 |
Dunst is a queer performance art and activist group in Copenhagen, Denmark. The group began in 2001 as an informal network, but since 2004 it formally works as an association. Among its projects are art shows, dinner nights, performances, film nights, parties and political manifestations, as well as TV and radio shows. The name means odour or reek in Danish.
During 2003, Dunst handled the Gay House at Christiania. Events and parties in the revived Gay House were popular among Copenhagen's gays, but Dunst allegedly received complaints and threats from Christiania residents and subsequently moved out of Christiania. [1] [2]
Dunst is known for its bizarre and ironic drag queen personalities (including such names as Ramona Macho, Miss Fish, Puta and Tove Hansen) and music performers such as the band Nuclear Family. Having decidedly anti-establishment aims, the group has a humorous approach with a drag-punk flavour. Public appearances have been referred in several mainstream media which would otherwise often ignore gay events. [3]
The attitude of Dunst appears more sarcastic and less militant than radical queer punk formations in other countries. It could be claimed that Dunst combines a postmodern appearance with a Danish tradition of humorous political activism.[ citation needed ] During the 1970s and 1980s, the theatre group Solvognen (Sun Chariot, linked with Christiania), singers Troels Trier and Rebecca Brüel, and the squatter performance network Kulørte Klat ("Coloured Blob") made imaginative and ironic performances, as well as feminist groups of rødstrømper (literally "Redstockings").
The Dunst website proclaims its "Manifesto" as follows: [4]
1. dunst is for all the cute ones.
2. dunst is the culture bearing layer of our gender political confusement.
3. dunst has provocation as a work tool and not as a goal in itself.
4. dunst makes contrasts strong.
5. dunst is for all who in a self performance will go beyond their own modesty.
6. dunst is the low life that others won't have an opinion about.
7. dunst is the sanctuary for those who come from a male or female chauvinist upbringing.
8. dunst crosses the gender specific habits and limits you keep in your everyday life.
9. dunst is for those who think they and others should be culturally carpet bombed.
10. dunst is always in change.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) movements are social movements that advocate for LGBTQ people in society. Although there is not a primary or an overarching central organization that represents all LGBTQ people and their interests, numerous LGBT rights organizations are active worldwide. The first organization to promote LGBT rights was the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, founded in 1897 in Berlin.
A drag queen is a person, usually male, who uses drag clothing and makeup to imitate and often exaggerate female gender signifiers and gender roles for entertainment purposes. Historically, drag queens have usually been gay men, and have been a part of gay culture.
Queer is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or are not cisgender. Originally meaning 'strange' or 'peculiar', queer came to be used pejoratively against LGBT people in the late 19th century. From the late 1980s, queer activists began to reclaim the word as a neutral or positive self-description.
Camp is an aesthetic style and sensibility that regards something as appealing or amusing because of its heightened level of artifice, affectation and exaggeration, especially when there is also a playful or ironic element. Camp is historically associated with LGBTQ+ culture and especially gay men. Camp aesthetics disrupt modernist understandings of high art by inverting traditional aesthetic judgements of beauty, value, and taste, and inviting a different kind of aesthetic engagement.
Queercore is a cultural/social movement that began in the mid-1980s as an offshoot of the punk subculture and a music genre that comes from punk rock. It is distinguished by its discontent with society in general, and specifically society's disapproval of the LGBT community. Queercore expresses itself in a DIY style through magazines, music, writing and film.
Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was the name of several gay liberation groups, the first of which was formed in New York City in 1969, immediately after the Stonewall riots. Similar organizations also formed in the UK, Australia and Canada. The GLF provided a voice for the newly-out and newly radicalized gay community, and a meeting place for a number of activists who would go on to form other groups, such as the Gay Activists Alliance, Gay Youth New York, and Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) in the US. In the UK and Canada, activists also developed a platform for gay liberation and demonstrated for gay rights. Activists from both the US and UK groups would later go on to found or be active in groups including ACT UP, the Lesbian Avengers, Queer Nation, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and Stonewall.
A gender bender is a person who dresses up and presents themselves in a way that defies societal expectations of their gender, especially as the opposite sex. Bending expected gender roles may also be called a genderfuck.
