Hello Butch Queen,
There’s recently been a lot of talk in our community about camp boys and how they should 'be men', because "if we wanted to date girls, we’d be straight…”.
You know the drill… Butch it up.
I just wanted to remind you and all those self-identified butch queens, that it isn’t you who’s winning our community’s battles for equality. The liberties you enjoy now, from holding hands in the street, marrying your partner or adopting children, these didn’t come about from waiting in line. In a society that favours straight white men, it is nothing special to be a "straight acting" white man, and there's nothing brave about ‘fitting in’. It’s those guys who don’t ‘fit in’ who have stood up and fought for the end of our discrimination.
Once the wave started rolling, you may have gotten up and supported them and that was necessary, so thank you for that.
But you know what? That battle isn’t over, and we haven’t achieved equality yet. So if you are content with the liberties those ‘queeny camp gays’ have carved out for us, then just sit down, shut up and watch the show called "Things getting better for EVERYONE", thanks to these guys sticking their neck out on the line.
Black people can’t choose to turn white and not be racially profiled by the police, women can’t become dudes just so they can get that promotion or raise. Your ability to blend in is not an achievement, and it’s nothing you earned. It’s a privilege the majority of people on this planet don’t have. Not just 'fairies' and 'bull dykes', but everyone who simply can’t hide their looks and mannerisms.
So please, join me in my cheer to all those camp queers, batty boys, benders, faggots, drag queens, rug munchers, muff buffers and kinksters. Because they had the balls to be different and demand change, while most of us were shivering in the closet, trying desperately to blend in, based on someone else’s rules. It was not us who won our battles.
By Dušan Tomić