Photo by Adamantios; Wikimedia Commons

Are you feeling like your side of the story isn’t being told? We want to hear it! Join the TNG conversation by submitting your article to submit@thenewgay.net

TNG has always been a forum for people to raise their own voices, speak their own unique viewpoints, to ensure that the entire queer spectrum is represented. And we can’t reach that goal without you.

So if you have something to say, send it over!

September 11th was the first day in my program. At headquarters, the cadets were lining for attention and a debriefing about the attacks on New York City. The commanding officer was telling us America was attacked. In the middle of formation, a high officer screams from the office, “Another plane hit the Pentagon.” The commanding officer let out a large yell of anger and frustration.

I remember very distinctly, too, our commanding officer mumbling to another cadet, “Those Arab fags are going to get it.” We were quickly dismissed and told to continue our day as normal as possible.

My experience with 9/11 was odd, to say the least. I went about my day thinking the terms, “9/11,” “Twin Towers are falling,” and “Pentagon attacked” were all military jargon for some physical activity. I mean, it was my first day introduced to a new culture in high school. I didn’t watch the news or listen to the radio before I got to school so I did not fully grasp the situation until my first period class replayed the footage.

At that moment, I felt angry, sad for my country and I wanted to get more involved with the JROTC in hopes of becoming an enlisted corpsman after high school.

Since 9/11, my connection with the military, nationalism, and patriotism has definitively changed from my 15-year-old self; a change that would be read as the complete opposite from my bellicose and Army-supporting love of country.

This post will cover many topics that are related to the military and patriotism, but more importantly this post will discuss the idea of homonormativity. Lisa Duggins defined homonormativity in her 2003 book, The Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack On Democracy, as, “A politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions, but upholds and sustains them, while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption.”

This is prevalent during times of great mass trauma or pain. I remember blanket campaigns from the HRC and gay.com that opened the doors to national belonging through a restructuring of sexual orders. During times of national strife and great pain, the queer subject, gays and lesbians alike, were co-opted with a sense citizenship and belonging. Specifically speaking, the sexuality of queer citizens did not matter, we were all Americans and we were all affected by 9/11. That following year we say the American flag and the Rainbow flag march proudly in front of lawns and during gay pride. More importantly, during this restructuirng of the good American, we did also see a highly privitized, monogamous and white(ned) docility of the queer subject, but also the criminilization and the detirment of “the other” who did not fit the imagination of the good American.

One site where we might begin to explore how this process operates is a recent advertisement from the Human Rights Campaign “Millions for Marriage.” (2003)  featuring Keith Bradkowski, a middle-aged white businessman who sought state recognition of his relationship with his late partner, testified at a DOMA hearing on “What is Needed to Defend the Bipartisan Defense of Marriage Act of 1996?” Bradkowski’s partner, Jeff Collman was  a flight attendant on the first plane to strike at the Twin Towers. Bradkowski offer his view to the committee: “The terrorists who attacked this country killed people not because they were gay or straight – but because they were Americans.” A rather symbollic representation of how the queer American was incorporated the idea of good American citizen, Bradkowski does raise an interesting inersection of what is an American Patriot and specifically what was a good queer citizen. He was in a very faithful and commited relatioship with his late partner, an upwardly mobile individual and an upstandig citizen who supported America following the years of 9/11.

The ad portrayed a prototypical good queer citizen: white and willing to die in the battlefields to protect the security of the homeland  both within and outside of its borders. But to proclaim that a terrorist attack launched against a nation regardless of its citizen’s sexualities is to unite an imagined community of Americans where a common victim hood exists at the hands of foreign others. His statment speaks to the degree that we were all attacked and not trgeted by race, class, sexuality or nationalism. Through this move and his positionality, the good queer citizen gains entrance into the idea of nation and heritage while also displacing racial, class and and sexual outsiders. Becuase as subsequent news coverage of the diversity of people who worked in the twin towers, a representation of over 50 countries were present within the buidling during its collapse and an undisclosed number of people whose sexualities were not included. But what the imaginings of who perished that day were Americans.

"Come Together" ad,2006. Credited to Gay.com

Let’s take a look at the gay.com “Come Together” ad, reproduced above.  Paralleling an “us vs. them” mentality sense of community, the image shows who if offered admission to the sense of national pride and unity during times of war, pain, or trauma. The posturing of the two seemingly white males suggest one clue. Another is their physicality, musculature, and hypermasculinity or femme-ing down to perform the virility of the American nation and lack of perceived disability. The American Flag firmly hugs the two of them suggesting no room for others, a gesture of monogamy.

What this means in the context of this post, and hopefully to real world situations is that the queer community was born out of the diversity, out of riot, and against oppression and patriarchy. However, during times of war or massive upheavel, there are pretty unnoticeable things that people proclaim under the banner of Patriotism that is both deeply classed, racialized and sexualized. Americans, and indeed all human beings, come in many shapes, forms, embodiement and emotionality. Yet what is portrayed in the HRC Bradkowski image and the gay.com image is still a a specific racialized, sexualized and, gendered and classed image of good queer citizenry. Nearly all adds produced in gay and lesbian publications nowhere disclose whether they were a person of different race, minoritized sexuality or subculture. And during those times, homonormativity is asked by the queer community to be considered as good queer citizens. But homornortamvity is standing room only and the word can only encompass so few people deemed worthy of national recognition.

The irony of homornormativity, too, is that while it requires a certain degree of compliance of the acceptable queer in the imaginings of American queer culture as heterpatriarchal society and politics have worked in tandem with homornormativity to offer a view of society to agree and match heteropatriarchal society. Proposition 8, DOMA, and Dont Ask Dont Tell offer glimpses into the extent queer subject fits in the national imaginings of American Society, but severely reminds all how (un)flexible that imagining is willing to mend.

So we are left to ask, “Can you call the good queer subject during a time of national unity, but take back from the queer community the promise of marriage, the ability to serve openly and equality initiatives that otherwise offer a better standing in society? Or does it seem counter intutive to create a good queer subject but through limitatios and a partial lens are we to accept a certain brand of queerness associated with “Americaness” and American pride?

From the Stonewall riots and now to the suburbs, is there something left to fight for? Queer intimacy and love is still radical and revolutionary. It is only when we engage our traumas from the past and our yearnings for the futures do we seize the possibility of justice for all.

c. Shando Davis, TNG Flickr

Submission by Asad Rahim, TNG reader and first-time contributor

Dear Asad,

At this point in your journey you think the hardest part about being a gay kid in an exclusively straight environment is that you don’t have a template to model your life after. There is no one to show you what you can hope for or what you should steer away from. No one to take you by the hand and assure you that everything will turn out fine. Blind and unguided, you’re left to fend for yourself, to piece together a good life when you have no idea what a good life is supposed to be for a gay black man.

As you grow older you’ll realize that what you once thought of as a burden is actually a godsend. Unconstrained by others’ definition of normalcy, you’ll be able to live your life on your own terms. No one will pressure you to have a kid or get married. You won’t be caged in by dominant beliefs about what role you should play in your relationships. And rigid definitions of masculinity won’t compel you to mask your emotions, interests and desires.

Blessed with a blank canvas, you’ll have all the space you need to paint a picture that will be beautiful enough for an audience of one and praised by the only critic that ever mattered—you.

Given that freedom, you owe it to yourself to revel in the outer realms of possibility. Allow yourself to embrace the contradiction inherent in you. Be the black-power-shouting, white-boyfriend-having, gospel-loving Muslim that you are. Until you’re not. Then be whoever that person is. Don’t worry if you don’t make sense to anyone else. As long as you make sense to you.

And that’s the great thing about coming out. Once you build up enough courage to live your truth, you’ll stop caring what other people think. The whole shuck and jive to win external validation will just seem silly. You’ll learn to do as you please, and do it with ease.

It’s true: life is much better outside the closet. But I don’t want you to think that it will be a crystal stair. Navigating gay life can be a pretty harrowing experience. The constant performance that closeted gay men must put on coupled with the stigma attached with defying social norms will leave many of your peers psychologically wounded, and those wounds will still be fresh long after they’ve come out of the closet. So be careful about who you give yourself to—for too many people won’t what know they have.

Don’t let a chiseled jaw and a few muscles blur your ability to discern a person’s character. Anyone can live in the gym and binge on creatine, but you’ll be surprised by how few good people are out there — people who are compassionate and funny — who awe you with their intelligence and see the very best in you even when you’re at your worst.

