reading three guineas at an impressionable age left me with a deep distrust of ritual. i couldn't go to convocations. funeral rites creeped me out. i still have a hard time chanting at protest marches. i can't even do the soccer cheer before a game: "3-2-1-snipers!," i mouth. but of all of these, nothing was so suspicion-inducing as marriage.
well, today's news is that after decades of principled objections to marriage as a hetero/sexist institution, and years of scorning gay marriage, i have put down my bow of burning gold. i've decided i am in favour of gay weddings. the way i see it -- now -- life's too short to dismiss other people's happiness. people want to marry. they want a wedding. for reasons passing my understanding, they want to organize flowers and families so they can stand in front of a crowd of people and say aloud the kinds of things i've always thought best whispered in someone's ear, or uttered to end an argument, or stumbled over in a home depot aisle.
gay weddings show culture morphing and changing. we'll take this aspect of the tradition, but no thanks, not the 'wife' bit. we'll say what we think the basis of a strong relationship is (in connie and val's case, the integrity of individuality and a commitment to sympathetic engagement with each other, which is about as good a definition as i've heard) -- and then we'll make the state sanction it. it's bold and creative, when you think about it. does it solve the issue of disproportionate state goods going to coupled people? does marriage, reworked, shed its baggage of dispossessing women of their personhood? does it undo monogamy's dyadic structuring of desire? of course not. but it turns out you never get tired of hearing the line "by the power vested in me by the province of alberta." it's all i can do not to throw my fist in the air and say, 'take that, fascist fucks!'
more profoundly, i think we can thank gay weddings, along with drag king culture, for a revitalization of butch fashion. people dress for a wedding. the girls looked good, of course (and val was resplendent), but the real treat of last night's soiree was the dudes. there were turquoise shirts with suspenders. there were tight dark vests over proper white shirts. there were cuff links. there were suits. there were funky glasses and short haircuts and brogues. there were ties. there were stripes: thin white stripes and thick white stripes and oxford stripes and pinstripes. there were boots, and there was leather, and there were hats -- so many hats! -- and exquisite manners everywhere. there were dudes with dudes, and there were dudes on their own, and some of them danced with their ladies and some of them danced with the family, and none of them danced with the buxom rugby player from connie's team, which was just fine since it turned out she and her equally zaftig husband could cut quite a rug when the hiphop was playing.
to tell you the truth, it was all very queer.
Showing posts with label queer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label queer. Show all posts
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Bathhouse
in a word: incredible.
we planned for 100, hoped for 125, and we were past that number in the first hour. all in all, we had close to 400 people at the bathhouse over the evening.
everybody was there: swarthy men and bright-eyed graduate students, groups of curious girls, swishy boys, pretty boys, grown-up women, transfolk, drag queens in street clothes, dykes -- friends, strangers... i wish we'd had a tape recorder at the front door, just to capture people's first reactions on walking into the dark red maze. some were anxious and wanted direction: "which way should we go? what should we not miss?" others were just excited: "OMG i can't believe i'm here!" yet others came through the door and you could actually see them adjust their facial expression from nervous to cruisy to cool.
we had art pieces in a dozen rooms and along the halls. marshall set up spotlights to augment the dim and highlight the art, and we provided flashlights for people to use if they chose. norman omar's painting of half a dozen men in towels leaning up against one another covered one hallway, for instance; we installed shane golby's rabbit hutch along one wall and put CW carson's terrifying clown images into three rooms on the opposite wall. one of my personal favorites was dolan badger's installation about fucking the indian (again).... really powerful, and beautiful, understated and bold, at once. anthea black silkscreened a gayle rubin room, a patrick califia room and a cynthia plaster room that you could only view through glory holes. the TVs throughout the bathhouse are all wired together. on one, we screened tom kalin and gran fury's AIDS has not left the building, on the second, sandi somers' whimsical the panty portal and on the third, a buck angel porn called buckback mountain (confession: it was hard not to go with v for vagina). seeing these three together, as you could in the movie room, worked surprisingly well.
we printed e.g. crichton's dirty soap prints on waterproof paper and hung them around the shower and on the floor. we had paige gratland's celebrity lesbian fists, silicon, displayed on black slate. josee aubin oullette took over the steam rooom and filled it with simple ink drawings of the everyday objects that get transformed by being in a bathhouse -- towels, lockers, pillows, beds, keys. it was a little treasure hunt of a maze, illuminated with sexy blacklights.
upstairs, four performance artists held court. antonio bavaro was dr glockensprockensphree (?sp), dispensing advice for the sex addicted. put a coin in her slot and kristine nutting opened the door to her confessional. todd janes's tearoom allowed for anything -- anything -- and was really moving, a space for intimacy in the place you generally come to avoid it, while julianna barabas, wearing a full-length white greek dress, washed, massaged and oiled your hands while singing to you. many people commented that hers felt like the dirtiest piece of all.
