Have you reached out to your LGBTQ friends? Are you still asking, How are you doing? Many of us have lived under the threat of homophobia for much of our lives. All of us have had nasty shit thrown at us or our posse over the years by those who love to hate. Orlando dredged up those memories and threatened to catapult us back to the days of fear and secrecy. Have you called your queer peeps who are still weeping?
Those of us who fell in love with someone of the same sex back in the days before the gay liberation movement were identified as mentally ill, perverts, and pariahs. We were busted, banned, and humiliated for our love. And many of us suffered violence that we could not even report to police or family, because to say we were beat up or raped in the area of town where the gay bars were – especially if we were women in ties or men in make-up – then we were asking for even more serious trouble.
After a Friday spent tearing up and laughing through the poignant Muhammed Ali memorial, and a Saturday spent at Boston’s annual Pride, riding in the trolley for LGBT elders as we were cheered the whole route by excited young and old people, I woke up Sunday to a text from a friend abroad. She sent solidarity “over this awful news.” What happened? I rushed to my computer – not knowing if she was referring to something personal or political. Turns out it was both. The homophobia which perpetually hovers – sometimes masked – over our lives descended on an Orlando LGBTQ haven and wiped out 49 human beings and hurt countless others. More people gay-bashed to death than any other attack since the Holocaust, one writer said.
It’s five days later and I can’t stop weeping. I can’t get myself off Facebook, despite the fact that each new testimony and each new photo makes me cry. It’s five days later and I start to realize how many of my straight friends have not checked in, have not asked me how I am doing, who do not notice how profoundly devastating this is to me, their friend. I talk to other lesbians and they say the same thing. One young friend said yesterday, “They just don’t get it.” The same thing folks of color say after yet another person is gunned down by the police and white friends note it with a meme and quickly move on. Articles are appearing that bemoan the hurtful silence or the passing concern of dear straight friends.
We older queers recall the difficult days when the bars were our only sanctuary. There was no movement, no gay center, no straight/gay alliance, no brochures, no place to meet lesbians other than the Mafia bars. There we were forced to buy expensive drinks, but we could dance with another girl and put our arms around each other without the fear of violence. The bars were scuzzy and dank, but we could take off the hated work skirts and frilly blouses and replace them with jeans and Oxford shirts with cigarettes tucked into our rolled up sleeves. We could do the Lesbian two-step, a grinding rub-a-dub of thigh to pussy, or we could rock and roll with a freedom we did not know anywhere else.
I’ve been in those bars in many places, unmarked doors where you had to knock and know what to say in order to gain entrance, but where the butches and their femmes looked as familiar as family. Where for many of us, they were family.
Oh, the macro- and micro-aggressions I’ve experienced – and I’m one of millions. When my first love and I were caught together in the 60s during high school, we were brutishly separated. We escaped incarceration and shock treatments, but suffered other punishments. The lifelong spew of anti-dyke insults and threats on the streets led to confrontations when I didn’t put up with them. Once in a supermarket a burly man rammed me violently with his cart for refusing to “look like a lady”; he screamed that I was a “sick bulldyke.” Friends were raped by cops coming out of an illegal Mafia bar. Other friends were tortured by what their religious leaders were preaching, leading to terrible internal conflicts. Many of us had lousy parents: my mother told me that my dad had heart disease because I was a dyke.
When I was a slender androgynous baby butch, I was often challenged as to my right to be in the women’s bathroom. At work I feared being alone in the office bathroom with another woman, remembering a friend who lost her job because of false accusations by a hetero colleague. And all those years that we all used the opposite pronouns to hide our same-sex partners when gabbing with work mates about what we did over the weekend. In the 80s I lost a friend when I brought a little yellow playsuit as a present for her newborn son. “You’re already trying to turn him gay,” she screamed when she saw it wasn’t blue, and threw me out.
But homophobia is not an historical relic – as Orlando reminded us in the most gut-wrenching way. The day before the rampage in Orlando, I sat on the subway next to a recent high school graduate on our way to Boston’s Pride. It was his first Pride. I told him that I had been at the very first Boston Pride. He told me his story. When he came out to his mother as a sophomore in high school, she instantly threw him out of the house. In some ways he was glad to go because his stepfather had been abusing him.
Even today, 40 years later, dancing is still an issue. When I go partner dancing as a leader to straight venues – as I do several times a week – young women followers ask me “What’s your problem?” and “Why do you act like this?” Not once. Not twice. But every friggin’ time I go dancing.
Like many other mass-murderers, it turns out the Orlando killer hated women most of all. Said one of his co-workers: “He didn’t like women. They have too many rights. They shouldn’t drive. He resented that he had to be nice to women in order to sleep with them. He had anger management problems – all the time. The things that set him off were women, race, and religion. A few times he talked about gay people, but usually it was women.” The killer’s ex-wife talked of his violence against her.
The early women’s liberation movement had it right when we said that heterosexism is derived from sexism – that sexism is an ideology that assigns people roles according to their perceived gender. When peoples’ behavior doesn’t abide by those limitations – a femme on the arm of a butch in a motorcycle jacket, a bearded man in a dress and a boa, two men kissing at a mall – sexists become heterosexists, that is, homophobes. Murderously so.
And whom did he kill? Mostly he killed young gay men of color. It was Latin night at the nightclub Pulse. The killer knew Pulse and knew its schedule. He clearly targeted Latinos/as. Pulse served as a safe space, a community center, a welcoming bubble in the lives of these gays of color and the other people in Pulse. Say its name: racism.
I’ve been involved in social justice activism since the civil rights movement when I was 14; and I first loved a girl at 15. Now I’m 68 and still weeping over racism, over heterosexism, and over my painful sense of loneliness. Has nothing changed?
How I wanted to love this film! But alas, I did not. I admired aspects of it, but the key relationship lacked passion. “Carol” is visually striking and emotionally flat.