I know, I know — you’re not trying to hear all this right now: you’re too fixated on snagging yourself a cutie with a booty. But if for a moment you allow yourself to have what you need instead of focusing on what you want, you’ll find that getting what you need is much more satisfying than anything you could’ve ever wanted.

Finally, know that being gay does not have to be “your thing.” Who you sleep with is only a big deal because you live in a heteronormative society that deems it as such. Be sure not to conflate what other people find interesting about you with what you find interesting about yourself. Embrace your sexuality, but don’t be held hostage by it. It’s silly to force connections with people just because you happen to sleep with the same sex or to take on a cause that is not dear to you because it’s the gay issue of the moment. Clear out enough space to grow independent of any label that purports to define you.

Yesterday you woke up in a cold sweat. Overwhelmed with fear—afraid of yourself and for yourself. Not knowing how that self was going to survive in a world so hostile to its existence. Tomorrow you’ll push through those anxieties and find the courage to chase your happiness. Free to pursue your joy without being disoriented by someone else’s map, you’ll find that the happiness that you’ve always longed for was never as far away as it seemed.

With love for all that you are and excitement for all that you will become,

Asad

Nong Tum, arguably Thailands most recognizable Kathoey courtesy wikimedia commons)

It’s delightful to see that when the big “reveal” happens, the judges and audience seem to generally be pleasantly surprised.  Thai culture is definitely more accustomed to trans females (eg: the publicly recognized culture of kathoey), but that doesn’t mean that there still isn’t a certain amount of societal shame attached to being a non-masculine male.  Thus, I was happy to see the singer treated with respect (the hosts referred to her as “her” rather than stumbling through awkward non-gendered pronouns or only using her name) and acknowledged for her talent.

Whenever trans individuals, from any sector of such a wide spectrum, are featured on TV in a positive light it feels like a step in the right direction.  I’d argue that RuPaul’s Drag Race, though not addressing transgender issues directly, certainly helps to humanize the gigantic grey area between black and white gender concepts.  [Also, side note, is it just me or did Drag Race JUST start being good like last week?]

I think moments like this are great indications of progress.  Both in Thailand and America there are plenty of misconceptions and prejudices that remain about transgendered individuals, but every time a talented trans person bravely stands up and says “this is who I am and I’m not ashamed” it seems to push the scale a little closer toward acceptance.  And whether or not you think this singer’s appearance on the show is a true sign of progress, you can’t deny that it’s nice to finally see someone pop up on one of these shows who actually DOES got talent.

The not so average Asian, Margaret Cho. Credited: UCLA Asia Institute

Funny as it is, Cho’s joke can easily refashioned for almost every ethnic community.Within many U.S. communities of color,  sexualities other than heterosexuality are still viewed largely external to the culture. Being queer is often assumed to be an uneasy by-product of American assimilation.

Growing up in my very diverse neighborhood, I was around many families of diverse backgrounds and I played with their kids when I went to school. I found comfort and escapism within my community of friends. When I grew into myself and began recognizing my attraction to guys, the comfort of being around my friends grew hostile and eventually dwindled.

Part of being a queer person of color is to also realize its complex interplay with being queer. Heterosexuality is expected within communities of color. Queer and homosexuality are pathologically erased from public conscious. Growing up as a recently arrived immigrant was hard enough, being queer was silenced or ridiculed. As a my friend Kevin profoundly said on a car ride once, ‘”You can be your race within your community and go home to your family and easily identify with  your family. But when your gay, you don’t come home to a family of gay people.” His disidentification from queer and race, in this case, strikes at family and community where sexual identity may be a stronger identity marker than being a racialized individual.

For me, I reflexively express my identity politics to people as queer, Asian, male. Queer comes first because it was the first identity I had to grapple with. That is not to say that it is the most important of my identity. For some, racial identity is more central. Environment affects so much how we come to value and understand these strains of our identities. Queer for me came at such an early age when my feelings were invalidated and admired with a sense of expiration by my family. As my feelings for the same sex grew stronger, I learned that my family was not very receptive to the idea.  they knew that if our community, our church, our extended family ever knew, it would be a source of shame and non redemption. But for me, growing up in my very diverse neighborhood and community, being Filipino was certainly central to my life experiences too but not comparable to the amount of fear and insecurity of being excommunicated by family and friends by sharing they were gay, lesbian queer or transgender.

Margaret Cho’s comments touch on how queer people of color discuss being queer and racialized. It’s everywhere, but in their own communities. Thankfully, this sentiment is changing nowadays with even more queer visibility not only on television and in movies, but also in news and legislation. That isn’t to say it goes down without a fight.

It remains important that we are everywhere now. Queer people of color occupy a very important role in queer struggle where they can bridge the understanding that sexual identity can also be a part of their racial identity and neither can they be kept secret or ignored. Gays are everywhere and they can be here.

Tropical Malady, courtesy of the Environmental Film Festival © Strand Releasing

As I’ve touched on before in this column, there are countless film festivals taking place all over the United States and throughout the world. In just about any major city and many of the smaller ones, as well, you can find a film festival that has the courage to show films that are often left out of the mainstream and likely wouldn’t be shown at your local multiplex. From festivals celebrating the art of film in total to those that seek to expose the creative work happening within niche categories based on demographic or interest, the recognition of the art and craft of film is alive and well.

This week in Washington opened one of these festivals. From March 15 – 27 runs the 19th Annual Environmental Film Festival, dedicated to “further the public’s understanding of environmental issues – and solutions – through the power of film and thought-provoking discussion with environmental experts and filmmakers.” Exhibiting over 150 films, attending the festival is a great way to not only learn about issues important to the world, but to also take in some great art and entertainment at the same time. There are films for every interest, including the LGBT community.

On March 26 at 7:30 pm at the AFI Silver Theatre, the Festival screens Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s hauntingly exquisite 2004 triumph Tropical Malady (Sud Pralad). As the first Thai film to be in main competition at the Cannes Film Festival, it won the Special Jury Prize in 2004.

Tropical Malady is a film split into two sections, telling seemingly different stories, with both seeking to provide a greater understanding of human interaction and our interplay with the world around us, seen and unseen. It is about loneliness and desire, and an attempt to contact on a deeper level with that which is beyond the confines of our own bodies. It strives to tell us that such connections take place between people on all levels, boundless of sexual and gender identity, and further penetrates through the idea that nature and our environment holds a deep sway over our relation to ourselves and others.

The first half of the film is the story of Keng, a soldier, and Tong, who lives in the rural city that Keng has been assigned. The connection between the two deepens into a romance of innocence and flirtation, deeper than merely a sexual attraction. What develops is not bounded by sexuality, but instead by the limitless nature of meaningful human interaction.

Tong exits into the night and the film shifts dramatically to a different story of a soldier, played by the same actor who portrays Keng who enters the jungle surrounding the rural village to find a young man gone missing. Interweaved into this storyline is the fable of a tiger shaman, and this shaman (portrayed by the same actor who plays Tong) begins to challenge the soldier in his struggle to find the villager as he gets lost deeper into himself and the jungle.

Tropical Malady is a challenging film that is patient in its storytelling and asks for a deep engagement and thoughtfulness from its audience. The connection between the two sections of the film may not seem apparent upon initial viewing and is often disorienting and confusing. But this disorientation is exactly the point, and what is accomplished is a thought-provoking, beautifully-filmed work that asks us to ponder our existence in this world and the one beyond, where the main character may not be us, but the world itself.

For more information on this film and the rest of the Environmental Film Festival, please visit www.dcenvironmentalfilmfest.org.

Evelyn Thomas, also known as Corporal Evelyn Thomas, is an internationally known gay activist. She is a secondary educator with a Master of Arts in Education.

The following article is an excerpt from my book, “Does Butch Nappy Hair Offend You? One Teacher’s Struggle For Acceptance in the World of Education”. This excerpt examines intersectionality of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation

*****

Photo of author, Evelyn Thomas

“Many African-Americans believe success is obtaining the “American Dream”, earning the figurative pass into mainstream society, adapting to the values and economic standing of the white privileged classes (Hooks, 1994). With the enactment of the integration policy in 1954, many African-Americans parents of the time saw the chance for future generations of black children to achieve the dream, a possibility that was once closed to them. Additionally, with the chance of upward economic mobility came the responsibility of adapting the culture and practices of the dominate players in American society.  It was a system in which “individual black folks who were most like white folks in the way they looked, talked, and dressed would find it easier to be socially mobile” (Hooks, 1994, p. 176).

