Faggot Jody

“Faggot Jody.” A short story by Crunch.

5:49am was not 10:31pm and Faggot Jody knew that when he rolled his frame towards that awful blue light coming from his alarm clock and he thought to himself once and then again aloud: “Why suffer this shit if the alarm don’t never go off?” and with that Faggot Jody flipped the face of the clock and that blue light down, the sun had not yet begun to dance on the top of Faggot Jody’s bookshelves, nor had it begun to lead the normal procession of dawn and doom into the room but he still knew where things were and could make out how to get them and without even looking Faggot Jody reached for the pills on his nightstand while people yelled outside – some womyn and her daughter arguing about some man that someone was dating – Faggot Jody didn’t really care so he didn’t listen too close, only close enough to know something to gossip about once decent folk were up. “Horse pills” he thought as he swallowed, “I wonder how many punks they died trying to down these shits” he continued, “ . . . bigger than any dick I’ve ever given the pleasure of my lips.” he concluded dramatically and found some music to put on, it was just early enough, in his mind, to listen to Diana Ross without headphones and so Ms. Ross played and Faggot Jody thought about the sun and it’s coming and he thought on outside and how nice it is and his mind found a memory of walking from the store earlier that week and got mad thinking on how wicked folks is and the stoop conversations that went like

“Look at that punk, he think he a woman with his ole’ sissy ass.”

“It don’t make sense to be like that, waste of a man. His mama got to be mad she got some AIDS havin person for a chile”

or the ones that made him scared for his safety. Faggot Jody laid flat in the space of the bed where his dead lover had been and thought on the rumblings in his stomach, where they came from and how hunger felt different ever since he was hipped to the fact that he had caught the virus, hunger felt deeper, burned more, rearranged the inside parts till they felt on fire, wetness formed in his eyes and before Eugene would be there to wipe the tears away and smile, he had held him and told him not to worry about nothing, not the big, not the storms, not the kids screaming “Faggot Jody” at the tops of their beings as Jody switched down the boulevard, not nothing, and Eugene loved him down- Jody knew that to be true- down to the last anything. Gene was a blunt man, straight and blunt like the sex that dangled between his legs, he never measured things to wide nor did he say nothing but what was true for him and Jody knew that, Jody thought on the hospital halls, florescent lights, night setting and weakening pulses- the night Gene could no longer fight and Jody sat somewhere inside himself tending to spaces that needed help and order and he took a pull from his joint, let tears come, dry and come again for hours till the room was lit and the voices of those taunting children could be heard throughout as they walked off to the killing factories, their freedom cries rang rough against Jody’s tears. At some point, he found the mirror and let that image take hold, he studied himself – the parts loved and unloved- standing like womyn perched behind red curtains looking onto silence. Jody rubbed himself once across the chest and then slowly over stomach, to his growing sex and grabbed it. It moved and he sighed, again he tightened his grip and thought about cumming and decided against it, found a pen, and wrote a spell to himself. The room was warm by the time he looked up – familiar shades got trapped in his eyes and Jody stood again, walked around the room once and thought “it’s time I shower.”

Places of Healing.

 

I wish my experiences with health care were not lived through the parameters of race, class and gender, but they are. I cannot conceive of hospitals and medicine without thinking about the thousands of African slaves brought to this country and worked to their bones. I cannot conceive of hospitals and medicine without thinking about the thousands of Black womyn who were involuntarily sterilized in this country. I cannot conceive of hospitals or medicine without seeing my grandfather – in his winter – lying on the couch, exhausted and in pain from chemotherapy. I cannot conceive of medicine or hospitals without noticing that the majority of HIV/Aids deaths (and infections) in this country are usually poor people of color who have little to no access to the medicine and precious knowledge that would save our lives. These experiences stay with me. They are apart of my very being and breathe as real as I do.

A few months ago when I was diagnosed with having the HIV virus (something I will formerly address on this blog later- but it is part of the reason why post have been so scattered), I immediately found that having to come into more direct contact with Western medicine was going to be a rehashing and analysis of trauma. Part of the mission of this blog is to express and explore the human experience from the perspective of a Queer, Black, Male bodied, Communist and that still holds true. I am excited to start a new chapter in the life of this blog- starting with this post. I hope it makes up for my long absence.

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“That’s a lot of trauma.”

The White doctor uttered as I sat in the chair giving him a rundown of my childhood. I suppose that I can be summed up in that manner: trauma. I also suppose that most of the people I grew up with can be assessed the same . . . But our lives are not merely death marches. People of color in this country have had to make beauty from the torn shards or poverty and destruction. And so it naturally follows that we would not solely view our lives as that. I may have grown up materially poor and dealt with the ills of drug abuse and domestic violence but I also knew about “love” and the movings of things not understood by White folks. In this case – as is most times the case when White folks seek to analyze experiences they have never had- cynicism is a White thing. Because that Doctor, in all of his knowledge and wisdom didn’t understand what Nikki Giovanni put so well in a poem: “Black love, is Black wealth.” Because of their privilege and materialistic socialization of Western thought, I would argue that White people have a harder time understanding the meaning of that quote because they see narratives of color as a doomed work of fiction- where there is little hope because of the poverty and inability of the people to move out of their social condition. (Never mind racist capitalism and the absurdity of pulling one’s self up by the bootstraps) I understand the trauma of my youth and the joy. I see them as the ongoing dialectic that has created me. I understand and love those experiences in order to make peace with them, so that when life’s great storms return I can better deal with them. I left the office horribly upset. It wasn’t until later that day, once I could process with a friend, that I realized how important race was in that situation. The doctor’s inability to connect with me on that spiritual point was an issue for me. With the HIV population growing in communities of color, there is also a rising need to have care providers that are of the communities they serve. I do not need to be under that White gaze while I am trying to figure out what is wrong with my body.

