 1926, through 30-something! It was such a prevalent
trend, people actually felt they were able to take the piss out of it in songs.
And then ten years later they were being rounded up in gas chambers. It’s
extraordinary. No minority should ever think that everything’s ok because it
doesn’t take long before someone pulls the plug on your freedom.
What I would drive home to people is the importance of solidarity. You
actually do have power collectively and as soon as you start deciding you are
in a minority – say ‘queers between 25 and 40 who watch Star Trek’ – you
might as well throw in the towel.
AM2: So perhaps don’t be complacent?
DL: Don’t get comfortable. Remember the things you have in common with
people are the important things, not the things that make you different – much
as I think celebrating difference is important. I don’t expect some kind of
monolithic, Stalinist bloc, but I think it’s really important that we are reminded
that we have very little power individually.