The double edge sword of assimilation had a negative effect on black educators and black students. With the Supreme Court decision, many of the black teachers were terminated from their position. [Prior to the Brown v. Board of Education decision, 96 percent of full-time faculty in black schools consisted of black women. The field of teaching has historically provided a significant means of upward mobility, particular for African-American women.] The new policy of an integrated form of education provided avenues for future economic success for black children it meant the decline in population of black educators. White teachers were entrusted with the assimilation process of the black student population.  Black children assimilated into this culture based on the normative practices of white aesthetics and Heteronormativity.

The integrated functions of oppression within the newly formed education system created a platform for black oppression and suppression of sexual identity. Black children had to forsake their ethnic pride (adopt the character of a white person) for any chance of social mobility. The Brown vs. the Board of Education streamlined assimilation of black children within the white culture, opened the narrow door of economic mobility, and provided a platform for white supremacy aesthetics in the hiring process of black teachers and the development of the young black mind. For a chance at economic upward mobility gay black teachers and students were forced to hide their true identity. What unfolds when these identities are elements of one person?

Kumashiro (2001) contends intersectionality “embracing the identity “queer” or “of color” is paradoxical. Sexual identity, sexual orientation, and sexual behavior are separate entities of the general motif of one person. Since every identity has meaning only because it is named against other identities, there can never be an identity that is all-inclusive”.  People depending on professional, social, or personal surroundings adapt identities based on the situation. ‘There is a connection between racism and heterosexism, and racial and sexual identities. In the efforts to challenge one form of oppression of which unintentionally contributes to other forms of oppression, and our efforts embrace one form of difference often exclude and silence others” (p. 6). In our society we must address all forms of oppression and not create a pendulum based the ideas of Heteronormativity practices of sexual identity, sexual behavior, and sexual orientation.

The internal conflict of adapting to the dominant white culture of America, maintaining my ethnicity as a person and educator, and hiding my sexual orientation creates challenges in the development of my pedagogy. It is a constant internal battle of the mind. To become an educator and accepted by my white colleague, I must stray away from everything that is identified as being apart of the black culture (natural hair style, body image, music, food, beliefs, religion, etc.) To become an educator and accepted by my colleagues, students, parents, and administrators, I must hide my sexual orientation of a gay woman for the fear of being terminated from my teaching position. Sometimes I adapt many characteristics and personalities to fit in the role of a black educator and again as a gay black educator, I become unaware of my true self at times. I am a product of the social experiment of integration and an assimilation form of education. This personal narrative will detail my struggle for acceptance in the education profession.”

On February 7th , 2011, edge on the net released an article commenting on the depiction gay characters in network and cable television. A trans-Atlantic cross cultural analysis of gay pop culture,  I find many points very agreeable with Douglas Baulf article, LGBTs on TV – does it get better. He is not only supposing the virtual lack of queer people of color, but the overall reticence of portraying queer characters of color and transgender issues. Watching more television these day than I would like, the state of gay characters on television is lax and negligent to say the least. I am happy to watch a budding queer relationship on Glee, lesbian love on Greys Anatomy and the stunning six gay characters on True Blood. But representation is an elusive creature and the connections between television and representation is always an appropriate discussion.

One is the lopsided portrayal of queer love and sex on network television.

The infamous Kurt and Karofsky kiss on FOX hit TV show Glee. Credited:the advocate.com

ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy portrays lesbian relationships as complex and loving relationships. Perhaps a “positive representation” is Arizona Robbins and Caliope Torres who maintain a fickle relationship that run hot and cold. But ABC executives are not at all hesitant to show the two of them sharing a steamy late afternoon shower romp. As Fox continues to delay any portrayal of male queer love between Chris Colfer’s character Kurt on Glee,  you have to ask, why is it more permissible to show two lesbians in the shower than two gay kids kissing? In this case, while we do have more gay characters than ever before, we see a sanitized and almost desexualized image of gay characters compared to cable television. Are we still afraid to see two gay men kiss in a hot steamy shower on network television? My answer- Network Television, your privilege is showing. Heterosexual kids in the cast of Glee hooking up and creating new couples nearly every episode and displaying their love in public ways, yet cast homosexual love as a “special episode” is a picture of privilege in mainstream television.

Jesus and Lafayette from HBOs True Blood. Credited : hbowatch.com

To add to the discussion, is there something to be said about the relative lack of queer people of color on mainstream gay television? Borrowing a note from Douglas Baulf, I really do hope it does gets better. I think his article has tapped a pulse on the state of  gay television. If HBO’s True Blood and Logos Noah’s Arc is the only portrayal of queer people of color on cable television then it goes to show where queer people of color are on the radar of gay culture- in the margins. Quite frankly, when FOX held open auditions for Season 2 of Glee for a possible love interest for Kurt, I was really hoping, with the diversity of the Glee cast, that his love interest would be a person of color. I am not saying race is marker of diversity but diversity exist in hetero and homosexual relationships too.

It seems odd to care so much about characters who do not exist in real life. They remain simply that, just characters. But it is important to recognize perceptions do matter. I write from a queer person of color’s perspective and my issues are very real and worthy or recognition in television. Bullying, notions of suicide, familial expectations and questions about love are prevalent in my life too. Am I alone in this sentiment?

Aaron Gray is a 27-year-old Chicago native, working as an Associate Designer for one of New York’s leading private label fashion corporations, and has assisted in designing collections for Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’s Carson Kressley, celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe, and California’s leading couture designer Bradley Bayou. In his spare time, he works as a bridal and special occasion designer under his own self-titled label.

Check out more about Aaron in his TNG article on “The New “F” Word” .

You can also find Aaron and the rest of the faggots at www.50faggots.com.

Check out more from the 50Faggots on TNG TV

***

Side note:  As I’m sitting down to write my article for this month about my life growing up Queer, I suddenly had this moment of complete clarity about a “hook-up” that just left my apartment.   It was a great night, one of those “special” and kind of rare moments when somehow the stars align and for one night you become “soul mates” with a complete stranger.  These moments happened a lot more often when I was in my early twenties, but times (along with my needs) have changed.  I guess my moment of clarity was just the realization that I’ve changed as well. That I can now easily accept that sinking feeling that once he left I was going to forget about him just as easily as he was going to forget about me (or at least pretend to).  I haven’t figured out if this is a moment I should be proud of yet, but I just had to get that out of the way so I can focus on the below.

First off, I’ve never really identified with the word Queer.  In my experience Queer has been a term often self-assigned by that special breed of liberal, socially conscious, and politically involved gay men and women.  My closest friends are of this breed.  They also use terms like “Gender-Fucking,” and back in my college days, when I was involved with DePaul University’s LGBTQ group, I won the award for “Best Gender Fucking.” I still don’t entirely understand what that award meant as it was never my intention to violently combat or fuck gender.  I was just having an intense love affair with clothes at the time, and leaned heavily towards the androgynous. And somehow, by simply being myself, I was unknowingly making a political statement that inspired people to think differently.  I do like winning things though, so it was a proud moment for me. (Thank you very much)

I was born in Chicago then moved to Washington, D.C., where I lived for two years as my parents tried to save their marriage.  After their divorce, I moved to St. Louis with my mom, Barbara (Barbie for short), and a year later we settled in northwest Indiana. I lived in Gary (birthplace of Michael Jackson) for a couple of years, until my best friend’s brother caught us having sex in my basement. I was 8 years old. I was a “firecracker” of a little boy, way too smart for my own good. I LOVED playing Barbies with the girls. Cousins would often catch me trying on my mother’s heels in her closet. She almost had a panic attack when I got red lipstick on her ivory slip dress while playing Dynasty in the backyard (I was Dominique Deveraux). But my mother, an expert at denial, blamed the incident on my best friend and in order to “save my reputation” moved us, once again, to a small town next to Lake Michigan called Miller Beach, Indiana, where I spent most of my life growing up.  Within a week in my new neighborhood I had a new boyfriend.  It was a passionate affair.  We broke up because I wouldn’t share my gummy worms.

Now, I’ve always been “different.” I’ve never been close to much of my family, save for a small group of cousins that lived nearby.  For most of my life, it was always just been Mom and me. At some point, I think as a way for my mother to deal with me being different, and not really knowing how to raise me, our relationship shifted from a mother/son dynamic to friends/jealous sisters. My mother was and still is a strong, independent woman with a character that is stronger than any man that I’ve met. Her need to work and succeed in business matched her need to spend time with me, so I was given a lot of freedom to explore different ideas about life.  I never had a curfew, nor was I was told to make my bed or clean my room or take a shower — these were all things that I wanted to do for myself.