My expectations were high. I have kept my eye on the director Todd Haynes since his difficult film about AIDS, “Poison” (1991), blew open the cinematic discussion of the pandemic. In Carol, the two lead actors Cate Blanchett as Carol and Rooney Mara as Therese Belivet are saturated with talent. And most important, the movie is based on Patricia Highsmith's novel The Price of Salt (1952), which was the second lesbian novel (after Well of Loneliness) I ever read – way, way before Stonewall or the movement. I have my original paperback: it cost 35 cents.
The story begins with a mutual glance of attraction between a married fur-draped Carol and a younger, single salesgirl Therese. Their love affair is full of inequalities and risks. Neither Carol’s husband nor Therese can understand the closeness of Carol’s connection with her main-ex Abby (i.e., her previous most important lesbian lover), well-played by Sarah Paulson. Carol’s husband employs a private investigator who gathers enough ammunition that Carol capitulates to the husband’s insistence on having full custody of their child. The book itself was noted for being the first lesbian novel to avoid having a tragic ending.
In Haynes’ film, Carol and Therese are both exquisitely beautiful. Too beautiful. Carol is what we used to call an Ice Queen: regal, dripping with privilege, perfectly coiffed, highly made-up, and never getting mussed, god forbid, even in bed. Therese is like a lost lamb – ungrounded, darling, and unable to get a grip on her life or feelings.
Too much time is spent gazing through rain soaked car windows, especially by Therese, leaving us with a dripping barrier to the protagonists. The frames are lovely, the poses are dramatic, and the aesthetic is arresting – but where’s the emotion? Where’s the buzz, the heat, the lust, the humor? Because the spark at the center of the narrative is missing, the lovers remain two-dimensional.
In discussing the director’s work on “Carol” with a friend, she said. “It’s the male gaze. The gay male gaze on lesbians. It’s looking from the outside in, thrilled with the beauty, but missing the connection.” The initial look across the crowded store floor brought promise to the early scenes, but unfortunately that was more or less the last sexy vibe we were to feel. Affected elegance and mournful stares replace recognizable lesbian sexuality and drama.
I recommend “Carol” because of its potential and the talent involved in its production, but I warn viewers to look for the artistry and the scenery, since the sweaty, beating heart and the throbbing arousal are nowhere to be found.
New England offers many groovy summer destinations, but few places in the world concentrate so many top-notch cultural opportunities as the Berkshires. These include the internationally-famous classical music festival at Tanglewood; perhaps the country’s most interesting dance village, Jacob’s Pillow (vintage photo on left); arts festivals, theaters, and dead writers/artists homes. And the landscape is phenomenal. You can get to the Berkshires from Boston in two to three hours. I love vacations I can drive to, but still feel that I’ve entered new ether. The Berkshires is creative and visual catnip, with its well-preserved old homes, dazzling landscaping everywhere, broad emerald lawns, rivers, and lakes. Just driving around the well-kept roads (compared to Boston’s pock-marked streets) is a vacation in and of itself.
This report covers a four-night stay in the Berkshires and gives you the flavor, if not a blueprint, of how to experience cultural immersion without exhaustion. I tried to include one daytime and one evening experience each day, with a few food and accommodation tips as well.
Monday, June 29 Despite the 10-mile backup on the Mass Pike due to road works that delay me by an hour or so, and a GPS that seems to believe that the longest possible route is the only choice, I arrive at my Airbnb condo in Housatonic with delight at how spacious, modern, handsome, and comfortable it is. If you’re headed this way and you’re looking for a two-bedroom rental, I recommend Alicia’s place. Check it out here.
I cruise to the nearby working class town of Great Barrington only to find my favorite second-hand and vintage stores are no more. I window-shop past a real estate office and even go scope out a couple of nearby, affordable ($200,000-ish) riverside condos. I skip the Monterey (nearby and fancy) listings that all hover close to $2 million. I return to Housatonic, stopping for dinner at the Brick House Pub (don’t miss the seductive sweet potato fries.)
Tuesday, June 30 BERKSHIRE CANOE TOURS I start the cloudy day on the Housatonic River with Hilary Bashara of Berkshire Canoe Tours. My podiatrist had recommended her. Hilary is gregarious, knowledgeable, and besotted with the Housatonic River, which she’s lived close to her entire life. Bring a hat and sunglasses and she’ll supply you with a kayak or canoe and escort you through this exquisite part of the river. The water is like a mirror and because it is late June after a rainstorm, the banks are a palate of greens dotted with copious wildflowers. Hilary can spot turtles from across the water; she can name every bird and tell you how they organize their lives; and she knows more about beavers than beavers themselves. This is a unique Berkshires opportunity, and, rain or shine, it’s the perfect day-time foreplay to an evening of music, theater, or dance.
SHAKESPEARE AND CO There are a ton of wonderful theatres to visit in the Berkshires area, but the one I try never to miss is Shakespeare and Co in Lenox. Like their famous cousins - Jacob’s Pillow and Tanglewood – this company sits on a large campus with multiple buildings and provides both performance and educational programs, as well as Intensives for professional actors. Founded in 1978 by Tina Packer, they now have over 30 staff, 150 artists, and serve 60,000 theatre-goers every year. Their robust youth educational effort includes kids known to the juvenile justice system.
Tonight I’m seeing their Henry V, in which eight talented actors play all the roles of Henry V in a style this company calls “bare Bard” – no scenery or elaborate sets. The director Jenna Ware’s staging is impressively rich considering that she only employs chairs, cloths, chests, and the actors’ costumes on an otherwise empty stage. From that she creates a fire, a fence, gallows, and a castle. Henry V is about war and class, and about how marriage between enemy aristocratic families is used as political glue.
In an interesting twist from Shakespeare’s day when men used to play all roles, here we have women playing men’s roles. The intimacy of the small theatre amplifies the emotional impact of this Henry V, not the least the scene of a gallows hanging that delivers a disturbing jolt to the audience.
The rest of this year’s season at Shakespeare and Co is varied, for not only do they mount Shakespearean plays and other classic work, they also present contemporary works with social relevance for a casual and hip audience.
