Letters

Pride Article Off Base

As progressive members of the lesbian and gay male communities, we appreciated some of Jud Kempson's thoughts regarding the AIDS epidemic in his article on gay and lesbian pride month found in the June issue of AGENDA. We have been deeply moved thinking about the millions of volunteer hours that have been given to combating the epidemic. This effort rivals any research or professional strategizing in its impact on the disease's devastation. The response shows not only a great deal of humanity but also represents a new phase in lesbian and gay organizing.

Other ideas that Kempson explores, however, trigger some of the frustrations we have felt toward lesbian and gay organizing. He suggests many times to put differences aside and celebrate "our community" and he refers to other gay men and women as brothers and sisters. The question that immediately arises is who are "we?" Are "we" anyone who is gay or lesbian? Kempson accuses gay organizers of "lambasting" white heterosexual men in the boardrooms of America. Are white gay men in the boardrooms considered part of our community? Is there a real basis of unity among all gay people; racist and anti-racist, right wing and left wing, exploiters and exploited? We think not. Our greatest frustration with gay rights organizing is the fact that alliances are built not on ideas and principles but on sexuality alone.

We are not a community defined by what we do in bed, as Kempson asserts. Kempson may not value the same things in a lover that we, as individuals, do. He might not even do the same things in bed. What we are defined by is what happens to us in a hostile society that has artificially dichotomized sexual expression in terms of same sex and opposite sex eroticism. The notion that there is some essence shared by all heterosexuals and all homosexuals is an artificial social construct which was developed in the late 1800s by medical theorists at a time when there was an increased emphasis on scientific explanations for human behavior. Before the idea of a homosexual (a person possessing some global psychic phenomena that attracted him or her to the same sex) was constructed, people talked about and stigmatized specific acts like sodomy and adultery. However, there was no notion that performance of such acts defined the essence and identity of the participant. All deviations from what was deemed normal sex within marriage were sanctioned. Adulterers and sodomists were both deviants.

We mention this history to suggest that the definition of sexuality and the associated oppression was artificially determined. So organizing with a "Whoever is gay is OK" slogan is seriously limited. We must demand more of our movement and ourselves than that. This means recognizing that gay people are multi-dimensional, with some common and some different (even antagonist) interests among us. A much more rigorous theoretical debate is needed in the gay and lesbian movement than has happened so far and, unlike Kempson, we are in no need of rest from it during Pride. In the same breath that we say we should be more critical of who we consider family and community, we put a challenge to our non-gay comrades to join the struggle against heterosexism and to provide personal support to the gay and lesbian people they struggle with.

A final criticism we have of Jud's article is his flippant concluding advice that we should "celebrate the way we make love including that occasional fuck... with a complete stranger." First of all, such a statement feeds misleading stereotypes. It suggests that casual sexual liasons are unique and distinctive to the gay community and that we somehow have a monopoly on anonymous "fucking." The nightly pick-ups that go on at straight-single bars across the country belie this notion. It is a heterosexist and homophobic culture that stigmatizes and stereotypes gay people for having casual sex. Such stereotypes also belie the largely monogamous experiences common among lesbian women. In any case, it is problematic to emphasize the "celebration" of anonymous sex in a culture that teaches us to objectify human beings at every turn. The meat market atmosphere of most pick-up bars, gay and straight, promote dehumanizing climates in which youth and beauty reign supreme, where biceps and buttocks are more important than values and politics. We should not romanticize these aspects of dominant sexual culture, but look for more genuine and humane alternatives to them.

For us, celebrating Stonewall's 20th anniversary must be more than a reflection on AIDS and affirmation that nothing is inherently wrong with being gay. We can begin broadening our view of the gay rights movement by commemorating Stonewall as not only a part of the legacy of the gay movement, but of the anti-racist movement as well. Stonewall was a mostly non-white bar. It was not a fancy place where elite, closeted gay men met. The events that have become known as the cornerstone of the gay rights movement were initiated and sustained by working class people of color, people who were among the most marginalized in U.S. society. They had little to lose. Moreover, the event that triggered the riots was the violent arrest of a lesbian woman.

It is also important to remember the context that allowed Stonewall to happen. There had been struggles in the leadership of many lesbian and gay groups to move from support group organizing to increased confrontation. Not surprisingly, those who advocated a more militant strategy, people like Randy Wicker in the Mattachine Society and "Ernestine Eckstein," a pseudo-named Black woman in the Daughters of Bilitis, had become politicized and learned organizing skills as participants in the civil rights movement. The connections to anti-racist struggle run deep. As part of Pride, lesbian and gay people should learn, celebrate and build on the anti-racist and radical legacy from which we have won the little space we have to express ourselves more freely- sexually and otherwise.

Dave Fletcher, Cathy Cohen, Sharon Holland, Brett Stockdill, and Nikita Buckhoy of the Anti-Racist Study Group on Sexuality

ANN ARBOR, MI