anyway, it was a marvelous evening, way beyond our wildest dreams. more than any of the art in particular, the night itself was the event: wandering halls, getting lost in the dark, bumping into strangers, imagining yourself in the sling next to the chainlink fence.... the crowd was perhaps the best art installation of all.
for pictures, program and rowan bayne's exquisite blog on the event, go here. for todd janes's take on his own art, go here. jackson's photos are all over, esp at the exposure fb page.
tonight? i sat on the sofa for five hours, catching up on design blogs and without a trace reruns. that's bliss of another sort.
we planned for 100, hoped for 125, and we were past that number in the first hour. all in all, we had close to 400 people at the bathhouse over the evening.
everybody was there: swarthy men and bright-eyed graduate students, groups of curious girls, swishy boys, pretty boys, grown-up women, transfolk, drag queens in street clothes, dykes -- friends, strangers... i wish we'd had a tape recorder at the front door, just to capture people's first reactions on walking into the dark red maze. some were anxious and wanted direction: "which way should we go? what should we not miss?" others were just excited: "OMG i can't believe i'm here!" yet others came through the door and you could actually see them adjust their facial expression from nervous to cruisy to cool.
we had art pieces in a dozen rooms and along the halls. marshall set up spotlights to augment the dim and highlight the art, and we provided flashlights for people to use if they chose. norman omar's painting of half a dozen men in towels leaning up against one another covered one hallway, for instance; we installed shane golby's rabbit hutch along one wall and put CW carson's terrifying clown images into three rooms on the opposite wall. one of my personal favorites was dolan badger's installation about fucking the indian (again).... really powerful, and beautiful, understated and bold, at once. anthea black silkscreened a gayle rubin room, a patrick califia room and a cynthia plaster room that you could only view through glory holes. the TVs throughout the bathhouse are all wired together. on one, we screened tom kalin and gran fury's AIDS has not left the building, on the second, sandi somers' whimsical the panty portal and on the third, a buck angel porn called buckback mountain (confession: it was hard not to go with v for vagina). seeing these three together, as you could in the movie room, worked surprisingly well.
we printed e.g. crichton's dirty soap prints on waterproof paper and hung them around the shower and on the floor. we had paige gratland's celebrity lesbian fists, silicon, displayed on black slate. josee aubin oullette took over the steam rooom and filled it with simple ink drawings of the everyday objects that get transformed by being in a bathhouse -- towels, lockers, pillows, beds, keys. it was a little treasure hunt of a maze, illuminated with sexy blacklights.
upstairs, four performance artists held court. antonio bavaro was dr glockensprockensphree (?sp), dispensing advice for the sex addicted. put a coin in her slot and kristine nutting opened the door to her confessional. todd janes's tearoom allowed for anything -- anything -- and was really moving, a space for intimacy in the place you generally come to avoid it, while julianna barabas, wearing a full-length white greek dress, washed, massaged and oiled your hands while singing to you. many people commented that hers felt like the dirtiest piece of all.
anyway, it was a marvelous evening, way beyond our wildest dreams. more than any of the art in particular, the night itself was the event: wandering halls, getting lost in the dark, bumping into strangers, imagining yourself in the sling next to the chainlink fence.... the crowd was perhaps the best art installation of all.
for pictures, program and rowan bayne's exquisite blog on the event, go here. for todd janes's take on his own art, go here. jackson's photos are all over, esp at the exposure fb page.
tonight? i sat on the sofa for five hours, catching up on design blogs and without a trace reruns. that's bliss of another sort.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Who what where when
in about 12 hours the second annual exposure festival will be half over.
it's a fantastic festival. loud and queer was a sellout; james loney was incredible (i blogged about it here); and i've just come in from screening the incredibly moving she's a boy i knew, by vancouver film whiz gwen haworth, also in attendance to field questions and comments from the audience. tomorrow we deck out the bathhouse with art for a one-night extravaganza that has buzz all over -- well, actually, all over the country: the rumour is that CBC is running the story nationally.
but i am tired.
i knew from last year that this week would be tough, but knowing is not the same as living fatigue. my days are peppered with paying artists' cab fares, chasing down films that don't arrive, finding a stepladder, troubleshooting stanchions, speaking to media (a special hell, for me -- remember, i don't like vacation snaps), and trying to keep everybody else's spirits up. over in another email account, i still have my day job to attend to, and i feel worryingly distant from my colleagues and students this week. dr zwicker, i wonder: who's that? if it weren't for ted's can-do and mo's just-don't, i don't think i'd be standing at 10pm this monday night.
