ABOUT THE JOURNAL

This on-line literary journal comes out in a time of continuous and emerging efforts of fighting for LGBTIQ+ rights in Southeast Asia and after the groundbreaking legalization of same-sex marriage in the US that has effected more resounding trivialized and dogmatized modes of speaking about homosexuality in the region, often climaxing to a decentered view of homosexuality, i.e. away from same-sex desire. While it is true that this “homosexual turn” is generative in ways that provide chances for homosexuals to claim their identity no matter how constrained, the vigilance in the region to persecute homosexuals is still, and shamelessly apparent. Moreover, this spirited undertaking is geared up to queer Southeast Asia, which means to deploy determined resistance against normalized regimes of power that roguishly transform defiant or non-conformist behaviors into manipulatable characterological types misleadingly collectivized and pathologized as “gay lifestyle.”

Our duty is to strongly oppose all forms of violence against people whose lives are coercively identified outside institutionalized habits of heteronormative behavior in the region and beyond since oppression is not natural anywhere. We cannot afford to witness our own death everyday. Our oppositional alliance can’t excuse the multitude of acutely dark realities that wrongly renames our body, joy, and gentleness to shoo us away from public, political, and creative life. We may have been socially disabled by bigoted manifestations of privilege, but we are not useless. Our goal is to unsettle the remoteness of Southeast Asian nations, homes, families, communities, and places of work LGBTIQ+ people cannot belong to. There are many ways to live with dignity, but being bludgeoned in the margins often compels us to master insurmountable dangers. We refuse to be slaves of dictatorial, mediocre, and impossible templates of life. Our efforts mean to challenge and remodel specifically Southeast Asian literary canons into which reductive, brutalist, and phallocentric fantasies of gender and sexuality are abstracted. We are committed in meticulously gathering, performing, and celebrating literary and visual works of high artistic merit by LGBTIQ+ artists, with or without representations of LGBTIQ+, especially since language is comfortably seized by “an abusive man who can write only his name, who can see only his own image.” We cannot let this abusive man speak what only our voices can indissolubly say.

It is through a concerted faith in creative writing and art that we want to nurture the ways in which LGBTIQ and other people, who want to live away from fear and intimidation, re-imagine everything particularly the essential aspects of life that are often designated to displace sexual difference. As sexual citizens and economic producers in/of Southeast Asia, it is viable and inevitable to occupy livable places in the name of equality, to be able to share them with the weak, and to participate in grounded initiatives in eliminating vulnerability, alienation, poverty, and corrupt thinking. We do not pretend that engaging with Southeast Asia means thinking of a monolithic or non-discombobulating region. As definitions of sexuality are historically and procedurally informed by national and ethnic cultures, the possibility of discovering differential, overwhelmingly plural, and untranslatable modalities of sexual identity is in our awareness and expectation. This existential thickness of Southeast Asia is an enriching problem that requires us to constantly make sense of ourselves as inhabitants of the region always in flux of transformation.

QUEER SOUTHEAST ASIA is a literary journal of transgressive art. The journal aims to give a platform to creative works produced out of a conscious opposition to oppressive norms in Southeast Asia and the rest of the world. It will release a monthly feature publication of poetic and/or prosaic writings. An annual issue will also be curated by the end of the year. Submissions are accepted all time of the year. Collaboration is also welcome. Please send a message to queersoutheastasia@gmail.com or contact the editors: B.B.P. Hosmillo (bryphosmillo@yahoo.com), Cyril Wong (cyrilwong77@yahoo.com), Hendri Yulius (hendri.yulius@gmail.com), Jaya Jacobo (lajayajacobo@gmail.com), and Pang Khee Teik (worldwithoutpangs@gmail.com).