A drag show is a form of entertainment performed by drag artists impersonating men or women, typically in a bar or nightclub. Shows can range from burlesque-style, adult themed nightclub acts to all-ages events with sing-alongs and story times.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people in the Philippines are generally accepted in Filipino society, and it has been ranked among the most gay-friendly countries in Asia. It has the second highest social acceptance rate in the Asia-Pacific next to Australia, according to a Pew Research Center survey in 2013. Despite this, some discrimination still persist and LGBT people have limited LGBT-specific rights, leading some activists to characterize LGBT culture in the Philippines as "tolerated, but not accepted." Homosexuals in the Philippines are known as "bakla", though there are other terms to describe them. According to the 2002 Young Adult Fertility and Sexuality Survey, 11 percent of sexually active Filipinos between the ages of 15 and 24 have had sex with someone of the same sex. According to Filipino poet and critic Lilia Quindoza Santiago, Filipino culture may have a more flexible concept of gender. Kasarian is defined in less binary terms than the English word; kasarian means "kind, species, or genus".
Rock Against Sexism (RAS) was a political and cultural movement dedicated to promoting women in music, and challenging sexism in the rock music community, pop culture and in the world at large. It was primarily a part of the punk rock music and arts scene.
Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) was a gay, gender non-conforming and transvestite street activist organization founded in 1970 by Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, subculturally-famous New York City drag queens of color. STAR was a radical political collective that also provided housing and support to homeless LGBT youth and sex workers in Lower Manhattan. Rivera and Johnson were the "mothers" of the household, and funded the organization largely through sex work. STAR is considered by many to be a groundbreaking organization in the queer liberation movement and a model for other organizations.
In gay slang, queen is a term used to refer to a flamboyant or effeminate gay man. The term can either be pejorative or celebrated as a type of self-identification.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer+(LGBTQ+)music is music that focuses on the experiences of gender and sexual minorities as a product of the broad gay liberation movement.
The city of Shanghai, China, a global center for finance, technology, manufacturing, and transportation, has a presence of LGBT people.
Esta Noche was the first Latino gay bar in San Francisco and notably contributed to queer Latin culture. It operated from 1979 to 2014, and was located at 3079 16th Street between Valencia Street and Mission Street in San Francisco, California.
Sin Wai Kin is a Canadian visual artist who uses "speculative fiction within drag performance, moving image, writing and print to refigure attitudes towards gender, sexuality and historical discourses of identity." They are known for their immersive performance art and drag artistry, a practice which they use to "interrupt normative processes of desire, identification, and objectification."
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted inequities experienced by marginalized populations, and has had a significant impact on the LGBT community. Gay pride events were cancelled or postponed worldwide. More than 220 gay pride celebrations around the world were canceled or postponed in 2020, and in response a Global Pride event was hosted online. LGBTQ+ people also tend to be more likely to have pre-existing health conditions, such as asthma, HIV/AIDS, cancer, or obesity, that would worsen their chances of survival if they became infected with COVID-19. They are also more likely to smoke.
Local Lounge was a gay bar in Portland, Oregon, operating from 2010 to 2021.
The practice of drag in Africa allows Africans to challenge gender roles. There were many different expressions of masculinity and femininity in pre-colonial Africa. Colonial powers introduced written laws that enforced rigid gender roles that devalued women and femininity. African drag performers, specifically drag queens, now challenge this strict binary and its subsequent criminalization of queer people. Their performances navigate various intersectionalities of gender, sexuality, and race that are legacies of colonialism. Because of the association of drag with queerness, as well as its inherent challenge of the gendered social structure, drag performances are innately political and often dangerous.
Carlos Felipe Parra Heredia, known professionally as París Galán, is a Bolivian drag queen, LGBT rights activist, and politician. A member of La Familia Galán, a collective of LGBT drag performers, Parra is the country’s best-known drag queen. He made history as the first-ever openly transgender individual to win elective office in Bolivia after being elected to the La Paz Departmental Legislative Assembly in 2015. To date, he is one of just two queer people and the second gay man in Bolivia to have held political office as a lawmaker, after Manuel Canelas.