Wednesday, July 1 ARROWHEAD Many writers’ homes have been turned into museums in the Berkshires, an area so naturally beautiful that it attracts bundles of creative people. Edith Wharton’s home, The Mount, is perhaps the best known author’s residence. But Herman Melville’s home, Arrowhead, in Pittsfield is truly a gem. The hourly tours are full of the inside dope on the life of Melville.
My erudite tour guide, Barbara, outlines Melville’s lifelong connection to the Pittsfield area and then hones in on the 13 years of 1850-1863 – before and in the early years of the Civil War – that Melville spent in this fairly simple farm house. Melville built a piazza (porch) on the north side for its view of Monument Mountain. The house was originally built on 150 acres in the 1780s and has been in the hands of the Historical Society for 40 years, serving about 5,000 visitors each season, according to Peter Bergman, head of their public relations, and a writer himself.
Using a quill pen, Melville finished Moby Dick and several other books in his study by keeping to a strict writing schedule, but was never able to make a living from his writing. Despite financial help from his father-in-law, a Revolutionary patriot and the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Melville had to leave the Berkshires for a Customs House job in NYC. (His friend and mentor Nathaniel Hawthorne also did a stint in a Customs House.)
Of the four children he had with his wife Lizzie, Melville outlived both sons, and only one daughter married and had children. He turned the details of his life experience into literature and, for his readers, a visit to his home gives added layers to his work.
TAFT FARMS A girl has got to eat and luckily Taft Farms is just down the road in Great Barrington. Founded in 1961, it has remained a Tawczynski family endeavor for generations. Besides its totally fresh-from-the-earth fruits and vegs, they have a bakery that is scandalously fabulous. I started with the most perfect biscuits (no sugar), scones (just like the best in the UK), baguettes (took my taste buds to France), mac & cheese (hard not to overeat), but most of all, the most scrumptious rhubarb and strawberry pie.
JACOB’S PILLOW Jacob’s Pillow is, for me, the jewel in the crown of the Berkshires. As a dance center, it is unique and exhilarating. There are three main performance areas, all of which I will enjoy today and tomorrow.
The biggest theater space is the Ted Shawn Theatre, named after the founder and continuing inspiration for Jacob’s Pillow. Dance companies the world over aspire to be invited to this premiere venue. Tonight I see the incomparable tap company Dorrance Dance with Toshi Reagon and her BIGLovely band in a collaboration called The Blues Project. In fact, I saw this show in Boston some months ago and when Dorrance announced that she would be performing at Jacob’s Pillow, I decided that I would follow her to the Berkshires.
Prior to the show, a Jacob’s Pillow resident scholar, Suzanne Carbonneau, gives a riveting pre-performance lecture. (This is a regular JP tradition and service.) Michelle Dorrance is credited with the rebirth of tap dance popularity in what the lecturer says is its second golden age. Its heyday was during the 1920s and 30s. “Tap,” Carbonneau tells us, “is the danced blues… It’s the encounter of African and European cultures… The history of tap is the history of America.”
The Blues Project (photo: Morah Geist) bears that out. A truly diverse range of bodies, ages, ethnicities, races, talents, and backgrounds makes the combination of this extraordinary dance company with this magic jazz band especially exciting. The works involve changing combinations of dancers in choreography, interspersed with improvised solos. The sublime moment comes when Dorrance and Reagon form a duet, with Reagon singing “I can’t stop myself from falling down.”
The company injects lindy hop, hip hop, acrobatics, and jazz into tap, holding it all together with an attitude that is full of rhythm and of admiration between the band and the dancers. Although the performance seems both shorter and slightly less intense than their Boston debut of this work, there are few dance companies that can match their sensational work in The Blues Project.
Thursday, July 2, 2015 HOUSATONIC RIVER WALK Housatonic River Walk in Great Barrington is just a few lovely blocks of a wooden path created and maintained by 2,300 local volunteers with the permission of home and property owners. It's a lovely day for a stroll and I do love rivers, having grown up in a town formed by three of them.
This civic effort is one of many attempts to deal with the contamination of the Housatonic by the General Electric company which dumped PCBs into the water. When this crime came to light, it seems to have infuriated the entire Berkshires population. It’s been mentioned to me every time the river is referenced.
JACOB’S PILLOW I am back to Jacob’s Pillow for three different activities. First I take the tour of the huge campus that is offered twice weekly by one of the 33 interns accepted to the program this summer. (There are 25 full-time staff.) This young woman tells the story of Ted Shawn’s marriage and dance collaboration with Ruth St. Denis. Oddly enough, she understates that “the marriage did not work out,” and moves to describe Shawn’s most famous dance creation, Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers, who performed across the country ostensibly as a way to make dance okay for guys. The surviving footage and photos show a highly homoerotic choreography and in fact Shawn went on to have two long relationships with men, first with a company member and later with a stage manager.
I am bothered by the de-gaying of Jacob’s Pillow throughout my time there this year. Even when they announce the annual Out Weekend (July 4th), they do it without saying any of the queer words. LGBTQ people think of Jacob’s Pillow as a gay venue and I see many gay people at all the performances. The reluctance to speak with candor about Shawn and about the Out Weekend, which is really the high point of the season with a gala party and all, is perplexing.
I also cannot help noticing that anyone with a microphone – those introducing, lecturing, guiding, announcing – are all white, the majority women. For arguably one of the most important dance institutions in the country, that’s a missed opportunity. American dance, of course, owes a great deal to African-American performers, choreographers, and musicians.
The second of the three performance venues is Inside/Out, a floor with no walls or roof, perched atop a hill where dance students perform. Imagine a rough amphitheater. The performances are free and it is always standing-room-only. Tonight I see two dance troops from Williams College who drum and stomp their way into the audience’s heart with their African- influenced repertoire.
The third venue is the Doris Duke Theatre, smaller but more modern than the Ted Shawn theatre. Companies that are on their way up the professional ladder appear here. Tonight I see the L.A. troupe Bodytraffic, after a pre-performance discussion by Resident Scholar Maura Keefe. She outlines the four pieces by separate choreographers that comprise their program.
