9 May 2009 (friday)
at approximately 11:30pm my neighbor Cole and I decide to head down to the cornerstore. Everything seems normal. My neighbor purchases a cigarello and goes back out to the car. I wait in line to buy some cookies to go with the masala tea we plan on brewing. The man in front of me takes longer than expected to purchase his food (I use the term loosely. Most of the "food" in these stores has little nutritive value). In come a few Black guys. Our eyes meet. I become hyper-conscious of the fact that I am wearing my rainbow jacket (looking FABULOUS, for the record). There is a moment of tense uncertainty as I am looked over by each of them. I purchase the cookies and get into the car where Cole is waiting. Once in the car I exhale.
"It's probably not a good idea to wear that in this neighborhood at this time of night," Cole 'informs' me. Of course, comrades, I am very aware of the dangers of being Black, working class, and Queer. He continues to 'educate' me:
"I know wearing that jacket probably has something to do with your values, but you gotta think about where we live." I remain silent. I wonder if he knows what his words mean in the context of my struggle. He doesn't know. Doesn't know how I joined this army whose struggle is the right to be. Doesn't know that these colors are not about "pride". They are a declaration of independence, a declaration of war, a challenge, a refusal to be made to hide.
"...I wouldn't mind so much if I was a girl," he says. For a moment I'm confused. Then the meaning strikes me. He means that people assume that he and I are together, or at least that both of us are faggots, and that that is dangerous for us both.
"It's not that I don't want to drive with you wearing that shirt. I mean, it's your call. But a quick change of shirts can save a lot of trouble." The blow I had expected doesn't come from the men who eyed me threateningly. It comes now, when I thought I was 'safe'. I say something about realizing the dangers and look out the window.
Cole and I moved in to the same duplex on the same day. After we met we went to the Wal-Mart to get things for our apartments. I was wearing the same jacket then. I remember we were standing in the check-out line. The cashier woman was talking to Cole and then she realized we had come to shop together. The air shifted subtly under the inquiry of her gaze. The conversation continued as if all was normal, but the tempature seemed to have risen three or four degrees. I remember thinking after that, each time Cole and I went somewhere together, that he was really cool because he didn't mind people's assumptions.
But on friday that changed. He did mind certain assumptions in certain places, at certain times. That is, he did mind being put in danger by the assumptions of the queer-bashing fascists who frequent the streets in working-class, Black neighborhoods. In some ways I didn't blame him. He never signed up for my crusade. I hadn't asked him if he would be my comrade in my people's struggle for the right to exist anywhere we went.
While he was educating me on the dangers of my political fashions I thought about about Bob Moses from SNCC. I remembered reading about how he had been assaulted by a police officer and by racists and how he had kept going. Beating after beating he kept fighting. Why? He had faced that violence head-on because he needed to break the fear that kept Black folks from standing up for their rights. I think to myself that I would take a beating for being militantly and unabashedly queer in a Black working-class neighborhood. I think of the queens and the transpeople of color who I've always revered for their courage to be Queer in working-class environments. I refuse to only be "out" in white, middle-class areas. I think to myself that it is worth it to continue to wear my declaration of war unabashedly, even if it means violence. Because I intend to conquer the fear that set me running last year when the queer-bashers in Raleigh chased me down the street.
Of course, war requires comrades, strategy, and arms. Perhaps I should learn martial arts and carry a good weapon or two. And perhaps I should inform people that my life is a struggle and that walking down the street with me at night could mean joinging the fight whether they believe in it or not. And I think to myself that more than anything I would love to live with other militant Queer people and put a sign on our door:
BEWARE: SOMETIMES QUEERS BASH BACK!
12 May 2009 (monday)
I go to the dentist to get a filling (I'm supposed to get two, but I can only afford one). While the dentist is working he tells me, since I'm such a good guy and since the economy is so bad, he'll do the other filling 'on the house'. I thank him as sincerely as I can with a drill and a wedge in my mouth. He then proceeds to ponder out loud with the assistant whether or not good deeds get one into heaven. My appreciation turns a bit sour. The "charity" for which he is praising himself is a mere $200, chump change in comparison to the $2,000+ I've paid out in the past two months.
