tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-77782567906046181672024-03-19T02:25:31.325-07:00Don't Stop Talking 2Joan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.comBlogger336125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-38949649766931402072023-05-07T20:39:00.006-07:002023-05-07T20:39:59.707-07:00Collage created for the American Launching of "A Sturdy Yes of a People"--Jan 2023Collage of Writings from A Sturdy Yes of a People, for American and Australian book launch, 2022 -2023
1.
From Stonewall to Soweto, the people are resisting, and that chant and this struggle have brought us into new lands. History is not a dead thing or a sure thing. It lives with our choices and our dreams. It is the story of our glories and our sadnesses. It is at different times a lover, an enemy, a teacher, a prophet. It is always a collective memory as complicated and as contradictory as the people who lived it, but it is always a people’s story. Let our tale be marked by our knowledge of what had to be done, and let it shine with the passion of our attempt. (1988)
2.
Of it all, it was your loneliness I could bear least: you who wanted touch so much became so diminished in your passions. I always saw you coming home from work so tired, so burdened. I wanted desperately to be able to call in from the other room your young husband full of strength and safety. Then, as I grew older, I wanted you to accept the love of women. Finally I wanted you to accept my love, but you did things your own way, like a tenacious farmer, chopping earth away from stone.
3.
People are moving all around this globe in unprecedented numbers—following jobs, fleeing catastrophes, finding new air to breathe. There is a great intermingling of ideas, religions, languages, desires. Some are comfortable with this multitude of choices; others are rushing to shore up the boundaries of the known world by reasserting a politics of exclusion and deprivation. When all else fails, they reach for guns.
4.
You were lying against the pillows, your hennaed hair spreading across them, your lipstick making the blue of your eyes even sharper. I get caught on those eyes; I think I see in them the seas I will never see—the endless blue on the map surrounding the continent of Australia, a blue I fear because it is as vast and unknown as death itself. You turned toward me when I entered, your body urging me to hurry. “I want you,” you said as I bent over you, taking you in my arms. I was deeply moved by your direct request and by my knowledge that I could meet your need. I kissed hard and then light, kissed your neck and shoulders and throat. I wetted your nipples, my mouth pulling on them through the sheen of your nightgown. I buried my head in your hair, pushing your face to one side with my cheek. I just wanted to touch you, to taste you, to make up for years of fear, of deprivation. Your breasts swelled to my mouth and I pulled them free of the gown, rounding them in my hands, resting my head against their swell. Here was an ocean I could survive.
I slowly caressed the wetness out from between your drawn-up legs, opening you up, making love to every fold and crevice of your sex, knowing just what I was doing, and letting you know that I held your need in my hand. I was making love as much to your belief in me as to your body.
5
“’I’m Mabel Hampton, I was born on May the second 1902 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and I left there when I was eight years old. ‘Miss Hampton when did you come out?’ What do you mean? I was never in! I had a couple of white girlfriends down in the Village. We got along fine. At that time I was acting in the Cherry Lane Theatre. I didn’t have to go to the bars because I would go to women’s houses. Like Jackie [Mom’s] Mabley would have a big party and all the girls from the show would go. She has all the women there.’
Ms Hampton never relented in her struggle to live a fully integrated life, a life marked by the integrity of her self-authorship. ‘If I give you my word,’ she always said, ‘I’ll be there’ and she was. Ms Hampton’s address at the 1984 New York City Gay Pride Rally. ‘I, Mabel Hampton have been a lesbian all my life, for eighty-two years and I am proud of myself and my people. I would like all my people to be free in this country and all over the world, my gay people and my Black people.’
6
This is the history I wanted; a conversation of possibilities, of lineages, of contradictions. In the evening, another communal sharing of food; many of the young people who had been present in Tel Aviv had made their way to Gila’s house for this last shared dinner. Feeling a little tired, I sat in the backyard, taking in the scents of the warm night air, the night sounds of Jerusalem. One by one, the students and their friend came to sit around me. They wanted stories of the body, wanted tales of how we survived the bigotries of 1950s, how we found each other and tried to imagine another world. We leaned into each other and again I saw the beauty of the unarmed human body, their hopes for another kind of future held in their bare arms. ‘Come back to us,’ one of the young women said, ‘when the occupation is over.’
But I do not think I will be able to make this journey again, and so this book, brought into being by the generosity of so many, is the way I honor all those in Palestine and Israel who bare themselves in the face of history and ask for an end to dispossessions, walls and exiles.
7
They called you freak and me whore and maybe they always will, but we fight them best when we keep on doing what they say we should not want or need for the joy we find in doing it. I fucked because I lied it, and Joan, the ugly ones, the ones who beat me or fucked me too hard, they didn’t run me out of town, and neither can the women who don’t walk my streets of loneliness or need. Don’t scream penis at me, but help to change the world so no woman feels shame or because she likes to fuck.
8
Things are not really the same. I am at the end of my life, not the beginning. I am not afraid of disclosure and only rarely ashamed. The end of the century is not the same as the middle of it. I know now that the eyes of the watchers are cold stones even when the sun of their convictions is riding high in the political sky. I know now that surveillance is the weapon of the insecure, the frightened, the pinched. I still fear, however, the human act of policing thought and speech, of hands holding pens to take down our words, never allowing themselves to enter into the messy world of debate. I still fear those who enter rooms cloaked in silent power and, while we speak, plan their retaliations. Surveillance is not seeing; it is the quiet planning of prisons.
9
Dedicated to my trans women, my women, friends
The light from the naked bulb under which we worked flashed over Chelsea’s face, a strong chiselled, with thin arching eyebrows and a prominent bony nose. As she spoke of her days on the street, when she was always running from the police, and her constant search for a place to spend the night, all the years in between those gritty times and the present seemed to melt away. I listened not only to her words but to the turn of her head, the softness of her demeanour, the passion of her vision. Here I was in my late fifties, witnessing once again the power of memory t inform conviction, the conviction of one’s right to survive. Still haunted by the realities of street life, Chelsea had asked not to be left alone at the Archives in case the police showed up, as they sometimes did when some door or window was left open triggered our building alarm. Chelsea’s words poured into the steamy basement, demanding that room be made for another layer of history.
10
This is now my battle: to win back from the specifics of medical treatment—from the outrage of an invaded body where hands I did not know touched parts of myself that I will never see—my own body, so marked by the hands and lips of lovers, now so lonely in its fear. Touch my scar, knead my belly, don’t be afraid of my cancer. Enter me the old way, not through the skin cut open, but because I am calling to you through the movement of my hips, the breath that pleads for your hand to touch the want of me. Heal me because you do not fear me, touch me because you do not fear the future. Cancer and sex. One I have and one I must have.
11
Hope
Wearing my voluminous flannel nightgown, I knelt before the small wood-burning stove, trying to see why the fire was so fragile. I felt hug and awkward in that position, aware of my rump and falling breasts, but the cold night air demanded that the fire be encouraged to burn at a brisker pace. My younger lover, small and tight in her body, sat on the couch watching me. I did not like what I thought she saw. I did not like the bigness of my ass, the weight of my body on my knees, and the just as I worked very hard to accept my lac of appeal, she said in a low firm voice, “You look so fuckable that way.”
12
Ten days had passed, ten nights of late-night telephone calls to her Havana hotel, just to hear her voice. Sometimes she would take the telephone out to the balcony—so I could hear the ocean, she would say. I pictured her, standing in her nightgown, the dark, warm night lifting the gown’s edges, her breasts outlined by the wind. Ringlets of hair weighed down with the wetness of the night. The sounds of that ocean never did reach me, but I knew what I was supposed to hear, and I could see, in the darkness of my room, the white heads rolling onto the beach, the curving sea wall that enclosed the people suffering in their beautiful city, suffering from the vindictiveness of my own government.
She told me, as I yearned for her, that at dusk young lovers drape themselves over the sea wall, their bodies hard with want. In all the cities of the world torn by war or hatred, crumbling from bullets or embargoes, citizens search for the alley or rooftop that will harbour their love. I want the governments to know this, to know that this century is marked by people’s struggle to survive the deadliness of officials, young men and women, the lovers, proclaiming their hope in the grips of flesh.
Havana, all torn by history and hope, was home to my lover, and I was jealous of its hold on her. My own history was crumbling and I, too, wanted my love to hold back the emptiness of disaster. But countries are larger than hearts, and so the days passed, and I did my days.
13
When we march in the streets, hundreds of thousands strong, we carry with us the lonelier courage of those who risked all because they said to someone of their own sex, “touch me here.” This small voice is still enough to rule us out of heaven, but whatever power comes to us in 1984 and beyond, we must not forget that for us passion is our politics. (1984)
Think of what they fear from us—love and desire, rebellion and difference, play, tenderness, touch, freer children who do not call each other faggot, girls who strive for their own glory, men who do not have to hate softness. All their words and reasons for exclusions, all the tumult of their No, will fall into the shadows of history.
You—my queer comrades—have given me a world where my words could live, where my love was kissed by the sun, where my anger turned to visions of possibilities. These are hard times, but necessary ones, these are the times when we BE, a sturdy Yes of a people.
[Typed up on a dark night in April 2023 with Di away in New York city and I on the verge of another journey.] Thank you Julie for all.
Joan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-25870843946589014862023-05-07T00:24:00.004-07:002023-05-07T00:24:43.199-07:00"Desire So big It had to Be brave: Ann Bannon's Lesbian Novels" written in January 1983It has been three years since I have written on this blog and yet, it is still here and I can see some of you whom I will never know make your way to older postings. Thank you. I am now using the blog to make avialalbe some of my orphan writings that have never been published or have been in books now no longer available. If this helps a young scholar or student or anyone, I am very pleased.
Desire So Big It Had To Be Brave: Ann Bannon’s Lesbian Novels
Joan Nestle, Jan. 1983
(With gratitude to the Lesbian Herstory Archives and Saskia Scheffer for so quickly finding this unpublished essay. Typed on a typewriter, the mss had the following handwritten across the top: “Ann Bannon. Odd Girl Out, I Am a Woman, woman in the Shadows, Journey to A Woman and Beebo Brinker. All available from Naiad Press Inc., at 3.95$ each.”)
Ann Bannon has come home, and I have waited twenty years to greet her. The author of the most read Lesbian paperbacks of the fifties and early sixties has resurfaced thanks to the efforts of Barbara Grier who had the ability to ferret out pieces of our herstory like a Lesbian retriever. When I first heard the news, I felt immediately vindicated for those times I had taken a leap of faith when I had answered, “No, Ann Bannon was not a man” after discussing the Lesbian paperback section of the Lesbian Herstory Archives slide show. I had already met Ann Aldrich (aka Vin Packer), March Hastings (aka Randy Salem) and knew they were part of our community. A staunch and wonderful woman, Valerie Taylor had already visited the Archives bringing with her the censored copy of Whisper Their Love that South Africa had declared too upsetting for their racist shores. I had seen photographs of Paula Christian speaking at one of the Lesbian writers’ conferences in Chicago, and Claire Morgan’s jacket photographs clearly announced her as a woman [retyping this in 2023, of course, we now know much more about Patricia Highsmith]; the only unknown still remaining in the pantheon of Lesbian paperback authors was Ann Bannon.
When I was a fem in the fifties looking for Lesbian novels to read, I never questioned who wrote them if they gave me what I wanted: a world I could recognize and sex that I could respond to. Ann Bannon’s books did both. I had read The Well of Loneliness when I was sixteen and loved it as an upper class adventure story. I was fascinated by its European ambiance, its world of villas and mansions with their horse barns, its Paris salons and Welsh ambulance ladies but Stephen and her world were vacation from the realities of life. As a working class daughter of the Bronx who had been making love to Roz J. since I was ten years old, I knew I never stood a chance with Stephen but Beebo—well, maybe. Bannon’s books were of lives I could touch and of places where I walked and in the late fifties, I needed both these books—the emotional grandeur of The Well and the Village bar scenes of the Bannon world. In our archival presentations we have often referred to these early works as ‘survival literature,’ meaning that in their times they gave some of us something we could get anywhere else.
Finding, buying and keeping the paperbacks was a political act. Called trash by the literary world and pornography by the commercial world, these books were hidden away on the pulp racks of the more sleezy drugstores. To pick the books out, carry them to the counter and face the other shoppers and the cashier was often tantamount to a coming our declaration. But all across the country, Lesbians were doing it; our need was greater than our shame. The books became parts of the personal caches of Lesbians, lent out only to special friends or to a young woman entering Lesbian life. The appeal of these novels is a complicated cultural issue; they were filled with hidden messages for me, not about depression or self-hatred which I filtered out because I knew it was the societal line and because my desire was greater then my despair, but about women straying off the beaten paths, about a visible sexuality, about a romantic energy, about a bravado that supported me in those young Lesbian years of the fifties.
Now Ann Bannon’s five book series is available in an inexpensive Lesbian produced edition that will allow the Lesbian reader of the eighties to recreate an historical journey. The novels revolve around the adventures of three major Lesbian characters, Laura, Beth and Beebo Brinker, the Village butch who earned her living delivering pizzas and running an elevator so she would not have to wear a skirt. The fourth main character is Jack Mann, a friendly protective gay man who offers shelter to all three women at different times throughout the series. The first four books are about the education of Laura and Beth who move from sexual naivete to full Lesbian lust. Scattered throughout the novels are straight women who want a Lesbian experience, confused straight women who just want to be good friends and bisexual women who seem to be able to cause problems in both worlds. These shifting surfaces of women relationships does reflect the unpredictable world of female bonding in the fifties. But I am not getting to the essence of the books, how they start in a college dorm in Illinois, move through Chicago and end up in Greenwich Village, down the stairs of a fictious Lesbian bar called the Cellar, how they capture the sexual tensions of the times without ever using clinically specific words. In I am A Woman, particularly, Bannon creates a relentless world of desire, confusion and risk that is almost physically exhausting to read.
The novels help to recreate a social history of pre1970 Lesbian life. In Odd Girl Out (1957) the only word used to refer to deviance ( the term of the time) is ‘homosexual.’ In the next novel, I Am a Woman (1959) Laura learns the terms, ‘gay,’ ‘ butch’ and ‘cruising’, and gets into a fight about the word ‘queer’ with Jack who is baiting her. Little by little, she learns about parts of her culture; she is told , “wear those pants, desert boots or car coat and men’s shirts and you are in business.” Bannon in one of the novels describes in a brief sentence the police clean up campaigns that went on regularly in the Village, “sweeping old dykes off the streets so young housewives would not be offended.” Most of all, Laura learns that there are women places called bars where women flirt with each other, pick each other up and make love. In whatever towns or cities these books were read, they were spreading the information that meant a new hope for trapped and isolated women.
Beebo Brinker, the last book written in the series (1962) but out of sequence in the narrative development of the other novels, introduces us to a character we have already met in the earlier books as a passionate, sometimes jaded, sometimes, confused, butch. In this novel we see Beebo as a baby butch who hits the Village after being kicked out of a school in a middle American farm state for being too different. The cover of the original paper back shows a young, tired woman clutching a worn suitcase and leaning against a streetlamp that lights up the street’s name: “Gay Street.” Beebo soon masters her new city and goes on to become a Village regular. We will see her age, grow bitter, do some destructive things (for which Ann apologized in a recent Gay Community News interview) and eventually become a home for both Beth and Laura.
There are sad moments, ugly moments in these books; they do not follow the eighties Lesbian feminist script. They were written in a different time by a housewife who hung out in the Village still not sure which one of these characters she was. Not revised memories, the novels are raw data, period pieces that are now finding themselves awake in another time, just as, in a way, the author is. The fifties were not a time that rewarded either difference or desire, The most prevailing literary metaphor for Lesbian life then was walking in the shadows. These novels ironically were blinking lights in that time of judgment; it is a delight to see Ann Bannon’s face in the light of day.
