Aloyziouz Falcon
DR: Why did you chose to move here?
AF: I’d been in Lutruwita in Tasmania and I’d visited this town on and off for seven or eight years and I kind of knew waves of different people, through different circles. I used to come out here because I was working for the Icecream Social. They started out here. I sometimes did the market or a festival and I’d drive the Mr Whippy van. I remember it being really hot all the time, like forty degrees. Just driving down the Calder thinking, Is the car going to explode?
I also did performances when I came out here in those times. I manage this male celebrity, Jaimé Falcon, and he was asked to host the Glittering Goldfields Queer Youth Formal with his co-host Shageasy at the Theatre Royal and that was really quite cute – all these teenagers that were non-binary and trans and queer and gay and lesbian, all showing up and having a special night. It was really fun to facilitate that experience and be the hosts. Jaimé and Shageasy ran a gameshow – someone comes and spins a wheel and plays a game. And there was the Shibu ball – a sort of a big performance art party that a lot of people in this town and surroundings were involved in – this big magical party that happened every blue moon. I really struggle to remember all the details and information about things, especially if I've been a part of it.
But the reason I moved here was that I got pregnant and was like, Where am I going to live? I was offered a place to rent out in Sedgwick. It was on a lot of land and was just a really beautiful place to spend time and maybe be pregnant at. Also my kid’s dad grew up in Castlemaine, so I just thought that would be, you know, maybe a nice connection for the dad to have support nearby.
We all ended up living in that house. It's a bit of an MC Escher house. My sibling Sky moved up from Lutruwita as well. So we all lived in this house. The day I moved up was the day the pandemic started, just pre-lockdown. I got off the spirit of Tasmania and the whole of St Kilda was just empty, and a security guard was chasing this person down the street with a toilet roll in his arms and I was like, What is going on? I just remember thinking this might be the last time we sit in a cafe and have a coffee.
DR: It was such a strange time.
AF: Yeah. So that was the entrance into living here. Just kind of becoming more isolated than I could've even imagined.
DR: It was probably a good place to be during the pandemic.
AF: I was really grateful to be out here because I know that it would've been much harder in the city – from the experiences of friends that were there.
DR: Can you tell me about the LGBTQIA+ community here, and your interaction with it?
AF: I feel like I rarely have any straight friends. I suppose I'm in different sections of the community – like I can be amongst the younger queer generation of people in their twenties, I can sort of, dip into that, but mostly I have friends that are in their forties and onwards.
DR: How old are you?
AF: I'm thirty-two, so I just sort of feel like I'm a little bit of an in-betweener. Also I'm a parent, so I have this other intersection with queer parent friends. I go to rainbow family playgroups and go camping with other queer parents, and it's just different to what I grew up with, or anything I've seen modelled through my family and parenting.
[A group of little kids enter the garden]
DR: Cue the children
AF: Cue the children. Here they come. [Children chatter in background] So here’s some I prepared earlier!
Yeah, so I feel like a broad range of the queer realms exist here. My kid is nearly two and for the first year in their life, and while I was pregnant, I felt quite invisible as a pregnant human. I had to work through a lot of feelings of being perceived as a straight ‘Becky’ that's just like, Yeah, and then I met a man and we’re getting married … or we are actually already married and this is our third child. I know that isn't probably what it looks like, but I was just working through that sort of gender dysphoria and identity dysphoria. For me, having a baby has been like a serious letting go of caring what I'm perceived as, or how people read me. And stepping more into the power of, I know who I am, so it doesn't really matter. If people are gonna see you they're gonna see you. It's not something I feel like I should have to force by dressing in a certain way or looking a certain way.
DR: How did that happen, that shift in your attitude, was it a gradual thing or were there steps?
AF: I want to say it was like a gradual beating down. I couldn’t really stop it, you know. If I try to change it, it feels quite forced. Having a baby, you just really don't want to force things, you don't want to force the baby to come out, you don’t want to force them to do anything, you want them to be in flow, and that's how I try to approach my social life as well. I don't really want to force a friendship where there isn't connection. I still make an effort and try, but I'm trying to not feel the need to push things and just allow them to come. You attract the people that you're on a vibe with. I think there was a definite time when I was like, I don't know where I really fit into all this, or, I don't know what other families I should connect with or hang out with. Often I’ve just been walking and my kid would wave to another kid, and then I'd meet that kid’s parent, and then it would turn out that maybe that kid’s parent is queer. Generally that would happen on a day when I was feeling really defeated and alone and isolated, and it's like the kid just does this magic spell, and was like, here's a friend, don't even worry about it.
DR: Are there many rainbow families here?
AF: Because of the pandemic a lot more families from the city moved out here. People that are a bit older than me, and have been around the traps a bit more, and have a bit more of that drive to put together people and groups like social permaculture. They have their coordination skills ready and maybe they have had a second child or something so they're just all over it – I don't know how people do it!
