(spoiler alert for tonight’s episode)
Iran’s Revolutionary Women
Roger Cohen followed up his column mentioning the women of Iran with a column about them entirely:
A friend told me he no longer recognizes his wife. She’d been of the reluctantly acquiescent school. Now, “She’s a revolutionary.†I followed as she led us up onto the roof. The “death to the dictator†that surged from her into the night was of rare ferocity.
Very much worth reading – go check it out.
Pride Month: Honoring Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman has always been one of my heroes, and that’s despite the fact that she never quite said that famous quote attributed to her about dancing & revolution. Or rather, she didn’t say the t-shirt version. What she said was:
“At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause. I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. “I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.” Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal.”
Which doesn’t fit on a t-shirt as readily as “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” (If anyone can make a t-shirt out of what she actually said, I want one!)
It’s from her memoir Living My Life, Pt. 1, page 56. Definitely a book worth reading, and you can read it online, for free, at the Anarchist Archives.
She was, as many know, a pro-choice, family planning advocate (for which she was arrested several times) but what a lot of people don’t know is that she disagreed with the majority of leftist contemporaries in her outspoken support for LGBT people way back when. (She was also a free love advocate, which we might call poly these days.)
Appleton > Brooklyn
In the next two days, we’ll be driving back to Brooklyn, so I may not post here much.
Colbert Report’s “Stonewalling”
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Word – Stonewalling | ||||
|
||||
(I got myself in trouble a long time ago for writing a short story about a lesbian teenager who went to her first support meeting at The Gay Center & who found her voice silenced by the voices of the young men around her. I called it “Stonwalled” and my gay but closeted writing professor was not happy with me about it.)
(h/t to Lena Dahlstrom)
MJ, Again
& Then there is the issue of whether Michael Jackson was trans or not. I don’t think it’s anything we can know, but it wouldn’t have surprised me, or Betty, if he had announced a transition at some point.
Goodbyes
It’s a lot of death in a week: first Ed McMahon, who we knew was ailing; then Farrah Fawcett, who was fighting her illness with bravery and in the spotlight, and then Michael Jackson – who was always ailing, invisibly.
Maybe it’s unexpected that I should admit I liked Farrah Fawcett, pinup as she as for the dumb blonde, but I was a tomboy in the 70s, and Charlie’s Angels were fantastic. They really were, in those crazy velour shorts and flippy hair. But I had the trading cards, and I remained a fan even through the Cheryl Tiegs season(s?). I became a fan of Fawcett’s when I saw her in Extremities and in Between Two Women – both of them, believe it or not, cementing what I would articulate as my first feminist awareness.
But Michael Jackson’s death is unreal, much like his life was. Keith Olbermann used the word “human” a lot tonight in talking about Jackson’s death, which is something we all need to be reminded of. He was a person, a broken, fucked-up soul, maybe wrong and bad in criminal ways, maybe just broken and sad. We don’t really know, and won’t really know, I don’t think.
As someone who loves to dance, though, there is no denying his talent: Off the Wall is a perfect gem of pop music, and it dances from track to track. I have it on vinyl from way back when – the secret perfect dance music of a punk rock child. I was a little surprised tonight to remember exactly how many “world premieres” of his videos I saw – “Thriller” I remember, as many Gen Xers do, but also “Bad” and even “Remember the Time,” which is a hokey but perfect little romantic song. It’s impossible to deny a man’s talent who was – despite your best efforts – a major soundtrack of your life. His music had something so perfectly immediate about it; I remember where I watched all of those world premieres, and I remember the first time I saw, and held, a copy of Off the Wall, and the party I was at the first time I heard the tracks on Thriller.
It’s hard to explain to younger people than me that MTV never ever showed videos by black artists before MJ (and that hip hop had its own special show in the late 80s, because hip hop was just too *whatever* to mix with the rest of what they played). & You can’t hate a man who obviously took notes on every move James Brown ever made & every sound he could make.
So goodbye to Ed, to Farrah, and to Michael. As the duo Yazoo once put it, a little early, Goodbye Seventies, too.
Latin LGBT Bloggers
They certainly don’t get enough credit, in general, but here are MiApogeo.com’s “7 GLBT Bloggers to Watch” – including Charlie Vázquez (who I read with for the Queer + Catholic readings last year).
How can you not read someone who calls herself a Post Pomo Nuyorican Homo?
(via Audacia Ray)
Korean FTM Documentary
It’s the 1st Korean film about the FTM experience, & it’s called 3xFTM. Here for more details.
(h/t to Matty)
ENDA on the Move
ENDA is being introduced tomorrow in the House! Our next step is to call our Representatives and ask them to cosponsor of ENDA. Below is a script to use. It is essential that we flood their lines to let them know how many of their constituents support ENDA! Once you’ve called, let United ENDA know what the staffer said by emailing laura.hart@unitedenda.org. Then ask all of your friends and family to call their Representative too.
Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and have them connect you to your Representative (based on your zip code). Tell them:
I am a constituent and I would like you to please tell Representative _______ that I would like him/her to become a cosponsor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. ENDA would ban discrimination against all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the workplace. Can you tell me whether or not Representative _______ has cosponsored the bill?
Just go ahead & do it. Find your House Rep at www.house.gov. (On the upper left side, put in your zip.)