drag culture.
i like it. not exactly sure why. probs has got something to do with the freedom of expression … but yeah …
so, yesterday i watched ‘paris is burning’ & i had quite a profound ‘Me’ revelation, as i do.
” unfold: ”
i was a teenager in the 80s. yes thats right, i’m an old fuck.
but i was a brown, ‘poor’, daughter of a christian single mother. layers of irony right there. & i found that christianity had no place for queer culture. no place for maori culture. no place for women. no place for me. no place for difference.
especially in the 80s.
i was raised in layers of confusion.
‘they’ weren’t confused. they believed their own bullshit.
i questioned it. i questioned the hypocrisy. i questioned the genuine-ness of it all. i questioned where ‘god’ was in their reality of christianity.
but i had no time to question my own sexual identity. especially layered on up-teenth sexual assault ‘issues’. & christianity had no place for any of that. there was only one right way to do sexual identity and that was at home in the bedroom with your ‘husband’ – if you were a biological woman anyways.
by default, my ‘rebellion’ came in the form of what i ‘looked like’. & that was a brown vagina.
i learned my culture was ‘wrong & uncivilised savagery’. & my ‘gender’ was just above that.
so i embraced as much as i could of the hip hop dance & music scene at the time. but it had to be smooshed with a tonne of ‘christain explanation’ to be applicable or tolerated in my world.
meaning? if it was for ‘out reach’ or winning damned brown souls from their misery, then it was semi-acceptable.
but drag culture? or homosexuality?
fuck No. there was no learning anything about that culture because according to the bible both were hell inducing ‘practices’. neither was deemed a way of life that wasn’t a choice per se. like my ethnicity.
i have been surrounded by queer persons, who were grappling with their own identities, all my life. like them, i was in my own way, trying to find where i fitted, as a brown vagina lol.
anyway, what i realised whilst watching ‘paris is burning’, is i had missed a whole ‘scene’ as i was growing up; that i was completely stoked with. i love the sounds, the freedom, the dance, the joy .. that is all an alternate reality, made by those who didn’t fit ‘mainstream’ & had decided to make their own thang.
i absolutely love that.
& while the hip-hop & dance culture that i thrived in, embraced some of the stuff that i needed, just imagine if i had found the ballroom scene! holy shit lol.
yes i may have been a straight brown vagina in amongst the queer nation lol, but i think i may have found my feng shui a lot sooner.
i guess this is a ‘what if’ kinda reminisce post full of shit that didn’t happen, but it is my attempt @ being sorta positive on a cunt of day lol.
gezus christ … i really do know how to waffle thats for sure!
kpm ©
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