Jewelle Gomez

Dispatches from the Wedding Front #2

This past Monday Diane and I walked out of City Hall after having the great joy of witnessing the Mayor (re)marry Phyllis & Del (engaged 55 years) and we stepped into the cheers of an ecstatic crowd and the rousing music of our community's band.

We were also faced with a few protesters. The most disturbing was a single man, white, maybe in his late 30s, who leaned over the barricade and jabbed his finger at us screaming over and over: "You're evil!"

That was startling...so personal...so rabid. His was the face of a lynch mob. I've seen the historical photographs...people with twisted, vicious faces, self-righteously enjoying the torture and death of a fellow human being. This was a lynch mob in front of our City Hall on Monday held back only by a thin veneer of civilization, the watchful eye of television cameras and our marching band.

We're still going to get married even though he wishes we were dead.

Emma Goldman & Love

"The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair; but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved.�
Emma Goldman

This was a quote used in the program book for the huge annual celebration given by National Center for Lesbian Rights last weekend. In a room full of Q and non-Q people the victorious plaintiffs (that would be me) and attorneys in the case against the State of California about a thousand people cheered our right to marry. I cheered too, thinking of Emma Goldman's speeches for human rights.

I'm not one of those folks who thinks marriage is for everyone. After all one of the perks has always been living a free and unemcumbered life (no kids, no curfews!) And as a feminist I still have my arguments about it as an institution that has been used to oppress women specifically and people with lower economics means in general.

I do, however, feel like I've said many times before: Black and White Freedom Riders didn't sit in at the counter at Woolworth's in the 1960s because the food was good! It was about the right to choose.

Like with our bodies it's true of ourselves!!! We have to have the right to choose to marry or not. If we don't have that right how can anyone say we are all equal under the law! And marriage is a legal contract first.

Does that discrimination mean someone gets to decide my books should not be published because there are people of color in them? Because there are lesbians in them? Some have tried that before (see the prohibitions against lesbian subject matter on Broadway, see the impounding of queer books by US customs over the past 25 years)!

I think of lesbians as able to look at the bigger picture. As women we have to because society is not always that trustworthy. But we often don't put ourselves at the center of that picture. And we don't see how the treatment of women is an indicator of how healthy the society is. Right now our society should be on life support.

Lesbians will be asked to go out and vote in California along w/the rest of the electorate to decide if the Supreme Court ruling supporting our right to marry should stand. Will we get out and vote? Hard to know. We often take a position and don't think about the major ramifications. We enjoy feeling self-righteously against marriage or think it's irrelevant and there are more important issues. (I know because I've been one of those lesbians on occasion).

There are no more important issues than our lives and being equal before the law because all the issues--global & personal-- connect. We give up one right and others soon follow. Our silence has allowed too many bad things to happen. This should not be another one of those times.

When my partner Diane and I got dressed up for the centennial commemoration of the 1906 earthquake we were proud to be part of the community celebration. For once I felt like I looked almost as good as one of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence! We deserve the right to stroll on Market Street along w/everyone else. And we're in San Francisco so we could and have people be excited to see us. That's not true everywhere, nor is it true every day even here. But we did because we can (and because I'm weak for period clothes). In another time we would not have survived that stroll. But people speaking up for our rights changed that.

Emma Goldman got deported for speaking up for women and workers. Would we have been quiet about that?

Let's not be silent about our rights come November!

And the wedding is in October. Send in your votes: should I wear the '06 outfit or go more 1940s/noir?

Lesbians/Movies

I just heard that the Frameline LGBT Film Festival will open this year with "Affinity" based on the novel by Sarah Waters! I'm a big fan of Waters' novels and watched the BBC version of her novel, "Tipping the Velvet," so many times I could almost recite the lines w/the correct, working-class, British accent.

I feel so hungry to see real, in depth, complex portrayals of Lesbians on screen I can hear my heart growling.

I know that this culture hates women and is afraid of Lesbians but it's so demoralizing sometimes to see how poorly or erratically we're reflected in the media. Even our own LGBT community is ignorant of our misrepresentation. I've heard many of our other initials claim that Lesbians are too demanding, exacting, exclusive, etc. etc., as if by our endurance we've gained some power. I wish they could tell me where that power is because it certainly isn't in Hollywood.

In the first Lesbian movies I saw Lesbians had to die:
"The Children's Hour" (1961) Lesbian hangs her self so her love object can marry her fiance
"The Fox" (1967) Lesbian is hit by a falling tree and her love object can settle down with the man who caused the trouble

Then there was "The Killing of Sister George" which many conservative women hated. There's no actual dying only the main character's character is killed off in her TV soap opera. But it was sexy and had real and deep characters and a lot of Lesbians live on.

