This page features computer generated text of the source audio. It may contain errors or omissions, so always listen back to the original media to confirm content. You can search the text using Ctrl-F, and you can also play the audio by clicking on a desired timestamp.
Everyone, Uh, welcome to queer objects. Thank you all so much for coming today. My name is Will, uh I'm a history student up at Victoria University, and I'm so chuffed to have the opportunity to introduce you all to the most wonderful and probably most gay historian and so sociologist and a in New Zealand. Chris Brickle Chris hails from Dunedin, where he is a professor in gender studies at the University of Otago. He's written several beautiful and significant books, including [00:00:30] the absolutely groundbreaking Mates and Lovers. A History of Gay New Zealand. That book in particular, is incredibly special to me personally, As I'm sure I'm not the only queer history kid in Aotearoa who would tell you that stumbling across mates and lovers is what made me realise that doing queer history is possible in New Zealand. So it's my absolute pleasure, pleasure and something of a wild dream to be able to sit beside you, Chris today and discuss with you your newest book, Queer Objects. Chris co edited queer objects with Judith Collard, and if you [00:01:00] haven't bought a copy yet, you absolutely must do so. There will be books for sale at the end, uh, with Allie over there at the back. And if you listen really closely, we're gonna ask a quiz question at the very end of the of the talk and tour. Um, and whoever answers it fastest and most correct will get a free copy of the book, so pay attention. So Queer Objects is the most wonderful collection of over 60 [00:01:30] objects examining the material culture of queer history. It features objects from all across the globe, including a good chunk from here Down Under. It considers histories that are and histories that speak to state power, hilarious histories and sorrowful histories and covers everything from dildos to dogs. Today we're going to hear from Chris about queer objects, both the book and some objects from Te Papa's collections on the table beside me. Um, thanks to curators Claire and Step, and then I'll ask him some questions. [00:02:00] You will get the chance to ask him some questions, and then we'll go on a tour around te Papa to visit some of the queer objects in person. Um, and I think that's all I have to say. So please join me in welcoming Chris Brick. Hey, thanks, will That's really, really nice. No one's ever given me such a lovely introduction. That's really great. Hey, I'm just going to talk a little bit about some of [00:02:30] the objects in the book. I'm going to talk particularly about the idea about what a queer object is or what makes one or doesn't make one. Perhaps there are no pictures of dildos, but there are pictures of dogs. So just to give you a little weenie taster OK, so when we were putting together this collection, which was actually Judith Collard's idea originally I had wanted to write about the makeup box, which will is going to mention [00:03:00] a little bit later and in the context of another book. But it was seen to be in the wrong time, period. So Judith said, Oh, well, why not? Let's just do a book on queer Objects. So that's how it happened. It was out of a kind of a chapter that doesn't quite work somewhere else. I'm really glad that happened because it allowed us to actually really start to explore queer material culture in a way that I hadn't sort of thought of doing before that so really, Judith should be here, too. Um, taking a bow for coming up with the idea. [00:03:30] As we were working through, we we invited some contributors. We had other people find out about the project and approach us with something they wanted to write about. We found that there were almost three kind of categories of objects. Those that could be said to be obviously queer, those that were queer in certain circumstances and those that didn't seem obvious at all. But actually, when you think bit more carefully and look harder, you realise do [00:04:00] fit very much into queer lives. So one of the things I'm hoping that you guys do when you go home is have a look at stuff in your house and have another think about whether it might be queer or not. And if it isn't, see if you can put it to a queer use. And, um, I'm not going to suggest what that might be. You'll have to use your own imaginations for that. So this first, this first slide here is taken by my partner, Jeffrey Vaughan, who, [00:04:30] uh, came with me to Adelaide a few years ago, and we photographed the pride parade so a pride parade, and the things in it which we don't necessarily look at terribly closely, are objects that kind of have a very much queer resonance. So the rainbow, I was gonna say, Rainbow flag. But it's not always a flag in this case, a banner rainbow hat who thinks the rainbow heads kind of cold If anyone sews, um, maybe a lion and rainbow hats [00:05:00] could be an idea. Um, and again, the kind of other kind of paraphernalia. Rainbow coloured balloons. Uh, the guy on the left, he's just sort of looking a bit sort of nervously towards the camera. But these kind of props, you know, they are kind of obviously queer in a queer kind of context, as are buttons and badges. Now, I know there is at least one badge in the audience today, um, a really cool little pink [00:05:30] triangle. One, this is a selection of, um, badges from one of the US collections. One of the things about the book is that we draw