"Oh well," he says, giving up on the idea of buying his way into heaven, "Maybe St. Peter will just bless me in some other way."
The receptionist at the dentist office has not been informed of the dentist's "charity" and asks me to pay the full price for both fillings. "I thought you could only afford one. Did you change your mind?" I swallow my pride and tell her that I can only afford the one but that the dentist said the other was on the house. "Oh!" she says, and makes the extra $200 disappear with a few key strokes.
As she looks up from her computer screen she sees my rainbow bracelet. "Oh! My son has one of those. They handed them out at his school." Surprised I ask what school. Turns out it's an elementary. I'm a bit puzzled.
"All colors, all cultures, all equal," she pines. "That's our motto!" I look at her face beaming with pride. I won't tell her what this bracelet has cost me. I won't tell her what I think about her son's "inclusive" school or what I think about her crusade on behalf of "the ESL population" of the school. I won't tell her that I am not set at ease by the fact that she was willing to be a surrogate mother for a gay couple. I simply smile and nod when she says, under her breath, that some of best friends are gay couples (I must admit I am shocked that she uses this phrase that today even most liberal white folks know is cliché and evidence of patronism). I won't say that "safety" and "inclusion" is a commodity like everything else, available only to folks like her who can afford it. That I am going home to a place where battles must be fought to make it safe to be Queer. Where bracelets and rhetoric must be made into weapons rather than flags. I smile and pay my bill.
War Is Never "Just" A Metaphor
Scattered across the planet are people who refuse to be silent. Who refuse to wear heterosexual camouflage and fiercely lead the attack against our oppression. These fighters--effeminists, trans folks, queens, butches, femmes, crossdressers, androgynous sabateurs--require your solidarity. We are presently engaged in an all-out battle to break the encirclement of our bodies and our desires and every bit of ammunition is crucial.
The war is not about "rights," comrades and allies. It's about power. Perhaps this power seems incosequential to you. Perhaps the struggle to wear what one pleases and to love who one wants to love seems like a minor thing next to the struggle for housing or for an end to hunger and AIDS or for the abolition of capital(ism). Perhaps you think my "militarist" language is hyperbole and histrionic. But consider this companer@s: the struggle against oppression is and can only be carried out by those who fight with their entire selves. We are not fighting for higher wages or better environmental protection or better schools. We are fighting for better lives. For dignity. For a more human world, less ugly and more loving. Ours is not a struggle "next to" the material struggles. It is one within them.
Within the fight for better conditions are people---living, loving, beautiful human beings---whose unexercised potentials and capacities alone constitute both the source and the subject of our liberation struggles. Ours is a war against the limit on human freedom, the impoverishment of human capacity by poverty, fear, abuse, patriarchy, violence, imperialism, heterosexism, white supremacy, and despair. What besides the blossoming of our very human love could be worth all this effort? And what besides the power to defend our right to be free can secure our liberation?
Those who live this struggle know that it's not merely about "discrimination" or "prejucide". War is not "just a metaphor." Homophobia is not an attitude, it's a fist, it's a threat, it's the fear of going home because something violent lurks there. War is a concept that captures our experience and re-organizes it in a way that lets us fight back. This is why I speak this way. This is why I appeal to our allies to understand the nature of our struggle and to our people to understand that we can change things when we learn to organize and to fight.
Concerning change and fighting back: resolutions and legislation are a beginning, but they will not be enough. Legislation does not protect us on the street at night. Resolutions do not help us defeat the strategy of suicide and despair imposed on us. "Rights" do not reach into the "private" world of the family where so much oppression against Queer people occurs. Nor will police patrols, the regulation of families by the government, or "diversity" training make us safe. Ours is a struggle to organize ourselves and change the conditions and consciousness of our communities. Our is a fight to unite our forces into guerilla units to advance the struggle everywhere by the power of our own hands, lips, libidos, words and fists.
