If you’re a queer woman, it’s highly likely you’ve experienced homophobic micro-aggression. Whether that’s in the workplace or whenever you explain your sexuality to someone new. Maybe it’s while kissing your partner in public or receiving the “obligatory passive-aggressive comment” from a distant relative you only see at Christmas. By highlighting these sorts of experiences, 22-year-old queer director Atikah Zainidi and Editor Poppy Ashton aims to dismantle society’s stereotypical views of queer womxn.
Stereotypes are funny because they are taken so lightly yet the damage it does it hardly light at all which is what I wanted to shed light on with Fragments
Atikah Zainidi
“I wanted to address homophobic/sexist stereotypes because despite being in a world where feminism and forward-thinking is more predominant than ever, we still live in a world where these outdated stereotypes towards the queer community still reign.”
Made with an entirely female-identifying crew, and shot in each womxn’s safe-space, the short documentary titled Fragments raises awareness of what women, queer women, and women of colour face every day, despite how far we’ve come.
“While it might be just bit of banter for men to ask “can I join in” while they see me kissing a girlfriend, it creates a stigma for me to want to kiss a girl in public and that stigma goes back to the question: Is it so wrong for me to want to kiss my girlfriend in public?” Zainid explains.
“These stereotypes don’t just exist for the amusement of others. They exist everywhere, in Hollywood films where the lesbian is always the masculine butch. Where the bisexual character is always the one who plays around, or even in a simple comment like ‘oh you’re pansexual so you fuck anything right?”
Of course unchallenged, these comments will, unfortunately, continue to be the norm. “Sooner or later, these stereotypes become the base for which people assume and associate. It gives way for sexism and homophobia to be tolerated.”