This is true of healthcare in general. People of color often have distrust for medicine in this county because of the historic underpinnings of the interactions had in the hospital. Black folks, in particular, have been the subject of experiments with drug vaccines, disease, eugenics, forced breeding, and other genetic manipulation. When you combine that with the fact that most people in this country cannot afford health care decent enough to see a doctor whenever necessary and the additional fact that the institutions of high education that give out credentials, to become licensed, are mostly White- then you have a pretty strong material reasoning to avoid/ distrust hospitals. Western medicine has given us little hope, despite the immense promise it holds when combined with a more holistic realm of thought.

Part of my communism, is believing in an alternative health system. The advancements of technology under capitalism are wondrous. The beauty of humanity is that we have become able to envision and see a world much larger than the one that currently exist- this applies to medicine and the science that is constantly pushing it forward.  The tragedy of capitalism and the mind/body dichotomy of the West is that we cannot see the full potential of our work because of the nature of the system. Capitalism is a system of waste and profit: it wastes our energy and planet in order the gain profit for the wealthy. Because the goal of these industries is capital then it makes no sense to cure disease or make medicine free because fully healthy workers could not be as easily exploited due to the fact that our minds and bodies would be stronger. We would be more able to struggle against our conditions. Western thought, in medicine, has led us to view our bodies as battlefields. Most medicine is designed to destroy the problem at all cost- meaning you might end with a more severe problem than you started with. One has to look no further that the barbarism of chemotherapy to see my point. I believe that this is because the West has never understood that treating the body requires spiritual health (by this I mean things like: being at ease with a doctor who understands you, having a peaceful home life, having meaningful relations with other humans) and a connection with nature. More and more research is finding that the biggest part of fighting the diseases we face is no more than changing our diet and pursing bliss. [that was overly simple but still truthful.]

And so, in my journey and in the service of communism, I see it as an important part of the project to share my narrative and examine the intersections of these life events as they (and I) evolve.It is important to reclaim the older knowledge from our ancestors as we move forward. Solutions to our problems will come from the combining of old wisdom and new thought. I apologize for my absence from this blog and promise to be more active. Here is to a new and powerful 2012, filled with health, life, and revolution! Luta continua!

Queers and Capitalism Part One: The Dialectics of Moving Towards A Larger Social Acceptance

“. . . the waters around you have grown “

I remember the first time I saw a B.Scott video. I sat in my freshman dorm and listened to this very flamboyant, very androgynous, bi-racial man rant and rave about Shemar Moore’s penis being exposed online. A moment like this sounds very mundane and trivial, but has profound meaning when placed into context. As a queer person it is very rare that I see myself reflected, even if it is slight, in media and this doubles when we’re talking about queer people of color, who are all but invisible in the culture. So when we see representations of ourselves it becomes something spiritual, something affirming, something that touches us and says: “you are worth attention and love.” The 7-minute rant did that for me. Move ahead 5 years and we get this . . .

The same B.Scott I knew and loved is now a bonified star complete with music videos, red carpet appearances and celebrity interviews. Looking at this very feminine, queer, man of color on the screen brings all kinds of questions to the surface for me:

“Has society come to a place where we can accept queers as people?”

“Does capitalism need homophobia (patriarchy) to exist?”

and “What does this mean for queer struggle and activism?”

I want to think out loud a bit about these things . . .

“Has society come to a place where we can accept queers as people?”

For someone like this and many other gay figures to come to such prominence in our time means that there is a large shift in society. Homo-life is a commodity now, something being placed onto the pedestal of consumer culture and devoured: your favorite pop singer has probably stolen swag from the ballroom, and there is a gay plotline on just about every show. In addition to that, more and more states are sanctioning some degree of union between gay couples and DADT is becoming smaller and smaller in the rear view. The state and big business are slowly adapting to a shift in public opinion. I believe that much of the work of 60’s queer activists to prove that gay culture was just as legitimate as others paved the way for certain aspects of the culture to take center stage in the way that they have thus influencing public consciousness. I also believe that the majority of this “gay is okay” push comes from capitalism’s understanding that it cannot afford for the queer population to be isolated in total from the whole of society.

I’ve always said that queer people represented a very particular threat to capitalism, especially in the United States, because of their positioning in the society. Queer folk prior to many of the movements of the 60’s and 70’s had little to no material connection to the American melting pot. And it can be argued that in certain communities of color the nature of queer oppression had a different character because of the fact that people found themselves already segregated and marginalized. Thus, many queers of color a.) Identified more with their racial caste and were kept in the embrace of their families because of their shared oppression and/or b.) weren’t given access into larger queer spaces because of the segregation.

However, I believe that the generalization can be made that queer folks challenged the stability of capitalism because of their status as people pushed outside of the nuclear family, which is one of the most basic oppressive structures of society and patriarchy. It becomes too dangerous to have pockets of the society that have no material attachment to it. It is also dangerous for capitalism to have spaces in which the development of such a critique can be developed and shared.

In addition, radical queer politics, much like feminism challenged many of the assumptions of the culture and capitalism. What does it mean for white supremacist hetero capitalism when the nuclear family, male/ female socialization and personal identity are challenged? Many older, less fabulous, leftists would say that it means nothing or very little because the means of production, the material ways in which capitalism operates, are not immediately being challenged. But they would be wrong on multiple fronts.  The challenging of patriarchal social relations not only means liberating womyn from unwaged labor but also brings the political and the personal together. Something desperately missing from a lot of movements of the past has been the revolutionary observation and transformation of gender identities. By this I mean, that feminism and anti-patriarchal ideology have never really been taken seriously by groups involving a straight male majority and that’s because it strikes at the most guarded and unchallenged of our identities; our gender. Feminist and queer movements of the past have sought to turn this on its head by placing an emphasis on personal development along these lines along with organizing in the workplace.