Notes: for more information, see Maida Tilchen’s interview, “Ann Bannon: the Mystery Solved” in GCN (January 8, 1983, 8+ and an older article by Andrea Lowenstein, “Sad Stories: A Reflection on the Fiction of Ann Bannon” in GCN (May 24, 1980). Also Naiad press has reprinted some of Valerie Taylor’s early novels.
Joan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-33053441026161957642020-08-18T22:15:00.002-07:002020-08-18T22:15:35.701-07:00Just a Street<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iu1l31yMxO4/XzyxGv4OYhI/AAAAAAAADxY/1uKyMKqcgVk6CVs9G-yfhc0n27fHZtu_ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/IMG_8103.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iu1l31yMxO4/XzyxGv4OYhI/AAAAAAAADxY/1uKyMKqcgVk6CVs9G-yfhc0n27fHZtu_ACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_8103.jpg" width="240" height="320" data-original-width="480" data-original-height="640" /></a>
A quiet place to be, this small window, for fragments of thought and touch. Here is the color of my next over street, people's gardens throwing light on a gray day. Streets so different from my New York streets. Old streets still but no bustle, particularly now in our curfew virus time, but so tender it all feels, reminding me of the sweetness of Collodi's narrator in Pinocchio,when he replies to the excited children, the bambini, no, not a story about a king, my little ones. A tale about a piece of wood, just a simple piece of wood, un semplice pezzo da catasta, from the woodpiles that warm our winter nights. I do not know what will appear on these pages, or why at 80, sentences, expressions, cling to me. Non mi picchiar tanto forte! Do not hit me so hard, this same piece of wood says on the next page as the carpenter tries to chip away at him to form a table leg. I cannot get those words out of my head. Please do not hit us so hard. Joan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com62tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-77702119048068125802020-08-15T18:50:00.000-07:002020-08-15T20:01:38.050-07:00Old Legacies, New Solidarities Presentation, 2018Face Book is becoming more and more problematic. At 80 I will try to return to my writing here. First I want to post the last public performance-talk that I gave for a queer conference here in Melbourne in 2019 before the virus hit. Thank you Daniel Marshall, Ann Vickery and Emma Whatman, the conveners of "Queer Legacies, New Solidarities," and to <b>Hecate (</b>44. 1&2, 2018)<b> </b>for publishing moments of the conference.<br />
<br />Added notes, August 16, 2020. This talk- performance has become very important to me. It is the last outing of this kind I will be physically able to do. For one last time I drank deeply of the joy of shaping a drama with people unknown to me for the most part, with offering the energy of thinking, artifacts, words that fitted no outline. Before this presentation, I had asked two friends, lesbians in their late 20s, how would they want to be spoken to in a public presentation--thinking of the static drone of most conference proceedings. "Don't tell us what to think" Ang said. "Help us ask questions." And that is why there are so many bits and pieces here, thrown out for conjecture and even fabrics to feel, bearing imprints of bodies, of stories. Two other background waters. First the physical challenge I had in getting my body with my cane, my suitcase of books, garments to the conference site. Having the thinkers, creators who had given life to my thinking all these years present, piled up on stools for all to see seemed necessary to me and so once again I became a schlepper. Last, I started the "talk" with the story of Lee and his kind words because of the tension one of the speakers had created between herself and the trans community. Lee gave me the gift of new solidarities and it seemed just the right time to share it. The joy, the aliveness I felt, the love for what we were all trying to do together in that rather cold room, brought back all the LHA slid show presentations, the one woman erotic reading shows, the endless talks I have given and my teaching days on that cold hill in Flushing Queens on which Queens College stood. Now on this lifeless page, one more time. Thank you for listening.<div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> <b>R</b><b>eflections on Legacies and Solidarities from the
Perspective of a 50s Fem: Fragments of Stories,
Encounters, Perils and Cries of Possibilities </b></div><div class="MsoNormal"> <i>A</i><i>cknowledgement of country: </i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I acknowledge that we are meeting on the traditional country of the
Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nations and pay respect to Elders
past and present. I acknowledge that for 61 years on another
continent, I walked the traditional country of the Lanapi people and I
wish to pay my respects to their elders past and present. I
acknowledge that the sovereignty of both these countries has never
been ceded. This primary, brutal dispossession is at the heart of the
brokenness of our human solidarities.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i> Re-Creation of a Talk
Setting:</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"> I set the room with many movable parts, all speaking to memory, encounters, geographies that have shaped my life, to old histories
and new ones. From the speaker’s podium, I hang two garments: my
old black slip in which I did erotic readings for three decades, the
fabric still showing my large woman’s shape, and my black cotton
Women in Black t-shirt that calls for an end of the Israeli occupation
in three languages, Arabic, Hebrew and English that I wore at our
weekly demonstrations here in Melbourne. These represent desire
and engagement, perhaps another way of saying legacies and new
solidarities. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> On the wall behind me, moving from the left to right, the enlarged
cover photograph of Urska Sterle’s book, <b>Vecno Vojno Stanje—An
Endless Struggle</b>—which depicts seven young, Slovenian lesbian
women with exhausted faces sitting in front of their small café, their
lesbian gathering place, which had been firebombed in the night.
They sit in a protective vigil with their dogs lying at their feet. On the
wall of the charred building are the words, “Death to Queers.” </div><div class="MsoNormal"> Next come three panels of butcher block paper on which I have
attached headlines and sentences, largely from newspapers in the
days before the conference. Bulletins of queer concern, of irony and
trepidation: </div><div class="MsoNormal">...“<b>Australia Better Off After Same Sex Marriage”</b>:
“…one of our most historic events. Now, one year on, our
country is better. Thousands of couples have married, there is
more commitment and mutual responsibility, our social fabric
is stronger and there is more love” (Wilson).</div><div class="MsoNormal">... <b>“Australia Battler Party”</b>—“Right Wing Party Wants Migrants Put
on Bonds” (Jacks). </div><div class="MsoNormal">...<b>“Gay Brazil’s Fears</b>—‘the gates of hell have been opened’”
(Phillips): “I would be incapable of loving a homosexual son. I’m not
going to be a hypocrite: I’d rather my son died in an accident than
showed up with some bloke with a moustache” (Lyons); “Where
there is indigenous land…there is wealth…” (Sengupta). <i>Words of the
new Brazilian President, Jair Bolsonaro. </i></div><div class="MsoNormal">...<b>“Fringe Party Targets ALP Over Safe Schools”</b>: “A glossy brochure
claiming Labor is enforcing a school anti-bullying program that
encourages young children to change their biological sex is being
distributed to hundreds of thousands of Victorian homes…The colour
leaflet, headlined ‘Stop Harming Our Children,’ attacks the Safe
Schools program for its ‘dangerous agendas’” (Carey). </div><div class="MsoNormal">...<b>The Voices of Rise Up Australia and The Coalition Against Unsafe
Sexual Education</b>: “The newest most dangerous development in this
program is to encourage children—separated from parental
guidance—to act on impulse to ‘change’ their biological sex…”
Translated into Mandarin, Arabic, Hindi, Punjabi, and Greek. 500,000
copies distributed (Carey). </div><div class="MsoNormal">...<b>“Gay teachers ‘more acceptable far from school’”</b>: “It’s not just a
matter of one’s attribute—it’s what one does with it that makes a
difference.” “The archbishop said schools did not care whether staff
identified as gay, lesbian or transgender but were concerned about
‘the public nature of what someone might say’” (Koziol). </div><div class="MsoNormal">...From <b>Vashti’s Voice,</b> No 1, 1972: “On International Women’s Day,
March 8 1972, 2000 people marched through the Melbourne streets
demanding women’s rights. This must indicate the enormous
potential power of women’s liberation as only a few years ago the
movement was virtually unheard of…Women’s liberation is no fixed
organization with a rigid platform that its members must adhere to—
it is a state of mind” (Vashti Collective, 3). </div><div class="MsoNormal">...<b>“No, the gender pay gap is not a myth…”</b> (Irvine)</div><div class="MsoNormal">... <b>“Vice Chancellors rail against ‘death of a thousand cuts’</b>”: “I think
universities are in a very precarious position—more precarious than we have ever been.” Vicki Thomson, Chief Executive, Group of Eight.
“Vice-chancellors are also reeling about a planned ‘national interest
test’ for research grants…[to] preclude projects deemed to undermine
Australia’s security, foreign policy and strategic interests.” (Koziol)</div><div class="MsoNormal">... <b>“Millions for LGBTI tourism, but no mention of Safe Schools”</b>:
“The state Coalition has promised if elected…to establish Victoria’s
first LGBTI business roundtable to be chaired by the premier, provide
$500,000 in funding to support Joy FM in becoming one of the first
tenants in the Victorian Pride Centre to be built in St Kilda, as well as
$50,000 annually to digitise archives and ‘preserve the history and
role of LGBTI Victorians’” (Precel). </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">On the central panel is <b>The Uluru Statement from the Heart,</b> an excerpt
of which is as follows:
<b>Our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first
sovereign Nations of the Australian continent and its adjacent islands
and possessed it under our own laws and customs. This our ancestors
did, according to the reckoning of our culture, from the Creation,
according to the common law from ‘time immemorial,’ and according
to science more than 60,000 years ago.
This sovereignty is a spiritual notion: the ancestral tie between
the land, or ‘mother nature,’ and the Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander peoples who were born therefrom, remain
attached thereto, and must one day return thither to be united
with our ancestors. This link is the basis of the ownership of
the soil, or better, of sovereignty. It has never been ceded or
extinguished and co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown.
How could it be otherwise? That peoples possessed a land for
sixty millennia and this sacred link disappears from world
history in merely the last two hundred years?
With substantive constitutional change and structural reform, we
believe this ancient sovereignty can shine through as a fuller
expression of Australia’s nationhood. </b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"> Under it are these words by Bruce Pascoe: </div><div class="MsoNormal"> "Many readers of the explorers’ journals see the hardships they
endured, and are enthralled by their finds of grassy plains,
bountiful rivers, and sites where great towns could be built; but by adjusting our perspective by only a few degrees, we see
a vastly different world through the same window. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"> Finally, a slide of a call to action by the New York Lesbian anti-Trump
activist collective, <b>Rise and Resist: </b></div><div class="MsoNormal"> Rise and Resist is a direct action group. But that doesn’t tell
the whole story. We are also, essentially, a grassroots direct
action LABORATORY for democratic community-based
change. Come meet with us, come find your activist people,
come workshop your ideas, come find out where the action is
already happening around your concerns for a democratic
society. Come plug in. BRING your enthusiasm and
commitment to making social change happen. GET support
and training to be your best, most courageous self. FIND your
voice. LOSE your fear. (Rise and Resist)</div><div class="MsoNormal"> On a small table, I stack the books that have informed my thinking for
this time together: a living bibliography: <b>Coranderrk: We Will Show the
Country,</b> the play based on transcripts (1881) created by Giordano
Nanni and Andrea James (2013); tattered copies of <b>Narrative of the Life of</b> <b>Frederick Douglass, An American Slave Written by Himself,</b> (1845)
(1960) and Albert Memmi’s <b>The Colonizer and the Colonized </b>(1965), my
companions for over 40 years; <b>Voices of Vashti Anthology: Melbourne
Women 1972–1981</b> (1986); <b>Collected Poems of Pat Parker (</b>2016); <b>Gay
American History by Jonathan Katz</b> (1976); <b>Memory for Forgetfulness</b>
(2013) and <b>Why Did You Leave the Horse Alon</b>e (2006) by Mahmoud
Darwish, and <b>Dark Emu </b>by Bruce Pascoe (2018). As Pat Parker
remarks, “Books don’t say much about what I did but I was there and
I kept moving” (1999). </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"> <b>The Talk --Story One</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"> Just a moment to share with you—last week, on a very cold
morning, white head bent low, 30-year-old red coat, buttoned tightly,
pulling shopping cart with cane in the other hand, coming home from
our Asian Taste take-away on Grantham Street with wonton soup for
Di and me—my legs hurting. I start one way and then turn the other,
a little confused—a young man perhaps in his early 40s steps aside to
let me pass. I say, a little embarrassed, “Changed my direction.” And
he says with a little laugh, “It’s your prerogative.” I, ever on the alert
for a feminist moment, say, “For men and women.” He answers as I
pass him, “I agree with you a 100%, Joan.” I stop short. “How do you
know my name?” Now all drops away and I am looking into a
smiling, gentle face. He says, “Joan, I know your work. I want to
thank you for all you have done for us. My name is Lee, I transitioned
some years ago, but I lived in New York for several years and heard you speak many times.” I stand a little straighter, so touched by this
accidental meeting here on this struggling street in West Brunswick,
with a cold wind snapping at our heels. Thank you, Lee.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> That this is a space where feminist and queer cultural workers share
their histories, their public thoughts in the same place, that sex
workers are welcomed as an integral part of our movements—how
exciting, how necessary, how a sign of our awareness of the danger of
the times. I want to thank you all for the caring you have given my
work, since I became a part of your communities 18 years ago. All of
us here, many of us from endangered peoples, together where we
need to be, a very powerful corroboree. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> This conference honours the founding of ALGA (Australian Lesbian
and Gay Archives) at the Fourth National Homosexual Conference in
1978 and the vision of Graham Carbery who housed his refusal of
historical exile in the specially-dug basement of his home. This is the
time too for honouring the work of the women who founded the
Victorian Women’s Liberation and Lesbian Feminist Archives in 1983.
I have an early memory of sitting with Jean and others deciding what
to do with the collection that had taken over her home. I know this
passion. Almost 50 years of pubic collecting of queer history—what
will we do with it? What does it mean to have a history or histories;
what are the critical intersections of all our stories? </div><div class="MsoNormal"> "The colonized draw less and less from [their] past. The
colonizer never even recognized that [they] had one: everyone
knows that the commoner whose origins are unknown has no
history. Let us ask the colonized: who are [your] folk
heroes? [your] great popular leaders? [your] sages? At most,
[they] may be able to give us a few names, in complete
disorder, and fewer and fewer as one goes down the
generations. The colonized seem condemned to lose [their]
memory." (Memmi, 2003, 146–7) (I changed Memmi's "He and his" to be more inclusive)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b> Story 2</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"> It is a warm summer night in 1957. I am sitting in Tam Tam’s on Sixth
and 8th in Greenwich Village—a grungy well-lit hole in the wall, bad
coffee, but open to all the freaks—no need for IDs. The mirror lining
its doorway often used by young lesbians to check their DAs, the
favoured butch hairstyle of the day. This night it was only me and an
older woman maybe in her 30s, I was 17 at the time, sitting diagonally
across from me. I had been walking the Village streets, looking,
yearning. I sip my coffee and then she speaks the words that gave me
a world. “How are things over at the Colony, slow? But the night is
still young.” My first public recognition, as a lesbian, as a queer. She
had read me, she knew. I had never been to the Sea Colony, only heard of it as a tough, working class lesbian bar. I squared my
shoulders and tried to sound knowledgeable—“Yeh—looks like it’s
going to be a good night.”