quite heavily from Australia and New Zealand, but we were also drawing from, uh, collections of objects and personal objects in a range of different countries. So just off the top of my head. Obviously, New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Japan, the US, the UK, France, Spain, Italy, [00:06:00] Greece and Poland, I think is pretty much the geographical spread. So again, some fairly obvious kind of objects, but that speak very much to a lesbian and gay politics, in this case coming out of the US, maybe slightly less obvious. But one of my very, very favourite things, which is on the back of the book, is Marcus Bunion's leather jacket. Now this jacket started [00:06:30] its life in Melbourne. Marcus was an immigrant to Melbourne, moved there from the UK and bought this jacket in a secondhand shop. Didn't necessarily have a queer provenance. But the more he owned it, the more he added to it to make it a very much a personal kind of, uh, document, if you like. So he added, on the flag, speaking to his Britishness, the pink triangle, which I'm gonna show you in closer detail [00:07:00] in just a moment. The lyrics from a song or bondage up yours. The publisher was very wary of this. Does anyone know the song? It's a feminist punk song. It's really cool. Go on, Google and and have a bit of a listen. And then about three people said, Oh, no, no, he's not putting gratuitous swearing on the jacket. It's actually a song, um, a little rainbow thing from Greenpeace and the anarchist, um, [00:07:30] kind of symbolism as well and and through personal kind of, uh, references on the back. So this is something that Marcus made clearer. It is really, actually a pretty neat thing. Here's Marcus wearing it on the left. Marcus is also a photographer, something he continues today. Marcus still lives in Melbourne. Um, and we had the sense of the object in its context. I could [00:08:00] have could have shown you a lot more images of Marx, but I didn't want to be terribly Intuit. So, um, here's just one of him wearing the jacket, uh, wearing the Jesus and Mary chain t-shirt underneath and a close up on the right of the, uh, slogan. Silence is the voice of complicity on the pink triangle, which, of course, Marcus was personalising this in the early nineties. The pink triangle was very common, um, as a pride symbol in the 19 eighties, in particular eighties into the nineties. [00:08:30] Um, silence is a voice of complicity is a Marcus take on the act up slogan? Um, silence, um, equals death. Yeah, this here is an incredibly personal, intimate object. What I want to do now is just to talk a bit about domesticity because, as I mentioned before, when I alluded to you looking through your vegetable rack or other places at home, uh, for queer things, [00:09:00] the the lives that we live in a domestic setting are really important, I think, in terms of the the way that things take on meaning for us often in our most intimate kind of spheres for home. OK, so this here is, um, a small artwork out of a diary from two women who live together in Vermont in the early 19th century and the, uh, the the embroidered things around the edges [00:09:30] are woven out of their hair and you can notice at the bottom the love heart with the braiding through the middle. So this is a pair of silhouettes of two women, Charity and Sylvia, about whom Rachel Hope Cleaves has written the most amazing books called Charity and Sylvia. An early marriage in America. Uh, and this is something they created for themselves to celebrate their relationship, Um, and the the enduring nature of it. And indeed, that relationship carried into one on [00:10:00] until one of the women died. So something incredibly personal moving from a public politics, uh, back in time to a more personal one. Right audience participation. Who is this woman? Sort of closes? No. Yes, it is. It's Radcliff Hall and [00:10:30] her her and her partner era Traub Bridge's dogs, who's familiar slightly with the book well of loneliness or knows of well of loneliness. From 1928 1 of the most famous books in In the In the lesbian literary uh, scene written in 1928. Who knows that Radliff Hall and Una Row Bridge bred dash ones? They did. They were very kind of proficient dash breeders. The problem was, [00:11:00] they came to adore the dogs too much, and they couldn't bear to part with them. So they ended up with rather a lot. So if you think about, um, lesbian women and gay men and their pets, and you can think back to kind of Cliff Hall and her vast collection of dash, what's the object here? Is it the dash Or is it the? Is it the photograph? I'm not quite sure. This chapter by hiker Bauer, who's at in London, started off being about the photographs but ended up being more about the dogs. [00:11:30] And it's called Queer Dogs, which is a, um, a title that the publisher wasn't sure of. But But he and I really, really liked. So we're stuck with it pretty much. What do we have inside our house? This is the first of a whole lot of slides. I'm only going to show you a couple from, uh, a Christchurch man called David Wilder, who's really central to my book. Um, the Southern men, his friends appear, and mates and lovers, too. To some extent, David had a little garret [00:12:00] flat in Christchurch opposite Hagley Park in the 19 fifties and sixties, and he filled it full of tasteful objects. So who thinks they're kind of tasteful in the way they kind of arrange their house? Sort of. I mean, I actually think like our $5 vase from the warehouse looks quite good. On top of the shelf next to the giraffe, it