When I was asked last fall to serve on the selection committee for a new
board, I had to ask what the COC Haaglanden actually did. To my surprise, the
activities should mainly consist of working groups and support groups that all focus on a
target specific audiences. The parties I remembered from my student days at Leiden
COC – men, women, leather girls, bikers, hot college girls and drag queens all through
each other – are no more.


I am now a board member and sometimes I feel like an air traffic controller who has a hole for one
plane trying to find on the runway. On many evenings the COC is occupied by small
groups that distinguish themselves sharply from others. For the unsuspecting visitor it is hell
tour to find out whether he/she/who is welcome at the Scheveningseveer on a certain evening.
If you're not in the target audience that night, you're out of luck.


The outside world does see a queer community that works together at the Pride and with
rainbow flags, but indoors it's every man for himself. Everyone having a good time
own letter to a half-empty bar. With Pride we show ourselves together to the outside world. Why
do we feel so unsafe around each other that we can barely see the colors in the rainbow flag?
dare to mix?


I miss the chance to just walk into the COC one evening – without checking the agenda first
study – and have crazy, weird encounters with people I wouldn't otherwise
come across. I'm in favor of making the COC an open association for the whole queer again
community. A place where you can meet people you wouldn't otherwise meet, where you
can start conversations with people who deviate from the average. Let's as a queer community
offer each other the safety that is sometimes not there in the outside world and the walls inside so much
possibly bring it down.

The Style Council – Walls Come Tumbling Down

Diana Comijs, Treasurer

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