The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras

Queer as Fact

History

4.8 • 644 Ratings

🗓️ 15 June 2019

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras began as a commemoration of the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, and has blossomed into the biggest queer festival in Australia. This episode will discuss the origins of the event, and some of the issues which have coloured its history. Tune in to learn about the Australian Dykes on Bikes, what may be the world's most in-demand archive, and host Eli's favourite ever Mardi Gras parade float! (NOTE: There is a graphic description of police violence in this episode which goes from 14:00 to 17:35, with the worst part from 16:00-16:40.)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Queer's Fact, a podcast bringing you queer history from around the world and throughout time.
0:04.9	My name is Eli.
0:06.3	I'm Alice.
0:07.2	And I'm Irene.
0:08.0	And today we're talking about the early years of the Sydney gay and lesbian Mardi Gras.
0:19.5	We have some content warnings before we start this episode. It will, of course, include period
0:24.3	typical homophobia, as well as lesbian, transphobia and biphobia within the community.
0:30.0	It will also include an extended section discussing police brutality. There are also brief references
0:36.0	to recreational drug use, mentions of
0:37.9	the AIDS epidemic, and a few swear words in quotes. If any of that sounds like something you don't
0:41.8	want to listen to, feel free to skip this one and check out any of our other episodes. So as I alluded
0:46.5	to at the top of the podcast, we're not going to be covering the entirety of the 40-year-plus
0:50.9	history of the Sydney Gay and Les lesbian Mardi Gras today.
0:56.1	That was just a little much.
0:56.7	Yeah.
1:01.1	We're also not going to be discussing it in a chronological way because, frankly, I tried to write the script like that, and it just kind of came out quite boring.
1:04.1	The development of Mardi Gras is in many ways quite inspirational, but it is also, when you
1:09.9	get down to it, kind of just a story
1:11.7	of like, organization and gradually increasing numbers of floats.
1:16.5	Yeah.
1:16.9	It's not a lot of fun.
1:18.1	So instead, what we're going to do is we're going to talk about the first Mardi Gras in
	...

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