Hi all.

Obviously I haven't posted for a really long time, but I'm thinking of resurrecting the blog. At the very least I'm thinking of starting a new project that addresses similar issues.

Is anyone still out there, following me (perhaps accidentally, by neglecting to purge me from their reader or something) even though I haven't posted?

If so, what would you like to see here? Or why were you following me in the first place? Would you like to see a group blog? Do you want to see the issues I (or a group of us) blog about expanded? If I ran a group blog, would you want to be a part of it? If so, what would you want to focus on?

I'd like to gain some focus for whatever it is I do next.

You can comment on this blog or email me: genderclear AT gmail DOT com

Braids and Gates

Recently I have been pressed to read Malidoma Somé on 3 different occasions, from 3 different people. So I know it is time to dig in.

Somé is from the Dagara tribe, in Burkina Faso. They conceptualize gender and sexuality very differently from the Christian/Western/Northern world. Gender is energetic, gay people are spiritual gatekeepers, and lesbians are witches. And since many of the gatekeepers, at least, are married with children we might call them bisexual. Actually, it would be more appropriate to say that gatekeepers and witches experience homoerotic attraction, because it is their gatekeeper status which is relavent to the community, less their sexuality. Their rituals and symposiums are what give society at large another year of life.

This reminded me of two other readings I had done recently: Judy Grahn's theory of braided evolution and Paula Gunn Allen's discussion of Native American lesbians.

First, Grahn:"... evolution is constantly braiding; beginning in the shape of horizontal strands consisting of the 'parallel' rituals of each gender, which are categorically different from the rituals of the other gender. ... As the strands of ritual elaborate into cultural forms, the sexes lose track of what each other is doing. One begins, historically, to become more elaborate than the other, with a consequent imbalance that affects everything. As part of this dialectical tension, 'crossover groups' of various kinds, and in particular transgendered peoples, help to effect the bringing together of the ritual strands, into what can be imaged as a 'braided' form, that allows a more balanced flow of evolution."

When it comes to gender and sexuality, Allen is not presenting her own theory as Grahn does, nor is she a cultural embassador in the same way Somé is. She is piecing together her cultural history from her lived experience as well as historical evidence of pre-contact times. But she does discuss at least two types of queer women in American Indigenous tribes: the lesbian who emotionally and sexually bonds with other women and the dyke who bonds with women for spiritual reasons. (The categories are not mutually exclusive.) Dykes are certainly powerful, but how powerful, and what kind of powers they have, is not clear. Allen is limited by the amount of information available to her about her people during pre-contact times, particularly about women. More information is available about their male counterparts.

For Allen, no social significance is discussed. Only the fact that dykes were not separate from culture and that they had distinct marriage rituals. Both Somé and Grahn offer specific cultural significance to GLBT people, but Somé offers it primarily (in this interview) to GLB people and Grahn to T people. I believe that Grahn includes butch women and effeminate men in her crossover groups, and may extend the crossover group to include all people, but I don't remember right now. Somé and Grahn believe queer people are important to the strength and health of culture, though Somé stresses spiritual significance and Grahn stresses cultural significance of ritual...though in truth both see culture and spirit as blended.

Another distinction might be that Allen stresses spiritual abilities, Grahn stresses purpose, and Somé streses both purpose and ability. Allen does hint at spiritual purpose without knowing for sure what it is/was. I don't know if Grahn thinks trans people have special abilities or if they are simply in a unique position, helping to bring women and men back together in a more balanced culture.

I find all of this fascinating but I'm weary of essentialising queer people as anything, including spiritual. I'm also weary of social construction, and spiritual arguments. Actually, I think I'm just weary. I find it problematic to say, "queer people, because they are born queer, have special abilities and qualities unrelated to their sexuality." Similarly I find it problematic to give all the credit for queer peoples' spiritual significance to culture. And I immediately dismiss any claim that God/dess made some group "more spiritual" or "more significant."

So I think I need to settle on some middle ground with all of this, for now. The ingredients of body-mind, culture, and spirit are all important. And I believe that we all have spiritual meaning and significance, regardless of our gender or sexuality. The way we express our meaning and significance, the historic and cultural realities that we need to address, and the channels that are open to us vary.

But it is still worth celebrating, ritualizaing, and honoring the knowledge that there are some places and mindsets that celebrate the spiritual cultural significance of queer people.

I'm also open to the idea that perhaps it is my own limited cultural mindset, spiritual process, or maybe even internal homophobia/gender issues that keep me from knowing how to keep the gate, cross the braid, or uncover information about my significance.

