Season of Grief

By Kelly Cogswell

My uncle died a couple days ago in Kentucky. I can't digest it. Maybe because I'd only seen him once since I left almost three decades ago. At first I'd make occasional pilgrimages back to visit my gay-hating mother, but there was too much suffering involved, it messed me up. So I finally quit going altogether, and lost them all-- cousins, uncles, sisters. Even now, with small reconciliations, it's too late to recover what's gone, or grieve what I already mourned.

I won't go back for the funeral. Who needs to revisit old wounds? Who needs a memorial, installation, TV program, anyway, to remind us of the dead? I know what I'm talking about. Saw both towers fall with my own eyes. Today, September 12th, 2016, it's enough to look at the sky which is the same bright blue that the passengers saw fifteen years ago before they crashed, the same gorgeous blue in which we first saw the two enormous plumes of smoke that would loom over the city for months. Or are burning still.

I've never been to the 9/11 memorial, though I've seen the selfies of friends who've grinned in front of it for their camera phones. I guess that´s better than the fake solemnity you sometimes get. One of New York's football teams went and during the pre-game show we got to see a video of this beefy white guy trying to bow his head but having trouble because his neck was so stiff with muscle. Probably we don't deserve better. The streets were still covered with ash when vendors began to sell tee-shirts, "I survived the Twin Towers" or whatever.

There's not much dignity in human history. It keeps repeating itself, sometimes in tragedy but mostly farce. We didn't even get a gloomy sky as backdrop. Worse, it was an election Tuesday in New York with the usual cast of ridiculous Democrats running for mayor. The big, red-faced, meaty-fingered Hevesi. The flip-flopper Ferrer. And whatshisname Green. I want to say Al, but that's just wishful thinking. Ana and I woke up to shouting from our neighbors behind us, and for some reason turned on the tube. Then Ana went downtown with her journalist's notebook, while I went up on the roof, saw the world changed, then went back downstairs and, after Ana returned safe, but covered in dust, predicted the rise of a stupid new American nationalism, cycles of revenge and retribution, foreign wars, racism, Islamophobia.

Nothing that came after was a surprise, not even the Islamophilia in which "progressives" absolve themselves of their own privilege and bigotry by letting that religion off the hook for misogyny and queer-bashing we'd never let slide in Catholics or Southern Baptists.

Still, I had nightmares. For weeks afterwards, local TV showed nothing but the buildings burning then falling, then burning, then falling, and people jumping from the upper stories again and again and again, and every night I'd be fleeing fireballs. When the bombing started in Afghanistan, portions of ravaged bodies would also enter my dreams. I was overcome with fury and grief, mourning the victims here in New York, but also those in Kabul, and then all of us who would be destroyed by the delayed real and metaphorical explosions any idiot could see coming in Bagdad, Aleppo, Orlando, Nice. Moscow.

Remember how Putin was emboldened to become less and less democratic after Bush's unilateral actions in Iraq? Remember that while the world was distracted, the Cuban regime arrested a huge swath of disgruntled bricklayers and independent librarians, many of which are still in jail, or exiled, or conveniently dead?

Our whole response was so stupid, but it's too late now. Even this cult of September 11th is weird because we usually mark the ends of wars, not the beginning, except in local ceremonies. And we're still in the middle of this one as a nation with no end in sight because the "War" Bush declared "On Terror" wasn't against a human enemy, but an abstraction, requiring not just the usual boots on the ground, but an army of watchdogs, an infrastructure of new language and a legacy of fear and loathing that we must continually replenish.

There's something so… made-up … about the whole thing I sometimes think we should be able to unravel it. We've been duped. Before September 11th we Americans didn't even have a Homeland to defend, just a home. Or a country that may or may not have embraced us, but was ours. Sadly, the history we repeat doesn't offer quick solutions. It's only easy to destroy.

Selling Misery

By Kelly Cogswell

If you read the headlines, or read my column for that matter, you'll want to go back to sleep, pull the covers up over your head and stay there. The terrorists are around the corner, the world is going to hell, and despite our progress, queers all over the universe have little shiny targets on their foreheads.

But how accurate is that view, even for me, who can actually see the effects of gunman and mad bombers just down my Parisian block? I read an article the other day reminding us that in places like the U.S. or France we were much more likely to be killed by food poisoning, or crossing the street, or falling off a ladder than we were by murderous assholes that swallowed a little too much Islamist (or Christianist) propaganda.

Last December, Slate published an article called, "The World Is Not Falling Apart," which used wide-ranging statistics to prove that the world was more peaceful than ever before in history. "Worldwide, about five to 10 times as many people die in police-blotter homicides as die in wars." When it came to terrorist attacks, Americans, anyway, were more likely to die of bee stings or "deer collisions, ignition of nightwear, and other mundane accidents."

Even women have seen improvement, no matter that in France, one dies every three days in an act of domestic terrorism committed by their boyfriends or husbands. In Brazil black women are slaughtered so frequently we really have to use the word femicide. Nevertheless, global rates of rape, sexual assault and intimate partner violence against women are considerably less than they were a few decades ago.

And for us queers, in the last few decades many places have seen the repeal of sodomy laws, huge marriage equality wins, and major progress on trans rights. Isn't it time to pop open a bottle of champagne and celebrate? What's the matter with me that I keep harping on violence, and deaths, and antigay campaigns?

