In Search of Our Queer Gardens: Live Homosexual Acts

Hello readers and welcome to another edition of “In Search of Our Queer Gardens,” my running column that examines various artists whose art that I have found to be compelling and speaks of Queer experiences. Two of my personal goals in writing this ongoing column is to a) come to my own, personal definition of what Queer Arts may look like and b) try to incorporate the inspiration I gain from these artists into my own production of art. This week, we have something a bit different. Instead of looking at a particular artist, as I have in the past, I wanted to examine an event we have on campus that is all about Queer Art.

Live Homosexual Acts is a series of monologues written and performed by JMU students as part of JMU’s annual week of LGBTQIQA pride, GayMU, hosted by Madison Equality. 2012’s LHA occurred last Friday night and was, I think, a pretty amazing show. (Full disclosure: This year, I was fortunate enough to join the wonderful student volunteers and participated in the show by performing a monologue that I had written.) I wanted to write a post not only giving details about this year’s show but also, I guess, explore the experience of what it was like to create and perform Queer art. If you happened to miss the show, here’s a great way to find out what it was all about!

From the time that I first heard about Live Homosexual Acts two years ago, I had wanted to submit a monologue and perform it myself but was always too chickenshit to do it. I typically work on Friday nights, so I was never able to attend an actual show but I know many students who had attended the past two shows and really enjoyed the experience. This year, my last year at JMU, I decided to push myself to really follow through on writing and performing a piece, and I know that the radical Queer voice that I’ve been developing recently, especially on this blog, really gave me the courage I was previously lacking to do this. The experience that I was able to have with the amazing students who participated in this year’s show is something I know I will never regret.

We had a diverse series of selected monologues this year that represented a multitude of voices: there were monologues about being Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual in addition to two (radically different) pieces about Trans* experiences.  There were seven pieces total that contained as many topics as there were identities: the difficulties of coming out, the hardships of living in a hostile society, gender politics, the erasure of identity and speaking out against damaging stereotypes both outside and inside the Queer community. The diversity of voices, I think, is really emblematic of one of the most wonderful aspects of the Queer community: we are so incredibly different from each other in so many ways yet we can be unified in our fight for equality and autonomy.

I’m not going to spend too much on my own piece, but to give a quick rundown of my intentions in my monologue: I wanted to call out heterosexual privilege in a way that showed how “normalization” creates blindness and complacency. I also wanted to juxtapose the homophobic and bigoted rhetoric of our nation’s politicians  with the bigoted actions of students on our campus. I wanted to express that, to me, the student who calls me a faggot as I walk down the street is just as bigoted as Rick Santorum, as Michelle Bachman and all of them are just as bigoted as the Westboro Baptist Church. To me, there are not degrees of bigotry but instead its one large dialogue of hatred that they are all participating in.

In the years that I’ve been at JMU, I’ve been called a faggot and a queer as I’ve walked across the quad in broad daylight and nearby bystanders did nothing. I have seen advertisements for GayMU publicly vandalized with messages such as “You Don’t Speak for JMU” and have watched the Breeze mysteriously not report on it when we asked them to. I’ve seen the Breeze publish front-page headlines that quote Kate Obenshein and her absolutely disrespectful “LGBTWhatevers” without comment. I have also seen the Breeze try to ponder why JMU would get two out of five stars for how accepting the campus is of LGBTQIQA students and offer little to no actual insight on what is like to actually be Queer on this campus aside from a few quotes from some students.

The wonder of Live Homosexual Acts then is that we are no longer being spoken for, spoken against or spoken about. We are capable of speaking for ourselves. We can talk back. I was able to express my utter rage at homophobia on our campus in a space that promoted that, embraced that and encouraged that. Other students were able to give voice to minority identities on campus that are so often erased by the myopic delusion of “tolerance” that we are told exists on this campus.

The purpose of this show,  to me, is to creatively act out and speak out in public. That is vital for our community on campus. We need that space to foster those expressions and the discussions that result. A space in which to howl against the injustices of our society and to also heal from them as well. That space is absolutely necessary for our well being and I am so grateful that I was allowed to be a participant in it this year.

This is what Queer Art is for and this is how we are using it.