'Over the rainbow: a brief (socio)history of queer resistance' with Jamie Lawson

Jamie Lawson's 0219 Best of Bristol lecture. Contextual statement for Jamie's tshirt: "Be gay do crimes" emerged as a political, queer slogan fairly recently - appearing most famously in a cartoon that did the rounds online in 2018, and spreading rapidly around queer activist communities after that (although the author of that cartoon has stated that the slogan predates their work, and has been part of queer collective consciousness for some time). Across the globe, marginalised people are often forced to resort to tactics which are classified as crimes simply to survive. Being LGBTQ+ is itself a crime in many countries, being fully decriminalised in the UK as recently as 2013 - the slogan commemorates those facts. The argument of my talk was that the marginalisation of queer communities around the world connects directly to colonialism and colonialist practices, which is why I chose to wear the tshirt. The slogan also commemorates the activists who engaged in civil disobedience in order to push the cause of LGBTQ+ liberation forwards. Stonewall, after all, was a riot.

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3/20/2019 10:31:41 AM