Before I was a lesbian, a fem, a feminist, I was a freak. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"> Legacy is a
big word that can slide too easily into legitimate, into legalities, into
lineages of power. Perhaps another remembering is what we choose
to keep alive from the rawness of our beginnings, the ways of being
that gave strength to get beyond the bleak, the limiting, the
narrowing, the taken. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b> Story 3</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In a conversation around the Lesbian Herstory Archives dinnerwork table in 1979, a Jewish woman in her 60s says, “I had a chance to
read The Well of Loneliness that had been translated into Polish before I
was taken into the camps. I was a young girl at the time, around 12 or
13, and one of the ways I survived in the camp was by remembering
that book. I wanted to live long enough to kiss a woman.” </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Perhaps legacy is the shout of resistance from those not supposed to
have a voice: "Things back then were horrible and I think that because I
fought like a man to survive I made it somehow easier for the
kids coming out today. I did all their fighting for them. I’m
not a rich person. I don’t have a lot of money; I don’t even
have a little money. I would have nothing to leave anybody in
this world, but I have that—that I can leave to the kids who
are coming out now, who will come out into the future. That I
left them a better place to come out into. And that’s all I have
to offer, to leave them. But I wouldn’t deny it. Even though I
was getting my brains beaten up I would never stand up and
say, ‘No don’t hit me, I’m not gay; I’m not gay,’ I wouldn’t do
that… . (Matty, speaking of her life in the 1950s, (Davis
and Kennedy).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"> Perhaps it is a memory of dispossession, of a world taken away in a
legal decision, in the service of the colonial illusion that the right to
possession was a white European legacy, in the continued belief that
“the tide of history” flowed in their service (Olney. The killing “blatant confidence,” as the Maori writer Linda
Tuhiwai Smith has argued, “to see ‘others’ as tools” for their
ascendancy (Pascoe 5). Legacies of arrogance, of a convinced right to
power, to another’s home. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> Can poems be legacies? Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, forced
into a permanent absence from his own home, wrote: “The poem is
what lies between a between. It is able/to illuminate the night with the
breasts of a young woman/It is able to illuminate, with an apple, two bodies/It is able to restore,/with the cry of a gardenia, a homeland!”
(Darwish, 110). </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> Are legacies cries from the centre that go unheard, can they be the
refusal of a refusal? Is there a relationship between power and
legacies, can a legacy be a plea to us to be more, to change the tides of
history, to demand equities, to learn from the archives and to change
them? </div><div class="MsoNormal"> The archives must be a wild place—a borderless place,
reflecting the anxieties of the present, questioning the certainties we
called into being, because we were so sure we knew what we were
seeing, who we were, who we wanted to be, certain of who and what
endangers us, of where safety lies. Let our legacy be one of
questioning our own blatant confidences. Power is coming our way;
some nation states want to kill us, others court us. Now is the time to
build our wisdoms of solidarity, our intergenerational listening, our
appreciation for differences within our own communities turning
away from closed borders. We all here have helped make the past,
now we must with tenderness, integrity and community take on the
future. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> When I look over my 79 years, I bend in homage to three lifegiving forces: grassroots liberation struggles, communities of
progressive thought, and always, our subversive bodies. Thank you
all for listening one more time to this Bronx-inflected voice. I have
learned so much under your Southern skies, histories that make me
weep and solidarities that fill your streets and my heart. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> Inclosing, KL, a new young friend from the Bootblack community I had
met earlier at the conference, rose and read the Uluru Statement from
the Heart. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i> References</i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"> Carey, Adam. “Fringe party targets Labor, backs Coalition, over Safe
Schools.” <b>Age, </b>November 11, 2018. Retrieved 22 October 2019.
<https: fringe-party-targetslabor-backs-coalition-over-safe-schools-20181111-p50fe9.html="" politics="" victoria="" www.theage.com.au="">.</https:></div><div class="MsoNormal"><https: fringe-party-targetslabor-backs-coalition-over-safe-schools-20181111-p50fe9.html="" politics="" victoria="" www.theage.com.au=""> Darwish, Mahmoud.<b> Memory for Forgetfulness: August. Beirut,</b> 1982.
London: U of California P, 1995.
——. <b>Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?</b> Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago
Books, 2006. </https:></div><div class="MsoNormal"><https: fringe-party-targetslabor-backs-coalition-over-safe-schools-20181111-p50fe9.html="" politics="" victoria="" www.theage.com.au=""> Davis, Madeline D. and Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy. <b>Boots of Leather,
Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community</b>. NY: Routledge,
1993.</https:></div><div class="MsoNormal"><https: fringe-party-targetslabor-backs-coalition-over-safe-schools-20181111-p50fe9.html="" politics="" victoria="" www.theage.com.au=""> Douglass, Frederick. <b>Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. </b>[1845]
Cambridge, MA.: Harvard U P, 1960. </https:></div><div class="MsoNormal"><https: fringe-party-targetslabor-backs-coalition-over-safe-schools-20181111-p50fe9.html="" politics="" victoria="" www.theage.com.au=""> Hall, Radclyffe. <b>The Well of Loneliness</b>. London, Jonathan Cape, 1928. </https:></div><div class="MsoNormal"><https: fringe-party-targetslabor-backs-coalition-over-safe-schools-20181111-p50fe9.html="" politics="" victoria="" www.theage.com.au="">Irvine, Jessica. “No, the gender pay gap is not a myth, and here's why
it matters.” <b>Sydney Morning Herald</b>, November 15, 2018. Retrieved 22
October 2019. < https://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-andfinance/no-the-gender-pay-gap-is-not-a-myth-and-here-s-why-itmatters-20181114-p50g0e.html >. Jacks, Timna. “Life coach with sights on upper house wants 10-year
bond for migrants.”<b> Age, </b>November 15, 2018. Retrieved 22 October
2019. </https:></div><div class="MsoNormal"><https: fringe-party-targetslabor-backs-coalition-over-safe-schools-20181111-p50fe9.html="" politics="" victoria="" www.theage.com.au=""><https: life-coach-withsights-on-upper-house-wants-10-year-bond-for-migrants-20181115-="" p50g99.html="" politics="" victoria="" www.theage.com.au=""> Katz, Jonathan. <b>Gay American History. </b>NY: Thomas Y. Crowell Co.,
1976. </https:></https:></div><div class="MsoNormal"><https: fringe-party-targetslabor-backs-coalition-over-safe-schools-20181111-p50fe9.html="" politics="" victoria="" www.theage.com.au=""><https: life-coach-withsights-on-upper-house-wants-10-year-bond-for-migrants-20181115-="" p50g99.html="" politics="" victoria="" www.theage.com.au="">Koziol, Michael. “'We are under assault': Major universities go to war
with Morrison government over research cuts.'” <b>Sydney Morning
Herald, </b>November 12, 2018. Retrieved 22 October 2019.
<https: federal="" politics="" we-are-under-assaultmajor-universities-go-to-war-with-morrison-government-overresearch-cuts-20181112-p50fih.html="" www.smh.com.au="">
——.</https:></https:></https:></div><div class="MsoNormal"><https: fringe-party-targetslabor-backs-coalition-over-safe-schools-20181111-p50fe9.html="" politics="" victoria="" www.theage.com.au=""><https: life-coach-withsights-on-upper-house-wants-10-year-bond-for-migrants-20181115-="" p50g99.html="" politics="" victoria="" www.theage.com.au=""><https: federal="" politics="" we-are-under-assaultmajor-universities-go-to-war-with-morrison-government-overresearch-cuts-20181112-p50fih.html="" www.smh.com.au=""> “Gay teachers 'more acceptable far from school.'” <b>Age</b>,
November 20, 2018, 11. </https:></https:></https:></div><div class="MsoNormal"><https: fringe-party-targetslabor-backs-coalition-over-safe-schools-20181111-p50fe9.html="" politics="" victoria="" www.theage.com.au=""><https: life-coach-withsights-on-upper-house-wants-10-year-bond-for-migrants-20181115-="" p50g99.html="" politics="" victoria="" www.theage.com.au=""><https: federal="" politics="" we-are-under-assaultmajor-universities-go-to-war-with-morrison-government-overresearch-cuts-20181112-p50fih.html="" www.smh.com.au=""> Lyons, Kate. “Far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro wins presidential
vote—as it happened.” <b>Guardian, </b>October 29, 2018. Retrieved 22
October 2019.
<https: 2018="" 28="" brazilelection-2018-second-round-of-voting-closes-as-bolsonaro-eyes-thepresidency-live="" live="" oct="" page="with:block-5bd63991e4b05fc14b59ed46" world="" www.theguardian.com="">. </https:></https:></https:></https:></div><div class="MsoNormal"><https: fringe-party-targetslabor-backs-coalition-over-safe-schools-20181111-p50fe9.html="" politics="" victoria="" www.theage.com.au=""><https: life-coach-withsights-on-upper-house-wants-10-year-bond-for-migrants-20181115-="" p50g99.html="" politics="" victoria="" www.theage.com.au=""><https: federal="" politics="" we-are-under-assaultmajor-universities-go-to-war-with-morrison-government-overresearch-cuts-20181112-p50fih.html="" www.smh.com.au=""><https: 2018="" 28="" brazilelection-2018-second-round-of-voting-closes-as-bolsonaro-eyes-thepresidency-live="" live="" oct="" page="with:block-5bd63991e4b05fc14b59ed46" world="" www.theguardian.com=""> Memmi, Albert. <b>The Colonizer and the Colonized</b>. London: Earthscan
publications, [1957] 2003. Nanni, Giordano and Andrea James. <b>Coranderrk: We Will Show the
Country.</b> Canberra: Aboriginal Studies P, 2013. </https:></https:></https:></https:></div><div class="MsoNormal"> Pat Parker:<b>An Expanded Edition of Movement in Black</b>. Ithaca:
Firebrand Books, 1999.
——. <b>The Complete Works of Pat Parker</b>. Edited by Julie R. Enszer.
Brookville, NY: A Midsummer Night’s, P, 2016 and Dover: Florida:
Sinister Wisdom, 2016. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> Pascoe, Bruce. <b>Dark Emu</b>: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of
Agriculture. Brunswick: Magabala Books Aboriginal Corporation,
2014. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> Phillips, Tom. “Brazil’s fearful LGBT community prepares for a
‘proud homophobe’.” <b>Guardian, </b>October 28, 2018. Retrieved 22
October 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/27/dispatch-saopaulo-jair-bolsonaro-victory-lgbt-community-fear.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> Precel, Nicole. “Millions for LGBTI tourism, but no mention of Safe
Schools.” <b>Age</b>, November 18, 2018. Retrieved 22 October 2019.
<https: millions-for-lgbtitourism-but-no-mention-of-safe-schools-20181118-p50gtn.html="" politics="" victoria="" www.theage.com.au="">.</https:></div><div class="MsoNormal"><https: millions-for-lgbtitourism-but-no-mention-of-safe-schools-20181118-p50gtn.html="" politics="" victoria="" www.theage.com.au=""> Referendum Council. <b>Uluru Statement from the Heart</b>. 2017. Retrieved
22 October 2019. </https:></div><div class="MsoNormal"><https: millions-for-lgbtitourism-but-no-mention-of-safe-schools-20181118-p50gtn.html="" politics="" victoria="" www.theage.com.au=""><https: finalreport.html="" toc-anchor-ulurustatement-from-the-heart="" www.referendumcouncil.org.au=""> Rise and Resist. Retrieved 22 October 2019.
<https: about="" www.riseandresist.org="">. </https:></https:></https:></div><div class="MsoNormal"><https: millions-for-lgbtitourism-but-no-mention-of-safe-schools-20181118-p50gtn.html="" politics="" victoria="" www.theage.com.au=""><https: finalreport.html="" toc-anchor-ulurustatement-from-the-heart="" www.referendumcouncil.org.au=""><https: about="" www.riseandresist.org=""> Sengupta, Somini. “What Jair Bolsonaro’s Victory Could Mean for the
Amazon, and the Planet.” <b>New York Times,</b> October 17, 2018.
Retrieved 22 October 2019.
<https: 10="" 17="" 2018="" brazil-electionamazon-environment.html="" climate="" www.nytimes.com="">. </https:></https:></https:></https:></div><div class="MsoNormal"><https: millions-for-lgbtitourism-but-no-mention-of-safe-schools-20181118-p50gtn.html="" politics="" victoria="" www.theage.com.au=""><https: finalreport.html="" toc-anchor-ulurustatement-from-the-heart="" www.referendumcouncil.org.au=""><https: about="" www.riseandresist.org=""><https: 10="" 17="" 2018="" brazil-electionamazon-environment.html="" climate="" www.nytimes.com=""> Sterle, Urska. <b>Vecno Vojno Stanje.</b> Ljubljana: Vizibilija, 2010. </https:></https:></https:></https:></div><div class="MsoNormal"><https: millions-for-lgbtitourism-but-no-mention-of-safe-schools-20181118-p50gtn.html="" politics="" victoria="" www.theage.com.au=""><https: finalreport.html="" toc-anchor-ulurustatement-from-the-heart="" www.referendumcouncil.org.au=""><https: about="" www.riseandresist.org=""><https: 10="" 17="" 2018="" brazil-electionamazon-environment.html="" climate="" www.nytimes.com=""> Vashti Collective. “Editorial.” <b>Vashti’s Voice, </b>No.1, 1972, 3.