Public displays of Queer affection defended by our strength and our willingness to defend one another and our homes are one way that we can begin. Not as some performance protest, but as an aspect of our everday lives, where we need to be able to love and defend our love. Challenging all the faggot jokes because we know we will be backed up by our comrades with whom we have committed to changing the world. Keeping an eye out for our Queer youth and elders who are still prisoners of war (that is who hate and hurt themselves because they are trapped in the psychological prisons manufactured for us). Preparing ourselves to help those who need it. Training ourselves to listen and to respond to the trauma and violence that characterize our collective experience. These and more are the kinds of tractics and strategies we must consider if we intend to win this war.
Viva Vagabundencia!
Sodomía o muerta!
from the mountains of desire,
Don Petro of the Southern Liberation Front
at approximately 11:30pm my neighbor Cole and I decide to head down to the cornerstore. Everything seems normal. My neighbor purchases a cigarello and goes back out to the car. I wait in line to buy some cookies to go with the masala tea we plan on brewing. The man in front of me takes longer than expected to purchase his food (I use the term loosely. Most of the "food" in these stores has little nutritive value). In come a few Black guys. Our eyes meet. I become hyper-conscious of the fact that I am wearing my rainbow jacket (looking FABULOUS, for the record). There is a moment of tense uncertainty as I am looked over by each of them. I purchase the cookies and get into the car where Cole is waiting. Once in the car I exhale.
"It's probably not a good idea to wear that in this neighborhood at this time of night," Cole 'informs' me. Of course, comrades, I am very aware of the dangers of being Black, working class, and Queer. He continues to 'educate' me:
"I know wearing that jacket probably has something to do with your values, but you gotta think about where we live." I remain silent. I wonder if he knows what his words mean in the context of my struggle. He doesn't know. Doesn't know how I joined this army whose struggle is the right to be. Doesn't know that these colors are not about "pride". They are a declaration of independence, a declaration of war, a challenge, a refusal to be made to hide.
"...I wouldn't mind so much if I was a girl," he says. For a moment I'm confused. Then the meaning strikes me. He means that people assume that he and I are together, or at least that both of us are faggots, and that that is dangerous for us both.
"It's not that I don't want to drive with you wearing that shirt. I mean, it's your call. But a quick change of shirts can save a lot of trouble." The blow I had expected doesn't come from the men who eyed me threateningly. It comes now, when I thought I was 'safe'. I say something about realizing the dangers and look out the window.
Cole and I moved in to the same duplex on the same day. After we met we went to the Wal-Mart to get things for our apartments. I was wearing the same jacket then. I remember we were standing in the check-out line. The cashier woman was talking to Cole and then she realized we had come to shop together. The air shifted subtly under the inquiry of her gaze. The conversation continued as if all was normal, but the tempature seemed to have risen three or four degrees. I remember thinking after that, each time Cole and I went somewhere together, that he was really cool because he didn't mind people's assumptions.
But on friday that changed. He did mind certain assumptions in certain places, at certain times. That is, he did mind being put in danger by the assumptions of the queer-bashing fascists who frequent the streets in working-class, Black neighborhoods. In some ways I didn't blame him. He never signed up for my crusade. I hadn't asked him if he would be my comrade in my people's struggle for the right to exist anywhere we went.
While he was educating me on the dangers of my political fashions I thought about about Bob Moses from SNCC. I remembered reading about how he had been assaulted by a police officer and by racists and how he had kept going. Beating after beating he kept fighting. Why? He had faced that violence head-on because he needed to break the fear that kept Black folks from standing up for their rights. I think to myself that I would take a beating for being militantly and unabashedly queer in a Black working-class neighborhood. I think of the queens and the transpeople of color who I've always revered for their courage to be Queer in working-class environments. I refuse to only be "out" in white, middle-class areas. I think to myself that it is worth it to continue to wear my declaration of war unabashedly, even if it means violence. Because I intend to conquer the fear that set me running last year when the queer-bashers in Raleigh chased me down the street.