I think because of that influx and there being an increase of queer families here, there was an acknowledgement that it would be good and beneficial to have a rainbow family playgroup. Because it is kind of weird being a queer parent and then hanging out with lots of straight families, and for me it’s like, Where do I fit into this? I don't have the desire for what they have, what they're doing. I respect and value that they chose what they’re doing in their life, but I sometimes feel like there's this vast canyon between me and them – their experience of becoming a parent and my experience of becoming a parent. To relate to each other can just feel like trying to leap over the canyon and hug. Really the only connection we have is that we have small children and we're tired. So it's nice to meet more like peers. Whenever I meet a mid-thirties parent who's come in on their parenting journey with a couple of other adults involved in the picture, and they don't have a generic family structure and they're like paving their own way, and maybe they’re also artists and queer and a parent, then I feel like I share three intersections with them. I feel that I can easily connect and understand without giving them my entire life story. We have enough to sit comfortably and feel seen.
DR: What’s it like being a queer parent?
AF: I think it's fun, and I think it's messy. Being a parent in general is just the hardest thing. I just actually don't know anyone that doesn't struggle with it to some degree – especially as the birthing person. It’s like really setting aside your own needs for those of another. In our society you don't ever have to do that unless you're in a support or care role, and even then you can get to clock off at the end of the day, change over with someone else and go back to your life and back to yourself. So being a parent takes a lot of strength that I didn't know I had. It feels like Rocky – my kids name’s Roqy but I mean Rocky in the movie – just training to run up those stairs, the constant rigorous training program, that's like trying to develop my muscles and my strength in my sleep. Trying to make the muscle of your heart so strong that you can withstand. I think having a kid grows that muscle really fast and quite painfully and beautifully and lovingly.
DR: What’s painful about it?
AF: I think for me – God I'm gonna cry …
DR: Oh no – sorry – you don’t have to answer ...
AF: It's painful because it's a love that I've never known, and I know it in my spirit and my soul – it's really deep. To love someone that much comes with a sense of care and worry – a really high expectation to do right by this human, and to guide them and let them guide me. Being a good role model of what being a human is. And for me, coming from a family in a cult and having a lot of domestic violence, all those intergenerational themes and wounds come up when you have a kid. So that discomfort is painful. I can't stop those things from emerging, all I can do is make choices every day about how I redirect or rewrite the narrative and make the world as good as I can for my kid. But I also have no control over any of it. You can't really control ... I can only control my own actions and self, so it's quite a deep experience. But maybe integrating that into my previous selves and other desires and ways of existing is … [children leave garden] Bye children! ... [laughs]
DR: When you say previous selves, what are they – can you talk about them?
AF: Talk about ‘the others’? Well, the others are packed in bags, and they live in my studio, and every now and then I get a chance to unpack one of them, and pull them out of the bag and be like, Well, what purpose do you have in my life now? Everything has become really cut-and-dry for me, it's like, Has this old version served its purpose and time and place, or is there something from that aspect of self that I can integrate into my now self that will assist and nourish my life, and my kid’s life? I'm not speaking metaphorically because what I'm describing is my past when I used a lot of character and performance art to process or channel and move energy in my mind. So I do literally have suitcases of different personas that I could just put on, and then shimmy on through and get to the other side, and then put them back in the suitcase and carry on. That was a method I used to compartmentalise and heal and deal with and process the many dynamics of life.
DR: Can you talk about your thoughts on gender, or your relationship to gender?
AF: How explicit can we get in this interview?
DR: It’s really up to you.
AF: Gender. What is it? At this point I feel like I'm just post-gender, like, fuck-it. I don't think you know growing up. I grew up in a really restricted environment and I was definitely just being groomed to be a perfect housewife and a perfect woman, and a good little girl. As a young child my expression was really like, moving into that tomboy vibe. You know, it was the 90’s. I think that was a thing then.
DR: Hasn’t it always been a thing?
AF: Yeah, I guess it has. Exactly. That's what I mean, it’s like I only have the reference of my own existence. I remember just feeling those uncomfortable feelings growing up, of putting on particular outfits, like skirts, and wearing my hair in a particular way. I felt very uncomfortable, it was like putting drag on for the day.
DR: What age was that?
AF: I think from about six, I was always very particular about what I wanted to wear. I remember one time I must've been trying to fit in and I wanted only pink flowery clothes, and then one day I just snapped and ripped it all out of the closet and put it in my bag and said, I'm never wearing pink again! I had this really bad, internal and external battle – I’m noting times in my life that maybe were indicators of a discomfort with what society projects on us.
In my early twenties, I didn’t have the language for it that I have now. I wouldn’t have said I’m non-binary. I still had all this programming that I had to decode and relearn. I used to say that I’m like a gay man trapped inside a woman’s body. I would say that to people, and they’d be like, What are you talking about? But I think that’s early signs of something not really adding up. My relationship to gender now is like post-genderism, so I don’t feel one way or the other. As a parent, I claim that I’ve become a mother but I also feel like I’ve become a father, and that’s kind of changed it again. I just feel like I embody the energy that it takes to channel the genders that I need at different times, so I would say it's quite fluid. What aspect I bring forward depends on who I’m around or who I’m with. I’m always up for the unravelling. I used to say, I’ll let you know my gender when I'm 80, when I’ve decided. Not that I’m confused – because I’m not confused, I’m just floating.
