Marzo 8 de 2010. En el mismo dÃa me tocó ir a una mesa de debate sobre el dÃa internacional de la mujer, escuchar hombres a favor de la interrupción legal del embarazo, comentar con mis compañeras activistas sobre cómo muchos hombres siguen/seguimos en la lógica de hablar de temas de mujeres en el mismo tono de voz que Ricardo Arjona (vaya mentada!) me tocó el chisme de que en una mesa de debate por la tarde a una de mis amigas le tocó escuchar el comentario de un muchacho que sólo tomó la palabra para decir "las viejas se siguen victimizando un chingo" para irse acto seguido de concluida su frase, y en el evento/kermesse/exposición colectiva de una escuela de arte me tocó ver a una mujer con un pin muy grandote del tamaño de un pañuelo de esos que van en la solapa y muy interesante además, que decÃa "yo no celebro muertes ni conmemoro guerras"
"STRAIGHTLACED: HOW GENDER GOT US ALL TIED UP"
Director: Debra Chasnoff
Trevor's Rating: 5 / 5 Stars
I have a confession: I broke down crying in the middle of this screening. This wonderful new feature documentary from Academy Award winning director Debra Chasnoff (from It's Elementary fame) features a variety of youth's perspectives on the impact of gender roles on men, women, and everyone in between.
Radical / separatist feminists have for far too long refused to incorporate an analysis of men's lives into their analysis and politics. Men, they would say, are studied in every other department on campus. Why give their lives any more attention than it already has? I believe that their brand of feminism ultimately ended up becoming the butt of jokes because of this refusal -- because men were made out to be the enemy, and because a feminist analysis gave men few tools to understand how their own gender impeded their ability to live life fully. Old school feminism made it seem like it was always easy to be a man and always difficult to be a woman. This was never true.
Straightlaced presents a new kind of analysis of gender that drops the insistence that it is women who only matter when we talk about gender. In this fabulous piece, we hear from all kinds of young people with a variety of gender presentations -- and a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds (which, as we all know, work with gender to produce variations on similar themes). It takes young people's voices and experiences seriously, which is certainly where it draws its strength. It avoids jargon. It's matter of fact. And it's incredibly powerful.
As I mentioned at the start, I had a mini-breakdown halfway through the film when they tell the story of a flamboyant young boy who committed suicide. His friends and neighbors were interviewed while planting a memorial garden, and they had colorfully painted picnic tables with messages of tolerance and acceptance. When they panned to a table painted "Hate Free Zone" with a heart around it, the waterworks started coming. I couldn't hold back. The pain of growing up as a sissy boy in an intolerant culture flooded me with emotion. In different circumstances, would that have been my story?
The tears didn't stop there. Hearing so many young people speak openly and frankly about the way that gender restricts their actions, emotions, friendships, and sexualities kept my cheeks damp for most of the film. I can't recommend this film more -- particularly for educators who can use this film as a resource in the classroom. Once released on DVD, Groundspark (the film's producers) will I believe make available a set of classroom resources -- which would be a wonderful asset to educators.
This is 21st century feminism, folks. In fact, we need a new word for this kind of analysis. Feminism doesn't cut it. (Gender studies, perhaps, though it's a bit bland I think.) But whatever the terminology, this is the direction we need to moving in collectively as folks invested in reworking and expanding cultural constructions of gender and sexuality.
Phew! After a few weeks of research and compiling, here's a rough draft of my syllabus for a class I'm teaching this summer, "The Sociology of Sexuality." Thoughts on the content??? There are obviously things missing, but in 7 weeks there's only so much to cover. Let me know if you have ideas for edits, substitutions, etc! Thanks!! xoxo
Unit I: THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF SEXUALITY
I. Week 1: May 6th – 8th
i. Wednesday, May 6th , “Introduction to the Course”
ii. Friday, May 8th , “Socially Constructed Sexuality”
i. Schwartz, P. & Rutter, V. (1998). “The Social Origins of Desire” in The Gender of Sexuality. pp. 13-21
ii. Seidman, S. (2003). “Social Constructionism: Sociology, History, and Philosophy” [Chapter 3]. In The Social Construction of Sexuality. pp. 25-39.