how tired am i? going to a command-performance queer meet-and-greet this afternoon, i found myself sharing an elevator with a woman from the united way, heading to the same event. dammit, i thought, small talk 31 floors before i'm ready. i did what i always do in such circumstances, which is channel my sister, the fund development officer who can chat up anybody. as the elevator doors closed on us, i arranged a pleasant look on my face and said, "united way! november's a busy month for you, isn't it? one of your busiest, i think i've heard. barb, is it? let me introduce myself, i'm heather zwicker. i teach in the english department at the ufoa but this week i'm also the board chair for exposure, edmonton's queer arts and culture festival." she looked a bit uncomfortable, like she was trying to find the right words to say. quick: be chipper. what would shannon do? "it's a multidisciplinary arts and culture festival," i said, "and hasn't it been a fantastic week in edmonton? salman rushdie was here on thursday, and thomas king spoke at city hall on saturday -- oh, and the university mounted a historical production of orfeo on saturday, did you catch that? i didn't, i was actually giving a paper at the parkland conference, but i heard that it was stunning, and i'm sorry i couldn't have been two places at once, because the films they showed as part of the festival of ideas sounded just phenomenal." i smiled super-brightly, then paused to inhale. she seized her moment. "sorry to interrupt," said barb, reaching for the door open button, "but i think the elevator isn't moving." and indeed, there we were, right where we started. just tireder.
it's a fantastic festival. loud and queer was a sellout; james loney was incredible (i blogged about it here); and i've just come in from screening the incredibly moving she's a boy i knew, by vancouver film whiz gwen haworth, also in attendance to field questions and comments from the audience. tomorrow we deck out the bathhouse with art for a one-night extravaganza that has buzz all over -- well, actually, all over the country: the rumour is that CBC is running the story nationally.
but i am tired.
i knew from last year that this week would be tough, but knowing is not the same as living fatigue. my days are peppered with paying artists' cab fares, chasing down films that don't arrive, finding a stepladder, troubleshooting stanchions, speaking to media (a special hell, for me -- remember, i don't like vacation snaps), and trying to keep everybody else's spirits up. over in another email account, i still have my day job to attend to, and i feel worryingly distant from my colleagues and students this week. dr zwicker, i wonder: who's that? if it weren't for ted's can-do and mo's just-don't, i don't think i'd be standing at 10pm this monday night.
how tired am i? going to a command-performance queer meet-and-greet this afternoon, i found myself sharing an elevator with a woman from the united way, heading to the same event. dammit, i thought, small talk 31 floors before i'm ready. i did what i always do in such circumstances, which is channel my sister, the fund development officer who can chat up anybody. as the elevator doors closed on us, i arranged a pleasant look on my face and said, "united way! november's a busy month for you, isn't it? one of your busiest, i think i've heard. barb, is it? let me introduce myself, i'm heather zwicker. i teach in the english department at the ufoa but this week i'm also the board chair for exposure, edmonton's queer arts and culture festival." she looked a bit uncomfortable, like she was trying to find the right words to say. quick: be chipper. what would shannon do? "it's a multidisciplinary arts and culture festival," i said, "and hasn't it been a fantastic week in edmonton? salman rushdie was here on thursday, and thomas king spoke at city hall on saturday -- oh, and the university mounted a historical production of orfeo on saturday, did you catch that? i didn't, i was actually giving a paper at the parkland conference, but i heard that it was stunning, and i'm sorry i couldn't have been two places at once, because the films they showed as part of the festival of ideas sounded just phenomenal." i smiled super-brightly, then paused to inhale. she seized her moment. "sorry to interrupt," said barb, reaching for the door open button, "but i think the elevator isn't moving." and indeed, there we were, right where we started. just tireder.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Extraordinary evening
back about a year ago, i got a note from a colleague alerting me to the fact that a well-known lesbian writer from the UK was moving to alberta and wouldn't i like to befriend her. i wrote immediately to valerie mason-john to say hey let's get together when you're next in town and don't worry, it's a dry cold.
she hasn't moved here yet, but she emailed in september to say she was coming to visit her partner who lives in ponoka. we bandied about various ways of getting together (how about lit fest on thursday night? no, can't do that -- but i'm going on friday? no, that won't work for me, etc) until she said, "look, we're having a dinner party on saturday night. if you and another person wanted to come, we'd love to have you." i demurred politely -- we were supposed to be working on my sister's new house all day, so we'd be tired, plus i know how precious visiting time is, you don't necessarily want to share it with strangers, and is it really environmentally, which is to say socially, acceptable to drive all the way to ponoka for dinner? -- and picked up the thread of other possibilities: tuesday afternoon? breakfast on wednesday?
she stopped emailing and immediately phoned all three of my numbers, from london, to insist we come for dinner.
well.