actually kind of works quite well. So think about the way we organise our houses. And there's nothing particularly queer about [00:12:30] that kind of lamp or that radiogram or that Greek vase. Or maybe there is. I'm going to talk briefly about Greek pottery in just a little while. You can't not really, can you? Um, library so library full of books. The titles that appear here are things like cactus gardening and container, you know, gardening and containers and pots and all of that kind of stuff. But David actually had a very, very big [00:13:00] collection of gay books, and I know this because I have his diary, which has a list of them in it. So for a man in Christchurch in the 19 fifties and sixties, somehow getting hold of gay books through customs, what men often did is that they would take materials offered to them by ship stewards and later, air stewards who smuggle things in in their cabin luggage because it got past the censors. So there are ways of getting hold of these things, um, in the middle of the 20th century, and [00:13:30] they, of course, gave huge meaning to the way that people understood their intimate lives. David in his pyjamas with, um, the radio grand. We can't not talk about clothes. We're going to come back to clothes with this giant headdress, which is the most camp and extravagant thing you've ever seen. I'm guessing, uh, we'll have it up on the screen so you can see it in more detail. OK, I want to talk now to finish with ambiguous objects. [00:14:00] I got this, uh, several years ago during an election campaign. Is it a queer object? Two years. And so what would make this a queer object? Yeah, So I bought the boys one and the girls one. And just as I was framing up the introduction for this book, I thought, I'm going to go back and have another look at that badge because it's an example of something that may or may not be in some circumstances, it isn't the [00:14:30] first time I saw this, though I thought this seems very clear to me. Does anyone else have the same kind of thought that the moment you see it, you could see it being worn in a way that actually clears the pitch in terms of how clothing and and adornment signifies sexuality? Right. Is this a queer object. This particular make of, um, portable record player was the make of [00:15:00] player that the women in the Leeds Lesbian Circle are used during the 19 sixties. And it's the subject of a really interesting chapter written by Alison or who's a very well known British lesbian historian. And Alison writes about the ways in which women would take this from from house to house and set it up. And it was a central part of the lesbian party at a time when many lesbian women in this part of England didn't want to go to bars. [00:15:30] And so it was very central to the lesbian society that was built up in the Leeds and Manchester areas during that time in British history. And so women would dance to the music of this portable record player. And, uh, this is slightly cheating, because this photo is actually from the Gateways Club, which is a very well known lesbian club. I've kind of Segway from the record player, but I wanted a picture of women dancing, So here it is, uh, the image on the right comes out of arena, Um, which [00:16:00] was a lesbian magazine from the same part of of the UK. So the the record player evokes music. It evokes dancing. It evokes that kind of feeling that you you have when you hear that kind of do. Does anyone remember these? And the you'd have a stack of records and the arm would fold back and there'd be a plunk as the new record would go on and then it would start playing. So there's this kind of really nice kind of feeling to it, too. And of course, the record player could be moved from place to place this [00:16:30] fitted in with profound changes in British society, increasing mobility of women. Uh, the motorbike, which this was small enough to be carried on, and the motor car. So it tells of a bigger story, too. So what might look like one specific little thing has a much bigger kind of tale to tell. And so I'm just going to finish with three more slides and talk a little bit about the significance of history [00:17:00] in the earlier sense. So going back beyond New Zealand in this case, who is this historical figures O. Why is CO important? Yeah, she she's a massively important figure in lesbian history right now. Does anyone know when she lived about 700 to 900 somewhere in BC? Yeah, that's pretty [00:17:30] much what I've got. Yeah, it's a little bit slightly unclear because the records are but yep, somewhere somewhere at that time. So someone who's a Touchstone Here's a portion of her papyrus, and I discovered that her papyrus are poems. Some of them were used to wrap mummies. So it was only later on, uh, during kind of investigation of of mummified remains at her poetry, which talks of love for women as well as for men. Her intimate life appears to be somewhat ambiguous, [00:18:00] but that's not a bad thing. Who has heard of Saint Eugenia, a much less known historical figure than Saint Eugenia, died about 2 58 AD so somewhat after CO did so she lived in Alexandria. She donned mail a tie and cut her hair short in order to seek adventure [00:18:30] and gain independence, she called herself. Eugenius was tried in court, where her father was the judge, which puts me in mind of that fantastic Barbra Streisand film where she appears in court and her father is the judge what it's called. I'm sitting here trying to remember to remember this. It's probably one of the best Barbra Streisand films