Vashti Collective. Voices of Vashti Anthology: Melbourne Women, 1972–
1981. Brunswick: Vashti Collective, 1986. </https:></https:></https:></https:></div><div class="MsoNormal"><https: millions-for-lgbtitourism-but-no-mention-of-safe-schools-20181118-p50gtn.html="" politics="" victoria="" www.theage.com.au=""><https: finalreport.html="" toc-anchor-ulurustatement-from-the-heart="" www.referendumcouncil.org.au=""><https: about="" www.riseandresist.org=""><https: 10="" 17="" 2018="" brazil-electionamazon-environment.html="" climate="" www.nytimes.com="">Wilson, Tim. “A year after the same-sex marriage vote, Australia is a
better place.” <b>Sydney Morning Herald</b>, November 14, 2018. Retrieved
22 October 2019. https://www.smh.com.au/national/a-year-after-the same-sex-marriage-vote-Australia is-a-better-place-20181114-
p50fyw.html</https:></https:></https:></https:></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>
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Thank you, Shebar, for getting this page back again. I will write more soon but here is my, our, dear Cello a few years ago. We said good-bye to him last week but like all who love and taste deeply of life, he will live. What times these are--50 years celebration of lesbian, queer, Pride in a city where Trump towers over all, in a country where yearnings for a better life drown in policed waters. Joan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com129tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-57325770055656207752018-10-07T00:19:00.001-07:002018-10-07T14:59:08.817-07:00Words, AgainI have missed this little pocket of screen that some how feels it is just you and me, Joan as a writer in small places. Face book is the posting of my work, my projects, my sending on of calls to action and thank yous to all who live there. Here I am the the aging woman, the writer who never did another book but yet it feels as if I have never stopped writing. A 78 year old woman with yet another body mystery--a mass in my left lung that is not cancer, but a rare disease known as granulomatous inflammation--a word I cannot really pronounce. An autoimmune misreading, trying too hard to protect, it has created a hardness of cells that can be systemic but for now seems confined to my lung. The mysteries of the body misreading itself, a tenderness for its fallacies, when it errs on the side of protection. How human that all is--to create difficulties from too much vigilance.<br />
<br />
I am still in Melbourne, still with Di, Cello still walks beside me, he and I slower, more crooked. We slant like Emily Dickinson's famous line, but I am afraid no truth seeps in. Other then the changing body, the changing abilities, the changing time one remains vertical. I am deep in helping to edit the Sinister Wisdom issue celebrating LHA's 45 years of existence along with wonderful LHA-ers: Red, Shawn, Morgan, Saskia, Deb, Maxine, Flavia. From 23,000 miles away, collaboration.<br />
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A Flame Robin, an Emblem of Passion, 2017, Anglesea, Australia</div>
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Like this pulsing heart of life, my heart, my head sometimes feels like bursting as I follow Trump's bellowing, the easy cruelties, the rush of money because Capitalism does not care who lives behind barbed wires or cocked guns-the overstatements of intent--I watch my NY Yankees, a daughter of the Bronx, I still am--and the the Boston Red Sox's sweat shirts assert "Do Damage"--not just simply win or do the best you can. The new Supreme Court Judge, a strange child man whose face pouts much like Trump's when he feels wrong done by, now a life time of power. Democrats demonized as the extreme left--we predicted this so many years ago when "liberal" became too scary for its progressive attachments--the center does not hold, it does not exist. But and the but is needed, we march, we get arrested, we write and create and vote and get others to vote and will never give up this resistance. </div>
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I am very cold often and tired but books clothe me--my watercolor pencils take me into Cezanne's world, I miss my old friends and wish they were closer-- a kind of loneliness has been a companion my whole life, now intensified by this great distance from my historical home. I fool myself, this loneliness is in my bones.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A wonderful Visit with Morgan and Saskia, 2017</td></tr>
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Joan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com57tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-7665911998010817182018-03-09T03:21:00.001-08:002018-03-09T03:21:23.554-08:00helloJoan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com126tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-5747200179173883572018-03-08T22:25:00.002-08:002018-03-08T22:25:31.489-08:00My Australian Reading List--How I Learned about My New Home, Compiled in 2008<br />
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"You were born here. I come for the first</div>
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time in my life: a sort of pilgrimage</div>
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to find some relic, read an earlier page</div>
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than the known text..."</div>
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From "Another's Childhood," by Gwen Harwood, as Miriam Stone</div>
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On my first extended visit to Melbourne in 1998, I hunted my partner's book shelves to read all I could about my new geography. I have never stopped my search for Australian texts that would help me read this land, these histories. Here are a few books, some old, some new, that have given me insight and pleasure. [Given out at my first Brunswick Library talk about home and exile.] </div>
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Armstrong, Diane. <b>The Voyage of their Life: The Story of the SS Derna and its Passengers</b>, 2001.</div>
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Astley, Thea. <b>It's Raining in Mango,</b> 1987.</div>
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<b>Australian Gay and Lesbian Writing: An Anthology</b>, ed. Robert Dessaix, 1993.</div>
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<b>Australian Short Stories, </b> ed. Kerryn Goldsworthy, 1983.</div>
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Bail, Murray. <b>Eucalyptus</b>, 1998.</div>
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Cornelius, Patricia. <b>My Sister Jill.</b></div>
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De Kretser, Michelle. <b>The Hamilton Case, </b>2003; <b>The Lost Dog, </b>2007.</div>
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Gardner, Helen. <b>Monkey's Grip</b>, 1977.</div>
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Grenville, Kate. <b>The Secret River</b>, 2005; <b>S</b><b>earching for the Secret River</b>, 2006.</div>
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<b>Growing Up Asian in Australia</b>, ed. Alice Pung, 2008.</div>
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<b>A Guide to Gay and Lesbian Writing in Australia, </b>ed. Michael Hurley, 1993.</div>
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Harwood, Gwen. <b>Collected Poems (1943-1995)</b>, 2003.</div>
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Hazard, Shirley. <b>The Great Fire, </b>2003.</div>
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Hewitt, Dorothy. Everything I could find. <b>Wild Card: An Autobiography-1923-1958;Collected Poems,</b> 1995; <b>The Chapel Perlious, </b>a play, 1972; <b>Bobbin Up, </b>1959<b>; The Toucher, </b>1992;<b>Neap Tide</b>, 1999. Wrote an essay on Ms. Hewitt's work for the American <b>The Women's Review of Books. </b>Honored to have spoken to her on the phone.</div>
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Hughes, Robert. <b>The Fateful Shore.</b></div>
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Langford, Ruby. <b>Don't Take Your Love to Town, </b>1988.</div>
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Miller, Alex. <b>Journey to the Stone Country</b>, 2002.</div>
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Modjeska, Drusilla. <b>Stravinsky's Lunch</b>, 1999.</div>
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Morgan, Sally. <b>My Place</b>, 1987.</div>
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Moorhouse, Frank. <b>Days of Wine and Rage, </b>1980.</div>
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Park, Ruth. <b>The Harp in the South, </b>1948Aand all else I could find of hers.</div>
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Patterson, Banjo. <b>Collected Poems.</b></div>
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Prichard, Katharine Susannah. <b>Coonardoo</b>, 1929; <b>N'Goola and Other Stories</b>, 1959.</div>
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Summers, Anne. <b>Damned Whores and God's Police: The Colonization of Women in Australia</b>, 1975.</div>
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Temple, Peter. <b>The Broken Shore</b>, 2005.</div>
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Tsolkas. Christos. <b>Loaded</b>,1994; <b>Dead Europe, </b>2005.</div>
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White, Patrick. <b>The Tree of Man</b>, 1955. I can still hear the creaking wagon wheels of the opening paragraph.</div>
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Winton, Tim. <b>Cloudstreet</b>, 1991.</div>
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Wright, Alexis. <b>Carpentaria</b>, 2006. An epic writer, not only of Australia but of the world. Her language is the living hope of the oldest people speaking, waiting, for a moved white heart.</div>
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Wright, Judith. <b>Collected Poems</b>, 1994; <b>Half a Life-Time,</b> 1999.</div>
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And so I started my 20 year sojourn in this wide brown land.</div>
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Joan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-80290642369765114652018-03-08T19:51:00.001-08:002018-03-08T20:52:15.463-08:00Earning My Keep, Melbourne, 2003Many thoughts set off by Megan Marshall's <b>Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast.</b> How do you begin another life in a different geography, what is the meaning of traveling and how does one earn this second chance. And so many other reflections and sadness too. My desk being put in order because two old NY friends, Morgan and Saskia, are coming for a three week visit. All my tumbled papers must be given some kind of order. One fell to the floor.<br />
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November 4, 2003<br />
Dear Peter,*<br />
I just wanted you to have a more formal sense of what I have been doing during my honorary fellowship in addition to my writing and research. Before I begin my list, I want to thank you and every one in the English Department, Cultural Studies and Creative Writing Programs that have so warmly welcomed me.<br />
1. Met with students approximately once a week to discuss their work.<br />
2. Reading with Andrea Goldsmith and Lisa Davis, "Writing Live," at the Lesbian and Gay Cultural Festival, Adelaide, November 2003.<br />
3. Department slide show and talk, "Where Do Stories Come From: The Creation of the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York City," March 26, 2003.<br />
4. Involved students in a public reading, "Personal Dispatches: Writers Confront War," Builders Arms Hotel, Melbourne, march 16, 2003.<br />
5.Held small seminar in reading a text from my book, <b>Persistent Desire</b>, February.<br />
6. Spoke at premiere showing in Australia of "Hand on the Pulse: The Life and Times of Joan Nestle," by Joyce Warshow, Sydney, February; Melbourne, ACMI Cinema, March 19th; Auckland and Wellington, New Zealand, May 30-31.<br />
7. Reading, "Beyond the Primary," Builders Arms Hotel, Melbourne, April.<br />
8. Talk and slide show, "Images from the Margins," Victorian College of the Arts, Honors Seminar, May 14.<br />
9. Co-facilitated Gender Workshop for the Gay and Lesbian Switchboard, May 6.<br />
10. Met with book club reading <b>A Fragile Union</b>, June 4.<br />
11.Gave an hour lecture in Prof. Stiben's Gender, Sex and Power class, University of Melbourne, October 15.<br />
12. Keynote speaker at the 25th anniversary dinner for the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives, October 25<br />
13.Wrote essay, "Wars and Thinking" to be published in the American Journal of Women's History, spring, 2004.<br />
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I hope to have the opportunity to continue my contributions to the educational community at the University next year. Happy holidays,<br />
Joan Nestle<br />
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* Peter is my partner's brother who is a distinguished professor in the Univ. of Melbourne's English Department. No pay is involved in being an honorary fellow but my appointment did help me win the right to stay in Australia for six months, to be with Di. I was awed by the appointment and felt very much I had to deserve my time here. The reading against war came about after Barbara Bush banned the reading of American poets Walt Whitman, Emily Dickenson, Muriel Ruckeyeser and others in a Washington D.C. literary event because she considered their work too anti-American.Joan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-4622295887857790922018-02-14T01:52:00.001-08:002018-02-14T01:52:36.732-08:00Anna's TouchShe came to the door. a small loaf of her oven baked bread in her work worn hand.Joan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-70140680322036078752018-02-12T22:12:00.000-08:002018-02-12T22:12:02.297-08:00In my hand...I know. I have been away for along time. Using face book to tell the story of my days and heart's doings, of my love and loved friends. but I am back. Getting my papers together for their voyage back to LHA, working on two boxes of my writing self. I come across 6 yellowing index cards " from 1963. My first woman lover, the first woman I loved, not always the same thing, is dying of ovarian cancer, so young, so wanting to live. I wrote these in the shortest form I knew of, haiku, but more, because the pain was too deep for more.<br />
1--Reductions<br />
The illness of my young friend<br />
Makes me a dry pod<br />
In an autumn field.<br />
<br />
Her death snaps me.<br />
<br />
2<br />
The poet slept with song<br />
And sucked her swollen breast<br />
The poet walked with night<br />
And stared (not finished)<br />
<br />
3<br />
Winter tiredness<br />
Oceans heavy with grey<br />
A silent gull<br />
Carries my strength away.<br />
<br />
4<br />
The human body<br />
falls into disrepair<br />
The soul takes up residence<br />
between a sunrise and a tear<br />
<br />
<br />
My dear dear Carol, all these years I have carried your image with me, the photo of you golden against a blue sky, with the words you wrote to me, in that small, tentative script--"To Joan, who make me feel big enough for all." All these years I have felt your lips on mine.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Joan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com107tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-43550760893848993692018-02-09T15:44:00.002-08:002018-02-09T19:02:21.694-08:002018--A gift of memory Yesterday I received this letter from Tanya Visceglia, an old SEEK student of mine.<br />
<br />
For Joan<br />
<br />
When I was twenty-one, the only thing I knew for sure was that while “being myself” was a nice<br />
idea, it was clearly not one that was meant for me. Gay and lesbian members of my Italian<br />
Catholic family were hushed up when visitors came, pitied when we were alone, and<br />
scapegoated in the heat of an argument. My Brooklyn neighborhood had been immortalized by<br />
its appearance in “Saturday Night Fever” as the epicenter of hotheaded, blue-collar despair.<br />
Bay Ridge’s only lesbian bar had an unmarked entrance and blacked-out windows to avoid<br />
unwanted attention from passers-by. Even that failed to deter the occasional pack of drunken<br />
cugines from wandering in and pulling down their pants to “show us what we were missing”.<br />
When that happened, most of us didn’t fight back. We hung our heads and waited for them to<br />
leave. Most of us weren’t out – either to our families or at work, and we couldn’t risk any<br />
trouble or possible exposure, particularly those of us who worked as police officers or as<br />
teachers in Catholic schools. Back then, an out cop was often a dead cop, and a lesbian<br />
schoolteacher was fired with no explanation. Gay pride hadn’t even occurred to me then – I<br />
would have happily settled for the absence of gay shame.<br />
Having recently returned from Madison, Wisconsin, I had seen the promised land, where<br />
Queer Theory reigned supreme, and spiky-haired undergraduates quoted Judith Butler in one<br />
breath and harmonized Indigo Girls in the next. Yet the same women who reverently quoted<br />
passages such as “what is most important is to cease legislating for all lives what is livable only<br />
for some, and similarly, to refrain from proscribing for all lives what is unlivable for some” bluntly<br />
<br />
dismissed my desire for masculine women as “imitation of patriarchal norms”, and my lipstick<br />
and high heels as “too straight”. My fantasies of a strong butch lover with rough hands that could<br />
rebuild an engine were confined to Saturday nights, which usually found me pinned up against<br />
the wall of the bad girls’ bar on the outskirts of town.<br />
My return to New York marked the year of the “lipstick lesbian”: girls who loved dressing<br />
up and hooking up with other girls who loved dressing up. New York Magazine’s article on ‘90s<br />
“lesbian chic” celebrated the death of “the old lesbian stereotype... she is humorless, wears badly<br />
fitted mannish suits, cannot sustain relationships and is hopelessly unhappy” and heralded the<br />
arrival of “the new, improved lesbian -- a party girl of much sex, lingerie and sophistication.”<br />
While femme style had made a comeback, butch-femme relationships were still left out in the<br />
cold. “So retro”, the DKNY pantsuits at Julie’s lounge bar would sniff, between sips of their<br />
Cosmopolitans. “If I wanted a man, I’d be with a real one.”<br />
One day, browsing in Judith’s Room, which has since gone the way of most independent<br />
booksellers, I happened upon a book of essays called “A Restricted Country” by Joan Nestle, a<br />
self-described 1950s femme from the Bronx. “In “Butch-Femme Relationships: Sexual Courage in<br />
the 1950s”, she wrote: “Although I have been a lesbian for over twenty years and embrace<br />
feminism as a worldview, I can spot a butch thirty feet away and still feel the thrill of her power.”<br />
And “Butch-femme relationships, as I experienced them, were complex erotic statements, not<br />
phony heterosexual replicas. They were filled with deeply lesbian language of stance, dress,<br />
gesture, love, courage, and autonomy.” Reading those words for the first time, I cried right there<br />
in the aisle. Finally, I had been given permission to be myself.<br />
<br />
In 1992, when I heard that Joan would be teaching the first course in Gay and Lesbian<br />
Literature ever to be offered at Queens College, I was so overcome with enthusiasm that I had<br />
read every book on the syllabus before the first class. In that course, we were all hungry: for<br />
images of ourselves, for testaments to our own experience, and for a place in which our own<br />
issues occupied the center of discourse without “throwing our sexuality in people’s faces” or<br />
“making an issue” where none need exist.<br />
Our syllabus didn’t revolve around any particular theoretical perspective, period or<br />
theme. We needed it all and cast our nets wide: “The Well of Loneliness” by Radclyffe Hall, Walt<br />
Whitman’s “Calamus” poems, “Maurice” by E.M. Forster, James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room”<br />
Kate Millet’s “Sita”, and Audre Lorde’s “Zami: A New Spelling of My Name”. We read Leslie<br />
Feinberg’s “Letter to a Fifties Femme” and excerpts from Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America”,<br />
which was then running on Broadway. Twenty-five years later, I’m collecting snapshots of that<br />
course from memory, and offering them to you, Joan, with thanks and with love.<br />
I already knew many of the students who showed up on that first day from the campus<br />
Gay and Lesbian Alliance. We were buzzing before Joan arrived, looking around for new faces. I<br />
walked in with Frank, a leather daddy who was preparing to enter the police academy. As I sat<br />