II. Week 2: May 11th – May 15th
i. Monday, May 11th “Normalizing Sex”
i. Rubin, G. (1984). "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality" in Pleasure and Danger.
ii. Warner, M. (1999). “The Ethics of Sexual Shame.” In The Trouble With Normal.
ii. Wednesday, May 13th , “The Construction of the ‘Homosexual’”
i. Chauncey, G. (1989). “From Sexual Inversion to Homosexuality: The Changing Medical Conceptualization of Female ‘Deviance.’” In Passion and Power: Sexuality in History.
iii. Friday, May 15th , “The Construction of the ‘Heterosexual’”
i. Katz, J. (1995). “The Invention of Heterosexuality.” Socialist Review, 20(1), pp. 7-34.
ii. Halley, J. (1993). “The Construction of Heterosexuality.” In Warner, M. (ed.), Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory.
III. Week 3: May 18th – May 22nd
i. Monday, May 18th , “The Construction of ‘Gay’ and ‘Lesbian’”
i. D’Emilio, J. “Placing Gay in the Sixties.” In The World Turned.
ii. D’Emilio, J. “Capitalism and Gay Identity.” In Passion and Power: Sexuality in History.
iii. Berube, A. “The Legacy of the War.” In Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two
Unit 2: MICHEL FOUCAULT, POSTSTRUCTURALISM, AND QUEER THEORY
ii. Wednesday, May 20th , “Foucault’s History of Sexuality”
i. Foucault, M (1980). History of Sexuality, Volume I. Pp. 3-49, 103-114.
ii. Epstein, S. (2003). “An Incitement to Discourse: Sociology and The History of Sexuality.” Sociological Forum, 18(3).
iii. Friday, May 22nd , “Foucault’s Queer Politics”
i. Halperin, D. (1995). “The Queer Politics of Michel Foucault.” In Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography. Pp. 15-125.
IV. Week 4: May 25th – May 29th
i. Monday, May 25th , “An Introduction to Queer Theory”
i. Sullivan, N. (2003). “Queer: A Question of Being or a Question of Doing?” In A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory.
ii. Halperin, D. (2003). "The Normalization of Queer Theory." Journal of Homosexuality, 45 (2).
ii. Wednesday, May 27th , “Heteronormativity”
i. Warner, M. (1995). “Introduction.” In Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory.
ii. Cohen, C. "Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?" In Black Queer Politics.
iii. Friday, May 29th , “Performativity”
i. Sullivan, N. (2003). “Performance, Performativity, Parody, and Politics.” In A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory.
ii. Esterberg, K. G. (1996). "'A Certain Swagger When I Walk': Performing Lesbian Identity.” In Seidman, S. (Ed.) Queer Theory / Sociology.
Unit 3: FEMINISM AND SEXUALITY
V. Week 5: June 1st – June 5th
i. Monday, June 1st , “The Politics of Pornography”
i. MacKinnon, C. (1993) “Defamation and Discrimination.” In Only Words.
ii. Califia, P. "Among Us, Against Us: Does Equation of Pornography with Violence Add up to Political Repression?" In Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex.
ii. Wednesday, June 3rd , “Sexual Violence”
i. Malamuth, N. M. (1996). “The Confluence Model of Sexual Aggression: Feminist and Evolutionary Perspective. In D. Buss & N. Malamuth (Eds.), Sex, Power, and Conflict.
ii. Armstrong, E., Hamilton, L. & Sweeny, B. “Hooking Up and Party Rape: The Social Organization of Gender and Sexuality at a Large Research University.”
iii. Friday, June 5th , “Sadomaschism”
i. Califia, P. “Sadomasachism and Feminism.” In Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex.
ii. Rofes, E. “Snapshots of Desire: Surviving as a Queer Among Queers.” In In Mark Thompson (Ed.), Leatherfolk.
Unit 4: SEXUAL SUBCULTURES, IDENTITIES, & PRACTICES
VI. Week 6: June 8th – June 12th
i. Monday, June 8th , “Bathhouses and Sex Clubs”
i. Rubin, G. “The Catacombs: A Temple of the Butthole.” In Mark Thompson (Ed.), Leatherfolk.
ii. Alexander, "Bathhouses and Brothels: Symbolic Sites in Discourse and Practice" In Dangerous Bedfellows (Eds.), Policing Public Sex.
ii. Wednesday, June 10th , “Sex Work”
i. Chapkis, W. (1996), "The Emotional Labor of Sex" In Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor.
ii. Wonders, N. and Michalowski, R. (2001). “Bodies, Borders, and Sex Tourism in a Globalized World: A Tale of Two Cities—Amsterdam and Havana.” Social Problems, 48(4).
iii. Friday, June 12th , “Transgender Lives”
i. Stryer, S. (2008). “Introduction to Transgender Terms and Concepts.” In Transgender History.
ii. Stryer, S. (2008). “A Hundred Years of Transgender History.” In Transgender History.
iii. Meyerowitz, J. (2003). “Introduction.” In How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States.