Although co-directed by Lillian Barbeito and Tina Finkelman Berkett, only the latter is present and dancing with the company. Berkett is, in fact, such an extraordinarily accomplished dancer, that she outshines the rest of her company. The men who work with her are more prominently featured than the women in Bodytraffic (photo credit: Christopher Duggan). However, since Berkett appears in all four pieces, it is hard to take one’s eyes off of her. Following the program, there is a charming Q&A with Berkett, moderated by Keefe. One of the dancers has Barbeito on his phone on Skype listening in right off-stage.
Jacob’s Pillow has a magnificent line-up of companies throughout the summer, and no visit to the Berkshires should skip the campus, with its worn wooden structures and sense of neighborhood. There is a pub, a restaurant, an ice-cream vendor. There is a photographic gallery and a dance archive. There is a dance school, including classes open to the community. There is space for top professionals to have artistic retreats to work out new choreography – filling the gap created by New York’s wildly expensive rehearsal space. There are places to picnic and people watch, with a break to check out the cool stuff in their store. Ain’t nothing like it nowhere.
Friday, July 3, 2015 I only have time to pack up, clean up, and lock up in the morning. I feel reluctant to leave the Berkshires for the city. To compensate myself, I make a pit stop at Tafts Farm. I've ordered a pie to take home. And some biscuits. And some mac and cheese. For days, back in Boston, I will have taste bud reminders of four days and nights well-spent in the Berkshires.
I’m studying West Coast Swing, or rather I’m trying hard to. I’ve been seriously involved in partner dancing since about 1989, during the birth in London of what would become a world-wide movement of queer dancers. For years I danced as a leader (Ballroom and Latin dances) – often six times a week. To do so, I had to shatter a lot of rainbow ceilings. (photo: with Vicki in the 90s)
Now, 25 years later, I’m being squashed by yet another rainbow ceiling in my dance and I can’t bear it. I don’t want to deal with it. I want it to evaporate. Don’t think I have always shied away from the good fight, though.
Here are some of the dance rainbow ceilings I shattered since 1990. I was the first woman to perform an official UK Showcase as a leader. It was with my teacher Ralf and I believe we did the West Coast Swing (an older version). I danced as leader in the ostensibly straight dance school of two of Europe’s top teachers, Glenn and Heather. Many of the women students did not want me to touch them as we rotated partners in the lessons, but I was saved by one (thanks Diane) who stepped up and filled those gruesome gaps. This was in the very early 90s. I won my International bronze, silver, and gold medals as a leader. On my 45th birthday (22 years ago!) I started a tradition of queer balls by using my birthdays as an excuse to raise money for movement groups I admired. I performed as a leader in the first Scottish Pride and many other events with a brilliant male follower, about a foot taller than me. I might have been the first dyke to lead in social dancing on the floor of the famous Blackpool ballroom – with the exquisite dancer Wonnita who went on to become a top dance teacher and run with her partner a fabulous women’s Ballroom and Latin dance club called Hilda’s in London.
None of this came without a price. I absorbed pushback and insults and homophobia and sexism and nasty remarks and disbelief and outrage every step of the way. Those things didn’t just roll off my back, believe me, but the growth of the safe haven of a LGBTQ dance community with superb teachers to support my obsession with dancing kept my feet moving.
I tell you all of this to show that I’ve paid my dues. Over and over and over. I’ve been in the States for 15 years now without finding a permanent dance partner. There is a miniscule queer dance scene, about an event per month, but with low participation and an unambitious proficiency level. In short, I have not really been dancing seriously since arriving here. However, West Coast Swing (a newer version that is virtually a new dance) is very big in New England and it has several aspects that appeal to me:
1. You don’t need a partner. Everyone dances with everyone. Even the competitions are “Jack & Jill” – that is, you pull a name out of a hat and just spontaneously lead and follow. 2. It is casual. There’s virtually no dress code. The women who follow can even wear flats and pants, and certainly not costumes that cost thousands and ridiculous spray tans and lacquered hair as is now the unfortunate norm even in same-sex Ballroom/Latin competitions. 3. It has no syllabus and so is still evolving. 4. Some of the lessons and dances are affordable.
I have written about my first foray to a West Coast Swing club (with lessons) that is less than a block away from my home. There I was met with aggressive hostility by the teacher of the beginners’ class – who is also the owner of the school. He was insulting and rude, even though I had called him earlier to make sure he had no objection to my learning as a leader.
Luckily I found Monday evening lessons at the welcoming “Ballroom in Boston” studio. Other dancers there, including a fine follower named X-, encouraged me to come along to a big club in Harvard Square that meets weekly, which I have been doing for five months religiously. It is comprised of about 80% undergraduate students – that’s people from 18-22 mostly – and then a few grown-ups.
The first time I came the woman at the door explained that it cost $10 but $5 for students. “What about seniors?” I asked. She did a mental double-take – of course they had never had a senior before I suspect – before agreeing, “Okay, discounts for seniors too.” The teachers are welcoming, the organizers are committed to creating a positive environment, but the young women followers are not happy dancing with me. I can see it on their faces as I approach them to ask them to dance. They’re thinking, “Oh jesus, I didn’t come to the club in order to dance with my grandfather.”
I’m an out dyke and I’m 67. There’s nobody like me on the floor. There’s no woman my age and no other butchy woman. There are plenty of women who lead and men who follow – BUT, it’s their secondary role (except for X-). There’s no other woman who leads exclusively. This self-satisfied Cambridge crowd assures me how cool and open the scene is, but last night five different followers turned me down. Five! This despite an etiquette that explicitly forbids refusing someone who asks you to dance.
I told myself that once I was really good it wouldn’t be a problem. However, I cannot get really skilled without dancing all the time and I can’t dance all the time if people don’t want to dance with me. Of course, there are those who do ask me to dance, but they are mostly guys who want to try out following and probably see me as lower stakes than dancing with another man while they’re feeling their way.
