In Defense of Lesbians ie. Those Fucking Dykes

By Kelly Cogswell

On Saturday, May 20, two lesbians got attacked on the Q train. The news reports say it was an altercation over seats. Apparently two lezzies had them, and when Antoine Thomas got on the train he demanded theirs, bumping against them, and screaming "Faggot," and "Dyke."

When they asked him to calm down, he beat them, smashing one woman's face until she was unconscious. At the hospital, they treated her for a concussion, a broken eye socket, and a nice array of cuts.

Thomas was arrested by a transit cop, then charged with assault, menacing and harassment, but the next day, the judge in Brooklyn Criminal Court let him go without bail. Why not? It's just some man beating on women. And not just any women, but dykes.

It's tempting to blame the attack on Trump, and the ascendance of white, aggressively hetero, male nationalists. After all, violence always follows hate speech, and there has been a surge in it against women and queers, people of color and immigrants, since he took to the campaign trail.

The problem is, during the U.S. election 2016, or 2008, it wasn't just the extreme right sneering at Hillary Clinton's voice, her hair, her thighs. The left was just as thrilled to embrace every fake news story about her, and glory in attacking aspects of her career that they minimized, or ignored altogether in her male counterparts.

The truth is, the vast majority of Americans despise women. And long before Trump, lesbians already experienced this hate exponentially, because we are by definition women who primarily make our lives with other women--however you define that elusive creature.

Nevertheless, the women's movement is still not a particularly welcoming space for us. Straight women often don't see the woman in the dyke, and pack us off to the LGBT community the first chance they get as if we were extraterrestrials. Even among queers, we're screwed. An acquaintance did the breakdown of a European LGBT fund, and discovered that only a tiny, tiny fraction went to projects that prioritized lesbians.

Here in New York, I was at a performance and reading Friday night by two dyke artists as part of a celebration of the Lesbian Avengers 25th anniversary. A prominent gay man invited to attend more or less said he'd rather die than spend an evening with lesssssbians.

When my friend, a straight man, told me about it, I think I was supposed to laugh, make fun of the guy. But I felt like somebody punched me in the face. I'd forgotten for a moment just how much people hate us, how ridiculous and disgusting they think we are. How acceptable it still is for absolutely everybody to express these views, though not necessarily to our faces.

Every day I rediscover that the funny, chic, thin lesbians we think are giving us visibility are in fact perceived as the exception. The rest of us dykes are absolutely monstrous if we exist at all.

This is why the Lesbian Avengers was created in the first place, to bring us real visibility, call attention to our issues, reshape the stereotypes. It is a measure of how powerful lesbophobia is that this lesbian visibility group has been largely erased from women's and queer history. No matter that the New York Lesbian Avengers spawned sixty chapters worldwide, drew tens of thousands of dykes to enormous Dyke Marches which have persisted lo, these twenty-five years.

What a delightful cocktail--the misogyny and homophobia of lesbophobia. Lately, it is playing itself out in questions of language. I'd be rich, if I had a dollar for every time I've been told in the last few years that nobody uses the word, "lesbian" anymore. It's passé. It doesn't speak to the young'uns who prefer queer or fluid, anything but that word abandoned by everyone but our greying institutions and a very small minority of trans-denying bigots.

Nobody wonders why most replacements for "lesbian" conceal gender, obscure orientation, refuse to slam the door on the heterosexual privilege that women get when there's at least some possibility they'll sleep with a man.

Nobody asks if our hatred of that word, "lesbian," reflects in part our hatred of the women it represents because they are all... what? Boring? Dour? Humorless? Ugly? Angry? Trans-hating? And frigid, of course. Except when we are oversexed nymphomaniacs. Add your stereotype here _________.

Above all, nobody seems to care that we can't organize politically without a word that captures both the misogyny and homophobia that govern our experience no matter what we call ourselves. And if we don't organize, what will change?

The Temptations of Direct Action

By Kelly Cogswell

Right before it happened, I'd turn on the news and watch a black or brown woman interviewing the likes of Al Sharpton, or Margarita Lopez, who was the first out Latina dyke on the New York City Council. It didn't seem remarkable then, seeing so many women, so many people of color on the tube. And queers, even. But after September 11, suddenly the newscasters were all white straight men with a certain, forced gravitas, their interviewee the pale-faced mayor Rudolph Giuliani available twenty-four hours a day complete with a NYFD or NYPD ball cap. Bush Jr. was there, too, surrounded by grimacing white congressmen.

In her book, The Terror Dream: Myth and Misogyny in an Insecure America, Susan Faludi argued that those terrorist acts actually launched a new attack on feminism. Focusing on the post-attack media, politics, and popular culture, she showed how they were all committed to elevating "traditional" manhood and gender roles, celebrating cops and firemen, sidelining women from nearly every heroic narrative of September 11.

I can feel it happening again. Not just because a pussy-grabber's sitting in the White House. But because a large minority of the besieged left, apparently emasculated by Clinton's successful primary campaign, is still going on about how Bernie "Big Dick" Sanders would have beaten Trump for sure. Our current problems are all Hillary's fault and the Dems that anointed her. So much for all those votes she got, all the people she mobilized. And now that the white nationalist kleptocracy is in full swing, that's somehow the fault, too, of girly liberals like her for not destroying it while we had a chance. What we need are more broken windows. More burning cars. More radicalized radicals taking names and kicking ass. Down with the effete failure of liberal democracy. Up with a vaguely defined utopian working class state that will rise magically from the ashes of what we have now.

Just for the record, I'm all for holding demos, and blocking airports and streets, along with Trump and his truly horrifying agenda. Direct action is perfect to voice a giant, "No!" And has always played an important role in social change, not just because it disrupts the steamrollers of power, but because a vibrant, visible left gives teeth to more modest, yet crucial measures like letter-writing, phone calls, voting, running for office -- the things that take root. When politicians have to compromise, and they always do, crowds in the street mean they can bargain from a position of power and won't have to give up so much.

Direct action as a tactic is also one of the few ways to make things visible that society wishes to remain hidden, an AIDS epidemic, for instance, lesbians, police brutality, the erosion of abortion rights. Activism can also transform those of us who have never tasted power before, never had a public voice. There's something intoxicating about confronting your fear, stepping into the street, and feeling the adrenaline kick in with an amazing whoosh. You feel good, powerful for a change, as your voice is amplified by all the bodies around you.