i'll confess, i agonized a little. for one thing, what to wear? i've seen valerie's photo online and in the tellingly-entitled femmes of power, so i knew she'd be nearly six feet of gorgeous, from boot-tips to hair. all i knew about her partner was that she's cleaning up in alberta's oil patch -- "cleaning up," i took it, in the metaphorical sense, not like some kind of ecodyke. so, once i was dressed, there was the question of wine. why, oh why, am i such an oenological dunce? in my mind's eye, i had us spending the evening in witty repartee around a formal dining room table trimmed with this season's accoutrements. i thought: it will be a new-built country estate. i wondered: will there be servants? from what i hear, oilpatch people burn bricks of money to warm their cold, cold hearts.
of course, i was completely off base. it wasn't oil people, it was country people. there were ten or eleven dykes, all smart and creative and edgy and intriguing and warm. we came from various places -- BC, massachusetts, UK, edmonton, ontario, the michigan womyn's music festival -- to this sweet '40s bungalow in ponoka. the house, it turns out, was built by an architect who saw a magazine picture of a california bungalow and set out to recreate it. cheryl has been restoring it by hand since she bought it a few years back. among her friends were ranchers from nanton and some sheep farmers en route to nova scotia. another couple there had just returned from running a wilderness outfit in the chilcotin. everybody was a writer and a reader; everybody was friendly and funny and sexily self-possessed. the food was tasty, by which i mean: it tasted like food. the smoky beans were cooked with fresh young coconut chunks and .... mmmm, are those artichokes? ours was the only wine, since everybody else opted for valerie's fresh-squeezed carrot-and-ginger juice. there were no clamshell greens. instead, tiny cherry tomatoes fooled around with seedy figs on a bed of hand-torn leaves.
there was a forthrightness to the evening that even this morning fills me with wonder. imagine inviting total strangers to an intimate dinner party. it's not that we might have been axe murderers -- that's unlikely -- but we might have been awkward, or pretentious, or dull. next to my sense of wonder is a sense of ... well, happiness. i love those women. i'm totally committed to the exposure brand of queer, but there's nothing like a lesbian of a certain age to really make me swoon.
the dyke dinner party in ponoka made my world a little bit bigger. i'm not quite ready to stop dyeing my hair, but i am seriously considering michigan this year.
she hasn't moved here yet, but she emailed in september to say she was coming to visit her partner who lives in ponoka. we bandied about various ways of getting together (how about lit fest on thursday night? no, can't do that -- but i'm going on friday? no, that won't work for me, etc) until she said, "look, we're having a dinner party on saturday night. if you and another person wanted to come, we'd love to have you." i demurred politely -- we were supposed to be working on my sister's new house all day, so we'd be tired, plus i know how precious visiting time is, you don't necessarily want to share it with strangers, and is it really environmentally, which is to say socially, acceptable to drive all the way to ponoka for dinner? -- and picked up the thread of other possibilities: tuesday afternoon? breakfast on wednesday?
she stopped emailing and immediately phoned all three of my numbers, from london, to insist we come for dinner.
well.
i'll confess, i agonized a little. for one thing, what to wear? i've seen valerie's photo online and in the tellingly-entitled femmes of power, so i knew she'd be nearly six feet of gorgeous, from boot-tips to hair. all i knew about her partner was that she's cleaning up in alberta's oil patch -- "cleaning up," i took it, in the metaphorical sense, not like some kind of ecodyke. so, once i was dressed, there was the question of wine. why, oh why, am i such an oenological dunce? in my mind's eye, i had us spending the evening in witty repartee around a formal dining room table trimmed with this season's accoutrements. i thought: it will be a new-built country estate. i wondered: will there be servants? from what i hear, oilpatch people burn bricks of money to warm their cold, cold hearts.
of course, i was completely off base. it wasn't oil people, it was country people. there were ten or eleven dykes, all smart and creative and edgy and intriguing and warm. we came from various places -- BC, massachusetts, UK, edmonton, ontario, the michigan womyn's music festival -- to this sweet '40s bungalow in ponoka. the house, it turns out, was built by an architect who saw a magazine picture of a california bungalow and set out to recreate it. cheryl has been restoring it by hand since she bought it a few years back. among her friends were ranchers from nanton and some sheep farmers en route to nova scotia. another couple there had just returned from running a wilderness outfit in the chilcotin. everybody was a writer and a reader; everybody was friendly and funny and sexily self-possessed. the food was tasty, by which i mean: it tasted like food. the smoky beans were cooked with fresh young coconut chunks and .... mmmm, are those artichokes? ours was the only wine, since everybody else opted for valerie's fresh-squeezed carrot-and-ginger juice. there were no clamshell greens. instead, tiny cherry tomatoes fooled around with seedy figs on a bed of hand-torn leaves.
there was a forthrightness to the evening that even this morning fills me with wonder. imagine inviting total strangers to an intimate dinner party. it's not that we might have been axe murderers -- that's unlikely -- but we might have been awkward, or pretentious, or dull. next to my sense of wonder is a sense of ... well, happiness. i love those women. i'm totally committed to the exposure brand of queer, but there's nothing like a lesbian of a certain age to really make me swoon.
