Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

Film Review: Gen Silent

This emotive documentary helped me clarify what should really be among the priorities of the LGBT community. When one considers all the resources that have been lavished on lobbying for equality in the sorry military/marriage institutions, the issues surrounding LGBT aging seem to be a more pressing and much more widely relevant front on which to focus our struggle. In the best of circumstances, we’re all going to get old.

My friend Eleanor and I sweated and gasped as we rushed down Provincetown’s Commercial Street through the humid, misty air to be in time to grab good seats for the screening of “Gen Silent.” I had tried to see it the couple of times it was shown in Boston, but it had been sold out.

Directed by Stu Maddux, who was present for a fascinating post-screening Q&A, it is a documentary based in Boston about local ageing queers. What are their options? Who will look after them when they need help? How do elder and nursing facilities treat LGBT elders? Will they have to go back into the closet if they need care?

By following individuals and couples and allowing them to tell their stories, Maddux draws us in with a sense of both identification and admiration. Sniffles and quiet sobs marked the showing, for no one among us could avoid a sense of vulnerability as we approach old age – even if it is decades away.

With senior facilities too often lacking in consciousness of queer and trans needs, even some of the earliest gay militants are now facing the possibility of having to return to the closet in order to safely get the care they need.

When Lawrence Johnson (top photo) can no longer care for his older partner of many decades, he must place him in a nursing home. But his partner feels too paranoid to be out, limiting the ways in which Lawrence can comfort him. Eventually, Lawrence finds a more open and supportive facility, so that he and his partner can hold hands without looking over their shoulder.

Sheri Barden and Lois Johnson (2nd & 3rd photos) are hoping to stay in their own home, for they live in a neighborhood with many long-time, close queer neighbors. But they are also aware of the kind of dangers any institution might hold for out lesbians – from physical and sexual abuse to isolation and ostracism.

KrysAnne Hembrough’s severe breathing problems are preventing her from taking care of herself. But her late-life transition has left this transgender woman with nothing but hostility from her entire biological family. Medical people, too, have expressed revulsion and have refused to touch her body. A case worker who actually gives a damn organizes an instant support network for KrysAnne, making her painful physical decline a less horrific experience.

“Gen Silent” is more than a top-notch documentary. It is a conscious-raising tool that needs to be shown widely in mainstream elder institutions and among professionals working with older people. It needs to be shown to LGBT people of all ages so that this important discussion becomes a key issue for our movements.

Not everyone is thrilled with what the well-paid, (mostly) pale male “leaders” of the gay rights movement have been spending their time and the community’s resources on, not the least the focus on military and marriage. These issues speak strongly to certain segments of the community, but certainly not to everyone. Some people so object to the roles of the American army abroad that they don’t want to spend precious pennies to ensure that queers get the chance to occupy other peoples or guide drones to bomb the weddings gays can’t have. Others feel that marriage is an appallingly failed institution and prefer creative family forms to assimilation.

But everyone would agree that we need to win the battle to stay out of the closet our whole lives.

Unfortunately, “Gen Silent” is an underfunded project that could use support – both financial and in terms of distribution. The visionary director Stu Maddux asked for human and material resources to get the film out to the nooks and crannies of our aging lives. Visit his website to learn more.

And check out the trailer below, presented under the righteous banner: The generation that fought hardest to come out is going back in – to survive.

Book Review: Please, Sir: Erotic Stories of Female Submission

Please, Sir: Erotic Stories of Female Submission
Edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel
Cleis Press 2010

There are many ways to get a sex education and one of the best is to follow the rich stream of erotica anthologies that Rachel Kramer Bussel puts together.

Her work ranges from erotic collections with such titles as Passion, Naked, Orgasmic and Fast Girls, to volumes, like Please, Sir: Erotic Stories of Female Submission (which follows Please Ma’am: Stories of Male Submission) that concentrate on a particular fetish or sexual sub-community.

Do people really do it on airplanes? Check out her collection of testimonies to The Mile High Club. Wondering how other people feel about oral sex? Try her Tasting Her or Tasting Him anthologies.