But it's hard to find mainstream Lesbian characters on TV or in the movies now. We can remember some we like clearly and add them to our rental queue:
"November Moon" WWII Lesbians who don't die
"Bound" mobster Lesbians who spill a lot of blood but don't die
"Late Bloomers" middle-aged Lesbians who fall in love and aren't dead yet
"Fire" Indian Lesbians who don't die...just barely!

But what do we make of "Notes on a Scandal" the brilliant turn by Dame Judy Dench (see earlier blog). What Lesbians is it about? Is it about Lesbians at all? I don't know.

Sometimes we do better not to star in the movie but rather be the secondary character: Laurie Metcalf (Roseanne's sister) in "Internal Affairs," or Cher in "Silkwood."

But I prefer a life-sized Lesbian with backstory and depth so I'll keep looking. The Brits seem to do better and if Sarah Waters keeps writing we'll be in good shape. Now if they'd just add a Lesbian to the very queer "Torchwood" series!

The Frameline Festival isn't perfect---it's often short on Lesbian films. But still it's done a good job of finding fabulous Lesbian films and filmmakers to showcase.

And there's Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project Festival June 13-15 at BRAVA Theatre!!! Now there will be Lesbians!!!! On screen and in the audience.

There's a Place for Us and other catchy tunes

I just watched a remastered (hate that word) print of the magical movie musical from 1961, West Side Story, at the classic Castro Movie Palace in San Francisco. It was the first time I'd seen it on the big screen since it was originally released and probably my 20th viewing. And it holds up. The music (although it barely shows an acquaintanceship with a Puerto Rican musical idiom) is brilliant in that Stephen Sondheim way. Unresolved, poignant melodies that swell without becomeing too Andrew Lloyd Webber-like and they still carry the story forward.

The dancing is exquisite---athletic, sexy, and, like the songs, carry the story in an integrated way. Okay, I know that Natalie Wood didn't have a PR bone in her body, but she did have those big liquid brown eyes and even if her trilled 'r' was over the top...she did still have those big liquid brown eyes! And I know Richard Beymer didn't really sing and George Chakiris was really Greek but they were emoting with enough life for every ethnic group put together.

There was a time when those inconsistencies made me politically unhappy and they still do on my most Virgo days. But the artistry is so magnificent, the story so compelling (yes, it's Romeo & Juliet cliche squared) and most importantly it had a powerful message that we as human being are still failing to heed: horizontal hostility only benefits those w/their feet on our necks. The friction between ethnicities and different classes helps keep us in our 'place'---that's not the place they were singing about.

'There's a Place for Us' the starcrossed "PR" and "Polack" (quoting from the movie not my vocabulary) sang and I've always wanted to believe that. That Tony and Maria could find a way to live together w/out cross cultural fear and hatred. That I could marry my partner Diane without cross cultural fear & hatred. That we could educate children, create art, find decent housing, get jobs, immigrate, etc. w/out cross cultural fear & hatred.

But I worry that this is not a belief or dream many of us share. Sitting several rows behind me in the theatre was a group of what looked to be heterosexual, white couples---about 6-8 people----who laughed every time an 'issue' came up on the screen and especially any time the men did anything 'unmanly' like dance. It was a wierdly ominous sensation to have such a group of cynical, unconscious, racist, sexist people sitting at my back.

I know people giggle when they're uncomfortable...and musicals often make younger people, inexperienced w/the genre feel awkward. I have a dear nephew who was incredulous when I shared my disc of West Side Story...he thought musicals were from Mars. I still love him.

But this group's responses were so specifically about the ethnic and class concerns and the things that the men performed it felt like a huge signal that something in our culture had gone awry. The men snorted and suppressed laughter as if they were in elementary school. It was so disturbing I worred that they might make some childishly inappropriate response at the emotional high point of the film and I'd go berserk and throw my diet coke at them. (They didn't and I was determined to hold my temper. no matter what)

There is, however, good news---This was only a small segment of the audience. There were plenty of other younger, white men (and many of them seemed to be straight) who were having no problem with thinking about the unfairness of immigrant sweat shop conditions or relating to the desparate aspirations of the equally poor members of the Jets and Sharks street gangs or admiring the sheer beauty of male dancing.

So on reflection---maybe there is a place for us, somewhere.

Honk if you're Irish!

I grew up in Boston in the 1950s & 60s, a time when none of my public school teachers thought a person of color was actually born in Boston. We must have 'come up from the South' or 'come over from an island.' They were relentless in upholding the mistaken belief that Boston was an all white, upper crust town where Samuel Adams (the president not the beer) could be found lurking at the corner library.