Currently Reading:
Allen, Paula Gunn. "Hwame, Koshkalaka, and the Rest: Lesbians in American Indian Cultures," in The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions : with a New Preface, 245-261. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.

Grahn, Judy. What is Metaformia? Metaformia: A Journal of Menstruation and Culture. http://www.metaformia.org (accessed November 24, 2008).

Hoff, Bert H. 1993. Gays: Guardians of the Gates. Interview with Malidoma Somé. M.E.N. Magazine, September.

Dear Queer people (and friends): Let's do this right.

A few disclaimers before I continue:

I know some of you are just trying to keep your heads above water right now. If this election has brought out your depression or you're still closeted and you haven't been saying anything about all this prop 8 business, then I want you to run to your nearest bookseller and buy Kate Bornstein's Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks and Other Outlaws. Or, if you don't have money, call a friend. Moisturize. Skip the rest of this post and concentrate on being okay.

If you're already involved and keeping it focused on love and action...Keep Protesting! Keep Working! Stay Hydrated! Make space for yourself to feel what you're feeling! Some of you have been working extra hard and really focusing on equality. Your hearts and actions are in the right places. Great. Take this space to tell us some other ways we can get involved!

But so long as we're protesting, let's do it the best way we can, with the most love and efficacy, with the strongest alliances. Let's look back and be proud of our accomplishments and our discourse. I believe in us. I think we can.


So listen up, queer community! We have been airing our dirty laundry since the fourth and we need to address this shit ASAP. And I'm not the only one who think so, so let's take stock and do this right:

The first big concern I have is the racism and entitlement that allows (white) queer folks to name Black/African American people as the problem, rather than as a part of our community, as our allies, or as our potential allies. This was not the group that poured money into passing Prop 8. Not to mention that queer people have a lot of different skin tones. I'm not the first to point these things out, but it bares repeating considering the racism showing up in queer white blogs right now. Let’s take this Prop 8 business as a reminder of what it feels like to be in the target group or to have people wield their privilege against us.

Let's reread the exit polls. The people who voted to keep our rights intact are the people the queer community has done the best job of reaching out to. It looks to me like we’re good at talking to secular, urban, college educated, young, white people. That means we’re not reaching out to large groups of people. Some of those people are already in our community and we're not doing a good job of including them. And we could both benefit from some alliance building. (What would it look like if the queer community were really anti-racist? What would it look like if we were befriending the elderly?)

The next issue I have is the attack on Mormons (specifically). They are not the only religious institution that gets political on this issue or any other. Are we using the LDS Church as an example because its easy to take shots at them? Because they aren’t like (most of) us? That is not to say the institution shouldn’t be held accountable--or better yet, educated-- in some way. But targeting LDS instead of Catholicism or Evangelicalism? I think we should take stock and think about whether we’re targeting them because they “aren’t like us.”

And while we’re at it, I think we should stop with the language of retribution. Is that why we want to take away their tax breaks? To get even? This is not to say that religious organizations should receive tax breaks. I don't think they should. Any of them. But passing prop 8 is not why. It is an example within a much wider problem. A good example, perhaps. But are we also willing to go after the progressive places of worship that supported Obama? Let’s also keep in mind that not all Mormons are homophobic or even political. I have LDS friends who have not been hostile and/or judgmental. Yes, of course the church and many of its members have not been our allies. But can’t we respond to people with love? What is so wrong with that? We know that spewing hate and lies hurts people. Why perpetuate it with the "they'll get what's coming to them" attitude?

Next, I'm annoyed with the comparison to Prop 2 (animal rights). Californians don't care more about animals than they do about queer people. Animals just received the right to turn around or spread their wings. Queer folks have not been locked in cages; chickens are not being given the right to marry. This is a case of apples and oranges. I'm sad that queer folks feel the need to fight over scraps. Let's work on the system itself.

I’m sad too that we’re focusing so much of our national attention on California, and I suspect it is because this is the place we expected to do well, to hang onto our rights. I suspect it is also a way to maintain a focus on marriage. Let’s remember the other states that passed discrimination. Let’s remember the many different ways that LGBTQ people have been unequal in this country. Let’s remember the other groups that share our fates. Arkansas banned adoption for all unmarried people. Why is so much focus on California rather than Arkansas, where unmarried straight people and many, many children also stand to lose? I don’t think we should stop working in California, but I think it is worth reflecting on the reasons we’re focusing our national efforts here.

Okay folks...I expect a lot from my community. And I wouldn't be calling this shit out if I weren't also committed to action

Let's do this right.

(X-posted on my facebook page and Film*Art*Gender Updates)

Gandhian Gays

I am writing a paper about a group called Soul Force --a Christian LGBT activist group -- and their use of Gandhian methods. In fact, they are even named after the Gandhian idea "satyagraha," or "soul force" in English, which is Gandhi's word for passive resistance.