down next to my friend Helen, the razor-sharp but fragile daughter of a Tanzanian diplomat, I<br />
greeted Shirley, who taught me how to salsa dance, and whose visual impairment never once<br />
slowed her down. Across from me sat Rhonda, a fireplug of a woman best known for strident<br />
proclamation of her love for butches. Dee, a Latina MTF with a wicked sense of humor, arrived<br />
breathless from her race across campus between classes on rollerblades. Others I knew only by<br />
<br />
name or face: Anna, Harold, Diane, Todd, and a slight, blonde woman who never spoke during<br />
class discussions, but occasionally shared her poetry in a soft, trembling voice.<br />
Joan’s kind blue eyes and genuine interest in every one of us slowly drew us out and made<br />
room for us to unfold the whole world of our experience -- from humor to desire to despair. In<br />
one class, while discussing “The Well of Loneliness”, I asked Joan why she had included it in the<br />
syllabus. She replied with the story of a woman who had survived a concentration camp by<br />
remembering the Polish translation of the story she had read, which sustained her hope to live<br />
long enough to kiss a woman. In another class, Frank acted out a traffic stop scene from John<br />
Preston’s “Mr. Benson”, squaring off in his academy uniform and mirrored police sunglasses. His<br />
performance met with wolf whistles of approval from students and Joan’s dry response: “Frank,<br />
now I see why you want to be a police officer.” In the last class of the semester, we read our own<br />
poetry aloud. Our quiet classmate shared a poem that was written to a woman with severe burns,<br />
who ran her local newsstand. “Seeing her every day/with strips of skin like loose bandages/I<br />
wanted to ask how she could be so brave/ wearing her scars on the outside/when I have so much<br />
fear/wearing my scars on the inside.” When I shared my poem about a friend who had recently<br />
died of AIDS, I felt cocooned in shared grief, knowing that over the past ten years, every other<br />
student in that room had also been crossing friends’ numbers out of their phone books.<br />
Outside of class, we made a banner for our road trip to the 1993 LGBT National March on<br />
Washington. On the day of the march, the escalator at Dupont Circle was so packed with queers<br />
that it ground to a halt, overwhelmed by the sheer weight of us. A huge cheer rose from the<br />
crowd, followed by a chant of “We are everywhere!”, and the waving of small rainbow flags at<br />
<br />
strangers from side to side of the Metro station. Looking around me, I drank in the first day I felt<br />
that the whole world was queer. We were a proud, open and unstoppable force.<br />
<br />
<br />
To celebrate the end of the semester, Joan invited us to her apartment for a potluck,<br />
where we saw our history displayed on every wall, bookshelf and end table -- the huge collection<br />
of letters, papers, and periodicals in the Lesbian Herstory Archives had not yet moved to its Park<br />
Slope brownstone home. Balancing plates on our laps, we clustered around Joan, asking her to<br />
read from her own work. First, she read: “Stone butch, drag butch, baby butch/leaned me back<br />
against the bathroom door/tuned for the intrusion, you sucked my breast/Alert and wanting, we<br />
made love in a public place/because territory was limited.” This was followed by the essay I had<br />
first read in Judith’s Room: “The erotic essence of the butch-femme relationship was the external<br />
difference of women’s textures and the bond of knowledgeable caring. I loved my lover for how<br />
she stood as well as what she did. ... these gestures were a style of self-presentation that made erotic competence into a political statement." Hearing those words read aloud, surrounded by my queer classmates and the lovingly catalogued proof of our collective existence and persistence, I knew I had come home.<br />
<br />
Joan's gift to us--the gift of shared history and purpose, remains with me and sustains me to this day. It walked by my side when I came out and stayed out in a rabidly Christian work environment. It deflected the pain of my mother's hissed whisper: "Why do you have to go around telling people you're married? It's none of their business." It gives me the strength to speak up for my partner in the thousandth performance of the tired old play "Excuse me, sir, this is the ladies' room." They may not know who I am, but now I do. And that is enough.Joan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-27782750171264982732017-08-15T03:35:00.003-07:002017-08-15T03:35:56.878-07:00The Living, Engaged Archives<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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From LHA slide show of the early 19802, NYC Gay Pride MarchJoan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-24580677876239848262017-08-04T02:20:00.001-07:002017-08-04T02:20:21.056-07:00I would rather be a queer then a wife.I would rather be a queer then a wife.Joan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-18196755235165921352017-07-05T00:10:00.001-07:002017-07-05T16:29:54.016-07:00Fragments from My Archives, San Diego, 1992. Sophia, Gail, Rose and the Poet, Bob FlanaganJournal Entry: Monday, June 1, written in 1992, San Diego, typed in 1999<br />
<br />
A sunny day in this new city--new in its self discovery it feels but old in its geography--the long swells of the Pacific at one end, the canyons, now jumped by housing, at the other. Sophia and Gail [of the Lesbian Writers Tour fame] and I had our buddy trip down here from Los Angeles. After I took leave of Lee [Hudson] at the airport--I love her more now then I have ever before--we piled into some one's car and took off. Sophia weakened by sickle cell anemia and epilepsy, Gail also a sufferer of the same illness and me, dizzy, but we laughed holding our breaths as Gail swerved from lane to lane at 80 miles an hour, the ocean dangerously sparkling. Down at Camp Pendelton we stopped to eat at Denny's--America's mass food cheap and piled on our plates--large blond and black men surrounded us, their heads shaved in the way only executioners and military barbers do, their bodies shaped for intimidation. I thought of gay men and feared for their lives. I realized it is mostly other men who are the victims of over developed masculinity until such creatures get into places of power and then we all suffer. Three sick queers--we piled back into our rental car and swerved our way into San Diego.<br />
We found the place I was staying, the Keating Guest House, a lesbian owned and staffed boarding house where we were instantly made uncomfortable by the over worked and tired woman in running shorts who opened the door to us. Sophia and Gale huddled in my room and then we set out for the world famous San Diego zoo. Thousands of people and panting animals, most with the sad red E imprinted on their explanatory cards--gentle creatures for the most--large black birds with warm brown eyes and stone like out-croppings on their heads--gazelles and grazing animals all sadly exiled from their homes of earth and forest and water by us. They look as if they would ask for so little and we teem by--eating too much, taking too much while these beings stand dazed in an Eucalyptus prison.<br />
Other memories--sleeping on the floor of Barbara Cruikshank's and Judith Halberstam's [Now Jack] apartment so happy to be away from the quaint guest house whose unhappy manager snapped, "what do you think I am, your servant," when I asked where the tea was. Her other memorable line was about the fog on the horizon, "At least it blocks out Mexico." Speaking to Judith's class at the University of San Diego after they had read my book [A Persistent Desire, newly published, or A Restricted Country] and then the slide presentation in the large auditorium to three hundred people, meeting enthusiastic Chinese students and finally, off into the scented night air, my work as a touring lesbian writer done for that night.<br />
The next day a visit to the Lesbian and Gay archives in a small square building, a walk on the beach and home to LA by the train, reversing the trip down in a calmer less dramatic but far less life enhancing way. Petite and kind Rose, the dominatrix lover of the poet and performance artist Bob Flanagan, picked me up and regaled me with stories of her children's shame at their mother's reputation. Sweet boyish, black haired, cow licked, choppy Bob, who had to travel every where with oxygen so he could pull air into his cystic fibrostic lungs, whom I visited in the hospital the next week, more oxygen being forced into his lungs, he trying to reassure Rose, so thin herself. "You know," he told her proudly in short gasps of breath, "I am living much longer with this disease then anyone is supposed to." Bob, the performance poet, who hung by his foreskin daring audiences to tell him what pain he should endure, who turned hospital rooms into stage sets as he literally hung himself out to dry--a sweet suffering man who offered his poetry and his body doing impossible things to his times. <i>Last year he died, (1998), leaving me with the memory of his thin body leaning against the folding doors of the huge cavern that housed the American Booksellers Association convention that year, his head, a back banner against the beige walls, his cowlicks leaping off his skull.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><b>2017: My queer, lesbian, feminist times gave me gifts. Books to travel the country with, shared communal undertakings, ironies galore, and then the brave ones, the different from the different ones, who let me be with them for a short time, me sometimes a little uncomfortable but trying not to show it, grateful for the discomfort. Now the years sift down their gifts and Bob and Rose stay with me, his slim book of poetry pressed so many years ago into my hands, his body, his breaths of unconquered self, living in all my years that followed.</b></i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Joan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-46658341634996450722017-06-12T22:26:00.002-07:002017-06-12T22:28:18.889-07:00A Recognition of a Terrible Sadness, a Demanding of an End to the Injustice of Occupation<span style="background-color: white; color: #505050; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14px;">AJDS (Australian Jewish Democratic Society) statement on 50 years of occupation. The statement can also be found on the AJDS </span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://ajds.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D1f4d9d702657fcf90eda6f38c%26id%3D4765583f33%26e%3Dc778939711&source=gmail&ust=1497080952074000&usg=AFQjCNGwOq9tLj5dzhaz5VgJ-XE4hjFb4A" href="http://ajds.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1f4d9d702657fcf90eda6f38c&id=4765583f33&e=c778939711" style="background-color: white; color: #336699; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px;" target="_blank">website</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #505050; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14px;">. </span><br />
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<div style="background-color: white; color: #505050; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px;">
As we reach the 50 year milestone of Occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, the AJDS is devastated by the realities of the ongoing military occupation of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. It is both painful and tragic because we believe it can end. In presenting the historical background and detailing the ongoing devastation we acknowledge the Palestinian dispossession and hope to shift the narrative, one that has not shifted enough in 50 years. In the context of our own history it is incumbent on us to shout ENOUGH. We refuse to stay silent or participate , not in our name, we are witnesses who choose not to be bystanders.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #505050; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px;">
Whilst the dispossession of Palestinians from their lands did not begin with the results of the 6 Day War – which is called the Naksa in Arabic, the Setback – the war played a significant role in emboldening messianic expansionist elements in Israeli society and amongst Zionists throughout the world, which has strongly impacted settlement expansion throughout the occupied territories, and ensured that years of “negotiations” have resulted in neither justice nor peace for Palestinians, or Israelis. While what is commonly termed ‘the Occupation’ began fifty years ago, we recognise that the history of violence against Palestinians in Israel and Palestine has its roots long before 1967. What is known in a Zionist narrative as the War of Independence of the State of Israel, is known to Palestinians and others as the Nakba, or Catastrophe in Arabic. It saw the mass dislocation of Palestinians from their land, with up to 800,000 Palestinians being forced to flee their homes and land and refused the right to return.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #505050; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px;">
<br />
<br />
As a result of the occupation, every aspect of Palestinian life is controlled by Israeli administration: through checkpoints, refusal to grant development permits, home demolitions, arbitrary military arrests, curfews, collective punishment, tightened control of economic and development opportunities, and innumerable other practices. In Gaza, which has been described as an open air prison, Israel controls the entry and exit of all goods. A 2015 UN Conference on Trade and Development reported that at current trends Gaza may become unlivable by 2020. In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, life is controlled at a minute level, and everyday extreme violence is enacted in order to remove Palestinians from their land. The Occupation, and those who enforce it, is incredibly creative and resilient, always able to find and invent new ways to hinder Palestinian life and work against Palestinian resistance (even as that resistance resolutely continues). The Israeli military industry and its global arms sales, relies on the Occupation. The Israeli economy is completely bound up in the Occupation.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #505050; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px;">
Sadly, Israel’s policies have made it a pariah state in world opinion, with increasing international pressure to pursue action to end the occupation, including from a growing number of Jews and Jewish organisations outside Israel, who can no longer align their identities with a state for the Jewish people which repeatedly and systematically acts against their ethics and values.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #505050; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px;">
<br />
<br />
The occupation which has occurred since 1967 is a continuation of a systemic dislocation of one people for the sake of another. It is an occupation which has always been, and continues to be, carried out by all levels of Israeli society. It is an occupation which has been widely condemned by the international community. It is an occupation involving the construction of Jewish Israeli settlements which are deemed illegal according to International law and have created a clear obstacle to peace and justice. It is an occupation which relies on a conscription army and a national population who refuse to see, or interact with, Palestinians as fellow humans.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #505050; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px;">
<br />
<br />
As hopelessness intensifies in the face of what seems like an intractable situation, and as the international community repeatedly fails to bring about a just resolution, we encourage people to take action in their communities and within global movements, in coalition with, and led by Palestinians, to understand, educate and oppose the actions of the occupation and the broader dispossession of Palestinian people. As a Jewish organisation we stand resolutely against the policies of occupation, dispossession and oppression. Instead we highlight the Jewish and universal values which call us to stand against such injustice, and foster Jewish identities that contribute to a world in which such violence ceases to exist. We call on the Israeli government, and Israeli society, to show that there is a partner for peace who can meet with Palestinians in order to bring about a just peace in the region. We call on our Australian Jewish communities to join us in refusing to support the ongoing occupation, in order to be part of a global movement which will ensure that there is not another 50 years of such violence.<strong> </strong></div>
<h4 style="background-color: white; color: #202020; font-family: Arial; font-size: 22px; line-height: 22px; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">
<strong>Some brief facts on the occupation (there are many more, of course. The occupation is dynamic, flexible, and comprehensive)</strong></h4>
<ul style="background-color: white; color: #505050; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px;">
<li style="margin-left: 15px;">In 2011 the World Bank projected that the Palestinian GDP could have increased by $3.4 billion a year if it weren’t for restrictions Israel imposes in area C of the West Bank.</li>
<li style="margin-left: 15px;">The Palestinian Authority, the governing body of Palestinians in areas A and B of the West Bank requires the consent of Israeli authorities on all decisions.</li>
<li style="margin-left: 15px;">The West Bank is littered with Israeli checkpoints controlling the movement of Palestinians. Each Palestinian town or village in the West Bank has a barrier at every entrance which the Israeli military can close without warning. The entire Palestinian society in the West Bank can be prevented from moving around within twenty minutes.</li>
<li style="margin-left: 15px;">A military court system applied in West Bank, which tries thousands of Palestinians every year.</li>
<li style="margin-left: 15px;">Israel restricts development and access to land in the West Bank, denying building permits and enacting home demolitions</li>
<li style="margin-left: 15px;">Whilst the figure of 2% is often spouted as the amount of land taken up by settlements, this does not take into account the infrastructure and adjacent lands seized to accommodate the settlements, and the lands that fall under settlement regional land management authorities, amounting to around 36% of the West Bank (according to B’Tselem). Lands which do not have settlements on them are still controlled by settlers and the settlement regime: there are roads throughout the West Bank on which only settlers can drive, and the army – together with settlers – will forcibly remove Palestinians from areas around settlements.</li>
<li style="margin-left: 15px;">The army regularly declares public spaces, and private homes, Closed Military Zones, in order to close off Palestinian access to spaces.</li>
<li style="margin-left: 15px;">Jewish settlements built in East Jerusalem (which is cut off from the rest of the West Bank) surround the Palestinian region.</li>
<li style="margin-left: 15px;">In East Jerusalem Palestinians are forcibly removed from their homes for Jews to move in.</li>
<li style="margin-left: 15px;">Israel controls who can travel in and out of the occupied territories, as well as controlling travel in between villages in some instances.</li>
</ul>
<h4 style="background-color: white; color: #202020; font-family: Arial; font-size: 22px; line-height: 22px; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">
Gaza</h4>
<ul style="background-color: white; color: #505050; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px;">
<li style="margin-left: 15px;">A 2015 UN Conference on Trade and Development reported that at current trends Gaza may become unliveable by 2020.</li>
<li style="margin-left: 15px;">Since June 2007 Israel has maintained control of all border crossings except Rafah in Egypt, which is not suitable for transport of goods, only people. Israel also controls sea and air space, forbidding Palestinians to build air or sea ports, and bans almost all export out of Gaza.</li>
<li style="margin-left: 15px;">95% of water is non-potable</li>
<li style="margin-left: 15px;">residents receive electricity for a few hours each day.</li>
<li style="margin-left: 15px;">Since 2007 three wars have been launched on the besieged population of Gaza with thousands of casualties and a large civilian death toll.</li>
</ul>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #505050; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<em style="background-color: white; color: #505050; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px;">Kind regards, </em><br />
