University of Oregon, Eugene, September 28, 2004
It’s the first meeting of the school year for the LGBT student group, and their lounge is completely packed—every chair is taken, and so is every space on the floor. Luckily, the organizers have saved me a seat. I’m not sure how many people are there for my reading and how many are there to announce student activities. There are a lot of activities to announce, including the fact that the next speaker will be the gay NFL player. After announcements, everyone goes around the room and says their name, their favorite body part and why, and the gender pronoun they prefer. For some reason I’m last, or just about last: I choose my head, because I’m in pain a lot, so I’m not so present in the rest of my body. Everyone looks concerned. Now I feel shy, like I’m in college, too, at the first meeting of the LGBT alliance.
My host, Karla, set up the event at the university, even though she didn’t go to school there, and hasn’t been a student for a while. She cautioned me that she wasn’t sure whether people would relate to my radical queer anti-assimilationist politics, especially when Oregon was facing an anti-gay marriage amendment, but that this made it all the more necessary for me to speak. I took on the electoral issues by promoting the event with the tagline, “Revolting Is More Fun Than Voting.” Some people rush out just before my talk, but more file in, and the room is still crowded.
After I speak, several students complain about the lack of radical queer organizing in Eugene, a small town known for activism, and they wonder whether they could start a queer direct action group dedicated to exposing the hypocrisy of mainstream gay culture. I assure them that all it takes is a couple of angry people who are dedicated to getting the word out, a good flyer, and a target. I say, “I imagine there are plenty of targets in Eugene.” People laugh in agreement.
Interestingly, in this context one student expresses her concern with the organizing against Measure 36, the anti-gay marriage initiative on the Oregon ballot. She says that she went to the “No on 36” office in order to volunteer, but it was clear that she wasn’t welcome because of her gender nonconformity. In a roomful of students of various genders, sexualities, ethnicities, and levels of conformity (a few of the students look like they could have stepped off the set for Dawson’s Creek), most people nod in agreement—no, they are not welcome in the No on 36 office. They have too many piercings, they’re not white enough, they’re too trans, too young, too queer.
The No on 36 campaign follows the standard approach of mainstream gay organizations in fighting anti-gay amendments, which have appeared in Oregon over and over in the last two decades: mobilize straight support by presenting a sanitized, “we’re just like you” version of gay identity. Usually, this approach not only fails but further marginalizes defiant, outsider, or unassimilated queers. Instead of silencing queerness, gay organizations should be building a confrontational, multi-issue direct action movement that makes it impossible for the same Christian Right homophobes to keep placing anti-gay measures on the ballot. By making an entire roomful of engaged local queers feel unwelcome, the No on 36 campaign was doomed to fail.
The election comes up in other ways. One student asks, “Do you think there’s a difference between Bush and Kerry?” I’ve anticipated this question and prepared a suitable anecdote. When I was 19, and eligible to vote in the Presidential election for the first time, I bit my lip and voted for Bill Clinton. I was not naïve enough to think that this would result in political change for the better, yet I bought the line that we had to “get Bush out.” When Clinton succeeded in dismantling welfare to such an extent that the Republicans had only dreamed of, and direct action queer activism virtually disappeared from the political landscape, I knew that I could never again vote for the lesser monster.
And so I say: “When there’s no choice, the only choice is not to vote.” This provokes a variety of responses, including a gasp or two, a few looks of shock, and nods of approval. Most people think that Kerry is not the ideal choice, but that we have to vote for him anyway, but one older queen suggests that the Democratic Party has never had any integrity, and that it’s time for a new system. After the discussion comes to a close, the person who asked the question about Bush and Kerry approaches me, and says, “ Thank you—I’m so glad that there’s someone else who thinks like me.”
The Empire Builder, October 5-7
It’s my longest train ride—48 hours from Seattle to Chicago—and I’m hoping for adventure: a hot guy in my sleeper cabin for a few hours, an amazing conversation, or both. Unfortunately, nothing exciting happens. In the lounge car, everyone is smashed or knitting. In the first-class lounge, everyone is just smashed. As I’m leaving the car, someone calls to me from behind: “Is that vintage?”