Soul Force is a strange mix because Gandhi & Christianity represent such vastly different views of sexuality than the LGBT movement. Gandhi was really messed up about sex. He committed to celibacy over and over again, only to repeatedly fail and feel guilt and temptation. I don't need to recount the ways in which Christianity and sex-negativity have been linked. And the LGBT movement -- at least the LGB part -- has been about embracing and celebrating our sexual feelings.

I like this group generally. I think they do some rad stuff. But some of it makes no sense to me at all, like the "Right to Serve" campaign of 2006, in which openly gay people tried to enlist in the military. Really? How can "soul force" support joining the military?

Another annoyance I have is that they fall into the same trap of many other progressive organizations and praise people who have done some genuinely awesome things without recognizing the ways they were oppressive to queer people. In the case of Gandhi, he was not awesome on women's rights or sexuality and he condemned homosexual "sex-pleasure." When straight members of my community exalt Gandhi (or Marx, or...) I find it important to remind them that they were not saints. They might have been great on certain issues, but not on many of the issues I spend my time on. I am disappointed that SoulForce never takes the time to note that Gandhi's method is useful and largely helpful, but that his views of queer folk are problematic. I would like SoulForce to talk about how to deal with these complex issues and how they navigate them. Instead they tend towards idealization. And whether or not Gandhi was okay on homosexuality specificially, he is an awful model for coming to terms with sexuality.

I'm particularly concerned about all of this (and wanting a roadmap for how to deal with it all) because Gandhi believed that what gave him the strength and moral resolve to do nonviolence successfully was his body purity. He didn't demand it of others (besides his wife), but I don't think there is a way around his extreme positions on sex and food in relation to how he was able to perform satyagraha.

This is not to say that I think Gandhi wouldn't love GLBTQ people, if he were around now, heard our stories, and shared in our suffering. He certainly would be concerned with the violence that has been done to us. But I think this is much more complicated ground than that.

All of that said, I think that the introduction of Gandhian principles to the gay rights movement, and the introduction of sexuality into Gandhian thought are needed and potentially awesome correctives.

Do you have a roadmap for dealing with anti-gay heroes? Is there someone you admire who would be really helpful for the queer community -- if only they didn't hate queers?

Currently Reading:
http://www.GandhiServe.org
http://www.SoulForce.org

Many Paths

As I understand it, the first accessible message when we acknowledge queer people is this: there are many paths. There really are all kinds of people out there and gender, sex, and sexuality are all over the map.

I find a lot of queer theorists (myself included) forget that message and try to queer things in very specific ways, or understand gender and sexuality with one size fits all approaches.

When I was at a Christian school I aligned my feminism with the constructionists to show that femininity was not a God given natural designation. I hoped this would allow for some freedom from the incessant subordination many Christian women experienced because their subordination was supposedly God ordered. This worked for me until I made the observation that trans people can reinforce the essentialist paradigm rather than subvert it.

While arguing for constructed gender, I simultaneously espoused an essentialist view of sexuality. The claims that homosexuality was unnatural and a choice were the reasons many Christians used to argue that homosexuality was sinful. That was hard to deal with intellectually. It is hard to say "women are a construction but, essentially, I'm attracted to them" without realizing you're either full of shit or in over your head.

Now I'm spending my time with ecofeminism and deconstructionism, earth based religions and Buddhism. The tension is difficult. Are queer people given to shamanism? Or are we performing? Is this world even real?

I find it tempting to try to find a singular way of understanding sex, gender, and orientation that will work for me every time. But to do so, I have to forget the first lesson I learned from queerness: there are many paths.

Currently Reading:
Allen, Paula Gunn. "Hwame, Koshkalaka, and the Rest: Lesbians in American Indian Cultures," in The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions : with a New Preface, 245-261. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.

Gaard, Greta. "Toward a Queer Ecofeminism," in New Perspectives on Environmental Justice, edited by Rachel Stein, 21-44. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2004.

Park Hi-Ah. "Sickness and Health: Becoming a Korean Buddhist Shaman" In Women's Buddhism, Buddhism's Women: Tradition, Revision, Renewal, edited by Ellison Banks Findly, 393-403. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000.

Prince-Hughes, Tara. "Contemporary Two-Spirit Identity in the Fiction of Paula Gunn Allen and Beth Brant." Studies in American Indian Literatures: The Journal of the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures, 10.4 (1998): 9-31.

Serano, Julia. Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2007.

