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.

Legends of The Ball XIII: Bayard Rustin

A Poem for Bayard Rustin.

Bayard I wish I was there to see you in those closed meetings.

To listen to the truth speakers as they turned their forked tongues on you.

Stabbed you and crucified you just as their Jesus had been.

Was Martin truly your friend, Bayard?

Did he shield you when the others said you had no place?

When they claimed that a Gay Black Communist was too off-putting an image to champion the civil rights movement.

Bayard I wish I had your strength.

I wish I could stand upright like you and demand to be seated at the table.

Demand “I too am Black, bring me a plate!”

It must have been lonely, Bayard.

And even now one questions if it was worth it?

To truly sacrifice self for people.

For family that seeks to menace you just as the crackers do them.

I have only begun to look into the life of Bayard Rustin but it is an inspiration to me. Bayard, who was forced into the closet by the leaders of the Civil Rights movement,  was a key figure, if not the most key, in organizing the March on Washington. He was right hand to King and he was forced to remain silent about both his Marxism and homosexuality by the leadership of the movement. My mind is still boggled by his dedication to the cause of Black liberation that he stuck through a horrific experience with the hopes that “his people” would be free one day. He also worked with A Phillip Randolph, leader of the “Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters”.

Later in life he became a staunch supporter of Gay rights going so far as to declare gays as “the new black”.

Today, blacks are no longer the litmus paper or the barometer of social change. Blacks are in every segment of society and there are laws that help to protect them from racial discrimination. The new “niggers” are gays. . . . It is in this sense that gay people are the new barometer for social change. . . . The question of social change should be framed with the most vulnerable group in mind: gay people

This brother seemed to be truly something else. I look forward to reading and experiencing more of him.

Why We Fight. . .

Oppression and exploitation are ever-present. I sometimes feel myself a subject to the death march, I feel as if my body will be trampled as I try to halt the clay soldiers. It is easy to see this world as a horrible place where people die and will always suffer until death, a place where the rich wield such ungodly power that a people’s revolution is too impossible even to dream. It is easy to lose hope and faith that any work makes any difference, like the machine will always win.

But that isn’t the case, and life shows us that. Today I saw a glimpse of why I fight, something justifying the battle. I was on the train and observed a quiet moment between two men. These two very working class latino men in front of me sat, embracing one another. One holding the other intimately. I didn’t mean to intrude by staring but I couldn’t help look.Occasionally I would catch them smiling and kiss one another. For some this isn’t a huge deal but it is for me.

In 2010 men of color showing any kind of affection towards one another is a rarity, queer men of color loving one another is a conspiracy. So seeing this in the open was one of those moments that locks you in time. Growing up in the ghetto and living in San Francisco has often taught me that moments like this are saved for queer White men and often restricted to the Castro district. It is still odd to see men show affection to one another because the poison of the society teaches that men are to be divorced from emotions aside from anger. This doubles when you have men who are oppressed on the basis of their ethnic identity. It is often the case that people of color have often internalized the values of the racist, sexist, capitalist system in an attempt to lessen the pain of oppression through assimilation. This has happened just as much as resistance to the same thing has. I often feel in myself the tension of patriarchy, the unrest of the clashing between standards and self. Words like “I love you” often sit, never escaping my lips. Subconsciously, I am acting out the 22 years of training, the urge to be a “real Black man”. I consciously have to fight back against this, accept my emotions, embrace my emotion. We are all fighting against the shackles that the society has placed on us and I often get lost in fighting.

So seeing these men was like a light and I don’t mean to seem as though I am over glorifying it but love is truly precious. In any form it is precious, but in this particular manifestation it is like a beacon guiding me to shore.  The statement holds true that revolutionaries are compelled by feelings of great love. It is at the heart of revolutionary thought and it compels us to move forward. We fight because we love.

