When I came of age, queer characters seemed to crop up all over the place in film and television, but not in print. They were side characters that appeared in American films, drag queens that possessed more visual flair than literary like in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, or women in semi-homoerotic, semi-homophobic narratives like Jennifer’s Body and Mulholland Drive. When they did appear in print, they were in young adult novels that were dismissed as frivolous romances, like Simon v.s. the Homosapiens Agenda. Nobody took them seriously. Although, to be fair, at thirteen years old we took very little seriously.
Narratives of liberation
The first blatantly homosexual narrative I ever studied in an educational context was The Well of Loneliness, early in my second year. Literature is the medium through which humans have identified themselves for centuries, have tried to work out who they are and where they come from and what they can be, and we were not in it. Jeanette Winterson, author of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, writes “That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.” Novelised fiction also offers permanency and anonymity that the digital world does not.
Even now there is little to show. Diana Reid’s Love & Virtue comes to mind, even if it seems homophobic as much as homoerotic, the gay relationship appearing briefly on the periphery and never granted explicit recognition. And while novels were few and far between, there were certainly no queer magazines. I had the good fortune of going to an all-girls school where girls flipped like dominoes during puberty to reveal which flag they were. We didn’t really know what we were doing — people changed names, genders and sexualities at the flip of a switch, because nobody had an instruction book and the only reference we had, aside from those dubious films, was each other. But aside from zines that we made and American movies from the 1990s and 2000s that we pirated online, we were fumbling around in ambiguity and obscurity. Queer people no longer seemed to draw the same fever-pitch levels of fear, hatred and bigotry; but nor were we a fixture of literary culture, even though we permeated Sydney’s arts and social scene, and have done so for decades.
With a lack of representation in print there is also a lack of nuance, which has even greater scope to identify the complexities and fragilities present in the community. Print is the form that survives centuries, physical material passed from hand to hand that provides concrete evidence of existence and history. These histories, when they are only available in the ephemeral digital sphere, are constrained by shorter attention spans, by the desire to keep scrolling quickly until the end, by the hazy glow of the screen or even by a battery limit. Print media is tangible and undeniable in a way that digital literature is not. And when the record of those experiences is available online in the medium of a website, blog or social media page, it is harder to preserve and much less likely to be exposed to academic interest or debate than physical evidence filed in an archive.
Printed in obscurity: Narratives of abuse
When queer people are treated as a homogenous entity there are several dangerous consequences, particularly in the invisibility of abusive relationships. Australian National University Gender Studies professor Isobel Lavers reflects on the way that the archive is constantly negotiated when it comes to queer women, particularly in reference to Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir In the Dream House, which considers how the queer women’s archive has failed to acknowledge a history of abuse and violence because of gendered biases: “The limitations of these rigid binaries, a rigidity in thinking I would argue is antithetical to queer positions inherently, is echoed throughout queer women’s abuse testimony.”
In the prologue Machado explains how novelised memoirs such as hers add to the archive: “I enter into the archive that domestic abuse between partners who share a gender identity is both possible and not uncommon, and that it can look something like this. I speak into the silence. I toss the stone of my story into a vast crevice; measure the emptiness by its small sound.”
Within the example of abuse in homosexual relationships, Lavers posits that “violence and abuse is known almost exclusively within a “heterosexual paradigm” that understands abusers as men and enforces a rigidity in understanding abuse.” These ideas about gender roles in relationships go beyond issues of abuse to reflect on how our understanding of what is ‘normal’ is substantiated by an archive that, regarding the vast majority of Australian literature, displays heterosexual relationships as a default and homosexual relationships as alien. When victims of domestic violence do not have print narratives that reflect their own experiences, it is harder to develop a frame of reference for seeking support and getting out of dangerous situations. They only have access to narratives that portray other types of relationships; not only that, but the scarcity of nuanced homosexual narratives could develop an impression that their experiences are unique and thus cannot be helped.
Remedying the archival gaps
A widespread and growing support for queer communities has culminated in state-run initiatives that promote investing in queer archives. The NSW State Library recently established ‘The Archives of Sexuality and Gender,’ which contains publicly accessible data from sources in Australia and around the world, dating from as far back as the 16th century. In addition, the Australian Queer Archives (AQuA) possesses an enormous collection of resources that have been collected since 1978, as a way to preserve the cultural memory of the queer struggle towards recognition specifically since the beginning of Mardi Gras. The intentionally diverse range of sources and archival materials is a balm for a vast mass of work that has patched together some of the cultural and historical gaps, linking the records and experiences of people across time periods and movements. However, the fact that these archives have been assembled in retrospect rather than actively compiled makes it much harder to collate a comprehensive record, with it being very likely that significant materials have been lost due to not being valued at the time of their creation.
The Women’s Library in Newtown has collected books written about and by women since 1991, with a focus on queer women’s literature. The library itself was established in 1994, and its efforts in the archive and in a range of social events is an important effort to address both the issues facing the queer women’s archive and queer social events around the issue of accessibility. The library itself is open for members of the public to visit, and regularly hosts community events such as book clubs, archival events and community meetings. It is run on a volunteer basis, which suggests some vulnerability in terms of continuity but it has persevered for three decades and is not going anytime soon.
Although the library itself was the product of a small group of women in queer media’s heyday of the 1990s, it is now supported by the wider community, with books donated to the library by the public and by some publishers including Spinifex Press. It is largely targeted at an older queer community, with fewer events that cater to young people. However it has demonstrated notable endurance in surviving the vast social exodus towards social media and online socialising, and durability in developing a system that relies on new generations of volunteers rather than the same group of people who founded it.