People are going to read me, and how they read me depends on what they want to project out. So, for me the importance is just feeling as comfortable as I can in my being. That’s not so much a physical thing as it is an emotional, spiritual and mental kind of process. I can’t control what others think or feel or see me as. But in saying that, I don’t want to dismiss the importance of queerness being visible, and I want to be clear about that, because I think that’s also really magical, and when I’ve seen myself as a queer role model for teenagers or younger people, I think that might have just altered their mind just a little bit and given them a sense of belonging.
DR: What about now, do you see yourself as being a queer role model as a parent?
AF: I think I am without even knowing it, because I'm so in my day-to-day life of looking after my kid that I don't really see myself from the outside. But people approach me and say how do you do it? or Wishes is doing it like that, so maybe I could do that. Without literally knowing what it’s like having a kid, they’re like, that looks nice! [laughs]. With my sibling and my kid’s dad, the way that we’re operating is different, and we're kind of making it up as we go. So it's a bit messy and chaotic sometimes, but I think it does make people think, Maybe I can do it differently, or maybe I can do it the way I want to do it. There are so many ways to have a family, and there are so many ways to exist in the world. There's power in visioning and drawing out your dream. You know, you might get lucky, and it might happen.
DR: Can you elaborate about coming into your queerness, what’s that been like for you?
AF: I think it's like acceptance and de-programming and decoding. It's hard work – neurolinguistic programming, replacing. I grew up in an extreme religious thing, so they literally instil homophobia and the heteronormative model into your being. The de-programming of that can take a lifetime. I think I fast tracked a bit of it.
DR: How did you do that?
AF: I just had to, for survival. I threw myself into the depths of experiences and surrounding myself with people like artists and freaks, and geeks, and queers. To find truth – to be able to connect to this life and reality. Because I grew up in a lie, I grew up in brainwashing so my soul was just screaming, Get out of here!
DR: When did that happen, what age?
AF: I left home at 17. I always wanted to move to Melbourne, and then I just landed on the doorstep of a warehouse in Brunswick when I was 17 or 18 and I was like, Can I stay here? I had an openness to the world that I'd been warned against having, and I think I was just embraced.
DR: And is there a similar kind of support here in Castlemaine?
AF: It’s less manic a decade down the train line. I’ve been on the ten-year train, it’s slowing down.
DR: Something else I’m asking people to talk about is language, how does it impact you in relation to your gender identity? You talked earlier about decoding and learning a new language to talk about things, how did you learn that new language?
AF: I suppose through peers and kind of moving away from the male gaze. Removing the claw of patriarchy from my psyche. I don't know how I did that. I think it's exposure – going to queer parties, seeing people loving each other in a way that has been taboo or has been hidden from my experience, and then in turn experiencing that. Being challenged, and going, I like this person, and this is really nice, so what's my aversion or what's my blockage to this? I've always been someone who needs to go and find out why and dig it out – and that feels really uncomfortable and scary. So, I think its exposure, and putting myself in situations, and learning through doing and living.
Also in terms of language, it's just a thing that happens a lot through peers, and the internet has made that go so fast. What I have been able to comprehend or understand from language – how to use language, the right language, or the politically correct language or just the language that’s not going to be offensive or it's going to be inclusive.
DR: So are there particular articles or authors that come to mind?
AF: I think I have a bit of an ADHD brain and just learn through memes really quickly, and also along the way I’ve had really hard and uncomfortable conversations with friends, that were like, hey, when you say this it actually really hurts.
I don't like cancelling people but rather than cancelling someone, being like – this is for someone else – ‘Hey, my pronoun is she/her and when you ‘they’ me, it feels like you're not seeing me which is painful because you're my good friend. And so you go, Why am I doing that? Why am I they/them-ing that person when they want to be she/her, and well, they are she/her?. So language can be so important. And then there's times when people are more fluid about it.
I've been to places more rural than here, like out in Broken Hill and White Cliffs, where I don't know when the memo’s gonna get there! So there needs to be compassion for people that have different backgrounds and experiences of life and exposure. Someone in a small country town is potentially and most likely not going to have the exposure that I've had to queer life in the city where everyone knows how to use all the right words to get around each other, so I think there needs to be an element of compassion always in how you hear and perceive another. When I feel safe, if I have the bravery to address it, if it is comfortable and if I'm feeling sassy and someone is like ‘she …’, I'll be like, I'm – not – a – girl! Or, I'm not a woman! It can leave someone quite baffled and confused and maybe they'll have to think about that later on. I'm not sure if it is a good thing or a bad thing to be a sassy person, I don't know yet.
DR: It’s hard isn’t it? You have to have strength and courage to confront people about that stuff.
AF: Yeah, you don’t want to pick fights, and obviously violence is a really terrifying thing for lots of people, especially within queer communities, so you want to avoid it. You know the spaces where you can be, and you know the spaces where you might have to close up a few things. But I don't know if that is how anyone wants to live.
DR: Have there been in any scenarios here that have made you aware of those delineations between places where you are comfortable or not?