On Jumping The Broom

It’s an odd feeling. It’s the same odd feeling I had returning home for winter break in 2008 after Obama won the election. Looking onto my mother’s smile as we sat in her section 8 apartment, void of heat in the middle of the winter thanks to faulty city government controlled heating, going over our whereabouts during the historic announcement of Obama’s victory. There was almost something heartbreaking about my silence, I felt as if I was betraying her. She was elated and went on and on about the change that was sure to come, the long struggle of Africans in this country was sure to be on an upswing. The Obama victory, transcended the physical and political for her, and many that grew up in the filth of segregation and the muck of South during that time. The victory was spiritual, sending waves of energy, renewal to Black people everywhere, pulling them up. My concern at the time, and still is today, was where the “up” may lead. As I sat there I felt a profound sadness, that my mind was full of thoughts that contradicted her optimism, that I could only think the Obama presidency would serve to pacify a once radical and active part of the nation, that Black people would trade raised fists and revolution for business suits and capitalist dreams (not to say that the Black population was previously immune to the desire to want to assimilate to the white capitalist oppressor’s idea of success). The presidency makes Blacks and other people of color in this country want what they can never truly have; to be amerikkkan in every sense, while blinding them to the on going brutality of the capitalist system because the great hope sits in the white house. As my mother went on I retreated deeper into meditation on how decades of extreme oppression could have led to a belief and acceptance of the system, all the while she was beaming, near tears.

I find myself in a similar situation now with the overturning of prop 8 in california, which now means it’s legal for gay couples to marry in this state. As a parade marches down Market street I sit finding little joy in the situation and feeling terrible about it. I want to see people happy, and it means the world to me to see people who have been beat down, by this barbarous system, experience some piece of happiness. However, as someone committed to radical change and someone who believes that the fight for revolution is just as much one about ways of thinking as it is about physical change, I cannot be completely happy or silent in this victory, just as I am not with many reforms the state throws down. I find little joy in the fact that my decision to couple monogamously has been approved by the state and that I may now enter into bourgeois property relations with another, just as my hetero counterparts do.

I have arrived at my conclusion, as I stated before, because I don’t believe in the institution of marriage. Marriage serves as one of the pillars of the capitalist system, supporting racism, sexism and the like. To understand this, one must understand the history and function of marriage in the capitalist state. The institution of marriage has served a means of power accumulation through the merging of property, and wealth. Womyn, in this scheme have been made into pawns, things to be traded. It is partially through marriage that bourgeois society has been able to accumulate, and maintain wealth. Currently, it maintains this function but also serves as it’s purpose to a higher degree when the factor of race coupled with class come into play. Meaning, it (marriage) has served to maintain the economic gap between whites and non whites, in particular Blacks and Latinos, who find themselves in lower social economic levels. This gap is kept by the fact that usually people marry in their same socio-economic bracket, thus wealth in the higher brackets finds it easier to consolidate and accumulate while it has disastrous effects in the lower ones, due to existing economic oppression and political repression. All of this is said in the hopes that I can give a basic outline of how marriage is a.) a tool of bourgeois society, b.) a engine in the capitalist machine, and c.) an institution which helps to maintain racism and sexism. One reading this can then ask the question: “But aren’t there benefits to marriage? and doesn’t gay marriage help to break down the old order?”

The benefits found in marriage, esp the ones being used as reason to vote “yes” on gay marriage, are privatized rights and incentives. For example, being visited in the hospital shouldn’t be something controlled by the state in the first place and shouldn’t be limited. People, who are capable of being in control of themselves should be able to assert their judgement over who is and isn’t allow. In this sense, as in many others, gay marriage serves only to strengthen state authority and capitalist social relations through the allure of obtaining what should already be yours.

Proponents of gay marriage also usually state that legalized same sex marriage can serve to break down patriarchy and sexism through it’s inherent radicalism. This is another false statement, seeing as though the basis of the campaign is assimilation and built on exploitation. One of the chief things at work in the organizing to legalize same sex marriage is racism and patriotism rivaling manifest destiny. The rights of immigrants have haphazardly been thrown around stating that many same sex couples consist of amerikkkans coupled with immigrants. Usually this picture consist of a white and a non white immigrant, and paints the picture of an immigrant of color bound to the hellish conditions of the third world while their white partner offers them “freedom” in this new world we call amerikkka. Never once, however, has the gay rights movement sought to link itself to the struggles of immigrants of people of color in any way which is genuine and parasitical. Slogans of “Gay is the New Black” seem cheap and hollow when Black queers were reported to be attacked at anti prop 8 rallies with the rhetoric of the Black vote deciding the prop 8 verdict in the air. It all seems pretty cheap when never once has a position on the immigrant struggle been taken by the leaders of the gay rights movement. In San Francisco, where I live, the HRC (Human Rights Campaign) has never mobilized to go down the street to the Mission (a predominantly Latino community) and intervene in the terrorist ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement) raids that occurred frequently. This lack of solidarity makes the blanket statements claim otherwise seem transparent. It must be realized that this movement is led by the bourgeois sectors of the gay community and thus fought with their ideology. And what of womyn? What has this male centric movement done to address sexism and incorporate queer womyn? It has often been the case that queer womyn have gone to bat, protested and fought for gay rights and all the while the word “gay” may as well be replaced with “male”. The gay thing in many cases has always been about the dick. As violence against womyn through the state apparatus increase, in particular in the case of abortion, the gay rights movement has been dangerously silent. Where was GLAAD when Missouri enacted a law stating that womyn considering abortion must be made to listen to the heartbeat of the unborn, that they must undergo psychological evaluations as if they are not adults in control of their own bodies and lives? A car made of faulty parts is inherently faulty and made worse when it is pointed and steered in the wrong direction. It is important that we continue to make these arguments, that despite momentary excitement, we stay critical and argue for what we believe is correct because if we don’t then we become slaves to reformism and not advocates of the revolutionary society we ascribe to.