I know she means my sweater; we’ve been sitting cattycorner from one another for about an hour, and she’s finally daring to start a conversation. I turn around: “Yes, it’s used.” She looks at the book I’m holding, and says: “What are you reading?” “It’s the new book I edited,” I reply, “That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation. I’m on a book tour.” I hand her the book.
“What’s it about?” she asks. “It’s about presenting a queer politics that isn’t centered around obtaining straight privileges like marriage, military service, and adoption, and instead fights for more important things like housing, health care, and an end to the U.S. war on Iraq.” She looks at the cover, at the lipstick and glitter smeared across a sneering jaw. “It doesn’t look like something I would read,” she says, “but I agree with everything you’re saying.” She hands back the book.
At this point, I’m sitting down and we’re facing one another. “How old are you?” she asks. “I’m 31.” “Oh,” she says, “I’m only 36, but I look so much older than you. Marriage and kids does that. I’m from Bellingham, Washington, my husband and I are in real estate, the other day we went over to our gay friend’s house. He has a huge Kerry-Edwards sign on his front lawn, and I guess he hadn’t seen the Bush-Cheney sticker on our car. He pointed at our sticker and said: how could you? For us, it’s just about taxes.”
University of Chicago, Center for Gender Studies, October 12
My host, Tim, buys four pizzas for the event, and I can’t imagine who’s going to eat them. But it’s funded by the university. And by the time the event is scheduled to begin, every seat is taken. They all introduce themselves and say what department they’re from. There are a lot of people from anthropology, sociology, and history, but there are also several people from the sciences. Almost everyone is a grad student; there are a couple undergrads, one professor, and one non-student.
After my talk, the questions take a decidedly more academic track than in Eugene. One person wants to talk about the difference between hierarchies and norms. I don’t really have an opinion on the subject, but I talk about it for a while—that’s what you do in academia. But then she has a follow-up question: “When does a hierarchy become a norm?”
Several people start their comments by saying, “I agree with everything you just said, except….” And then they proceed to tear me to shreds. Actually, I weather the barrage well—it’s just a bit tiring. I’m glad that people are engaged, but I’m also glad that I didn’t choose the academic path of endless argument over theoretical differences.
I talk about the way gay marriage proponents literally drape themselves in the stars and stripes as the U.S. bombs Iraq, overthrows the only democratically-elected government in the history of Haiti, funds the Israeli war on the Palestinians, and makes the world safe for every multinational corporation to plunder indigenous resources. Gay marriage proponents want us to think that “full citizenship” means attaining things like tax breaks and inheritance rights. For rich white gay people with beach condos, country club memberships, and a couple of hedge funds that need trimming every now and then, marriage might just be that last thing standing in the way of full citizenship—but what about for everyone else?
The questions go on for over an hour after my hour-long talk. My voice is getting hoarse. I bring the event to a close and encourage people to talk among themselves while I go to the bathroom, but suddenly the one professor in attendance blurts out, “I have something to say. I didn’t want to mention this, but I have to. I’m working class, and my lover and I bought a house together—we were both working class—and when he died of AIDS, I lost everything. I didn’t want to be involved in the gay marriage struggle, but I was dragged into it by conscience. I understand what you’re saying about the way gay marriage is framed, but the people most likely to benefit from gay marriage are not the upper-class gay people you mention, but those with the least privilege: working-class people and people of color. If my partner and I were married, then I’d still have that house, and everything else that we built together. “
This professor is very emotional, which makes it hard for me to respond. But assimilation makes me emotional, and I talk about the violence of cultural erasure so central to the gay marriage movement run by groups like the Human Rights Campaign and the Log Cabin Republicans, who have more in common with the National Rifle Association than any sort of queer left agenda. What we need to be fighting for is marriage abolition, and universal access to all the benefits that marriage might sometimes help procure: housing, healthcare, citizenship, hospital visitation and inheritance rights, tax breaks, and so on. Of course, we all make compromises in order to live in this horrible world. For a long time, queers have married straight friends for citizenship or healthcare. My point is that we should be striving to make as few compromises as possible, not enshrining those compromises as “progress.”
