Breaking the Spell: Rethinking queer community

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Slater

A quick thought on assimilation vs. radicalization ... I don't really see it as an either/or. I think both have a role to play and they can complement each other, as long as there are at least some common goals or outcomes.

My personal frame of reference for this is my activity in Queer Nation in the early 1990s. Some people in the gay community complained that we were too radical, too marginal, but in a conversation I had with a lesbian who had just become Seattle's first openly gay city council member, she pointed out that without QN, she would be the fringe, the radical edge. But with us out there, pushing boundaries, she suddenly looked more mainstream to people. The combination helped push the center, if you will, helped reframe the concept of normal.

Actually the group doing this really effectively right now is the right wing. With the Tea Partiers out there moving the radical edge beyond the bounds of sanity, the "center" of the Republican party suddenly seems more mainstream, despite the fact that they are so conservative that many Nixon-era policies would be considered practically leftist by today's Republican standards.

I, too, was involved with QN in the 90s and, quite honestly, the me from 1993 would probably be absolutely aghast at the me from 2011. I too think that we need a radical edge. The point I was trying to make in my post is that if we should not look down our noses at those who choose to take the radical path because we should not look down our noses at people and that they do some good (and they do) we should not look down our noses at people who assimilate for much the same reasons. I believe that not only did my parents make my sister and I's life significantly easier even though that meant not being as 'authentically black' as the Black Power movement would have had them be, they made a *difference* because when we moved into the house I grew up in, no one would have sought my parents out for advice thinking that they were intelligent or wise or had anything of value to offer the neighborhood . When I left home, people were seeking my parents out because they had stopped being 'merely black' and had become pillars of the community. A resolution that probably surprised all of the long-term residents of the neighborhood.

I think I actually do some good even though I'm assimilated and even though I work for a multinational corporation and even though I live in the suburbs and drive an Audi. There I am, every day at work, this dreadlocked butch woman who is unapologetic in her love for her partner. There are some *seriously* conservative people at my workplace and I have had to learn to get along with them as they have had to learn to get along with me. I have rattled their cages by pretty much shooting all of their expectations of me as a black, butch lesbian into deep space. Whatever images they might have held of black women or butch women or lesbians generally, I defy almost all of them and that makes them think. I've already had one person--a rather conservative Christian--come to me to say that they think their daughter is a lesbian and if they are right, they would like me to talk to her because they want her to have something positive to shoot for. I think that's progress.

Cheers
Aj