Maybe it's my activist past. I have that saying trapped in my head that declares nobody is free until we all are. And when it comes to queers, there are plenty being left behind. In the United States, LGBT people of color, trans people, poor people. The ability to exercise our new right to marry also varies from region to region. We heard a lot about Morehead, Kentucky, but there are plenty of other places where county clerks have announced they won't hand out marriage licenses to queers. The only difference is things are already so bad for LGBT folks in those communities, that nobody feels supported enough or safe enough to even begin to challenge them.

And if we Americans lift our heads to look outside our own country we see places like Nigeria where the war on queers is overt and institutionalized. If we dare concern ourselves with the bloody rampage of the Islamic State we see queers thrown off of cliffs and out of windows. Stoned to death. Iran is looking positively civilized for occasionally sending us to the gallows.

But still, how often does it happen overall? Isn't this backlash an indication of how threatened some people are by our progress, our new visibility? What do I stand to gain by encouraging you to keep your champagne safely in the fridge, to be afraid? Especially in the increasingly privileged U.S.?

After September 11th, I remember that Bush and company played on our fear and anxiety to sell us censorship, and spying, a Department of Homeland Security, and a shiny new war in Iraq. Probably some in the Bush administration believed these things were useful. But many just liked the new power. And a great many more stood to profit financially from new control of old oil fields, or the giant machine of war. They also used fear and anger to inoculate us against their abuses, like the torture engaged in at the prisons of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

As for me, all I want is for you to stay awake, pay attention. Remain mobilized. History teaches us that trends can be reversed. Things seem like they're getting better now, but nobody knows how sturdy our progress is, especially if you look at how easy it's been for the anti-abortion people to roll back women's gains.

And we are vulnerable. Not just from our enemies but from our own authoritarian trends. Squashing internal dissent. Attacking speech because we don't agree, or it lacks nuance. Trying to get things banned. We've forgotten that civil liberties like freedom of speech and association are the most important weapons we have to protect the gains we've made, and hopefully enable new ones.

I wonder sometimes if I've helped fuel that whole trend, with my constant doom and glooming, making everything seem equally important, equally dire. Maybe I should try to lighten up, remember what liberation feels like, and joy.

Entitled to Bigotry?

By Kelly Jean Cogswell

In case you haven't heard, there's an Islamic center proposed for a spot a couple of blocks from Ground Zero. The multi-story project would be run by an interfaith board, and include a performance arts center, restaurant, pool, and yes, also, a mosque.

At first, the local opposition tried to block construction by arguing the site should have landmark status. And while I know we New Yorker's love our Burlington Coat Factories, it's no surprise the zoning board wasn't persuaded to save the 132-year-old factory of no architectural or cultural value.

When that challenge failed, opponents decided to get at the heart of the matter and use naked anti-Muslim sentiment to halt it in its tracks. And after a couple months of rabble-rousing, half the United States is suddenly up in arms against the Center, waving around the memories of the sacred families of the sacred victims like so many flags.

If you believe them, the building is nothing less than an affront to America itself, a hotbed of radical Islamist ferment designed to torture the grieving families of victims that mostly don't even live in New York, and certainly don't have to pass the construction mess on the way to work. It's enough that they'll know a Muslim might be nearby.

It's not racism or bigotry, just an effort really to spare the feelings of victims. As Abraham H. Foxman, the Director of the Anti-Defamation League put it, "Survivors of the Holocaust are entitled to feelings that are irrational." Referring to September 11 family members, he said, "Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."

It's an interesting idea, giving victims of trauma entitlement to bigotry. Perhaps we could introduce it into law, and award every dyke, fag, trannie, female, or person of color in the country a get out of jail free card because lord knows plenty of us have had our personal "holocausts" (if you insist on banalizing the word). In New York City alone, besides the several hundred acts of anti-queer violence every year, there's the perpetual and insidious prejudice.

Perhaps we should establish a hetero-free zone around the LGBT Center. Imagine the pain of suffering of watching two heterosexuals make out on the street corner when doing the same with your same-sex lover landed you and your boyfriend in the emergency room. We should demand all property buyers nearby be examined for traces of straightness. Longtime hetero residents should be expected to pack their bags or convert.

Sounds ridiculous, huh? You can really only indulge in bigoted exceptionalism if you're already a member of the cultural and political majority.

In any case, Tribeca, the area around the World Trade Center, has never been, and never should be, a "Muslim-free zone" as some bigots are demanding in both open and veiled statements.

One of the project's proponents, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, has already been in the 'hood for years, running a small local mosque. Which means he belongs there as much as anybody, more than most. And the likes of Georgia politician Newt Gingrich and Alaska meddler Sarah Palin should keep their pie holes shut. Along with the New York Times, that reports the increasingly negative polls as if they should decide a local matter.

I'm not insensible to the meaning of the place. I live on First Street in Manhattan. I watched the Towers fall from my own rooftop, and for weeks and months afterwards breathed in the smoke and ash. I'm still not done grieving. But I'm a New Yorker. There have been disasters before. Horrible losses. Radical changes in landscape. Plagues and fires.

Like in 1911, when 146 mostly female garment factory workers were burned alive or died after jumping from the roof when their sweatshop factory caught fire. They couldn't escape because the doors had been locked by the owners to keep them inside. Until 9/11, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire was the worst workplace disaster in New York City.

I can't imagine the horror, but some good came from it. People fought for factory safety standards. The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union took off. What's the legacy of 9/11? Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?

If we really want to respect the dead, it's time we quit using them as a platform for bigotry, or to score political points. We should ban presidents and politicians from tracking their muddy footprints through the blood. Let Washington stick to Memorials. Here in New York, we should look to the future, and try to build something, anything, that leads to understanding, prevents more deaths, refuses a movement of hate.