Queerus Activus Maximus

Max sipped their glass of wine. Urgh, couldn’t these people have shilled out for something a little better? They had corporate sponsors desperately attempting their best pink wash through this event. They should have a lot more cash and much better wine. Max eyed some hors d'oeuvres being ferried past by a waiter. They seemed suspiciously like the kind you would buy frozen at your local Woollies. 

They looked out across the hotel’s function room at their competition. There was Reese Jones who had helped pass some anti conversion therapy laws in Tasmania. Tasmania was barely a state so Max didn’t think it was something worth awarding. Of course, Shirley Thomas was here as her new book on why men are generally kind of terrible had gotten lots of press. Max wasn’t scared. They could beat them.

Max was here, drinking cheap wine and second-rate appetisers, to attend the ceremony for the Querheros Awards. Querheros was supposed to be a mashup of Queer and Heros but came off sounding more like some sort of breakfast cereal. David Bowie’s “Heroes” was playing on repeat throughout the whole function centre. There were somehow even speakers in the bathrooms still churning it out. There was no escape. Max had never thought it would be possible to hate David Bowie, but they were getting close.

Max looked out at the mass of people. It was roughly the same crowd that had attended the 30 under 30 awards, run by the queer lobbying organisation “Queer Equality Now!”, a few months ago. They had initially rejected Max’s application for the 30 under 30 awards on the ridiculous grounds that Max was, in fact, 32. But Max had threatened a lawsuit based on ageism if they didn’t accept it, so they relented and even made them one of the 30 under 30 out of fear of any further lawsuits.

Max went back to mingling with the crowd. They saw that Taylor Greywater, a former young Australian of the year finalist who had become shunned by the activist community after a recording of her making some off-colour jokes about Jewish people had been discovered by the press, was here despite not having been nominated. They guessed they were a plus one of someone more successful. They spied Instagram influencer Mika Jackson, who spent her time on temporary housing projects for homeless people. Saying it was queer activism because of intersectionality. Max shook their head, fools. Intersectionality doesn’t sell. Average people don’t have time for queer theory. And homeless people? They scare people, not an easy sell. You're not going to get any pink-washing funding for that. 

How did Max end up here? Many years ago, in high school, Max had done one of those charity chocolate sales at the behest of their classmates. Max couldn’t even remember what charity was for anymore. Their grandmother had generously bought out their entire supply, making them the top seller in the school. They were given an award at a school presentation. People clapped. Teachers said they were an amazing person that all the other students could learn from. They loved being told how incredible a person they were. They became addicted. 

Max became school captain. They were at the front of every fundraiser in the school. Draped in full denim for jeans for genes day. A bright yellow ensemble for daffodil day. International Women’s Day, Harmony Day, NAIDOC week, Wear It Purple day, RUOK day, none could pass by their school without Max making sure people were aware. Every school assembly, they were praised. Awards followed: Young achiever of the year, young volunteer of the year, young woman activist of the year. Max thought the qualifier of young in all of them was unnecessary; they were just as good, if not better, as anyone who had suffered from the ravages of age. Articles in the local newspaper talked about how wonderful a human being they were. Finally, everyone saw how amazing they were.

Their impressive list of extracurriculars, combined with their natural intelligence, earned Max scholarships to any university they wanted. Their rise seemed unstoppable.

Once on campus, they moved quickly to solidify their position. After George Floyd was murdered by police in America, they organised a solidarity protest on their campus. 

At the start of the protest, after they had introduced themselves and given an acknowledgment of country, there was a sudden interjection: “What about your pronouns?” one activist yelled.

“Sorry?”

“Your pronouns. He, she, they.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” was all Max could respond with.

There was murmuring in the crowd. Max could hear people questioning their leadership. It was a debacle. University was the big leagues of activism, their blindspots became obvious. Others started taking the lead and running activism on campus. People weren’t seeing them as the amazing person they were. They weren’t getting the attention or praise they deserved. They needed people to see them that way again. They had to up their game, starting with whatever this pronoun stuff was.

They dug into gender identity and sexuality literature. By the time they were done, they would be an expert on every letter in the LGBTIQA and whatever other letters might be added after that. But then something unexpected happened: they realised what they were reading was describing themself and all their feelings about their own gender. 

They never liked being lumped into the category of women. Being categorised as something so common it made up half the population. They struggled with anything traditionally girly like makeup, hair or fashion. All their friends trying to help them style themselves better, be a better girl, fit in, just made it worse. They hated being bad at anything, let alone something that everyone else seemed to do so naturally. But now they realised, it wasn’t them that was broken, the system of gender in society was. It all made sense now. So they came out as non-binary.