you ever said. What's up, Doc? It is, too. Thank you. Sorry, slight diversion. So Eugenia, when she [00:19:00] appeared in court as a male figure, revealed her breast and revealed her original identity to her father, who was the judge? And in a really interesting chapter by Robert Mills, Robert suggests that in many ways she can be seen as a gender queer figure whose identity comes and goes, flexes and wanes through a number of kind of artistic representations. Mill suggests this tells us something interesting about the fluidity of gender in mediaeval times, [00:19:30] and that ideas about independence were so closely tied to masculinity and certain forms of religiosity were so closely tied to masculinity that women who sought them were seen as masculine. But actually this created a certain kind of space for degrees of ambiguity. So moving off Eugenia onto my onto my final slide, this is an un unashamed segue to Papa because here [00:20:00] we have. Yeah, So who are they who do these dolls represent? They are the top. They are so recognisable as the top twins. Like, Does anyone think this doesn't look like the top twins? I can't remember how I found them. Um, Stephanie and Claire might be able to say a little bit about them. I understand that not a lot is known about their providence. It only makes them more fascinating. But if anyone can kind of create any of us out of wool [00:20:30] and make us look really kind of like ourselves, I think that's actually, you know, pretty good testament to their artistic creativity, don't you think? OK, on that note, then, of the top twins, I'm gonna hand over to will, and we're going to look at these fabulous things. Listen. Thank you, Chris. Everyone want to join your hand in books? Can you hear me at the back? Is this microphone cool? OK, thank [00:21:00] you. Awesome. Thank you, Chris. So we're also super lucky because we've got a whole bunch of IRL objects here from te Papa's storerooms brought for you here today so you can have a closer look at them, which is super awesome. The first one, though unfortunately, we don't actually have in real life. I shouldn't have said that first that made it set it up differently. But this one. So the first thing that we're gonna talk about today, um, as the evergreen collage as the evergreen panels. Uh, so these were made by a trans woman named Chrissy [00:21:30] We She was a well known queen based in Wellington. Uh who from 8 1984 to 1999 ran a late night coffee lounge called the Evergreen. Um, it was open till the early hours of the morning and it boasted the best best cheese Toasties in town. Uh, it was known as a safe space frequented by queer and especially trans people. And Chrissy is very fondly remembered by people for her warmth and love. Although in a lot of the interviews I've done with people, uh, it's clear she also wasn't afraid [00:22:00] of tough love. And many of the older queens who I've talked to chuckled to me, recalling times where she barred them from the coffee lounge for being a bit too rowdy. The evergreen was a space that facilitated community building, which was an essential prerequisite to community organising, allowing a space for like-minded people to meet, discuss ideas, plan protests and get organised between 1986 and 1989. The evergreen was an official gay and lesbian community Drop-in Centre, and after 11 p.m. it became a drop [00:22:30] in centre for sex workers. And so on the wall of the evergreen, Chrissy had these fantastic collages. Uh, some of them include photographs from back in the 19 sixties and seventies, and she continued to make them to make them all the way until she died in 2002. The collages feature Chrissy's friends, family, acquaintances, business cards and newspaper clippings. Um, and I think what I love most about them is I feel that a lot of queer history is kind of seen as as being, uh, full of of [00:23:00] silence or shame or sadness. But actually, when you look at these collages, uh, the all Chrissy and all her friends are having so much fun and they being young and proud, and they're just having a good time, and they're with their family and their community, and I think it is, um, a really wonderful way of showing that actually, you know, just because something happened, um, before law reform or before marriage, equality or whatever that it, um our history there wasn't. Hasn't Hasn't always been silent. It's been full of laughter as well. [00:23:30] Um, so those I think are really special. Do you have anything you wanna add? Oh, did anyone go there? The evergreen? Does anyone remember the evergreen? I went there once. Any memories, you always gotta pay $3. You always got a cup of coffee or tea and a biscuit. So if you didn't get anything, you got that? Yes. Or Milo? Alright. Next one. Fine. Next [00:24:00] one we have. Uh So before I talk to you about this object, which is a pink police hat, I need to talk to you about Carmen. Um who does anyone not know who know who who knows who Carmen is. No one wants to put their hand off if they don't know. Ok, most of you do. Just for those who don't, Carmen was probably the most famous clean living in a during the 20th century. She was a business owner, a performer, one time mayoral candidate, activist sex worker who was always in the headlines for her headlines. For her antics, she owned several coffee lounges in Wellington through [00:24:30] the 19 seventies, including her most famous cars, International Coffee Lounge, Uh, through the coffee lounge. She, like Chrissy facilitated community building provided other queens with employment