“Queer and funny”: celebrations without animosity

“My partner and I experience animosity from gay people time and again, especially when we show up at parties as a couple,” one gay person told me during a survey. For the 19-year-old, who identifies as neither male nor female and lives in a polyamorous partnership with various relationships, “at times animosity in public spaces” becomes a burden.

A lot has happened in Austria since Conchita Wurst warmed the national heart a few years ago. (Almost) every child now knows what transgender means. That in principle two men or two women can fall in love with each other is no longer a big surprise to anyone. However, older semesters sometimes struggle with the words. “What does queer actually mean?” some friends who befriend a teenage daughter recently whispered to me in a conspiratorial manner. She’d rolled her eyes in a conversation about the “Pride Parade,” making her well-meaning parents feel like they’d already been sidetracked.

Queer is an identity of people who see themselves outside the norm – and also don’t want to conform to a norm. How exactly they deviate from societal expectations is not so easy to answer. It is mostly alternative ways of living and playing with gender roles and sexuality that are important to queers.

Anyone who has little to do with this explanation should visit the Rainbow Parade in Vienna on Saturday. Also known as the Pride Parade, it aims to draw attention to the equality of LGBTIQ people i.e. lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders, intersex and queers. Bands like “Pop:sch” or “Pussy Power” play for this purpose on the Rathausplatz. Even if not all participants identify as queer, you can party there with a colorful variety of people – without being attacked for having fun.

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