The problem is that this power can also corrupt, especially those young straight men that were born to it. Who, after all, already dominates the street? Ride the subway after 10 p.m. it's almost all men. Women are home taking care of the kids. Or they're just scared to go out alone. Pretty soon young men aren't satisfied with waving a sign and chanting, but take a brick and toss it through the nearest McDonald's window in the name of the working class and a healthy environment.

You get a positively explosive formula when you mix this temptation to violence with the activist tendency to imagine that getting arrested for blocking traffic is somehow more noble than making a phone call. Or that a sympathizer in the Senate who knows how to compromise and wrangle votes is nothing more than a turncoat.

Like the "alt-right," the “alt-left” is going beyond rejecting the conservative nature of our institutions, to rejecting the institutions themselves, despite the fact that they consolidate our gains, and have the resources to protect them, if only we insist on it. They never see the change democracy permits, only its failures. They think stability is always bad. And demand bulldozers and steamrollers.

So even as I rejoice at the vast numbers on the streets blocking everything Trump conceives of, I remember that revolutions so many activists are calling for have always and only benefited men—particularly white men-- in multiracial societies. Women are sidelined, along with disenfranchised people of color who were deluded to believe this was ever for them. As usual, the Puritans of the left will also purge queers, if not for our sex lives, then liberal alliances, not to mention the tasteless jokes we make when we despair of the world.

When Facts Don't Matter: Activism in the New America

By Kelly Cogswell

During the presidential debates, every time Republican candidate Donald Trump opened his mouth he lied, and Democrats had a field day presenting the screen captures of a tweet he'd claimed never to have written, videos of him saying things he'd denied, photos of him chatting with shady characters he said he didn't know.

What a delusional ignoramus, we thought, and wondered who would vote for such a buffoon who got caught in every fib like a three-year old child who denied eating chocolate even though her face was smeared with the stuff. Likewise, who would get hung-up on the false kerfluffle over Clinton's servers and emails when the story was debunked a dozen times a day?

As it turns out, the only delusional members of the American electorate were ones who believed that facts matter. Masha Gessen nailed the problem in her essay, "The Putin Paradigm," in The New York Review of Books, in which she explains why fact-checking doesn't work when dealing with tyrants like Trump, or his role model Putin, who repeatedly and enthusiastically lies in the face of hard evidence. Putin claimed, for instance, after invading Crimea and Ukraine, that no troops were on the ground despite plentiful proof. Then later announced, that of course there were. So what?

The thing to remember is that, "His subsequent shift to truthful statements were not admissions given under duress: they were proud, even boastful affirmatives made at his convenience. Together, they communicated a single message: Putin’s power lies in being able to say what he wants, when he wants, regardless of the facts. He is president of his country and king of reality."

Gessen goes on to assert, that when reality itself is under attack, the only solution for the opposition is to shift from fact-based arguments to finding "a way to tell the bigger story—the story about the lies rather than the story of the lies; and the story about power that the lies obscure." She herself admits that this is harder than it sounds, particularly for the American media which is all about reporting the facts, and doesn't even like to report those unless they have been confirmed a dozen times.

For anybody who cares about democracy, this new embrace of the blatant lie is even more disturbing than Pence's hatred of women and queers, Trump's obvious incompetence and greed, his surrealistic, nihilistic anti-appointments, his ties to white supremacists, and explosions of rage that will soon be able to express themselves with nuclear launch codes.

American social progress, after all, has been built on facts, and on reason. When Sojourner Truth cried out, "And ain't I a woman?" She wasn't just tapping the sympathy of white women, but appealing to their brains, and eyes, to consider just what disqualified her from that category. LGBT arguments for legal equality are likewise just that: arguments. With reasons and facts, and logic. Everything Trump rejects, and everything his presidency could unravel.

Post-fact, I feel twelve years old and confronted with an abusive mother who was never persuaded by them. Our arguments always sounded like dialogue from some absurdist play. I'd declare "The earth is round," and offer physics, math, proof, and she'd answer, "Cherry Jell-O."

Like with Trump, it didn't matter if she knew she was lying, or was psychotic and actually believed what she said. Either way, her stated, and changeable beliefs governed my world. Ever since, I've struggled with just how much weight to give words. Why bother calling a chair a chair when somebody could call it a dog and insist I put a leash on it? This is why I sometimes abandon writing for visual art, and why I became an activist in the first place.

When language itself is debased by lies, when "signs" are tampered with, and words don't persuade, we are left with the physical world, the act, the signified. Somebody, of course, has to concern themselves with the facts, and keep rebutting Trump's factory of lies, but resistance now, more than ever, requires images, and gestures, also our irrefutable flesh. Stories can be made about that, too, but we can at least attempt to shape our own narrative even if we have to do it with an audience of six, or twelve, or twenty passersby. And we can also try to control how our bodies appear in the media, continuing to release our own videos and press releases like the small Russian activist group, Pussy Riot, which really gets under Putin's skin.

And as far as words go, when it comes to telling the larger political stories, and finding ways to approach the truth, we can't just offer alternative narratives, we have to find ways to demolish false ones, unmask Trump's desire for total power, even go undercover to plant seeds of dissent in the echo chambers and chat rooms the fascistic and ascendant "alt-right" has constructed for itself. We must also identify the ordinary people around us who can be brought to reason one by one by one.

Resisting Trump

By Kelly Cogswell

I take good news where I can find it in Trump's woman-hating, neo-Nazi, gay-bashing, Muslim-registering, anti-Semitic America. Last week, it arrived from a climate change conference in Marrakesh, Morocco, where delegates from 197 countries united to approve a statement urging immediate action in the face of Donald Trump's promise to pull out of the Paris Agreement and defund international efforts.

In one of his last appearances as Secretary of State, John Kerry delivered an emotional speech declaring that despite Trump's election, the U.S. fight against climate change wasn't over. Market forces would ensure a transition to a low carbon world even if policy didn't, because investments in renewable energy were absolutely exploding. And the vast majority of Americans supported action even if a powerful minority didn't.

I hope so. I really do. But the real reason this news cheered me a little was that I also learned that California was exploring how to join the climate talks as a subnational party if, or when, Trump makes good on his threat. In short, California is looking for ways to resist.

There's a good chance they can. The UN Convention on climate change declares "Any body or agency, whether national or international, governmental or non-governmental, which is qualified in matters covered by the Convention, and which has informed the secretariat of its wish to be represented at a session of the Conference of the Parties as an observer, may be so admitted unless at least one third of the Parties present object."