in an era of rampant anti trans discrimination. Um, but this coffee lounge wasn't your usual, uh, upstairs. There was a suite of bedrooms which acted as a brothel, and Carmen famously used to say that all the tea and coffee and sandwiches were downstairs, but the suites were all upstairs because of Carmen's notoriety. [00:25:00] She was often targeted by the police, uh, who often would try and trick her and her staff into sex so that they could make an arrest in a pro pro practise known as entrapment. I won't get into all the horrible details, but police abuse of Queens was horrific and was incredibly commonplace. Carmen, recognising this, sought to work with the police in order to get them to lay off herself and her other queens. And she would sometimes take Queens out to the police college in in order to give talks. As a result of [00:25:30] this and I think, a healthy dose of Carmen's famous charm, she managed to develop a more positive relationship with the police and It was so positive. In fact, that, uh, vice squad, former vice squad Detective Trevor Morley gifted this customised police helmet to Carmen on her 70th birthday. So he painted it pink. He put some, um, feather boas on there, I believe, which has since come off, but jewelled it, um, And on the inside, he has written to Carmen a KATDR happy 70th birthday. And thanks for the memories. [00:26:00] Former Detective Trevor W, a Morley a KATW along with his police number and dated 7th September 2006, Wellington, New Zealand. So I don't think it's appropriate to talk about this object without recognising that police abuse of Maori has actually continued to get worse over the years. And that despite painting rainbows on cop cars, diversity in itself is not enough. And, uh, police abuse of rainbow communities continues to happen. But I think that in the context [00:26:30] of continuing tensions between police and queer communities, the helmet does represent an instance of a very unlikely friendship. And I think it speaks to the power of queer resilience in the face of brutality and resistance to brutality that a friendship was even able to come out of it much to think on next. You unless you had anything to add. Alright, Now we move on to this beautiful gay head dress. [00:27:00] Um, this was worn by drag artist Tony Roger Roger, uh, who was known more commonly as Frankie or Frank L. It was used while he performed with his friend and fellow drag queen Johnny Cross. Um and who, by the way, has an incredible series of photographic albums which you should check out You can. I'll tell you to get in contact with we'll. We'll sort it out if you want to look at them because they're stunning online online? They're online online. [00:27:30] They're online anyway. Frankie regularly headlined at places like Carmen's uh, one of Carmen's other establishments, which was called the balcony, uh, which is where the now defunct Central Library used to be on the corner by the police station. Um, Frankie made a whole heap of his own costumes out of things like fake pearls and plastic jewellery. Um, and I think, as it would have been amazing to see something like this in person. Oh, maybe, can we jangle it? Are you able to Oh, no, no, no. Is that rude to ask, [00:28:00] just Can you hear that beautifully gay? I don't really have an awful lot to say about it, because I think it's pretty obvious how clear this is. Um, I think also. But I do think it does say a lot that I mean, um, to make something so stunning out of virtually nothing or that these kind of fake plastic bits, um, to make yourself a crown to a dawn on your head is something of a reclamation of power during a you know, a homophobic [00:28:30] time. So I think it's as much as it's also fun. I think it's also really powerful and important. So that's that. Oh, this is really cool. The year is 1985 the debate over homosexual law reform. The bill which would decriminalise homosexuality, has been growing louder and louder. The whole nation is divided. Worlds are colliding. Horrible people like member of Parliament Norman Jones are telling gay people to go back to the sewers where you came from, while [00:29:00] queer people are fighting for their lives on the streets. During the debate, opponents to law reform organised a nationwide petition claiming that they had over 800,000 signatures. They organised a big ceremony to deliver the petition to the steps of Parliament on the 24th of September 1985. And it was a rally that was so vitriolic and nationalistic that many onlookers likened it to a Nazi Nuremberg rally. They contained, uh, the petition within 91 boxes, creating quite the display. [00:29:30] Um, however, it was found that some of the boxes were empty. The petition seats contained fictitious names, including being signed by one Mickey Mouse signatures by Children and several repeat signatures. So this placard was made by gay activist Hugh Young, who, along with other counter protesters at the petition, um, presentation on the day, sought to mock the petition and point out how false it was. This sign, of course, points to the fact that many of the signatures were repeated. Hence, I signed 27 times. [00:30:00] Parliament rejected the petition, and by the following year, homosexual law reform was passed. So do you have anything in your app? No. Other than I mean, yeah, There are photos that are quite sort of scary of that event, with rows of the New Zealand flag sass that said for God, country and family as well as the big boxes of petitions. Was anyone there? Because I know that. Yeah. Roger. Tell. What [00:30:30] was