My only responsibility was to get good grades and I happily obliged.  I was a latch-key kid that spent a lot of time alone reading books and, like many a young gay boy from a single mother living in the Midwest, television was my Bible.  It shaped my perception of the ideal everything.  For example: Thanks to Breakfast at Tiffany’s, I still find nothing more romantic than a kiss in a rain. I always end up feeling like Charlie Brown during Christmas. Though I like to play the role of James Bond, the coolest bachelor of all time—who, in my opinion has always been little gay, which serves as a role I can really get into — my idea of the perfect future for myself is still (and will always be) The Cosby Show-cast as Claire, of course.

Though as I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to the see the fun in being Heathcliff.  And as of late, I’ve started placing this ridiculous pressure on myself to meet my future husband so we can date long enough to realistically adopt children at an age where we won’t be too old when we have our 50^th wedding anniversary, complete with our grandchildren performing a lip synched routine to Beyonce’s Single Ladies on the grand staircase of our (Brooklyn? Greenwich Village? San Francisco? London?) town home.  I know it sounds silly, especially as a gay man to place this unrealistic pressure of a “straight ideal” on myself, but growing up in Indiana, there wasn’t this budding community of gay mentors waiting to take me in and push me along the right path.  The only way for me to survive being trapped in that town was to dream about a better life for myself.  And those dreams all consisted of these random moments and images that I studied as a kid on television during the late 80’s and early 90’s.

And in 1992, at nine years old, my young life was forever changed when I was introduced to one of the most magnetic and powerful women I’d ever seen on screen in my entire life.  A woman so glamorous and complex that she became not only a leading role model for me, but the epitome of strength and sexuality.  Her name was Catwoman.  And she became my dream, so big, that for an entire year it consumed my life.  And with my head held high, I carried around a “whip”—made from an old bike tire that I cut—and after every sentence I’d curl my “r’s” and hiss.  Luckily for me, the boys on my block just accepted this latest character development, as I was still the only boy that could do a cartwheel and land into a perfect split.   Unluckily for me, this was the moment my mother had enough of my “shenanigans” and thought it was time for me to “become a man.”  And just like that, my little life changed.  My whip was replaced with a baseball bat.  Barbie’s were replaced with GI Joes.  And no more “hissing” when I got upset.  Also, communication with my mother from that point on was replaced with arguing or chatting with random strangers in AOL chatrooms.

Years later, during my senior year in high school, as I was walking in the Mall on my lunch break from the Gap, I saw two gay guys walking together wearing tight boot-fit jeans.  And with a look of disgust, I remember saying to a co-worker standing next to me, “Ugh. I will never be like that. I will never be THAT gay.”  I’m not proud of that moment.  And being who I am now, I can look back and laugh. But this story only serves to show how confusing and complicated life is when you’re growing up queer and you have no support.

“I think bad parents are a source of a lot of the problems with Queer youth.”

—Morgan, 50Faggots: A Gay in the Life: “Growing Up Queer”

The above quote is an excerpt from our 3^rd installment of our mini documentary series A Gay in the Life, which consist of street interviews with diverse gay men and women we meet while traveling across the United States filming our Season One cast of www.50faggots.com.  In the video below, you will be introduced to three amazing queer youth activists from St. Louis, Missouri who have a profound and very honest discussion about life, growing up Queer, and the problems facing gay youth today.

A few weeks ago, as I was getting ready for work, I happened to catch an interview on The Today Show with Cheryl Kilodavis and her five-year-old son, Dyson, talking about her book “My Princess Boy.”  For those of you who aren’t familiar, My Princess Boy is a nonfiction picture book that Cheryl wrote for (and about) her son Dyson, whom she has allowed to let happily express his authentic self by enjoying “traditional girl” things like jewelry, sparkles, dresses, and anything pink. When I saw Dyson on my television screen wearing his pink velvet jumper and tutu, I began to tear up a bit, not only from the joy of seeing a mother so proudly supporting her son for who he is and how he wants to express himself; but I saw a piece of myself in Dyson, and my heart ached a bit for the surely long journey that lies ahead for the boy, who at a very young age, has been thrust into the center of a heated dialogue about the importance (or lack of importance) of gender roles for children. My only hope is that Dyson will continue to receive the same unconditional love and support from his family as he enters into the next stages of his life.

Sidenote again:  I can’t decide if I should keep this guy’s number in my phone.  It’s really not a big deal…I just know myself well enough to know that if I do put his number in my phone it somehow makes the situation more real.  I don’t think I want it to be real.

Growing up queer is no easy task. To be completely honest, being a queer adult can be just as confusing at times. Now in my late twenties, while I’m no longer the young Princess Boy playing with Barbies and trying on my mother’s heels in her closet, I did paint my kitchen pink (with black trim), and I now have the Barbie logo tattooed on my chest across my heart—for my mom—for doing the best she could, and for all the times I was able to play and pretend.

Photo courtesy of the U.S. Navy archives

Discussing disability is a difficult issue. Many recognize a person with a visible disability and — because were raised not to stare or remark on those who are different — we have learned to ignore disabilities by ignoring the individual’s presence. In instances where we do recognize someone’s disability, we begin to overly accommodate their space and surroundings, perhaps as a compensatory mechanism for all differently-bodied people to share our space and effort with those who are perceived disabled. Then there are people who recognize the disability and probe into the individual’s personal life,  highlighting his different-ness even more.

Some time ago I was hanging out at a club when a man in a wheelchair rolled up and began dancing right next to me and my friends. He was handsome, shook his body around and waved his hands like no tomorrow. He looked as though he was having a great time and I gave a kind smirk before I turned my head  and continued dancing with my friends. His striking, wavy hair and pleasant smile still linger vividly.

As I remember, there were people who noticed his wheelchair’s presence and looked, though did not notice the individual: a sort of kind gesture of noting his disability while simultaneously ignoring his presence. Others gawked and covered their mouths to remark. The flashing lights, fog machine, and refracting disco ball could not mask the ever-growing circle of people who spread away from him until he was dancing in his own little space.

Arguably there was an interplay of tolerance within the club that night, which created a sense of normativity within the gay club. However,  this tolerance came with a heavy dose of public scrutiny, explanation and condemnation. In contrast, Jenny Morris quotes  JoAnne Rome, a woman born without a left hand, in her book Pride Against Prejudice. Rome speaks about the experience of enduring the stares of able-bodied individuals, stating, “I owed an explanation to everyone who demanded one ….‘What happened to your arm?’ was a luxury I could not chose to answer… the world made it clear I owed them an explanation”.

Certain assumptions are made about appearance and identity. For example, imagine the ideal “man” in society. One may envision a white, thin, Christian with a powerful wage earning capacity. Does his idealized podium remain if he had a prosthetic arm? The correlation between visual appearance and a claimed identity problematizes the connection between the basis of community and membership in communities.  Simply because one person looks a certain way does not mean they claim a certain identity.

Does exclusion from one group create the formation of another? Are there connections between disability and queerness  within our society?

Appearance and perceived disability can be read as a queer issue: heterosexuality is perceived as the norm, while homosexuality is a perceived as abnormal.  While queers may appear to be included within the framework of society, queerness cannot divorce itself from  public scrutiny, explanation, condemnation and tolerance within dominant society. By this basis of exclusion from heterosexuality, homosexuality is placed as the outlier. Just because we see gay images or what people think of as “gay” around us does not mean every gay person should claim this identity. Or does it?

So I ask you, TNG readers, how does the queer community accommodate differentness?

“I love being white and I think it’s something to be very proud of… I don’t want our culture diluted. We need to close the borders now and let everyone assimilate to a Western, white, English-speaking way of life”

precious few of the American Apparel set batted an eye. It was the beginning of the new millennium, and god damn it if we weren’t all too busy overdrawing parentally-cosigned debit cards to furnish converted rowhouses, using our Creative Class Midas touch to renovate the urban waste left behind by Baby Boomer White Flight iniquities, to notice. Also the guy had a beard, tattoos, and a B.A. in English. It followed that he also had something called “irony,” which meant that he could say in a national newspaper, sober, the kinds of things most of us can only say at parties with close friends, drunk.

The next time Stephen Colbert slips into his alter ego and skewers the illegal-alien issue to

laughs, he might want to consider the family of Chandra Levy, the 24-year-old intern who went jogging in Rock Creek Park on May 1, 2001 and was brutally murdered.

Her alleged assailant, Ingmar Guandique, who entered the U.S. illegally from El Salvador in

2000, is about to go on trial…

The Levys are hardly the only U.S. family to discover that not all illegal aliens come here to work and eventually enter the mainstream. Too many come here to ply their illicit trades, take up with gangs and live in the shadow of polite society.

