L: Let’s maybe circle back to the beginning of this conversation, when you talked about feeling safe at queer parties. Could you tell me a little about what makes a space feel queer for you?
Primarily the intention behind it, like most of the queer parties, you know they are queer because it’s queer people organizing them. I think also when you go into a queer party… I no longer have this perception, I lost it because I don’t party with straight people anymore, but I have a friend who is queer but is hanging out with straight people a lot, and she is partying with straight people a lot, and once she came to a Ganymedes party, she was like ‘Wow, everyone is just so free to express themselves!”, and everyone is just…
It just all feels so free and without this need to impress each other or something like that, you know? And to me, that’s a queer space, this space where you can just feel that you can be whoever the fuck you want.
“To me, that’s a queer space, this space where you can just feel that you can be whoever the fuck you want.”
I really like that at Ganymedes parties, you can… I talk about Ganymedes parties because I go to those, but also just at queer parties in general, you can go there and you will see people who just came from work and didn’t have time to change, and people who definitely made this the event of their day and got like… face: done, outfit: on point, and these people just co-exist in the same space and have the same amount of fun. Yeah, that’s queer spaces for me, where you can just be whoever.
L: Is there anything that you would like to put out there that we didn’t talk about yet?
Yes. One thing that I recently stopped apologizing for and stopped feeling bad about is stimming, so self-stimulating behaviour, repeating certain phrases, for me it’s also very much about movement, making different sounds, like it can be anything, and I recently sort of stopped limiting that.
Because I have been limiting sort of my expression of emotions for a long, long time and at some point I was just like: ‘What would happen if I stopped that, what would happen if I just did whatever?’ So that’s one of the ways in which I have been taking up space unapologetically.
The other one is, also because of my sensory processing issues and sort of difficulties in figuring out conversations for example, especially when they are with people I don’t know, with people whose body language I’m not really sure of, like it’s difficult for me to know when I’m supposed to speak…
“I have something to say, you know?”
So, a long while ago actually, I think two years ago, I started raising my hand in casual conversations, because I was like ‘I don’t know when the fuck I’m going to speak, but I have something to say!’ And that’s also something, like I have something to say, you know? Just because I don’t know when I’m supposed to start speaking so that I don’t interrupt other people and other people don’t interrupt me doesn’t mean that what I have to say is any less valid or less valuable than what other people would say.
L: Thank you so much for this conversation.