it like? Roger that. There was the There was all this organised thing up on the on the steps of parliament and on the front forecourt there. And then there were barriers along and there was a line of policemen, I think, along that side and behind the policeman was Fran Wilde standing on a box shouting at them, and, um, and lots of people with banners and things booing and hissing and that sort of thing. So there there wasn't a very big, supportive crowd, I think, for the petition. But there was certainly a very vocal crowd against [00:31:00] it. And, um and there were lots of, um, you know, just lots of people and police were taking people away who were leaping over the over the barriers and trying to disrupt the presentation. So it was quite a It was quite a fraught scene, Um, in that sense, so yeah, I recall one of the other MP PS involved Jeff, Jeff Bray Brook and a labour MP who was who was one of the leading campaigners against it. I think he died a little while ago and they had and they [00:31:30] had and the radio had recordings of him quite openly admitting that he got it completely wrong and it was all and it was all there was. There was no apology whatsoever, of course, but but sort of Oh, well, you know, it hasn't turned out like we feared sort of thing, right? One more. One more, Uh, two more Second, the last one. So this rugby ball was signed by the Crazy Knights and Pons and be heroes rugby teams in [00:32:00] 1998 when they played New Zealand's first gay interprovincial rugby game at the rugby league park right here in Newtown. Well, we're not here here, but you know what I mean? What's really sweet is that the Knights presented this ball to one of their staunchest supporters after the match. Um, Alan Bracegirdle, who threw up, flew up from Christchurch for every game in 1998. That's cute. The Crazy Knights, founded by Dean Knight, were the first gay rugby team to be formed in New Zealand. [00:32:30] The knights included players from all walks of life, including drag Queens and a future minister of sport and finance. Grant Robertson. Grant Robertson's signature is actually on the ball, as has his partners, ALF. Very cute. They met on the field, uh, and were joined in the Civil Union in 2009. 0, the crazy Knights aim was to provide a safe, queer, friendly environment for gay men to play rugby. At the time, Dean Knight noted that if it was a perfect [00:33:00] world, we wouldn't need a gay rugby team. Everyone would simply be able to be themselves and be honest about their sexuality. I think it's a really lovely um instance of queering, something within New Zealand culture that is typically associated with the most masculine form of heterosexuality. Although I don't really know how straight all that thigh growing is. But why do you ever alrighty, last object. So this is also really interesting. [00:33:30] In 2008, Air New Zealand put on special flights for people who wanted to attend the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. It was called the pink flight. Did anyone go on it? No, it was cool. It was, uh, specifically marketed at the queer community. So you all missed out on the flight. Uh, there were drag queen performances, pink cocktails and cabaret performed by the crew. Maybe their next safety video performance artist. Mika was given this pink Air New Zealand bag [00:34:00] when he went on a pink flight to Sydney. And so to me, uh, it kind of fun as this object seems, I think this object can actually be used to spark some pretty serious questions about the state of queer politics. Who benefits from Air New Zealand's promotion of a gay friendly image? What are the working conditions for queer people at Air New Zealand? Like they were OK with drag queen performers on a pink flight? But there have been repeated claims that they are refusing to hire trans women as flight attendants. Even when the woman in question are, well, overqualified. [00:34:30] What is pink washing doing to our communities? And with that, think about it. And on that note, I think it's time to go back to you, Chris, unless you have anything extra you wanna say there's no way I can compete with any of that world. That is fantastic. Um well, listen. Thank you, Chris. OK, I have some preprepared questions for you about five. Not [00:35:00] this time. Oh, alrighty. So, uh, who's who's read the book already? Oh, people, Part part part of it. OK, awesome. Well, if you read the book, you'd know that there are a lot of photographs of authors, um, from the younger days scattered throughout it. Um, and I think it's a really lovely way to kind of show the sense of, like, ownership and excitement that people clearly felt as they were writing, um, their pieces [00:35:30] within within the book and kind of linking between past and present. Um, So I wondered what was your motivation to include these old author photos? Um, I guess a couple of things. People sometimes just sent them in, and I kind of grabbed them and said Yes, yes, yes, we're going to put that in there. But also, I really like that idea of the personal kind of stories of objects in the way that they are really hooked into people's own lives. And so being able to, um, have a photograph of yourself and in your in [00:36:00] your younger incarnation gives you a sense. It gives the it gives the reader a sense of that time and place and gives them connection to the person who's there. So, for instance, one of my favourite chapters is Matt Cook's, uh, chapter on the telephone, and he talks about the way in which the phone enabled queer community through such things