Anne Hoffmann, a Sydney local and longtime volunteer at the library, remarked on the vast archive of queer newsletters, magazines and newspapers from across the world and at local universities. “You’d have a subscription [to queer news] as part of your groups and that would pay for the newsletter. People would have a subscription just to keep them going.” She commented that “the quality of the paper made it hard to preserve” the newspapers which had been collected in that archive. When Anne was growing up, she remembered “in 1995 one of my psych lecturers going ‘you have to learn about this brand new [internet]’, it’s going to change the world! Everything was still in print, and bulletin boards were the thing that happened before the internet.”
Social spaces
Secondhand bookshop and café Sappho Books on Glebe Point Rd is one of the rare local spaces where queer culture is fostered and normalised beyond nightclubs and bars. Cathal Reynolds, who has worked there for many years, said that “There’s not many places that aren’t centred around alcohol” when it comes to queer socialising. “I think online spaces are the easiest place to find people.” He added that in regards to the cost of living crisis, “Everything costs money. You can’t go out without money. You have to pay for the space you take up.” Cathal’s view on the more generalised queer print media was “I think a lot of people just couldn’t afford to do passion projects. They’re all more general because they just have to be able to survive.”
The pandemic spurred a significant shift for the social lives of all young people, but for the queer community it “sped everything up.” There was already a slowing social scene, but COVID caused a sudden halt that stopped young queer people from socialising and made it immensely difficult to get back on track even after lockdown. While there are still places like Birdcage and The Bearded Tit where local queer communities flourish, this still takes place at night with alcohol, and is usually prohibitive without money or willing queer friends. At USyd, there is the QueerSpace, a room specifically allocated for the sole use of queer students, as well as a handful of societies like SHADES, Queer STEM, QOCO (Queers of Colour) and Queer Revue. However these societies tend to host events infrequently and usually to centre them again around alcohol and being out late, something which is inaccessible to many students who live far away or affected by the current cost-of-living crisis.
Jules, a radio host and veteran of Newtown queer society who frequents the Women’s Library, discussed several queer nightclubs that featured large in her life, including The Taxi Club, Ruby’s, Midnight Shift and Tropicana among others. Most of these no longer exist today. “Oxford St will always be Oxford St,” she said, but “the establishments have disappeared. Lockdown destroyed everything.”
Digital Spheres
Dating apps have surged in popularity as a way to meet queer people, even sometimes just to make friends. Platforms like Hinge, Bumble, She and Grindr are convenient avenues for those looking to make as many connections as possible, although this tends to result in shallower relationships and time spent doom scrolling through profiles rather than getting to know someone. Furthermore, access is not equal: some queer people who are not yet out would be putting themselves at risk by using these sites, while women, trans or nonbinary people may feel less safe than men.
Some meeting groups, like the Lesbian Run Club and Frontrunners LGBTQIA+ manage local events that try to go beyond this formula, hosting weekly meetups that revolve around sport, crafts, yoga and so on. There is still an emphasis on trying to meet potential partners rather than friends, but the opportunity to be in an exclusive community space is extremely important. The Sydney Gay Gals is another queer social group that has a whopping 3,700 members and a vast range of activities including book clubs, drink nights, sports sessions, film festivals, conversation groups and parties, with roughly half of the events directed specifically at young people. These groups are some of the best ways that the internet has been used to help the queer social scene thrive rather than confine it to online chat groups, using websites like Meetup, a platform allowing people with similar interests to find each other and then hold in-person events. This could become even more beneficial if it gained greater permanency and physical presence, through establishing permanent meeting locations or advertising in physical spaces like on community noticeboards, to improve accessibility. Even better would be printed records of these groups, reflective of a developing community. A tangible, permanent record would ensure that these fragments of social history do not vanish if the online presence dissipates.
Queer Journalism
During the 1990s, every state in Australia had a gay and lesbian publication. The NSW lesbian publication was called Lesbians on the Loose, and was distributed for free throughout the state and the country. It was the longest-running publication of its kind, and allowed lesbians a literary space of their own.
According to Frances Rand, a co-founder of Lesbians on the Loose, “the single biggest [issue] was visibility. It was easier not to recognise our relationships and discriminate against us when we were hidden. The more gays and lesbians came out to friends, family and in public, the harder it became to ignore the validity of our relationships. Lesbians on the Loose with its listings of social, political and sporting groups, activities, personals, dances and bars enabled not only the growth and development of a lesbian community but a sense of pride in ourselves. It was OK to be gay; we didn’t have to hide any more.” This print media has developed a space that fosters both the queer women’s archive, and all issues of the magazine have been digitised and saved in the National Library of Australia, allowing it to remain permanently accessible.
However, the magazine stopped printing in 2019, shortly after Barbara Farrelly, who had co-founded the magazine with Rand in 1990, passed away. Despite flourishing for nearly three decades, the magazine did not have the durability to continue over multiple generations. It was distributed for free across Sydney and in various locations around Australia, with a circulation of 20,000 when its printing ceased and it began to be digitised.
Fortunately, there are other outlets for queer media, with FUSE and QNews being two of the main sources. Critically, both of these are free to access. QNews is available in newsletter form with a subscription to be mailed out across the country. But these are not aimed at a particular queer minority group; they are directed towards all queer people, which is beneficial for the vast scope that it provides but also detrimental to groups that once had dedicated, specific forms of print media aimed at them.
For queer people who have been effaced from the history books since within living memory, the print archive is a space not only to preserve our stories, but a means of reclaiming the history that we have been denied. In it we can see the loves, struggles and victories of those who have come before us: it is a reminder to every person who has grown up not knowing who they were or if anyone else was like them that they are not alone.
*Some names have been changed.
