
Audio Transcript:
we were never super wealthy growing up
yeah
but from the outside it would have
looked like it because, um my dad... everything my dad did he bought stuff
because he couldn't have it and his whole mentality was
'I want to be able to provide things for my family that I never got'
yeah
- cause he raised, you know - absolutely
his brothers and sisters
yeah
very interesting the levels of internal guilt
that still lay there and the guilt you feel as a child of that as well because
you feel like if you have any criticality about um...any criticality about
that sort of point of view, it's taken as you're not... you don't appreciate what I've given you
- and you're selfish - yeah you're selfish and this is what I gave up for you
it is absolutely confusing especially if you're...if you're really aware of that
position as well I mean I'm aware of my privilege
I'm aware of my privilege as a white man I'm aware of my privilege as a middle-class person
I'm aware of my privilege as a white gay male within the...you know a
bigger queer perspective so um, I'm also aware of English...the privilege of
English being my first language
yeah
um and that's...what that kind of
holds in that space
um it is a very... it's a very prickly kind of
place to sit
yeah
because I used to get really kind of frustrated in that space and go
um...to be looking for an answer to kind of mediate that privilege or kind of come
to a reasoning of how to use that privilege in a really positive way or...
or whatever and that constant desire to to fix something
yeah
to problem solve that
injustice I think is a deeply kind of um... certainly was for my family, like
that family orientated thing, like if there's a problem you can fix it like you either
fix it by working harder or you fix it by spending money on it or or doing
something that kind of gets it out of the way, cause problems are there to be
fixed yeah they're not you don't sit in a space and be critically reflective
of it, you fix them because you have the means to do it
I'm not a part...
I'm not very much a part of the the queer male scene in Melbourne or Sydney
yeah
in the way I was before um because I really in the same way that I rejected my cultural
sensibilities of being Italian, I really rejected the notion... the accepted notion
of what it meant to be a gay man
mmhmm
because again it felt like an imposition
of masculinity that I was not comfortable with or a sense of having to
prove that through a lens, whether it be a cultural lens, an aesthetic lens
a wealth lens or whatever it may be...umm
I guess in the same way that we view institutionalised religion, when you have an institutionalised community it defines such specific boundaries
around what is acceptable
and I often battle with this mentality of... I call it that the kind of umm
the 'falsity of community' and it's, it's really umm... I don't say it out loud a lot
because people get really....um they get their backs up about it and I understand why
yeah
because community saves people's lives...umm I know plenty of gay men, women and
trans people who would be dead if they didn't have a community around them
yeah, absolutely
I guess in the same way that we view institutionalised religion, when
you have an institutionalised community it defines such specific boundaries
around what is acceptable
yes, yep
and I see that within a queer
perspective but I also see that within a migrant perspective or an ethnic perspective
so you know you're a bad Italian, you're a bad gay, you're..
you know, there are qualities and quantifications of what makes you the best
yes
so my dad was born in Italy
okay yeah
he was born in Terra Nova in Calabria
yeah
um and he came to Australia when he was four years old
yeah okay
um so he he has very limited memories of what it was to be living in
Italy...um and my mum was born in Australia
but her, her family were from like two villages apart um from my dad's family
in Calabria as well?
in Calabria
um
a place called Santa Cristina d'Aspromonte
and I really kind of wish that I engaged with my grandparents
a little bit more
meaningfully in how we spoke about our culture from when I was quite young
it was never something that we spoke about but it was also never something that we silenced
yeah
like it was just... we didn't really talk about it
yep
um I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that my grandparents had left a place that
was quite difficult, I mean they all came from farming stock, like it was
was hard labor land, everything was... you know had to be made or sourced or
whatever and it was very hot it was very difficult for them so I think there was
a sensibility of leaving that aside... there certainly wasn't any romance about
Italy as a place
yeah okay interesting
there was some romance about a kind of lifestyle that they led
which mostly came from my maternal grandmother and it's mostly only
now when she kind of talks about it and it's about painting a picture of how
life is very different today than what it was then
yeah
which is very much about hand milking cows
- yep and making soap - making soap
it was almost like they knew that that transition was gonna be incredibly difficult so they tried to
continue that um community there
yep
so there wasn't any particular notion of
trying to assimilate into the culture right away or trying to hide their ethnicity
yeah okay
but there is definitely that class divide between the
south and north
absolutely yeah
I mean that industrialists
versus the peasant farmers
yeah
and they often spoke about that so the
comparisons were always between skips and the wogs or the Northern Italians and
the Southern Italians
or the Calabrese and the non-Calabrese
that's exactly right, the Calabrese and the non-Calabrese
and it was never referred to as class it was always just
like location
yeah
geography
yeah
which I always found really interesting
I think about the sort of factors that are involved with migration and what that means to be
kind of wrenched from your culture whether you desire that or not because
of the the poverty or the lifestyle or whatever
there's a desperate need to belong somewhere whether that belonging is through
assimilation or through a desperate grasping of your cultural identity
through iconography or through food or nostalgia or whatever it is
and my family... that definitely happened through food
yeah
some language but the language was really disparate because it was that sort of um Italian Australian
you know you put a vowel at the end of an English word and it's suddenly Italian
yeah it's this own language in itself
exactly
did they also speak dialect?
they also spoke dialect
when I said to my maternal grandmother
'nonna you know I would really love to take you back to Italy, I would really love to see where you came from'
because I've never been down South I've
been to the North and I've been to Venice and Florence but never down below
um below that...um and she was like
'no, no I don't need to go back'
I mean what is memory?
