ROSEMARY ABBOTT | Culture
SEPARATE RAINBOWS
Maddy Hayes, a 26-year-old from Aro Valley in Wellington, says she’s been happily minding her own business, working a normal 9-to-5 and enjoying a few Saturday night pashes with other females at Ivy Bar.
“Nothing wrong with going to work, paying rent, and kissing girls at Ivy. But I don’t want to be lumped in with whatever’s going on over at the Greens, especially with that whacko “bussy boy. Ew,” Hayes told our reporters, referring to Greens MP Benjamin Doyle, who has been under fire this week for social media posts deemed extremely inappropriate by the New Zealand public.
Her comments come after Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick passionately defended Doyle, stating that the word bussy had been “co-opted by rainbow communities for use oftentimes with irreverence and absurdity”. And that his emoji use was also completely normal.
However Maddy feels her entire identity has been dragged into an ideological debate about rainbow-coded language.
“I don’t think it’s that wild to say I don’t want to be associated with a man posting what looks like pretty gross content on his Instagram account,” explained Hayes, whose personal Instagram account features mainly pictures of Wellington’s waterfront and Cuba Street.
Maddy then doubled down to our reporters, completely distancing herself from the perception that every queer person has to behave strangely.
“No, I get it. Some people want to express themselves differently, but I personally don’t need to post a weird combination of emojis and slang every time I log on. Not everything needs to be some cryptic, niche-coded identity flex,” she said.
“At the end of the day, I’m just a regular lesbian. I work, I socialise, I occasionally lose my mind over a woman with a nose ring, and then I go home. I don’t need to overcomplicate it with… whatever Biblebelt Bussy is meant to mean.”
More to come.
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