Doug PollardTranscript - Daniel Witthaus
Daniel Witthaus
Doug: As always, at the beginning of the show we talk to Daniel Witthaus who’s on a tour challenging homophobia around Australia – except, he’s been in Sydney. Daniel, is there very much homophobia to challenge up there?
Daniel: [laughs] Good morning, Doug. It seems so, based on my conversations after the week up there.
Doug: ‘Cause you know, we all have this image of Sydney as some sort of gay Mecca, don’t we?
Daniel: M’mm, absolutely – and I think that travelling around the country has really brought that home to me. The last 24, 25-weeks everywhere that I go people will be talking about: ‘well, it’s not like Sydney’, or ‘we don’t have what Sydney does’ or – you know, even people looking wistfully off into the distance and saying: ‘if we were in Sydney things would be different’ because that’s the thought that LGBT life is, is remarkably different and in some ways it absolutely is. But it’s not the magical place that many think that it is.
Doug: So, what did you find by way of homophobia in Sydney?
Daniel: I think a young person put it really well. He said, look, there’s homophobia as there is everywhere else – m’mm, you know: ‘we have our struggles’ and it’s definitely not a magical place. But what we do have which is probably different is that we’re only a bus ride or a train ride away from somewhere that’s LGBT friendly. So, they know that they can get to Oxford Street; they know that they can go to places like Newtown, they know that they can – kind of . . . . . .
Doug: They don’t have so far to run, in other words.
Daniel: Absolutely – and they say – like, you know – there’s one young person I spoke to and he said, ‘when I walk down Oxford Street I feel like I’m home’ ‘I feel like –’ you know: ‘this is ours, this is where we belong’. So, I think it’s that kind of thought that’s really different I guess, to a lot of the young people I speak to in rural and regional Australia who don’t have that at all.
Doug: But did you get to get into any schools around Sydney?
Daniel:Yeah, I certainly did. I went on a little bit of an excursion [laughs] it took me an hour, an hour-and-a-half to get there by train to the south-western suburbs of Sydney – in a place called Campbelltown, which is starting to see more LGBT life and – you know, deep in the suburbs, what they’re finding is – like, a story that – you know, again, is no different to the rest of Australia, especially, outer-metropolitan Australia in that this school is struggling with how to best support its students.
There’s young people who are out or some people who are almost out, at the school – m’mm, teachers certainly know about it and students certainly do but there – kind of, seems to be a tension between the straight, macho boys and the gay boys as they call it, and they think that they can be doing something better. One teacher put it to me best, she said: ‘we talk about appropriate and inappropriate language’ and ‘we can talk about gays and lesbians but sometimes it’s a struggle’ and she said: ‘the other day I finished a class and I said well done guys, we’ve only said faggot twice - - -’
Doug: M’mm - - -
Daniel: ‘- - - this class, that’s an achievement’.
Doug: [laughs] I guess the wilds of suburbia are – oh, dear, I sounded a bit like Tony Abbott there, didn’t I – I guess the wilds of suburbia are much the same where-ever you go. You get out of the city centre and the tolerance level – kind of, drops.
Daniel: I think what really brought it home is that if you’re somewhere like Campbelltown although you do know that Sydney – Oxford Street, are there – it’s another world away for a lot of people and it’s still – like, an idea inside peoples’ heads. But as I said, if somehow you can get that hour-and-a-half into the city which many young people just can’t do, at least it’s there and people can still dream and people in regional and rural New South Wales can do so, also.
Doug: You got the opportunity to balance things out haven’t you; if you’ve got a difficult time at home at least, you know, this is not very far away – I guess, it’s pretty much the same – I used to live in London and I used to live in London’s suburbs and it was awful living out in the suburbs. But it was only 40 minutes on an underground train and I was in the thick of places like Earls Court which wasn’t just Australians in those days it was also the gay centre - now, it’s Soho of course – so, that made it – kind of, easier.
Daniel: Yeah, there is no doubt that the young people I spoke to were emboldened by the fact that places – like, there were LGBT organisations and there were strips and there were places that they could go. There’s no doubt that they – I don’t know; had a different – kind of, m’mm, like a different swagger – a different body language, a different way of talking that was completely different to young people I’d seen around the traps and so,
I think that’s a heartening thing but it’s also balanced by the fact that until young people know about that, until young people can get there and experience it and even have the pep and the courage to actually walk through a door or to walk down a street – which still, some young people don’t feel that they can do because it’s too much too soon, it’s still a tough journey but once they get there is no doubt it creates a different kind of – I don’t know, attitude and belief in themselves.
Doug: Okay, well – thanks for that Daniel. So, where next?
Daniel: It will be Newcastle, so, the home of Silverchair.
Doug: Home of Silverchair, bit of a rough town I think? By all accounts.
Daniel: Let’s talk about that next week.
Doug: We’ll keep our fingers crossed – okay, Daniel Witthaus, thanks very much for joining us this morning.