“Ballroom in Boston” isn’t like that. It’s mostly grown-ups and there’s never been an issue. The followers are happy to dance with me. The teacher Kirsten says “follower/leader” as naturally as most of the other instructors (sigh) say “ladies/gentlemen” or “gals/guys.” Some of the students even invited me to a private dance party they had.
There are other West Coast lessons to be had, but mostly those are very small groups with hetero-couples who cannot figure out what my problem is. In fact, I have not infrequently been asked by these women, What’s your problem? Or, What do you think you are doing? Or, Why are you acting like a man? To which I answer, Why are you acting like a woman?
I spoke to one of the hipper young teachers at the Harvard Square venue about all the followers turning me down. It’s time to have a talk about etiquette, he said. But that’s not it at all. Straight people aren’t turning each other down. The most awkward unskilled male leaders ask the most dazzling advanced women followers to dance without getting turned down. It’s not about dancing: it is about homophobia and sexism mixed with ageism among these groovy liberals.
I’m horribly depressed about all of this for I didn’t sign up for another rainbow ceiling. I am reluctant to abandon West Coast Swing. This is my exercise, my hobby, my social activity, and I’ve devoted time and money to it. The thought of giving it up is excruciating, but absorbing insults week after week ain’t a piece of cake either. What should I do?
Well, sort of. I wasn’t at THEWhite House Conference on Aging (which is to be held in July): I was at the fifth and final regional consultation forum leading up to the actual Conference. I was recommended for the Conference by SAGE (Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders). My job was to bring up the particular needs and realities of LGBTQ people, to inject the queer into the conversation. I applied and was accepted, putting down my “affiliation” as writer.
It was held at the new Edward M. Kennedy Institute, sitting with sibling congeniality next door to the JFK Library on the University of Massachusetts campus. The main hall is a replica of the US Senate chamber, holding 100 comfy seats with desks, ringed by a balcony of stiff observer seats. Lacking a red dot on my name tag, I was ordered upstairs. AARP was the co-sponsor and provided copious, decent snacks and lunch. Instead of just cookies at the break, for instance, they also offered energy bars and trail mix.
There were two panels filled with worthies to start off the day. I was struck by their demographics:
**Taken as a whole, the speakers were a lot younger than the group they were talking about. **There were no “users” on the panels, only “professionals.” **The majority of the speakers were white women.
Here’s a short report of my personal experience of trying to inject LGBTQ content, followed by some salient points from some of the speakers.
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
I had prepared my question and dutifully copied it out on the postcard that came in our pack, but the volunteer usher who collected it stood around in the balcony with a bunch in her hand instead of handing it in for consideration. Luckily Lisa Krinsky's (Director of Boston’s terrific LGBT Aging Project) question about cultural competency and treating LGBT people with dignity did get asked.
In our breakout session on Elder Justice we were divided into six smaller groups to come up with a priority/challenge/solution. I talked a lot about breaking the isolation of LGBTQ seniors, especially those who are closeted, and about other marginalized groups. I saw to it that I was one of the people reporting back to the room to ensure that LGBTQ concerns get written down. However, in the end the leaders homogenized the varied concerns of the six smaller groups into one single “most important” priority. That is, they made mush out of nuanced issues. You know: more resources; more public awareness. Blah blah.
In the final, most interesting plenary session, filmed "for the White House," they opened the mic and at last “the people" were able to speak. It was enlightening to hear from the participants – and to finally see the passion activists have about their varied issues. One nursing home resident basically said, “Nothing about us without us.” A woman spoke about encouraging seniors to prepare for Guardianship. We learned that half of people over 65 live in communities with no public transportation whatsoever. And that 90% of trips taken by folks 65+ are by car, leaving them devastated when they can no longer drive.
I had snuck into the main chamber in order to be positioned to make a jump for the mic. I spoke about isolation, marginalization, and the necessity to use increased resources to reach groups like isolated LGBTQs and undocumented immigrants. I talked about the LGBTQ generation before mine – people who had never been “out” in their lives – and how they would experience senior services/institutions. I talked about people of color and others who did not necessarily see the social worker or the criminal justice system as a place to turn to. I regret that I neglected to raise two important aging issues: sexuality and HIV.
Afterwards about six or seven gay people came up to personally thank me – and I refrained from asking them why they had not themselves spoken up. Two (assumedly naive) people said, How great that Obama is going to see this footage and hear what you said.
In the end, I felt I had successfully accomplished a bit of my mission.
However, queers are decidedly not on the radar of the main speakers and the bigwigs, to say the least. Issues of poverty, race, gender, and sexuality were hardly referenced by the experts (except for one panelist, Jeanette Takamura, Dean of Columbia University Social Work). No one said the word "ageism" until the end of the day. That was disheartening.
OVERVIEW OF THE SPEAKERS
The day’s Superstar is Senator Elizabeth Warren, who scores the only two standing ovations – bringing a spark of passion to a day that will be very “conferency.” The first comes the moment she opens the door and enters – people jump and cheer – and the second is for saying, “This is not the moment to talk about cutting Social Security; this is the moment to talk about strengthening Social Security.” In between she champions Medicare and Medicaid, tells us that 1/3 of all people near retirement have no savings, and raises the alarm on conflicts of interest among financial people selling retirement plans and getting kickbacks. I am most gratified by her point that beefing up Social Security “is not only about honoring our promises to our seniors, it is also about honoring our promises to our young people” since all of us are aging. We learned that from the disability movement: improved accessibility helps everyone.
Caregiver (and Union member) Kindalay Cummings-Akers, introduces Congressperson Stephen Lynch (both pictured on left), after talking about the real challenges of her profession, not the least the restrictions by Medicare on who gets care at home. Lynch, himself a champion of elder services and of improved employment circumstances for carers, looks at the implications of our increased life expectancy.
Therese McMillan, from the US Department of Transportation, gives a fascinating peek at how good public transportation can make a difference in the lives of older people. When seniors were asked what they’d most want near their house, the majority said “bus stop.” People who regularly use public transportation walk more than those who drive, countering the sedentary lifestyle which she says is “the biggest threat to health.” (Writers are done for!) Poor neighborhoods are often “food deserts” – where fast food and liquor stores dominate: public transportation helps people get to fresh fruit/vegs. I love her concept of “extending the ladders of opportunity”: mobile seniors help others through volunteering, childcare, etc.
