The white Australian gay is at the Mardi Gras parade. He is at the party, proud of the bars, gay clubs, and queer spaces.
The queer refugee of color is not at the Mardi Gras parade. The party is too loud, too policed, too welcoming of Zionists (Boycott, Divest, and Sactions motion failing at Mardi Gras Annual General Meeting; Dayenu Sydney supporting the Gaza genocide), too friendly to transphobic and anti-refugee universities (University of Sydney threatening to deport Luna), and the after-party is too $$$.
Where are they?
They are applying for a protection visa or waiting for the outcome of that application. To apply for protection, the queer refugee of colour gathers their documents and prepares their application.
They, the queer refugee of colour, of [Australian address], must make the following statement in support of their claims for protection:
- The following is a summary of their claims for protection. It is not an exhaustive statement of what has happened to them in the past or the reasons why they cannot return to [country]. They will, and must, provide further information in relation to their claims during any interview with the Department of Home Affairs.
- They must also relay trauma despite pain destroying language. They must translate experiences to English in spite of linguistic barriers. They must effectively convey their background in accepted terminology, although they may not identify with the Australian LGBTIQA+ glossary of common terms (“cisgender,” “deadnaming,” “dysphoria”).
- They must keep score of hardship and distress to carry over suffering. They must simplify life events and circumstances to articulate a Westernised narrative. They must align their experiences with chronological telling and expected emotions.
Besides having to produce documentation and records of being persecuted in their home country, and navigate a Kafkaesque bureaucratic system during the asylum-seeking process, and find their own social support, and so on and so forth, the queer refugee of colour must pass gender and sexuality testing, too, with high distinction. They must be perceived as the gender and sexual orientation they identify as, or else their visa will be refused, they will be held in immigration detention, and they may be deported from Australia to death, imprisonment, and torture.
More than an “Am I Gay?” quiz on BuzzFeed, gender and sexuality testing is an interrogation process of queer refugees at risk from conversion therapy, or severe beatings in police custody, or forced medical detransition, and under threat of mandatory detention in Australia and deportation to danger. The Department of Home Affairs has a specific idea on what it is to be “gay,” and it is not to be a lesbian in Sri Lanka, or a queer in China, or a trans woman in Malaysia, but to be a white Australian gay.
To obtain status in Australia, queer refugees of colour need to perform culturally recognisable identities and narratives, strategically conceal the Malaysian trans woman or the Chinese queer or the Sri Lankan lesbian, and be the white Australian gay. “Out and loud,” the white Australian gay is flamboyant and gregarious, looks for dates and hookups on Grindr, and actively seeks sexual relationships on cruising apps. Besides having to deal with the psychosocial effects of an intensive application process (as well as the set of conditions that led them to initially apply) and collect testimonials from partners and friends, queer refugees of colour must be the white Australian gay at the Mardi Gras parade in glitter, pride flags, and rainbow sequins, “out and proud.”
“Where were you at Mardi Gras?” asks Home Affairs when the queer refugee of colour attends an interview requested by the Department.
Having met regularly with migration lawyers or casework services and located attachments and supporting evidence (including photos of them participating in queer activities in Australia), queer refugees of colour are then cross-examined and have their autobiographies and personal histories studied by Home Affairs. In great detail, queer refugees of colour are aggressively questioned about sexual acts, investigated by Home Affairs officers reviewing their experiences and expressions of sexuality. Their private lives, emotions, and relationships are analysed by asylum officers probing into sensitive information including physical anatomy, stages of physiological arousal, frequency of sexual activity, psychological aspects, and sexual attraction.
Put under high levels of scrutiny and pressure, queer refugees of colour are tested on their gender and sexual preference and quizzed about queer knowledge to prove themselves, having to describe sexual practices and behaviour in depth and at length. In 2019, a Freedom of Information (FOI) request revealed the list of intrusive questions a gay Bangladeshi couple was asked by Home Affairs. Both asylum seekers were denied permanent protection visas despite having to answer sexually explicit questions including:
- in which room they had sex,
- at what time of day they had sex,
- whether they used condoms,
- in what order they gave oral sex,
- whether they ejaculated,
- whether they were circumcised, and
- whether they swallowed each other’s semen.
In 2020, the Federal Court considered a decision of the Tribunal rejecting the asylum applications of a gay Pakistani couple (BFH16 v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection). Both asylum seekers appealed after being denied permanent protection visas because asylum courts initially found their sexuality “implausible.”
Where is the queer refugee of colour?
They are at the Palm Sunday rally. Queer refugees of colour are at the protest, out of the closets and into the streets. The protest is proud, not welcoming of cops, acknowledges Aboriginal land and recognises Palestine, and the after-protest is free.
In The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You, Iranian-American novelist Dina Nayeri writes that “to satisfy an asylum officer takes the same narrative sophistication it takes to please book critics.” Processed with gender and sexuality testing, the queer refugee of colour must tell an asylum story deemed credible to satisfy a Home Affairs officer, write a LGBTQ+ tale worthy of Queer Honi, a Queer Honi that reads:
“After the party and the protest are over, the white Australian gay and the queer refugee of colour walk into a bar. They greet each other at the gay bar, share a pitcher and a conversation. The queer refugee of colour invites the white Australian gay to a fundraiser party, and the white Australian gay gives the queer refugee of colour a spare ticket to a Mardi Gras after-party event and one more kiss. Happy Mardi Gras, goodnight.”