Of course, war requires comrades, strategy, and arms. Perhaps I should learn martial arts and carry a good weapon or two. And perhaps I should inform people that my life is a struggle and that walking down the street with me at night could mean joinging the fight whether they believe in it or not. And I think to myself that more than anything I would love to live with other militant Queer people and put a sign on our door:
BEWARE: SOMETIMES QUEERS BASH BACK!
12 May 2009 (monday)
I go to the dentist to get a filling (I'm supposed to get two, but I can only afford one). While the dentist is working he tells me, since I'm such a good guy and since the economy is so bad, he'll do the other filling 'on the house'. I thank him as sincerely as I can with a drill and a wedge in my mouth. He then proceeds to ponder out loud with the assistant whether or not good deeds get one into heaven. My appreciation turns a bit sour. The "charity" for which he is praising himself is a mere $200, chump change in comparison to the $2,000+ I've paid out in the past two months.
"Oh well," he says, giving up on the idea of buying his way into heaven, "Maybe St. Peter will just bless me in some other way."
The receptionist at the dentist office has not been informed of the dentist's "charity" and asks me to pay the full price for both fillings. "I thought you could only afford one. Did you change your mind?" I swallow my pride and tell her that I can only afford the one but that the dentist said the other was on the house. "Oh!" she says, and makes the extra $200 disappear with a few key strokes.
As she looks up from her computer screen she sees my rainbow bracelet. "Oh! My son has one of those. They handed them out at his school." Surprised I ask what school. Turns out it's an elementary. I'm a bit puzzled.
"All colors, all cultures, all equal," she pines. "That's our motto!" I look at her face beaming with pride. I won't tell her what this bracelet has cost me. I won't tell her what I think about her son's "inclusive" school or what I think about her crusade on behalf of "the ESL population" of the school. I won't tell her that I am not set at ease by the fact that she was willing to be a surrogate mother for a gay couple. I simply smile and nod when she says, under her breath, that some of best friends are gay couples (I must admit I am shocked that she uses this phrase that today even most liberal white folks know is cliché and evidence of patronism). I won't say that "safety" and "inclusion" is a commodity like everything else, available only to folks like her who can afford it. That I am going home to a place where battles must be fought to make it safe to be Queer. Where bracelets and rhetoric must be made into weapons rather than flags. I smile and pay my bill.
War Is Never "Just" A Metaphor
Scattered across the planet are people who refuse to be silent. Who refuse to wear heterosexual camouflage and fiercely lead the attack against our oppression. These fighters--effeminists, trans folks, queens, butches, femmes, crossdressers, androgynous sabateurs--require your solidarity. We are presently engaged in an all-out battle to break the encirclement of our bodies and our desires and every bit of ammunition is crucial.
The war is not about "rights," comrades and allies. It's about power. Perhaps this power seems incosequential to you. Perhaps the struggle to wear what one pleases and to love who one wants to love seems like a minor thing next to the struggle for housing or for an end to hunger and AIDS or for the abolition of capital(ism). Perhaps you think my "militarist" language is hyperbole and histrionic. But consider this companer@s: the struggle against oppression is and can only be carried out by those who fight with their entire selves. We are not fighting for higher wages or better environmental protection or better schools. We are fighting for better lives. For dignity. For a more human world, less ugly and more loving. Ours is not a struggle "next to" the material struggles. It is one within them.
Within the fight for better conditions are people---living, loving, beautiful human beings---whose unexercised potentials and capacities alone constitute both the source and the subject of our liberation struggles. Ours is a war against the limit on human freedom, the impoverishment of human capacity by poverty, fear, abuse, patriarchy, violence, imperialism, heterosexism, white supremacy, and despair. What besides the blossoming of our very human love could be worth all this effort? And what besides the power to defend our right to be free can secure our liberation?
Those who live this struggle know that it's not merely about "discrimination" or "prejucide". War is not "just a metaphor." Homophobia is not an attitude, it's a fist, it's a threat, it's the fear of going home because something violent lurks there. War is a concept that captures our experience and re-organizes it in a way that lets us fight back. This is why I speak this way. This is why I appeal to our allies to understand the nature of our struggle and to our people to understand that we can change things when we learn to organize and to fight.
