This week, Midsumma announced it will drop the alphabet soup known as the LGBTIQ and replace the acronym with another lesser known acronym of DGS, which stands for Diverse Gender and Sexuality. The announcement came at the annual GLOBE fundraiser dinner where Midsumma unveiled its five year plan.
“A couple of years ago we realised we didn’t have a very clear vision of where we were heading as an organisation,” Midsumma Festival Director Tennille Moisel told Same Same. “We weren’t deliberately focusing on one part of the community or thinking about whether there was enough representation for another. We started to think about what we wanted Midsumma to be synonymous with, and what we came down to was inclusivity.”
While some will argue that the term DGS implies unity within the community as a whole and captures the whole rainbow under one umbrella term, I also wonder if this so-called evolution doesn’t throw away years of history and meaning in a nod to political correctness.
Although I never loved the whole alphabet soup – and it certainly is a mouthful – I do wonder whether a term as vague and broad as “diverse gender and sexuality” washes its hands of the very identities we’ve fought so hard to have recognised. For starters, the acronym DGS places sexuality last, when in fact the community it represents mostly identify as gay and lesbian. As one gay man told me: “I’m not diverse, I’m gay.”
Although it is important to be inclusive, I’m not sure a term as vague as “diverse gender and sexuality” is one that most of the community identifies with, and certainly it may not mean much to the mainstream who’ve only just stopped using the word gay as a synonym for lame.
Oh, that and I fear DGS sounds like a psychiatric disorder and when spelled out, it makes us sound like well, “DaGS”.
Last week, a Baltimore woman received a note from a neighbour who chastised her for having rainbow solar jars in her front year, screeching: “Your yard is becoming Relentlessly Gay!” the letter reads. “Myself and others in the neighbourhood ask that you Tone it Down… This is a Christian area and there are Children. Keep it up and I will be forced to call the police on You! Your kind need to have Respect for GOD.”
Besides coining the best hashtag in history #relentlessgay, the viral letter has prompted the owner of the house, mother of four Julie Baker to fight back with a crowdfunding campaign to fight bigotry with more rainbows, promising to turn her house into one big gay pride symbol – even painting her roof rainbow colours if she raises enough money. Since she launched her campaign, she’s already raised over $40,000. You too can donate to the relentlessly gay cause at her GoFundMe page.
The very long awaited biopic film of Timothy Conigrave’s beautiful, brilliant, much-loved and cried-over novel Holding The Man, which tells the 15-year love story of how Tim met his lifelong love John, the captain of the school football team at Xavier in the late ’70s and how both men were lost to the HIV epidemic is finally on the verge of coming to cinemas. Adapted from Tommy Murphy’s stage play, by the playwright himself, Holding The Man will be the centrepiece gala presentation at this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival on Saturday August 8. For tickets which are $65 including the screening and the after party, visit miff.com.au.