Even if they get thwarted by the Trump admin or Russian ally, nothing stops California, or New York or Oregon, from passing more stringent regulations. Now, at least, American states can still find ways to resist on an international level every time the official representatives of our country act against our interests. They can also guarantee abortion rights and minimum wages. For once, the tradition of respecting state's rights in the U.S. may work in the favor of progressives.

In other good news, individual cities like New York and San Francisco have declared that they won't participate in mass deportations and other unconscionable, bigoted acts, like any efforts to register Muslims. On Sunday, some New York politicians from the local, state, and federal level even jointly marched against hate and condemned Trump's administrative appointments. While press conferences aren't enough for the long run, they show that our daily protests have paid off. For now. Because no politician ever opens their mouths unless they think it will win them votes.

In the long run, we'll have to do both. Lay down in front of bulldozers and, like California, look for back doors not just to resist, but progress. Which means we activists have to commit ourselves to unraveling how our various levels of government actually work, understanding for instance the relationship between the beat cop and the Justice Department. The State Department and a queer film festival in Ankara.

Too many of us have seen our LGBT rights as a simple Christmas list of important issues, not as intertwined civil rights dependent on the health of our democracy and things like free speech and assembly. Clean votes. From now on, queer issues must include not just marriage equality or gender recognition, but the gerrymandering of voter districts, the suppression of voter rights, an independent judiciary actually committed to administering justice equally regardless of sexual orientation, gender, or race.

Not to say we should ignore specifically queer issues, but that we should see them in context. If you thought trans women of color had it tough before, imagine trying to work for their safety under a Justice Department led by a neo-Nazi. Every anti-bullying law everywhere will be under attack as well, along with hate crime ordinances. Those queers who couldn't access marriage in anti-gay regions, will face even worse obstacles. AIDS, in this new anti-gay, anti-Obamacare era, will probably hit us hard along with an epidemic of despair and self-loathing.

The worse things get, the more important it will be to demonstrate and put our queer, our brown, our black flesh out there, reminding politicians that we are not abstractions. And reminding ourselves of the power we have acting with, and for, each other.

It's not easy to take to the streets right now. Even experienced activists are still shell-shocked, and frightened. And we should be. It's easier to throw protesters in jail. And many of us are older, and already concerned about the vulnerabilities of our bodies. Getting hit by a cop or a bystander may not just put us out of commission for a few months, it may kill us.

And yet. And yet... "When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid. So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive." Audre Lorde.

When Trump Is King

By Kelly Cogswell

We could have done it. Had the first female President of the U.S. And one of the smartest, most prepared executives ever, but never underestimate misogyny. Never underestimate the vast selling power of hate and fear, and a sensationalist, ratings grabbing media that insisted on covering Trump as if he was a candidate like any other. Not a crook, a predator, a thug, a sleazebag racist openly endorsed by the KKK, and helped into office by a Russian dictator, a cowed FBI director, and the likes of Julian Assange who's not a radical truth-teller, just a resentful, but powerful, little fuck in some embassy basement.

What I really want to know is, what are we going to do about it? What are the Democrats? When Florida Republicans stole the vote in 2000 (later verified by the New York Times), none of the white Senate Dems protested during the roll call, and Gore was like, Gee shucks, what's a guy gonna do? Then the whole party rolled over as George W. conned the country about weapons of mass destruction, and followed him into a war that most of them now, including Clinton, acknowledge was a huge mistake.

So there you go. Afghanistan was succeeded by Iraq. And environmental treaties gutted or put aside, and almost every international agreement suspended for oil profiteering with Bush aided and abetted by a mainstream media that didn't dare, for instance, use the word torture to describe what resulted because his administration was so vindictive that rags like the Times were afraid their journalists would be excluded from a press conference or something. Then, the impact was mostly abroad. Domestically Bush made nice, never once called Latinos rapists, and had in his cabinet black and brown people like Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, and torture apologist Alberto Gonzales.

Trump is not even gonna play that. Not with a Republican Congress at his back. We're gonna see wackjob Giuliani redux, a Gingrich thrilled that Trump has promised to deport immigrants, destroy the Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade, roll back marriage equality among other monstrous things. On the global level, Trump scorns not just specific agreements but the whole idea of international cooperation on trade, defense. If somebody annoys you, just nuke 'em, though handsomely reward your extreme right pals like Putin, France's Marine Le Pen.

So what I want to know is, are the Democrats and the media gonna roll over again, kiss goodbye the rule of law, accept dirty and missing votes, suppression of speech, of assembly, a politicized judiciary just so they can keep access? Make money? There's no question that all the Republicans who turned their backs on Trump last week are gonna kiss his ass today. But will the Democrats and the media bi-partisan and co-operate this country to death? Are they gonna throw the entire world under that very big fucking bus?

I really do need to know. My household's kinda vulnerable you see. Two queer females. One dependent on Obamacare. Another an immigrant. I wish I'd done more. But I've been paralyzed with a kind of sick fear. This country can be so ugly. The only moment I felt vaguely hopeful was last Saturday, when I went to Clinton's campaign headquarters downtown to get tickets to her election night rally and saw the enthusiastic mix of races and ages bent over their phones, sending texts to get out the vote under a distant banner acknowledging Orlando.

Everybody looked so calm and happy it made me a little teary. When I saw a woman take her two young daughters to pose in front of some Hillary signs, I nearly sobbed. I wonder if they're going to find some way to keep participating now that my fellow Americans have voted, not just for Trump, but against Hillary, against the last eight years of LGBT progress, new black and Native American activism, and women, women, everywhere.

Some of us will get lost in fear, or embrace an ugly cynicism because many of us imagined as I did growing up that our system of democracy was somehow as fixed and invulnerable as a statue of blindfolded Justice in which her scale never wavered. And when I began to understand misogyny, racism, homophobia, classism, and that nothing was fixed, or guaranteed, the whole thing did seem rigged, like lies. I felt ashamed and guilty, and ready to keep the whole country at arm's length as if I could avoid contamination.

We can't. We shouldn't. The truth is that we are not the best country in the world, nor are we the worse. Not yet. We have done great things, and horrible things. What redeems us are the people here who understand that words like liberty, equality, justice are not facts, but aspirations, which require unending vigilance and the kind of hard work Clinton, anyway, was known for. It is time to recommit ourselves to the fight.

