Saturday, May 31, 2008

Backyard Plays

In my memory, they started when I was 5. Because they pre-dated the tutelage of Hood Elementary School. Though, it seems impossible that even I was precocious enough to be organizing and directing these extravaganzas at 5. I have only my memory to rely upon; my sisters were definitely out of the house by the time they began, and none others involved are available for me to ask. (I know my sisters were gone because the songs we performed were from their abandoned albums, or perhaps albums I stole from them as they prepared to leave. I was definitely precocious enough to have stolen my favorites from their collection as they packed up to leave.)


I do know that older kids - years older - were involved, though I was clearly in charge. (Some things seem to never change.) The skits were reenactments of scenes from my favorite TV shows or movies, or original creations written (well probably not written at 5) or created by me. My mother provided costumes as needed. The house my family had lived in for 25 years by then provided an assortment of props. My father's and grandfather's hats, my grandmother's walker, clothes from trunks in the attic, an assortment of accessories left behind by teenage sisters, visiting great-uncles and vaguely related English cousins filled the stage and adorned every type of character to perfection. Or, at least it seemed so to this pint-sized impresario.


In an early entrepreneurial venture (before I cut down the lilac bush and sold sprigs around the neighborhood from the back of my Radio Flyer Red Wagon), I charged parents (other peoples, not mine), older siblings, and various others connected somehow to my large cast five cents to see the show. It might not sound like much, but it bought an enormous amount of comic books in 1969. (It started the collection that I sold off to purchase my first computer almost 20 years later.) The shows were sprawling spectacles. Again, some things rarely change.


The shows were fully driven by me, but I often gave away most of the best parts to others. Though, I always saved a star turn or show stealer for myself. I remember jungle adventures, featuring my dog Andy playing any and all animals required. The adults seemed to especially enjoy some re-created movies scenes that held meanings hidden to the 7 and 8 year olds performing them, but clear to the parents. (And, definitely hidden from me, but I had an impressive memory for conversation even then, and could often repeat verbatim conversations of which I had no understanding. My mother had trained me to repeat back anything I overheard in neighbors' houses.)


I think all of my relatives were sure in my childhood that I would end up in some aspect of performance. And, maybe they were right. But, most of the performances have been in life, and not on a stage.

Friday, May 30, 2008

On being hated

"If no one hates you, you are not trying hard enough."


Perhaps there are people innocuous enough that, even when they are being completely themselves, they inspire no dislike, let alone hatred, in anyone else. But, I doubt it. My experience is that humans are so eccentric, diverse, unique, and crazy that when any one of us is completely ourselves, we will induce the full range of emotional reactions in others. Some will love us, some will hate us, and every other reaction in between.

What happens most of the time is that most of us hold back part of ourselves. We don't tell our whole truth. We don't take actions that those around us might judge. We filter ourselves. We pre-judge our actions by the standards of those around us. We don't say what we really want to say because of who is present in the room with us. We don't take risks, don't reach out, and don't call people on their shit.

When you meet someone who works outside those rules, someone who will not go along to get along, we tend to have a reaction. We love them or hate them. I am not perfectly free. I restrain myself in certain situations, but I probably express my true self more than most. As a result, I have my fans and my detractors. I have no problems with being hated. In fact, if I hear that someone really dislikes me, I figure I have managed to be truly myself with them. I feel the same way when someone I have only spent a little time with tells me or someone else that they really like me. Being hated is not a bad thing.

What sometimes confuses me is when someone I love being with is disliked by people who like me or vice versa. For example, I have a very theatrical friend who I love (and completely see myself in) who is disliked by a number of my other friends. I just can't see how my friends can like my "theatrical-ness", but dislike his. In another example, I am one of the most stubborn people I know, but I do have a friend who I think is perhaps even more stubborn than me. And, again it confuses me when our mutual acquaintances will feel one way about my stubbornness and the opposite about his, i.e., really like one of us and really dislike the other.

Though, there is perhaps a way in which I am perhaps particularly eccentric and that is that I don't mind at all being around people who hate me. If fact, I kind of enjoy it, because it is never clear whether they will decide to maintain the societal norms and be nice - or just break out the crazy. Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer - and frienemies are just their own thing all together.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

7 Elements of Oppression

Here is a conceptual framework for oppression/privilege that I am kicking around. Feedback welcome.

  1. The targeted group is constructed by the dominant group. Who is black, who is gay, who is a woman, who is an outsider? These questions are not sui generis in the oppressed communities, rather they are created as categories by the dominant culture. Thus, you can have men who have sex with men saying they are 'not gay' because the dominant culture has constructed the category of gay as a stereotype. Thus, who is Black has been determined legally - the one drop rule.


