Tonight I'd like to talk about something almost everyone has heard of by now; the well-deserved victory of Conchita Wurst at the Eurovision Song Contest 2014 in Copenhagen.
Conchita is a stunning drag queen who sports a charming beard. Her song, Rise Like A Phoenix, went straight to the hearts of millions of Europeans and got her the top spot.
And yes, of course her appearance helped. The controversy of it all is attractive to a lot of voters. But that was not in any way the only factor. The song was one of the best, with fantastic orchestration and reminiscent of a classic Bond theme. Her voice is flawless, not a single mistake or off note.
And yet what so many people are choosing to focus on is her appearance. And not positively, either.
On the comments of the Youtube videos of every single Eurovision song, I have read comments calling Conchita Wurst an abomination, an "it", a deviant, disgusting, vile, wrong, fake, "not a real woman", "not a real man"...
And I just don't get it. Where does the motivation come from for this hatred? What is the scary thing about a gender-nonconforming drag queen with a beard? A Russian MP has called this "the end of Europe". But how on Earth does this affect him in any way? How does this negatively affect anyone? She's just a woman with a beard.
I suppose, if I use my imagination and really try, I can find a few reasons as to why people are scared of such a beautiful performer (and yeah, I know a lot of people just call Conchita Wurst beautiful to seem open-minded, but I'm being honest here. I am blown away by how stunningly beautiful she is).
- They are scared of liking something they've been conditioned not to like.
Many people are brought up in a conservative environment where liking anything that isn't clearly the opposite sex and gender through and through is the biggest sin of all. When they grow up and find themselves attracted to a performer like Conchita Wurst, they become frustrated - sexually frustrated, and frustrated with their orientation and identity. This frustration is let out in the form of hate speech. - Simple jealousy.
If you've never really achieved anything in your own life, it can be easy to jump on the bandwagon whenever there's a chance to hate on someone even remotely successful. This is frustration at play once again, albeit a different type. - Fear of the unknown.
I'm talking simple ignorance here. The unknown is scary. For some people, not knowing the gender of someone is very scary, because they put far too much thought into gender roles, and some people have a habit of wanting to decide instantly if any given person is a potential sexual partner. - Homophobia.
Here, I'm referring especially to the type of homophobia that is fear of another man treating you as you treat women. People automatically assume that drag queens are always gay (and in Conchita's case, they're right). And when the person assuming this happens to be the kind of straight man who sees women as sex objects and nothing else, that man will automatically think that all gay men see /him/ as a sex object. This brings with it the fear of rape that most women have to live with every day. - Sexism.
A hell of a lot of people (especially men) have a philosophy that their gender is superior, and that everyone from the opposite gender is worth less. (These people usually don't even acknowledge the existence of non-binary individuals.) When a drag queen then comes along and challenges the border between male and female by wearing a beard while in drag, it becomes impossible for the sexist to keep masculine and feminine separate from each other, and their outdated system falls apart. The ensuing frustration leads them to spout hate.
I think that about covers why people dislike Conchita Wurst. None of these reasons are excuses for hate speech, and anyone who spouts transphobic, homophobic hate speech at Conchita Wurst is being incredibly childish, vindictive and cruel.
I'm both proud that Conchita Wurst was voted #1 by the European audiences and extremely disappointed with every single of the probably millions of people posting hateful comments about her.
That's all I have to say. Goodnight.
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