VII. Week 7: June 15th – June 17th
i. Monday, June 15th , “Intersexuality”
i. The Intersex Society of North America. “What is intersex?” Online at: http://www.isna.org/faq/what_is_intersex
ii. Fausto-Sterling, A. (2000). "Of Gender and Genitals: The Use and Abuse of the Modern Interssexual" In Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality.
ii. Wednesday, June 17th , “Sexuality Research and its Discontents”
i. Humphries, L. (1970). “Methods: The Sociologist as Voyeur” In Tearoom Trade.
ii. Epstein, S. (2006). “The New Attack on Sexuality Research: : Morality and the Politics of Knowledge Production.” In Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 3(1).
“’Knowledge is power’ is perhaps a truer statement than we often realize… Like power, knowledge depends on that agreement of a significant group of people and establishes itself more firmly as their organization grows. And when that organization is of professionals whose knowledge is itself high in the hierarchy, power takes on the further mantle of authority. In such organizations, it is not at all surprising that the articulated hierarchy of ‘kinds’ of people is also replicated. All you need do here is picture a room full of elementary school teachers, and another full of professors of physics. Which group is composed of representatives of the top of the gender/race hierarchy? And yet we are supposed to believe that science is of all fields the most disinterested, neutral, nonpolitical” (161).
-- Minnich, Elizabeth Kamarck. 1990. "Partial Knowledge,’ in Transforming Knowledge. Philadelphia: Temple University Press:147-176.
"A COMPLICATED QUEERNESS: LIVING FEMME IN A DYKE COMMUNITY"
Director: Johanna Buchignani, Emily Hillman
Trevor's Rating: 4 / 5 Stars
Okay, so admittedly I'm a bit biased with this flick -- this was my friend Johanna's (who attended SF State with me in the Human Sexuality Studies MA program) Masters thesis project. I've also seen the film before, since she screened it when we graduated. With that out of the way, this film raises some very poignant questions about gender, sexuality, and "lived" feminist politics (that is to say, the politics that play out in a politicized, queer community). I'm particularly interested in the very queer complications that arise in traditionally lesbian, women's communities when many of the community members transition to become men. This short film -- 17 minutes -- aims to tackle questions of a slightly different ilk: what's it like for dykes who like to dye their hair, put on makeup, and paint their nails (not to reduce femininity to superficiality, but of course these are some of the ways that many women "perform" femme). Here in San Francisco, however, those two questions are deeply intertwined. Hence why there is a significant chunk of time in the film paid to the inclusion of transmen in communities of female-bodied people. When she screened the film at our graduation, I was somewhat put off by the segment on transmen, which begins with a picture of a syringe and then a transman injecting testosterone. I think this tends to biomedicalize their identities and also seems to allude to a kind of artificial-ness. These qualms aside, Johanna is brilliant, and she's raised some important questions here. I hope she continues to explore them, in film or in writing.
"WORKING ON IT"
Director: Sabina Baumann, Karin Michalski
Trevor's Rating: 3.5 / 5 Stars
This relatively short documentary (50 minutes) is obviously German -- and I'm not just referring here to the subtitles. The few pieces of German queer cinema that I've been exposed to have often tended to push the boundaries of genre, and are generally interested in exposing the film's artificialness. Last year at Frameline for instance, I saw a German flick in which the main characters paused the film and edited the storyline by deleting objects or even people on screen. This documentary shared an urge to remind viewers that what we were seeing was indeed a construction of a filmmaker, in this case by showing the participants (not sure what to call them, they were far more than just interviewees) setting up viewing areas where participants watched taped footage of other participants. How meta! This is all of course connected to the film's subject matter, which is an exploration of participant's stories and theories on how gender and sexuality are constantly constructed and renegotiated. It's very theory-heavy, without being particularly laborious. In one scene, a participant tries to explain her idea of sexual-labor using a lot of jargon that was even harder to understand in the translated subtitles. The person sitting next to her asked if that made sense, and the filmmaker replies "No, not at all." Chuckle. It also felt dated -- a kind of queer theory-driven extravaganza that would have made more sense in the late 1990's. It culminates in a kind of music video / art performance that, while vaguely interesting, didn't seem to move any of their arguments about gender / sexuality forward. I'll be frank: I wanted to hate this film. It rubs up against a kind of narcissistic psychobabble that spewed forth in the name of "queer theory," which many people mistook for an opportunity to self-indulge their egos. In short, I give "Working On It" 3.5 stars for its creative spirit, not for its insight.