AF: I just have mild things that I kind of keep to myself. If I go to the playground and there’re other parents and maybe they might go, Is it a boy or a girl? about my kid, and I’m like, Well, we actually don’t disclose that, we just use they/them pronouns. We don’t use boy or girl at home, or sometimes we use a bit of a combination. Sometimes I get a look that’s just like, What–is–wrong–with–you? I don’t think I’ve really had anyone vehemently tell me that it’s messed up. One older lady at the market once implied that by not gendering my kid I was maybe denying them – that I was creating a shame around their actual gender, whatever that means. But isn’t that what has happened to a lot of us anyway? By being told we’re a girl or a boy, a lot of people have shame around … I don’t know how to talk about this, it’s still kind of new. But if my kid turns around and says, I'm this! I'm going to be, Okay! I hope I’m not going to have some internalised explosion of, Oh my god, oh no! I’d be very disappointed in myself. It’s really interesting because I see my kid get called all the genders, or not all of them – just the two of them that people use. And so far, I don't think it’s made a difference except maybe they don’t have any specific identity.
DR: Identity?
AF: Yeah, they're not one way or the other about anything.
DR: Do they talk about that?
AF: They talk mostly about trucks and stuff. And other things like ducks and animals and colours and people. I’ll say, who loves you? and they'll name all these people. And I’ll be like, how do you know all these people's names? They're nearly two, so I'm sure within the next year we’ll know how not using he or she has affected them – the ‘experiment’ will become clear.
DR: Do you know other parents who bring their kids up that way?
AF: I do know other parents that do it. Generally, eventually, people slide into using a he or she pronoun. I remember reading about some Swedish couple who were like, We just use they/them, and the whole world was like, This is a shock! the horror! But I remember thinking, oh yeah, that makes sense.
DR: Did you make a decision about it, or did it just happen?
WF: I made a decision because it’s actually so intense how much the world categorises.
The first thing someone wants to know about your baby is its genitals. And I was like, Imagine if someone just came up to me or you, and said, What genitals do you have? Like on–the–street! It’s an uncomfortable thing. So, why should I disclose that information for someone who can’t even speak yet? And why are you so interested?
When people see a baby they want to know something about the baby, and the first thing that they want to know is what genitals the baby has. Because then they can go, oh – a boy, okay, so that means I can get you blue clothes and I can get you a blue card with Congratulations it's a boy! And when Christmas and birthdays come up, I know that this is the gift that I can get them. That's not even really my life – I don't have that kind of family, grandparent vibes of people getting those gifts or whatever – but I assume that's part of it. There is something about the they/them – it just leaves people confused … What? Where do I …? What box do I put you in? There’s like a desperation to put people in a box, so they can understand it. I think when people say, my gender identity is fluid, it's an uncomfortable place. Yeah, I get that.
DR: Have people talked to you about that?
AF: Yeah, just in general conversation with friends when we’re like, why do people get so thrown off? Potentially, for someone who's come from a really straight-down-the-line life and upbringing who hasn't thought about the world outside their own, something like gender fluidity could be really discombobulating and a lot to process. So I think to push that on someone is not a great starting point, so sometimes to make things easier I just go, I'm a bisexual. And people go, oh, OK. But for me, its not about whether I'm into men and women – that's not the umbrella I'm using. But for some situations it's just easier to narrow it down, and if that person then goes, I want to investigate my thoughts around that, then that can be their journey.
I took my kid to an interview for a family day-care when my kid was maybe like 10-months old. The person who ran it said, boy or a girl? And I was like, well, we've been using they/them pronouns and she said, well that's going to be really confusing for the other children because they’re going to ask me, What does they/them mean? And, how come you're calling that kid this if they've got those genitals?
I thought well it hasn't really been a problem, and still even to this day it hasn't been a problem. There are times when kids get naked around each other and when they do nappy changes, they see what's going on. I can see a little clock in their head, and they go, Oh. But most of the time, they don't look at each other's genitals and go, You're a boy or a girl. Sometimes, even after seeing, they might just go with the other gender. It’s not that hard to talk about.
DR: So, what happened with that day-care situation?
AF: Well, she didn't pick me. I didn’t make the cut.
DR: So, you have to audition for day-care?
AF: Yeah, you really do, and you have to fill out forms and things, things that I'm not very good at. I'm not like a form-fill-er-out-er-er. Not an admin queen. So yeah, I just thought that was funny because obviously that person is saying I'm confused. Because she can't speak for the children being confused. She can't tell me what those children really think or feel. She’s saying, that's too confusing for me, because I'm in a binary world, and I like it that way, so don't be coming in here with your weird stuff. That's too-hard-basket, we're going to keep it all girls and boys over here, because it's easier.
DR: I imagine it’s not uncommon.
AF: It's not uncommon, but I get a lot of carers at the day-care I send Roqy to, and I go, I just use they/them, and they go, Okay, yeah cool, and, I'll try my best. And I go, Great, that's all I'm asking. I don't mind if you don't always get it right, the point isn't just to they/them them, it's to not go, you're a boy so we're gonna get you doing Bob the Builder, or, we're gonna send all the girls off over there and all the boys off over there … I think it has evolved a little bit in education.
DR: One would hope so.
AF: A little bit, but it also devolves quite quickly, I think.
DR: That makes me think of a story someone else was telling me about here, about a gay group that walk their dogs in the park and the women go one way around the park and the men walk in the other direction ...
AF: But then sometimes maybe there's a place for that too. I don’t know, there's just so many ways to be in the world isn't there? And so many subgroups you could be a part of.
