Get ready for a transformation

Get ready for a transformation

Infinite love. That’s what I see when I look at Sydney Mardi Gras’ new logo of two hearts intertwined.

Yes, I said ‘Sydney Mardi Gras’ — the brand new shiny name of our beloved festival, making sure political correctness and acceptance for everyone (and I do mean everyone) are at the forefront of next year’s Mardi Gras, and for the years to come.

So what does this all mean? Name changes, new logos, and party details revealed before March 2. Has Mardi Gras flipped as we know it? Will the glitter never fall the same again?

My answer is ‘Yes, but for the better’.

Two years ago I hated Mardi Gras. I believed it was over-commercialised and full of sleaze. I knew the LGBTI community was much more than that, and I wanted Mardi Gras to reflect that.

Thankfully, I wasn’t the only one.

When I joined Sydney Mardi Gras’ communications team and was shown the ‘Say Something’ concept, I knew change was on its way.

We wanted to get back to the community, we wanted to give everyone a voice and a platform to speak their minds, and I believe we managed that.

The symbol of infinite love, like a butterfly, represents metamorphosis, a transformation.

And if the evolution from the old Mardi Gras to New Mardi Gras was like a phoenix rising from the ashes, then the change of New Mardi Gras to Sydney Mardi Gras is a beautiful butterfly awakening from its cocoon, and finally spreading its wings once more.

I expect next year’s Mardi Gras to be the biggest yet. Mardi Gras hasn’t even reached its full potential yet, but we are getting there.

If you believe in love for everyone and sex with whomever you please, and if you believe in fun and happiness, in celebrating who we are and fighting for what is right and being who you want to do be, Sydney Mardi Gras 2012 is for you.

By JESSE MATHESON

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15 responses to “Get ready for a transformation”

  1. Jesse, I’m not a 78er but I am 51. Over the years, I’ve been involved in the G&L community in many different ways and have also been designing floats and costumes for the parade for many years. I respect the past but am not worried about it. My concern is the effect that dropping an identity will have on the future. I’m glad that in your world there is no need for labels anymore, but that isn’t my world…and I mean my current world not my past ‘good old day when times were tough’ world. I have seen and been part of lots of amazing changes in recognition of us as equals with everyone else, but we still haven’t reached a time when being GLBTQI just isn’t an issue. When we reach a day that I can just walk down the street anywhere, holding my GFs hand and not be worried in any way about whether that is a risk, then we might be ready to not have a label in the parade.

    Maybe G&L isn’t inclusive enough and other options need to be canvassed but to call the festival Sydney Mardi Gras isn’t adding diversity, it is merely taking away all identity. The floats that my partner and I design are sometimes overtly political, sometimes quirky and always fabulous (I hope) but whatever we design, we do so in the knowledge that people watching the parade or seeing our pictures in the paper know immediately that the parade is about gays and lesbians because it is labeled that way. A number of years ago we made two Marie Antoinette inspired costumes out of 400 plastic water bottles (as you do). When people watching the ‘Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras’ saw two women in the parade wearing 400 plastic water bottles they thought ‘look at what those two lesbians are wearing’ (or as they did ‘look at what those two gay guys in drag are wearing’) but I am worried that if we wore the same thing to the Sydney Mardi Gras that people would just say ‘look at what those two women are wearing’. To you, that may not matter, but to me it does. I spend a lot of time in my day to day life pushing to have who I am and what my relationship is recognized and accepted. On that one night of the year, I don’t have to push, it is assumed and immediately accepted. It sends a message to all outside the community that I am here, I am a lesbian, I am not hiding, I am fabulous and I am OK. I think that is too valuable a thing to lose and the potential cost of essentially hiding who we are by this particular name change, to me, is too high a price to pay. I gave up hiding a long time ago.

    And if that makes you as a young person think I am a just an old dinosaur, then so be it. I embrace my dinosaurness and lead me to the tarpit.

  2. Because ANZAC day is for the Australian New Zealand Army Corps… Mardi Gras on the other hand, serves a much larger community, it is a far more ambiguous celebration.

    That was easy…

  3. please explain how my example is invalid? im curious as to your thought process (if any)… and im sure others are too

  4. @ – Your example is invalid, and you presume that it means nothing to me but a party weekend. You actually don’t know me to a bar of soap.

    The ‘broader’ gay community thought for everyone to be accepted equal, and it was a lot more than just Gays & Lesbians on that day. They should be happy we have reached a point where labels don’t represent our cause, but instead, the cause itself is so iconic that it is synonymous with everything we have achieved and will continue to fight for.

  5. Jesse there is a difference between ‘trying to suit everyones needs’ and betraying its own birthright and offending and alienating the broader gay community who had to literally fight for what we as gen Y take so callously for granted.