Earlier today I had a conversation with someone about the nature of this newest reform by the state and it’s connection to the revolution. They referred me to a piece written on the subject by Sherry Wolf on the website “Socialist Organizer” (http://socialistworker.org/2008/11/20/case-for-gay-marriage). In this piece, Wolf argues that the left mustn’t denounce the battle for marriage equality, which I agree with, but should work within the struggle. The point of divergence from my agreement with Wolf comes when she states:

“Leftists take these stands for reforms because we understand that the capitalist system and its imperial might won’t fall in one fell swoop. Reformist struggles themselves create the organizational and human material necessary for a further transformation of society. Moreover, it does make a difference in the here whether workers have more pay and couples have more rights.

As Rosa Luxemburg put it in Reform or Revolution, “Legislative reform and revolution are not different methods of historic development that can be picked out at pleasure from the counter of history, just as one chooses hot or cold sausages. Legislative reform and revolution are different factors in the development of class society. They condition and complement each other, and are at the same time reciprocally exclusive, as are the north and south poles, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.”

In other words, professing hostility to gay marriage in the name of opposing the “hetero-normative institution” of marriage is like attacking demands for an end to the death penalty because the criminal injustice system would remain otherwise intact.”

It is in this part of the piece that she begins what is all to common in the left, especially in the Trotskyist tendency, she begins to negate criticism and debate of the currents guiding a movement and advocates a system of reformation as a means to achieving revolution. She quotes Luxemburg, from the piece “Reform or Revolution” without realizing that in the same piece Luxemburg also says:

But doubly important is this knowledge for the workers in the present case, because it is precisely they and their influence in the movement that are in the balance here. It is their skin that is being brought to market. The opportunist theory in the Party, the theory formulated by Bernstein, is nothing else than an unconscious attempt to assure predominance to the petty-bourgeois elements that have entered our Party, to change the policy and aims of our Party in their direction. The question of reform or revolution, of the final goal and the movement, is basically, in another form, but the question of the petty-bourgeois or proletarian character of the labour movement.

It is, therefore, in the interest of the proletarian mass of the Party to become acquainted, actively and in detail, with the present theoretic knowledge remains the privilege of a handful of “academicians” in the Party, the latter will face the danger of going astray. Only when the great mass of workers take the keen and dependable weapons of scientific socialism in their own hands, will all the petty-bourgeois inclinations, all the opportunistic currents, come to naught. The movement will then find itself on sure and firm ground. “Quantity will do it”

What does all of this mean? Luxemburg is stating that the ultimate goal of revolution cannot be made through reform and especially not through paternalistic relations between the revolutionary tendency and the proletariat when it comes to a fundamental class consciousness and understanding. Meaning that the method of entering into reformist battles without any provocation from the more class conscious elements as to the direction and character of the movement, without any objective of raising consciousness and building networks and structures that can challenge capital is misguided and counter revolutionary and serves the movement no justice.

To hear incorrect views without rebutting them and even to hear counter-revolutionary remarks without reporting them, but instead to take them calmly as if nothing had happened. This is a sixth type.

To be among the masses and fail to conduct propaganda and agitation or speak at meetings or conduct investigations and inquiries among them, and instead to be indifferent to them and show no concern for their well-being, forgetting that one is a Communist and behaving as if one were an ordinary non-Communist. This is a seventh type. – Mao on Liberalism

This is easily applicable when we look at the severe lacking of class consciousness and critical analysis in the gay rights movement.