Rachel Kramer Bussel titles her Introduction to Please, Sir: Erotic Stories of Female Submission “Risk and Reward,” an immediate and clear summary of why woman submissives like what they like. There have been copious articles by feminists (and others) talking about what they get out of kinky sex and deconstructing the world of sexual fantasy, but Bussel has a non-judgmental, informed approach. “It’s about unlocking something within yourself so you can reach beyond your normal limits, exposing your body and soul in order to go somewhere you cannot get to alone.”

With 22 stories by 22 writers, including a final story by the editor herself, the reader can dip into 22 experiences of submission. Rachel Kramer Bussel’s story “Your Hand on My Neck” is an especially exciting example of risk (his hand squeezes her throat) and reward (she loses herself in the pleasure of belonging).

But it is good to start with the beginning of this book, where Shanna Germain’s story “Anticipation” gives us one of the strongest depictions of the role of anticipation in this special world of hanky-panky.  A woman sits at a computer cafe in Europe writing her lover in the States. Having been apart for six months, imagination and anticipation are their only fuels. As he arouses her through the screen, she says, “I have to bite back a quiet sound of want, swallow it down around my steaming coffee and hope that no one heard.” He teases her with his plans for her when they are reunited. “I have to shift and cross my legs, the pulse of my clit beating hard inside my jeans. I’m not one of those women who can come just by rubbing their legs together, sadly. I need a hand on me, ideally his hand, hard and fast, spanking my ass or my clit, bringing me to that heated burn of orgasm.”

“The Negotiation” by Remittance Girl, one of the more literary tales in the collection, takes on another basic aspect of kinky sex, an activity that emphasizes frank discussion and consent.  Two elegantly suited businesspeople are negotiating a merger, but he tells her that her assets are as yet unevaluated. “In the interests of full disclosure” she pushes her chair back from the table so that she is in full view. “Slowly, she uncrossed her legs and parted them until the hem of her short skirt pulled taut against her thighs.” Having examined the assets, he moves the metaphor into kinky gear. “You realize that a merger is not the only option for us? A buyout would suit us just as well… It would provide for a far more reliable corporate governance structure.”

Wherever your sexual curiosity takes you, Rachel Kramer Bussel is sure to have gathered together the best erotic stories on the topic.

Here is her (very) explicit video book trailer for Please, Sir: Erotic Stories of Female Submission.

What Goes Around Comes Around in the West Bank Settlements

In the West Bank Israeli settlement of Immanuel, hyper-religious Ashkenazi parents are refusing to allow their daughters to study with Sephardi girls, despite a High Court ruling against them. From this we learn that practices of separation, of apartheid imposed on the “other,” soon seep into the life of the perpetrators.

Israeli settlements in Palestine impose an unconditional, radical separation from the Palestinian population whose land they have invaded. The settlements have their own roads; their own walls, checkpoints and security forces; and their own schools and social services.

NOTE: “Ashkenazi” usually refers to Jews from western and central European backgrounds and “Sephardi” broadly refers to Jews from Mediterranean, North African and Arabic national backgrounds. Orthodox Ashkenazis often belong to sects based on the practices of medieval communities – thus the retro couture of fur-hats, white knee-socks and speaking Yiddish. Religious Sephardi Jews are likely to be more comfortable in modern life. By the way, I was unable to find photos of modern religious girls on Flickr and have used vintage shots.

What’s the problem? Let’s see what the Ashkenazi parents are saying:

"The Mizrahi students' families don't belong with the other families," another parent said. "They have a television at home while the [Ashkenazim] speak Yiddish. The Mizrahi girls have a bad influence on our girls. No court will change anything," he added.

"It's like putting Americans and Africans together. They can't study together with such huge mental differences," he said.

And what does this Mizrachi parent reply?

"It's a disgrace to this place, the ministry must intervene to stop the segregation once and for all," the father of one Mizrahi student said. "The Ashkenazis think they're more intelligent than we are, but what really bugs them is our skin color."

