Reasons NOT to Participate in Your Own 'Cultural Erasure'
An interview with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
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In 2004 a book titled That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilationwas published. I stored the book away in my mental “to read” list, where it remained for a few years before I actually got a copy and cracked it open. As soon as I finished it I started looking for other books by the editor, Mattilda (A.K.A. Matt Bernstein Sycamore). Luckily for me she had edited a new book by that time, Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (2006).
And, when the “new revised and expanded edition” of That’s Revolting came out a few months ago, I was eager to see the new material. When it was suggested that I review the book for OIA, and maybe interview Mattilda as well…well, part of me was jumping for joy (curse that part of me that quails at all human interaction!).
Obviously my inner fanboy won out over the shyness, because last month I did get the chance to talk to Mattilda about the new edition.
I would like to preface this piece with a disclaimer. I’ve already outed myself as a fan of Mattilda’s work, but that doesn’t mean I blindly agree with absolutely everything she thinks. I don’t think I would want to. I think there are critiques to be made of some of the material in That’s Revolting (and I hope to explore some of those).
However, I think there is a trap that books like this one fall into: if it attempts to represent the un-represented, and falls short in any way, people discredit it. There is no way to give every person/issue a voice in one anthology. I think part of why I like Mattilda’s books is because I don’t get the impression she thinks they hold all the answers or that they are some kind of utopian vision. The impression I do get is that she knows they are imperfect, and that isn’t the point anyway.
The point is to expose people to possibilities they may not be aware of; not to promote one option as THE WAY. During our discussion, Mattilda said that when she compiled the first edition of That’s Revolting her “hope was that there would be 10 or 20 or 30 books like this out in the world.”
I think this distinction between distributing information about many different ways to be queer instead of just upholding one is important to keep in mind while reading the book. However, I think one of the problems with the book is that this aspect of the purpose could have been more clearly articulated. It is clear that the contributors represent a diversity of life experience and identity, and they are anti-assimilationist. But if you are a proponent of assimilation and/or have never been exposed to appealing alternatives, I could see how at times the tone of the book might leave you feeling that a certain type of fringe or counter culture identity is being promoted as more desirable than your own.
For those of you who have not read the first edition, That’s Revolting is a collection of essays by various authors who write about the people, issues, and cultural practices that are at risk of being abandoned by a gay movement engrossed with assimilating to straight norms. I would argue that the goal of That’s Revolting is not to condemn any individual LGBTQ person who feels the desire to assimilate to straight culture. Instead, the book is about rejecting a movement in LGBTQ groups and culture towards mandatory assimilation as a condition of inclusion.
If I felt that the authors were arguing that no one should assimilate, I don’t think I could like the book (I also think that it’s impossible not to assimilate to some degree). Instead, the book seems to argue that if you feel the need to assimilate, just try not to shut down the possibilities for people to express themselves in other ways while you’re at it. This is the problem with the assimilationist movement according to Mattilda.
“I think that is what the gay assimilationist argument is, what its doing, limiting people’s options, not expanding them.” So, “if you’re choosing a certain image of how you want to be in the world without also limiting the options for other people, that’s what we’re looking for,” Mattilda explained.
For those of you who are familiar with the first edition, the updated version includes five new entries and a revamped introduction by Mattilda (hilariously titled There’s More to Life than Platinum: Challenging the Tyranny of Sweatshop-Produced Rainbow Flags and Participatory Patriarchy). I was curious about how Mattilda had narrowed the submissions down to five and how they fit into, or fleshed out, her vision for the book as a whole.
“I thought about some of the things that I wanted to expand upon in terms of the first edition, so things that I thought were lacking…I wanted more things that were taking a broader historical view,” she told me.
One of the new pieces describes the author’s experience starting with gay liberation in the 1960s and 70s and ending with the present. Another is an interview about the early days of ACT UP in the 80s. There’s a description of an action that took place between the printing of the first edition and the new edition. There’s also a piece about rural queer youth organizing.
Gay marriage is one of the main issues of disagreement between assimilationists and anti-assimilationists. The articles from the first edition that cover this topic remain in the new one, and the updated introduction focuses on it more. Gay marriage has become the focal point for many organizations in the past few years, and considering the recent California court decision to allow it; I wanted Mattilda to talk about her opposition to marriage.
She explained, “The whole fight over gay marriage, to me, is really an example of a fundamental shift of resources in the wrong direction.”
“So, where we have the people with the most access to power deciding what everyone else needs, and saying the most ridiculous kind of rhetoric like ‘oh, well now we’re finally full citizens’ - meaning for the richest white gays and lesbians with nice stock portfolios. If that is their main concern then sure, gay marriage, might be this last thing they need, this tax break. But that whole rhetoric around who belongs, the whole thing about citizenship, it’s like…did you happen to notice that one of the biggest issues going on in the U.S. right now is about undocumented people being forced out based on their citizenship status? While at the same time these people are like, we’ve solved these issues,” Mattilda continued.
I encouraged Mattilda to go on, “Because we’ve solved them for us; or some of us…”
“Yeah. And I think also our dreams have become so minimal, like accessing the dominant institutions of straight privilege. That’s not the goal, that’s giving up,” said Mattilda.
Since I have lived in western North Carolina all my life, I have had limited contact with the types of gays and lesbians Mattilda was referring to. Certainly, I didn’t have any interaction with wealthy gays and lesbians before moving to Asheville when I was 18, and not much after that really.