To make it clear I am against discrimination of any kind, but to oppose the oppression without analysis of the fight back is not scientific and not conducive to progressive results. A similar case can be found in the debate over “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” (DADT) Of course I want equality but I also will not hold back in discussing that entering the army means entering an institution, bankrupt of morality, that serves as the state imperialist arm as it seeks to find capital through expansion, genocide, and exploitation. We must have open criticism to have a successful movement, because all oppression and exploitation is connected under the world capitalist system and we cannot afford to gain at the cost of others.

Does this now mean that I am against gay marriage and should join the West Borough  Baptist Church as the claim that god hates fags? No. That’s the same foolishness and dogma, which draws these “pro gay”/ “anti gay” binaries, that has kept the discussion and critical thought at a minimum. This entire posting merely means that I am against the state objectification of social relations for the strengthening of capital. If people choose to couple monogamously that is their choice as is the opposite. However, bourgeois society has conditioned us to think negatively of the latter and believe that the former is perfected in a union under the state. And since the battle for liberation is also a battle for transformative thought, it is a dis-service to the movement to remain silent.

Crunch.

conforming. . .contradictions. . .reflections. . .and survival

Illustration by Bruce Nugent

As some of you know I currently live in San Francisco, I’m originally from Washington DC. Coming from the ghettos of DC to live in the very capitalist, very liberal, very racist, very sexist city of San Francisco has been a very interesting experience. I have seen myself develop and change in many ways and noticed strange urges and thoughts come and go through my mind in my time here.

I grew up all over DC because my family was very poor so we were constantly moving from hood to hood. That’s why I often list different hoods in DC that I say I’m from. In any case, I was always in the hood and one thing that became very clear to me at a very young age was the way in which I was supposed to behave as a young male, especially as a young Black male. Naturally, I am timid, and very gender neutral in my opinion. I say this meaning that I am not very effeminate or masculine. However, when I was growing up, my lack of masculinity was perceived as feminine. Since I refused to play with the boys, talk like the boys, and walk like the boys I had to be a sissy. I hung out with girls as much as possible because they were more accepting of me but ultimately there are limits in male/ female friendships even at younger ages. So I became in a way anti-social and began to develop those habits. I knew that I was queer before I knew what words existed to describe it. I remember distinctly wanting to have sex with my best friend, who was a male, in 2nd grade and I also knew that it was not something everyone else need to know about, I knew it wasn’t something normal. As I grew an I learned what “gay” was and what I was I began to despise effeminate boys, both out of self hatred and envy. I hated who I was and envied their ability to be so open. I envied the way in which they challenged the gender binaries without any kind of hesitation, know good and well that when they stepped out of the house it would most likely mean conflict, physical and emotional. Naturally I wasn’t very effeminate and felt lucky that my natural self didn’t lend it self to the social taunting that came along with it but I also began to feel as though I was deficient in someway. And like before with the development of anti-social behaviour, I began to act out, subconsciously being guided by a need to purge myself of the contradictions, and consciously guided by a need to please the Christian leadership of my after school program, of which I was a part for my entire life since the age of 5. The climax of all of this being my divorcing of the queer friends I had in school at the time. The part of me that needed to strongly to belong to the church demanded that these connections be severed, out of the fear of being lost in the world and void of love from God. The part of me that envied their flamboyance and hated it at the same time felt sated, albeit temporarily. I could be alone now to think and purge. I could be at temporary peace now that the outside representations of my Waring self were partially gone. I felt a small sense of joy, confused and lost, but still some sad glimmer of joy. I suppose these warring parts of me have always driven me to be very distant from people, for fear of not being accepted because I have yet to accept myself. I suspect this to be one of the chief reasons behind the aloof nature, which until recently has dominated my friendships.

In any case I came to San Francisco queer, but not too sure of what that meant for me, I am still not but 5 years ago it was worse. Immediately I was hit with an onslaught of images and ideas about what queer was and how it should manifest in society. However, contrary to prior years, this time I began to try and absorb it all. I found my self trying to emulate the “snap queens” that I would outwardly despise and quietly envy in the past. It felt strange, temporarily liberating, but alien at the same time. It wasn’t me but I so desperately wanted it to be. I felt lost because for years I had smothered and repressed instead of building and shaping. I was lost. I was scared and twisted from years of battling and conforming to social norms, from years of trying to find some kind of acceptance, some kind of family that would help me escape poverty, addiction, & abuse. I have seen and found that I am not the only person left scarred by this society. We are all walking wounded. For all of us, but particularly people who are Black and queer there is sometimes a difficulty in defining and finding self because of what is expected and projected on us by society. The historical development of the Black community in this country has left our concepts of gender and sexuality limited. The ways in which the white supremacist, capitalist society has exploited, policed, commoditized, and objectified our sexuality has left us sensitive and almost distrusting of it, in my opinion. While our concepts of what it means to be male and female, while influenced by the over all patriarchy, sexism and homophobia of the culture, have been twisted into stereotypes that are violently re-enforced. All the while the pressure of the oppression we face under capitalism and racism forces us to turn on one another in destructive ways. All of this, limiting healthy growth and self discovery. It exist everywhere, because the system of Capitalism and the social relations it manifest in people can do nothing but divide destructively, but it is magnified in the Black community.