The kind of profound racism that permits Israelis to participate in the longest-running brutal Occupation of Palestine and to demonize an impoverished occupied people can never be contained. Just as the levels of violence against Israeli women skyrockets when Israeli men are involved in vicious assaults on Palestinian civilians and institutions, so too is racism something that oozes into the life of the dominant group.

Discrimination against Sephardi Israelis is nothing new. There’s a reason why a Black Panther movement among Jews of color in Israel was founded in 1971 and why activists continue their work even now. I remember in the late 1970s riding in a group taxi between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. When we were stopped for one of those ubiquitous security checks, we Ashkenazim were left unmolested while the Sephardi Jews were pulled out of the taxi to have their papers examined and to be questioned. Why? They “looked like” Arabs. And of course whether their ancestors were from Yemen or Morocco or Iraq, their families had lived in Muslim societies for many generations.

The reaction of Sephardim to broad discrimination in Israel has been mixed: some tried for assimilation by joining in the racial hatred of their former Muslim neighbors, while others stood in solidarity with Arabs against a shared discrimination.

Now settler Jews with a super-sized religiosity and an even bigger sense of racial superiority are eating their young. They have even adopted the language of Nazis. Listen to one mother talk about why her children should not have to mix with others:

"The court and media don't understand that this is another world," a mother who is keeping her daughter out of school said. "The Hasidic program was created because of a different religious outlook. Only pure children attend it."

Virtual Street Corners Launch Party

On Friday evening, the celebratory launch party of our Virtual Street Corners project was held at both Coolidge Corner and Dudley Square. Jamarhl Crawford, a community activist and poet, hosted in Roxbury while I was the M.C. in Brookline. This photo shows the two of us talking via the up/down screens that are set into the picture windows of the Brookline Booksmith and Roxbury’s Nubian Notions. Because of a front-page piece in the Boston Globe about the project, there was an unusual amount of buzz.

The founder, John Ewing (pictured at left below with me) developed this vision of a system of connectivity between these two communities, connected by little other than deep shared history, bus #66 and the METCO school busing system.

However, to make it happen, he had to come up with innovative technology. John has been working, with a little help from his friends, to stitch together donated and bought pieces of equipment. We were thrilled when it all worked on Friday night.

The two locations took turns providing music and entertainment for each other and when a poet wasn’t reading or a high school acapella group wasn’t singing, folks were able to talk to each other. Some teenagers and adults were shy to step up to the microphone, but the children loved it. I found the kids dragging their parents into the fun. Pablo Goldbarg arranged the music for the Brookline side.

John also hired six journalists – this is where my real role comes in – to do journalistic pieces that reveal something intrinsic to the neighborhoods. Because of my years of work with Brookline’s seniors, I am contributing video pieces – with the help of my cameraman Peter Jarmu – that reflect the experiences of older residents, some of whom were themselves raised in Roxbury.

On Monday June 13th I hope to be showing an interview I did with Anne and Henry Schwab, two German Jews who escaped the war and eventually made their way to Brookline. On Wednesday June 14th I’m intending to show an interview with Sumner Kaplan, ex-Brigadier General, ex-Judge, ex-legislator  (the first Democrat elected in Brookline) and ex-resident of Roxbury.

Look for me for the next couple of weeks on Mondays and Wednesdays at 12:30pm at the Booksmith and say hello to folks on the Dudley Square screen anytime you’re in the area in June. If you come at noon, you'll get to see the charming Nina LaNegra who "broadcasts" from Roxbury at 12:00.

Thanks to Barry Hock for the photos of the launch.

Boston Pride's 40th Anniversary: I Was There

Yesterday I went to Boston Pride 2010, 40 years after I went to the first (photo on left). In fact, I believe that my collective from those early days of gay liberation was involved in creating that first Pride. We were the “Stick-It-In-The-Wall, Motherf*k*r” Collective.

Pride wasn’t the first time I marched as an out lesbian – that would have been a few months earlier in the year, at the 1970 International Women’s Day March. Lesbians joined these feminist marches openly in a few cities – to a less than pleasant reception from our sisters. For most of us, it was the very first time we were making a public statement – even to roommates and good friends.