AF: I’d been in Lutruwita in Tasmania and I’d visited this town on and off for seven or eight years and I kind of knew waves of different people, through different circles. I used to come out here because I was working for the Icecream Social. They started out here. I sometimes did the market or a festival and I’d drive the Mr Whippy van. I remember it being really hot all the time, like forty degrees. Just driving down the Calder thinking, Is the car going to explode?
I also did performances when I came out here in those times. I manage this male celebrity, Jaimé Falcon, and he was asked to host the Glittering Goldfields Queer Youth Formal with his co-host Shageasy at the Theatre Royal and that was really quite cute – all these teenagers that were non-binary and trans and queer and gay and lesbian, all showing up and having a special night. It was really fun to facilitate that experience and be the hosts. Jaimé and Shageasy ran a gameshow – someone comes and spins a wheel and plays a game. And there was the Shibu ball – a sort of a big performance art party that a lot of people in this town and surroundings were involved in – this big magical party that happened every blue moon. I really struggle to remember all the details and information about things, especially if I've been a part of it.
But the reason I moved here was that I got pregnant and was like, Where am I going to live? I was offered a place to rent out in Sedgwick. It was on a lot of land and was just a really beautiful place to spend time and maybe be pregnant at. Also my kid’s dad grew up in Castlemaine, so I just thought that would be, you know, maybe a nice connection for the dad to have support nearby.
We all ended up living in that house. It's a bit of an MC Escher house. My sibling Sky moved up from Lutruwita as well. So we all lived in this house. The day I moved up was the day the pandemic started, just pre-lockdown. I got off the spirit of Tasmania and the whole of St Kilda was just empty, and a security guard was chasing this person down the street with a toilet roll in his arms and I was like, What is going on? I just remember thinking this might be the last time we sit in a cafe and have a coffee.
DR: It was such a strange time.
AF: Yeah. So that was the entrance into living here. Just kind of becoming more isolated than I could've even imagined.
DR: It was probably a good place to be during the pandemic.
AF: I was really grateful to be out here because I know that it would've been much harder in the city – from the experiences of friends that were there.
DR: Can you tell me about the LGBTQIA+ community here, and your interaction with it?
AF: I feel like I rarely have any straight friends. I suppose I'm in different sections of the community – like I can be amongst the younger queer generation of people in their twenties, I can sort of, dip into that, but mostly I have friends that are in their forties and onwards.
DR: How old are you?
AF: I'm thirty-two, so I just sort of feel like I'm a little bit of an in-betweener. Also I'm a parent, so I have this other intersection with queer parent friends. I go to rainbow family playgroups and go camping with other queer parents, and it's just different to what I grew up with, or anything I've seen modelled through my family and parenting.
[A group of little kids enter the garden]
DR: Cue the children
AF: Cue the children. Here they come. [Children chatter in background] So here’s some I prepared earlier!
Yeah, so I feel like a broad range of the queer realms exist here. My kid is nearly two and for the first year in their life, and while I was pregnant, I felt quite invisible as a pregnant human. I had to work through a lot of feelings of being perceived as a straight ‘Becky’ that's just like, Yeah, and then I met a man and we’re getting married … or we are actually already married and this is our third child. I know that isn't probably what it looks like, but I was just working through that sort of gender dysphoria and identity dysphoria. For me, having a baby has been like a serious letting go of caring what I'm perceived as, or how people read me. And stepping more into the power of, I know who I am, so it doesn't really matter. If people are gonna see you they're gonna see you. It's not something I feel like I should have to force by dressing in a certain way or looking a certain way.
DR: How did that happen, that shift in your attitude, was it a gradual thing or were there steps?
AF: I want to say it was like a gradual beating down. I couldn’t really stop it, you know. If I try to change it, it feels quite forced. Having a baby, you just really don't want to force things, you don't want to force the baby to come out, you don’t want to force them to do anything, you want them to be in flow, and that's how I try to approach my social life as well. I don't really want to force a friendship where there isn't connection. I still make an effort and try, but I'm trying to not feel the need to push things and just allow them to come. You attract the people that you're on a vibe with. I think there was a definite time when I was like, I don't know where I really fit into all this, or, I don't know what other families I should connect with or hang out with. Often I’ve just been walking and my kid would wave to another kid, and then I'd meet that kid’s parent, and then it would turn out that maybe that kid’s parent is queer. Generally that would happen on a day when I was feeling really defeated and alone and isolated, and it's like the kid just does this magic spell, and was like, here's a friend, don't even worry about it.
DR: Are there many rainbow families here?
AF: Because of the pandemic a lot more families from the city moved out here. People that are a bit older than me, and have been around the traps a bit more, and have a bit more of that drive to put together people and groups like social permaculture. They have their coordination skills ready and maybe they have had a second child or something so they're just all over it – I don't know how people do it!
