'Queerre': A Des-Old Movement for Gay Punks, Freaks and Rebels

Contents:

• 16 GAY AND BI OLYMPIC FIGURE SKATERS
• THREE OLYMPIC FIGURE SKATERS E OUT — 2 GAY MEN AND 1 QUEER WOMAN
• 'QUEER SKATEBOARDG': PHOTOGRAPHER DOCUMENTS GAY SKATER CULTURE
• THERE HAVE BEEN AT LEAST 39 GAY OLYMPIC FIGURE SKATERS. HERE’S THE LIST
• 'QUEERRE': A DES-OLD MOVEMENT FOR GAY PUNKS, FREAKS AND REBELS

16 GAY AND BI OLYMPIC FIGURE SKATERS

But the scen stggled wh homophobic, sexist and racist elements.

Queerre and rt grrrl risted opprsive homonormative tennci found mastream LGBT anizg.

Pansy Divisn, "Fem a Black Leather Jacket" Fun-lovg Bay Area gay rock mastays Pansy Divisn brought homopunk to the mass when the group toured wh Green Day the 1990s. In the early ‘70s, San Francis shock theater group the Cockett performed loose, nearly amatrish mils wh tl such as Journey To The Center Of Uran, featurg gay men wearg elaborate eye makp, beards filled wh glter and stum llaged om different sectns of thrift stor. Part of their athetic was du Plenty and Gear’s openly gay personae—the sger perhaps more mp than the keyboardist’s more forebodg S&M mien.

THREE OLYMPIC FIGURE SKATERS E OUT — 2 GAY MEN AND 1 QUEER WOMAN

Brpunk had s share of gay reprentatn.

” Then there’s the Tom Robson Band, whose proudly queer lear penned the “Say It Loud – I’m Black And I’m Proud” of the gay world “Glad To Be Gay. Shelley lnched his solo reer 1981 wh “Homosapien, ” an electro-pop paen to queerns and love.

'QUEER SKATEBOARDG': PHOTOGRAPHER DOCUMENTS GAY SKATER CULTURE

Early ‘80s hardre was such a haven for toxic heteronormative masculy that most of s gay adherents remaed the closet.

All the jocks who shaved their heads and beat each other up while nng around circl at the Starwood would’ve had gray matter projectile spewg om their ears had they known Germs to-stctn merchant Darby Crash was gay—a factoid kept well hidn until two s after his ath.

Neher Bob Mould nor Grant Hart were wily known to be gay until years past Hüsker Dü’s 1987 breakup. Both were onted by burly, proudly and loudly gay Randy “Biscu” Turner (Big Boys) and Gary Floyd (Dicks). Anarcho-punks the Apostl were onted by the openly gay Andy Mart, while polil hardre outfs such as MDC serted anti-homophobic msag to their songs.

THERE HAVE BEEN AT LEAST 39 GAY OLYMPIC FIGURE SKATERS. HERE’S THE LIST

Then two Toronto-based gay anarcho-punks, G. Applyg anarcho-punk ethics to gay polics, Jon and LaBce proselytized—via J.

S and a 1985 manifto Maximum RocknRoll fanze, “Don’t Be Gay”—for a queer-centric punk movement, smashg gay and lbian orthodoxy, not jt the mastream hetero world’s prejudic. Among the bt was San Francis’s Pansy Divisn—sentially what the Buzzcks would have been like if Shelley and crew had all been gay and all of their songs had been as explicly queer-centric as “Homosapien. One posive byproduct of queerre was rt grrrl, the ant gay polics of ‘z like J.

’s Silver Lake neighborhood at leather bar The Gntlet) and ftivals (such as Olympia, Washgton’s Homo-A-Gogo) sproutg across North Ameri and Europe. You n fd untls pop culture referenc about skatg where 's a punch le to a joke -- TV shows like Friends ("I'm an ice dancer -- all my iends are gay! That uldn't be farther om the prence of queer skaters the sport n be traced as far back as the 1950s, wasn't until 2018 that Adam Rippon and Eric Radford beme the first out gay figure skaters to pete at the Olympics.

'QUEERRE': A DES-OLD MOVEMENT FOR GAY PUNKS, FREAKS AND REBELS

" Of urse, there have been numero gay skaters at the Olympics -- multiple queer Olympic champns, even... I thk as I got olr, was fely this ternalized sense of homophobia that I felt was pletely rampant.

So I skated to Ida Corr, this club song om 2007 (keepg current), and you know, was kda gay. And so I remember I jt kept this program and I skated at Skate Ameri, this like gay-ish program.