This year’s theme was “From Riots to Rights,” in celebration of the four decades that have passed. Later at the Festival, after the march – or rather parade as they now call it, I was interviewed by a young man from the Boston LGBT History Project about the difference, then and now. “Then,” I told him, “we were revolutionaries. We were rebels and wanted to change the whole concept of gender, of relationships and of the structure of family life. Now we send checks to the lawyers and lobbyists and hope that, despite them pocketing their handsome salaries as professional queers, they will get someone to make some legislation happen.”

I didn’t add that not only were these well-paid professionals more or less useless in actually getting things accomplished (other than fundraising and holding dress-up galas for themselves), their priorities were embarrassingly assimilationist. The idea of pouring community resources into getting queers equal access to an aggressive army and to a failed, exclusionary institution (marriage) would have been laughable in the old days. In those days we were busy trying to connect the dots among class, race, gender and sexuality and to figure out what kind of post-capitalist world we were after.

Back to yesterday’s parade. I met up with my friend Stephanie at the Arlington Street Church – with which I have a 1960s history when they let us in the New England Resistance place draft resisters in their sanctuary. Stephanie and I had decided to watch the march for awhile until we found a group we wanted to join.

The skies opened and although we each had umbrellas, the streets quickly became brooks and there was no real way to stay dry. Those on the floats and dancing or baton twirling or tooting on horns in the parade just surrendered to the weather and kept their mood together as they got drenched.

Stephanie and I were lucky to find a tree with branches covering an available piece of sidewalk and were saved from the worst of the storm, which went on for at least an hour.

Who was there and what swag were they passing out? Home Depot had a contingent wearing some cute aprons – unfortunately over their clothes. Like Marshalls and TJMaxx, they were passing out colorful plastic carry-bags – which served well as make-shift rain hats. Every other little business was passing out those ubiquitous Mardi Gras beads, sometimes flinging heavy packs of 7 or 8 at the crowd. I got hit by one pack, but luckily not in a delicate spot. Someone was offering pencils and I wanted one but she thrust a dozen into my hands – she probably wanted to finish her assignment and get out of the rain.

There were gay non-profits of various kinds – from the Fenway Community Health Clinic (offering oodles of free lube and condoms, but no dental dams) to the Senior Pride Coalition, a group that included two busloads of elders.  The Network / La Red – dealing with domestic violence in lesbian, bi and trans homes – marched as well as a big leather contingent. AARP only offered their duh-inducing slogan: “Pride Comes in All Ages.”

There were churches galore, but no synagogues or mosques. There were big gay clubs and politicians. I saw our governor Deval Patrick just as I arrived. Whatever other defects he may have, Patrick has been a friend of the LGBT community from day one – long before his teenage daughter came out.

At one point a doughy white man crossed the street and came right at me. He had a dour look on his face and “FBI” flashed through my mind. He thrust out his hand and kinda shouted his name. He was running for Boston City Council or some such.

Stephanie and I were going to join the dance contingent when they arrived, but they were just playing C&W, no swing, so we stayed under our leafy protection. We fell in behind the last float, as it was blasting Latin music, and made the climb up to City Hall Plaza for the Festival. My feet were killing me, not the least because of having stood for nearly three hours last night during the launch of the Virtual Street Corners project.

It is also Pride day in Tel Aviv, but my friends in Israel are too depressed by their government’s actions to party. I can’t get them out of my mind, knowing that they are feeling there is no Pride in Occupation.

The rain stopped but there was a wind from the water so everyone was shivering. The give-aways at the booths were paltry and there were not that many vendors. Because of the recession, many small businesses stayed away – not wanting to pay for a booth, staff time or trinkets. The only clever hand-made sign I saw the whole day was held high by a young guy: “I’m Proud of my Heterosexual Parents.”