I think because of that influx and there being an increase of queer families here, there was an acknowledgement that it would be good and beneficial to have a rainbow family playgroup. Because it is kind of weird being a queer parent and then hanging out with lots of straight families, and for me it’s like, Where do I fit into this? I don't have the desire for what they have, what they're doing. I respect and value that they chose what they’re doing in their life, but I sometimes feel like there's this vast canyon between me and them – their experience of becoming a parent and my experience of becoming a parent. To relate to each other can just feel like trying to leap over the canyon and hug. Really the only connection we have is that we have small children and we're tired. So it's nice to meet more like peers. Whenever I meet a mid-thirties parent who's come in on their parenting journey with a couple of other adults involved in the picture, and they don't have a generic family structure and they're like paving their own way, and maybe they’re also artists and queer and a parent, then I feel like I share three intersections with them. I feel that I can easily connect and understand without giving them my entire life story. We have enough to sit comfortably and feel seen.
DR: What’s it like being a queer parent?
AF: I think it's fun, and I think it's messy. Being a parent in general is just the hardest thing. I just actually don't know anyone that doesn't struggle with it to some degree – especially as the birthing person. It’s like really setting aside your own needs for those of another. In our society you don't ever have to do that unless you're in a support or care role, and even then you can get to clock off at the end of the day, change over with someone else and go back to your life and back to yourself. So being a parent takes a lot of strength that I didn't know I had. It feels like Rocky – my kids name’s Roqy but I mean Rocky in the movie – just training to run up those stairs, the constant rigorous training program, that's like trying to develop my muscles and my strength in my sleep. Trying to make the muscle of your heart so strong that you can withstand. I think having a kid grows that muscle really fast and quite painfully and beautifully and lovingly.
DR: What’s painful about it?
AF: I think for me – God I'm gonna cry …
DR: Oh no – sorry – you don’t have to answer ...
AF: It's painful because it's a love that I've never known, and I know it in my spirit and my soul – it's really deep. To love someone that much comes with a sense of care and worry – a really high expectation to do right by this human, and to guide them and let them guide me. Being a good role model of what being a human is. And for me, coming from a family in a cult and having a lot of domestic violence, all those intergenerational themes and wounds come up when you have a kid. So that discomfort is painful. I can't stop those things from emerging, all I can do is make choices every day about how I redirect or rewrite the narrative and make the world as good as I can for my kid. But I also have no control over any of it. You can't really control ... I can only control my own actions and self, so it's quite a deep experience. But maybe integrating that into my previous selves and other desires and ways of existing is … [children leave garden] Bye children! ... [laughs]
DR: When you say previous selves, what are they – can you talk about them?
AF: Talk about ‘the others’? Well, the others are packed in bags, and they live in my studio, and every now and then I get a chance to unpack one of them, and pull them out of the bag and be like, Well, what purpose do you have in my life now? Everything has become really cut-and-dry for me, it's like, Has this old version served its purpose and time and place, or is there something from that aspect of self that I can integrate into my now self that will assist and nourish my life, and my kid’s life? I'm not speaking metaphorically because what I'm describing is my past when I used a lot of character and performance art to process or channel and move energy in my mind. So I do literally have suitcases of different personas that I could just put on, and then shimmy on through and get to the other side, and then put them back in the suitcase and carry on. That was a method I used to compartmentalise and heal and deal with and process the many dynamics of life.
DR: Can you talk about your thoughts on gender, or your relationship to gender?
AF: How explicit can we get in this interview?
DR: It’s really up to you.
AF: Gender. What is it? At this point I feel like I'm just post-gender, like, fuck-it. I don't think you know growing up. I grew up in a really restricted environment and I was definitely just being groomed to be a perfect housewife and a perfect woman, and a good little girl. As a young child my expression was really like, moving into that tomboy vibe. You know, it was the 90’s. I think that was a thing then.
DR: Hasn’t it always been a thing?
AF: Yeah, I guess it has. Exactly. That's what I mean, it’s like I only have the reference of my own existence. I remember just feeling those uncomfortable feelings growing up, of putting on particular outfits, like skirts, and wearing my hair in a particular way. I felt very uncomfortable, it was like putting drag on for the day.
DR: What age was that?
AF: I think from about six, I was always very particular about what I wanted to wear. I remember one time I must've been trying to fit in and I wanted only pink flowery clothes, and then one day I just snapped and ripped it all out of the closet and put it in my bag and said, I'm never wearing pink again! I had this really bad, internal and external battle – I’m noting times in my life that maybe were indicators of a discomfort with what society projects on us.
In my early twenties, I didn’t have the language for it that I have now. I wouldn’t have said I’m non-binary. I still had all this programming that I had to decode and relearn. I used to say that I’m like a gay man trapped inside a woman’s body. I would say that to people, and they’d be like, What are you talking about? But I think that’s early signs of something not really adding up. My relationship to gender now is like post-genderism, so I don’t feel one way or the other. As a parent, I claim that I’ve become a mother but I also feel like I’ve become a father, and that’s kind of changed it again. I just feel like I embody the energy that it takes to channel the genders that I need at different times, so I would say it's quite fluid. What aspect I bring forward depends on who I’m around or who I’m with. I’m always up for the unravelling. I used to say, I’ll let you know my gender when I'm 80, when I’ve decided. Not that I’m confused – because I’m not confused, I’m just floating.