Nuit Debout: This Revolution Is Not for You

By Kelly Cogswell

Revolutions don't excite me any more. They're never for me. Not Occupy Wall Street. Not the new social movement going on in France right now, called "Nuit debout" and centered fifteen or twenty long blocks from me at Place de la République.

It began on March 31 following a series of protests against proposed government changes to the labor laws that might or might not make things worse for workers. What's sure is that France has a high unemployment rate, and young kids are already so worried about retirement that associations of high school students joined labor unions as the prime organizers in these enormous demos. I saw the student leaders, and was excited that some were young women.

These protests exploded into a movement that seemed spontaneous, at first, but was triggered in part by François Ruffin, a journalist releasing a Michael Moore- like film, and other activists. They reportedly decided to piggyback on the March 31 demo, by refusing to leave the plaza afterwards, encouraging others to stay with them. Their goal: to unify several social movements including concerns of labor protection and income inequality. It worked spectacularly well. Ruffin's film is a hit. And, "Nuit debout" (Up All Night, or Standing Night ) has become a more general movement frequently compared to Occupy Wall Street.

After weeks of encampment, they've reached a détente with the authorities, settling into a rhythm where they only gather on the weekends and after work until midnight or 1 a.m. If you pass by, you'll see tents, and tables and small working groups. Other times, there are big general assembly meetings with lots of speakers. In terms of gender, the overwhelmingly white crowd seems reasonably mixed, but when it comes to speakers it's mostly men. The men talk a lot-- about equality, horizontality, and intersectionality, drawing connections between civil liberties and income, police reform, immigration, Palestine, the environment, questions of race, women, queers.

Probably, if I stayed, I'd even agree with a lot of what they say. But form matters, too, and at Nuit debout, men hog the podium in general assemblies, and grandstand in working groups. Not only do more men speak, they speak much longer than women. And when women finally do get a word in, they are repeatedly, frequently, inevitably interrupted.

The feminist group there proposed that they partly solve the problem by alternating genders on the list of speakers, but the crowd determined that there weren't enough female speakers to justify such a move. And never once thought it useful to ask why.

The group, Commission on Feminisms, has also been trying to hold regular women-only meetings to encourage more women to articulate their issues, at least in this smaller protected space. But men, that often self-identify as feminist, come to harass, and harangue them, inspiring one of my friends to joke that they'd finally figured out how to interest men in what women have to say.

These "feminist" men have also used the open, mixed feminist meetings to rage against women-only meetings being held in a public space like the Place de la République, in a public movement of citizens like Nuit debout. So what if women can't fully participate in this public movement, or even stand safely in the public plaza?

Sexual harassment there is not uncommon. There have even been sexual assaults. I read one blog post describing how when some women tried to talk about their experiences right there at Nuit debout, (just like Occupy Wall Street!) some man shouted he'd never seen such a thing. And when the women responded rudely, the man's feelings got hurt and the group had to process that. Because his feelings, of course, were the point.

Nevertheless, it was a woman, Fahima Laidoudi, a 53-year old cleaning lady and far-left militant, who apparently has prodded Nuit debout to recognize their lack of diversity on the racial front. In response, Parisian activists created a sort of outreach committee. In the city of Marseille, they went further, and organized an event Saturday in the cité des Flamants, a housing project outside of town.

Almost nobody came except journalists, including one from Le Monde, who reported that instead of a tickertape parade, they got a critique from one local activist, Fatima Mostefaoui. "Here, we've been standing and awake for thirty years," she told them. "Nobody here was waiting for you to fight poverty, police violence, social injustice… You came here to give us a voice? We've had a voice. It's just that nobody's listening because everything we say is censored and stigmatized."

Afterwards, one young man told Le Monde that they'd picked the wrong place. "I'm not sure I'd try again."

Me neither. Even though the men of the left have increasingly mastered the language of change, they themselves haven't budged. They don't listen, can't stand any voice but their own. Without women, without poor people, people of color, oh yes, and queers, the end result can only be more of the same.

The State of the Queer Cuban Nation

By Kelly Cogswell

Late in October, a handful of independent activists appeared for the first time before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights reporting on the state of the LGBTI community in Cuba and asking the commission to pressure the regime not just on behalf of queers, but of any independent group trying to work for human rights on the island.

In the video, they seemed articulate, dignified, and maybe a little desperate, offering quiet reproaches to an international LGBT community that has a blind eye where Cuba is concerned, largely ignoring actual LGBT people trying to speak and work on their own behalf, while seeming to applaud every press release from CENESEX, the government-approved National Center for Sex Education run by the straight daughter of Cuba’s dynastic ruler, Raúl Castro.

Carlos Quesada of the International Institute on Race, Equality and Human Rights, said that the “so-called visibility” of Cuba’s queers internationally was dependent on one name, Mariela Castro and that “it contrasts with the actual situation of the members of the LGBTI community in Cuba.”

Determined to see if they could get something done outside the CENESEX bubble, a coalition of Cuban groups, including the Free Rainbow Alliance of Cuba (Alianza Arcoiris Libre de Cuba), the Trans Fantasy Network (RED-Trans Fantasía), The Foundation for the Rights of the LGBTI Community (Fundación por los derechos de la Comunidad LGBTI) and Divine Hope (Divina Esperanza), a queer Christian Group, decided to conduct their own study of the state of the queer Cuban nation. They prepared a questionnaire focusing on personal experiences of discrimination and violence, and whether or not LGBTI people had basic information about their human rights.

It was an ambitious project, especially for embattled independent groups. "By law, organizations that do not declare their support to the state are not allowed to be registered," explained Juana Mora, of the Free Rainbow Alliance of Cuba, and former member of CENESEX. She let those words speak for themselves, knowing that the commission would be well aware that in Cuba, independent activists and journalists face harassment, discrimination, violence, and arrest. Later on in the presentation, she and Quesada described how queer activists were continually monitored and their research materials seized and copied, routinely denounced as counterrevolutionaries, threatened, and subject to detention and interrogation.

Unsurprisingly, most LGBTI people approached for the study were too afraid, or too disillusioned to talk to them. Mora told the commission that "…in Cuba there's a culture of fear surrounding any discussion of human rights. Because when Cubans hear these words they think you're attacking the government. The other thing is, that since in Cuba there isn't a culture of respecting human rights, many people responded that it was a waste of time, knowing that nobody would do anything about your problems."