I didn't post about this for a few days, mostly because I was pretty saddened by the whole affair. Rebecca Walker -- daughter of famed feminist author Alice Walker (who penned The Color Purple, among other things) -- has written a nasty letter in the UK's Mail ripping her mum to shreds for being largely absent in her upbringing. She basically accuses Walker senior of not living up to her feminist ideals, and abandoning her when she became pregnant:
"My mother's feminist principles coloured every aspect of my life. As a little girl, I wasn't even allowed to play with dolls or stuffed toys in case they brought out a maternal instinct. It was drummed into me that being a mother, raising children and running a home were a form of slavery. Having a career, travelling the world and being independent were what really mattered according to her.
I love my mother very much, but I haven't seen her or spoken to her since I became pregnant. She has never seen my son - her only grandchild. My crime? Daring to question her ideology.
This seems a little outrageous coming from a daughter who elected to ditch her father's name (Leventhal) in favor of her mother's (Walker) when she grew up. Career making move indeed.
But really it all just seems pretty tacky and depressing. I was interviewing my friend for an upcoming episode of "The Gayest Podcast in Michigan" (whew-hew!), and he said some things about his relationship with his mom that were pretty rough. We talked about it later and both agreed to keep those comments out of the podcast. Because nobody knows what will happen in a few years -- will they patch up that relationship? Will she pass away and he be forever regretful? Perhaps nothing would change, but we agreed that there was always some hope, and no reason to air all that laundry in the interview. What good does that bring?
Walker is clearly trying to inflict hurt here, and I'm sure she "succeeds." But it reminds me here of feminist "Oppression Olympics" over who is more oppressed than who. You know, the whole "No I'm a lesbian AND Black AND 84 and therefore have had a harder life than anyone else here." Okay... so what does that get you? Nothing but a slice of pity pie -- if you're lucky.
Could it be that Rebecca Walker is just trying to sell more copies of her book on parenting that was released last year? Is it really that painfully shallow?
Salon.com has more analysis here. Read more if you like. Frankly I found the whole thing gave me indigestion.
UPDATE: Walker responds to Salon.com's piece with a bizarre series of accusations -- and basically by stepping back from the piece:
Chesler wants to draw in the personal differences I have with my mother. This appears to be opportunistic and ill-conceived, because the fact is the piece to which she refers is an inaccurate tabloidization of an interview I gave. No matter how much she would like to see the piece as factual and however sensational the article may appear, my father is not a descendant of Holocaust survivors, I never used the word fanatical to describe my mother's views, and so on.
Chelser's zeal to make comment is undermined by the fact that she did not take time to fact-check the so-called "essay" to which she refers. She has unwittingly used tabloid sensationalism to make an all too personal assessment of a situation with little bearing on the major national issues we should all be deeply concerned about.
So I didn't wake up quite so early today as I did yesterday. Last night we were up late playing cards -- but I'm getting ahead of myself! Yesterday was an action packed day. We began the day with a lovely breakfast prepared by the staff here at the Wildwood Retreat Center. The highlight was this amazing blueberry cake/break, toasted with a smear of peanut on top. Heaven!!!
I found some of the conversations yesterday a bit challenging. I haven't yet voiced some of my concerns, because I like to see where the conversation heads. I also wasn't quite sure what those concerns were. Now that I've had time to sleep with it, I feel that they mostly derive from one of the sessions that relied heavily on the language of "oppression" and "structuralism" (e.g. "white men hold the power"), which I find completely erases the complexity of everyday life. Collectively white men may indeed hold many of the cards, but: 1) we can imagine plenty of white men who are pretty powerless in many situations -- whether it be due to economic or gendered reasons; and 2) this erases -- and I mean erases -- any potential to understand how masculinity (which works to buttress male privelege) also has deeply painful emotional consequences for all men (and all women too, at that!). So I felt a bit frustrated by the conversation here, which I found relied on a kind of 60s / 70s style oppression framework that I thought had gone out of style (for good reason).
Phew. I'm glad to have written that to process my thoughts here. I'll find a chance hopefully to share them later. After this session, we were split up into "tribes" of men -- small working groups that we would be relying on for the rest of the academy. My tribe is the "Oh Mighty Sisi" tribe, which plays on the fact that Isis (the Egyptian God) spelled backwards is Sisi (pronounced, of course, like sissy). We used a piece of the music from the TV show from the 70s, The Secrets of Isis. We might have changed the words a bit:
Oh Mighty Isis!
Sissy Winds
That Blow on High
Lift Us High
Into the Sky
There may have been some lisping and limp-wristing involved in our performance of said song. Good times.