  2. There are interconnected levels of oppression - specific interventions will not address all of them. A program designed to deconstruct individual beliefs about race and racism will not change institutionalized racism. A change in sexism corporate policy will not remove sexism from the individual employees. Legal change in gay rights does not necessarily lead to changes in societal attitudes.


  3. Power is the essential component of oppression/privilege. People of all kinds discriminate and judge, but when the dominant group does this to the subordinate group - then we see the processes of oppression/privilege coming into play.


  4. All targeted groups receive the same messages about themselves that the dominant culture receives about them. Thus, members of targeted groups have internalized to some extent the negative messages of dominant culture. Blacks have internalized racism. Gays & Lesbians have internalized heterosexism. The disabled have internalized able-ism.


  5. Membership in a dominant group brings with it unearned privilege. All men, all heterosexuals, all white folks, all upper class folks, all temporarily able-bodied folks, all native-born citizens, et alia receive privileges (usually invisible to them) because of their membership in that dominant group.


  6. Most people belong to multiple groups, some dominant and some targeted. We all have multiple identities. While we being targeted because of our membership in one group, it is important to monitor the unearned privileges that we get because of other identities. The critiques of feminism as an upper class movement, or the civil right movement as a male movement, or the gay rights movement as a white movement are all based in leaders forgetting to monitor their dominant group memberships.


  7. Even as things improve, the historical inequalities experienced targeted groups have lasting effects. We must understand, and in some cases correct for, the historical inequalities (intentional and unintentional) that have led to an inequality in opportunity for members of target groups.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Remembering dark places...

The old saying goes, “You can never go home again.” The idea being that once you have seen the larger world, that place you called home will never seem the same. This idea is one of the two main themes of the musical, Into the Woods. In the show, each character takes a trip ‘into the woods’ (out into the world) to get their wish (grow, evolve, change). In the process of getting their wish, they themselves are changed. The world teaches them things that they never knew before. And, when they go back to their lives (back home), they bring back with them their changed selves and the consequences of what they have learned. And, their home (village, castle) is then lost. Destroyed as a consequence of the very growth that taught them so much.

Life is never as simple as the fairy tales, and happily ever after can be harder than it looks. One of my ‘homes’ is the gay dance club. As a college student, my friends and I would pile into cars and head down to Portland to go to The Underground, the one gay dance club in reasonable driving distance of our small liberal arts college in Maine. We called ourselves the GoGo’s, because the group coalesced at a GoGo’s concert that most of us attended together. There we were, a bunch of 18 &19 year old gay boys dancing in a circle to We Got the Beat, demanding our space on the Civic Center floor. And, somewhere along the line the dozen of us decided that we should all have drag names – and the Bowdoin GoGo’s were born. At The Underground, there was nothing better than five or six of us dancing, with various boyfriends, pick-ups, and potentials in tow. These were great nights of fun and community. After college I found another gay dance club, The Haymarket in Boston. I went a couple of times a week. Some of the Bowdoin GoGo’s had moved to Boston as well, and along with all the friends, boyfriends, and tricks we were each making, we made The Haymarket our new home. The Haymarket was trashy and wonderful. Amateur strip nights, seedy hustlers, and the best dance music in Boston, the place was packed and just about as diverse as any club in Boston. I reveled in the attention of black gay men who would say to me as I got off the dance floor, “Big girl can move.” And, for awhile, I dated the most beautiful black man in Boston. The Haymarket was a community that kept me going, when all around there was death. But, as I got older and got in a relationship, and focused more on my work (in all its forms), the clubs became less and less a focus of my life. And, when at 30 I decided to stop drinking, the clubs seemed even more superfluous. I looked back fondly at that home, where I had been held as I became myself, but I stopped going to the bars. I had been ‘to the woods’ and the clubs couldn’t be my home anymore.

One night shortly after I turned 41, I went on a trip through time. I went to Faces in East St. Louis. It was an 18+ night, and a number of my students from Webster decided to go. And, there I was back in the home of my youth. A gay dance club filled with young gay boys and dykelets flirting, dancing, giggling, and finding themselves at home. The music was 80s – it literally was a trip through time. The drag show included Kitty Litter – a big girl who can really move.

And, there were wolves and dangers and dark places. But there was also laughter and connection, and that feeling of community. Faces is gone now. I was glad I got to experience before it closed.