Spretnak, Charlene. "Radical Nonduality in Ecofeminist Philosophy," in Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature, edited by Karen Warren and Nisvan Erkal, 425-436. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

Addendum to "Kinkophobia and Heteropolarity"

Months ago phoenixandtree brought to my attention some ways I had been hard on Starhawk, particularly in my discussion of "heteropolarity." I'm just now getting around to being a good scholar and correcing myself. I've added the following addendum to that old post, and I'd appreciate if people would really digest it.

Addendum: This entry was careless. I'm leaving it up so you can see what it looks like when I post carelessly (I think we need models of bad scholarship and peoples' thought processes in addition to good scholarship) and also so you can see this vital correction. I also think heteropolarity is worth speaking out against. But I don't want to misrepresent Starhawk's current views. In The Spiral Dance, on page 9, she refutes this whole idea of magic as essentially a male/female polarity for the very reason that it is heteronormative, which she sees as bad for everyone. The amusing irony of this is that I came upon this passage not while rereading Starhawk, but while rereading another essay in Blessed Bi Spirit as a sort of refuge. On pages 122-123, Ann Schranz quotes the passage from the Spiral Dance. I want to be sure to note this change and thank Starhawk for her clear and thoughtful articulation of this point. I also want to encourage you to read Blessed Bi Spirit.

Currently Reading:
Schranz, Ann. "From Orientation to Orienteering" in Blessed Bi Spirit: Bisexual People of Faith. Debra R. Kolodny, ed. 118-123. New York: Continuum, 2000.

Starhawk. Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, & Politics. Boston: Beacon Press, 1982.

The New Image

"The God who supposedly transcends sexuality, who is presumably one and whole, comes to us through language that is incomplete and narrow. The images we use to describe God, the qualities we attribute to God, draw on male pronouns and experience and convey a sense of power and authority that is clearly male." Plaskow, 6-7.

"The new Image must be a deity that embodies the male-associated items ...and the essence of those female-associated ideas ... this Image, a "What," will include an acceptable means-by-which, that is the PATTERNS through which we might wish ourselves and others to perceive the world. No one needs to invent or concort such an image. A powerful Image already exists--the Great Mother Goddess." -- Wilshire, 106.

I'm female bodied. I don't identify as a man, I don't feel like a man, I'm not a man. By any measure I should find comfort in the Goddess, who expands gender roles for women. I like the Goddess, I would rather have a world with the Goddess then a world without. But this "expanded" view of the Goddess (as feminine and masculine) just isn't enough for me. And neither was an expanded, feminine view of God.

I can't figure out what I'm looking for in a divinity. But I believe in one, probably with many many faces, names, and ways of being that I can identify within both the Goddess and the God. Maybe I need to stop looking and start getting-to-know Her/Him/Hir/Shim/Esh/...

In a related quest for role models, I had a conversation recently with Max Dashu. She gave a marvelous presentation on the Goddess and Her priestesses (really, I recommend her if you get the chance). She mentioned some male bodied queer priests of the Goddess and I asked her questions about them after the presentation, which led us to a conversation about the bias in a lot of queer spirituality writing towards male bodied people.

Its true, a lot of the writing out there is by people with male bodies who are interested in exploring their historical spiritual paths. She's absolutely right, that bias is real. Which is not to diminish the needs of people like Randy Connor who do great work unearthing a queer spirituality, especially for folks assigned male at birth. But there's bias, for a number of reasons, including lack of hstorical data and lack of people assigned female at birth doing the work (and Randy would agree with me on those points). Max also pointed out that often this kind of scholarship might come at a cost to women and I see that too. There's an androcentrism -- a phallocentrism -- that can pervade queer writing.

But then there's the fact that it was the men folk I latched onto, despite my gender, because of their queerness. There's no specific reason I would identify with male bodied folks who pursue gender transgression for spiritual reasons or within a spiritual system. But I'm unsure who I'm looking for historically, so that is who ends up resting the in the void. It allows me to deal with a feminine spirituality that has nothing to do with child birth, isn't essentialist, and doesn't force me to look at what it would mean to have the masculine traits I dislike.

How do you traverse these issues? What do you read that helps? Does the expanded Goddess image do it for you? I'm not just asking if you have brilliant ideas, I want to know. Share your thoughts, really!

Currently Reading:
Wilshire, Donna, "The Uses of Myth, Image, and the Female Body in the Re-visioning of Knowledge" in Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Reconstructions of Being and Knowing. Jaggar, Alison M., and Susan Bordo, eds. 92-114. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1989.

Plaskow, Judith. Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective. New York, NY: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991.

Both of these readings are through a class taught by Mara Lynn Keller. Max Dashu was in a class taught by Arisika Razak.