Welcome to Gendernautica; via Yorkshire.
There are no stupid questions.
There are some silly answers.
Origin
Nowt So Queer is an indefinite article exploring & outing queer histories, the tense present, and the myriad futurities of gender & sexuality; all viewed through alternating lenses of day-to-day social activism by androgyny & the fantasia of drag. All faces, voices & stories are currently of my own researching, devising, and articulating.
Yorkshire Proverb
“There’s nowt so queer as folk!”
What’s it all about?
Well, Nowt So Queer is a broad collection of performance works, articles, and general explorations of queer & gender pedagogies in and out of an academic setting, and with or without performance spaces. These works will ultimately range from performances, written documents, collected archives & histories, and the systematic dismantling of gender.
Nowt So Queer is the overall umbrella that includes an ongoing arts practice with links to theatre, stand-up comedy, drag, charting local history, engaging with local spaces, & aiming to create queer spaces, for performance or otherwise.
“Queer”
as in “as a nine bob note”
Queer: history, definition, & reclamation
Queer is an umbrella term that includes all, but that also forms part of, the LGBTT2QQIAAP+ community. Queer is left intentionally vague to allow for all members of the community to identify more broadly as such, as is the case with the “+”. While the traditional acronym was simply LGBT, there could be a possibility for future iterations to be reduced and expanded simultaneously to just Q+.
Queer, in its earlier forms, suggested a point of difference. Queer suggested something against the natural grain, something peculiar. Queer still incorproates this aspect in a sense, but also extends the point of difference to an intersectionality of identity, whether sexuality or gender-based.
Queerness is about that intersectionality and community. There’s nothing so queer as people. The innate need for belonging & understanding, through identity & a community to belong to as part of that identity.
“Where the streets are gates, the gates are bars, and the bars are pubs”, by ‘eck it’s only Yorkshire!
This project seeks to document & archive a queer Yorkshire to attempt to carve a future for a clearer & more accessible queer future. So, not to negate the will of an old Yorkshire proverb, but for everything that is to be heard, and all that is to be seen, it should be documented, recorded, & after thorough research, disseminated & understood.
‘ear all, see all, say nowt
There’s folk as queer as nowt else
So, why now?
I don’t know how to best answer that question. But this project has begun in a truly topsy-turvy time in history (2019-2021), and there are constant reminders every day that there is still much work to do in our community, among others. The first York Pride wasn’t until 2012, and there still are very few queer spaces, a handful of local drag performers (who even York Pride still seem reluctant to include in their Pride shows), and no specific source or wealth of knowledge on the Queer history of York, despite its long and varied history in all other areas! So, why not now?