memory is just a recreation of what we want it to be
yeah
based on some facts, like memory is nostalgia
she knew that if she had gone back there it would
have changed so dramatically, it wouldn't have been anything like the
village that she grew up in and it's almost like holding that image to
the divine, is that same capacity that she provided me for that recipe that I
- could never get as good as she could, you know? - that you, yeah
like I could never get the pasta as good as she could, she would never have Italy as good as it...she had it in mind
yeah
my dad whenever he talks about
things like immigration or refugees or whatever and it's like 'how did you come here?'
yeah
you came he on a boat
yeah
you were a refugee, why did you come here?
to escape poverty, your family weren't being killed and murdered and
raped and tortured like their families maybe
yeah
where's the empathy?
where's the compassion?
yeah
and I think there is in in that which is why I talk about the
'falsity of community' because I feel like that um essentialising of the
community eliminates empathy because it wants to
standardise an experience
yes
and in standardising experience you go
'every other person has gone through exactly what I have', therefore we
empathise in a collective way we don't have to empathise with the person next
to us
yes
it's an ideology rather than an actual experience
yes absolutely
and there is no connection to people
it's connection to ideas
yes
and we're all connecting to ideas in isolation
without connecting with each other
it's like the difference between Italians Italians
yeah haha
and immigrant Italians, you know?
yeah
and you go to Brunettis and you see it
yeah yeah
like this sort of entitledness
this...you know, Italians Italians are very bold and loud and unapologetic
and all of that...
and you just... the... you equate yourself with them even though
you have a completely different lived experience
absolutely
and that internalised racism that...I mean I speak for myself here
yeah
that internalised racism goes, 'oh my god, you are just fucking far too much to deal with'
yeah yeah
you know, the same... I I... you know the comparison is the same in the queer community for me
mhmm
I can be as effeminate, I can be as butch as I like
at any point in time, there's an equal balance in me, but if somebody is
super effeminate, if there is a super effeminate male, there's something
that that is so jarring in that image of what I expect to be acceptable
a default internalisation goes 'woah, that is too much'
yeah
and then I reprocess and I
- go actually no this is just a reaction to... - what is this about?
yeah this is a reaction to my own
internalised homophobia or internalised racism, whatever it may be
um but it's amazing that sort of um...the immediacy of that reaction even when
- you're aware of it and how powerful it is - and how powerful it is, yeah
what can you bring as a migrant?
what can you bring - your religious practices, your language, your food
yeah
and that's what they did and they, they didn't want to do anything else
yeah, and we see the same with every other migrated culture to Australia, I mean
that's that is the reason why Australia is such a diverse
landscape in terms of cuisine, in terms of um races, in terms of religious
experiences because we, and through a lot of difficulties, have encouraged that sense of...
communities have built those those kind of ghettos, that they experience
those things together and they have grown into their own experiences
yeah
I haven't consciously had friends around me that were a part of a different ethnicity
almost... I kind of... I think because I
did reject my my cultural identity for so long because it felt like it was...
the expectations of what that imposition meant were quite huge
yeah
I never tried
to hide my ethnicity but I never made a big deal out of it either and I think
also that's because I was also dealing with the fact, of the fact of being a fat kid
yeah
a queer kid
yeah
so there are already a couple of
things that I wanted to hide and then gradually once realising that they were
only attributes of the greater idea of myself, I started to embrace
those things where I felt like I could
we built in this mentality as immigrants
that we all must assimilate to the 'Australian way' but we don't know what the 'Australian way' is
and in fact the Australian culture is an ever evolving
culture because we are such a relatively young society, not a country because of our
First Nations people but a cultural society
yeah
as a white as a...kind of like contemporary Australia
because we've only had English and American influence in terms of our, our
ruling structures so then we adapt and adopt those qualities but we actually
ignore every other element of our humanity that is made up...that has got
us to this point which has been the work of everybody who's been here
yeah
in a situation where I kind of like... I'm given a bit of a you know 2-minute thing
you know 'tell us a little bit about yourself', um so I'll say:
my name's Michael I'm a white cis-gendered gay male um and my family are Italian and I will
refer myself as like Italian Australian but I will also refer to myself as a
queer male and the reason why I do that is because I certainly didn't feel
like there was a representation of people who looked like me growing up
mmm
who shared the commonality of my sexuality, who shared the commonality of
my interests but also the diversity of all those things as well and the
conflicts of all those things together
absolutely
so for me it's about visibility of that
like I would love it if people introduced themselves based on values
yeah
rather than identity
that again comes down to giving people labels for things
yeah
because they're incredibly helpful but also limiting
Oh totally limiting and and because
we still have such a divisive idea of what it means to live your life as a
migrant, what it means to live your life as a gay person or a queer person or a
trans person or whatever because we always see the labels as the first port
of call rather than the humanity underneath it
yeah
the reason why I rejected my cultural identity, in the same way that I rejected my sexuality
as a community at the very beginning, was because I didn't want to be identified
or confined to an idea of what I was supposed to be and that that label was
all of me
mmm
whereas I see all of these things as elements of one bigger picture
yeah
and they influence me and they help me make decisions and they inform how I
move through the world but they don't define it
no
cause only my experience on a
day-to-day basis defines it
- yeah and it can change - absolutely
at any point