Thursday, June 27, 2013

The Cruel Paradox of American Intersectionalities: We Can Marry but We Can't Vote


Paula Grant



How cruel fortune can be. Langston Hughes knew this when he warned in his epic jazz poem, "Ask Your Mama," about cultural exchanges, acceptances that come at a price so high they tamper with the soul. My friend Paula Grant, journalist Charles M. Blow and others have pointed out that amidst the Gay Pride celebrations of this weekend,with their sense of national victory, there must be recognition  that the conservatives of the Supreme Court have judged some Americans not American enough to have the right, the ability, the certainty of the vote.

Intersectionality means different histories of exclusion living side by side within the same skin, the same body, different histories of power as well. The American legal system,as Kimberle Crenshaw, wrote in her essay, "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics," almost 20 years ago now, has a hard time knowing what to do when these histories are in the same body demanding equity. Her example is the invisibility of Black women in either gender or race legal decisions and in some feminist thinking where the white woman and her histories  stand for the history of gender. (HeinOnline, 1989,U. Chicago Legal Forum)

The judicial decisions are coming thick and fast and lives are being changed. DOMA gone and Proposition 8 repelled; the Voting Right's Act with its protection of the voting rights of those traditionally disenfranchised by
entrenched power blocks is struck down. The poor, the newly arrived, folks of color and accent, the easily intimidated by official power and those who would in many cases vote for economic and social justice rights have been pushed back into the hands of the authorities who for years have turned them away--a time of celebration? Yes, gay people who marry are more and more becoming like the majority; high ranking conservatives call for our right to marry, it is healthy, it tames the wildness of queer desire, it reinforces the principles of family and home, of known ways of life that look more and more like the sitcoms of the 50s.

But the danger lies else where, so gerry mander the voting rolls, making it in Texas hard to even be a voting Democrat, I heard on PBS National News last night. Replot the maps of citizenship so those who are angry or in need or have different ideas of what communities deserve in terms of service find it harder and harder to prove they deserve the right to vote. Plans for identification cards are flooding forth in the zones of discrimination some of us know so well from the Civil Rights campaigns of the 60s. I think of the Voter Registration work we did in the back roads of Alabama, of Mississippi, Louisiana, I think of the floating bodies found in small overgrown rivers, the bodies of civil rights workers whose killers where good upstanding civic men. To be gay and black, to be gay and poor, to be gay and Hispanic, to be gay and left, to be lesbian and black, to be lesbian and poor, to be lesbian and a single mother, to be lesbian and left--how will we celebrate these decisions? What dances will be do, now that the wide doors have been opened to that institution of control known as marriage but the doors to the voting booth where control can be questioned have been closed to those who most need representation?

Another time, 1980s, Demonstration, NYC

Translation by Edith Rubenstein
Comme le sort peut être cruel. Langston Hughes le savait quand il a mis en garde dans son poème épique de jazz « Ask your Mama, » sur les échanges culturels, des acceptations qui coûtent un prix si élevé qu’elles altèrent l’âme. Mon amie Paula Grant, le journaliste M. Blow et d’autres ont souligné que parmi les festivités du Gay Pride de ce week-end avec leur sentiment de victoire nationale, on doit reconnaître que les conservateurs de la Cour suprême ont jugé que certains Américains ne sont pas assez américains pour avoir le droit, l’aptitude, la certitude du vote.

L’intersectionalité signifie différentes histoires d’exclusion, vivant côte à côte avec la même peau, le même corps, ainsi que différentes histoires de pouvoir aussi. Le système légal américain comme l’a écrit dans son essai Kimberle Crenshaw, « Démarginaliser l’intersection de Race et de Sexe : Une critique de féministe noire de la doctrine d’antidiscrimination, une théorie féministe et une politique antiraciste, » il y a près de 20 ans maintenant, a beaucoup de difficultés pour savoir quoi faire quand ces histoires sont dans le même corps exigeant l’équité. Son exemple est l’invisibilité des femmes noires dans les décisions légales concernant et le genre ou la race et dans certaines pensées féministes où la femme blanche et son histoire représente l’histoire du genre. (HeinOnline, 1989,U. Chicago Legal Forum)
Les décisions judiciaires viennent en grande quantité et rapidement et des vies sont changées. DOMA (Défense de loi sur le mariage) supprimé et la Proposition 8 repoussée ; la loi sur le droit de vote avec sa protection des droits de vote de ceux qui en étaient traditionnellement privés par des blocs de pouvoir retranchés est anéantie. Les pauvres, les nouveaux arrivés, les gens de couleur et avec un accent, ceux qui sont facilement intimidés par le pouvoir officiel et ceux qui voteraient dans beaucoup de cas pour des droits économiques et de justice sociale ont été repoussés dans les mains d’autorités qui pendant des années les ont rejetés – un moment de célébration ? Oui, les gens gay qui se marient deviennent de plus en plus comme la majorité ; des conservateurs de haut rang appellent à notre droit au mariage, c’est sain, domestique l’impétuosité du désir queer, renforce les principes de la famille et du foyer, des modes de vie connus qui ressemblent de plus en plus aux comédies de situation des années 1950.

