My homophobic father is humming along to a Troye Sivan song. The song’s about the boy he wants to kiss. I can barely control the smirk that creeps onto my face.
Of late, I’ve started tuning into music by queer artistes. As I sketch and paint, I listen to entire albums: Troye Sivan, Hayley Kiyoko, Brendon Urie and King Princess. They all have accents, of course. Foreign accents. Accents that I did not know or understand as a child. Accents that my family struggles to comprehend, even now.
I am grateful for these accents.
I am grateful, yes, but also troubled. Why should mentions of queer love be restricted to English music? I want the way I love to be represented in the language I speak, in the films I watch, in the songs I sing, in the words that roll off my tongue with inherent ease and fluency.
English, however, continues to dominate LGBTQ+ representation; a relic, of course, of the Anglophilic history of most countries, former colonies or not.
gravitas 