Category — Rants and Raves

“The safety of the world depends on your saying ‘no’ to inhumane ideas. Standing up for one’s own integrity makes you no friends. It is costly. Yet defiance of the mob, in the service of that which is right, is one of the highest expressions of courage I know.” — Gabrielle Giffords

I regret having to write this rather depressing follow up to my post on Hide/Seek, an exhibition of queer portraiture at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

For several weeks, a controversy has been brewing. Upset by the mere existence of the exhibit, a right-wing Catholic group stirred up some entirely disingenuous anger over the inclusion of David Wojnarowicz’s video “A Fire In My Belly.” The National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian chose to cave almost immediately to the pressure exerted by a hateful minority, erasing the pain and suffering of AIDS from history, and showing how little has changed between the creation of One Day, This Kid… and now. New York Times writer Frank Rich is absolutely right when he calls it gay bashing.

Now artist A.A. Bronson has requested that his work, “Felix, June 5, 1994″ be removed from the exhibit.

Here is the letter he sent to the Director of the National Portrait Gallery:

Dear Martin Sullivan

I have sent an email to the National Gallery of Canada requesting that they remove my work “Felix, June 5, 1994″ from the “Hide/Seek” exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. I had resisted taking this step, hoping that some reconciliation could be reached regarding the censorship of the David Wojnarowicz video, but it is clear that this is not coming any time soon. As an artist who saw first hand the tremendous agony and pain that so many of my generation lived through, and died with, I cannot take the decision of the Smithsonian lightly. To edit queer history in this way is hurtful and disrespectful.

yours truly,
AA Bronson
Artistic Director

Bronson was a member of the General Idea art collective in Toronto, along with Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal. Partz and Zontal died of AIDS in 1994. Their art, as well as the collective’s papers are housed by the National Gallery of Canada.

Cross-posted to the CLGA Engagement blog

As a queer woman who has lived on this planet for, oh, say, longer than five minutes, I’m no longer surprised when some aspect of queer culture or non-white culture or poor culture or women’s culture is co-opted by media conglomerates or straight people or white men. Women are told their place is in the kitchen, but men dominate the world of celebrity chefs. Gay culture is known for its dance parties, but it’s Madonna who is most famous for voguing. The examples are endless.

As a queer woman, there was always one thing that I could own that I was certain no one would ever steal from me. Something that was so worthless to the rest of the world, I was positive the media empires would stay far, far away. That thing was “butch.” Butch as a concept is different things to different people. For instance, I have never followed strict codes of butch and femme or set rules for myself or others. For me, the power of butch was in its opposition to societal rules. In our backlash-filled times, the masculine woman is reviled. The woman with no interest in men is ignored. The woman who doesn’t cater to the male gaze, doesn’t stick to her assigned side of the gender binary, and doesn’t behave like a lady – that woman is garbage. And there’s power in that. There’s power in being outside of society. I reveled in my magical land of Gina Gershon movies, lesbian separatist road trips, and dykes on bikes.

But today, the world has tried to take this from me. Today, the world has introduced… butch furniture.

Butch furniture, you ask? Yes, says the New York Times. Butch furniture is when you sell a rusty metal cabinet for $13,500 or screw together some rough wood planks for $10,000. Butch furniture is made by men for rich people.

At first I thought they were just using the word “butch” innocently. Like, maybe after last week’s Men’s Fashion issue blew through five gajillion iterations of the word “masculine,” the editor picked up a thesaurus, saw “butch,” and went with that.

But no, they are using butch in the queer sense. Except there isn’t a lesbian or even a woman in sight. The article even goes so far as to quote someone as saying “One man’s butch is another man’s femme” [emphasis mine]. The author then sets the “butch” furniture in opposition to “sissy” furniture, with absolutely no understanding of the hateful, homophobic history of the word “sissy.”

Finally, and most enragingly, the author goes on to quote Judith “Jack” Halberstam as saying “It’s an old term, but it’s still brimming with meaning. Today, I would define it as a counter-gender identity.” Clearly failing to learn anything from that statement, the author ends the article with this:

Mr. Moss would agree. “I thought about this a lot,” he said. “I used the term ‘butch,’ versus ‘masculine’ or ‘tough’ or ‘manly,’ because what I mean by this is work that is stereotypically considered manly, but expressed by a personality that is stereotypically considered sensitive or feminine.”

In other words, an artist.

But only, of course, if you’re a man.

[This post also appeared on Shameless]

I sent out two lucky cats on the same day in March. One to T. and one to D. The one that was sent to T. arrived fine in a couple of days, the one to D. took much longer.

This is what it looked like when I sent it:

So it arrived at her local post office a few weeks later, but she could never pick it up, owing to the fact that the shithole post office in Brooklyn is only open weekdays from nine to five. Y’know, the same exact hours people are at work. So they informed her they sent it back. I had just about given up on seeing it again, being that it’s almost three MONTHS later, but today I got a package slip telling me to pick up my returned package at the post office. When I get there, they tell me I have to pay them another NINE DOLLARS to pick up the package I already paid them to fail to deliver.

They handed me a box that looked like it had been used for a game of soccer. Mind you, I had shipped this package in a Canada Post box that I bought for the purpose, so it wasn’t some crappy piece of weak cardboard. And I wrapped it and taped it and packaged it really well.

But this is what it looked like when it came back:

And this is what was left inside:

To say I’m upset is an understatement. It is hard work making those cats and it’s a labor of love. It takes me hours and hours and it’s not like I have a lot of free time. Y’know, I just wanted to do something nice for my friends and raise some money for charity and have some fun and this is just… so depressing and discouraging and miserable. And I had to pay $20 for the privilege.

I hate you, Canada Post.