Slowly and subtly, queers have been brought into the fold. One interesting moment in this history was in the wake of the 60’s and 70’s, in the middle of the AIDS crisis-we saw thousands of gays –revolutionary or otherwise- pass away at epidemic levels. This crisis had varying effects on gay communities, some of which are relevant to this post and some aren’t. Something that is important to recognize is that the effect of the AIDS epidemic and the response to it not only left a vacuum of leadership in queer spaces but it also paved the way, in part, for queer struggle to be co-opted through the nonprofit industrial complex. This is important because we see a very distinct change in the character of queer activism around this time.  Friendlier, more passive things like quilt making and appealing to the state for sympathy became more prominent. A little later on, queers became more attached to the causes of DADT repeal and marriage rights, the latter can be understood partially in the context of having to watch loved ones die without any recourse or protection from their biological families. I would argue that this more identity based activism, and less aggressive stance in the mainstream, had a less alienating and more tolerance inducing effect on the some of the population.

So I think the boost in queer visibility can be attributed to a push and pull between forces. I think that movements against patriarchy and capitalism paved the way for aspects of oppressed peoples humanity (specifically queers here) to be accepted in the mainstream and capitalism, by it’s very nature and need to survive, adapted to this shift by exploiting and incorporating what it could.

“Does capitalism need homophobia (patriarchy) to exist?”

For me, a struggle against homophobia must mean one that addresses capitalism. I see my oppression as a Black, gay male as one whose roots are intrinsically linked with the beast of capitalism. In order for the power structure to maintain itself it needs to suppress certain parts of the population. Does this mean that we will never see wealthy gays? No, San Francisco is proof of that. However, it does mean that the majority of queer and trans folk, especially those of color, can bet that they will never be apart of the ruling class. The very nature of the society cannot allow for that. Queer folk, being a one of the more vulnerable parts of the population, find themselves subordinated into lower levels of the working class through homophobia or excluded entirely as seen in the case of trans folk. This strengthens the elite and their machinery because the horizontal violence (homophobia) maintains a division of labor and permanent caste position. We also see the building of a surplus army of labor (the unemployed) to be used against working people who may feel the need to challenge their abuse at the hands of the elite. Workers who seek to withhold their labor (strikes) until better conditions arise are quickly met with the leagues of unemployed folk who will scab (break the picket and replace the strikers) and that makes sense in a society where there is no space for the entirety of the population to work for a decent wage.

Also, just as in the case of race, socialized gender is a one of the pillars of capitalism. In using patriarchy as one of it’s stepping stones, capitalism has created the conditions under which it’s demise cannot come without attacking the gendered division of labor, homophobia, etc . . . This means that our ascension into the utter fabulousness of liberation means that gender, and capitalism must be destroyed because the destruction of such a poisonous ideology (patriarchy) would mean the crumbling of walls built between working people. The system needs us isolated into paranoid fractions.

“What does this mean for queer struggle and activism?”

It is in the best interest of capitalism to bring queers into the fold (through a very narrow, white supremacist, patriarchal view of course) the potential to expand capital through an exploitation of queer images and culture is vast. At the same time this gay assimilation dulls the blade of radical queer politics. Because capitalism’s veil of justice and equality is kept in place through the façade of acceptance and limitless upward mobility, embodied in the emerging queer ruling class, it becomes harder for queer militants to argue for the necessity of a revolution against capitalism itself. Reform to the system is popular when the connection between class oppression and patriarchy isn’t clear. If I believe that patriarchy is something completely separate from the otherwise redeemable capitalist world order then it makes no sense to seize the means of production as apart of liberation because my conceived liberation is tied to the eradication of an ideology within certain people and not connected to a material struggle against the bourgeoisie (the top 10% of people who own everything) to end the totality of oppression. Radical queers, in this historical moment, find themselves struggling to articulate the need for a queer struggle that includes a radical class analysis and positive program that reflects such. We must also win people away from bourgeois delusions like equality under capitalism.

I think it’s exciting to be alive right now, and to organize right now.  We have an opportunity to present a new proposition and deconstruct past failures with the intent of building a movement that can win.  For me, radical queer organizing looks like many things: the building of safe spaces where we can heal and build self determination, the challenging of straight and male privilege, and the inverting of gender roles with the intention to create the conditions where all beings can fully express themselves are a few of those. The incorporation ideas such as self-care, and consciousness raising around gendered dynamics are some others. The appropriation of queer identities by the mainstream has, in an unintentional way, given us the opportunity to observe and reflect on our organizing and position in struggle. It also has made the ground fertile to plant revolutionary seeds. More queers are out and engaging in some form of political activity than we’ve seen in a while. (Maybe ever, I would wager that the amount of queers campaigning for reform and the amount visibly/verbally opposing the reformist queers out numbers the activists of 40-50 years ago) And that means we have some work to do. We have some questions to pose. We have some ideas to raise. And we have some consciousness to change.

Seeking Boys With Soft Skin and Big Hearts

The outlines were once bodies

blowing gently on bathroom floors

and empty wash house basons.

Carrying war wounds

and lifetimes of “I’m sorry, you know I can’t love you like that.” or “What we got is real”.

Torn bits

reaching to cradle one another.

Pulling at skin,

holding each other as they dance about.

Struggling to make sense

out of lifetmes of having hearts at the bottom of shoes

or floating in the tips of condoms

or singing love songs to themselves

while pretending that fingers are some dream lover’s dick thrusting violently.

Wrapped in a cold embrace listening to pretend voices that sound similar to their  father’s-

whispering affirmations.

Longing to be apart of the chorus of “I love you’s” present at some family gatherings.

And in some intentional way. . .

lusting to subvert that love

with cock rings, gags, and whips.