Mais le danger se trouve ailleurs, remanier si arbitrairement les tableaux électoraux, fait qu’au Texas, il est même difficile d’être un électeur démocrate, ai-je entendu la nuit dernière sur PBS National News. Retracer les cartes de citoyenneté de sorte que ceux qui sont mécontents ou dans le besoin ou ont des idées différentes sur ce que les communautés méritent en terme de services trouvent de plus en plus de difficultés de prouver qu’ils méritent le droit de vote. Des plans de cartes d’identification continuent à submerger les zones de discrimination que certains d’entre nous connaissent si bien des campagnes pour les droits civils des années 1960. Je pense au travail d’enregistrement de votants que nous avions fait sur les routes de l’Alabama, du Mississipi, de la Louisiane. Je pense aux corps flottant trouvés dans de petites rivières recouvertes, les corps de travailleurs pour les droits civils dont les assassins étaient des hommes civiques en bonne position. Etre gay et noir, être gay et pauvre, être gay et hispanique, être gay et de gauche, être lesbienne et noire, être lesbienne et pauvre, être lesbienne et mère célibataire, être lesbienne et de gauche – comment célébrerons-nous ces décisions ? Quels bals allons-nous faire, maintenant que les portes ont été largement ouvertes à cette institution de contrôle connue comme le mariage mais que les portes pour l’isoloir électoral où le contrôle peut être remis en question ont été fermées à ceux qui ont le plus besoin de représentation ?


Monday, June 24, 2013

LHA: From 215 to 484--40 years of Holding on to Connections and Disruptions

Setting out for NYC Gay Pride, 1980s: Georgia, Mabel, Jan, Beth, Joan, Deb, Nancy Lucinda, Eileen, Judith
Opening of 484, the new home of LHA, Brooklyn, 1993 with Deb, Paula, Maxine and many more





Getting 484 ready for its history--Sam, one of the volunteers who have made the 40 year life of LHA possible, without fanfare but endless generosity





Sunday, June 16, 2013

Rooms of Lesbian Plenty

You have not heard from me for a while but as I have said words, the world, swirl in me. The way we hurt each other. The way now the streets are theaters once again of scapegoating, of hatreds, where lost youth hurl insults from football stands and women in all the streets are haunted and hunted. These words you have enough of. La Professoressa has been away meeting with women trying to change things--in Boston, in London, in Onati, in Zagreb. The weeks have been long and I do not feel well. That is why when Saskia, the photographer keeper and sharer of LHA sent me this image of one room of 13A, the old home of the archives, my old home, I felt such wonder. Taken some time in the 1970s, here you can see how private space was transformed into a richness beyond compare, the textures, the worn furniture, I can feel the marvel of having lived with this growing collection for such a long time, I walk into this room, and straighten a book or check the desk to see if there is a left message from a visitor. Almost like the writers' studies of the 19th century, I enter the sepia world of kept memory, the memory of a people.

Tonight I want to write for those of you who like myself live with cancer. Turn away those of you who do not want these words. That is alright but for those of us who cannot turn away I write now for you. I write for us who cannot tell with clarity what exactly is leaving us, but that something is wrong we know. I write for those in a kind of cancer limbo where only we can see the pain, feel the troubled nerve, the siege slowly gaining ground but still a mystery to our doctors. I write for those who know our lovers grow weary with the unnamed slowing down of life that cannot be explained, for all those who listen to the losing sounds of their own selves and fear the burden they become in the eyes of others, who hear the stories of, it is good it is all over, it was exhausting, never knowing what would come next, it is good it is over and I think of us, who are not over, but going in small ways and how human we are in our cellular failings, how we wait and do not wait, how we walk down our own roads, steadying ourselves, to go one step further, on an uneven road, an unwanted road but still grateful for its small sharp stones under our feeling feet. I am of the cancer people and now it is night and I hold on to Saskia's photograph of when I lived in the rooms of dreaming.

Joan, 2011--Photo by Digby Duncan