In the end, though, they persuaded 150 people nationwide to participate. Of these 26 were lesbians, 81 gay men, 19 bi people, 23 trans women, and 1 intersex. Sixty-six self-defined as white, 28 as being of African descent, and 44 as mixed race. Forty-four were between 15 - 25 years old, 56 were between 26 and 35, and 38 were older than 36.

Their news wasn't good. Despite the CENESEX “circus,” as Cuban queers typically call the institution's displays, violence and discrimination were incredibly high, especially on the institutional level. Eighty-seven said they had been assaulted both verbally and physically by cops, and arbitrarily detained. Forty-five had been discriminated against in the workplace, harassed or fired. Sixty-seven had experienced violence within their own families, including being thrown out of their homes. Violence and discrimination, both within and without the family, was worse the further you got from Havana. Cops regularly blackmailed and extorted rural queers. Worse, if they fled to Havana, they risked constant harassment and extortion by cops there and were often deported back to their place of origin. Trans people faced the worst of the violence and discrimination, especially if they were of African descent.

Mora testified that in general, very few of the people polled knew about international human rights instruments, or worldwide advances in LGBT rights. Few had access to resources or support on the island, especially in the areas of work and education. No statistics were kept about homophobic or transphobic murders. Few victims of violence even reported assaults because they weren't investigated, much less solved and prosecuted. "Nothing happened to the guilty. In only one highly public case was the murderer punished."

Sisy Montiel, coordinator of the Trans Fantasy Network, testified that she had become an activist because she herself was the victim of discrimination and violence, and as a young person was arrested so often for being "ostentatiously effeminate in public" that she barely finished high school.

She eventually got sex reassignment surgery, and found work in the theater, but many others like her were forced into prostitution, or killed themselves, literally encouraged by the state to end their lives. Things weren't much better now, she said. Kids are harassed so much in school they either leave or are expelled. Which meant they couldn't go to college or get decent jobs, usually forcing them into prostitution. Discrimination prevented most from getting medical care. Access was made even worse by racism, with black trans people being refused hormones and surgery.

After screening a short film, "Situation of LGBT population in Cuba, 2014-2015," they offered a list of recommendations, which again emphasized the need to pressure the Cuban government to respect independent organizations and civil society in general, and LGBT groups in particular, exposing how social change of any kind requires the same basic rights--to meet and assemble peacefully, to express themselves, fundamental rights that Cubans simply don't have. Not yet.

The Cuban government declined to participate in the hearing.

Sustaining the Approaching Apocalypse of Uppity Queers

By Kelly Cogswell

If I could, I'd give up on words, and just publish a photo of a cute kitten. Maybe the one with a furry little face sticking out of a boot. Or, if you prefer, I could offer beefcakes, or hot dykes, galore. Whatever would elicit that smile, a satisfied little coo.

And while you were enjoying all the overwhelming cuteness, I'd pipe in a little music laced with the subliminal messages that would get you to do more than write a quick check, but engage with queer lives in some systematic, enduring way that would go beyond the ups and downs of this week's campaigns.

Is it even possible? Not the kitten stuff, but creating a movement, a kind of long-lasting brand loyalty that would attract people for a lifetime? In this country, we love the individual more than the community, and at every opportunity perpetuate the myth that we all pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and don't owe nobody, nothin', not ever.

So instead of appealing to the greater good, we usually market outrage in brief bursts, like a fire sale, or pop-up store. Another gay guy was murdered in Jamaica, come to this demo. Two dykes got screamed at in a Paris train station when they dared to kiss, sign this petition. Shall I feed you statistics on dead trans women? Or even the living? The rates of LGBT poverty, our lack of education? Violence?

Yeah, I could get out my big stick and whack it around until I have your attention or you flee, too burnt out to care any more. Or because you only picked up this gay rag for the bar listings, or to read a little fluff piece on theater, maybe, or about that actor who finally came out and is so fucking happy he practically glows.

Right, better to go all upbeat, and vomit rainbows, the other tactic to pull you in, and educate you, at least a little about all those heroes on the ground. I was in Kentucky last week and went to a big thing on the ACLU and queer rights. The people were great, and so optimistic it made me tired, how they reconceived every defeat as a victory.

When the law passed banning same-sex marriage, they didn't cancel their party. Because after all, look at how many LGBT groups grew out of the fight. And the fact that the bigots even drafted the bill at all is proof that we're getting stronger and they can see us on the horizon-- the approaching apocalypse of uppity queers that will no doubt take place minutes after the Supreme Court acknowledges that we deserve equal rights, at least in the marriage bureau.

I don't know if I could pull it off, facing each defeat with hope and renewed energy. I'm not very Zen. Most activists aren't. Hell, nobody is. Hence the carrots and the sticks. And why it's so hard to deal with the stuff that's not life or death, but merely devastating in a daily sort of way, like discrimination in housing and employment and education, or bullying. These things that have no end in sight.

Sure, they can be partly addressed with legislation. But even a win in the Supreme Court won't end the marriage battle everywhere. Like with the Voting Act, we have to continue to pay attention, and be bold enough to demand that laws are actually enforced. Regions can still create impediments, block actual roads, scare the crap out of people, close the clerk's office when a queer turns up.

Look at the black civil rights movement, or women's movement, it seems like protecting change is even harder than creating it. It requires a life-time vigilance, not just the ADD of emotional appeals and manipulation. It's a real danger that once we can all put a ring on it, complacency will set in, and gay money will stay in gay pockets, and all those student activists going door to door will turn to something more exciting.

Demobilization will, I suspect, reinforce existing divides in our community. Not only among gay men, and dykes, bi folks, and trans people, but along chasms of race and ethnicity, class and region. Even marital status. If you're single and plan to stay that way, what have you won from this long, expensive campaign?

The most vulnerable in our community will be left behind unless we start to see the goal of our movement as more than just mere equality with a heterosexual world that is neither just in social terms, nor particularly happy. We need a broad and enduring vision that we can aspire to.

Queer Turkey: A Snapshot

By Kelly Cogswell

I don't know what I expected to find at a kuir film festival in Turkey. Cops writing down the names of besieged queers, maybe. Or mobs of angry fundamentalists outside the degenerate theaters. But while I can see the tall white minarets of the local mosque from my hotel window, and hear the call to prayer a couple times a day, religion, at least in Ankara, the capital, still has a much smaller impact than in a place like, say, Egypt. In fact, I've seen more headscarves in certain Parisian neighborhoods than around here, where men on the street seem largely indifferent to women passing with their liberated hair.