The entire town was the Kennedy Compound. I thought maybe we were related to the Kennedys from the way my great grandmother talked about the 'Kennedy boys' and 'Rose.' And since my great grandmother been living there since 1897 her accent sounded like she could have been a distant, darker relative . But St. Patrick's Day was always a complex, contradictory holiday.

Everybody wore green. We ate Irish soda bread and made corn beef and cabbage. At school we laughed and joked because it was a special Boston/Catholic thing and we were a part of it. Except for late in the day when the men were drunk. That was when you (if you were a person of color) ran the risk of having a car full of guys throw beer bottles at you. It seemed to be the local sport after 5 PM, as if you were meant to feel the solidarity until sundown.

I still wear green on St. Patrick's Day even though I haven't lived in Boston for decades and I'm certainly not still Catholic. I wear it because I like celebrating ethnicity. That's such a big part of my writing and activism. I write from the perspective of being Native Amerian and African American and I write about it as well. I write about it just like Edna O'Brien or Colm Toibin write from and about their ethnicity.

Ethnic writing is the most elemental, profound, and effective literature of our time. It just seems that when it's not European American ethnic but POC (people of color) ethnic the terms becomes a denigration or box or dismissal. James Joyce was an ethnic writer and Maeve Binchy and Emma Donoghue and J.M. Synge and John Patrick Shanley and Oscar Wilde. And I'm wearing green for them today.

"All incidents and characters are fictiona....

Lawsuit is the first word that came to my mind but that's just because I live in the US. Then breaking the authors' legs came in a close second as an option but that's just because I grew up in a cold water tenement in Boston. All these bad karmic reactions were my response to finding out that a friend and an organization I care about were used, unwittingly, as part of the plot of a local murder mystery.

And it said in the front of the book that it's all fictional! But it wasn't. The organization, Frameline, important in the LGBT community of San Francisco; and my friend, a well known cultural icon and others are named...literally by name. The authors of this mystery novel seem to be novices---but we live in a small town. Why would they do that? Lack of imagination? Lack of home training? A vendetta?

You'll notice I'm not saying the names of the two authors here.

A while back mystery writer, Mary Wings, contacted me because she wanted to include me in a novel she was writing, She Came by the Book. The murder took place at a big library fundraiser and the keynote speaker/suspect looked and sounded a lot like me that time I spoke at the major public library fundraiser. The charcter's girlfriend sounded a lot like mine. And the convertible we drove was a dead ringer for my little two-seater! I loved it. A kind of in joke and a piece of history captured for all time for anyone to read. But she asked me first! And she didn't use my name or my partner's. Anyone reading it who'd been part of the scene would recognize us but a homophobic psychopath picking the book up in a remainder bin couldn't Google me, track us down and harrass me and my partner.

That may sound paranoid but I've been an activist and writer for a long time. People do nutty things. An east coast restaurant owner barred me from her lesbian establishment because I was judged too soft on 'porn.' I once received a telephone call at 8 AM Sunday morning from a man haranguing me about a review I'd written in the SF Chronicle. (According to him it wasn't feminist enough. It's SF, go figure!) I unlisted my phone number for the first time in my life.

In my current novel, happily just dispatched to my agent (hooray!) I talk about civil rights activist Angela Davis and the women in the early 1970's who were arrested for looking like her when she was a 'fugitive' from the FBI. Angela Davis is not a close personal friend but we have shared the same stage and I will make it my business to let her know that she's mentioned in even that tangential way. It seems like good community spirit.

It's one thing when you're writing a memoir, you expect to find actual names and places. Entire towns have stopped speaking to writers like Frank McCourt because of it. But what do other writers do when they include real people in their fiction? It's a wierd dilemma. One would hope we'd be more thoughtful and professional but clearly not everyone is.

When in doubt I always follow my great grandmother's admonition: Good manners can always smooth the path.

Why I voted for Hillary:

I received half a dozen emails from friends and acquaintances with the headline: "Why I'm voting for Obama." This was interesting to me since most of my friends are feminists and I thought they would be just the base that Hillary could count on.

I didn't respond because I didn't think who I was voting for was of much interest to anyone who didn't live in my house or at least sleep in my bed. For the first time in years it feels like we've got two---but earlier three---credible Democratic candidates. We did not have to choose the lesser of two evils.

And the three candidates were from despised groups: a woman, an African American and a southerner. What a coup! For once the Democratic party isn't looking like a typographical error on the page of life.