the dyke dinner party in ponoka made my world a little bit bigger. i'm not quite ready to stop dyeing my hair, but i am seriously considering michigan this year.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
The other queers
pride week sort of sneaked up on me this year. mo and i went to the march yesterday and planned to go to the dance (or at least a pre-party) last night. when 7 and then 8 PM rolled around, though, we didn't really feel like going out again. we didn't have very good excuses: i wanted to try a new noodle recipe, mo didn't want to drive all the way to the city's southeast, i can't really dance on my knee and wouldn't want to be tempted, and anyway greece and russia were playing each other in the UEFA tournament .... and so we made the decision to stay in fairly easily.
we did, however, get up this morning and head off to the "mayor's pride brunch for camp fyrefly." we hadn't been planning to go, but we ran into michael phair in churchill square yesterday and he had two extra tickets, so i put on a dress and heels, mo grabbed a commuter mug of coffee, and we got to the crowne plaza by 11. walking into the room, i had to wonder: when did we become these queers? -- the ones who skip the party but make the fundraising breakfast, the ones on friendly terms with the mayor and MLAs, the ones who make small talk with strangers over waffles and eggs? and as for the small talk: there's the obligatory wink to partying like only queers can, as in "yes, 11 does feel early after last night..." but for the most part the chat was solidly un-queer middle-class stuff: how we feel about vancouver or toronto and where we've all traveled recently.
things are equally disorienting at the other end of the age spectrum. no doubt about it: camp fyrefly is amazing. in its third year, this four-day experience for queer youth from across canada is something i can't even imagine having experienced when i was in high school. these young people actively celebrate their differences (from each other, from their families, from all the other people/posers/losers at their high schools) and, once the camp is done, support each other through the year. when i think back to high school, i remember feeling unrelievedly miserable, lonely and isolated because i was desperately uncool, being too brainy, too brawny, and insufficiently feminine. i bought something resembling respect through establishing a cottage industry of fake IDs and porn, and i defended my reputation with fist fights and blackmail. god, though, wouldn't it have been easier to go to gay camp? the idea of having your freak cherished is -- well, i don't know what to think of it, really. it sounds like a disney movie with a helping of self-esteem on the side. and can you imagine what it would mean, on any given day of high school, to get a text from outside? your cell phone'd be a frickin' genie.
mo and i were struck, yesterday, by the number of young people at pride. at first i wondered whether it was just me: when i was 18, everybody over 35 fell into the undifferentiated category of "old." am i living the obverse of this, where anybody short of graduate school is "young"? but i don't think so. the concept of "youth" seems to be a significant twenty-first-century phenomenon. stretching from 16 to 25, in most usages, "youth" refers to that no-longer-a-kid-but-not-yet-comfortable-being-an-adult stage of life. it's probably a consequence of minivan parenting (or whatever they're calling it these days), and i'm sure it has to do with post-secondary tuition rising so ferociously that students have to live at home to go to school.
sometimes i balk at the new youth concept. my first objection: youth runs to 25? i was finished my doctoral coursework by 25! by 25, mo had been living on her own for a decade! also aggravating: when you're involved with the arts, it's clear that "youth" is a magic word, an open sesame that other terms -- say, "mid-career," "experimental" or, the real death knell for funding, "feminist" -- can never even approach. finally, like a typical old fart, i find myself thinking, oh fer chrissakes get over yourself and get a real job.
at the same time, i understand the need for such a term. whatever i might think about recent socioeconomic shifts and their causes, i know from my experience in undergraduate classrooms that your typical student doesn't see herself as an adult. she doesn't want to call her classmates "men" and "women"; they're "guys," if not "kids." part of this is simply germane to university education, of course: part of our role, as i see it, is to bring students through this transition and to model them as adults for each other. but what i fail to take seriously is that it is a transition, and a big one. if you don't see yourself as a grown-up, you're not going to magically change just because i see you that way.
at this morning's brunch, one of the fyrefly youth leaders spoke briefly. she looked about 17 -- young -- and she referred to herself as a "youth." i wouldn't have pegged her as queer if i'd run into her at a bus stop, which is a whole other puzzle to me about kids (sorry, youth) these days. she said to a room of 250 mostly middle-aged queers, "you know what pisses me off? people always ask us youth what we want to do when we grow up. well, i want to do things now. i am doing things now! part of being a good leader is learning how to lead yourself. we at camp fyrefly are building a better world for ourselves and for each other -- and for you, too. and if the world we build threatens to backslide, well, that's just too bad, 'cause we won't let it!"