As for LGBT folks, they're here, they're queer, and they've been organizing in earnest since the early Nineties. The human rights organization Lambda Istanbul was founded in '93. The largest national organization, Kaos GL, was formed the year afterwards, in Ankara, and became the first LGBT organization with legal status in 2005. Despite periodic efforts by the increasingly authoritarian Islamist government to get rid of them, the judiciary of this secular republic has repeatedly upheld their right to exist.

Civil society offers some support. Some newspapers cover LGBT issues and events. A request in 2012 to include some protections for LGBT people in the new constitution was supported by the main opposition party. Nevertheless, acceptance is not widespread, and while student groups and other efforts are growing every year, it's hard to imagine how most of these LGBT projects would survive without major foreign support.

When I went to lunch with Ömer Akpinar and Aylime Aslı Demir of Kaos GL, they unapologetically explained most of their funding came from a range of foreign embassies as well as human rights funds. There is a lot to do, and the money has to come from somewhere. The 13-member staff of Kaos GL is spread thin with a variety of projects from Pride marches that get bigger every year to queer publications and projects helping LGBT people survive. They also try to offer assistance to smaller groups.

One of their biggest efforts right now is directed to supporting LGBT refugees fleeing Iraq, Iran, and now Syria. Turkey is a transit point, and many will end up in Canada or the UK. In the meantime, the government places them in small cities and towns where they not only have to grapple with the difficulties of having fled their homes, and being foreign, but with the homophobia of conservative regions.

Kaos GL also has a campaign directed towards teachers and school counselors, in co-ordination with the teacher's union. Up until recently, if a struggling queer kid looked for help at school, they'd get ratted out to their parents, and the kids would often get yanked from the school. Nobody ever knew if they were living or dead. Kaos GL provides information, and encourages school staff to help the children without putting them in danger.

They also hold cultural events. Last year, for instance, they teamed up with a human rights center at Ankara University to show Lars Von Trier's "Nymphomaniac," banned by Turkish authorities for its extensive nude and sex scenes. The screening was denounced in the religious press, but they didn't mind much because afterwards five hundred people turned up to watch the movie and support them, instead of the expected one hundred.

According to Ömer and Aylime, the religious press is the main opponent of the LGBT movement. They aren't very good at it. Not yet, anyway. Most of their anti-gay articles are just cribbed verbatim from queer Turkish publications with the word "pervert" added on every time an L, G, B, or T is mentioned. As a consequence, the content and language are actually quite progressive if you ignore all the "perverts" sprinkled throughout.

While there aren't any specifically anti-gay groups, violence is a big problem for LGBT people, especially trans women who are murdered in epidemic proportions. One of the films in the festival, "Trans X Istanbul," showed two middle-aged trans women thumbing through a photo album in which they were among the only survivors.

In recent years, some of the violence in Istanbul has been inspired by more than transphobia. Property speculators have been using anti-trans campaigns to force them from desirable redevelopment areas. These hate campaigns are often followed by attacks and murders.

They're not suffering in silence. Trans women are some of the most visible, and radical, organizers in Turkey. In Ankara, they were the founders of The Pink Life Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans Solidarity Association, which supports trans people, especially sex workers, and organizes the Kuirfest film festival, among other things.

Queer activists of all kinds got a boost from the huge antigovernment demos of 2013 that were sparked when cops squashed peaceful demonstrators trying to prevent Istanbul's Gezi Park from being replaced with a shopping mall and luxury housing. The resulting protests became a kind of referendum on Turkey's democracy, raising issues of freedom of speech and assembly, and protesting attacks on secularism. For most of the population, it was the first time they'd dared to take to the streets.

Mobilized and empowered, LGBT people started to create small groups all over the country, even in conservative towns. Which is essential. Faced with an eroding secularism, and a creaky democracy, queers need every hand on deck. And after the Gezi protests where they were often in the forefront, they may even have more allies. As Sedef Çakmak told one newspaper, "Gezi did in three weeks what would have otherwise taken us three years."

Check out Kaos GL (English) and Pink Life's Kuir Fest.

All #BlackLivesMatter, and Advice to That Young Activist

By Kelly Cogswell

If there's any cause for hope on America's racism front, it is that young black woman in braces on the TV. She wasn't just a participant, but an organizer of some of the New York marches protesting Eric Garner's death, and the verdict that gave his cop murderer a free pass.

Watching her talk, you have to wonder how long it will be before the old guard try to wrangle her into speaking at one more March on Washington, or a big New York Rally Against Something or Other, sandwiching her in between reverend this, or congressman that, sucking up her youth and vitality the way they always do.

As an "older and wiser" activist, I feel I should give her some advice. Which first of all, is to ignore older and wiser activists of all kinds. You seem to know what you're doing, keep it up. And be especially wary of anybody offering a platform you haven't built yourself. The more successful you are, the more the old guard will come knocking at your door, and you can bet your bottom dollar they won't give much in exchange. Before you know it, your cause will have become a career, and whatever new ideas you had, whatever lines you were willing to cross will seem ridiculous, outlandish, not at all worth the risk.

I mean, really, what kind of sucker actually believes this U, S, of A, can deliver on its promises of liberty and justice for all? Or that it's worth putting yourself in harm's way for a man that's already dead? Naw, take the crumbs you can get and milk that expense account for all its worth. Not that they'll tell you that up front. They'll tell you that they're actually considering your ideas in Committee A. And adding some language to the guidelines Committee B is going to present. Change takes time, and blah blah blah. Come back next Thursday at nine for the photo op with the mayor.

No, my friend, better to do what you're doing, and refuse compromise. Let the wheelers and dealers wheel and deal. You stick to the streets. Allow yourself to dream a better city, better country. Demand everything. Fight hard, resist violence, and keep each other safe. Maybe even fly the freak flag once in a while. Avoid any proposition that requires new clothes.

All I want for Christmas is to see the hashtag upgraded to read #allblacklivesmatter. We know the names of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, but what about Dionte Green, another black death in Missouri, but gay this time? Doesn't he count, too? Or how about black cis-woman Yvette Smith who was shot twice by a deputy sheriff earlier this year in Texas? In 2010, Detroit police officer Joseph Weekley killed a young black girl Aiyana Jones. Sakia Gunn was killed for being a dyke, neither the first nor last. Friday, DeShawnda Bradley (Sanchez), a black trans woman was killed while she was pounding on a stranger's door for help.