<em style="background-color: white; color: #505050; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px;">Yael Winikoff</em><br />
<em style="background-color: white; color: #505050; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px;">Community Organiser, Australian Jewish Democratic Society</em>Joan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-17646572680536549962017-06-09T06:35:00.001-07:002017-06-12T22:24:58.761-07:00"Beautiful Military Equipment," the Erotics of Trump<div class="_1dwg _1w_m" style="font-family: inherit; padding: 12px 12px 0px;">
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"Our relationship is extremely good," Mr Trump said at the beginning of the closed-door meeting [with the ruler of Qatar]. "One of the things we will discuss is the Qatari purchase of lots of beautiful military equipment." (The Age, June 8, 2017) Beautiful military equipment. The erotics of national death dealing, for the turn of a coin. "Beautiful military equipment." Kiss the bombs, embrace the land mines, stroke the missiles, mount the launches. We deserve to loose this earth, this precious earth, so in love with the death of others we seem. "Beautiful military equipment." Tenderness goes into the shadows.</div>
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Joan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-38706128349300300962017-05-29T06:24:00.000-07:002017-06-06T18:48:50.320-07:00My first public talk here in Melbourne, 1999Now I see how it will be, As I sort papers, my history really, I will post here what calls out to me--not because of its rightness but because of memory's fragility.<br />
<br />
E-Mail<br />
From: Joan Nestle<br />
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999<br />
Subject: Hatespeech<br />
To: Crusader [owner with Rolland, his partner, of Hares and Hyenas, the queer and progressive bookstore here in Melbourne. Crusader and Rowland have remained friends and supporters since my first days here.]<br />
<br />
Dear Crusader,<br />
I am going to type in my speech--I tried to send it to you through a cut and paste attachment but I have not mastered that technique without Di [Otto, my partner now of almost 20 years] it seems. This may take two e-mails. Thanks for wanting it.<br />
<br />
Background: What follows is the text of comments I made on the topic of Hatespeak for a panel at the 1999 Melbourne Writers' Festival. David Crystal chaired the discussion and Kim Scott and Ghassan Hage were co-speakers. We each had ten minutes to approach this very complex topic.<br />
<br />
First I want to thank the Melbourne's Writers' Festival for being so generous to me and my work; I am a visitor here and not a famous writer. You have brought me new friends and a renewed sense of wonder at the kindnesses between strangers that language--the speaking of it and the hearing of it--can engender. With all this tenderness in my heart, it is sadly but somehow fitting that this, my third and last time to speak with you, is about what we have come to call "hatespeech."<br />
<br />
I want to share with you why I think I was asked to speak on this topic. I am not an academic who has studied the twists and turns of language, and I am not a philosopher who delves into the meanings of linguistic utterances. I am a Jew born in the Bronx of New York city in 1940, a lesbian who came out in the late 1950s and has been active in my queer community for over thirty years, and perhaps most pertinent for this discussion, a writer of erotica that often has earned me the label of pornographer. thus I am both the recipient of hatespeech and some would say the creator of it.<br />
<br />
I come to you this afternoon with fragments of information, and with quandaries about this topic of hate and how to control it in our societies. I speak as an American, a citizen from a country whose wealth was built on slave labor, whose very land was stolen from indigenous people, the land where the KKK was born, where Japanese Americans were forced into relocation camps during the Second World War, where some of the most powerful men of business and politics have been and are virulent anti Semites, the birthplace of Joseph McCarthy, a politician who made unorthodox thinking so shameful, that thousands of people lost their jobs, their social safety and some, their lives.<br />
<br />
<br />
A piece of information: Just as I was preparing for this discussion, I checked my e-mail to see what my friends back in New York had been up to. I discovered an urgently forwarded message informing me that action must be taken. In a Times magazine internet voting poll for person of the century, Hitler was running 3 in popularity. White supremacist advocates, whose hatreds include all people of color, Jews, Catholics and homosexuals were flooding cyber space with their voices.<br />
<br />
<br />
My quandaries about how to approach the civic challenge of hate speech come from the contradictions I find when I use my queer perspective. Anti-discrimination laws, yes; challenging the laws that uphold heterosexual social dominance, yes, and of course, anti-violence legislation, yes--but as Judith Butler has pointed out--the assumption that speech is the same as action leads to some unfortunate positions. For instance, the national policy of keeping gays under control in the military is based on this same belief--that conduct and speech are one so to declare one's homosexuality<br />
becomes the same as performing a homosexual act, resulting in the loss of freedom, not the protection of one. <br />
<br />
<br />
My history as a queer--and I use that word consciously not as a signifier of queer theory, but as an act of reclamation, as an act of anti-hate speech, because that is the word that haters used in the 1950s and that is now the word that stands in the fullness of our own culture--has shown me that one of the best ways to fight hate and its speech is to refuse the victim category on which it is so dependent. From the 1950s on, gay people in America organized culturally and politically to limit the effect homophobic words and actions could have on their lives. A homophile civil rights movement was born, small journals were published, with articles debunking the onslaught of religious, legal and medical hate speech and then in 1969, a ragtail group of drag queens, bull dykes and their admirers turned the discourse of hate on its head. From the Stonewall Rebellion on, gay people have poured their energies into lessening the impact of hate speech in their lives and on their psyches, while at the same time pushing at the state to include us in the Bill of Rights.<br />
<br />
<br />
A quandary--the most powerful example of the magical loss of distance between speech and action are the words of the same forces of the state that we want to empower to protect us form hate speech. "You are sentenced to die," and death does enter the room. "We declare war on you," and whole cities fall. In the hands of the conservatives or reactionary forces, protective legislation becomes a weapon against those labeled obscene or socially suspect.<br />
<br />
As a Jew, I face another quandary--I know my history, I know that like racism, anti Semitism is one of the most powerful forces of hatred in the world, and yet I do not agree with the laws that want to control the hate sites of the internet. I have read the words of hate on my own computer screen--words that say the only problem with Hitler is that he did not finish the job, that say Jews control the world, that Jews are Christ killers, that the Holocaust is a figment of the Jewish imagination. I have read the words that in an eerie way sum up my life--with a few adjustments--"Kill the mongrel Jew commie pornographer sodomites." Just as I have read "if we are all lucky, all homosexuals will be dead in ten years."<br />
<br />
I do not believe that this kind of hatred, this transforming hatred that becomes an altered consciousness, can or should be hidden away or that it can be legislated out of existence. I want to know that these words live still, that there there are Americans who say they are willing to kill Jews to protect the Christian white way. I need to face this reality, to know how much more work has to be done, to know how we as progressive forces must organize in the face of consuming hatred. We must take action, and we must make connections--between other genocides and turned backs--I am thinking of Rwanda--but if a man wants to say the death of six million Jews did not happen, what purpose is served by making him a criminal, by passing laws that make it illegal to speak or lie about history? If the deaths mean nothing to him, how do we strengthen our own freedoms by enabling the state to police our statements--in this case, a statement that seems insane, but in the next instance, one that we hold dear. I am afraid the issue is too complex for such a response.<br />
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Some final comments. I do not want the state to have the power to silence what it considers painful speech. I do want the state to be challenged for its support of systems of power, systems of exclusions that engender the need to hate. I more fear the hate speech of the powerful, our religious and military leaders, because it is not seen as such, because it is delivered as if it is rational policy, right and moral thinking, patriotism.<br />
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I will do battle with the anti Semites, with the queer haters, with the women haters, by engaging in cultural work and political struggle that will, I hope, make their voices meager things. I will join with others in the creation of narratives of liberation, narratives fed by all the cultural and political voices of the world in which the desire to live with understanding of difference speaks louder than the need to hate.<br />
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Sometimes the words we think we cannot say are more powerful than the ones we do--like the word, sorry.<br />
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(Crusader, I typed fast so there may be some editing that needs to be done--like I spelled quandary wrong in part 1.)<br />
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<b>Now it is a late cold May night here in Melbourne in 2017. So many years later, now in the Trump time where poses of hate and ridicule are America's face of government. </b>Joan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-25005516871143827992017-05-29T03:18:00.000-07:002017-06-26T04:16:44.233-07:00Two Letters, 1964 and 1976<br />
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I am in the process of sorting papers for the two archives in my life, LHA and ALGA. All goes <i>piano, piano, slowly, slowly, </i>each year a growing column of talks given, of lives touching mine, of Australian moments which will live in Brooklyn while NYC streets will find themselves in Melbourne. Two letters stopped the sorting process, stopped the illusion that memory can be assured. The first from the first woman I loved, Carol Betty Lipman, We met in our last year at Queens College<i> </i>while I was living on Sixth Street on the Lower East Side --1960, perhaps, and Carol was still living at home with her family in Jamaica Estates in Queens---two separate worlds. I cannot tell the whole story here, I would never stop writing; just to say we became lovers even though she had to disobey her therapist at the time who warned her, "if you allow yourself to kiss a woman, you will be lost." Such warnings, such refusals to obey were part of queer life then. We did kiss, on the chewed up sofa in my one room flat, a kiss, a wanting I will never forget. Can words forget? There is no marble strong enough to hold on to that moment, only bodies that have already left. Carol and I lived together for a few years, and then she fell in love with another woman and I moved out of our shared two room apartment on the upper West Side, back to the lower East Side. A New York story, a lesbian story, deep enough for a lifetime. Written on a single sheet of lined pad paper in blue ink.<br />
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<i>Dear Joan-</i><br />
<i> Every day, I think to myself- how is Joan-what is she thinking? I wonder if I can ever really be happy, Joan. there are always so many problems. I would have called you tonight but every night I say to myself-she will ask why do you call. And whatever I answer means nothing to her anyway. If I say, I was worried about you--you would say you don't have to worry about me Carol. and if I said I was thinking of you, you would remain silent. And whatever else I might say would certainly upset you-so you see, I do not call you. I try not to be selfish although I would like to hear your voice and I miss you.</i><br />
<i> I wish our lives could meet sometimes but when they do, it is then that we are most apart. I think we are together in our separateness. It is quite sad to think that but I know it is true. I feel so much a part of you at times Joan.</i><br />
<i> Please stay well Joan.. In spite of what you may think, I still love you in my own way and I think you kn</i>ow <i>that.</i><br />
<i>Carol</i><br />
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Carol died of ovarian cancer in 1966.<br />
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The second letter, also in hand, the bookkeeping sloping script of my mother, Regina.</div>
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Dec/21/1976</div>
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Joan Dear=</div>
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We received your card. It is quite difficult to communicate at this time. Somehow, when I permit myself to remember beautiful happenings I live the Christmas 2 years ago--I think it was then, when Mabel [Hampton], Lillian [Foster], I, you and Valerie had that fantastic day--so real, so beautiful, one can't live on past feasts, and it is impossible to reconstruct the past to the present.If I sound maudlin or depressed, that could be the gift I give myself to be truly emotional for all the beauty that one has experienced. Possibly in the future, I will recall the beauty that exists now--I don't know--I shall hope I can salvage and create my own myths. Do I sound despondent--Not so, just feeling all emotionalities and longing for the sight and feel of you. I love you so much. I am enclosing a check for $20. have a feast or a drink on me--Also am enclosing a $10 bill. Send it to Mabel and Lillian for their wine or whatever. I salute all of you, your beauty and your love.</div>
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Regards to Debbie, Valerie, all.</div>
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Mother</div>
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Regina Nestle, 1958 (?) NYC<br />
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My Jewish working class mother, under deep strain trying to protect her grandchildren, Lisa and Robin, from the violence of their father, writes from California, cherishing her time back in 13A in an apartment filled with lesbians of all ages and the becoming collections of LHA.<br />
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I carried these frail papers with me, from NY to Melbourne, almost 20 years ago, my documents of being, and now I prepare to send them back to where it all happened, to LHA , but really to you, to ask you to cherish your markings of love, and to give heart comfort room, as Hopkins said, for complicated lives lived outside the more rewarded, more known, territories.<br />
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Lillian Foster, 1938<br />
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Mabel Hampton, 1980, at 13AJoan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-30485847880619134332017-04-05T02:26:00.000-07:002017-04-05T16:30:46.074-07:00Journal Moment, 2004/April 2017I have stopped talking at least in a blog way, it seems. 77 soon and going slowly. Doing what I have done before when I sense a transitional time coming, getting papers in order to find their home in the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Today I worked on gathering my set of the minutes of OWN, the Older Women's Network, founded in the 1980s by Naomi Replansky and Eva Kolisch which met monthly in the community room of Westbeth in the Village. Women, gay and and straight, feminists all, old friends and new, aged together, sharing their celebrations, their struggles, their political insights, their practical knowledges of medical and legal care, even dance steps. I sat at the table with them from time to time and thus my copies of the minutes, the maps of the conversations. a portrait of aging that will enrich the archives collection. At some point,OWN started a journal group and I was part of it for a short while--with Eva, Edith, Kathy, Joan D. and Helen. Some of these journal offerings will be housed at the archives as well.<br />
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Here is one of my journal entries, written when I was no longer living in the Northern Hemisphere.<br />
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Dear Eva, Edith, Joan and Kathy--Thank you for keeping the journals coming; I can't tell you what it means to me. I am a little rusty as you will see.<br />
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<b>Journal--July 16, 2004</b></div>
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Now towards evening after a cold blue day with gusting winds, our winter, remember, your summer.</div>
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I have just finished reading a most Australian novel, Tim Winton's <i>Dirt Music,</i> full of sea and escarpment, men and women struggling to come back from the blows of life. I start here because of the hugeness of my task--I am now the Australian Joan and how did this come to be? I wander the inner suburb streets of West Brunswick with their early 20th century terrace cottages and its newer immigrant housing, nothing above three stories, roofs of terra cotta shingles or of corrugated steel, blue cobbled-stone lane ways making for short cuts behind the houses, shortcuts into the history of night soil pick ups, reminding me of small towns in Ireland, the unevenness of the stones beneath my feet. How do I tell you of my life here, how do I keep intact all my histories, all my longings for New York and my friends of so many years, and the small garden that now fronts the room in which I write--seldom write.</div>
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For 35 years I lived 13 stories above the ground, never in all my years did I live in a house--a fact when discovered by my Melbourne friends sends them into wonderment. We have a front door and a backdoor, a native garden in the back, made by Di's hand, two baby gum trees [now soaring adults, 2017], an ancient grass tree, banksia bushes and callistemon shrubs--all with their unflower-like flowers, long spikes with small curled-in tendrils that slowly unfold into very red red berry-like blooms, full of nectar for the native honey-eaters, small birds so badly treated by the intrusive English sparrows, whose progenitors came in cages hauled here by home-sick Europeans. You see, I cannot speak of this place without these Australian themes--the fragility of an ancient land, of biologies that do not fit a Northern hemisphere way of seeing, of tensions between making home and invasions.</div>
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I wonder after reading Winton's book if I am too old for this land. His characters make long treks over impossible terrains, fleeing from pain, only to find each other in calamitous accidents like sea planes crashing into isolated top-end lagoons. On earlier trips, when I was stronger, Di took me into the central desert, a red rock strewn plain, with its blue tongued lizards, wild camels, strutting emus, mystical Uluru, pitted with stories of first Australians' origins. As Di walked through an ancient passage in the rock formations known as Kata Tjuta, I huddled in the shade thrown by its rolling shapes and thought I was on another planet. By the end of our three week trip, I had grown used to the feel of hard scrabble under my boots. But I was still a tourist then, with my own home on 92nd street. and it was six years, before the second cancer. Now I am a different traveler.</div>
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I am really wondering if I can make a life here, other then waiting for Di to come home from work. I make sure there is a good dinner waiting for her when she comes through the door. I do some helpful, I hope, things for students at the University--I just served as an examiner of a short novel handed in as fulfillment for a MA degree in Creative Writing. About gay male sex in public places, called "The Park Bench," and it was quite good--my reputation precedes me, I joked when the woman from Student Affairs called to ask me if I would serve in this capacity. I bake apple pies for Anna, our wonderful neighbor from Calabria who is always giving us home made tomato sauces and small salamis which she has hand stuffed and tied so tightly.Our little dog Cello insists on his walks, giving me time to ruminate in those aforementioned streets, but how do I make a life here, here with my aging body and my New York self and the longing for my friends.</div>