We are told by Maine’s Judith Shaw that elders who are victims of abuse are three times more likely to die in the three years following their victimization than their general group. John Friedman of Brown University says that a generation ago three out of four workers had a work pension: now three out of four don’t.
I am a bit put off by the injection of rapacious corporations into the proceedings. We are subjected to a CVS “retail pharmacist” and a Bank of America/Merrill Lynch (!!) spokesman bragging about how well they take care of their senior customers. (The two corporate representatives were both men of color – the only ones on the panels.) I was unhappy, too, with remarks by Brigitte Madrian, a “public policy and corporate management” professor from Harvard, who couldn’t bear the idea that people were able to tap into their own retirement savings before retirement – as if people in crisis are frivolous.
Sylvia Burwell, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, pointed out that 2015 is a big anniversary year: the 50th anniversary of Medicare, Medicaid, and the Older Americans Act, as well as the 80th anniversary of Social Security. The department’s present emphasis is on the prevention of heart attacks / strokes, the #1 USA killer.
Two hours into the day and there has been no mention of the impact on aging of poverty, gender, race, or sexuality. Disability was only mentioned in terms of transportation.
The second panel, including two participants of color, consists of all physicians (in senior roles) and one PhD. We’ll start with her. Jeanette Takamura (on left) is the first woman Dean at the School of Social Work at Columbia University. She is the bright light of the day for me. She’s got an impressive CV of significant work around older people, including the development and enactment of a modernized Older Americans Act. Takamura is the first to mention women and the LGBT community – and also the first to raise the crucial issue of political will on the federal, state, and local levels. She says the money needs to follow the person. She points out that by 2043, the majority of Americans will be people of color. I am surprised to learn that private (for-profit) long-term care companies are not expanding: they’re contracting. Later, in response to the question of the LGBT Aging Project, Takamura talks about the “micro-aggressions” people of color and gay people suffer all their lives and gives a “macro-aggression” example from her own life. (“She speaks English so well!”)
Ellen Flaherty from the Dartmouth Center for Health and Aging talks about rural elders. Rural communities are older and more isolated than urban ones. She is full of suggested solutions: For long-term care, shift Medicaid spending from nursing homes to home care. Improve the conditions of caregivers. And use technology for fall detectors, for Tai Chi lessons via Skype, etc. I am surprised at her emphasis on solutions using the Internet because my experience of rural connectivity has not been impressive.
Every profession has its jargon and I repeatedly heard two buzz phrases new to me: “health confidence” and “activated patients.” I can only guess at their meaning. I fear “health confidence” is somehow a similar construct to “food insecurity,” which means “We don’t know where the hell our next meal is coming from.” As for “activated patients,” your guess is as good as mine.
Finally, thank you to the three brilliant people from the LGBTQ seniors movement who got me involved. Terri Clark forwarded me the Conference announcement. Terri has encouraged my involvement in this work from the time I met her in Philadelphia where she does education work around HIV and also around senior sexuality. Serena Worthington (Director of National Field Initiatives at SAGE), who ran the LGBT Elder day-long session at the Creating Change conference in Denver with such panache, provided my recommendation. And Aaron Tax, SAGE’s Director of Federal Government Relations, sent me useful educational materials.
Here's the Conference trailer (very different optics than the session I was at).
After Marriage: The Future of LGBT Activism Harvard University’s Third Annual Gender & Sexuality Symposium (March 27, 2015)
When I saw Harvard University was offering a free breakfast and lunch, I decided to go to this all-day workshop. Seriously, I had never seen the keynoter Jewelle Gomez speak, although I was long aware of her activism and writing, not the least her much-admired novel The Gilda Stories. I’m hoping that the movement really does have a future, for I have been perplexed and infuriated by the choices that well-off white male “gays for pay” have been making for the American movement. I’ve written many times about my opposition to the call for “gays in the military.” (The American military! The world’s worst bully.) Since the earliest days of the women’s liberation movement, I have considered marriage and the nuclear family to be at the heart of women’s oppression. I was bewildered when the queers decided to sweep in to save this failed institution, with its 50% divorce rate and uncounted more living in separation or misery.
I’m interested in what the panelists have to say about looking forward. Our Harvard host Michael Bronski introduces the keynoter. Jewelle Gomez, born and raised in Boston, recalls Boston as “deeply intransigently exclusionary, and it is internationally recognized for being so.” She describes her experience as a child at the South End Cathedral, “where the nuns vigorously ignored me and all young kids of color.”
She tosses out some great quips. She declares from the outset that she would be using the word “queer” in its most inclusive sense, “because there is a letter shortage – like our California water shortage.” Ain’t that the truth! A “femme icon,” as one audience member calls her, Gomez points out, “I spent my life looking for a butch woman like Barbara Stanwyck riding a horse. Today young women think a butch looks like Justin Bieber.”
I appreciate Gomez’s repeated use of the words “feminism” and “lesbian,” as in “Feminism is my religion of choice.” These words seem increasingly rare in academic and conference settings. She mentions our treatment within our bio families – where we are too often treated like infants, when we are neither married nor parents. She notes how the queer baby boom pulled the community away from “free living” – which I understand to mean our fast-moving political lives outside traditional structures like the family.
But then things changed. Gomez explains how she became a litigant in the California case for marriage equality. Once invited to join the other couples, she says it took her and her partner “about five minutes” to agree. While somewhat conflicted, Gomez says that “It was the principle of the civil right, not the institution itself.” She describes staying within the prescribed talking points language (“marriage equality” yes, but never “gay marriage”) and wearing the straight-assed clothes the lawyers insisted on. Gomez also expresses the hope that movement resources will go to other campaigns as well, naming as an example the problem of homeless queer youth.