They are a menace who eat up tax dollars and terrorize neighborhoods. That is a reality different from the one often peddled on Capitol Hill in bi-partisan fashion, which is: They do the menial work that Americans no longer are inclined to do. The latter is an insult to millions of blue-collar Americans.

The F.B.I and Justice Department do not track the number… of crimes committed by illegal aliens. Nor do the media routinely unearth a perpetrator’s illegal residency. Only in sensational cases does it come out that an illegal alien committed an unspeakable act against an American or legal resident…

Well-meaning souls on both sides of the political aisle can wax eloquently in favor or against illegal aliens. This is not to take a position on that. That is to suggest that it should not be played to cheap laughs, not when too many Americans have been vicitimized by it or live in fear of it.

[note: bold emphasis mine]

just another day in "eclectic Adams Morgan"

The latest site of this uproar is Brazil. A few of the country’s extensive networks of samba schools, popular clubs or academies dedicated to teaching and performing the African-Brazilian dance, have recently instituted a policy setting aside bathrooms expressly for use by homosexuals and transvestites. The policy has incited protests and outcry on both sides of the issue.

Defenders claim that the policy is meant to create safe spaces for queer students to feel comfortable and secure. They also highlight the fact that the restrooms are optional and LGBT students are not forced to use them. “I don’t see any problem,”  Iran Araujo, who heads cultural programs for the Independent League of Samba Schools, told the Daily Mail in response to the protests.

Opponents, however, equate the creation of these separate facilities to forced segregation. “They are carnival apartheid,” Claudio Nascimento, a government official, was quoted by the Mail as saying. In more practical terms, many gay groups are worried that the use of these bathrooms will make queer individuals easy targets for ridicule or violence and potentially put them in harm’s way.

In my own opinion, I would be much more troubled if the use of these facilities was in some way compulsory and the option of using the other bathrooms was not available to students identified or labeled as queer. As it stands now, it seems more like a policy born of good intentions that was not  fully thought-out. The former amateur queer theorist buried deep inside me thinks this whole mess could be avoided if all facilities were open to everyone regardless of gender or sexuality, but that’s not a particularly realistic solution for the time being.

What do you think? Do these gay-only toilets represent a form of separation and stigmatization or an attempt to ensure the safety and comfort of queer Brazilians? Deposit your $0.02 in the comments below!

In the aftermath of this holiday season I want to take a moment of your time to reflect on all the wonderful gifts we’ve received. Last spring I had the opportunity to go to Rwanda as part of a study program and was privileged so witness how people continue to rebuild 16 years after unimaginable violence. As part of the program we spoke to survivors and perpetrators, traveled to memorials, and asked ourselves over and over ‘what can we do?’ The day after we went to a memorial that was so graphic and raw that we had no choice but to leave forever changed, we had the honor of meeting a group of women who were working past that horrific violence and attempting to reconcile. The group was comprised of widows of genocide and wives of perpetrators, and despite that seemingly insurmountable divide, they were working together to help themselves and each other.

Spark Microgrants is trying to help this group of women start raising goats to improve their living situation. They already make soap as a collective and this would be another revenue stream for them. This is vital since these women are now the heads of their households in the aftermath of the genocide. The project needs a total of $3000; please help out with any amount that you can.

Thin and Sushi Credited:cheapethniceatz.co

A visit to any local grocery or supermarket is a uniquely a different experience nowadays than it was ten years ago. Today one is more apt to find very detailed labels citing the origin of certain fruits and vegetable, whether the product is certified USDA organic, if the coffee is free trade and even if the fish is line caught. Ever growing concern in the world economy over individual habits and consumers right in efforts to lessen the carbon footprint has heighten new levels of consumerism to “go green.” Buying eco-friendly detergents, reusable bags, and 99 percent recycled packaged goods are now commonplace. But in the face of all these pressures to eat right and think globally there remains a split between lower classes, in particular queer people of color. It is simply out of reach for many. Women of color, specifically Asian-American and African-American women, are personally educating their communities about proper nutrition, encouraging their children to engage in healthier active lifestyles and lastly addressing the issue of accessibility specifically impacting children to make healthier choices.

Healthy choices first start at home. The mother remains the locus of this specific education. Food is very much tied to a sense of culture as women of color will address, food is culture. For newly arrived Asian women and their families, they discuss how challenging it is to readjust to their new lives in America when markets are uniquely different and as new foods are introduced. African American women have a higher geographic disproportion in inner cities, striving for improvements in social services to achieve social justice while at the same time promoting their families’ health. For Asian immigrants, the population enters the job market earning minimum wage or less and their purchasing power remains undermined in large urban areas. With simply less money to go around for both groups, thus, educating children on proper eating habits at the home becomes an essential role for child rearing and raising children.

Self esteem and happiness go hand in hand. Establishing a good sense of self esteem for children at a young age allows children to perceive the world as safer and happier. For women of color, the effort to establish and maintain a healthy self-esteem remains an uphill battle in addition to maintaining a peaceful tranquil home on top of work, school and co-committing factors which shape her daily routine. While child obesity remains a rapid on a river of growing concerns for women of color, the struggle to simply find enough resources to feed children outweighs the need to for them to eat right. Simply put, the priority is to feed the children first, eat right second. When ten dollars can feed a family of four at McDonalds while ten dollars at Whole Foods can buy probably two peaches, the need to maximize already tight money is superseded by the need to eat right. Therefore, with the additional role of women of color educating their children of proper nutrition within the home, using the education and employing it when outside the home is also important. The concern for proper nutrition then becomes what is eaten outside the home.

Is Whole Foods Classist? Credited:thelostogle.com

In addition, in measure to combat childhood obesity, women of color encourage children to engage in less sedentary lifestyles by promoting more active lifestyles. But certain geographic factors do not safely permit such behavior in inner cities. Nonetheless, Asian and African American women rely heavily on school and other similar social institutions to help promote physical activity.  Self-esteem for these children remains important. Because the biggest difference in helping a child to build a healthy, responsible lifestyle is contingent on the proper food and diet, social institutions must play their roles in building self-esteem when single mothers and lower income households cannot readily provide such.

Lastly the issue of accessibility poses a unique position for mothers of color. The ability of affordable healthier choice is a real concern because while readily cooked meals become an ever increasing rarity, affordable and accessible healthy choices outside the home are another issue. Building on the two pervious arguments made, parents face the not-at-home gap where the strides in maintaining proper nutrition are truncated when they leave the house. Maintaining continuity of diets and healthy lifestyles also depend on whether children have received proper education on what is acceptable nutrition and whether they are encouraged to make right decisions, accessibility thus plays a key factor.

How this is perhaps also a queer issue is the larger addresses of wage gap for queer kids of color. Compounded with the notion of thinness is a positive attribute in our larger society, the ability for queer kids of color and their access to nutrition inhibits their sense of happiness and self-esteem and one more fold to how food affects queer kids and queer people of color. Living within this paradigm of thinness equals happiness, queer people of color at times reject foods particular to their heritage because of their perceived “unhealthy” standards upheld within American culture.

Perhaps one solution in addressing the issue of the privilege of eating right in America is to recognize class is a serious political division for women. A particular way women of color dealt with these issues of eating right is by taking a more direct and conscious concerted effort in regulating what goes into the mouths of their children while also posing factual evidence addressing the material and income disparities of eating right with American society.  Inevitably, universal sisterhood remains a difficult uniting banner when material resources prevent lower class and women of color from identifying with the struggles of middle class and white sisters especially within the arena of food and diet. Furthermore, addressing the material problem women and women of color face such as the adoption of the double and sometimes the triple day, geographic location, and income disparities illuminates the need to understand the multiple layers of identity which shape their lives.

Thousands take part in New Delhi's gay pride parade (AP Photo)

Last week an article was released on the socialistworker.org recounting the experience of two study abroad students who were involved in two LGBTQ protests in Trinidad and Tobago, a country that still maintains anti-sodomy laws.  No matter your opinion on Socialism/Socialist sources of news, or your general political views for that matter, this article was an informative, unique look into yet another example of a possible growing LGBTQ Movement abroad.

In response to the week long visit of American Pastor Phillip Lee, whose group is partially funded by the infamous U.S. conservative group, Focus on the Family, students from the Trinidad and Tobago LGBT organization, The Coalition Advocating for the Inclusion of Sexual Orientation (CAISO) decided to plan a protest to counter “ex-gay” Pastor Lee’s seminar that is supposed to guide the “healing” of homosexuals with the Bible. Despite the generally highly secretive (due to existing stigma for being gay or queer) young LGBTQ community in Trinidad and Tobago, students still showed up, some acting or appearing with more caution than others. With only 35 people, Trinidad and Tobago saw the first ever LGBT protest in its history. The second protest drew nearly 120 young students.

