The local area and a newsworthy change of heart... 

Yarra Bend Road has a long history of treating illnesses, both mental and physical. The building I am living in was once the Infectious Disease Unit of a hospital; from my window I can glimpse the grass inside the smooth metal ramparts of a secure forensic psychiatric unit. Past our neighbours is the site of the old, long-gone Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum, Victoria's first mental health institution which ran from 1848 to 1925 and whose care was not quite up to the standards of our neighbours. This then became a women's prison before being flattened into parkland.

There are two things Yarra Bend Road does well: hospitals and parks. Surrounded on both sides by parkland, the campus on which I live shines through the dark at night, the only domestic lighting visible from the main road. By day, the park is beautiful: footpaths and creek trails wind in and out of the gum trees, and the city’s towers gleam against the sky to the south-west. By night, I walk quickly down the narrow road, phone and key at the ready. Night-time silence has always unnerved me. It’s one of my least favourite things about St Andrews, with its narrow hedgerowed streets and no midnight company but your own three streetlit shadows and echoing footsteps and fogged breath. But silence has found me in the city too.

Yvette Schneider, a prominent “ex-gay” activist who argued from personal experience that it was possible to choose heterosexuality, has renounced her anti-LGBT stance in two GLAAD articles.

Homophobe no longer a homophobe! Someone who took on a hugely damaging role against LGBT identifying people says she’s not into that anymore! Obviously this change is positive, but one is tempted to ask: so what? Schneider has done a good thing in approaching GLAAD, but we must remember that she seeks to undo phenomenal damage: retracing her steps rather than treading new ground in LGBT rights activism.

Schneider’s GLAAD testimony shies away from the effect of her anti-LGBT activism, focusing on the damage she herself suffered while suppressing, and being told to suppress, same sex attraction. Her deeply personal approach paints her experience as an individual's journey, rather than a widely publicised and cited series of testimonies across fourteen years of anti-LGBT activism. In fact, her experience is both. The oppression Schneider faced, her own and others' suppression of her sexuality, and her internalised homophobia have all caused her great suffering. However, the publicity of her past actions furthered the oppression of other LGBT identifying people in the church and beyond. Her U-turn is good news, but we must remember its context.

However, perhaps new ground will be trod in the very circle Schneider has cast off. Throughout her activism, Schneider’s role has been to provide a testimony, bearing witness to the possibility of choosing heterosexuality. Now, her testimony is dramatically altered – but her audience, built up over years of activism, to some extent remains the same. As one of the “ex-gay” school’s most prominent women, she’s familiar, and therefore wields more influence than an outsider ever could. Coming from such a community, approaching GLAAD is a brave and important move, and hopefully, possibly, an influential one. This news, though a small victory, is definitely good news.

Here is a selection of quotes from my encounters: the weird, the wonderful.

•           “Why aren’t you wearing any trousers?” “Why are all of you wearing trousers? I’m asking the real questions!”
•           “I hear there are only, like, five unicorns left in the wild these days.”
•           “Stop that now, you koala eating arsehole!!!”