It was in the early years of college that I lost myself, as most do during this time, trying to build anew. I was being confronted with so much at once. I sprang into my new life, hoping to find family, and instead learning that all parts of society are interconnected and no part is immune from the ills that affect us all. Being queer and Black, and coming to the realization of the double alienation is akin to being pushed from the proverbial nest. The gay community which I had romanticized and dreamed about joining once I escaped DC was not what I imagined. I found hatred and racism. I found myself lost again surrounded by men who saw me as flesh, frightened and enticed by me at the same time, wanting to kill and bed me at the same time. San Francisco is not the mecca of homosexuals it is proclaimed to be if you are not a white male. Prior to this I had grown up in an all Black neighborhood (for those unfamiliar with DC it is very possible to go on for most of your day without seeing someone of another ethnicity. You have to consciously go out of your way.) This pain was new, strange and new. I dealt as I always did, by retreating into myself. Don’t get me wrong, I was among friends, I was developing a friend circle of queer people of different ethnicities but I felt isolated still in the sense that I was the only “Black” one. My attempts to connect with Black people on campus had failed tremendously. After attending one session of our campuses BSU men’s meeting and being utterly turned off by the patriarchy. Black men talking about how real Black men helped to spread the seed and strengthen the race was not something that I needed to hear, I did not need to be apart of the rampant sexism reinforced but high fives. I felt othered amongst the Black population, which at this time was mostly made up of Nationalists and didn’t look too kindly on my rainbow coalition of friends. Determined not to scare off my friends I kept the internal angst to myself, choosing instead to be a listener of other’s problems.

I suppose that I developed the habit of repressing and self negation as a defense to my external conditions as a youth and my intense longing to be apart of something. I thought it better at times to continue these tendencies in order to be apart of something and also because of the loneliness I felt, because the isolation I felt, not just as a queer Black child but as one who grew up in an atmosphere dominated by drugs and abuse. I have always longed to escape and find my “true home”.

That was 5 years ago. Many habits have changed while some still remain. The reason I am writing this more personal blog entry is partially apart of an excercise of letting go of baggage and accepting that it for what it was. It is important for me to look at the past, understand it and do my best to use my experience to help others. As someone who plans on dedicating their life to changing this miserable condition we are all in, things like this are of chief importance. I can see the ways in which the false masculinity, and patriarchy forced upon Black men combined with the experience of growing up in the drug infested ghettos, that cripple the Black community, have effected me. I know that this is a similar and shared experience. It is a dangerous one and teamed with the larger system of white supremacy under capitalism it threatens to destroy scores of queer Blacks that are in search of a place called home.

Legends of the Ball V: Essex Hemphill

Bold. Raw. Blatent. Powerful.

When you read one of his pieces or you have the rare pleasure of hearing him speak, Essex Hemphill hits a part of your soul and conscious that is often hidden from yourself. On a personal note, even though I always recognized my own queerness, my first reading of Hemphill hit at a spot within me that I hadn’t even realized was there. I felt offended and taken aback by the poet’s honesty and brashness. His willingness to express the Black Queer experience with pretense, with out bullshit fluff. Essex was straight to the point. You felt the pain of a young Black man who had loved, been exoticized by White society, felt the sting of racism, been smothered by the trappings of the inner city, been dealt a cruel hand by contracting HIV and above all who had survived to live and ACT UP! Essex, stands as a mountain of inspiration for myself. Often one of my friends always ask me why I carry around Essex’s book of poetry & prose; “Ceremonies” and I smile and think to myself; “for survival, I need this to survive.”

Get Into Hemphill:

“Heavy Breathing”

I wanted to give you

my sweet man pussy,

but you grunted me away

and all other Black men

who tried to be near you.

Our beautiful nigga lips and limbs

stirred no desire in you.

