Slay and yass.

Kia ora koutou!

Now I know what you may be thinking. But no, Janhavi did not get a mohawk. Hi, I’m Goose from UniQ, and I’m very pleased to present the 2022 edition of Queerlient!

UniQ had a bit of a rocky start to the year, especially with getting our team together. This is why you probably haven’t heard from us as much as we’d like. But when I got brought in to organise the creation of Queerlient a few months ago, I was very excited to get to work.

Going into Queerlient 2022, you can expect it to be chock-full of organically sourced and locally-grown content from every shade of the VUW Rainbow. One of the key drivers of this year’s issue was to offer the spotlight to some of the lesser-heard voices in our community. Some of the regular Salient columns have been expanded to give their writers a chance to tackle how their own focuses overlap with rainbow identities. Teddi from Teaspoonie gives us an empathetic take on how the medical system handles their gender fluidity in a featured article, while Kelly Mitchell’s piece for the Ngāi Tauira column offers a deeper interpretation of what it means to be takatāpui. 

Words like ‘diversity,’ ‘representation,’ and ‘intersectionality’ get thrown around a lot these days, but it’s very easy to lose track of exactly what they stand for when this modern age has most of us racing down informational superhighways at breakneck speed.

Something especially important to my heart is the knowledge that being Queer is not incompatible with any other part of your life and identity. This  intersectionality point is as true now as it has always been. We stick together and hold each other up.

I’ve always believed the student magazine is an important part of this university’s culture and a crucial glimpse into how we as students are doing. The world is loud and full of fire, and news from across the globe can affect us just as deeply as those from within our own homes. The internet opens doors to a planetful of perspectives. I’m just happy to give my fellow students a chance to shine.

I am so glad to be a part of such a vibrant and diverse community, and to offer a glimpse into that community through this magazine. To read and learn from the works presented here in Salient, “an organ of student opinion,” to ask my friends “what did you think of that article?” or “what did you get for 12-across on the puzzle?”, is an on-campus pastime that I never tire of.

It has been a privilege to bring this all together and I hope you enjoy this issue as much as I do.

To quote the actor and sage Pedro Pascal, “I love you... and slay, and yass.”

Ngā manaakitanga,

Goose (they/them)