and then, as if that weren't enough of a high, they did the 50/50 draw and my girlfriend won $400. right there at the front of a crowne plaza ballroom, she hugged michael phair and winked at laurie blakeman. i think the mayor waved a little, and i know fern snart gave her the nod. then mo came back to the table where our new friends congratulated her and we all made jokes about how she could fill the car for a week on that money.
we did, however, get up this morning and head off to the "mayor's pride brunch for camp fyrefly." we hadn't been planning to go, but we ran into michael phair in churchill square yesterday and he had two extra tickets, so i put on a dress and heels, mo grabbed a commuter mug of coffee, and we got to the crowne plaza by 11. walking into the room, i had to wonder: when did we become these queers? -- the ones who skip the party but make the fundraising breakfast, the ones on friendly terms with the mayor and MLAs, the ones who make small talk with strangers over waffles and eggs? and as for the small talk: there's the obligatory wink to partying like only queers can, as in "yes, 11 does feel early after last night..." but for the most part the chat was solidly un-queer middle-class stuff: how we feel about vancouver or toronto and where we've all traveled recently.
things are equally disorienting at the other end of the age spectrum. no doubt about it: camp fyrefly is amazing. in its third year, this four-day experience for queer youth from across canada is something i can't even imagine having experienced when i was in high school. these young people actively celebrate their differences (from each other, from their families, from all the other people/posers/losers at their high schools) and, once the camp is done, support each other through the year. when i think back to high school, i remember feeling unrelievedly miserable, lonely and isolated because i was desperately uncool, being too brainy, too brawny, and insufficiently feminine. i bought something resembling respect through establishing a cottage industry of fake IDs and porn, and i defended my reputation with fist fights and blackmail. god, though, wouldn't it have been easier to go to gay camp? the idea of having your freak cherished is -- well, i don't know what to think of it, really. it sounds like a disney movie with a helping of self-esteem on the side. and can you imagine what it would mean, on any given day of high school, to get a text from outside? your cell phone'd be a frickin' genie.
mo and i were struck, yesterday, by the number of young people at pride. at first i wondered whether it was just me: when i was 18, everybody over 35 fell into the undifferentiated category of "old." am i living the obverse of this, where anybody short of graduate school is "young"? but i don't think so. the concept of "youth" seems to be a significant twenty-first-century phenomenon. stretching from 16 to 25, in most usages, "youth" refers to that no-longer-a-kid-but-not-yet-comfortable-being-an-adult stage of life. it's probably a consequence of minivan parenting (or whatever they're calling it these days), and i'm sure it has to do with post-secondary tuition rising so ferociously that students have to live at home to go to school.
sometimes i balk at the new youth concept. my first objection: youth runs to 25? i was finished my doctoral coursework by 25! by 25, mo had been living on her own for a decade! also aggravating: when you're involved with the arts, it's clear that "youth" is a magic word, an open sesame that other terms -- say, "mid-career," "experimental" or, the real death knell for funding, "feminist" -- can never even approach. finally, like a typical old fart, i find myself thinking, oh fer chrissakes get over yourself and get a real job.
at the same time, i understand the need for such a term. whatever i might think about recent socioeconomic shifts and their causes, i know from my experience in undergraduate classrooms that your typical student doesn't see herself as an adult. she doesn't want to call her classmates "men" and "women"; they're "guys," if not "kids." part of this is simply germane to university education, of course: part of our role, as i see it, is to bring students through this transition and to model them as adults for each other. but what i fail to take seriously is that it is a transition, and a big one. if you don't see yourself as a grown-up, you're not going to magically change just because i see you that way.
at this morning's brunch, one of the fyrefly youth leaders spoke briefly. she looked about 17 -- young -- and she referred to herself as a "youth." i wouldn't have pegged her as queer if i'd run into her at a bus stop, which is a whole other puzzle to me about kids (sorry, youth) these days. she said to a room of 250 mostly middle-aged queers, "you know what pisses me off? people always ask us youth what we want to do when we grow up. well, i want to do things now. i am doing things now! part of being a good leader is learning how to lead yourself. we at camp fyrefly are building a better world for ourselves and for each other -- and for you, too. and if the world we build threatens to backslide, well, that's just too bad, 'cause we won't let it!"
and then, as if that weren't enough of a high, they did the 50/50 draw and my girlfriend won $400. right there at the front of a crowne plaza ballroom, she hugged michael phair and winked at laurie blakeman. i think the mayor waved a little, and i know fern snart gave her the nod. then mo came back to the table where our new friends congratulated her and we all made jokes about how she could fill the car for a week on that money.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Vriend
i've been working with some people on an event to commemorate the vriend decision. as you probably know, the vriend decision is the 1998 supreme court case ruling that read sexual orientation into the alberta human rights act and the canadian charter. it's a major landmark for queers in alberta: it's our stonewall.