The world also saw India and Nepal both celebrate their first ever gay pride parades this year. The first Indian gay pride parade was held in late-November after homosexuality was legalized in July. Back in August, Nepal also celebrated its first ever gay pride parade. As reported by The Advocate, “According to The Canadian Press, the celebration was led by Sunil Pant, a parliament member and the country’s most prominent gay activist.” Both India and Nepal’s first gay pride’s drew about 2,000 people.

It seems as though the potential for a new, energetic international LGBTQ movement is becoming more of a reality. While pride parades are most definitely not the cornerstone of a “movement” they undoubtedly break the silence, that more often than not, condemns so many of our brothers and sisters to death. More and more LGBTQ people (especially LGBTQ youth) are beginning to fight back, use their voice, and proclaim their identities and loved ones with pride even in the most unwelcoming environments. It is especially important for us to stand in solidarity with our LGBTQ brothers and sisters abroad when groups like Focus on the Family continue to send “ex-gay” experts in the name of the United States to countries like Trinidad and Tobago while also sponsoring anti-gay groups who are seeking to execute gay and queer people in Uganda. Although there is obviously much work to be done, unfortunately for Focus on the Family, it seems that all their work still cannot set us “straight.”

Ideal Male Beauty Credited: fatqueer.blogspot.com

Whether or not the medical concept of obesity is truly the dire emergency that it is touted as by many public health officials, the fat male body is viewed as something that is emasculate, disgusting and amoral. Fatness is so conflated in the queer community that uttering its name is as hurtful as dropping the “f bomb.” Pathologically avoided and socially damaging, society and the queer community places a notion of fatness equated with degradation of the body. But why is such a damaging connotation placed on the human body when every human being possesses this quality of fatness? No one is ever truly devoid of fat. Nonetheless, there seems to be an unequal distribution between our notion of fatness as degrading, while the notion of thinness, and even extreme thinness, is somewhat permissible.

We all have fat but it is the noticeable amount of fat on our bodies we give attention to and scrutinize. Because we are socially conditioned to believe that fat is unappealing, a comparison drawn with fat acceptance and queer acceptance elicits a variety of theoretical stances. The most poignant one regards the medicalization of the queer body and the medicalization of the fat body in shaping identities. Members of both communities have attempted to use scientific studies to justify their identities, to attempt to legitimize their existence by claiming it is an immutable piece of themselves. But increasingly, searching for a “fat gene” or a “gay gene”, these professionals and health officials bypass critical discussion that would place blame. By placing their identity in the hands of genetics, they derail discussions of choice, behavior and environmental impact which shape us all.

The Bear, The Big Daddy of Queer Fatness. Credited: thebearoutpost.com

Even more there remains no analytical lens at which queer people of color address these issues of choice, behavior and environmental impacts which evaluate assumptions about body image and image culture which many are affected. Notions of heritage and social celebrations where food is central to a cultural practice reveal a sense of pride in eating food but also what it means to be a person of color. By extension, already marginalized with the tenuous relationship in the dominant culture, fatness and queerness are even more marginalized and isolated within these communities which criticize their own bodies as unappealing and shameful. Fatness, in this case, not only centers itself in identity politics or the center of the body consciousness but exists within a nebulous of meanings and understanding which shape out intersectional analysis of one another. Fatness does matter and always worthy to discuss because in discussing it, we confront the issue head on and explore its constructive political meaning and even erotic potential, dare I say.

My own criticism of this body-based agenda — as the gay media has a stranglehold on the queer body — is that it requires a serious reconsideration of the impact of thinness and the psychological imposition of weight reduction strategies have on the queer body. Explicitly, we need to evaluate the connections with which we do not consider thinness as illness yet highlight obesity as a monstrosity within the gay community. As for myself, I am apt to conclude that health at every size is an appropriate health ideal. In the ever-growing shadow of the obesity-led health crisis, reputable studies conducted have suggested that weight and health is a tricky slope. While on the one hand obesity has direct correlations to health, there is also a discursive downplay of thinness as a health problem. There is an impulsive judgment to criticize the fat body as slothful and unhygienic. However,  the thin body does not invoke the same diction. The function of realizing health at every size is that there is no one mythical human being the queer community should strive to look or aspire to. This mythical human being— white, male, Christian, middle classed, heterosexual, adult and thin —has grown to mythical propositions while distorting everyone’s sense of body image. But like myths, they do not exist and it is time to pursue the approval of our own desires to meet our own needs and overall affect our own positive health.

So when your ready to eat your Thanksgiving meal, appreciate your body and give thanks that it’s the only thing you truly own in this world. Own it and love it because it not going anywhere.

In a recent episode of Glee (if you’re not a fan of the show, plow on anyway, this reference is brief), a lumbering jock bullies Kurt, the only openly gay character in the show. When Kurt confronted him in private, the bully kisses him and runs off. Chances are that the message of this episode isn’t new to you: most violent homophobes are afraid of their own gayness and lash out to keep others from suspecting them. We’ve all seen this happen in politicians, religious leaders, and the homophobes in your own life.

Individual homophobes are usually pretty easy to figure out, particularly if you’re of the school of thought that most people are at least a little bisexual/pansexual. And when a small group of homophobes band together, they’re still rather transparent. Terrifying and even more difficult to turn over to the fabulous side, but transparent. And at least two of the people in the group probably have a steamy history anyway.

But then there are entire populations. Episcopalian bishop Gene Robinson is retiring as the stress of all the constant death threats on his and his family’s lives has become unbearable. I can’t blame him. A message or two is alarming though not hard to deal with, but thousands? Maybe all those individuals alone are lashing out because of what they fear in themselves, but they, together, have made a horrifying force. How can anyone tolerate that?

Uganda is among the countries that consider homosexuality a capitol offense and a Ugandan newspaper recently released the names of a hundred gay people. Violent homophobia on a national scale, gay genocide. I had the misfortune to see a video of a Ugandan “professor of homosexuality” lecture. The basic anatomy, stuff that you can check on your own body, that he taught was way off. Students, journalists and reporters still ate it up. Hatred on a national level involves poverty, miseducation, fear and propaganda.

From an individual to an entire nation, homophobia is still strong. Many people have claimed that, due to the recent increase in violence (or the increase in reporting on it), homophobia is in deathly throes. There is little comfort in that thought when a bishop must wear a bulletproof best beneath his consecration vestments. I wish I could come up with some kind of solution to homophobia, on any scale, but it’s beyond me. We must, above all, though, accept our differences and work together.

The panel discussion on Immgration and GLBTQ Latino/as will be moderated by Ryan Janek Wolowsk and Samara Rivera and will feature Lisbeth Melendez, the Executive Director of Unidos, Jose Ramirez, the Youth Empowerment Program Coordinator at La Clinca del Pueblo, Stacey Long, Federal Legislative Director at The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and Julie Kruse, Policy Director at Immigration Equality.

DC Latino Pride is sponsored by The DC Center, Getrude Stein Democratic Club and Verizon.  The entire GLBTQ community is invited to this important event.

Details:

Friday, June 11
Charles Sumner School
1201 17th Street, NW
6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Free and open to the public.

Pride & Heritage is a coalition of local community-based organizations serving the API LGBTQ communities: KhushDC, the D.C. Chapter of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF-DC), Asian/Pacific Islander Queers United for Action (AQUA), and Asian Pacific Islander Queer Sisters (APIQS).

Details:

Saturday, May 22
Christ Church, Washington Parish
620 G Street, SE
7:30 p.m.
Tickets can be purchased online here.

To create a safe space for open dialogue, it is intended exclusively for people who self-identify as API and LGBTQ, and will focus on discussions about coming out and maintaining healthy relationships.  Team building and dance activities will also be included.

Pride & Heritage is a coalition of local community-based organizations serving the API LGBTQ communities: KhushDC, the D.C. Chapter of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF-DC), Asian/Pacific Islander Queers United for Action (AQUA), and Asian Pacific Islander Queer Sisters (APIQS).

Details:

Saturday, May 22
The DC Center
1810 14th Street, NW
12:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.
To register and see the full schedule of events click here.

Black Cracker is primarily known for producing Bunny Rabbit’s Lovers and Crypts, as well as touring with CocoRosie. After successful tours with Bunny Rabbit, the two broke up and moved on to different projects. Bunny Rabbit formed a duo, Follower, and Black Cracker went solo.