as, uh, phone support lines, uh, phone trees the way that political groups would use phone trees in order to connect members run campaigns. [00:36:30] Uh, he talks about himself as a 16 year old, very shy, uh, boy in London, plucking up the courage to dial that number, Um, on the phone, you know, ring a phone line and talk to what he saw was a very worldly gay man while I was away at a kind of a switchboard. So we we think now about the smartphone as a thing, and there's a chapter on that. But the way that Matt's own very personal kind of testimony talks about the way in which the phone, the old sort with a dial on it and handle, [00:37:00] was really pivotal to his own, you know, self development. So that tells the story. Really. There were some authors I would love to have had photographs from, but they couldn't be arm twisted also. I mean, if anyone hasn't seen the book is a little bit of a sales pitch. Am I allowed to do this? Um, what we tried to do is to get chapters which were really readable by a non academic audience. So there are some which are a bit denser than others, [00:37:30] but we tried to really weave personal stories through. So they are chapters that, um you know, they're not kind of high theory or anything like that. So So trying to reach out to as diverse audience as we can get, um, And again, Yes. Showing the personal side of the things is a part of that. I think I Yeah, I thought that the there were also, um, instances in the book where even if the author didn't have a personal relationship to the object themselves, they developed it through [00:38:00] writing about it. As one of the authors, Lauren Britton, uh, wrote a series of replies to personal ads that have been published in Trans magazine. Trans, Um, and that's a really you have to buy it to read it, But, um, but I really love that about queer objects. So the book doesn't attempt to be stoic and impersonal and and pursue of some kind of like historical objectivity, as though that even exists and instead really revels in these kind of connections. So I want What do you Why do you think it is important to have personal connections [00:38:30] like that in the book? I guess, because for me, queer history has always been really personal, like I sort of started with people's experiences of their lives. I guess it's partly coming out of my sociological training where the personal and the political are really closely connected. Which, of course, is also a very important part of queer politics and lesbian politics, too. So there's that. There's always that connection in that kind of politics and in that scholarship, but also it makes it really engaging, like [00:39:00] who doesn't like reading about the way that other people's journeys kind of might, you know, reflect their own in some way. So I think that's kind of that's part of it. I mean, my partner Jeffrey, he had never had anything published before, and there's a chapter that he wrote in here, which, incidentally, needed less editing than most of the others, which was really fantastic about a satchel that he carried to school when he was six, about what that means for him. And there's a really cute photograph of him age six in there. So it just yeah, just [00:39:30] to break away to. I think the fashion for writing Impenetrable prose and academia is sort of. I think everyone's a bit bored by it. It sort of died out of way, but I hope unless you're writing in certain areas. So yeah, I just think accessible personal. It tells a story in a way that kind of works, Really. So, uh, we all know queer history is something that is kind of seen as being characterised by the so-called silences [00:40:00] of the archives, where our histories have been hidden or censored or destroyed, or we've had to write in ways that make it not immediately obvious to the casual Look on, look at what it's about. And so I wonder if the study of material culture then has any particular significance for queer histories? I think so. I mean, I think you know. One example in the book is Frieda DAO's mountaineering memoir. So the object is the book Frida lived with her partner, Muriel Cadigan, from about 1910 [00:40:30] onwards, so fairly early on, and their relationship is really kind of coded. And so there's a coding that goes on often, and objects somehow end up revealing the codes that are woven in there. Fredda gives it away in one place where she says that they were what they were kind of trying to, um, sleep on a bunk about, you know, 2 ft wide. And it was not very restful, but quite exciting. And sometimes, you know, let let's slip it away. But there's something about material [00:41:00] culture that you can see how people use things in their own life. Or in that case, you can see how Frida wrote a book that was ostensibly about the passion of mountaineering but was also about the passion of Muriel just lying just underneath the surface. Awesome. Um, I was also I think it's maybe in the introduction. I can't remember if it's in the introduction or an entry, but, um, there's the idea of objects facilitating a queer genealogy and being passed down. Um, so there's an object that's passed [00:41:30] down from Oscar Wilde. Is that right? Yeah, the postcard that we think belonged to Oscar Wilde and got passed down to his executive and then a friend of his and a friend of his. And I think it's on about the fourth or fifth kind of remove now, which is so lovely. And I think, um, the way it it speaks to intergenerational queer connections. And I think that's such a lovely way to think about preserving history in that