All black lives matter, not just those of black men, and not just those killed by cops who wear on their shoulders the power of the State, and carry terror in the increasingly large guns, and teargas, and I never thought I'd say this--tanks.

Black women come in for more than their share of violence. And the deaths of black transwomen should inspire an equally enduring rage. Often committed brutally, and publicly, with extraordinary violence, their horrible deaths are meant to inspire fear in a whole population, just like lynchings. The life-and-death power on display here is not so much that of the State, but of an entire society that already forces transwomen of color to the margins. Makes school impossible, like finding decent jobs. Their lives matter, too.

Don't be afraid to say it. Maybe for the first time it would work. The movement seems open and free -- for the moment. I went down to a protest at Foley Square this week, and on my way saw young people of all races arriving together, as friends. Even if you don't believe the white kids are there for the long haul, and even if you'll often find their privilege shows, a generation ago those white kids wouldn't have been there at all. So they're learning. They're educable. And accepting. Dare everything.

Beyond that, what can I say? I've been at this a while, know how to work the press, marshal organized demos, but these free flowing, wonderful, cop-thwarting things popping up all over the city are beyond me. I'm thrilled to see street activism and direct action renewed, go beyond those sterile Facebook clicks. Some things like racism, like homophobia, won't change unless we confront them in the flesh. It's what our enemies are so afraid of.

Kelly Cogswell is the author of Eating Fire: My Life as a Lesbian Avenger (U Minn Press, 2014).

Allies Aren't Enough In Ferguson, San Fran

By Kelly Cogswell

Another unarmed black man is shot by a white cop, and as the situation explodes, plenty of right-thinking white folks are exhorting each of us blanquitos to become an ally. It's also what straight folks are supposed to become when another fag gets beaten, another transwoman mutilated and killed. Or a dyke gets raped.

I hate that word, ally. It is so patronizing. So besides the point. As if Michael Brown's death has no consequences for white lives. As if the murder of Bryan Higgins, radical faerie, this week in San Francisco won't touch hets. As if we could make our lives bubbles. No, not even bubbles which explode pretty easily. But pods maybe. Metal space ships exploring a different galaxy which we can leave whenever we want a change of scenery.

Sure, plenty of people are sheltered. Random attributes give us privileges, and we enjoy them as much as we can. I suppose it's even remarkable that anybody bothers to wring their hands at the latest horror. But the links are still there. We drag around our shared histories like toilet paper stuck to our shoes. Like that extra forty pounds we don't really notice anymore. Haven't for years. Doesn't mean that sodden, shitty thing isn't there. In the houses we can buy, the jobs we get. That bloody smudge on the sidewalk.

But as long as my passport says American, what happens in Ferguson, or Detroit, or Chicago is my business, too. As long as I am human, really. Seeing each other as separate and irrelevant is part of what got us into this mess to begin with. The inability to look each other in the eyes and recognize, "Okay, a person. Like me." Dogs are smarter than us. One sniff and they know what's what. Cat. Dog. Tree. Homos not so sapiens get distracted by all the superficial stuff, skin, hair, gestures, cars. Language. Act like they are mountain ranges with no clear path over. Are often glad that the barrier's there. And work to build higher ones.

In fact, differences really only exist in the painful middle distance. At the cellular level we are pretty much indistinguishable. And the further away you move the microscope, the more you can see how our futures are bound together, like the misery of our past. It's in our own interest to pay attention, and think about how we fit together. And then plunge in.

Which is why I wish we'd retire that word, ally. It implies that we don't really have to do much but have nice thoughts and maybe make a donation. Send some tents to the war zone. Sandwiches. Not go there yourself in the flesh. Risk getting hurt. Maybe physically, maybe just your feelings. I mean, you should try not to be a complete asshole, you're not the center of attention and maybe should listen more than you talk, but missteps are inevitable if you leave your space ship.

The thing we have to keep in mind is that we are not "allies". Not acting on anybody else's behalf. We don't deserve gold stars for getting involved in the society we belong to. We don't even have to pretend to understand somebody else's experience. We just have to believe we are more deeply connected than we admit. And if we fuck up sometimes, so what? If practice doesn't make perfect, it does make better. At least we aren't still deluded into believing we're somehow outside the problem, and that it won't bite us in the ass one day. Hasn't already infected our lives.

I thought about this a lot when I was out there on the frontlines as a Lesbian Avenger. I always figured that if dykes finally got treated with respect, had the room to make choices about sex and romance, weren't subjected to violence, it would stretch the possibilities for straight females like my bigoted hateful mom. Don't want to get married? Fine. Resent kids? Don't have to have any. And no problem if you don't want to put on the panty-hose, make nice, suck-up to the boss. If I can walk the streets unafraid as a lesbian, then you can, too.

It's pretty obvious how militarized, and bigoted policing affect the LGBT community. Fags of all races still get arrested in adult bookstores, get stung in illegal sex operations. Trans people, too, get profiled and harassed as prostitutes. Instead of getting help, many queers get harassed after assaults.

Even on a sheer tactical level, it's clear one segment of the population can't be assured justice while another goes without. It is a habit. We can't address violence against queers, or against people of color, without going after it in American society at large. We may have to address our problems in small ways, one law at a time, but our thinking has to be big enough to hold us all.

Kelly Cogswell is the author of Eating Fire: My Life as a Lesbian Avenger (U Minn Press, 2014).

Of Mice and Dykes

By Kelly Jean Cogswell

Last week was the CLAGS conference on Lesbian Lives in the 1970's. One of the big questions they asked participants was, "What did you think you were doing?" The extraordinary answer was, "Changing the world."

In some of their mouths it sounded almost bitter. Some went on to blame Reagan for cutting down the hopes of the Seventies. Others blamed AIDS for drawing dykes into service organizations, and making them too nice or too tired to overthrow the patriarchy after taking care of their dying brothers.

Progressives haven't seen such ambition in ages, though there was a hint of it in Obama's presidential campaign before he transformed himself from charismatic leader into one more middle manager with his cards clutched to his chest, and bold positions abandoned as soon as the primary results were in.

If you look for cock-eyed optimism now, you'd have to go to the Tea Party movement. They are busy envisioning a second American Independence saga in which patriots can practice isolationist politics while keeping their jobs (and flat screen TVs) dependent on a global market. And without contributing to the common pot, they can also preserve all the advantages they've grown accustomed to in the greatest country in the world, like roads and hospitals and armies and bridges.

