Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Call me old fashioned, but I love songs that end. As a songwriter, I feel like you put a fade out when you can't work out how to end a song.
I remember my first Mardi Gras. It was in the year 2001. I decided earlier that day that I was going to go in drag. It was my third time in drag.
We have such a rigid idea of what heterosexuality is and that's problematic. We have such a rigid idea of what gay is and that's also problematic.
On New Year's Eve, 2000, my friends and I were going to a party in Melbourne and I decided to do it in drag. It was the happiest night of my life.
The first time I ever dressed in drag was at a costume party during my childhood. I went as Wonder Woman and my mom even took me to get the costume.
Recognizing your place of power and privilege in an unfair system can, as an ally, help you to start using that privilege as an opportunity to do good.
I've had boyfriends I've dated whom I met as Courtney, but then dated as Shane. Courtney can certainly act as a glamorous stepping stone across the pond.
When it all boils down, being Courtney has forced me to be different to the status quo, which means I have gotten to decide on every choice along the way.
Drag has taught me that I have deliberate control over my image, and when this notion is applied to one's whole life, it is both powerful and transformative.
Drag can make you a little more fearless and I think girls especially love drag because they get to see somebody define their own standard of feminine beauty.
Courtney wants to make the statement that superficial beauty is manufactured and that any woman, or in this case, any man can be beautiful with the right tools.
There's something problematic with this idea that straight men can be 'turned', and the binary of gay and straight and the lack of knowledge of the Kinsey scale.
I think it's really cool that 'Drag Race' has created this space where so many different kinds of people can come together and socialise and have fun on equal terms.
I love New York audiences, because they're used to going to shows, and you really notice it. They laugh and applaud and do all the things that you want an audience to do.
I think it's so important to think about the basic human rights of others and to use our collective voices, minds and bodies to lift those people up and bring about change.
For my teen years and all of my twenties it felt like I was trying to live up to this expectation of being a man and what that meant - not just what clothes I wore, but how I acted.
It's a common misunderstanding, that when a bisexual person is dating someone of the opposite sex that they are now straight, or if they are dating someone of the same sex they are now gay.
Being trans means different things to different people. Some people don't take hormones, some people don't have surgery, some people are just happy living in the clothes of their chosen gender.
As a drag performer, people have traditionally put us into the category of 'pervert' or 'deviant' or things like that. So I've always been really careful not to be vulgar or grotesque with sexuality.
It's so easy to be polarised and yell from different sides of the room about certain subjects, but I think it's so much better to walk into the middle and have a conversation to drive change forward.
The gay community has had a sometimes tumultuous relationship with non-queer people coming to their shows because it was tourism, like using the queer spaces as a form of comic relief or entertainment.
'The Bi Life' will show many stories. I think that people will find some of those stereotypes, maybe some people are greedy, maybe some people are using bisexual as a transition, but not all of them are.
When someone is saying something bigoted, try and remember that that person actually just doesn't understand, and that it comes from a level of ignorance, or from socialised brainwashing, or religious ideas.
It's easy to make a reality show that's sensational but it's more challenging to make a reality show that's got a lot of heart and integrity and still keeps you enthralled and makes you want to keep watching.
I know when there's lots of stuff racing around in my head it can be hard to sleep and stay asleep. And one of the biggest things that used to keep me awake at night was worrying about my gender and sexuality.
Yeah, back in 2003, I went to 'Australian Idol' the first day as a boy, and I got knocked out. So I went back the next day in drag and made it into the Top 12 and got a record deal and toured around Australia.
For people living with HIV, the knowledge that undetectable equals untransmittable is huge news, not only as a means of preventing transmission, but in breaking down the stigma that many people still experience.
The thing about gay male pop stars is: they aren't supported by gay men. Gay men don't really support them until they've gone beyond the gay community and had success in the mainstream, so it's really challenging.
I love being Courtney, but it almost feels like something different to drag for me - it's a part of me, it's not a parody, it's a form of expression for me, a way to give my feminine and masculine sides an outlet.
There is so much frustration in the heterosexual male community manifesting in different ways, whether it be aggression or sexism or racism. I'm not saying all heterosexual men are that way, but you do see a lot of it.
An ex-boyfriend of mine is living with HIV. He has an undetectable viral load so I know first-hand how this can affect people in a serodiscordant couple - which is where one partner is HIV-negative and one is HIV-positive.
I just feel like, at any moment, a drag or a trans or a gender-diverse artist that doesn't fit in a box is ready to break into the mainstream. I want to do my best to put myself in the best position to have that happen for me.
People who cling rigidly to gender binaries are more than welcome to. But for a lot of young people, we're seeing that our gender roles don't have to be dictated by a set of rules made by society. We can do whatever feels natural to us.
Changing genders is not a quick process... it takes about two hours to put on all the make-up and the lashes, and the hair, and the corsets, and the seven kinds of adhesives that work in tandem on my body to keep things up and keep things down.
Pride is a time to celebrate what makes us unique and the more we let young people know that those things that make us different are actually our greatest strengths, the more comfortable we are in our own skin and the more peacefully we'll sleep at night.
I sort of throw away the definitions of gender - that boys are 'supposed' to wear blue and girls are 'supposed' to wear pink - and those gender roles and gender presentations. I do it on my own terms rather than based on what other people say I should do.
Russia is a very different place than what we in the West are familiar with. We cannot apply our own values and judgments to the country. We need to have greater compassion and understanding and recognize that our similarities are greater than our differences.
Gender roles are absurd when you actually look at them. The fact that anybody could ever say or think that dressing in women's clothes is wrong, or odd. Women dressing in women's clothes and men dressing in men's clothes is the actually the thing that is really odd.
I was always made to feel that men were desirable because of their masculinity, and for a boy, being feminine was not something you should be proud of. But, I came to realise it's OK for boys to be feminine, for girls to be masculine and we should all express ourselves however we want.
Normally when you go to a queer space the people often look like you, they are the same age as you and so on, but at Mardi Gras and at queer events in general, everybody is different, everybody comes together. And that is what I love about Pride and Mardi Gras and those sort of events.
I think my first actual real job was a door-to-doors salesperson for Foxtel, a cable TV company, and that lasted a couple of weeks because I got held, like I wouldn't say at swordpoint, but I was kept in someone's house against my will and she did have a sword and was sort of brandishing it.
Because bisexual people almost have a foot in the gay and the straight world, their friends can misunderstand them too. Like if a bisexual man starts dating another man, people are like 'Ah, he's gay,' but you know, bisexual people remain bisexual, and their attractions can change and flux over time.