I am loath to write this piece for fear of being ghettoised as a lesbian writer - but it occurred to me today that, for people living in the big gay-friendly cities of the world, what Mardi Gras represents to the gay boy in the bush on the verge of suicide, the trans kid wrestling with gender and sexuality or the lesbian girl in the suburbs contemplating an unsatisfying yet completely acceptable marriage might be utterly lost.
As an out teenage lesbian in the large country town of Adelaide in the early nineties, light years away from London Pride, Wigstock NY, or Sydney Mardi Gras for that matter, the possibility of living a happy, successful life as an open queer seemed slight at best and positively dangerous at worst.
So I saved my coin, quite literally, and bought a bus ticket (as I couldn’t afford the interstate flight prior to the days of domestic airline competition) to attend my first Mardi Gras in Sydney.
Now, I can’t claim to truly understand those that went before me and laid a solid foundation for me to build my life on, but I appreciate them.
I am not so a-historical as to assume that gay people need to stop whinging because the battle has been won. I am all too aware that progress is tenuous and can be taken away by the flick of a pen. Those on the coalface of Proposition 8 (The proposition which overturned the California Supreme Court’s ruling that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry) in California would attest to that.
For those living in Sydney the rhetoric continues, after an involuntary yawn at the mere mention of Mardi Gras, that is. What’s the point? The fight has been won. It’s so Sydney-centric. What does it really mean? It doesn’t stand for anything anymore. It’s just an opportunity for a bunch of queers to engage in state-endorsed hedonism.
Like that’s a bad thing.
The reality though is quite different. The origins of Mardi Gras are steeped in an inaccurate mythology of biblical proportion. The original Mardi Gras was a party, not a riot with the intention of revolution, or a march for equality. It was a party celebrating the freedom to love who we damn well choose.
A freedom enjoyed by so many who take it for granted as a default and never even consider otherwise.
The first Mardi Gras party was initially approved by the police until, after heading down Oxford St from Taylor Square, it had that permission ceremoniously revoked and so descended into the brutality and violence for which it is known.
An unintended riot, that ironically, ensured its future.
Mardi Gras today is as much a rite of passage to most queer youth as schoolies is to high-school graduates, as it was for me when I stepped off that bus many years ago.
In Australia we celebrate a horse race and dignify it with a public holiday in Victoria. We celebrate a monarchy that means less to the majority of our citizens than Harry Potter. We celebrate an eight-hour work day and then actively and intentionally work twelve instead. We celebrate ‘one day in September’ like a pilgrimage to Mecca.
Why not celebrate Mardi Gras as the party it was always intended to be?
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