I must confess my excitement to spend an entire Sociology class period on Wednesday watching a queer film. Even better, there was free pizza.
Vivek Shraya’s film “What I LOVE about being QUEER” played at the Norm Theater in the Student Union Building, and our section, taught by Sociology professor Dr. Rachael Sullivan, was required to write a reflection on the film (or a response as to why we chose not to see the film, if we made that decision).
Shraya, who rocked a blonde streak in his fashionably styled hair, provided a short introduction in which he explained his reason for making a film that celebrated queerness, recounting his work with queer youth in Toronto and the self-loathing and disgust that too many of them felt toward their identity. Motivated to illuminate the joys of being queer amidst numerous media that highlighted the struggles of that identity, Shraya interviewed a handful of individuals in the queer community in the intimate setting of his kitchen, asking them what they loved about being queer (http://vivekshraya.com/films/what-i-love-about-being-queer). Many of those interviewed celebrated the unique culture of queer communities and the beauty of their individual queer identities, but I was intrigued by how many of them reflected on the fact that the queer community is very much a chosen family and how queer individuals make an active decision to choose the queer community as a family of loving and supporting people.

The queer topic of Shraya’s film and the personal look it provided into the minds of its subjects reminded me of another film I had seen earlier this year. In June, the month unofficially reserved for many queer events such as Pride, I went to the Tokyo Lesbian & Gay Film Festival with a couple of gay friends I had met through theatre. It was my second year attending this film festival, which had been the first queer event I had attended after coming out as gay in the previous year, and after a pancake brunch, my friends and I filed into the small auditorium with the other queer folks of Tokyo.
It was there that I saw director, producer, and writer Yun Suh’s documentary, “City of Borders”.

“City of Borders” documents the only gay bar in the city of Jerusalem, and poignantly reflects the incredible unity between individuals from heavily divided communities through the shared experience of being queer (http://www.cityofborders.com/). Jerusalem has many borders between its inhabitants, from the deep-rooted border between Israelis and Pakistanis, to the borders between the various religions practiced in the city, to the deadly border between the homosexuals and those who are religiously opposed to homosexuality.
The film followed five stories of various members of Jerusalem’s queer community, depicting their struggles with their queer identity in the city, in greater society, and in their private family spheres.
One of the young gay men featured in “City of Borders” risked his life each night he traveled to the gay bar, and as I recall his spotless white shirt seeming to glow as he and his comrades quietly scaled walls and crawled through holes in barbed fences, I wonder what they loved about being queer, if they love being queer in a climate so hostile toward them. Another one of the men in the documentary had had his arm slashed by an Orthodox Christian who had charged into a crowd at a previous gay march in Jerusalem, brandishing a knife. Despite the horror of the attack, the man wore his literal scars with a sense of pride.
Through its close documentation of the lives of its subjects, “City of Borders” also captures the unparalleled love that ties Jerusalem’s queer community together as they break down the borders that divide them to celebrate their identity.

Shraya’s “What I LOVE about being QUEER” and Suh’s “City of Borders” demonstrate the possibility of individuals to come together and create safe spaces and communities for each other. These two films alone depict Jerusalem’s gay bar uniting gay Israelis and Pakistanis, and Canadian queers reflecting on queerness and queer culture and extending positivity about one’s sexuality toward queer youth who struggle to come to terms with their own identity. Offering a new take on global citizenship, Shraya and Suh encourage support and unity between and within marginalized groups, and celebrate the queer experience choosing one’s own community, one’s own family.

I am a half-Japanese half-American individual, and it was only mere decades ago that the two halves of my heritage were embroiled in war. Consequently, the impressions of World War II that I received from my relatives differed greatly depending which parent’s side of the family with which I spoke. Take, for example, Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States of America who led the U.S. in ending World War II and pushed for peace through the founding of the United Nations, according to his Wikipedia article. My grandmother dined with Truman once, and my father, born and raised in Pennsylvania, was fond of recounting that one story to me. The story was barely more than a single sentence–“My mother once dined with Truman,” or some variation thereof–but I understood that he was very proud of the fact that my grandmother had interacted with an individual who would play a large part in shaping world history. One day, I was in an elevator with my grandmother on my Japanese mother’s side, and I recounted my father’s story to her. I remember clearly how her smile ebbed slightly, showing no sign of my father’s enthusiasm. She had only been a baby, but she had experienced the terrors of war first-hand, fleeing her home in her mother’s arms as Allied troops fire-bombed civilian cities in Japan (http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2014/02/15/commentary/tokyo-firebombing-and-unfinished-u-s-business/). Then came the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and as if that weren’t enough, Nagasaki was targeted, establishing Truman as a war criminal (http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/31/us/hiroshima-a-controversy-that-refuses-to-die.html, “http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/after-hiroshima-truman-fa_b_3727286.html). I couldn’t deny my grandmother’s experience and the experiences of countless other Japanese people in WWII, but I also couldn’t ignore the effects of Truman’s actions in ending the war. Which side of the story would I align myself with? Which side of my family would I align myself with?
In her essay “The Role of Interpretative Communities in Remembering and Learning”, Farhat Shahzad addresses the impact of family as an interpretative community in influencing an individual’s memory. Throughout my predominantly American education, the information provided by school textbooks about WWII was secondary in comparison to the impressions from my family. “Human beings do not consume knowledge linearly from different technologies of memories such as textbooks and museums,” she asserts, with family being “the strongest, most cohesive, and most viable social group…on the processes of remembering and learning.” Whereas I barely remember the textbook information beyond vague dates and facts, the biased knowledge about WWII imparted to me by my family has remained years later.
The way that my personal narrative fit into Shahzad’s focus led me back to the question of “What is a global citizen?” At the beginning of this term, I considered a global citizen to be an individual who embraced the diversity that exists in the world, but now I believe the definition of “global citizen” must also include an awareness and acceptance of the conflict, be it internal or external, that can be brought about by different viewpoints.