Instead you chose blonde,

milk-toned creatures to bed.

but you were still one of us,

dark like us, despised like us.

If Ridge ST Could Talk V: flashback

 

I remember breaking ties with the other gay boys in 7th grade, perminantly dissassociating myself from them. In my younger days I was afraid, scared, and bitter. Why had God forsaken me to be amongst the snap queens? Why had I been born a tad more effeminate than the other boys? Why?

It’s funny the way contrdictions work. I came out when I was in 7th grade to my mother and in the same year I made a clear and deliberate effort to distance myself from all of my other gay friends. They were “too gay” and I was passable, barring someone passing me when I was in the middle of obsessing over one of my crushes. I began to develop an intense distaste for effeminancy in men. I hated it and would repeatedly beat myself up for what I percieved to be behavior not fitting of true masqulinity. I began to always lower my voice in conversation, to walk rigidly so as not to switch (which is something I naturally do to this day, it’s called having hips), and I began to hang out with an array of people, all could be found at the bottom of the junior high social tottem. (I thought it would throw off the oppression a little if I was just one of the “wierd” kids) The funniest thing is/ was that I was never that effeminate in behavior. I was just led to believe such because the culture told me very clearly what a man, a Black man especially, was supposed to be and looking in the mirror I saw none of that.

Legends of The Ball IV: Vogue Evolution

Stepping out on faith from the Ballroom scene, on the shoulders of Willie Ninja, Vogue Evolution came to mainstream attention as the first openly LGBT team to compete on MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew. These Ball Kids: Leyomi, Pony, Prince, Deshawn, Malachi are LEGENDS in their community and fiercely advocate for those who have been rendered voiceless by society.

The crew, made up of four Queer men of color and one transgendered womyn, ultimately got fifth place on the show but the impact of their mere presence spoke in waves for the audience watching. For years the Ballroom scene, which is rumored to have been around since the Harlem Renn, has been misappropriated and misrepresented by pop Divas like Madonna and Beyonce. From movements to music many have been heavily influenced and have mimicked the artistry of the Balls, but rarely have the Ball kids, themselves, had the opportunity to represent and speak for themselves. We’ve had flashes but never full on impact. That’s what makes the appearance of Vogue Evolution so important. In a culture that is hostile to homosexuals and and almost unbearable for queer people of color, it is rare that we get to tell our own stories. It is rare that we are given the credit we deserve for contributing to the human experience. Fashion, Pop music and R’nB all owe an un-payable debt to the Ballroom.

Get into them:

If Ridge St Could Talk II: To The Lumpen Mass. . .

* lumpen= people who aren’t working class or the bourgeoisie. The lower class ie prostitutes, pimps, dboys, etc. . .

I was recently in a discussion with some friends about the lumpen proletariat and their place in the over all revolution against Capitalism. One of my friends, an activist in the homeless rights struggle was at odds with another of my friends because he diss the lumpen, claiming that they have no place in the revolution. I said the following

It’s really interesting because I agree and disagree with Huey and the Panthers on this point. Organizing oppressed communities, in particular Black and Brown ones, means your going to be dealing with the Lumpen. And I agree with Huey that they need to be placed inside of the thought of bringing about revolution under capitalism. Marx analysis was based and limited to the time he lived in, he did not project into the future and so his analysis of the lumpen follows the same way. What constitutes the lumpen now is very different and Boone is right in his aggression towards certain parts of the Lumpen. Huey himself said that certain parts of the Lumpen couldn’t be organized such as pimps. It is very difficult growing up in a place where you are surrounded by pimps, prostitutes, DBoys etc. . . I know when I was growing up I developed a hostility towards them and still harbor ill feelings (it’s hard not to when people are selling poison to their own, you know and your immediate family are victims of that) However, I am trying to always remember that I hate this system, which has produced the lumpen, more. That people are shaped by their conditions. Another interesting point that I picked up speaking to an ex panther the other day was how detrimental the Panthers being the party devoted to organizing the lumpen was. The Ex Panther was saying, and I agree, that the working class is the only class that can bring about revolution under the Capitalist system because of their relations to the ruling class and the means of production. Thus, the working class is the revolutionary class. Marx was right on this, however I agree that it is essential that we start a new pedagogy that has a place for the lumpen, they are the most effected by this Capitalist system in many ways. And if we are talking about updating the Left and making it relevant well. . .

It’s funny cause this all started with me reciting a lyric from a Digable Planets song. “To the lumpen mass. . .”