Crunch their impossible numbers and what you get is the portrait of a people that wants to be liberated from need and interdependence like a spoiled teenager ready to run away from home with her credit card and iphone (both paid by her parents) because somebody capped her calls or made her do chores.

They don't want to believe we're stuck with each other. Not just now, but forever. So maybe deluded is a better word than optimistic to describe such a movement, acknowledging there's a little bit of delusion in any attempt at social change. Or for that matter Obama's attempt to carve a middle, waffling road at this time of crisis.

These days, demoralized progressives are neither optimistic nor world-changers building lively antiwar, feminist, green, or LGBT movements. Queers arise sometimes like last week's Flash Mob demo against deadly homophobia in Grand Central Terminal, but there's nothing continuous, or urgent. There's no overarching dream. We're just consolidating gains, playing defense, or inching ahead.

It's partly because we transformed grassroots movements into institutions that have become establishments like so many others. People have their fiefdoms and ten-year financial projections. They tamp down any spark of revolution with caution. Half the LGBT organizations applauding the reversal of the Proposition 8 ruling in California's federal courts had advised the lawyers not to push ahead. It's not the right time. Halt in your tracks, you usurpers.

You could smell the dust coming off of the recent One Nation extravaganza before they stepped onto the D.C. mall. The marchers were apparently enthusiastic, but what they were forced to listen to were the same old speakers from the same stale institutions mouthing the same old platitudes. Up with good jobs, health insurance, and same-sex marriage. Down with racism, and immigrant- and gay-bashing. The underlying message was vote for Democrats in November. Heralding the rally as the beginning of anything is as deluded as expecting a suddenly "clean" administration in Albany.

I'm increasingly troubled by the equality-obsessed LGBT movement we have on our hands. Of course we have to push for legal rights, but what could be more conservative than only wanting the same things as the others have got?

That kind of vision won't change the world, or even solve bullying in schools. For that, you have to entirely revise American life, starting with the football and cheerleader culture of high schools and colleges that tortures all kids who are nerdy, awkward, overtly intelligent, or queer. You have to restructure the American Family. Get your hands dirty in combat with churches. You have to drive a bulldozer, or just imagine one. You have to dismantle the myths.

What a joke that in high school we're forced so brutally into tribes at the same time we're taught to admire those singular individuals that pull themselves up by their bootstraps, succeed without a helping hand from anybody, except of course Gawd. You don't have to be a genius to see how that American contradiction leads some to become bullies and cultural enforcers, others lone gunmen, either mowing down crowds, or taking out themselves.

Maybe it's time to recover our ambition, and set our sights not just at changing a law or two, but all of America. It will take a new grassroots movement, and a mixture of characteristics I've noticed in the country mice upstate: creativity, persistence, and a quick learning curve. You plug one hole, they find another soft spot to gnaw at. Ignore them, they'll have your house down on the ground in a flash.

Rethinking Outrage

By Kelly Jean Cogswell

Terrible, the queer kids shot in Tel Aviv, terrible the lesbians raped and slaughtered in South Africa. Then there are the bashings and murders in the States. Terrible. We need more laws, more resolutions, more vigils and marches, more politicians on our side, more media, more verbage to step over on the way to work in the morning before the super sweeps it off the curb.

More and more I wonder where it gets us, that horror at sudden, deadly explosions of hate. The deaths we respond to are particularly dramatic, but unfortunately not rare. We remember the death of Mathew Shepard crucified to a fence post in Wyoming, not all the other queers dropped in back alleys with a blow to the head.

If we really paid attention, we'd be horrified every day. We'd be on the street ranting in sackcloth and ashes at the suffering so many of us are exposed to. Maybe we'd even go beyond the anger to action.

These days, I watch our queer community's brief moments of outrage with increasing fatigue and grief. Activists haven't found a way to harness that energy, and it usually doesn't achieve much. Folks get out on the street for one march, send an email to support a draft of one law that certainly won't put an end to deadly outbursts of antigay hate. For that, we need sustained and radical work to address two separate problems-- violence and homophobia -- which have taproots sunk so deep in our cultures it will take more than a bulldozer of a movement to rip them out.

And there's no signs we want to. How many queers argue open-mindedly for the right of women to wear burkhas, rally around the little crosses, and stars, support religion under the guise of religious and cultural freedom? We are complicit in giving preachers the keys to the state houses and schools, as if the arguments against queers weren't almost always moral ones, casting us as too unclean to be equal as humans or citizens. As if these moral arguments didn't sentence our bullied queer children to years of hell. As if they weren't in part responsible for the deaths of two young queers in Tel Aviv.

Only a revolution will save us. A real one. Things turned on their heads and kept there. We haven't seen many real revolutions. Usually there's some roulette motion where you end up like Cuba back at square one, or zero, because the human capacity for transcendence lasts, if you're lucky, about as long as a post-six-pack piss.

We can only hope for floods and earthquakes. Great event changers. Conversions. I suppose you could wish for a sudden explosion of Buddhists and Quakers who are at least nonviolent, though Jesus himself warned new wine bursts old wine skins. Better to try something altogether different. Maybe introduce valium into the tap water of our cities, half of which ends up packaged in bottles. Or instead of urging our citizens to eat more fruits and vegetables, ply them with more sugar and starches, reducing them into semi-permanent insulin shock, too weak to lift a violent hand.

Failing a revolution, we can only go at things piecemeal as usual. A law here, a community center there. Education is useful in moderation to spur activism. Learn too much about the world you can be crushed under the weight of all its bigots and idiots. What are the odds we can reach them all?

Ten to one you say, offering the magic percentage of queers in the world.

It's a point worth thinking about. Maybe we've been going at this social change stuff all wrong, trying to change things in a global way, when we should be thinking local. Like insurgents, perhaps we should act in small cells. Have an expansive vision, but stick to our limited territory of families, neighbors, friends. Like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons we could go door to door. "Have you ever met a queer? No? Then today's your lucky day. Look. No tail, or just a small one. No horns. Any questions? Have a copy of our sacred texts. A few poems by Audre Lorde. James Baldwin."

We should do what is possible. Think of it. Our agents are already in place in every family and town. The problem is, they are sleeping and the haters are awake. They are awake and looking for a target. We tell them with nods and winks and sermons who they can safely pick. We put the guns or machetes in their hands.

Our periodic and verbose catharses of outrage, do little more than reveal us to be a Queer Nation of Rip Van Winkles that wake long enough to express dismay at the world, then fall back asleep. By our silence, we recruit for the wrong side.