Brave New Gen
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday March 2, 1995
EVERYONE knows it - all gay men love Judy, Liza and show tunes. Lesbians are really into dogs, politics and Patsy Cline.
Of course, that's utter nonsense. Even Kylie and k. d. will one day be passe'. Gay and lesbian culture is anything but static - it changes faster than an Albury drag queen between numbers. And a lot of that change is generational, each composed of reluctant adolescents and nervous teenagers, aware that they're different, but unsure how they fit into the images of muscled gay boys, Vanity Fair lesbians and glittering drag queens.
To come out today requires both courage and self-awareness. Faced with the horrible epidemics of HIV and homophobia, gay and lesbian kids nevertheless are coming out, often proud and very, very aware.
"I guess I knew at school," says Monika Rodziewicz, 20, who went from Sydney Girls' High School to do an arts degree at Sydney University.
"I had a very intense romantic friendship with a girl who was a year below me. It turned into a brief sexual affair. I didn't have the vocab to express it as 'I am a lesbian', but I just knew it felt right, it felt comfortable, it felt like a beautiful thing and it felt like something I wanted to explore further." Rodziewicz's parents moved to Canberra, and it was on a visit that she told them she was a lesbian.
"They picked me up from the bus depot, we're in the car, and there's a news item on the radio about (gay and lesbian) antivilification legislation. The reporter was talking about John Fahey, and I made a really loud derogatory comment about him - I was so pissed off." (Fahey's Liberal NSW Government opposed the legislation.) "My parents were really confused, and asked 'why does this affect you?' I really clumsily blurted it out. They were both really silent. I realised it was a bad move. I'd planned to sit them down and talk to them over dinner.
"Then the next day they asked me to leave. They said here you go; we'll pay for your bus ticket. It was basically, 'get out'. I was shocked. I don't know what they said to each other, but how could I have expected anything like that to happen?" Rodziewicz has not seen or spoken to her parents since.
"The pain of it all is still with me. I've thought about reestablishing contact, about making that first step. I sent them Christmas and birthday cards, but after a while I just stopped because I knew I wasn't going to get anything back from them." Rodziewicz is now spending most of her energy on the Queer Youth Cultural Coalition (QYCC), which recently held a forum and an exhibition of young queer artists as part of the Mardi Gras Festival. She stresses both the importance of young people having a cultural outlet like QYCC, and also the difference between its exhibition and more common versions of lesbian and gay art.
"QYCC was far more in-your-face and subversive. One of the main aims was to promote the visibility of queer youth, and I think it's essential to have that outlet and to have young people participating in gay and lesbian culture," she says.
Rodziewicz, like all the people interviewed for this article, is a strong coalitionist - the term for those who believe lesbians and gay men should work together for common causes.
"I think lesbian separatism is a bit of an old dinosaur. It's really dying out. Young dykes have a far more open-minded attitude.
"QYCC is definitely coalitionist. We've even expanded what coalitionism is - it's not just lesbians and gays; we've included bisexuals and trans-gender people. Coalitionism is a reality in our community and now is the time to stretch the parameters." Brendan Bolger, 20, came out when he was 14. "I'd had enough. I needed to talk about it," he says. He was carted off to the local GP for a chat, to see if he was sure. He was.
Bolger's advice for parents of other gay and lesbian children is simple. "Support them in everything. Because adolescence is hard and confusing enough without having to deal with sexuality, which most of the time you are told is wrong, dirty and shameful. If you don't support your children they end up growing up with no trust in you or anyone else. If they can't look up to you for guidance and advice and something positive, they've got no-one to look up to and they lose faith," he says.
Three years ago, Bolger did Fun And Esteem, an AIDS Council workshop for young gay men. It was here he first learnt the information essential for any sexually active kid.
"It was really useful for safe sex, because up until then I had practised unsafe sex. I thought that by having sex with other men, I immediately had AIDS. I had no idea about what HIV transmission was then. I just assumed that it was going to happen to me." Bolger believes adamantly that all children should receive explicit safe sex education - something he didn't get at Belmore Boys' High School.
"We have to teach them," he says. "It's something that is threatening their lives. If you're not prepared to do something about it, then you're condoning them being killed off." Bolger's experience of the HIV/AIDS epidemic has recently become far more personal.
"Recently two of my closest friends became HIV positive. I think I'm still in shock from that, because it was something I never expected to happen. I've been to a couple of funerals of acquaintances, but it's never really hit home - the sort of people you've grown up with, and shared a lot of time with, actually contracting HIV.
"At one stage you think you've got the rest of your life together. Then, all of a sudden, it's cut short. How long have we got, 10, 15 years? I look back over the last 10 years and I think how far I've come and then I think how short that time span is." Bolger's aims for the future aren't set yet. He'd like to be a journalist, but is more interested in simpler things.