The new tracks are much more pop oriented, straight-forward electronic/hip-hop beats supporting raunchy lyrics. Darkness, mystery, sadness, pain and desperation were prominent qualities in Lovers and Crypts, and these qualities still pervade in the Black Cracker’s solo work. Donʼt worry, youʼll still be shaking your booty.

TNG: Gender identity and expression hasnʼt been as present from you as it is now in tracks like “Silly Boy.” Your viral mixtape is titled preTty boy. What made you decide to recently undertake this musical and personal transformation?

BC: Self-esteem. Itʼs a crazy thing. Not ever feeling proper in the language of my skin and that insecurity and disconnect spilled over, it flooded my sense of expression. For instance, as a poet I would never write anything love related because I never felt good as a lesbian. Early on I had some poems about gender, but they were more about inequality… as a poet I always tried to be beyond myself and now in retrospect it was mostly because I was uncomfortable in the identity of my body, including race, gender, and sexuality.

The terms of my split with Bunny Rabbit where so perverse and destructive that I had no choice but to examine myself. I began talking with my family for the first time, actually allowing myself to be myself. Accepting childhood, the effect of family experiences, and how much they had shaped these self-esteem issues. So I just began loving myself, and through that process I began to realize what I had been rejecting; my relationship with my cultural, emotional, and physical male self.

Living in Paris, where because of race politics I was “passing” without even attempting to. Plus, a new community of friends supporting my request to recognize and identify me as male has brought me so much peace, inspiration, and joy. I feel less freakish. Iʼm so overwhelmed and enthralled about my sexuality and passion that love songs and songs about me were such a simple pleasure.

TNG: Youʼve remixed songs from mainstream artists, including Beyonce. Are pop artists a part of your inspiration? If so, how much?

BC: I never was allowed to listen to music other than gospel when I was younger. Then once I was out of the house I was a dread head for a bit, then underground punk. But my love has always been “black music.” I think it really comes from a huge desire to be loved by the “black community,” which also relates to gender and sexuality. By living on a military base is a community on its own, so I never felt a lot of class-based racism growing up. So it also has a sorta activist nod to a community that never quite gets seen for its brilliance and creativity, you know? So I like to, for my own self, pay homage to “pop” to my “people” if you will. But also I just wanna fit in sometimes, and I can really relate to the themes. The immaturity, the violence, the wanting to live as fast as possible because it may not past long, “the good life.”

TNG: Iʼm excited that youʼve started Black Cracker solo performances. Youʼve come a long way and your music shows it. Where and how did you begin this journey as a musician?

BC: It started sorta youngish, but not really. When I was a wee my family was dumb and church-going, so when I was 5 and living with my grandparents in Alabama I gave the piano a go, supposedly. But when I started living with my mother we moved to Germany and the grand piano could not come along. No one thought to get me a keyboard, so then that was that, until I moved to NYC.

I came here for a visual arts residency down in Tribeca, and the lame-ass commodified nature of the art world really hurt my naive spirit. So at the time I was working at the DIA Center for the Arts and wanted to be expressive outside of visual art. So I tripped into writing with the goal of rapping. I wanted to do music but could not quite afford the equipment. I ended up with stacks or lyrics that a friend said “Oh, you should do poetry.” So I stumbled into an open mic session. For the next few years I became a poet. I was then finally able to afford some gear. I was dating Bianca Casady at the time, her sister was studying opera. So I started collaborating with them. We all sorta started together, but then we had a hard split because I was into technology and they were into the lo-fi thing.

I made a few bad unreleased records and slowly learned and upgraded gear. I produced a rap record in Cuba and fell in love with the idea of producing because it combined elements of curating (my art world side) and education/guidance. I became deeply involved with the world of education and was the artistic director of Urban World NYC for a while teaching teens expression all over the city. So after Cuba, I eventually started collaborating with my ex-lover, Bunny Rabbit. Blah blah… here yada yada.

TNG: Out of curiosity, who do you admire?

BC: To be 100 percent honest, I have such a deep love right now for the teens at my program Urban Word NYC. I have been working with them a bunch this summer (as I have been for like 9 years now) and man do they keep my head on straight. To be from one of the biggest, toughest cities in the world and sometimes become so invisible, lost in the very society that they are trying to prevail in and doing so with such composure, humanity, and grace. I took 6 poets out to the Brace New Voices teen poetry fest in Chicago this year and to see them unfold, learn their purpose, struggle with their pain and isolation, but still know how to sing and dance is so damn “OD” as they would say.

I live for them. They give me permission to create. Every choice I make I think about how the next in the lineage will have to deal with what I could not or did not.

Itʼs not easy to put a finger on Black Crackerʼs style. Mysticism and grime definitely come to mind when listening to the work with Bunny Rabbit, but on the preTty boy mixtape, sex and love are at the forefront. Hip-hop and electro-pop are heavy, but Black Cracker is obviously looking for more than radio-friendly dance hits. Genre-blending experiments, deep bass, and ethereal synths will keep you entranced, hooked, and wanting more. Time to cyber stalk Black Cracker! Thereʼs free tracks, exclusive remixes, and tour dates.

For more information on Black Cracker, check out: http://flavors.me/blackcracker

Download the preTty boy mixtape

No blacks please.
Sorry no blacks.
If you are black not interested.
Chocolate not welcome.

You will never see the above four sentences on a job application.
You will never see the above four sentences on a sign in front of a club.
You will never see those four sentences while applying for an apartment.
However you will see those sentences quite frequently on the gay dating site Adam4Adam.

In the year 2010 it is illegal to be racially selective in the work place. In the course of making friends it would be considered racist to say out loud that you do not want black friends. I am hard pressed think of any situation where it is socially acceptable to physically single out a black person as being undesirable and not welcome. Except on Adam4Adam.

Many times on Adam4Adam these racially driven statements are followed by “I’m not racist, it’s just a preference.”

If an employer doesn’t want to hire a black person that is also a preference isn’t it?
If someone doesn’t want to have black friends that is a preference as well.
All of the above situations are one form or another of racism. An entire race of people is being disqualified solely based on skin tone.

Adam4Adam is basically a gay sex site. While its credibility is extremely low, its popularity amongst a sizable portion of the gay population is high. While browsing the site (for reasons unspecified here) I found it shocking just how acceptable and normal it was for a large number of these profiles to state out loud that black men were not desirable. And then there was the guy who didn’t like Asians either who said that “if you are chocolate or rice please don’t bother.”

“No blacks. It’s just a preference.”

I sit now putting myself in another man’s skin. I am at my computer lonely at night browsing people’s profiles. I am trying to imagine how it would make me feel to see over and over and over and over that someone does not want me to message them because of my skin color.

“No blacks. It’s just a preference.”

Had they not said they didn’t like black people I may have e-mailed them. Would it have been that horrible to receive an e-mail from a black man? Is it that hard to not open an email? Is it that hard to not open fifty emails?

I do not think a black man should ever have to get used to seeing people express out loud they find them undesirable. It is time for gay men to stop this. We cannot dismiss Adam4Adam. Millions of people are on this site daily. The language used on this site has an effect on many people’s daily lives.

We all have a right to our preferences. Every single person in the world has the right to have sex with whatever turns them on. Despite our liberty to choose our sexual partners we are obligated as human beings to take into consideration the feelings of our fellow man. For the sake of people’s feelings is it that fucking hard to keep some of our preferences to ourselves?

Hicham Boudiz in Morocco

“I’m an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.”

This line, from E. M. Forster’s novel Maurice, has long been my favorite literary euphemism for declaring one’s homosexuality.  For Moroccan writer Hicham Bouzid, author of the forthcoming novel Kafavis’ Syndrome: An Odyssey of a Bisexual Moslem (Publish America, May 2010), when searching for the proper reference point for examining the struggles bisexuals face in the Muslim world, he went all the way back to origins of epic poetry itself.

He did make one important stop along the way, however, in late 19th and early 20th Century Greek poetry. The title of his book is a reference to Constantine P. Cavafy, aka Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, a homosexual poet who lived in Alexandria, Egypt from 1863 to 1933 and was himself deeply affected by Homer’s Odyssey. These layers of historical and literary references all help Bouzid to tell a story that is actually quite modern.

Born in Rabat in the mid-1970s, Bouzid found himself in a deep rut following his graduation from university. It was reading that helped him through this difficult time.