People are going to read me, and how they read me depends on what they want to project out. So, for me the importance is just feeling as comfortable as I can in my being. That’s not so much a physical thing as it is an emotional, spiritual and mental kind of process. I can’t control what others think or feel or see me as. But in saying that, I don’t want to dismiss the importance of queerness being visible, and I want to be clear about that, because I think that’s also really magical, and when I’ve seen myself as a queer role model for teenagers or younger people, I think that might have just altered their mind just a little bit and given them a sense of belonging.
DR: What about now, do you see yourself as being a queer role model as a parent?
AF: I think I am without even knowing it, because I'm so in my day-to-day life of looking after my kid that I don't really see myself from the outside. But people approach me and say how do you do it? or Wishes is doing it like that, so maybe I could do that. Without literally knowing what it’s like having a kid, they’re like, that looks nice! [laughs]. With my sibling and my kid’s dad, the way that we’re operating is different, and we're kind of making it up as we go. So it's a bit messy and chaotic sometimes, but I think it does make people think, Maybe I can do it differently, or maybe I can do it the way I want to do it. There are so many ways to have a family, and there are so many ways to exist in the world. There's power in visioning and drawing out your dream. You know, you might get lucky, and it might happen.
DR: Can you elaborate about coming into your queerness, what’s that been like for you?
AF: I think it's like acceptance and de-programming and decoding. It's hard work – neurolinguistic programming, replacing. I grew up in an extreme religious thing, so they literally instil homophobia and the heteronormative model into your being. The de-programming of that can take a lifetime. I think I fast tracked a bit of it.
DR: How did you do that?
AF: I just had to, for survival. I threw myself into the depths of experiences and surrounding myself with people like artists and freaks, and geeks, and queers. To find truth – to be able to connect to this life and reality. Because I grew up in a lie, I grew up in brainwashing so my soul was just screaming, Get out of here!
DR: When did that happen, what age?
AF: I left home at 17. I always wanted to move to Melbourne, and then I just landed on the doorstep of a warehouse in Brunswick when I was 17 or 18 and I was like, Can I stay here? I had an openness to the world that I'd been warned against having, and I think I was just embraced.
DR: And is there a similar kind of support here in Castlemaine?
AF: It’s less manic a decade down the train line. I’ve been on the ten-year train, it’s slowing down.
DR: Something else I’m asking people to talk about is language, how does it impact you in relation to your gender identity? You talked earlier about decoding and learning a new language to talk about things, how did you learn that new language?
AF: I suppose through peers and kind of moving away from the male gaze. Removing the claw of patriarchy from my psyche. I don't know how I did that. I think it's exposure – going to queer parties, seeing people loving each other in a way that has been taboo or has been hidden from my experience, and then in turn experiencing that. Being challenged, and going, I like this person, and this is really nice, so what's my aversion or what's my blockage to this? I've always been someone who needs to go and find out why and dig it out – and that feels really uncomfortable and scary. So, I think its exposure, and putting myself in situations, and learning through doing and living.
Also in terms of language, it's just a thing that happens a lot through peers, and the internet has made that go so fast. What I have been able to comprehend or understand from language – how to use language, the right language, or the politically correct language or just the language that’s not going to be offensive or it's going to be inclusive.
DR: So are there particular articles or authors that come to mind?
AF: I think I have a bit of an ADHD brain and just learn through memes really quickly, and also along the way I’ve had really hard and uncomfortable conversations with friends, that were like, hey, when you say this it actually really hurts.
I don't like cancelling people but rather than cancelling someone, being like – this is for someone else – ‘Hey, my pronoun is she/her and when you ‘they’ me, it feels like you're not seeing me which is painful because you're my good friend. And so you go, Why am I doing that? Why am I they/them-ing that person when they want to be she/her, and well, they are she/her?. So language can be so important. And then there's times when people are more fluid about it.
I've been to places more rural than here, like out in Broken Hill and White Cliffs, where I don't know when the memo’s gonna get there! So there needs to be compassion for people that have different backgrounds and experiences of life and exposure. Someone in a small country town is potentially and most likely not going to have the exposure that I've had to queer life in the city where everyone knows how to use all the right words to get around each other, so I think there needs to be an element of compassion always in how you hear and perceive another. When I feel safe, if I have the bravery to address it, if it is comfortable and if I'm feeling sassy and someone is like ‘she …’, I'll be like, I'm – not – a – girl! Or, I'm not a woman! It can leave someone quite baffled and confused and maybe they'll have to think about that later on. I'm not sure if it is a good thing or a bad thing to be a sassy person, I don't know yet.
DR: It’s hard isn’t it? You have to have strength and courage to confront people about that stuff.
AF: Yeah, you don’t want to pick fights, and obviously violence is a really terrifying thing for lots of people, especially within queer communities, so you want to avoid it. You know the spaces where you can be, and you know the spaces where you might have to close up a few things. But I don't know if that is how anyone wants to live.
DR: Have there been in any scenarios here that have made you aware of those delineations between places where you are comfortable or not?