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Your journals tell me how we all keep going and more, find the gardens and the touch that for long minutes still the worry.</div>
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In March, 2017, with La Professoressa</div>
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April 6, 2017.</div>
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I have made a life here--with wonderful friends, new discoveries, my darling holding on, and I know how fortunate I am, in this world where so many live in fear of what is falling from their skies, from what awaits them at the border, from an enforced paralysis of movement by state sanctioned hatreds. Thank you all.</div>
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Joan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-7907892987448423542017-01-28T22:17:00.001-08:002017-01-28T22:17:02.057-08:00Hold the Line - Pete Seeger<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eOKMx1xfj-4" width="459"></iframe>Joan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-81209914507811407412016-11-29T15:46:00.000-08:002016-11-29T16:04:27.340-08:00The Hard Words We Need, the Words of Gideon Levy<div id="m_2345394952833293807ygrp-mlmsg" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12.8px;">
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif;">"For supporting Israel, all is forgivable<u></u><u></u></span></h3>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">The Israeli right has invented a new hybrid tool: the pro-Israel anti-Semite. It turns out that such a thing is possible. You can be an anti-Semite and still be okay is certain circles in Israel. The main thing is being “a friend of Israel,” which today means loving the Israeli occupation.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">In return for supporting the Israeli occupation indefinitely, for encouraging the settler enterprise, the Israeli right is prepared to forgive anything. Anything at all. To forget the past, turn a blind eye to the present, mortgage the future, and relinquish any vestige of morality. Just let us go on building in the territories, that’s all we care about. To perpetuate the occupation, the Israeli right will sacrifice even the fate of America’s Jews, pawn its connection with them, ignore their anxieties and dismiss their concerns. <u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, another extreme right-wing figure, once said: “For the sake of Israel, lying is permitted.” The limits of this dubious assertion have now been woefully stretched by Israel’s right-wing settlers. For Israel, it’s permissible to support even anti-Semitism, extreme nationalism, chauvinism and racism of every sort. The stretch began with the Israeli public’s overly broad support for candidate Donald Trump, perhaps the broadest of any other constituency outside the US, until it arrived at the ministerial letter congratulating the newly appointed Bannon."</span></div>
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<span class="m_2345394952833293807yiv8599124179gmail-date-display-single"><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Friday, November 25, 2016</span></i></span><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><u></u><u></u></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/when-anti-semitism-not-anti-semitism-when-it-s-trump-loving-friend-israeli-509907827&source=gmail&ust=1480548583383000&usg=AFQjCNGPWEjk0b6By1Fvn5-USdoYYzeISw" href="http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/when-anti-semitism-not-anti-semitism-when-it-s-trump-loving-friend-israeli-509907827" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">Middle East Eye</span></a><u></u><u></u></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #336699; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 27pt;">When Is Anti-Semitism Not Anti-Semitism? When It’s From a Trump-Loving ‘Friend’ of Israel<u></u><u></u></span></h1>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.commondreams.org/author/gideon-levy&source=gmail&ust=1480548583383000&usg=AFQjCNEFRaGS1SHAgv5158F8YtFzI19jgQ" href="http://www.commondreams.org/author/gideon-levy" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">Gideon Levy</span></a><u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/11/25/when-anti-semitism-not-anti-semitism-when-its-trump-loving-friend-israel&source=gmail&ust=1480548583383000&usg=AFQjCNHQCKEJ5mGqEarB48erLKt83n0xAQ" href="http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/11/25/when-anti-semitism-not-anti-semitism-when-its-trump-loving-friend-israel" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">http://www.commondreams.org/<wbr></wbr>views/2016/11/25/when-anti-<wbr></wbr>semitism-not-anti-semitism-<wbr></wbr>when-its-trump-loving-friend-<wbr></wbr>israel</a></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://commons.commondreams.org/t/when-is-anti-semitism-not-anti-semitism-when-it-s-from-a-trump-loving-friend-of-israel/33607&source=gmail&ust=1480548583383000&usg=AFQjCNF2BIfpIngXcWeCn2vKhD3cRrQACQ" href="http://commons.commondreams.org/t/when-is-anti-semitism-not-anti-semitism-when-it-s-from-a-trump-loving-friend-of-israel/33607" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank"><span style="color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; text-decoration: none;"> <span class="m_2345394952833293807yiv8599124179gmail-comment-count">0</span> Comments</span></a><u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">Critics have pointed to Bannon’s “promotion of antisemitism, misogyny, racism, and Islamophobia” as disqualifying him from any White House post. (Photo: Reuters)<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">"The only message of congratulations that Steve Bannon has received from abroad, apparently, since being named the senior strategic adviser in Donald Trump’s White House, is one that arrived on official Israel government stationery and was signed by Israeli Minister of Agriculture Uri Ariel. <u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">The Anti-Defamation League, long prominent among American Jewish organisations battling anti-Semitism, published a sharply worded announcement signed by its CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, urging that Bannon’s appointment be rescinded; the Reform Movement’s Religious Action Center and others pointed to Bannon’s “promotion of antisemitism, misogyny, racism and Islamophobia” as disqualifying him from any White House post; and local Jewish Community Relations Councils (eg <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/jewish_federation_condemns_trumps_bannon_appointment/&source=gmail&ust=1480548583383000&usg=AFQjCNFWzI0Rl4FlgEDRvbmwcGhAiUwZxQ" href="http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/jewish_federation_condemns_trumps_bannon_appointment/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">New Haven</span></a>, <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://us10.campaign-archive1.com/?u%3Df745cce2c470d30734f30ee81%26id%3D488bfb2de8%26e%3D%255BUNIQID%255D&source=gmail&ust=1480548583383000&usg=AFQjCNE0lNU0UhFmmQQuqiLA_kX6pL4Cyg" href="http://us10.campaign-archive1.com/?u=f745cce2c470d30734f30ee81&id=488bfb2de8&e=%5BUNIQID%5D" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">San Francisco</span></a>) promptly published similar statements even as the leadership at AIPAC equivocated.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">In return for supporting the Israeli occupation indefinitely, for encouraging the settler enterprise, the Israeli right is prepared to forgive anything. Anything at all.<u></u><u></u></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Meantime Israel’s Ariel hastens to send Bannon his blessings. Ariel, who is from the Jewish Home party, the party of the settler movement and the most extreme right-wing group in the Knesset and a senior partner in the Netanyahu government’s coalition, was pleased at the appointment of a man whose ex-wife has accused of anti-Semitism. “There are no words to describe this shame,” fumed Knesset member Stav Shaffir of Israel’s Labor Party in a Facebook <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.facebook.com/stavshaffir&source=gmail&ust=1480548583383000&usg=AFQjCNHXGTBodibP1QkhqWWnK0SKNar1gg" href="https://www.facebook.com/stavshaffir" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">post</span></a> (Hebrew).<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Knesset member Stav Sappir of the Israeli Labor party posted a scathing response to Ariel’s ensdorsement of Bannon (Hebrew) on her Facebook page: she wrote. “Rabbis from all across the USA are publishing denouncements… [and] dozens of Jewish organisations are campaigning against the appointment; the rest of the world – left and right alike – are warning of the danger in appointing a proud racist to such a sensitive American government post… while, along with Minister Ariel of Israel, those congratulating Bannon on his appointment include the leadership of the Ku Klux Klan, some prominent American anti-Semites, and the American Nazi Party.” <u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;">For supporting Israel, all is forgivable<u></u><u></u></span></h3>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Israeli right has invented a new hybrid tool: the pro-Israel anti-Semite. It turns out that such a thing is possible. You can be an anti-Semite and still be okay in certain circles in Israel. The main thing is being "a friend of Israel," which today means loving the Israeli occupation. In return for supporting the Israeli occupation indefinitely, for encouraging the settler enterprise, the Israeli right is prepared to forgive anything. Anything at all. To forget the past, turn a blind eye to the present, mortgage the future, and relinquish any vestige of morality. Just let us go on building n the territories, that's all we care about. To perpetuate the occupation, the Israeli right will sacrifice even the fate of America's Jews, pawn its connection with them, ignore their anxieties and dismiss their concerns. Former Prime Minister Yizhak Shamir, another extreme right-wing figure, once said: "For the sake of Israel, lying is permitted." The limits of this dubious assertion have now been woefully stretched by Israel's right wing settlers. For Israel, it's permissible to support even anti-Semitism, extreme nationalism, chauvinism and racism of every sort. The stretch began with the Israeli public's overly broad support for candidate Donald Trump, perhaps the broadest of any other constituency outside the US, until it arrived at the ministerial letter congratulating the newly appointed Bannon.</span></h3>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Israel loves Trump</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Unlike in many other countries, notably in Western Europe, no Israeli official figure has expressed reservations about Trump’s electoral win. This turn of events is not attributable solely to any threat to Israel. It was driven by authentic support for this problematic president-elect. Evidently the Israeli right, with its nationalism and its racism, finds a common language with the American right, similarly nationalist and racist.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Even worse, the global battle against anti-Semitism, a platform where the rightists typically scream loudest, begins to some degree to resemble a manipulative and cynical (and currently less useful) ploy. Suddenly, being anti-Semitic is no longer so terrible now. Suddenly it’s forgivable, especially if you hate Muslims and Arabs. So long as you are “pro-Israel”.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">The Jewish and Israel right has issued a blanket pardon to pro-Israel anti-Semites, who will run the next US government. Like pornography, anti-Semitism now becomes a matter of geography, self-interest and cost-effectiveness. Right-wing American anti-Semites are no longer seen as anti-Semites as long as they support the occupation. Israel’s right wing finds anti-Semites only on the left. Roger Waters, an upstanding man of conscience, is anti-Semitic; Steve Bannon, openly racist and a closet anti-Semite, is Israel’s friend.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Jewish and Israeli activists who left no stone unturned in the search for signs of anti-Semitism, who saw every parking ticket issued to an American Jew as a hate crime, who screamed bloody murder when any Jew was robbed or Jewish headstone desecrated, are now kashering vermin. Suddenly they’re not sure that what we have here is that old disease, anti-Semitism.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When anti-Semitism is not anti-Semitism<u></u><u></u></span></h3>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Jurist Alan Dershowitz, pro-Israel crusader and propagandist extraordinaire, has already come to Bannon’s defence. In his Haaretz <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.753694&source=gmail&ust=1480548583383000&usg=AFQjCNH7ET4v8M9iFhvifjDD6CJ_dTdz9A" href="http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.753694" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">op-ed</span></a> of 27 November, Dershowitz opined that the man whose wife testified that he didn’t want to send his children to school with Jews is not an anti-Semite. “The claim was simply made by his former wife in a judicial proceeding, thus giving it no special weight,” commented Dershowitz with pseudo-Talmudic aplomb. Dershowitz was told by an Orthodox Jew who once worked with Bannon that the man had never shown signs of anti-Semitism. Suddenly that’s enough for Dershowitz. Suddenly it’s all right to distinguish between anti-Semitism and racism.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">'These racists love Israel because Israel acts out their own fantasies – subjugating the Arabs, abusing the Muslims, expelling and killing, arresting, interrogating and torturing them, razing their homes, shredding their honour'<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Israel’s ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer, naturally made haste to join the chorus, declaring that he “looked forward to working with Bannon.” And how. They see eye to eye on everything: there is no such thing as a Palestinian, there is no occupation, illegal settlements are forever, leftists and liberals are traitors.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">For Dermer, the Likud ambassador in Washington, friend of the Tea Party, boycotter of J Street, who in normal diplomatic circumstances would long since have been declared persona non grata in the USA and thrown out on his ear, the election results and the new appointments are like a brand new day dawning. Dermer will feel right at home with conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, another Islamophobe slated for a senior appointment; Dermer will love working with Bannon, and Mike Huckabee is so precisely his cup of tea. Dermer, remember, received the 2016 Freedom Flame award from the CSP, an organisation whose banner is Islamophobia and for whom Dermer is a hero.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Racists united<u></u><u></u></span></h3>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">These and other likeminded racists are Israel’s best friends in the United States. They have common cause with right-wing racists in Europe. When supporting the occupation is the one measure of friendship, Israel has no other friends apart from racists and extreme nationalists. This should have evoked tremendous shame in Israel: tell us who your friends are and we will tell them who you are. With friends like these, who needs enemies? The disgrace of their friendship is sufficient. But Israel apparently takes pride in its friends.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">These racists love Israel because Israel acts out their own fantasies – subjugating the Arabs, abusing the Muslims, expelling and killing, arresting, interrogating and torturing them, razing their homes, shredding their honour. How this bunch of lowlifes would love to go there. Till now it’s been possible only in Israel, the light unto the nations in this context. Long gone are the days when a handful of South African Jews went to prison with Nelson Mandela. Now, well-connected Jews in America support the nation’s new rulers: racists and anti-Semites. <u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">“The Palestinians call the white nationalist Bannon an anti-Semite, and AIPAC and Dershowitz think he’s not such a bad guy,” commented Palestinian-American author Susan Abulhawa on her Facebook page. Abulhawa was expelled by Israel at the Allenby Bridge last year. The US and Israel are sharing the same values these days.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">All that’s left now is to wait and see whether the new American regime will deliver the goods. Will the declared Islamophobia and xenophobia of several of its main figures lead to blind support for the Israeli occupation, even more so than under previous American administrations? Will the Israeli right wing’s bet pay off?<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Liberal Jewish dilemma<u></u><u></u></span></h3>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">There is also the matter of what will happen among liberal Jewish circles in the United States, who are a substantial segment of the American Jewish community. Will these developments change their attitude to Israel? Rightist, ultra-nationalist Israel, with its overt support for Trump and its senior minister who sends his congratulations to Steve Bannon – is that a country worthy of automatic support from America’s Jews? Israel, stalwart friend of the American hard right – is that an Israel whose flag liberal American Jews can proudly wave?<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Over the next few months, we will find out. Maybe, paradoxically, the rise of the American right, alongside a regime no less rightist and nationalist in Israel, will shake up the liberal Jews of America and pose hard questions they have never faced. Until now."<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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Joan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-45479508680977105582016-09-20T17:11:00.003-07:002016-09-20T17:11:59.452-07:00Connections Made, Connections Hold<header class="story-header" id="story-header" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-size: 16px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="story-meta " id="story-meta" style="margin-bottom: 20px;">
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Theater Artists Protest Cancellation of Black Lives Matter Benefit</h1>
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<span class="byline" itemprop="author creator" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person" style="font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-size: 0.6875rem; font-weight: 700; line-height: 0.75rem; margin-right: 12px;">By <span class="byline-author" data-byline-name="ANDREW R. CHOW" itemprop="name" style="white-space: nowrap;">ANDREW R. CHOW</span></span><time class="dateline" content="2016-09-20T02:00:04-04:00" datetime="2016-09-20T02:00:04-04:00" itemprop="dateModified" style="color: black; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-size: 0.6875rem; line-height: 0.75rem; margin-left: 0px; white-space: nowrap;">SEPT. 19, 2016</time></div>
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<div aria-label="tools" class="sharetools theme-classic sharetools-story-meta-footer " data-author="By ANDREW R. CHOW" data-description="More than 50 people signed a letter condemning Feinstein’s/54 Below for canceling the concert event, “Broadway Supports Black Lives Matter.”" data-media="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/09/19/arts/19BLM-ITEM/19BLM-ITEM-jumbo.jpg" data-publish-date="September 19, 2016" data-shares="facebook,twitter,pinterest,email,show-all,save" data-title="Theater Artists Protest Cancellation of Black Lives Matter Benefit" data-url="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/19/theater/black-lives-matter-artists-protest-cancellation-of-benefit.html" id="sharetools-story-meta-footer" role="group">