Following a “Cambridge” lunch that features the choice of sandwiches of a gluten-free or vegan or vegetarian or roast-beef persuasion, the afternoon panel discussion is high-energy, open, and full of revealing info. The moderator, Sue Hyde (National LGBTQ Task Force), injects rocket fuel to the day’s tone in her introductory statement, in which she talks about how we need to grapple with the broader economic questions: in fact, says she, “we need a socialist revolution.” Been a long time since I heard such exhilarating and welcome sentiments said from a queer podium.
Nan Hunter, introduced as the inventor of queer family law, is Skyped in and therefore looms over the rest of the panel on-screen. She says that the legislative wing of the LGBT movement is fairly confident of a positive Supreme Court outcome in June regarding gay marriage. The other panelists agree. Hunter shows us two extraordinary charts of the USA. One illustrates the location of the 630,000+ gay couples (self-identified on the census), mainly on the two coasts and in the big cities in between. The other shows the 120,000+ couples with a child in which at least one partner is a person of color. These folks are scattered throughout rural areas, especially in the South. (Thanks to Sue Reamer for remembering these stats.)
Aisha Moodie-Mills (Center for American Progress) references some sobering figures that show that lesbians raising children are more likely to be poor than anyone else. Black lesbians more so. Trans women even more so.
Kevin Cathcart (Lambda Legal) blows my mind with an observation that should have been obvious: “No civil rights movement has ever been over or finished by a Supreme Court decision.” There is no such thing as a victory, for any gain is a constant target for a backlash – from the Voting Rights Act to Roe v Wade. Cathcart also talks about how, even if marriage equality is established by the Supreme Court, other June decisions are going to have a dire effect on our communities, not the least the weakening of the Affordable Healthcare Act. He says that in this country there are “50,000 sero-conversions to HIV per year,” and points to the impact a stripped-down health insurance system could have on those living with HIV as well as on prevention resources.
Joey Mogul from DePaul Law School warns us about the mass criminalization and incarceration of people of color by the prison-industrial complex. “We spend more to cage and kill people than to help people.”
Audience members speak about coalition-building, about the relationship of the movement to the faith communities, and about funding. Kevin Cathcart points out that only 2% of queer people donate to LGBT causes.
Sue Hyde ends with a hard truth: “Marriage is an equality issue but it doesn’t change much,” in terms of racism, classism, and the other forms of oppression that we are still grappling with. The panel brings a grounded energy to the day that counters the attitude of those organizations working to integrate queers into the worst of American institutions. I am glad to feel a shared anger in the room, a sense that we can at last put our energies where they are intensely needed. It brings hope for a more radical twist in the path the movement has taken: from asking for acceptance in the homophile days, to fighting for liberation post-Stonewall, to the present lawyer-led lobbying for assimilation into mainstream institutions.
I only recently heard about the writer Angelina Weld Grimké (1880-1958), a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance. She was mentioned by Kay Bourne in one of the events she and her collaborator, the photographer Craig Bailey, are doing around the Boston area about the local history of Black artists. Kay mentioned Angelina Weld Grimké at a celebration of LGBT Black theater people in honor of The Theater Offensive.
Grimké wrote with gut-wrenching intensity about lynching and racism and Black families. Her famous play Rachel (1916) was Grimké’s response to the call by the NAACP for work that would counter the racism of D. W. Griffith's 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation (1915).
I read her amazing short story “The Closing Door,” in the thick collection Black like us: a century of lesbian, gay and bisexual African American fiction, edited by Devon W. Carbado, Dwight A. McBride, and Donald Weise. This story knocked me on my ass. The characters are drawn with a humanity that makes them seem present in the room, not the least Agnes, the anchor of everyone else’s feelings. When one of her brothers arrives from the South with desperate news of another brother, Agnes is catapulted into a terrifying depression. The range of perspectives inside this one home is monumental. And the ending is a weighty comment on the bittersweet complexity of motherhood within an oppressive Jim Crow environment.
Because I have not yet read much of her work, this post will necessarily be short. I write to share in the off chance that, like me, Angelina Weld Grimké is missing from your shelves. Work of such power and import may be something you want to experience.
PRIDE is the movie you will not want to miss. In fact, if it is playing near you, you will want to put down that fork/pint/keyboard/stress – and run your little ass over to the theater. Take a hanky because you will cry. Wear pants with an elastic waistband because you will laugh. Bring your phone because you will want to call friends afterwards – either to do them the favor of recommending the film or to organize a protest demonstration inspired by PRIDE.
PRIDE tells the true story of a group of London queers who in 1984 decide to form an uninvited alliance with the striking miners. When they are rebuffed by the union leadership, they rather randomly choose a tiny, isolated Welsh village in the Dulais valley to be the recipients of the money they raise at a Pride march. The raucous first meetings between the two groups, so profoundly ignorant of each other’s realities, set the tone. Their common enemy, Margaret Thatcher and the forces of British reaction, provides a steady bridge. Gay-bashing and union-bashing are siblings.
The miners’ strike – the longest in British history – was the defining struggle of the 80s. The defeat of the unions was the focus of Thatcher’s not inconsiderable hatred and power. It affected the politics and the economics of every generation since. PRIDE, the film, is like a grand musical, which turns out to be a fitting way to express that magical connection among allies. A plethora of characters are drawn with incisive wit and strength (except for a couple of vegan lesbians – the only two-dimensional stereotypes) and the sub-plots are emotionally packed and politically charged.
You know me. I hate most films. But I love PRIDE with my heart and my fist. I can’t even pick which characters I love the most: Mark (Ben Schnetzer), the dashing young charismatic visionary; Sian (Jessica Gunning), a miner’s wife whose life is opened up by rubbing up against “the gays”; Steph (Fay Marsay), the quick-witted and hip dyke; or Cliff (Bill Nighy), the elder statesman of the miners whose dignity and humor cushions the over-the-top moments.
If you care about justice, if you ever loved a queer, if you want a chance to cheer, if you need a reminder that people give a shit, go see PRIDE.
I miss dancing on a regular basis something fierce.
Now that I’m not teaching fitness, I’m not working out and partner dancing is the only thing I can think of that I’m motivated to do multiple times a week.