We moved on to have a chat about the Gay Men's Health Movement's history and development over the past 20 years or so (with a loose timeline extending much further into the past). This is of course important historical work, to mark our progress and development and to make sure that other people also mark and remember it. We traced out history as coming out of the African-American and Women's Health Movements of the 70s, which both worked in reaction to a medical establishment that was not meeting their needs (and was often doing damage to their communities).
Perhaps one of the day's highlights was a participant-led workshop from Michael Scarce, whose work on crystal meth in San Fran I recently discussed here. He led a discussion about creating a movement of men who were trained to respond quickly and effectively to media messaging and medical research that potentially stigmatizes (or outright demonizes) gay men's lives and sexualities. This of course comes directly out of his work with MSRA recently, but also comes out of a desire to broaden the conversations beyond MRSA. I think this is excellent -- and I hope our conversations bears real fruit in the future.
The event was lovely. A group of us walked up to "Julie Andrews Point," which is called as such because it gloriously resembles the scene from The Sound of Music in which Julie Andrews run across the field singing the movie's theme song. It was pitch dark when we went up there, although the moon was so bright that the fields were basked in a silvery light. One of the participants by the name of Eric sang some songs and told some lovely scary stories -- which were only seperated by Chris Bartlett's painfully accurate renditions of a few of Ethel Merman's songs. Intense!
And of course post-storytelling, I had to jump into the hot tub. Yes! Gotta love the hot tub. Okay, I have to run. Time for breakfast! I woke up a bit late.
Call For Papers:
For a Special Issue of Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy
Transgender Studies and Feminism: Theory, Politics, and Gendered Realities
Edited by Talia Mae Bettcher and Ann Garry
The recent publication of The Transgender Studies Reader (ed. Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle, New York: Routledge, 2006) marks a watershed in the development of trans studies. Arising in the early nineties in close relation to queer theory, trans studies is characterized by the coming-to-voice of trans people, long the theorized and researched objects of sexology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and even feminist theory.
Sandy Stone’s groundbreaking “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto” sought the end of monolithic accounts of trans people (authored by non-trans) to reveal a multiplicity of trans narratives told by trans people themselves. By recognizing trans people as flesh and blood human beings with particular access to experiences of “transness” and transphobic oppression, as its starting point, trans studies opens up a way of theorizing “transgender”--for trans and non-trans people alike--that ideally resists, rather than reinforces, mechanisms of transphobia. This raises important questions in feminist theory and politics. How can feminist theory best understand transphobia and trans resistance? Where do feminist and trans politics meet? Where are the overlaps and gaps, the points of connection and disconnection?
Hypatia invites submissions to a special issue on transgender studies and feminism, which recognizes the emergence of trans studies.
We welcome articles that investigate the relations between feminism and transgender studies. Articles exploring the intersections of multiple oppressions are especially welcome, as are submissions that come from subject-positions outside the United States (and North America more generally). We seek a collection of papers that is international in scope.
We also welcome articles that focus on issues specific to trans studies, trans politics, and trans people. This includes (but is hardly limited to) the following: medical regulations of trans bodies; transphobic violence; transphobia in housing, employment, education, medical treatment, and the like; sexual violence against trans people; critiques and concerns about various views within trans studies or politics, tensions between queer theory and trans studies.
Submissions need not be limited to the discipline of philosophy; we encourage interdisciplinary submissions. Regardless of disciplinary orientation, all submissions need to be theoretically sophisticated. Submissions that show a sensitivity to the interrelations among theory, politics, and real impacts upon flesh and blood human beings are especially welcome.
Papers should be no more than 8000 words, prepared for anonymous review, and accompanied by an abstract of no more than 75 words. Please provide a cover letter identifying your paper as a submission for the special issue “Transgender Studies and Feminism: Theory, Politics, and Gendered Realities.”
The deadline for submissions is 15 April, 2008. Papers should be submitted by electronic attachment in Word to Ann Garry at agarry@calstatela.edu. Submissions should follow Hypatia guidelines (see http://www. msu. edu/~hypatia/). Please address all correspondence, questions and suggestions to Ann Garry or Talia Bettcher at tbettch@calstatela.edu.
If you happen to be in Michigan, you should totally come out to this event! Serano is fabulous transgender writer / activist -- I'm sure she will have some very smart things to say!
Please forward widely
The University of Michigan Queer Studies Workshop presents:
"Transsexual and Trans Feminine Perspectives on Sexism"
A talk by Julia Serano, University of California, Berkeley.