AF: I just have mild things that I kind of keep to myself. If I go to the playground and there’re other parents and maybe they might go, Is it a boy or a girl? about my kid, and I’m like, Well, we actually don’t disclose that, we just use they/them pronouns. We don’t use boy or girl at home, or sometimes we use a bit of a combination. Sometimes I get a look that’s just like, What–is–wrong–with–you? I don’t think I’ve really had anyone vehemently tell me that it’s messed up. One older lady at the market once implied that by not gendering my kid I was maybe denying them – that I was creating a shame around their actual gender, whatever that means. But isn’t that what has happened to a lot of us anyway? By being told we’re a girl or a boy, a lot of people have shame around … I don’t know how to talk about this, it’s still kind of new. But if my kid turns around and says, I'm this! I'm going to be, Okay! I hope I’m not going to have some internalised explosion of, Oh my god, oh no! I’d be very disappointed in myself. It’s really interesting because I see my kid get called all the genders, or not all of them – just the two of them that people use. And so far, I don't think it’s made a difference except maybe they don’t have any specific identity.
DR: Identity?
AF: Yeah, they're not one way or the other about anything.
DR: Do they talk about that?
AF: They talk mostly about trucks and stuff. And other things like ducks and animals and colours and people. I’ll say, who loves you? and they'll name all these people. And I’ll be like, how do you know all these people's names? They're nearly two, so I'm sure within the next year we’ll know how not using he or she has affected them – the ‘experiment’ will become clear.
DR: Do you know other parents who bring their kids up that way?
AF: I do know other parents that do it. Generally, eventually, people slide into using a he or she pronoun. I remember reading about some Swedish couple who were like, We just use they/them, and the whole world was like, This is a shock! the horror! But I remember thinking, oh yeah, that makes sense.
DR: Did you make a decision about it, or did it just happen?
WF: I made a decision because it’s actually so intense how much the world categorises.
The first thing someone wants to know about your baby is its genitals. And I was like, Imagine if someone just came up to me or you, and said, What genitals do you have? Like on–the–street! It’s an uncomfortable thing. So, why should I disclose that information for someone who can’t even speak yet? And why are you so interested?
When people see a baby they want to know something about the baby, and the first thing that they want to know is what genitals the baby has. Because then they can go, oh – a boy, okay, so that means I can get you blue clothes and I can get you a blue card with Congratulations it's a boy! And when Christmas and birthdays come up, I know that this is the gift that I can get them. That's not even really my life – I don't have that kind of family, grandparent vibes of people getting those gifts or whatever – but I assume that's part of it. There is something about the they/them – it just leaves people confused … What? Where do I …? What box do I put you in? There’s like a desperation to put people in a box, so they can understand it. I think when people say, my gender identity is fluid, it's an uncomfortable place. Yeah, I get that.
DR: Have people talked to you about that?
AF: Yeah, just in general conversation with friends when we’re like, why do people get so thrown off? Potentially, for someone who's come from a really straight-down-the-line life and upbringing who hasn't thought about the world outside their own, something like gender fluidity could be really discombobulating and a lot to process. So I think to push that on someone is not a great starting point, so sometimes to make things easier I just go, I'm a bisexual. And people go, oh, OK. But for me, its not about whether I'm into men and women – that's not the umbrella I'm using. But for some situations it's just easier to narrow it down, and if that person then goes, I want to investigate my thoughts around that, then that can be their journey.
I took my kid to an interview for a family day-care when my kid was maybe like 10-months old. The person who ran it said, boy or a girl? And I was like, well, we've been using they/them pronouns and she said, well that's going to be really confusing for the other children because they’re going to ask me, What does they/them mean? And, how come you're calling that kid this if they've got those genitals?
I thought well it hasn't really been a problem, and still even to this day it hasn't been a problem. There are times when kids get naked around each other and when they do nappy changes, they see what's going on. I can see a little clock in their head, and they go, Oh. But most of the time, they don't look at each other's genitals and go, You're a boy or a girl. Sometimes, even after seeing, they might just go with the other gender. It’s not that hard to talk about.
DR: So, what happened with that day-care situation?
AF: Well, she didn't pick me. I didn’t make the cut.
DR: So, you have to audition for day-care?
AF: Yeah, you really do, and you have to fill out forms and things, things that I'm not very good at. I'm not like a form-fill-er-out-er-er. Not an admin queen. So yeah, I just thought that was funny because obviously that person is saying I'm confused. Because she can't speak for the children being confused. She can't tell me what those children really think or feel. She’s saying, that's too confusing for me, because I'm in a binary world, and I like it that way, so don't be coming in here with your weird stuff. That's too-hard-basket, we're going to keep it all girls and boys over here, because it's easier.
DR: I imagine it’s not uncommon.
AF: It's not uncommon, but I get a lot of carers at the day-care I send Roqy to, and I go, I just use they/them, and they go, Okay, yeah cool, and, I'll try my best. And I go, Great, that's all I'm asking. I don't mind if you don't always get it right, the point isn't just to they/them them, it's to not go, you're a boy so we're gonna get you doing Bob the Builder, or, we're gonna send all the girls off over there and all the boys off over there … I think it has evolved a little bit in education.
DR: One would hope so.
AF: A little bit, but it also devolves quite quickly, I think.
DR: That makes me think of a story someone else was telling me about here, about a gay group that walk their dogs in the park and the women go one way around the park and the men walk in the other direction ...
AF: But then sometimes maybe there's a place for that too. I don’t know, there's just so many ways to be in the world isn't there? And so many subgroups you could be a part of.