but it means even more than that, at least to me. and to explain it, i want to tell you about the world of alberta 10-15 years ago. which is another way of warning you that this is a serious post. we're back in the room with the sonograph, and the tech has turned on the political augmentation. no doubt my account is dopplerized, but this is history from the heart.
i started my job at the UofA in 1993. between the time i interviewed (dec 1992) and the time i started (july 93), ralph klein was elected premier of alberta. between my first paycheque and my second, his government implemented punitive 21% across-the-board funding cuts to health, education, and social services. i say that so trippingly i forget to absorb it. take a look at your latest bank deposit. then lop off a fifth of it and try to pay your bills. that's a 21% cut. now imagine trying to run a school, a hospice, or a suicide prevention program without that fifth.
it took me years to understand what it meant to start my career under those demoralizing circumstances. indeed, it took me years -- five of 'em -- to bring home again the salary i started with that first month. more significant than the money itself is the way being under-waged distorts your sense of reality and erodes your sense of worth. it's one of the problems plaguing artists in canada, where we support art but not artists. it puts you in the position of having to argue, over and over again, that what you do has social value. having to argue for the value of art, or teaching, or crisis prevention is like having to argue that women deserve to be treated like human beings: if you have to start there.... after a while, those arguments just grind you down. you accept de-skilling. if you're an artist, you take the canada council recommended $125 for a reading, even if you have to fly across the country and miss three days' work to do it. if you're a professor, you pay for your own long distance calls. if you're a nurse, you teach people how to change their own catheter and watch them hobble out of the hospital.
worst -- most pernicious -- of all, you become so inured to the way things are that you forget they could be different.
what i want to convey is the emotional consequences of those klein cuts: the sense of collective despair we felt. it wasn't just a matter of the deterioration we faced in our individual workplaces and homes. it was the society we suddenly found ourselves living in. virtually every day we albertans were subject to hearing terrible things about the poor, women, artists, students, intellectuals and queers -- despicable things, hateful things, from our elected representatives. teachers were fat cats with too much holiday, people on AISH were scammers, the homeless were lazy. women should be happy they are allowed to work at all. got an addiction? a mental illness? here's a bus ticket to BC. kindergarten? who needs it.
things were being torn down so rapidly that you didn't know where to turn first. increased class sizes, decreased salaries, increased patient loads, decreased insurance coverage, increased violence, decreased intervention programs. one day we came to work and discovered that the alberta government had closed the dentistry school. the dean himself learned about this from the newspaper. never mind that it's the only dentistry school in western canada. never mind that it's a major source of dental work for people throughout northern alberta. it was just summarily struck out of existence. students started working 20, 25 and 30 hours a week to keep up with exponentially rising tuition. professors worked unpaid days, while avoiding (at least i did) desperate pleas from the development office. food banks ran out of food. did you catch that?: food banks ran out of food. it was all so very, very evil that we could not stand undismayed. we stood dismayed, and bewildered, and exhausted, and terrorized.
and for the most part, we stood alone. on the one hand, this is alberta's fault. call it alberta pride, alberta separatism, alberta exceptionalism, alberta fear (of falling short, of being found out, of being called out, of not being the centre of anything, of not being toronto), but we've never been very good at initiating liaisons and inviting solidarity. on the other hand, the rest-of-canada has to share the blame. nothing's easier or more fun to despise, neglect and gloat over than alberta.
so when the vriend decision was announced on april 2, 1998, it was momentous not just for queers (though certainly that), but for the possibility that something, anything could be different, more hopeful, than it had been. i cried for many reasons that day, but one was relief at the fact that the rest of canada had not forsaken us. i know this sounds pompous, inflated and precious. but that's how it felt to me: we were not forsaken. we couldn't do it alone, that much was clear by 1998, and suddenly we didn't have to. my country was not going to stand back and let alberta turn into a bullies' backwater.
everybody went to the leg that day. the news spread around campus by whispers and then shouts. (remember, it's 1998: no texting.) it was sunny and chill, as i recall, a spring day in every sense. all afternoon the high level bridge undulated north as people came in pairs, in groups, by the dozen and alone to stand on the legislative grounds. there were speeches, i know, and lots of cheering by the roused rabble, but when i think back to the day itself, it unfolds silently, in strange slow motion. i stood with my back up against mo, her arms around me, and we watched the crowd grow. the nurses came. the raging grannies came. the ATA was there before we were. we ran into friends and colleagues who looked as dazed as i felt, and happy. there was a lot of hugging. it was an incredible day.
that day wasn't the end of it. things got worse, rhetorically, before they got better. but one of the reasons i'll be attending next sunday's commemoration is that 2 april 1998 represents the day i learned that you can never give up on hope. it's the germ of social justice.