Friday April 4th, 2008
3:00 PM, 2239 Lane Hall
Free and open to all. Light refreshments will be served.
Julia Serano is a writer, performer, trans activist, and biologist, and the author of the book, "Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity" (Seal Press, 2007), a collection of personal essays that examines the ways in which misogyny frames popular stereotypes and assumptions about transsexual women.
This event is sponsored by the University of Michigan Women's Studies department, The Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and the Lesbian-Gay-Queer Research Initiative.
Julia Serano will also be performing spoken word with Creative Writing M.F.A. candidate Randa Jarrar at the ShAut Cabaret on Thursday April 3rd at 8pm, 325 Braun Ct. $5 admission. A portion of the proceeds will to go Camp Trans.
No time for analysis cause I'm off to class, but Salon.com is featuring a cover story today on trans-inclusivity within the LGBT civil rights movement. Check it out here.
I was at Orphan Andy's today, the diner in the Castro where my roommate and our mutual friend Jeff works, and we got into a somewhat heated discussion about the tension between the desire to create and nuture gay male communities vs. the desire to create and nuture radical social justice movements. Can we engage in the process of building identity-based communities while also hoping to build a politics that moves beyond identity categories?
This tension is somewhat difficult for me to navigate. As a young man who came out as gay in the South, the marginalized experience I had there created my own radically queer political perspective. That is to say, because I was nelly boy in a deeply and often blatantly heterosexist culture, I was radicalized politically from an early age.
Now I live in San Francisco, however, where being gay is no longer radical. It has lost almost all potential to produce an interesting or transformative political consciousness - especially for wealthy white gay men. Perhaps this is not true for men of color; the poor; and gay/bi/queer women. But, for gay men, the potential to create subversive and radical politics here is largely dead.
I have long been hoping to see a new radical politics emerge that sat at the crossroads of racial justice / feminist / and queer political discourses. That is, a movement that was just as interested in tackling racist and sexist prejudices and inequalities as it was in ending heterosexist / homophobic ones. This kind of organizing has begun to emerge in places like the South, where organizations like Southeners on New Ground (formerly headed by Mandy Carter) and Tennesee's Highlander Institute (formerly headed by Suzanne Pharr) have long been pushing for this vision of radical political organizing.
The tension, then, is how to move forward as a activist and organizer hoping to build healthier and politically conscious gay men's communities, while also hoping to build a multi-issue justice movement. Is such a thing possible? My growing up in the South as a gay man has made me attached to my gay identity and my gay brothers in a way that prevents me from dropping my hope for doing gay men's community building. I think there are still places where this can produce radical and feminist consciousnesses - as it has clearly done for me.
Are these projects necessarily seperate? Must I choose between them, or can I find someway to further both agendas? These are the questions that are on my mind, and have been for some time now... Any ideas?
I wanted to post the notes that we came up with at the workshop I co-facilitated with Win Chesson from UNC at the NGLTF's Creating Change Conference in Kansas City last week. My notes are in brackets. Here they are!
What Can Men Do?
- Wear t-shirts, be visible
- Speak out in public, be feminist allies
- Acknowledgement / confront your own priviledge / internalized misogny
- Call others out [on their sexism/racism/etc]
- Encouraging women to take on leadership positions, especially in LGBT organizations
- Actively build colaitions with feminist and women's organizations
- Notice who is interrupting who
- Hold anti-sexism workshops
- Reaching out to heterosexual men's groups
- Question hate crimes legislation [Matt Foreman, E.D. of the Task Force, highlighted the "progress" made towards passing this legislation. Several workshops participants questioned whether these laws are racist in practice]
- Looking into our families
Questions To Ask:
- Theory --> Practice. How to translate?
- Inclusivity; What are the brands of feminism?
- What is the role of feminist men?
- Context
- Male privilege and anxiety [Anxiety over negotiating that privilege]
- Intersections with other issues
- Unequal distribution of male privilege among men
- Body image and media representations
- How does that impact desire? [What bodies are seen as desirable, what bodies aren't?]
- Hypermisogyny in gay male communities
- Sense of entitlement [that gay men, particularly white gay men, have]
- Connection between sexism and homophobia
- Feminism as a tool to critique our identities
- Misogyny among FTM [female to male transgender] communities
- Transitioning into and out of positions of power and privilege
- The treatment of effeminate men in queer male communities
What is Feminism?
- Thought and action vs. System of patriarchy
- Pro-sex Feminists
- Against and and all system of oppression / "isms"
- Queer eco feminism (for ending domination}
- Difficult to define, many brands
It's true! The workshop, "Feminist/Queer/Man: Dialoguing on Gender," was a huge success! More on the workshop later. For now, I'm relishing in the fact that 60 queer folks turned out - including the lesbian slam poet Alix Olsen!