They exist in some wet nexus trying to crack light

and see how big the moon is

and how soft skin is

and what human looks like

Spears & Flowers: Reflections on Queer Alienation

I have been very introspective recently. The beauty of radical queer politics, and the benefit it holds for all political tendencies and struggles, is it’s unflinching quest to challenge all aspects of the culture, including ourselves. radical queer politics questioned the family, feminism, patriarchy and other aspects of society through a look at their workings within human beings and our interpersonal relationships. In a recent meeting of a radical queer space that I love and am connected to, I was inspired to write this piece.

I often catch glimpses of who I want to be staring at me in the mirror, waving. I see a lot of what I am and more of someone I wish I was from time to time. But the purpose of all of this is to come closer to loving my reflection for what it is, when I see it. It is becoming more evident to me that self-improvement and self-love are not mutually exclusive. As I stand I see thousands of contradictions and things I despise about myself, but I also know that many of these are a result of being out in the world. They are not essential components of my character and I can change them. It also is important to look at that image, in the mirror, and love it fiercely. To embrace it for what it is at that moment: not who it was, could or should be. It is only when we strive towards a place of love for ourselves that we can truly work to combat the negative traits we despise.

P.S. I wrote somewhat dry because I wanted to get the thoughts out as clearly as possible without too much colorful language possibly getting in the way.

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In my younger years I sought to craft a master heterosexual disguise. This desire came from the fact that I knew that the boldness exemplified by some of my “out” peers was something that was not tolerable, something that was often met with violence. The most disgusting incident of this manifested with the murder of someone who lived on the same street as I did. The young man, who often cross dressed and defied the code of conduct by talking back to his hecklers, was found stabbed to death with shards of glass in his anus. Daily, I knew of boys who were raped or beat in school. The general attitude around these attacks was silence from the administration and larger community. Because of this, I learned, very early, that my survival was dependant on my ability to make myself invisible. Part of this pact with oppressive patriarchy, meant also that I had to often partake in the demonizing of my queer brothers and sisters. Eventually this meant that I began to absorb the rhetoric, let it run through my blood, and define myself with those same horizontal lines.

I hated effeminate men. They were something unforgivable to me, something disgusting. I would lash out at my friends, and police them when we hung out. I despised the fact that I possessed those same qualities and wanted to exorcise them, from myself, through verbal assaults on other effeminate men.  Often times, in oppressed communities, the qualities that are picked upon by the dominant culture are those that are most harshly policed. It’s the same as problem I sometimes see occur in Black communities around “loudness”, “Black English”, and “dress”. Because we live in a society that is dominated by the straight white male lens, we must all act accordingly in order to move about with the least amount of trouble. Albeit, oppression and trouble are mainstays regardless of how much people desire to assimilate to the prescribed aesthetic. So we come to a place where we, as the various oppressed peoples, see ourselves through dual lenses and we posses what Dubois coined as “double consciousness”

“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.”

-        W.E.B. Dubois

Recently, I have been challenging the way this internal hatred manifest in a different way: by looking at the men I lust for. I’ve always been attracted to a specific kind of man. My day dreams and night fantasies were dominated by very hard, masculine men. My dealings, in real life, have been the same. Regardless of the tragic amounts of repression within them and the dysfunction that it brings to the relationship, I wanted a “MAN”. I remember having a conversation with an ex, while we were dating, where he forbid me to be around other queer black men. This was also the same man who refused to engage with the option of versatility in the bed, who refused to acknowledge me sexually. And none of this is said with the intention of demonizing him. Quite the contrary, he represents the psychic dissonance formed within us in this society, where oppressed folk cannot fully come to a place of reconciliation with themselves and develop into semi-formed humans. The same thing goes for myself and my attraction to men like him.

In a recent video, the poet Yolo Akili, challenged the culture, specifically of Queer Black men, when he asked the question: “Are You The Kind of Boy You Want?” The video, which features a range of men, focuses on the fact that often times we pursue partners, and friends, out of a longing to negate certain qualities within ourselves. It highlights the lack of self-love we have. Personally, I know that my desire to be with stereotypical images of Black men or damaged men, who would ultimately lead to hurt, came from a disgust I had for myself. I outright rejected the notion that I would be in a relationship with effeminate men, with larger men etc . . . Looking back, I see a lot of my attitudes towards potential partners as reflective of a kind of alliance with White supremacy and patriarchy. I projected this prescribed image of Black manhood onto these men, dehumanizing them. At the same time, this image was something I desperately wanted to be because of my learned hatred of the effeminate parts of myself.

The nature of life in this society teaches us many things; among them is an intense self-loathing. From birth we are told that we are lacking and taught to consume in order to fill in for, or cover up our flaws. Combine this basic rule of Capitalism with White Supremacy and Patriarchy and we have generations of oppressed people consuming an ideology that is slowly killing them. And for that we both desire and loathe societal poison. The society hates womyn and defines “male” by what the former is not. And so it follows that men embodying traits relegated to womyn are seen as pariahs, or backwards. The tragic error in this confusion is that it continues that dissonance we spoke of by ignoring the full range of human expression and the material fact that nothing is essentially “male” or “female”.

In my search to come to a deeper love for myself, and therefore coming closer to a greater capacity to honestly love another person, I have come to some very hard truths. And it is difficult to approach a place of self-love after years of taught hatred but it is a healing we need. Many constructions of relationships between beings fall between the pillars of co-dependence and co modification. Our alienation brings us to seek an unhealthy validation in romantic partners. We disguise this often as “love”, all the while afraid to see our tolerance of abuse and longing for what they really are: reactions to the fact that we have not been told enough that we are loved or deserving of love. We commodify one another: looking at the value we acquire through virtue of being involved with another. I believe that this comes from the lack of self-love that comes with life under White supremacist, patriarchal capitalism. That’s why “love” is something radical, something golden, something revolutionary: because it is something diametrically opposed to the progress of the society which oppresses and exploits us. If we as militants, as revolutionaries, as any people who hope to bring joy to the world and ourselves, cannot deal with the love most essential to the revolutionary project then we have lost.