Concerning change and fighting back: resolutions and legislation are a beginning, but they will not be enough. Legislation does not protect us on the street at night. Resolutions do not help us defeat the strategy of suicide and despair imposed on us. "Rights" do not reach into the "private" world of the family where so much oppression against Queer people occurs. Nor will police patrols, the regulation of families by the government, or "diversity" training make us safe. Ours is a struggle to organize ourselves and change the conditions and consciousness of our communities. Our is a fight to unite our forces into guerilla units to advance the struggle everywhere by the power of our own hands, lips, libidos, words and fists.
Public displays of Queer affection defended by our strength and our willingness to defend one another and our homes are one way that we can begin. Not as some performance protest, but as an aspect of our everday lives, where we need to be able to love and defend our love. Challenging all the faggot jokes because we know we will be backed up by our comrades with whom we have committed to changing the world. Keeping an eye out for our Queer youth and elders who are still prisoners of war (that is who hate and hurt themselves because they are trapped in the psychological prisons manufactured for us). Preparing ourselves to help those who need it. Training ourselves to listen and to respond to the trauma and violence that characterize our collective experience. These and more are the kinds of tractics and strategies we must consider if we intend to win this war.
Viva Vagabundencia!
Sodomía o muerta!
from the mountains of desire,
Don Petro of the Southern Liberation Front
3 comments:
powerful stuff, overtake.
the critiques and tactics hammered out in the mountains of desire are an inspiration to those working on their own arms in the struggle that is the fight to exist, the fight for dignity and humanization. your courageously lived life and intellectual work are constant bunsen burners on the dirty robes of normativity that heteropatriarchy pulls about itself (especially right after an attack).
anyhow, keeping my eye on the connections...
love,
adam
I try and remember that while we must always be on the offensive against a system that is certainly moving on us, there is a difference between tactics of the individual and of the army. The situation we face as individuals is a manifestation of that system, but the individual can confront only that situation while an army can destroy the system which creates oppression. There are times for banners, true, but also for camouflage. No one can tell you how to measure which tactics are correct and only you can know what is right for your situation, but we must be calculating, and above all organized. The violence of the system is all around us, and even if we don't call it down, it of course continues to surround us and advance. But when it comes, perhaps we are in a better position when we have provoked the situation intentionally through organized tactics capable of destroying that system, not simply designed to counter its movements.
Anyway keep your head up and be safe. Love you brother
Viva Vagabundencia for sure.
from the stoops of el barrio
J, Northern Section
I stumbled to your site through a google search on surrogacy for gay couples.I would like to say something; I hope you think about my words. And I wish you the best of luck on your journey through life.
You are clearly an intelligent person and a great writer. I enjoyed reading your posts; they certainly have a message. I'm just not sure what you want...? As the mother of two sons (who happen to be going to a very liberal school where all lifestyles are celebrated), and the cliche best friend of a gay man, it is difficult for me to understand your words. You talk about your pride and your refusal to take off a coat in a dangerous situation that could possible protect your fiend and save your life--ok, clear; you have a battle, you are trying to make being gay an acceptable lifestyle in your environment.Got it. What I dental receptionist--wasn't she just trying to show her acceptance and care? Wasn't she just trying to say (even if it seemed awkward) that she was non-judgemental and cool with you? You fly your flags and want to fight the fight but then put down the people who are on your side? In your army? I guess I'd like to know--what in the hell is going to make you happy??
I blog. It's about my life; it's a lot of shit. If that is what this is for you, I say yay! You have a diary! However, if you have a message and want this blog to mean something, stop being the cliche-ed contridiction. You want want want to be treated equally, like a regular old human being (which of course you are) and not judged by your sexuality; but then you judge the people who are trying to treat you the way you are asking to be treated. Babe, if you are wearing your bracelet and proclaiming your gayness, you need to realize that you are going to be noticed. Clearly, this woman was only trying to say "I do not judge." She may have sucked at doing it, but at least she made an effort. I just don't understand what would make you happy? To be ignored?
Lots of love and light from,
A woman who is not only willing to be a surrogate for a gay couple...but currently is.
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