I ran into my partner’s daughter and her boyfriend, which was a treat since Stephanie and I were blown away by how few people we knew. The weather was surely one factor; the recession another. But the truth is we’re not sure how to relate to this generation of Pride. For my contemporaries, a parade is no substitute for a march and a Festival will never do as much as a rally. If the theme is “From Riots to Rights” – perhaps it’s time to return to the riots.

Note: I found many of these images on Flickr and thank “iamtonyang” and “miss skittlekitty” for them.

Virtual Street Corners Launches Tonight 6:00-8:00pm

I'll be the Brookline MC at the official launch of the Virtual Street Corners project. This high-tech project allows real-time high-tech communication between people in the largely middle-class Jewish town of Brookline and the African-American and other peoples of color in Roxbury, a Boston neighborhood.

There will be a party atmosphere this evening, with music and poetry and clips. Will I see you?

Through June, come visit me on Mondays and Wednesdays at 12:30 at the Brookline Booksmith. I will be showing short video interviews with some of the fascinating people I have met through teaching my senior fitness classes in Brookline. For example, the Brookline photographer Ruth and her Roxbury friend of 35 years Leon, a painter, talk about their relationship. Iko, a war bride and sculptor, shares her amazing home with us. Henry and Anne tell us about surviving the Holocaust and then turning around to contribute to America's war effort. And Sumner, who has a park named after him in Brookline, was born 90 years ago in Roxbury.

Check out the front page story on the Boston Globe today here.

How’s this for a morning?

I was sleeping on the cheapo foldout futon on my living room floor. When I have houseguests – and Sue is here from London – I give them my bedroom. This isn’t just me being a gracious host – this is me staying as close to my computer as possible. I only have two rooms and so my office is in my living room.

So my alarm clock – the one which makes gurgling brook sounds because I can’t figure out how to change it to a buzz or bell – is plugged in behind the bedroom door where Sue is. Instead I set the alarm feature on my cell phone, which works fine, except that my cell phone is practically as old as I am and I am always anticipating its demise.

I wake up every hour – worried about oversleeping – and get up at 6:15. My routine on the mornings when I teach early classes of fitness to seniors and elders is very precise. I give myself 90 minutes to get out, and each of those minutes is devoted to an essential task.

Ironically, it is an unusually packed day. I’m one of six journalists involved in a project called Virtual Street Corners which uses high-tech to connect two communities: Roxbury, a neighborhood of Boston populated mainly by African-Americans and immigrant groups; and Brookline, a mostly middle-class town with a large Jewish population. Just a couple of miles apart and connected by the infamous 66 bus, there is not a lot of collaboration or involvement between the two places.

I check my email once I struggle up from the floor. There is an email from John, the organizer of the project. Everyone has been waiting to hear from him because although the project was set to open yesterday, nothing happened. I have loads of people turning up, including Ruth, one of the two super-talented subjects of my piece, driving in from Providence, Rhode Island. No one has been able to reach John for the last 36 hours. I have an email from him saying he’ll meet me at the project at 12:30. From that I guess I can conclude that we’re going ahead.

I spend a few more minutes I don’t have sending emails to the people who need to know that and calling Ruth in Providence who is waiting for a decision.

At 6:45 someone rings my doorbell. My doorbell at dawn! I am immediately befuddled and go to my intercom. “Who is there?”

“The Fire Department.”

Before I can even take it in, someone else buzzes them in. SOS has been aroused and comes out of the bedroom. “Get dressed,” I order her, “there might be a fire or something.” I can hear sirens on the street via my balcony doors, but I have no idea if there is any connection.

I open my apartment door to the hall and can hear a building fire alarm, but on another floor. The only smell of smoke is the usual leftover cigarette stink sneaking out from the apartment of the woman next door. Nothing happens.

Except that I’ve lost 6 or 7 minutes out of my routine. I need a lot of clothes for today: my athletic clothes for teaching my two classes; something to wear on the street for the first time that my work is being highlighted by the Virtual Street Corners project; clothes for two different interviews I will be conducting while Peter, another person involved in the project, films them; then clothes for tomorrow since I am sleeping over at my partner’s place in another town.