I look out, as I try to free myself, and see rooms filled with Black men like me. Sitting underneath the horror of that ceiling and knowing, each day, that its existence is becoming more and more real – the air a little more thin.

I also see that, like all things, this doesn’t have to be the permanent definition of our existence. I draw inspiration from healing spaces, from spaces of challenge and love. It is easy to become overwhelmed and see it all as insurmountable. But that is the exact the opposite of reality: our individual projects of self-help and improvement lead us to a greater love for ourselves and for humanity. This has a material effect on our conditions because it brings to the surface a counter ideology that will move with us through physical struggle. The scars of the racist and sexist capitalist system are seen beyond economic oppression, they are apart of our spiritual fabric. Our oppressions intersect and harm on multiple levels. That is why this work and kind of analysis was crucial to the Queer liberation movement and Feminist theory. That is why revolutionary self-reflection is crucial to me.

I want to end with a quote, and some commentary:

“I believe that many of the destructive lessons taught in our childhood homes is the result of the desperation of our parents. They were children once and learned those same lessons. I don’t know how we begin to unlearn that behavior.” –Essex Hemphill

I believe that many of the destructive lessons learned in this society are the result of the desperation of our parents and the ailments of our society. As children we are torn asunder learning these lessons. The beginning of the unlearning, of the reconciliation of our torn selves lies in our ability to grasp warmly, hold up and affirm one another. Our power lies in our ability to recognize and reconcile with our own humanity: to take our scarred inner children and embrace them, allow them to cry and finally, to speak. Much of Western culture is a about running away from ourselves, being terrified of what makes us human and repressing it. It is my sincere intention to do away with this within myself. I want to see every raw bit and say “I appreciate you.”

The “F-word”

My queer, class struggle, politics stem from my relationship with feminism and the radical challenging of power through confronting patriarchy. It is through a developing Black, Marxist, Feminist lens that I understand the material conditions of, not only my particular oppression, but the history of the various people who have existed in the world and confronted oppression and exploitation. Recently it has become very obvious to me that I am a bit of an oddity, in the sense that it is not common to hear of male feminist, even in the political Left. Often times my political position has been met with raised eyebrows, uneasiness, or dismissal of my opinions as being my own. Other men sometimes attribute my feminism to my relationships with womyn and while it is true that the source of my feminism comes from my upbringing/ close relationships with womyn, it is a bit inaccurate to speak of those connections as if I have been brainwashed by angry, butch, white womyn who refuse to shave.

Feminism came to me long before I was able to articulate, understand, or accept it. It was not something taught to me by a member of the intelligentsia, but instead by the womyn who surrounded me as I grew up. Looking back to my childhood, I can see feminist thought and action as something ever-present in my mother’s smile, her hands, her roar, her laugh, and her back. When she was a young womyn she ventured out into the world, and went to college in Michigan. This was forever and a day away from Washington DC, where she was born and raised. My grandfather, unhappy about one of his daughters venturing out so far attempted to raise all of hell to the surface. She lived, became a Black Nationalist, womanyst, dancer, poet, and finally a social worker upon graduation. I remember going through her old photos in my youth and seeing images of righteous afros, smiling men, homemade dashikis, glorious fists, forever cloths, and a life so wondrous and far away from mine.  All of this joy and eccentricity made it harder for me to understand how and why I found myself poor and unhappy in the ghettos of DC with the same womyn who’s smile emanated from those pictures. I didn’t know then that the world is a cruel place for Black people and especially Black womyn.  My mother, full of light, saw that for herself. Somewhere between the crack infested 80’s, Ronald Regan’s love letter to the Black ghetto, and ailing parents my mother found herself in a less sun filled position.

My youth is filled with memories of violent men, drugs, dignity destroying welfare, tear-stained food stamps and thunder screams. These were the realities that I observed my mother navigate. I saw firsthand the incredible power that lies in Black womyn and the strength that is necessary to re-enter, everyday, a world that chips away at your very life force. I also witnessed the power of community and the laying of hands that is womyn holding each other warmly and creating informal networks of support and trust. All of my mother’s friends were womyn that I looked at as aunts. They watched me, played with me, applauded me, and scolded me. Most importantly, they all imbued me with the strength, courage, and wisdom of a generation of Black womyn who had come of age in the post 60’s nightmare of America and lived to tell the tales of rape, joy, power, and loss.

They relied on one another so fiercely and loved one another fiercely, even in times of disagreement or betrayal. Many of the patriarchal, Black Nationalists, I’ve met, take issue with the fact that the racist capitalist system has exploited male/female difference, combined it with institutional racism and made it near impossible for the mythical “Black nuclear family” to exist. I have a serious problem with a generation of Black men falling by the waist-side due to White Supremacist, Patriarchal Capitalism and state sponsored terror.

However, I see Black womyn’s role as mothers to Black men as essential and I am not an advocate for the lessening of that by some reactionary “return of the Black male to his rightful place”. Often times that slogan has been code for female and child subordination through patriarchal oppression.

I see Black womyn’s oppression as my primary teacher and shaper. I see it as the roots of my radicalization and worldview. Queer or not, men are socialized through the patriarchal society and are people who have lived with those values as central parts of their lives. However, I found that that was something derailed by my upbringing in this community of Black womyn and seeing something powerful in radical womyn raising men. In addition to my developing queer identity, I began to analyze the society from the position of someone who was oppressed based my gender expression.

It is important to state, however, that my upbringing didn’t make me a feminist. It made me more understanding and receptive of and to feminism.