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<img alt="" class="media-viewer-candidate" data-mediaviewer-caption="The actress Kathleen Chalfant, who signed a letter of protest over 54 Below’s action. “I was very distressed to discover that, in order to support one movement I thought was important, there was some kind of peculiar political test,” she said." data-mediaviewer-credit="Sara Krulwich/The New York Times" data-mediaviewer-src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/09/19/arts/19BLM-ITEM/19BLM-ITEM-superJumbo.jpg" itemid="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/09/19/arts/19BLM-ITEM/19BLM-ITEM-blog427.jpg" itemprop="url" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/09/19/arts/19BLM-ITEM/19BLM-ITEM-blog427.jpg" style="display: block; height: auto; max-width: 100%; width: 300px;" /><div class="media-action-overlay" style="border-radius: 6px; border: 1px solid rgba(200, 200, 200, 0.8); bottom: 15px; cursor: pointer; left: 15px; opacity: 0; position: absolute; transition: opacity 0.2s ease-in; z-index: 5;">
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<figcaption class="caption" itemprop="caption description" style="color: #666666; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-size: 0.8125rem; line-height: 1.0625rem; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span class="caption-text">The actress Kathleen Chalfant, who signed a letter of protest over 54 Below’s action. “I was very distressed to discover that, in order to support one movement I thought was important, there was some kind of peculiar political test,” she said.</span><span class="credit" itemprop="copyrightHolder" style="color: #999999; display: inline-block; font-size: 0.6875rem; line-height: 1rem;"><span class="visually-hidden" style="border: 0px; clip: rect(0px 0px 0px 0px); height: 1px; margin: -1px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: absolute; width: 1px;">Credit</span>Sara Krulwich/The New York Times</span></figcaption></figure><div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="180" data-total-count="180" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-size: 1.0625rem; line-height: 1.625rem; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 75px; max-width: none; width: 570px;">
A group of actors, playwrights and others in the theater world <a href="https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/theater-artists-solidarity-blm/" style="color: #326891;">signed a letter</a>protesting the recent cancellation of a Black Lives Matter benefit concert at Feinstein’s/54 Below.</div>
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The protest was led by the <a href="https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/" style="color: #326891;">Jewish Voice for Peace’s</a> Artists and Cultural Workers Council, and the letter includes signatures from the playwright Annie Baker, the novelist Alice Walker, and the actors Wallace Shawn and Kathleen Chalfant.</div>
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Earlier this month, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/theater/black-lives-matter-benefit-feinsteins-54-below-canceled-israel.html" style="color: #326891;">the owners of 54 Below decided to cancel</a> the concert, set for Sept. 11, titled “Broadway Supports Black Lives Matter,” saying in a statement that they supported the Black Lives Matter movement but disagreed with a “platform that accuses Israel of genocide and endorses a range of boycott and sanction actions.”</div>
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The letter in response, which has been signed by more than 50 people, asserts that the cancellation “both undermines the visionary leadership of the Movement for Black Lives and contributes to the institutionalized silencing of advocates for Palestinian human rights.”</div>
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The letter continues: “We call on theater venues, artists, and supporters in New York City and beyond to proudly support the Movement for Black Lives and its inspiring solidarity with the Palestinian people.”</div>
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Other signers include the playwright Sarah Ruhl, the cabaret singer Justin Vivian Bond and the actress Tonya Pinkins.</div>
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In an interview, Ms. Chalfant said, “I was very distressed to discover that, in order to support one movement I thought was important, there was some kind of peculiar political test.”</div>
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“To be opposed to the action of the Israeli government is not the same thing as being anti-Semitic,” she said.</div>
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Some of the Black Lives Matter benefit performances were moved to a show on Sunday at Joe’s Pub, which sold out.</div>
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A version of this article appears in print on September 19, 2016, on pa</div>
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Joan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-11699746061355830482016-09-01T03:22:00.001-07:002016-09-01T03:23:51.564-07:00Living Intersectionalities<br />
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Chinese & Indian Australians: queer, here and in need of Safe Schools</h1>
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<li class="author">By <a href="https://overland.org.au/author/audrey-yue/" property="dc:creator schema:creator" style="color: black; text-decoration: none;" typeof="schema:Person">Audrey Yue</a> and <a href="https://overland.org.au/author/c-dcruz/" property="dc:creator schema:creator" style="color: black; text-decoration: none;" typeof="schema:Person">Carolyn D'Cruz</a></li>
<li class="date" style="font-weight: bold;"><time content="2016-08-31" datetime="2016-08-31" property="dc:created schema:datePublished">31.Aug.16</time></li>
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<a href="https://overland.org.au/2016/08/asian-australians-against-safe-schools-a-response/" style="color: black;">As reported in <em>Overland</em> yesterday</a>, the New South Wales parliament last week tabled an Anti-Safe Schools Petition of 17,000 signatures from the Chinese-Australian community. The petition raises a few key concerns about the Safe Schools program, namely that it promotes gender fluidity contrary to cultural and religious beliefs; discriminates parents and children from other cultural backgrounds who have a view that sexual relationships involving male and female is normative, and prevents them from teaching these norms to their children; is not inclusive of Australia’s cultural and religious diversity; and does not address other forms of bullying such as those based on race or physical appearance. The following day, on 25 August, the chairperson of the Confederation of Indian Australian Associations and the president of the Chinese Association of Victoria both expressed the same troubling concerns as those cited in the petition. Two days later, former High Court Judge and prominent gay advocate Michael Kirby responded to the media by backing the Safe Schools program and stating that Australia, unlike the Australian Chinese community, has<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-26/former-high-court-judge-backs-safe-schools-program/7790666" style="color: black;"> ‘moved on from not discussing homosexuality’</a>.<br />
Implicit in these concerns are claims about the incompatibility between cultural identity and sexual identity. Implicit here too is the separation between sexuality and culture. Sexuality is viewed narrowly as sexual practices rather than as a set of learned, culturally inscribed values, meanings, symbols, habits and rituals that we live and experience alone and with each other. Culture is also viewed narrowly through its anthropological lens as a set of shared beliefs and customs of a group of people, rather than the arena where issues such as identity are played out and contested. Central too is a contestation of values, between Western sexual ‘progress’ and non-Western sexual ‘backwardness’.<br />
The petition does not recognise the long histories of sexual diversity in Chinese and Indian cultures. In artworks from archaeological digs, pictures in sacred texts, stories from literary classics, and in practices of everyday life, there are plenty of examples of diverse sexual practices and gender expressions. From as early as the third century in ancient China, political ideologies, philosophies, and religions have regarded same-sex intimacy as a norm in everyday life. Poems and courtly journals from the Ming, Lin and Song dynasties have extolled the virtues of male friendships and some have even regarded them as neutral and exemplary. Similarly, in the ancient texts of Hinduism such as the Kama Sutra, sex and same-sex eroticism are celebrated as central and natural components of everyday life. Taught in schools, celebrated in operas and embraced in popular films, these practices are respected in Indian and Chinese cultures. In 1997 China decriminalised homosexuality and in 2009 India officially recognised its third gender by giving the <em>hijra</em>, a person who is born male or intersex but dresses in feminine clothing and uses female pronouns, the right to vote. So it is not historically accurate to claim that the cultural and religious values of Chinese and Indian communities are at odds with gender diverse expressions. In fact, as Chinese-Australian writer Benjamin Law concurs in his tongue-in-cheek gonzo journalism book, <em>Gaysia</em>, ‘Of all the continents in the world, Asia is the gayest!’<br />
Moreover, by suggesting that gender fluidity is contrary to cultural and religious beliefs, the petition also denies the presence of LGBTIQ people everywhere, including in Australia’s Chinese and Indian communities. (In <em>Sex by Numbers</em>, David Spiegelhalter, a statistics professor at Cambridge, revisited Kinsey’s contested claims that 10 per cent of the population are gay, and proved Kinsey was actually quite accurate. It is therefore prudent to proclaim there are at least 10 per cent of people in these communities are LGBTIQ-identified.)<br />
In fact, anti-bullying support resources for Chinese and Indian LGBTIQ people are extremely important as they confront multiple layers of discrimination in their everyday lives: the gendered racism and hetero-sexism of the mainstream predominantly Anglo and straight community, the hetero-sexism and patriarchy of their ethnic communities, and the racism and hetero-sexism of other straight ethnic communities.<br />
Even in mainstream predominantly Anglo LGBTIQ communities, sexualised racism works to situate Asian queers as both hypervisible and invisible at the same time: hypervisible through the exoticisation, fetishisation and sometimes stigmatisation of skin colour, (ask any Asian male who uses Grindr); invisible, because cultural identities and heritage are often relegated or not recognised as part of queer social life. Coupled with Australia’s white immigration policy that has historically emasculated Asian men by preventing them from bringing their wives or inter-marrying, and Australia’s media that has consistently stereotyped Asian women as either too feminised or too passive, Chinese and Indian LGBTIQ folk experience multi-layered discrimination at the intersections of these histories and practices.<br />
For young people who are also experiencing life-cycle transitions, these intersections are accentuated. As they encounter the physical and social change that falls between childhood and adulthood, they are also coming to terms with who and what they want to be. Just as straight young people embark on life-cycle transition with trepidation, so too are Chinese and Indian youths, straight and queer alike. Some straight kids, especially those who are lithe and smaller in musculature, are also often misread as effeminate. Some queer kids, who may choose to ‘come out’ by disclosing their sexual identities, are sometimes ostracised from their families and ethnic communities. All of which makes the support resources the Safe Schools program provides all the more important. As the 2015 Mission Australian Youth Survey reports, equity and discrimination are one of the top three issues ranked by young people as the most important to them. In claiming that the Safe Schools anti-bullying only addresses one form of discrimination (sexual), the petition fails to see that for LGBTIQ people from culturally and linguistically diverse and Indigenous backgrounds, experiences of discrimination are always intersectional and interrelated.<br />
The Safe Schools program emerged from evidence-based research that there are and will continue to be young people who are same-sex attracted and gender questioning, and thus vulnerable to bullying and self-loathing. These young people need access to information that can help make sense of their feelings and experiences. They need to hear that there is nothing psychologically wrong with them and that they do not have to be forced to conform to rigid gender identity and sexuality norms that suppress their own sense of self, a self that does no harm to others. Their peers need the same education so that they do not fall into bullying or discriminatory behaviour, which will cause irreparable damage to young LGBTIQ folk.<br />
Safe Schools cannot be a question of weighing the values of cultural and religious beliefs of migrants against the lives of young sexually and gender diverse children and teenagers, some of who will be from migrant backgrounds themselves. We know that migrant and LGBTIQ identities are not mutually exclusive. There <em>are</em> queer Chinese and queer Indian people. Our multicultural nation needs to get used to that fact. We’re here, we’re queer and we are not prepared to allow young queer folk from migrant communities to experience the same kinds of isolation and alienation that many of us had to grow up with.<br />
Moreover, the purported cultural and religious values pitted against LGBTIQ folk by segments of the Australian Chinese and Indian communities can be equally found in Christian cultural and religious beliefs that still pervade much of Western and (white) Australian culture. We do not need to look far to see that the language of the anti-Safe Schools petition lodged by members of the Australian Chinese community in NSW, whose sentiments were supported by segments of the Australian Indian community, is remarkably similar to that expressed by the Australian Christian Lobby.<br />
As a nation, we need to recognise that migrants and LGBTIQ people both share common histories of marginality. To suggest that ‘the Chinese community need to be told that Australia has moved on from not discussing homosexuality’ is to suggest that migrant communities and queer individuals cannot coincide and that the Australian nation is homogenous. For queer migrants, there is no easy way of separating one category of identity from the other; both markers sit within the same body as neither separable nor inseparable. And this should alert us to the fact that these identity markers also intersect with others – class, age, nationality and citizenship, disability – to name some of the more salient classifications of social differences. Attending to the intersectional and multi-dimensional aspects of difference does not call for a more general anti-bullying program to replace Safe Schools. Rather, it calls for highlighting the specificity of different forms of life experiences that can help young people navigate the difficult terrain of growing up and give them options for how to negotiate their gendered and sexual lives. Contrary to opinion from the anti-Safe school lobbyists, gender and sexuality educators are much better equipped to account for how sexuality and gender have come to operate and acquire their meaning in our society than those who have never studied this stuff. If we are to understand how bullying works in the school ground, the workplace, the media and even various cultural and religious beliefs, we need to give an account of how the marginal have come to be marked as lesser beings.<br />
Any responsible parent would not want to encourage or perpetuate an environment that produces bullying. All educators need to be made aware of the diversity of the students to which they have a duty of care, and be equipped to deal with such difference and deter prejudice and bullying. Every government ought to support programs that build environments that respect the diversity of its people and protect those who are marginalised, isolated or excluded from social life as a consequence of erroneous understandings of identity and prejudiced practices of past institutional arrangements (such as diagnosing homosexuality as a mental illness). The sooner the Australian nation cultivates the means in which to educate its people on how sexuality and gender diverse folk are present in all cultures, and that this does not have to spell incompatibility with religious belief, the better able our democracy will be able to live up to its name of governing for all.<br />
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<em>Image: Bengaluru Pride 2009, by <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lighttripper/albums/72157620702946040" style="color: black;">Vinayak Das</a></em><br />
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<footer style="font-family: "PT Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;"><div id="author-biography" style="clear: both; font-weight: bold; padding: 5px 10px;">
Audrey Yue is Director of the research Unit in Public Cultures and Associate Professor in Cultural Studies, University of Melbourne.<br />
Carolyn D’Cruz is a Senior Lecturer and Program Convenor of Gender, Sexuality and Diversity Studies at La Trobe University.</div>
</footer>Joan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7778256790604618167.post-26766336186038513132016-08-02T23:57:00.000-07:002016-08-23T21:39:37.362-07:00Listen to the Seen<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VJZIbqD6b-I/V6GNv5EY4JI/AAAAAAAAC8U/ZD_8Bpa3hZEyVawBpFtFyToB85Yq6h_aQCLcB/s1600/2005-04-13%2B11.37.34.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VJZIbqD6b-I/V6GNv5EY4JI/AAAAAAAAC8U/ZD_8Bpa3hZEyVawBpFtFyToB85Yq6h_aQCLcB/s320/2005-04-13%2B11.37.34.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Denver, Joan Nestle and Mabel Hampton looking out over Rocky Pond Pond in New Hampshire, Deb Edel's family vacation home, c. 1979</td></tr>
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I have been trying to sort my images, recreating the slide shows I with the help of comrades presented through the 1970s until the 90s, for the Lesbian Herstory Archives. All will be given to LHA to be available, but as I click the images over, through the years, I pause and feel the touch of lives, of love.<br />
I could use this space to rail at the uglinesses of our times, but in other places, these words are being said, by so many, and that is good. Here I will touch the past and what my life is like now.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GJQ7gx1p9c8/V6GOF3-akNI/AAAAAAAAC8Y/gpw5_f0irYQLUVlSShPDZ2bzqRQTinGXgCLcB/s1600/2016-04-24%2B16.09.32.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GJQ7gx1p9c8/V6GOF3-akNI/AAAAAAAAC8Y/gpw5_f0irYQLUVlSShPDZ2bzqRQTinGXgCLcB/s320/2016-04-24%2B16.09.32.jpg" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cello and Joan, on the deck at Dayehnu, Anglesea, Victoria, Australia, 2016 with my knitted blanket, the only thing I can knit</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eMOeV2149S8/V6GOT1wUmZI/AAAAAAAAC8c/e1Blu_2FxJUyxBy6_2msRdrugRLYNMQHgCLcB/s1600/2016-07-07%2B13.10.23.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eMOeV2149S8/V6GOT1wUmZI/AAAAAAAAC8c/e1Blu_2FxJUyxBy6_2msRdrugRLYNMQHgCLcB/s320/2016-07-07%2B13.10.23.jpg" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cello, age 16, a dear friend, West Brunswick, Australia, 2016<br />
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Intent, filled with their own lives, losing vision and strength in limbs as us, they look as hard as they can at the world around them--understanding what we will never know--but willing to sit beside, with horizons out of their control. An unseeing gaze that gives complete attention.<br />
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From another time, another place:</div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2McjPcFgAKM/V6GUXJn84RI/AAAAAAAAC8w/fmA9X2nkrpsQjcWv0MGS-UWa23YLV0WrgCLcB/s1600/2005-04-14%2B11.14.10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2McjPcFgAKM/V6GUXJn84RI/AAAAAAAAC8w/fmA9X2nkrpsQjcWv0MGS-UWa23YLV0WrgCLcB/s320/2005-04-14%2B11.14.10.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Marching, bare breasted down Fifth Avenue, NYC, after Giuliani threatened to arrest any woman who removed her top, Gay Pride, NYC, 1980s with images of Sonny Wainwright, writer, founder of Feminist Writers Group and Mabel Hampton held high<br />
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Oh Cello, the stories we could tell. Listen, listen.<br />
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Joan Nestlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01121582562666351548noreply@blogger.com4