way, passing down something through the generations. And it made me think if I had an object, what would it be and who would I give [00:42:00] it to? So I guess my last question is a bit of a is a bit of a silly one. Maybe, I don't know. But if you had to pick an object to pass down that is apparently in your possession, what would it be? Well, it's actually the makeup box in here. The makeup box that the cover the globules on the front, which the publishers very nicely put a little spot UV elimination on the front to make them pop out. That's the cover of a Japanese incense box, which inside it has a number of stage pals really wonderfully rich smelling [00:42:30] pal. Um, pistol stage makeup that was owned by John Hunter. John Hunter was a female impersonator who toured New Zealand after the Second World War. He was too young to go to war himself with the Kiwi concert party. Uh, it's a really fantastic we object. There are images of hunter in the Turnbull library. Uh, there's an interview that someone has done with him. I know, um, a couple of people who knew him quite well, and he passed [00:43:00] that, uh, makeup kit down to a friend of his who passed it down to someone else who passed it on to me. So that would be my kind of thing. It's also the object. I think I mentioned that we couldn't put in the other book originally the Colonial Objects book, because it was too modern. So it's where this book started. But it's kind of cute, like David Wilde, who was a second owner whose apartment I showed you before, who passed it to his executor and his executive [00:43:30] said, I want you to have this. It's like a queer heirloom, and I thought, Yeah, OK, it is It's quite nice, and every so Often I go and I lift the lid and sniff it and then put the bag on again and then go and have a cup of tea. So do you make any distinction in the book yet? But it's, um, between good objects and bad objects. So, for example, you might say a bad object that store here in the whereas the headpiece, for example, was a good it was fun and fabulous. Well, we [00:44:00] do have a few things that are quite interesting. That gesture to this. Has anyone heard of the penile graph before? How do you say it used to determine the degree of arousal and male subjects? Yes, shock. And so that was an object that was used as part of regimes of shock therapy. So that the chapter, which is Kate Davison's really, really [00:44:30] interesting chapter on Neil, uh, McConaughey, who is an Australian aversion therapy doctor who used this device as part of his in inverted commas therapy. That's an object that we frame up in the introduction as being about queer suffering rather than something that would be about queer celebration like that. So we we we sort of do Oh, yeah, now this. What will's holding up here is an example of a piece of film which was used as part of one of these aversion therapy [00:45:00] sequences. And so, um, the pliers graph would then be attached to the person and their their arousal at this kind of image would then be would be measured. And I don't want to go into detail about the horrific of those different kinds of aversion therapy. There were several, some involved electric shocks, some involved, Um um, extremely severe vomiting, um, as a kind of a supposedly readapt kind of attempt. But something like that would be an example. Another [00:45:30] one that I think is interesting. Wayne Murdoch's chapter on the powder puff in Melbourne. The powder puff was often used by men in urban queer scenes. Um, during those kind of periods, uh, they'd have it in their pocket. They put makeup on with it, but the police were very keen to grab hold of these and use them as evidence in court. And so something which had been part of a subculture. A good object then gets translated into a bad object [00:46:00] in the sense that it's something that is used to secure guilt and becomes exhibit A, um and so Wayne's chapter, actually, which will is about to hold up an envelope with the powder puff, and you can see the powder puff at the bottom. Um, this is an example of an object like like that sort of a community item that then becomes kind of evidence in a in a court case. And in this particular case, the two men were jailed for a number of years, and the lives of both of them spun [00:46:30] out of control. And they end up, um, one, I think, lost a leg in a wharf accident. And the other one became extremely, um, uh, alcoholic. So it was, um, yeah, pretty sad end for these for these two. So the book is it's not a sad book, and it's not a happy book, but it's got elements of of both kind of pleasure and suffering and things in between. Um, if you like, yeah, that's a slightly melancholic but maybe not too melancholic place to end. [00:47:00] Perhaps So, um, I hope you've all enjoyed this gay day. Um, if you please all put your hands together once more for Chris and so and that's for well as well. And just pass that to Allie and Steph and Claire [00:47:30] for putting this on. Um, we're gonna have We're gonna have some gay tea and some gay coffee. Um, now and you'll get a chance to talk to to Chris and to anyone else that you heard from that you would like to talk more. Are you gonna, um, do any signing of any books? Yeah, I can do any signing if anyone would like signing Allie's got books over there. And the and the food is somewhere there. Out the back. Thank you. Come and have a look.
This page features computer generated text of the source audio. It may contain errors or omissions, so always listen back to the original media to confirm content.
Tags