New Fact:
There is a West Coast Swing school/club one block away from me, on the edge of the pond, and it has been there for a decade, unbeknownst to me.
Intermission: Here’s a couple of fab West Coast dancers:
I hear about it over the weekend and head down to the first possible lesson on Tuesday evening. Beforehand, I call the teacher on the number on the website. He is pissed off I am interrupting him but I want to ask, “I’d like to come take lessons, but I lead. Is that a problem in any way?” He purports not to understand my question. I repeat it. He says it’s not a problem.
More facts:
I danced West Coast Swing in London for 10 years.
My dance partner and I used to perform it in various queer settings in the UK.
I was the first woman to ever perform an official Showcase as a leader, leading my teacher Ralf in a West Coast Swing.
I haven’t danced West Coast since coming to the States in 2000 because the form they do here is different than what I know and people don’t find it easy to follow me as a result.
I chat with some of the other students beforehand, mainly because the lesson starts 20 minutes later than scheduled. It is held in a cramped room with a disgustingly filthy floor – but nothing as gross as the nearby bathroom I am to discover later. Eventually we get started. “Guys on this side,” says the teacher, “and girls on that.” I line up with the men. I get looks. I’m the only one crossing the artificial and ridiculous gender line of partner dancing.
As we rotate from one partner to the next, the older women have no problem dancing with me. The younger women are unhappy about it. The youngest – a college undergraduate – says to me, “What do you think you are doing?” “Leading,” I answer. “Why would you do this?” – her tone is very antagonistic. I lean in close. “You know, don’t you” I whisper, “that the only organ I use when leading is my hand.”
The teacher is hostile to me. He may be pissed off that he has to dance as a follower because there are three “extra” leaders. He may just find dykes repulsive. The first time I dance with him he tells me I have a violent lead and that I must be much more relaxed. The second time I rotate to him, he tells me my lead is too weak and how is the follower to know what to do. This becomes the alternating pattern throughout the lesson.
However, he is very professional, knows his stuff, and knows how to teach. We cover a huge amount of material and although I cannot get into the basic step he teaches, I think his system is impressive.
After the lessons (the advanced students have been having a lesson downstairs), there is a dance from 9:30 -11:30 in the main hall. It has a big picture-window view of my pond and a lovely clean wooden floor. I just sit and watch. The level is amazing – the crowd is huge (maybe 100+ dancers) – and as West Coast is a “Jack & Jill” competitive system, everyone dances with everyone else. (Jack & Jill means that instead of competing, as a couple with your own partner, you pick names out of the hat and dance together spontaneously.)
However, all the inviting is being done by the men. All of it. Four or five men my age ask me to dance and when I say that I lead, they act like a bucket of shit has been poured over their heads and they flee. There isn’t a single same-sex dance couple on this very crowded floor.
Intermission: Here’s what the scene (of which I was a founding member) looks like now, in one of the greatest dance venues in Europe:
I’ve been pioneering these kinds of things all of my adult life and frankly I am no longer in the education business. I don’t want to smash barriers or demonstrate a new way. I don’t want to battle heterosexism in the dance world anymore. I just want to study dance and then dance. I love to dance. I love to lead. And these two things have sent me right back to the early 1990s when I was, I believe, the first UK woman to officially qualify for bronze/silver/gold medals as a leader. Life is short. Been there, done that.
What to do now? Suggestions welcome.
Final Treat:Denise Jordan and John Lindo - one of the great West Coast Swing dancers and a frequent same-sex dancer - doing a slow West Coast:
There are five us on the panel, plus our moderator Bob Linscott, the Assistant Director of the LGBT Aging Project. This is an organization that has put queer aging issues on the agenda in Boston and beyond with great success. Diversity is a priority during the Boston University freshman orientation – and we are one of their diversity experiences.
There are perhaps 100 kids – most freshman, but also older undergraduates who are in charge of getting them to and from the activities. A surprising number of the youngsters are out gay. They are all welcoming, interested, responsive, adorable. They do this finger-snapping thing – meaning “yes, I hear you, I agree, I like that, but I’m not going to interrupt you with applause” – and they burst into applause repeatedly, too.
Bob provides a brilliant overview of the special challenges older LGBT people face: we live alone at a much higher rate, fewer of our generation have children, medical and care professionals may have their own bias, and much more. Sam talks about knowing he was gay since birth. “You flirted with the doctor when you were born,” his mother told him. Mel talks about juggling being black and being gay in a complicated world with competing oppressions. Michelle discusses her journey as a transwoman, which she only faced after getting off the drink she used to self-medicate. Dennis talks about sobriety as well, rightly connecting his drinking and drugs to life in the bars – the only place where gay people could meet up.
I talk about the restrictions on women when I arrived to BU in 1965, about the first women’s liberation collective at BU in 1969, and about how the world is now looking much worse than we 60s revolutionaries would have anticipated then. They laugh at my jokes, and love best my reference to the girl who used to climb the fire escape to my brownstone dorm – a few of them are now living in that dorm – so that we could secretly do it in the bathtub.
Their questions are fabulous – from why men who have had any kind of sexual contact with men are prevented from ever giving blood, to what people should do about the increasing restrictions on women’s reproductive rights.
We go to the student cafeteria where they have dozens and dozens of all-you-can-eat choices and have lunch. Three of the girls buy copies of Lillian from me and others take all the calling cards I have brought with me.
I have been feeling very down for some time – the result of obsessively following the massacre in Gaza and the protests in Ferguson combined with some rough patches with good friends. I have felt isolated and depressed and wondering what’s going to happen to me as I age. This afternoon has been like a tonic – meeting these teenagers who really give a shit. I hope they will not be burdened with piles of nasty student loans and that they will keep on being dazzled with hope.
On the way home, I check my Facebook page on the bus. I see that a ceasefire has been agreed in Gaza. The people in Gaza are celebrating the fact that for the first time in 50 days they are fairly sure that they and their own young people will live to see the dawn. Yes, it’s been a good day.
Recent Comments