    I agree that it IS a business and they do need to survive financially, however at what cost? This new move will i dare say have no real consequence to you and other Gen Y’s who see it as a big party weekend and nothing else.

    but for people like myself who owe a HELL OF A LOT to the ’78ers’ it is a betrayal of everything that has been fought for.

    imagine if ANZAC Day became ‘Veterans day’… yes its ‘all inclusive’ of the many people who fought for our freedom, but it betrays what it is meant to represent.

    food for thought

  6. History and tradition aside, you’ve got a gay and lesbian organisation who feel they need to drop the title “Gay & Lesbian” because it’s putting people off?
    This is progress?
    Sounds more like an admission of defeat to me.

  7. Does it matter? I’m not going to grow up and go “I remember back in my day when I had to march every 2nd-3rd month to get same-sex marriage changed, so everything has to run by me first!”

    This is a business trying to suit everyones needs, its not going to please everyone, and any change probably won’t please the 78ers. I don’t mean to sound disrespectful, but sometimes change needs to occur even if it ditches tradition.

  8. Ah, the arrogance of youth.
    Dare I say Jesse, when you get your own Mardi Gras you can call it whatever the hell you like with it.
    The word “inclusive’ is being tossed around a lot. Just how included do you think those who were there in 1978 (or earlier) feel?

  9. Jesse even if I did have a column I wouldn’t attempt to stifle debate by requesting that people only comment in a specific manner or on a particular topic.

  10. Sue, I am sorry. At the time of writing it was literally an hour after I had attended the release of the new name, I was under the impression that this was correct. I admit to that miscommunication.

    Non-compliant, when you get your own column, you can do whatever the hell you like with it.

  11. ‘As someone who was at the first Mardi Gras in 1978 I am completely shocked that an event that was held in the name of gay solidarity, and included us all chanting ‘stop police attacks on gays, women and blacks’ prior to so many of us being brutally bashed and arrested that night seems to have been effectively ‘de-gayed’ by removing these words from the parade title. I had thought that Mardi Gras was actually becoming more inclusive, not less, and if anything it should be the GLBTI / Queer Mardi Gras Parade in this day and age, surely.

    No one can seriously think that our elders and youth, who continue to suffer fear of discrimination, bullying and persecution to the point of considering or committing suicide, have nothing left to fight for and no longer need clear, specific, mainstream visibility. We all do. The struggle is far from over.

    I wondered last week, when I saw the 1978 and 1979 posters being used by Mardi Gras on their new ‘through the ages’ poster and as their profile picture on Facebook, whether something similar to the butterfly might be the new symbol – a tribute to the first events, to the 78ers, and to the designer of those posters. To me the new symbol is not just two hearts, to my eyes it is an immediately apparent direct reference to that butterfly on our first two posters, and it needs to be acknowledged as such and the designer of that beautiful original image credited for that.

    Hopefully Mardi Gras will reverse this decision that erases its true history, consult with 78ers about the way forward, and embrace rather than alienate large parts of the GLBTIQ community’.
    Jo Harrison
    78er.

  12. Jesse, as a member of the communications team I would have hoped that that your communications are more accurate. “the change of New Mardi Gras to Sydney Mardi Gras” Please there has been far too many miscommunications coming out of NMG HQ and you are just adding to it. New Mardi Gras will become Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and the season events will be called Sydney Mardi Gras. Please get your facts right.

  13. So Jesse we should wait to comment on the fact that we are furious about the name change and the communication of it because someone on the ‘Sydney Mardi Gras’ communications team’ within the organisation formerly known as New Mardi Gras doesn’t want us to?

    Do you understand the difference between a newspaper and a press release of an in-house newsletter?

    The fact that you commented on your own piece before anyone got a chance to demonstrates to me that you don’t.

    There is a great degree of anger and frustration in the broader community and your attempt to stifle debate in the comments thread to this article before it even begins demonstrates the arrogance that the organisation is being called out on.

    There is a very old saying Jesse, “If you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen.”

  14. I am excited.

    I expect next year’s Mardi Gras to be the biggest yet. Mardi Gras hasn’t even reached its full potential for us in a long while. It was started as a rebellion – a revolution… i think with the the fight for equality hitting the media, a number of great initiatives like the inclusive name change, and projects like the it gets better project and gay is ok. We are heading to a point where only love and celebration are bound to come out of it… i sound like ive popped one too many valium, but i havent i just have a really nice strong faith that we are getting there.

    “If you believe in love for everyone and sex with whomever you please, and if you believe in fun and happiness, in celebrating who we are and fighting for what is right and being who you want to do be, Sydney Mardi Gras 2012 is for you.” Couldnt have said it better myself :)

  15. I would like to comment, before everyone else does, that this column was written before the explosion of the name changing controversy. If you are going to comment, I would prefer you wait until next week when I will be speaking about this in more detail.

    Right now, I would really like to hear your experiences over the past however many years it has been that you have been attending Mardi Gras, or talk about some fond memories… and let the war begin in next weeks column :)

    Thanks!