“Due to my insomnia and depression, I had to stop what I was doing and became no one, doing nothing for a long time,” he recalls. “I read and did nothing else.”

After moving to Italy and working odd jobs in both agriculture and industry, he rediscovered a passion for one particular type of literature.

“I am a great fan of Greek mythology, though it sometimes makes for boring reading,” he admits. “But when I started applying the principles of psychoanalysis I learned in school, the Greek mythology became a treasure that can tell us a lot about ourselves.”

It was while he was in Italy that he first stumbled upon Kavafis’ poetry dealing with Homer’s original work, which inspired Hicham to write his own book with both men in mind. Boudiz is now married and living with his wife in Germany, but he chose to make the central story of his novel one that has gone largely untold: The plight of bisexuals living in the Muslim world.

He describes Kafavis’ Syndrome as “a story about an unhappy man, who lives as a pariah in his own mind and community.” This man’s life is characterized as “an odyssey that lurches him from pedophilia to impotence; homosexuality to fleeting moments of himself.”

“Bisexuality can be both a curse and a blessing, which is often hidden in the midst of the other problems facing gay men or lesbians,” Bouzid explains. “The bisexual can be seen as a hypocrite as he can fool both the heterosexual and the homosexual world.

“But the character in my book is honest and as a result he suffers for this honesty. He sees the world either black or white – there are no mixed hues in his world, and for that he suffers. I feel attracted to the subject as I personally find it unfair that one should suffer for what he or she didn’t choose.”

While his book tells the story of a highly individual internal and external struggle, it does so by referencing a work that should be extremely familiar to anyone who’s taken a high school or college English class and one that includes themes that are staggeringly universal.

“The Odyssey appealed to me for its trials and tribulations that any of us can face in this world,” he says. “The challenges are many, and I think a man is born of iron but as challenges come he melts, and if he holds onto that the process of melting turns him into another shape, another quality, that of becoming steel.”

Kavafis writes of this same process, also through the lens of the Odyssey, in his poem entitled “Ithaca“: “Always keep Ithaca in your mind/To arrive there is your ultimate goal./But do not hurry the voyage at all./It is better to let it last for many years;/and to anchor at the island when you are old,/rich with all you have gained on the way,/not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.” In other words, it is the journey and its powers of transformation that is actually the destination.

And so, while we all have our personal struggles, Bouzid is hoping to shed some light on one easily overlooked type. In terms of his own journey, Kavafis’ Syndrome will be publish on May 10 and Hicham’s next project will be a book about LGBT rights in Morocco – the non-fiction companion to his fictional narrator’s struggles.

Ultimately, however, Bouzid describes his own “Ithaca” is a simple place, yet one that can be difficult to reach: “I only ask people for tolerance.”

For many sexual minorities around the world living under homophobic governments, leaving their home country is the best way to ensure that they can continue the fight for their rights from a safe distance. For every Val Kalende or Walter Trochez who chooses to stay and work against his or her own government domestically, there are those who escape to countries like the U.S. to marshal international support and dream of the day they can safely return to their homes.

With the recent attention and international backlash aimed at Uganda over the last few months, more and more Ugandan ex-patriots have come forward to fight against their government’s hateful policies.  One such activist goes by the name Moses and you may recognize his masked face from a clip like the one above that played during an episode of The Rachel Maddow Show, in which he appeared at a press conference for an event protesting the National Prayer Breakfast with a bag over his head to protect his identity. Below, Moses shares more of his personal story with TNG.

Flight

Growing up gay in Uganda was not an easy or pleasant experience for Moses.

A recent photo of Moses, who prefers to keep his identity hidden to protect himself and his family.

“Homosexuality is seen as out of character – deviant behavior [in Uganda]. It is seen as impossible for a person’s child to be gay. It’s abnormal. It’s seen as a Western ploy to recolonize the country,” Moses recalls during a recent conversation via email. “It was very hard for me to come out to people but my behaviors would tell.”

Eventually, through a mix of familial and societal pressure, Moses married a woman. When he couldn’t perform sexually, he was prescribed drugs and it was through this method that he was eventually able to have a child with his wife. However, following a sexual assault by a male police officer that he could not report and years of living in constant fear of being outed by family members, co-workers and even media outlets known for publicly “naming and shaming” sexual minorities, Moses knew he could not stay.

“There is nothing more disturbing in this world than living in fear,” he says. “So, when I was invited to attend an HIV/AIDS conference, that is how I found my way here to the USA. That was in 2009. This was the time when the Anti-Homosexuality Bill was also introduced in Parliament, so I decided to seek asylum.”

Achieving asylum in the U.S. is particularly difficult, however, for sexual minorities.

“Seeking asylum isn’t easy. It is a long process and takes time,” he explains. “I arrived in this country not knowing anyone. This has been a challenge, but people have responded to my outcry and that’s why I am here. Bureaucracy like in any other nation slows down most of the process. But patience pays.”

Fight

Moses hasn’t been sitting on his hands in the meantime. He has become active in a very public campaign against the proposed homophobic legislation in Uganda, even as he has had to hide his identity to protect himself and his family back home. This work led to his most recent appearance in the national media as a spokesperson for the American Prayer Hour, which was held last month.

Moses gained national attention when he shared his story at a press conference for the American Prayer Hour last month.

“I was in Texas and received an email from Truth Wins Out inviting me to participate, but at first I was reluctant and fearful,” Moses says. “I responded ‘yes’ after two days of intense consultation. They hooked me up with the HRC, who sponsored the trip.

“I worked as a teacher back in Uganda, so speaking before people isn’t always a problem, although this was going to be aired on many national channels and maybe international ones, so I had to prepare myself for that. I said what I had experienced personally and my view of the consequences of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. I enjoyed it because this was the time for me to bring out all the issues that affect gay people in my country and Africa at large.”

Ultimately, the important issue for Moses is not the law itself but its consequences for the lives of individuals.

“I was always in constant fear. I had many thoughts, of reporting myself to the international organizations like Amnesty International, but feared exposing myself to the authorities where I would be subjected to more arrests and torture. Always in fear, fear and fear and now that the law is in Parliament, I fear going back to this country and I also have great fear for my gay friends there for the hell they are going through,” he explains.

“The world we are living in is dynamic. It’s high time people realize that and come to terms with it and accept homosexuality and let people live open lives.”

And, in his own humble way, Moses is hoping to help bring this about for everyone, regardless of the country they find themselves in.

“Racism is dead.  We have a black president,” were words spoken out of ignorance by someone I know.   I was just at a lost for words to how to reply.  They haven’t seen the black ghettos on the outskirts of Manhattan.  They haven’t been to a queer gathering and heard the accusations that any white woman who voted for Hilary was racist against Obama.  They’ve never been turn down for a date due to the color of their skin.  I’m responding to their comment by giving them a copy of Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections From An Angry White Man by Tim Wise.

Color divides the queer scene.  Whites go to one party, blacks to another, Latinas to another, and Asians to another.  For the most part, I don’t know where people of color go to party.  Or if I manage to find a party where they are – they don’t want me there because I am white.  I am against all forms of oppression but when my allies don’t even want me to associate with them because of my skin, it upsets me.  Skin shouldn’t be the deciding factor in what parties someone goes to – but it is.

I’ve also noticed online dating is insanely racist and people seem okay with that.  People of color not wanting to date someone white.  Someone white not wanting to date a person of color. It’s ridiculous.  That’s stuff that shouldn’t matter.  It should matter if you are kind, compassionate, and loving.  Not what your meatsuit happens to be.

Newsflash: We’re all oppressed in the capitalistic system.  Everyone.  Some have more privileges than others but we’re all prisoners.  Instead of fighting among ourselves for scraps and dealing with the branches of the problem, we should go for the root.  As long as we’re living in a system that thrives on oppression, division, and “us” against “them” – we’re not going to get anywhere.  We need to stop fighting over silly things and agree to disagree to tolerate and respect each other.

Separatism isn’t real world conditions. By separatism, I mean dividing ourselves based on sex or race.  Men can be just as proactive in the battle against sexism as women.  Whites can be just as effective in combating racism as persons of color.  But to simply devalue someone based on something beyond their control is ridiculous.  I get really upset when I see individuals show special interest in wanting a social group composed of a certain sex or race.  It shouldn’t matter.  Their attempt at being politically correct is making them an anti-racist racist.

I would like to see a queer scene where everyone – all races and sexes – come to the parties together.  I was really disappointed by the New York City queer scene and the division.  I am disappointed by people who claim to be anti-racist but then won’t date me because I’m white.  If the cycle won’t end with you, who do you expect it to end with?