I mentioned to Mattilda that in my experience gays and lesbians with access to money, certain kinds of power, and other resources are not the only people pushing for gay marriage. Many of the gays and lesbians I have known don’t have access to any of this, yet they are strong supporters of gay marriage (and other assimilationist issues, such as gays being able to serve in the military).
I suggested that this might have something to do with the amount of coverage and support the fight for gay marriage gets in mainstream gay media outlets, and the fact that other alternatives often do not get coverage.
Mattilda responded by pointing out that debates about gay marriage in the media are usually represented by the religious right and gay marriage camps.
“They really make it so that there can’t be a more complicated, critical conversation about marriage, to begin with, but about queerness and about assimilation. That’s the biggest tragedy in some ways about that whole assimilation movement; because, for me, queerness is about creating more options, not fewer. I think, like you’re saying, these big national gay non-profits have a certain kind of stranglehold on popular ideas of what are supposedly the issues that matter.”
Within this type of framework where our choices are people who hate us or people who see gay marriage as the answer, gay people really have only one option: to support gay marriage.
I agreed that the depiction of gay marriage in media outlets should be more nuanced and not so intent on polarity, but also suggested that queers who oppose gay marriage could complicate their views of gay marriage supporters. I feel that it is important to distinguish between gays and lesbians who view gay marriage as a way to cement and legitimatize their access to power and those who support it because they don’t have an available alternative and/or because the gay marriage supporters get so much visibility.
Mattilda went on to say that the fight for gay marriage has taken center stage because people view it as a way to gain access to privileges like health care, housing, citizenship, and a whole set of benefits bundled together in one institution. However, even if gay marriage becomes legal nationally, many LGBTQ people will still not have access to any of this (unless they have a partner and wish to legally marry that partner). Opponents of marriage believe we should be fighting for these benefits to not be tied to marriage at all. We should be demanding that most of them (like healthcare) be available to everyone, regardless of their marital status.
The anti-assimilationist argument is against marriage in general, not just gay marriage. The argument is not against committed relationships or public ceremonies or even having the state recognize your relationship if that’s what you need. It is against any of this being required to gain access to basic rights and privileges.
Many of the authors in That’s Revolting discuss activism, specifically direct action. Mattilda herself writes about taking part in particular actions as well as being part of groups known for this type of activism. From reading some of her other work I know that Mattilda has fibromyalgia. The symptoms of fibromyalgia can vary for different people, but they often include fatigue and chronic pain. It occurred to me that these symptoms would make participation in many types of direct action more difficult or risky. It seems like marching through the streets all day or getting hit with a police baton would become more daunting and harder to cope with if you started out exhausted and in pain.
So, I asked Mattilda, “Have you had to re-evaluate or come up with different ways to express yourself politically?”
“Yes, absolutely,” Mattilda replied.
Mattilda went on to say, “There was a time in my life, not that long ago, maybe ten years ago when I would of thought nothing of lying in the middle of the street and being dragged into a police van by the cops. That would have been just a risk that I, as someone with a certain access to privilege, am willing to take in order to bring attention to important issues…I think realizing, I mean, now I can’t actually do something like that. I guess I could, but it would basically destroy my life for a month. It has made me think about direct action in different ways and made me realize what I am able to do.”
“I think another thing that it has made me do is ask people for help more and I think in the past I tended to operate as a self-contained unit. I think that has really made me think about what it means to take care of one another. The other thing about activism is that a lot of it is about invulnerability. It doesn’t mean that we think that we’re invulnerable, but it’s about projecting this invulnerability to the world. It’s made me think about, the reverse, about what kind of possibilities can I find by constantly expressing my vulnerability. What I have found is that when I can be the most vulnerable is actually when I feel the strongest, emotionally. That’s really changed me, and that’s why I feel more hopeful ironically, by being able to express vulnerability,” Mattilda added.
Mattilda’s assessment of the potential power of vulnerability really resonates with me. When I first started being involved in activism, I participated in a lot of marches and public protests. I saw in myself and some others around me a tendency to be more comfortable holding signs and shouting chants than just talking with one person who had questions. There is a vulnerability involved in certain types of activism that can be initially deterring, but ultimately very powerful.
I told Mattilda I feel there are lots of ways to be an activist and it is important and can be intense when people find the way that works for them and makes them feel effective to which she replied, “Absolutely, and I think that we need all of those things and I think we need them all at once.”
The last question I asked Mattilda was an attempt to turn the examination of assimilation onto anti-assimilationists themselves. I asked, “That’s Revolting is about ways for queer people to resist mainstream assimilation, so I was wondering if you have any ideas about how to resist the assimilation of queer itself?”
Mattilda replied saying, “I think queer is so complicated because simultaneously it exists in the grossest, corporate, consumer friendly, kind of Queer as Folk/Queer Eye for the Straight Guy product-driven, target marketing garbage. And at the same time it has retained this possibility of being a defiant identity that challenges all norms and reframes gender and sexuality as necessarily challenging power.”
“I think where we get that hope [of resisting queer assimilation] is in creating culture on our own terms and nurturing one another and remaining defiant against the violence of the status quo, whatever status quo that might be,” Mattilda said in summation.
So, if That’s Revolting sounds like a book you might be interested in, get a copy and heed Mattilda’s instructions in the introduction to “Pick it up and smash something.” If you get to the end and haven’t seen anything you like, then put it down and make something.
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