It wasn’t until college, when I entered a larger more radical community of my peers that I embraced the “f-word”. Being in struggle and solidarity with female comrades contributed to my understanding of patriarchy, under capitalism, and how the two beast feed off of one another’s destructive energy. As a queer person, my oppression is based in patriarchal thought. It is the thought that socializes men to see their needs as the most important, that breeds their violent culture, that reprimands their tears, that tells them everything that is masculine is so out of a negation of the feminine characteristics within all of us. So when we talk about battling patriarchy, we are talking, in part, about breaking down the socialization that contributes to the development of men and womyn semi-self realized human beings. We are talking about abolishing gender as such and that is essential not only to womyn and queers, but to the whole of the world. We are talking about ending a world that creates such a power dissonance between humans. We are not merely talking about getting people who wear dresses to join picket lines and call it feminist realization in class struggle.

As I am writing this, I think of the male organizers I know. I recently decided to celebrate my birthday with a drag party. I originally thought that the men would react very negatively to this, that they would outright protest. And indeed some of them did. Some had a problem with my minimum requirement of lipstick. It is incredible to think of the reasons and thought behind the aversion to men wearing dresses. What does it say about the culture when men who claim to be about revolution cannot bring themselves to wear a dress for one night? Many of my male comrades did come in dresses and that small act, while not a feminist revolution, made me smile a bit.

I hear the radio on in the distance and the discussion is of whether or not men should be able to have “man bags”. People are outraged and disgusted that the DJ would even propose something so horrific, that he would propose men degrade themselves by performing some act attributed to the opposite gender. It is heart breaking to think of the generation of men who cannot be themselves without the violent reinforcement of our culture’s hatred of womyn. I think I’m going to call in.

Homecoming

When I speak of affirmation I am talking about a homecoming.

People often ask me about liberation and revolution and that’s because the words in the streets will soon be liberation and revolution. The ruling class have grossly misused the power they accumulated through blood and exploitation and we are now in a situation where we could see huge up springs of revolutionary action from the masses of people within the next ten years, given that we get out, organize and help to create a peoples army with the people. I speak on Black queer struggle because I am most familiar with that as a Black queer. And because of this I am often asked questions about Black queer struggle in relation to the Black community, if that mythical group indeed exists, and the entire working class. Usually, and very proudly, I am the first to say that I am not the correct person to be asked because I don’t know nearly as much as people project onto me but I wish to speak right now, if for even for a very brief moment, about two things; a homecoming, and a fire. I wish to speak, if even for the slightest of moments, about Black queer affirmation.

It is important for Black queers to know that the changing of our conditions will not come with our acceptance into the violence that created the very need for us to run away from home. That violence, which was born out of the evils of a rising bourgeoisie in Europe and strengthened through the rape of Africa, is something all consuming and all damning. It is important to recognize the dangers in basing the queer revolution on assimilation, especially for Black queers. The ability of our more privileged brothers and sisters to get married and so on will not result in decent housing for all, or an end to the system of profit over people. It can only result in the fortifying of the that violent system, the capitalist system, which has needs and desires diametrically opposed to our own as a people seeking liberation from oppression. That is because oppression against people of color, queers, and womyn are the very necessary preconditions for a successful capitalist society; the most oppressed and marginalized will become the most exploited.

Black queer folk occupy a very unique and key position in this country and system because of their caste positioning. We are an intersection of many disparate groups. Many of us have left the “Black community” because of the culture of patriarchal oppression against queers that, while prevalent in the dominant society, has a particularly damaging character in the Black community. It is often shouted that Blacks are the most homophobic of all peoples, which I reject most simply because Blacks cannot in-act state violence against gays in the same manner that the mostly white state can and does.

Essex Hemphill, that bold and often forgotten poet, once said:

“The return I call for is so we can do the work that no one else can do for us. The white lesbian and gay community can’t come in and interrogate our black churches about the homophobia. We have to do that. We’re already singing in the choirs, we’re already on the usher boards, but then to accept homophobic diatribes from the podium … I’m not expecting the white community to interrogate black intellectuals, writers and cultural activists about their homophobia. We have to do that first, and the only way we’re going to do that is to really consider and understand how important that home space is for us.”

I believe that it is absolutely necessary for the Black Queers to struggle within the Black community for the redemption of the race. Problems, such as homophobia, within the Black community are two fold. They are problems that cannot be solved without the larger culture making a shift and they must be addressed in order for the larger culture to make a shift. By this I mean that problems that Black folk face in their interactions with one another are often mirrored by the social ills at large; for example patriarchy is not exclusive to the Black community but sometimes has a particular character when we speak about the oppression of Black womyn under Black male patriarchy. So I contend that Black Queers must struggle within the Black community to attack the twin beast of patriarchy and homophobia.

As We Fuck

They would rather us die off

Stretched out with their monstrous tubes running throughout

Man made oxygen pumping through nostrils

Clinging to borrowed time

Hey would rather us bludgeoned to death

Chased down the boulevard by other able bodied Black boys

Hands up, crying family

Glossed over by high powered news crackers looking for something more appealing

Cause the dead only matter here when they’re white

And niggers killing off one another is common place.

They would rather us choke to death as we go down on one another in alleyways

Kneeling in the shadows of god and his men

Praying for quarter to one another before Golgotha

Seas rising on salted tongues

Purple bruises on brown skin

Billy clubs on black tones

The state would rather us dead

Killed by our own nut as we exchange snatches of intimacy masked as high adrenaline fucks

Taken off to Betty Ford

The free clinics are sick houses, bloated with Black bodies

God’s great irony always comes when I’m confronted by some pale faced motherfucker

Beggin me to sign his “right to marry” petitions

What does the HRC, or any of these well to do gay organizations have to say about Duanna Johnson?

Or the New Jersey 6?