I need enough of my own iced tea and lemonade to last me through the day; some fruit for my break between classes; a buttered mini-bagel for a quick lunch; and my notes for the filmings.

SOS and I weave around each other in my tiny place, both trying to get ready. The clock is progressing too fast. No time to eat. No time.

I’m out the door 2 or 3 minutes late, not really finished with my preparations for the day, but have run out of time. I lug a lot of bags down the hall. Freak out: the elevator is not working. I am on the 7th floor. I struggle all the way down and more minutes are lost.

Traffic gets worse and worse because, I find out only as I enter Harvard Square, there are road works squishing everything into one lane. I’m going to be late to work. There are 30 elders waiting for me.

Now I’m only a block away, just one right turn and I can look for parking. But what’s that? A moving van is trying to turn around right at the corner, but isn’t really pulling it off. More minutes.

When I get into class, my students are already marching in place while watching the door. “There was a moving van at the corner!” I yell, rushing across the room to set up my boom box and CDs.

“Yeah, and my dog ate my homework,” Roz says, shaking her grey hair.

My classes are, as always, wonderful.

Immediately after, I make my way to Coolidge Corner where supposedly the project is ready to go. Not. The screen is working and I can see Nina, the woman in Roxbury who is “on” before me, but I can’t hear her. Eventually the sound is kinda working and I am impressed by her energy and warmth. My students start arriving to be the audience. The first film is about Ruth, a photographer in Brookline and her friend of 35 years Leon, a painter in Roxbury. Both of them arrive in person – Ruth here and Leon there - and both do a magnificent job of using their large, appealing personalities to keep up the chatter across these communities.

Peter cannot hook his computer, where my film resides, to the connection and runs around town looking for the proper adaptor. John, the hard-working project organizer, arrives, but he is busy talking to a Globe reporter. The reporter in the midst of everything starts asking me about obstacles, difficulties, challenges. He never actually asks me what I’m doing and what my pieces are about. I’m polite but brief. I'm too busy managing the mic and inviting passersby to join in.

Despite his heroic attempts Peter never gets the hookup to work and so we wrap up after 90 minutes of trying. I’m a bit mortified to have dragged over 20 of my students out in the heat and sun without being able to show them the film of their classmate. We drive off to do an interview with Iko, who was a war bride from Japan and is a wonderful sculptor, followed by an interview with Sumner, 90, one of the pillars of Brookline who actually was born and raised in Roxbury.

Peter and I are both hungry and tired and I drop him off and make my way to a computer to write this diary in the hope that this vague sense of unease all day, perhaps even of discombobulation will disappear out the tips of my typing fingers. Alas, not.

PS: It turns out that a building resident was stuck in the elevator for an hour and that was why the Fire Department was called. Remind me not to ride the elevator without a cell phone and a book in hand! There are some dramas I can live without.

Marvin Isley (1953 – 2010)

Marvin Isley, the youngest of the Isley Brothers men, died in Chicago at 56 yesterday from complications from diabetes. He went from being part of a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band (1992) that gave Jimi Hendrix his start as a lead guitarist to becoming a spokesman for diabetes, especially as it affected the African-American community.

As the Isley Brothers bass player in the 1970s, he helped bring the band from their soul music groove into the funk scene. Marvin’s bass line on “Who’s That Lady?” was considered a main motor to the success of that hit. By 1984, the diabetes got the better of Marvin and he had to drop out of the world of music performance to deal with its devastation: he had a stroke; both legs were amputated; and he received a kidney transplant.

I was a big fan of the Isley Brothers, from their early soul days through the mid-70s and then rediscovered them, like so many others, when Ronny Isley turned up again big-time as Mr Biggs, a video character, says Wikipedia, “created by frequent collaborator, hip-hop/R&B singer R. Kelly, who first used Isley in the 1996 single for his hit Down Low.”

Perhaps my favorite album was the 1972 “Brother, Brother, Brother,” not the least because of spin Marvin and his brothers gave to Carole King’s “It’s Too Late.” Seems like a fitting goodbye.