vriend commemoration:
sunday 6 april, 1:30-3:30
edmonton city hall
free and open to all
but it means even more than that, at least to me. and to explain it, i want to tell you about the world of alberta 10-15 years ago. which is another way of warning you that this is a serious post. we're back in the room with the sonograph, and the tech has turned on the political augmentation. no doubt my account is dopplerized, but this is history from the heart.
i started my job at the UofA in 1993. between the time i interviewed (dec 1992) and the time i started (july 93), ralph klein was elected premier of alberta. between my first paycheque and my second, his government implemented punitive 21% across-the-board funding cuts to health, education, and social services. i say that so trippingly i forget to absorb it. take a look at your latest bank deposit. then lop off a fifth of it and try to pay your bills. that's a 21% cut. now imagine trying to run a school, a hospice, or a suicide prevention program without that fifth.
it took me years to understand what it meant to start my career under those demoralizing circumstances. indeed, it took me years -- five of 'em -- to bring home again the salary i started with that first month. more significant than the money itself is the way being under-waged distorts your sense of reality and erodes your sense of worth. it's one of the problems plaguing artists in canada, where we support art but not artists. it puts you in the position of having to argue, over and over again, that what you do has social value. having to argue for the value of art, or teaching, or crisis prevention is like having to argue that women deserve to be treated like human beings: if you have to start there.... after a while, those arguments just grind you down. you accept de-skilling. if you're an artist, you take the canada council recommended $125 for a reading, even if you have to fly across the country and miss three days' work to do it. if you're a professor, you pay for your own long distance calls. if you're a nurse, you teach people how to change their own catheter and watch them hobble out of the hospital.
worst -- most pernicious -- of all, you become so inured to the way things are that you forget they could be different.
what i want to convey is the emotional consequences of those klein cuts: the sense of collective despair we felt. it wasn't just a matter of the deterioration we faced in our individual workplaces and homes. it was the society we suddenly found ourselves living in. virtually every day we albertans were subject to hearing terrible things about the poor, women, artists, students, intellectuals and queers -- despicable things, hateful things, from our elected representatives. teachers were fat cats with too much holiday, people on AISH were scammers, the homeless were lazy. women should be happy they are allowed to work at all. got an addiction? a mental illness? here's a bus ticket to BC. kindergarten? who needs it.
things were being torn down so rapidly that you didn't know where to turn first. increased class sizes, decreased salaries, increased patient loads, decreased insurance coverage, increased violence, decreased intervention programs. one day we came to work and discovered that the alberta government had closed the dentistry school. the dean himself learned about this from the newspaper. never mind that it's the only dentistry school in western canada. never mind that it's a major source of dental work for people throughout northern alberta. it was just summarily struck out of existence. students started working 20, 25 and 30 hours a week to keep up with exponentially rising tuition. professors worked unpaid days, while avoiding (at least i did) desperate pleas from the development office. food banks ran out of food. did you catch that?: food banks ran out of food. it was all so very, very evil that we could not stand undismayed. we stood dismayed, and bewildered, and exhausted, and terrorized.
and for the most part, we stood alone. on the one hand, this is alberta's fault. call it alberta pride, alberta separatism, alberta exceptionalism, alberta fear (of falling short, of being found out, of being called out, of not being the centre of anything, of not being toronto), but we've never been very good at initiating liaisons and inviting solidarity. on the other hand, the rest-of-canada has to share the blame. nothing's easier or more fun to despise, neglect and gloat over than alberta.
so when the vriend decision was announced on april 2, 1998, it was momentous not just for queers (though certainly that), but for the possibility that something, anything could be different, more hopeful, than it had been. i cried for many reasons that day, but one was relief at the fact that the rest of canada had not forsaken us. i know this sounds pompous, inflated and precious. but that's how it felt to me: we were not forsaken. we couldn't do it alone, that much was clear by 1998, and suddenly we didn't have to. my country was not going to stand back and let alberta turn into a bullies' backwater.
everybody went to the leg that day. the news spread around campus by whispers and then shouts. (remember, it's 1998: no texting.) it was sunny and chill, as i recall, a spring day in every sense. all afternoon the high level bridge undulated north as people came in pairs, in groups, by the dozen and alone to stand on the legislative grounds. there were speeches, i know, and lots of cheering by the roused rabble, but when i think back to the day itself, it unfolds silently, in strange slow motion. i stood with my back up against mo, her arms around me, and we watched the crowd grow. the nurses came. the raging grannies came. the ATA was there before we were. we ran into friends and colleagues who looked as dazed as i felt, and happy. there was a lot of hugging. it was an incredible day.
that day wasn't the end of it. things got worse, rhetorically, before they got better. but one of the reasons i'll be attending next sunday's commemoration is that 2 april 1998 represents the day i learned that you can never give up on hope. it's the germ of social justice.
vriend commemoration:
sunday 6 april, 1:30-3:30
edmonton city hall
free and open to all
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