What is the Castro doing for me?

When I am murdered will I get remembrance?

These pink suit bourgeois half steppers are fighting for fucking in the church, their pick of third world babies, and equal distribution of rainbow flags in the old navy.

What demands do I have equal to that?

My revolution can’t be made in wedding chapels or adoption clinics

I just want peace

And decent housing

And if this mother can’t give me that then I’m finna burn it down

BYE GIRL! Moving beyond Capitalism & Gay Rights towards liberation.

Over here at “. . . or does it explode?”,  we take much inspiration from the radical queer militants and organizations of the past and seek to begin to expand upon the discourse around what queer liberation means in the context of the larger class struggle. As movement against the ills and oppressive regimes of White supremacist patriarchal capitalism picks up it is important to look at the contributions to people’s liberation made by those whose voices are often rendered silent by history: the womyn and the homosexual. It is in the spirit of Audre Lorde, The Combahee River Collective, Gay Shame, and James Baldwin that we submit the following post.

In light of the disheartening amount of queer teen suicides, it has become very apparent that organization of queer youth, in particular womyn and those of color, must be re-conceptualized.  The two groups previously mentioned were given special attention because they often find themselves directly under the heels of a society dominated by the many-headed beast known as capitalism. The gay rights movement has found itself completely out of touch and sync with the issues facing queers, especially queer youth. In fact, we would go so far as to say that due to the direction and composition of the leadership, the objectives of the gay rights movement are almost diametrically opposed to bringing about true liberation for queers under white supremacist, patriarchal capitalism. If it is true that the capitalist system is beyond reform then it must also follow that a movement that places the markers of its revolution, of its homecoming, at assimilation, cannot possibly succeed in the liberation of its people. It is thus the job of queer militants to bring into being a new proposition for queers and other oppressed people who are increasingly finding that rainbow flags and bumper stickers, made in third world sweat shops, proclaiming love and advocating for equal rights aren’t enough.

In the beginning stages of organizing amongst oppressed people it often becomes necessary to create safe spaces. These are areas that people can congregate away from the stress of daily harassment and degradation. Though they do not serve as a permanent solution they provide comfort and a temporary oasis. It is absolutely necessary that these safe spaces exist in order to create militants that are able to create revolutionary change. After all, if one doesn’t have some degree of self-confidence and support then it is near impossible for them to begin to take on the historic task assigned to us all: the revolutionary overthrow of the oppressive capitalist system. The Black Panther party often spoke of self-determination. It was a common theme in their rhetoric. This idea becomes increasingly important when we speak of those who under white supremacist patriarchal capitalism that face multiple forms of oppression, not only as the mules of the ruling class but also as the inhabitants of the lower stratus of the caste system: queers, womyn, & non whites. In these cases the oppression faced under capitalism is felt, often times, disproportionately harder and the level of struggle involves more than merely overthrowing wage slavery. For example: Black Liberation activist saw the need to battle not only capitalism but also devastating effects of white supremacy. This meant affirming the self and the race through pride and a re-establishment of the Black womyn and man as people with a history and legacy that went well beyond the Maafa. They saw the need to instill a sense of agency in the people who had known almost nothing but rape, murder and forced subservience (spiritual, physical, and mental) to whites. Their oppression was not just as workers, but also as “other’d” humans. In their affirmation statement The Combahee River Collective expressed the following:

The major source of difficulty in our political work is that we are not just trying to fight oppression on one front or even two, but instead to address a whole range of oppressions. We do not have racial, sexual, heterosexual, or class privilege to rely upon, nor do we have even the minimal access to resources and power that groups who possess anyone of these types of privilege have.

The psychological toll of being a Black woman and the difficulties this presents in reaching political consciousness and doing political work can never be underestimated. There is a very low value placed upon Black women’s psyches in this society, which is both racist and sexist.

The same can be said of queer folk, who are also oppressed not just as workers, but also as people perceived to be the lepers of the bourgeois family. Sexuality was something that was immediately policed in several societies by the European colonizer. One of the simplest explanations for this is because the act is not conducive to reproducing the workforce. In order for capitalism to develop it took not only a violent assault on the bodies and autonomy of womyn but also the rape of the African continent. Racism and patriarchy are at the very foundation of capitalism.

Queer safe spaces serve to create the community that queer folk (gay, Trans, etc. . .) are often violently forced out of. The binaries of gender expression and interpretation are laws written in blood. The society acts on these aberrations of the bourgeois nuclear family often with resounding violence and disdain. One has to look no further than the case of Duanna Johnson (the Black Trans womyn who became a national figure initially because she was viciously beat by police, with their hands wrapped with hand cuffs. After filing suit, she was found gunned down in the streets. Her murder is still unsolved.) to see a manifestation of the aforementioned point. Often times, people in more privileged positions in caste society, see these spaces as separatist and incongruous with creating change. While it is true that there is a huge potential for these spaces to devolve into reactionary separatism, which we will discuss a little later, it does not hold true that these spaces are in incongruous with the revolutionary project. They are in fact necessary parts of the blueprint.

Something that queer organizers, and others, should be conscious of, however, is the development of these spaces. For if they never progress beyond creating a space outside of the tyranny of white supremacist patriarchal capitalism, then they have in many, if not all, ways failed in their revolutionary task and have indeed become reactionary separatist spaces. If the coming revolution is truly about an organic coming together of those oppressed by the bourgeoisie then organizations whose end goal is separatist are indeed counter-revolutionary.