I rush to the bathroom after thanking everyone for coming, and when I return, people are still chatting. The professor comes up to me and says, “I’m sorry that I got carried away like that. As an academic, I know that it’s not fair to use an emotional appeal to further an argument.” I’m amazed at the clarity of this admission, and touched by it. Maybe there is hope in the academy. On our way out, Tim holds up four empty pizza boxes. “See, I told you they’d get eaten.”
University of DePauw, Greencastle, Indiana, October 13
Eighty percent of DePauw students are in fraternities or sororities, including many of those at the reading. It’s a smaller crowd—fifteen people or so. Several seem hesitant about staying in the room, which is a student lounge. During my talk, facial expressions in the audience alternate between confusion, amusement, and concern, and at least one person looks at me like I’m an alien that’s landed in their living quarters. But afterwards, almost everyone thanks me for coming to DePauw, for bringing a new perspective.
One person confronts my fashion: “Not everyone wants to wear pink corduroys and a lavender sweater.” My point, of course, is not that everyone should look like me, but that we need to be creating more options, not fewer. The radical potential of queer identity lies in enabling people to choose their sexual and gender identities. Instead of fighting for the right for the State to sanction our carnal coupling, we need to honor and continue the legacy of generations of queers who have developed new ways to lust for and fuck and love one another, to create family and community outside of traditional models, and to challenge and dismantle all hierarchies of race, class, gender, sexuality, age, and ability.
Here the conversation moves to the kitchen, where people have cooked a vegan dinner for me. The miso soup is delicious. The conversation becomes more informal, and a couple of students are intent on baiting me with questions like: “What do you think of drugs?” “What do you think of Will & Grace?” “Queer as Folk?” “Angels in America?” One student comes over to me and asks, “If we do direct action on campus, will people kill us?” I don’t really know, but I assume they’ll be fine. I say, “Remember that you’re in a privileged space where you allegedly have more freedom than in the outside world.” He continues, “There’s this racist homophobe coming to speak. He teaches that slavery civilized black people, and some of us want to interrupt him; but we’re wondering if that would silence his freedom of speech.” I assure him that they should feel free to interrupt him and perhaps do more. They could post some of his opinions around campus and satirize them. They could contact other campus groups who might be offended by such sickening rhetoric and together build a massive media spectacle. In addition to contacting the campus press, they should alert local and Indianapolis media in order to put the speaker, as well as the college, under scrutiny.
After dinner, some of the students take me up to the GLBT lounge. We sit on colorful, plush sofas and talk some more. We talk about class issues in Greencastle, tension between students and town residents, problems with hate crimes legislation that doesn’t question the overall criminal justice system, experimental queer literature, what to show instead of Queer As Folk for their social events. I feel like we’re becoming friends, like I’m learning from their questions while also providing them with more options. One student points to the stack of magazines on the card table—The Advocate, Curve, Out. “I bet you don’t like those either,” he says. Ashley, the student who organized the event, wants to know what magazines they should get instead. The gay mainstream has such a stranglehold on popular representations of gay and queer lives, and most progressive or radical magazines have never developed a queer politic. Even the better ones might only have a couple of avowedly queer articles. What accessible print publication exists for young queers in Greencastle, Indiana, who are coming to terms with their sexualities and identities, looking for something fun, smart, sexy, dangerous, critical and irrepressibly queer? I don’t have an answer.
Mattilda, a.k.a. Matt Bernstein Sycamore, is the editor, most recently, of That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation. She maintains a website at www.mattbernsteinsycamore.com.