Their mum had given them the horrific name of Ethel. It sounded like something from the nineteen-thirties. People always assumed they’d be some old lady. They didn’t want people to ever think they were old or a lady. So, when they came out as non-binary, they were afforded the chance to create a new, better name. Maximus had named themselves after the main character in the movie Gladiator. It had fairly masculine connotations, such as Gladiator and Mad Max, while still giving them the non-binary name of Max. They had tried some other names, like John (for John McClain and/or John Wick), but none were quite as flexible as Max. 

They changed their whole image. They had short hair, usually coloured in some way. Their fashion became the talk of campus. Slick suits, colourful jumpsuits, industrial overalls. They had an outfit for everything. Their new look shone confidence everywhere they went.

Realising they were non-binary was great. Not only did it mean they got to be seen and identified how they had always wanted to, but now they were firmly under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella and had a whole new branch of activism they could join. They became the one educating people on pronouns, how to be properly accepting of non-binary people, how to use inclusive language.

They went on the offensive. They were the one at the front of an action planning meeting, questioning whether the acknowledgement of country had emphasised the seriousness of the genocide enough. They were the ones at transgender rights meetups questioning whether the leadership was adequately calling out the mistreatment of incarcerated trans people. After undermining the leadership of a group, they would launch their own group and siphon off the membership of the other. Activist leaders trembled in their presence. 

After university, they had assumed the career that best fit this personality: entrepreneurialism. Their drive, combined with a knack for helping companies with their pink-washing efforts, made them very successful. Sure, none of their projects ever seemed to work, but it was all about the optics. As long as they made their corporate beefactors look good, as long as they could keep posting feel-good stories about their ‘successes’ to their Instagram, they would keep getting work. 

It was one of their many projects that had earned them a nomination tonight. They had created a program called PrideSig. It analysed your email history with AI and suggested what pronouns you might like to use in your email signature. Trained on millions of emails, which Max had sourced from definitely not dubious sources, it could suggest up to two hundred pronoun combinations for you to add to your signature block. 

Did they know anything about the advanced mathematics and statistics underpinning the models used in AI? No. Did they know how to program? No. Did the AI sometimes hallucinate and suggest the pronouns “all glory to the dark lord/judgement day is near”? Yes. Did the Russians backdoor their awful code and use PrideSig to hack into the Defence Department? Yes. Did any of this stop Max from jumping on the AI hype train? No. 

Of course, corporations loved it. It was the perfect way for them to show they cared about diversity while using AI to outsource any meaningful action. As a bonus, any mention of AI in any way was sure to cause their stock price to rise dramatically. They paid Max a handsome subscription fee and gave them contacts to promote its use in any company or government agency that claimed to have a good diversity and inclusion program.. 

Max had been smart and made sure to hold copyright over everything. The programming had been done under airtight contracts. Their previous project before PrideSig had been a joint project with their former best friend, Vivian. They had made “In Their Shoes”, a VR experience that lets you feel what it’s like to be in a minority group. From seeing what it’s like to be a trans person being attacked in the street, to what it’s like to navigate the world in a wheelchair, to what it was like to be a Black slave in the Southern USA in the 19th century. It had been going well until, somehow, it became known to the fetish community, who crashed the servers, trying to get off being whipped as a slave. Both Max and Vivian blamed each other for the failure. Vivian said it was Max’s fault for going too hard with the advertising. Max blamed Vivian for not correctly filtering the user base, as they were supposed to be in charge of the day-to-day operations. Vivian produced a planning document that showed Max had responsibility for user management, at which point Max accused them of gaslighting them. They both fought for control of the project before the whole thing collapsed, and neither of them had spoken to each other since. Max wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

Quiet was called, and the presenter of the award took over the stage. She gave some speech about how great it was they could all gather like this, how much good work had been done, how much was still to be done. The usual stuff. Max looked at their watch and wished they’d hurry up and just say who won already.

Max’s name was announced, as if they doubted it for a second, and the room erupted in applause. They approached the stage, camera flashes going off to capture the moment. They stood on the stage and let it wash over them. Everyone seeing how amazing they were. Seeing them for the brilliant person they were. They gave their speech, thanking their friends and family. Only because it was expected, not because they had ever needed them. They talked about their struggle, how much they had overcome, making sure to pause to wipe a tear from their eye. They had been practising all week to be able to cry on cue. As they finished with an appropriately quotable bit of inspiring speech, the crowd broke into applause. Some in the crowd teared up. The clapping turned into a standing ovation. The flood of praise drove Maximus into a euphoria. They could feel their magnificence beaming across the crowd. They were God’s gift to this world. They were unstoppable.