I'm in Kansas City until Monday for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's annual Creating Change conference. Missouri, of course, is home to the new Democratic Senator McCaskill! Creating Change is the largest LGBT organizing conference in the world. This will be my fourth Creating Change. I attended Portland 2002, Miami 2003, and Oakland 2005. I'm happy to be here in Kansas City '06, where (unlike previous CC conferences) I'll be presenting 2 workshops! I'm presenting one workshop called "Know Your Own Risk: HIV 101" and another I'm co-presenting with my friend from UNC Win Chesson called "Feminist/Queer/Man: Dialoguing on Gender." I'm super psyched! More later. Time for bed now - after my flight was delayed 6 hours!
Tonight I put the finishing touches on two papers for my classes, which marks the ending of my official first semester as a Human Sexuality graduate student. Only 3 more semesters to go - goodness how little time we have!
This semester has proven to be both more and less challenging than I anticipated. It has been less challenging in the sense that I find my HMSX classes to be pretty easy and haven't provoked too much critical thinking on my end. I stopped reading months ago because I found it to be unnecessary for success in all of my classes this semester - and because I found a large chunk of it entirely uninteresting.
On the other hand, it's proven to be personally challenging in my quest for knowledge in the realm of sexuality studies. I'm not alone when I say that this program is seriously lacking in several critical areas that I did not anticipate -- namely, feminist thought and theory; queer theory; issues of race and racism; transnational comparative sexual politics and theory; and, possibly to my greatest surprise, Les/Bi/Gay/Trans studies. This boils down to a lot of talk of straight white men (like Freud, for example). To say that I am disappointed would be an understatement.
Slightly more than halfway through the semester something of a coup occurred in our Foundational Theory course when professor Gil Herdt asked students how we were doing. I couldn't restrain my feelings any longer - I had spent the previous two weeks in misery (especially after a guest lecturer on "feminist theory" opened by saying she knew nothing about the subject at hand). I blurted out a diatribe of complaints that ranged from procedural to ethical. The silence that enveloped the room was, in a word, deafening.
I met with the professor several times following that emotional classroom encounter and we've worked through a few of the key issues. He has agreed, for instance, to devote a day or two on race and queer theory. This of course does not satisfy my demanding appetite for critical knowledge and understanding in the field, but it is at least forward movement.
Beyond the class, however, these series of events has certainly set off a chain of doubt for me as to whether I can truly envision a life within the academy. I worry that if a Human Sexuality Studies department conforms to such monolithic, non-threatening understandings, then can I expect any better from more established disciplines such as Sociology? I still have hope that I can, and that this program is a product of a certain school of thought that is not representative of the larger Human Sexuality Studies academic community.
It seems frankly unusual and alarming that my courses and faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill took strikingly more radical and progressive views of the field. Professors like Sherryl Kleinman, Karen Booth, Pamela Conover, and Randall Styers all were far more compelling for me than my professors *so far* here at San Francisco State University. I look forward to next semester when I'll be taking classes from both Deb Tolman and Amy Sueyoshi whose work is far more in lines with my expectations for this program.
In any case, I'm doing extremely well despite the academic woes. My thesis is coming along beautifully. Presently, my research question is as follows: "How do young gay men negotiate sexual risk?" I'm interested in finding out how men who grew up with AIDS in the background and who "came out" after the introduction of powerful new HIV therapies in 1996 perceive and understand sexual risk. I think the old mottos of "use a condom every time" just aren't cutting it for young gay men today - and for legitimate reasons concerning how they perceive HIV. They never watched as a community was faced with extinction or had the unpleasant experience of losing many of your close friends within a few short years. So, yea - that's what I'm trying to investigate. What's it like for sexually active 21-25 year-old HIV-negative gay men?
I'm headed home for the holidays exactly a week from today. I can't wait to be back in North Carolina for two weeks! My friends there are throwing me a "Welcome Home / Happy New Year's" party that I'm oh-so-excited about. I can't wait. I'll also be making a visit to Chapel Hill at some point to see a few faces up there and have a drink at my old haunts. Good times, indeed.
I found myself today on the front porch of a beautiful garden home, chatting casually, with three of the most important architects to my politics and thinking that exist. I took a deep breathe, and examined the people around me. David Halperin. Suzanne Pharr. Eric Rofes. Talk about overwhelming.