There will be academic theses for years interpreting the meaning of the outcome of this presidential election. And I guess you can't tell everything from demographics. I think that my being a feminist runs so deep that is the strongest lens I use. It's the philosophy that cuts across all lines and this country desperately needs a philosophy other than capitalism.

LGBT people often say that we are the last group that it's okay to malign in public--- hairdresser jokes, Adam Sandler movies, etc.

But that's not true women are the target of more jokes, more viciousness, more violence, more unnoticed condescension and dismissal than any other group. The English language has imbedded in it a hatred of women, much as African Americans used to say that the word "black" helped to shape and codify this country's hatred of African Americans. True.

Yet male culture (that's male culture of all colors) and women collaborators continue to dis women in ways that would be wholly unacceptable to other groups. So the prime example during the election was a simple yet chilling wake up call:

The newscasters were abuzz with something that happened after a Hillary press conference: Hillary apparently came down from the podium said something to right wing nutcaster, Chris Matthews, and tapped him on his cheek. I'd heard about it a couple of times on one of the endless news stations after one of the endless primaries. Then the station finally ran the video clip.

What none of the newsMEN were saying was that before Hillay patted Matthews' face...HE PINCHED HER CHEEK! If I could have come through the television and stabbed him I would have. That he had the audacity to do such a thing should not have been a surprise. Men have little or no respect for women. A generality I know but...

If he'd patted Barak Obama on the head Chris Matthews would have lost his job. But condescending to a woman is still okay on national television, in our schools, on the street and in our homes. It's even required in some cultures...and some of those cultures are as American as apple pie. Try going to a garage with your car or a high level board room w/out being looked at like you're a combination cockroach and cocktease.

The numbers of women who can't support Hillary just tells me that women also buy into the hatred of women that pervades our society. They think he's sexy and inspiring, he's the son/lover/father they never had.

I think Barak Obama is a lovely guy, I hope I get another chance to vote for him someday---when he's been around the block a couple of times.

And when the rape and battering of women isn't still a national sport; when women have the right to our own bodies; when women don't have to grovel, get naked or bake cookies to get to the top.

Maybe younger women don't believe that misogyny is still shaping their lives. But my friends should know better.

Yes, this is one of those letters...

...you know, like you get from friends you haven�t seen in a decade once a year reporting on personal jaunts, adventures and joys. Each year I wonder: should I read it. Or will I be overwhelmed by envy at this one�s new house addition or that trip to Venezuela?

Never-the-less, I always read them and end up entranced by other people's adventures---whether dramatic or prosaic. Every letter is a window into the lives of others. So here goes:

Speaking of windows---my favorite film of 2007: �The Lives of Others.� BRILLIANT! Taking place in Germany before the wall comes down, it tracks the subtle growth of humanity within an isolated secret police official who taps the phones of �enemies of the state� for a living. Would that the seeds of such humanity were possible within the snoopers we have.

And re: another movie---sort of---folks are excited about the film being shot in the Castro now: a biopic about Harvey Milk. I had the pleasure of sitting on a panel that reviewed designs for a bust honoring Harvey. The designers captured his sense of humour and eternal motion and we�ll all get to celebrate Harvey when it�s placed in City Hall this year. You can see pics at

Participated in some events that generated enough spirit to last me at least until the end of �08 and beyond. Two old friends, Joan Pinkvoss (Publisher of Aunt Lute Books) and Susan Levenkind (activist), along with other amazing women were honored at the Pat Bond Memorial Old Dyke Awards and I got to do the �incantation� that opened the amazing event. The women were from every corner of the community�so many elder dykes who�ve been working the revolution for so long. And no sign of stopping.

An image I'll carry with me always was the woman sitting next to me who appeared to be about 80. She leaned gently on the shoulder of her friend on the other side, and slept lightly. She woke periodically...at applause or music...with a blazing smile. She was waking to the dream we were all having---dykes in unity and love. Pics and info here:

I already mentioned the Audre Lorde/Pat Parker celebration; pics and audio available on the Sister Comrade web site:

The other event was the Saints & Sinners LGBT Literary Conference in the Sppring. It was my first time back in New Orleans since the levee broke after Katrina. The tragedy of that natural disaster has only been surpassed by the failure of our government to help people get back into their homes or protect them from real estate sharks.

The resumption of the conference was a great way to help bring people back to the city. And it was a a major joy to be with the queer literati in one of the greatest cities in the world. And they honored one of our local babes, Dorothy Allison, with an award.

As a whole the year seemed to confirm my feeling that if we want the world to change it's on us to do the changing and have fun doing it!