"I'd just like to be successful in whatever I do. And happy. I am now - I'm lucky I have a lover, Austin, who supports me," Bolger says.
Aubrey Jonker, 20, is a student at Sydney University and lives with her parents in Blackett, a suburb just north of Mt Druitt.
"I suppose you have a simplistic view when you're younger," Jonker says. "I thought once I came out, that would be the solution to all my problems. It was going to be like some kind of utopia." She laughs. "I guess I realised that it wasn't perfect. Nothing ever is." Jonker is the lesbian officer for the university's Student Representative Council. Her sense of acceptance and happiness about her sexuality helps in this job - but her own coming out was not trouble free. "I found coming out as a lesbian really stressful," she says. "I suppose in practical terms it was relatively smooth, in that my parents didn't throw me out of home or anything.
"Mentally, it was so difficult, because I never saw it as an option when I was growing up. When it first occurred, I thought no, no, I can't be like that. It's OK for other people to be that, but not me.
"For a while, I thought I must have been bisexual, because somewhere in my twisted logic I thought that was better than being a dyke, because I wasn't completely cutting myself off from heterosexuality." Jonker told her parents about her sexuality two years ago.
"I decided I couldn't go on living the type of life I was living, going out and not letting my parents know what I was doing, so I decided to tell my mother. She cried, and was really upset.
"The next morning I told my dad, and he just reacted with silence. That's their way of dealing with things - they just won't talk about it.
"I guess in some ways I feel that even though I've come out to them, I can't talk about things openly. Like I can mention I'm going to be in the Mardi Gras parade, but I can't tell them all the details or how exciting it is for me. I'd like to be able to do that." Jonker is concerned about about the exclusiveness of gay and lesbian culture and the narrow range of representation in Sydney's gay and lesbian media.
In the future, she hopes to become involved in community politics.
"I feel it's really important that young gays, lesbians and assorted queers become really active in the community and really mobilise. We have to fully express our views, rather than just let them go, because perhaps we feel that other people are older than us and they know better," Jonker says.
"Celebrating is all very well, but we've got to make sure we've got something to celebrate." Jason Lane is 17. He lives at 2010, Sydney's gay and lesbian youth refuge in Glebe.
He's wearing ripped jeans which show the stockings he's got on underneath, 12-hole Docs, a Pansy Division T-shirt, a nose ring and silver nail polish. His sense of personal style may explain why he had trouble growing up in Penrith.
"I used to have a bright red mohawk as well - I didn't fit into the average Penrith look, the thongs and stubbies. I didn't go down well in that Panthers World of Entertainment kind of country," he says.
Lane left home before telling his mother and stepfather he was gay. For him, it was either 2010 or the street, and he's happy to have found sympathetic accommodation with other young gays and lesbians. He also says he's known he was gay "forever".
"I've always known that boys are my thing. I didn't actually get the word, like the poof thing, until I was 12. It was on a TV program and I worked it out - 'Ah! That's what I am'.
"I used to try and not think about it. I'd try and think about boobs or whatever, because that's what boys were supposed to do. It just wouldn't work. I'd always go back to, like, crotches and stuff. I knew that I wasn't going to change.
"I did have one girlfriend, just to see whether that would be my thing, and like I didn't even touch her! She thought there was something wrong with her or something. It was pretty funny. She'd be coming on to me, and I'd like go and put a record on ... stuff like that," he says.
LANE is not a fan of Sydney's homogenous gay and lesbian scene. "I think it's really boring. It's just so false, and everybody's doing the same thing. I'm not into gym and Judy Garland and whatever," he says.
He is into music and visual arts, which he studies at Meadowbank TAFE. Being 17, one of the issues that most concerns him is unequal age-of-consent laws. "I think it's a load. Like ... John and Julie can do it (at 16) but John and Steve can't." Lane is also critical of the way mainstream media represent gay and lesbian life. "They make us out as if all we do is take drugs, party and have sex. It's as if we don't have normal lives. They think our lives are like one big Mardi Gras, and that's just bulls---." Lane's experience with HIV/AIDS is also limited, but safe sex has always been an issue.
"I do know people who are positive. I don't know anyone who has died of it as yet, but I probably will. It's only a matter of time, as I see it." Lane hopes to keep working in visual arts, but he's not second-guessing his future just yet. Like all the people interviewed for this story, he's happy to have made it so far, and has no problems with his identity or sexuality.
"It's just me. It's just how I am. And I feel fine!" Young gays and lesbians can call the Gay and Lesbian Counselling Service on (02) 360 2211 or 008 805 379. P-FLAG, a support group for parents of lesbians and gays, is on (02) 899 1101.
© 1995 Sydney Morning Herald
