On May 11th, a drag race was held on one of the streets of Tbilisi. Queer talked to the organizer of the event, a member of the initiative group Fiona, who spoke with us about the main goal of the project.
Fiona is an activist initiative group, which aims to gather queers in underground places and make events and rallies. Even though a lot of organizations work on this issue, the visibility of queer people is still very low, in my opinion. In Georgian movies, one rarely sees queer people. There are no queer people on TV as well, who openly speak about their orientation or sexual identity. The gatherings are important for other matters as well, it’s a way to express our existence, have fun, share experiences, love, sorrow, etc.
By the way, we even created elections on one of the streets, which were already held once and we chose the president, mayor, and sheriff. Their responsibilities are to gather queers, create interesting and useful events for them, and in general, support them. We also had the first conference of the drag queens. We discussed the origins of drag culture, how it developed in Georgia, what we have achieved and what are the challenges in this regard.
Nowadays against the government’s hatred and so-called anti-LGBT law, which is the analog of the Russian law, we decided to use the power of love, which is always stronger. So we decided to have the drag queens’ race. We decided to bravely go out on the streets and stand there as any other valuable and law-abiding part of the society, who pays taxes just like anybody else. We want 200 meters of the street to be protected so that we will come out and run. The race will also be a competition and there will be a winner, however, this is not the main point, the main thing is to oppose hatred and aggression with love and strength.