Two weeks ago, I was at Eric Rofes' house for his monthly potluck gathering to discuss issues of sexuality (politics, theory, journalism, ideology, and more). Before the meeting, Eric and I were discussing Suzanne Pharr (author and activist, wrote "Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism") - his friend and also who I brought to UNC as keynote to my final Unity Confererence. Because of our previous connection, he invited me to a benefit he was hosting at his house for The Highlander Institute today (Pharr used to be executive director of the Highlander Institute).
And so, here I am two weeks later. David Halperin let me know back in September that he was coming into town this weekend for a conference. I met David at SFSU's 2004 Summer Institute on Sexuality, Society, and Health. Incidentally, in honor of his visit, I made my first trip to Steamworks - the big gay bathhouse in Berkeley. I'll blog about that experience more later!
Somehow today I wound up having brunch with one of David's former colleagues at MIT and then I invited David to Eric Rofes' house for the benefit for the Highlander Institute.
My life is too crazy. I was lucky enough to arrive in time to the event to hear Suzanne speak. She was, as she always is, brilliant. She spoke of the political and cultural aftermath of Hurricane Katrina with the conviction that has made her career as an activist so succesful. I got a chance to chat with Eric and David - which was surreal enough in its own right (since I met David in San Francisco and then later read, in Eric's book, David's thoughts about HIV prevention work in Australia).
Inga Muscio has inspired me - yet again. She lists this phenomenal "Imagination Reclamation Resource Guide" at the end of her book, Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil. The guide is also available online here.
I was flipping through the weblinks, many focused on the Prison-Industrial Complex, and came accross a wonderful resource: Prisonsucks.com. The site features a plethora of mind-boggling statistics about the US Prison system. It features such gems as:
U.S. incarceration rates by race, June 30, 2004:
Whites: 393 per 100,000
Latinos: 957 per 100,000
Blacks: 2,531 per 100,000
Gender is an important "filter" on the who goes to prison or jail, June 30, 2004:
Females: 123 per 100,000
Males: 1,348 per 100,000
Look at just the males by race, and the incarceration rates become even more frightening, June 30, 2004:
White males: 717 per 100,000
Latino males: 1,717 per 100,000
Black males: 4,919 per 100,000
If you look at males aged 25-29 and by race, you can see what is going on even clearer, June 30, 2004:
For White males ages 25-29: 1,666 per 100,000.
For Latino males ages 25-29: 3,606 per 100,000.
For Black males ages 25-29: 12,603 per 100,000. (That's 12.6% of Black men in their late 20s.)
This is perhaps the most depressing set of facts I've come accross in some time. It is the kind of thing you know to be true, but obviously are allowed to easily forget in this racist / Imperialist / classist society.
Perhaps the website's best factoid is their comparison of incarceration rates for South Africa under Apartheid versus America under George Bush:
South Africa under Apartheid was internationally condemned as a racist society.
South Africa under apartheid (1993), Black males: 851 per 100,000 U.S. under George Bush (2004), Black males: 4,919 per 100,000
What does it mean that the leader of the "free world" locks up its Black males at a rate 5.8 times higher than the most openly racist country in the world?
I'll leave you with that thought. Oh, and the vomit coming up in the back of your throat.
Following heavy criticism from concerns with Vioxx and the outrageous delay of the morning-after pill, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Lester Crawford resigned Friday without warning.
Vioxx aside, the delay of the Morning After pill despite widespread scientific support for doing so was a serious misstep for the agency. The FDA had said that the delay was due to concerns for how safe the drug might be for minors - though they acknowledged its safety for grown women. Women's groups decried this stalling measure. NOW had this to say: "For all intents and purposes, the FDA said that since they couldn't figure out how to deal with young women, then NO women could have access to EC as a non-prescription drug."
The decision to delay making emergency contraception more readily available led to FDA Office of Women's Health Director Susan Wood's resignation (see her resignation here) last month. In her letter of resignation, she openly criticized the FDA for its recent disregard for sound medical advice: "I have spent the last 15 years working to ensure that science informs good health policy decisions. I can no longer serve as staff when scientific and clinical evidence, fully evaluated and recommended for approval by the professional staff here, has been overruled. I therefore have submitted my resignation effective today."
It seems that the "cronie" problem as seen in other government organizations like FEMA are not restricted to any particular segement of the bureaucracy. With Crawford gone, a door has been opened to begin reforming the agency - but that's seems unlikely to happen as long as GW's in office.
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Pam's House Blend
She's a fabulous North Carolinian blogging about politics, LGBT and women's rights, the influence of the far Right, and race relations. What more can I say?