It must be made perfectly clear to queers and the larger class struggle is that they are in unity with one another. Does this mean that queers should fully immerse themselves into class struggle, giving up the politics of their radical queer roots? Hell No! These politics, which are in many instances grounded in feminist theory, are so desperately needed in the political Left at the current moment. It is, however an understandable fear by many that entering into the class struggle, as narrowly as it is currently defined, often means class reductionism. One of the reasons that the Left currently finds itself drowning in the muck is because the issues of race, sexuality  and gender have not been fully dealt with in a way that is respectful of both and the self-determination needed by people in those particular caste. Until these things are addressed then the Left is certainly doomed. Let us return to another part of the River Collective’s Statement:

We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy. We are socialists because we believe that work must be organized for the collective benefit of those who do the work and create the products, and not for the profit of the bosses. Material resources must be equally distributed among those who create these resources. We are not convinced, however, that a socialist revolution that is not also a feminist and anti-racist revolution will guarantee our liberation. We have arrived at the necessity for developing an understanding of class relationships that takes into account the specific class position of Black women who are generally marginal in the labor force, while at this particular time some of us are temporarily viewed as doubly desirable tokens at white-collar and professional levels. We need to articulate the real class situation of persons who are not merely raceless, sexless workers, but for whom racial and sexual oppression are significant determinants in their working/economic lives. Although we are in essential agreement with Marx’s theory as it applied to the very specific economic relationships he analyzed, we know that his analysis must be extended further in order for us to understand our specific economic situation as Black women.

If this is agreed upon and true, then we cannot merely spend our time fighting a class war under the loose banner of “unite and fight” we need to be in constant struggle with one another against the vestiges of the poisonous system that exist within ourselves and manifest in our organizing. It is through the lens of these politics that we may accurately see the role of the queer militant not as one that advocates for the inclusion of queers into broader activist spaces to argue for the inclusion of “queer rights” but expanding upon what queer rights and liberation mean overall.

In the beginning of this piece I accused the mainstream gay rights movement of being assimilationist in character and I would like to bring the article to a close by elaborating on this point. Firstly I use the term “gay rights” instead of saying queer liberation because the current movement at best promotes an image of bourgeois gays as happy capitalists desperately begging for their seat in the imperialist coliseum. Secondly, I wish to re-label the mainstream movement as a bourgeois white supremacist patriarchal movement that prioritizes the politics of assimilation over true liberation. In the gay community pictured here we see no people of color, no Trans-folk, no poor people and scarcely lesbians (never mind lesbians with any of the other aforementioned categories attached). These people are only seen when the need arises to show false diversity, play on old stereotypes for scare tactics, make  sexual objects of, or add more validity to the existing claim of oppression. What we see constantly is middle class white men proclaiming their love for one another and for a system that in reality would rather them choke to death while going down on one another than be present in society. The unity and inclusion featured and promoted through the false images of international love and otherwise are just that: false! Gay Shame poses the following question on their website:

Where are the gay marriage “activists” when the INS is actively raiding and deporting whole families ?(such as it is currently doing just blocks away from the Castro in San Francisco’s Mission District).

Other struggle against oppression is only used in the service of strengthening the reformist dogma of “EQUALITY NOW!” It is also in this erasure of all things not white, privileged and male that we find the rhetoric of assimilation. It is shouted from the mountain tops. “WE’RE HERE WE’RE QUEER! “ “LET US MARRY!” “LET US FIGHT” “LET US ADOPT!” The ability to adopt, join the military and marry is treated as the final indicators of the “Great Gay Arrival” into American society. The problem with this line of thought is that it treats queer struggle as a.) something outside of the problems of the rest of society and b.) Begs for inclusion into the destructive culture that, at this moment, moves to annihilate the Middle East in its quest for profit and control, actively places disproportionately large amounts of Black and Brown bodies into the prison industrial complex, and seeks to privatize higher education. And these are just a few things. Are issues such as housing, healthcare, education, war, and the prison industrial complex not queer issues? Are they regulated to other sections of the population? THEY ABSOLUTELY ARE but cannot be discussed under the context of this bourgeois gay rights hokum.

Over at the Gathering Forces blog there was a post entitled: “Beyond Gay Marriage and Queer Separatists–The Call for a Working-Class Queer Movement” that called for a third tendency in the struggle for queer liberation, one that went beyond separatism and reform. We second that motion. When we speak of queer liberation we are speaking of the liberation of the entire working class from the chains of capitalism because in order for queers to be liberated they must confront and overcome the contradictions of allies but also amongst themselves as people who occupy one of the lower caste in society. It is through this revolutionary confrontation and work that the community of which we also speak may begin being built. Imagine a queer group taking on the issue of child care funding and working with mothers to develop a culture of militant resistance, while at the same time making the space into a place where dogma and stereotype may be challenged and done away with. It’s fantastical but very possible. Queer safe spaces (which they almost always must start as) must also go beyond their comfort zones and begin to intervene and dialogue with the rest of the working class. It is only through this work and dialogue can the two sides be made whole.  There must an alternative out there that rejects the push to pacify and young queers bourgeois by telling them to wait on a better life later on. A better life only comes through engaging in struggle that aims at breaking down the walls of this house. Only then will it get better. We have seen that the liberation of queers is dependent on the abolishing of capitalism and thus dependent on working class revolution. We have also seen that the working class cannot move towards liberation, and thus ending its status as a class of exploited laborers under the ruling class, unless it addresses the attitudes prevalent within itself that breed homophobia, racism, patriarchy, etc. This is the challenge that lays at the feet of the new Left in general and queer organizers in particular.

Legends of The Ball XVII: Yolo Akili

The culture cannot take the bold Black queer. It violently tells us that we ought not love loudly, that we ought not break earth beneath our feet. But it is precisely for that reason that we must. Must stand defiant before the death march that seeks to absorb us.

Hearing the jarring, erotic poetry of Yolo Akili brought those words immediately to the front of my mind. At once the brilliance and boldness of Essex Hemphill came to mind. So rarely do you find Black queer poets gaining exposure for work that is unapologetic and militant. Shine on.

Enjoy.