"I'll tell you what, we were tough faggots." -- Ed Mead

Ed Mead spent 18 years in prison after being a part of an armed revolutionary group in Washington state called the George Jackson Brigade, which was similar to the Weather Underground.  Author Daniel Burton-Rose wrote of him,

Ed Mead was arrested relatively early in the Brigade’s trajectory, so he spent much of his organizing time behind bars.  In his close to twenty-year sentence, Mead led work strikes, filed petitions, and generally did his best to fan the flames of discontent wherever he went.  This made him something of a scourge to prison administrators, who bounced him through state and federal penal systems, moving him along whenever his organizing efforts began to bear fruit.

One of his more notable efforts was Men Against Sexism (MAS), a group of "tough faggots" who forcibly stopped the buying and selling of prisoners by prisoners for the purpose of sexual exploitation [violent pimping of weaker prisoners by stronger ones] in Walla Walla.  During the group’s zenith in 1978, MAS proved so effective that a feminine male prisoner could wear a dress around without threat of violence.  MAS backed up their work with homemade grenades, single-shot rifles, and a willingness to die to stop prisoner-on-prisoner rape.  "Of all the political work that I’ve done," says Mead, Men Against Sexism is what I’m most proud of.  (The group effectively disbanded after a foiled escape attempt in 1978 involving Mead, several other prisoners and an array of homemade weapons.)

Yes, Mead and others actually had smuggled weapons into the prison, including a gun Mead was ready to use on at least one occasion.  According to Burton-Rose, the two men you see below holding hands debated killing members of a prison gang who defied their ban on "owning", selling, and raping other prisoners.  Only under threat of death did the gang release an effeminate gay prisoner over whom they had claimed "ownership".

Tough faggot, indeed.

Writing on the back reads, "MAS [Men Against Sexism] member Ed Mead + Danny Atteberry (misidentified as "lovers" in CM ["Concrete Mama", a nickname for the prison]) walk the tier of Big Red, the isolation unit at Walla Walla State Pen.  77 or 78 <probably."

Download a 300 dpi high-quality scan here.

Writing on the back reads, "Photo from the epic struggle of prisoners in Walla Walla's Intensive Security Unit, '78, in which Ed was involved.  The [George Jackson] Brigade attempted a bombing of the Capitol Complex in Olympia in support of the prisoner's strike."

Download a 300 dpi high-quality scan here.

These are scans are from copies found in a friend's musty old box of activist stuff from the 1970s and 1980s.  As far as I could tell from poking around on Google Images, this might be the first time these have been posted online.  I can't help but love the fuck out of these photos of queer resistance from inside prisons in the 1970s.  I have no idea what the original source of these photos is, but I will gladly credit them if someone tells me.

* * *

For even more forgotten radical history from my area, one of the other members of the George Jackson Brigade, Janine Bertram, was a co-founder of the Seattle chapter of COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), an early sex workers rights group.  Janine wanted the government out of sex workers' business completely, and was quoted as being opposed to compromises that "would have made the state the pimp."  The Seattle chapter of COYOTE later changed its name to the Washington Association of Prostitutes and created a job training program to teach women male-dominated skills, such as welding.

(I learned about this little piece of the ho revolution while trying to see if those prison photos has been published anywhere, skimming "Guerrilla USA: The George Jackson Brigade and the Anticapitalist Underground of the 1970s," which has now been placed on my book wish list.)

(A sampling of images of covered women in the midst of Egypt's revolution during the last week.  More photos of women in this gallery and this one and here, too - not all of whom are Muslims or wearing headscarfs, niqabs, or chadors.  There's also an album for Facebook users, requires login.)

Before reading my post, you should know a bit about the situation on Egypt.  If you have not been closely following international news, I made a comic/infographic explaining the January 25h revolution through Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, so at the very least, go read that for the basic context.  If you want more information, here are three short videos that I liked, with totally different tones - the first has upbeat scenes from Egypt and Tunisia (which ousted their dictator recently), the second is a heartwarming look at Egyptians taking care of each other and the city of Cairo, and the third is a serious vlog made by a brave young woman who helped start this revolution.  For stuff specifically about women taking part in the Egyptian revolution, see pieces from Slate, Matt Cornell, Newsweek, Global Voices, Democracy Now, and The New York Times.  Lastly, you can watch ongoing events on Al Jazeera English's web stream - this is still unfolding!

I made my most controversial and widely re-posted tweet on Twitter a week ago.  Here's a sentence that proved even more polarizing than I expected:

I hope that western feminists who infantilize Muslim women see photos of Egyptian women in burqas rioting against a dictatorship.

Aside from some angry stupids, my statement received good responses from both cool Western folks and residents of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.  (As an aside, for those calling me out for using the term "burqa" when the photos from Egypt show women wearing scarves and chador/niqabs/hijabs: yes, I knew that.  Accessible language is important to me, and everyone American has an idea of what "burqa" means.  And, Twitter only allows for so many characters.)

For most people, the idea of a sex worker supporting covered Muslim women sounds absurd.  What could we possibly have in common?

I do feel a sense of solidarity with Muslim women who are belittled for choosing to wear an abaya, chador, niqab, burqa, or what-have-you.  As a sex worker and a devout atheist, I am hardly what you could consider an apologist for the injustices women suffer in the MENA region and how Islam views women/sexuality in general.  But, that doesn't mean Muslim women are feeble-minded weaklings.  I know what it feels like to have other women decide that you're too stupid to be allowed to make your own decisions.  Western feminists, by and large, claim that I have been brainwashed by the patriarchy, and must be "saved" from my decision to work in porn.  Likewise, the same people tend to impose their judgments on Muslim women, arguing that they need to be "saved" from the religious brainwashing forcing them to adhere to Islam.

It's easy to feel paternalistic towards Muslim women - the more covered, the more pitied - and they are definitely a caricature in the West for what "oppressed" and "sexism" looks like - just like sex workers.  The same people who say it's hypocritical for covered Muslim women to demand freedom in Egypt will also scoff at sex workers demanding respect in the states.

One of the things I often remind people is to remain conscious of is whether their desire to "help" others is rooted more in solidarity, or in paternalism.  It's a troubling dynamic to me, and not only because I'm in a group of people greatly affected by it.  It's a very slippery slope to start deciding that other adults are incapable of deciding what they want to do with their lives.  Would you have any interest in building bridges with someone who condescendingly believes you can't be trusted to decide what to do with your life and what clothing (not lack thereof) to wear?

When dealing with social issues like Egypt's revolution, you have to look at things first not through the lens of feminist gender analysis, you have to get basic and consider Maslow's hierarchy of needs.  (For those unfamiliar, it's a pyramid setting up human needs, starting from food/water/shelter, and being topped out with self-actualization.)  Think of it also as a "social change hierarchy of needs": you can't lecture people about how they should focus on pondering whether wearing head coverings are sexist, when paying for food is a daily struggle for them.  This might come as a surprise to some, but when people don't have money for bare necessities, live in daily fear of the police, and have no hope for their futures, they're not laying in wait for middle and upper-class liberals in America try and dictate a political agenda to them.  I would love to see full gender equality in the MENA region, but I'm sick of seeing people doing the "let them eat cake" thing in regards to Egypt.

The situation in Egypt is exciting to me not only because the revolutionary spirit started in Tunisia is spreading, but because so many of the protesters seem to be young and less conservative than previous generations.  This gives me hope that this is a win for women - both in the long and short term.  American conservatives are busy fear-mongering about radical Islam, arguing hyperbolic nonsense that if Egypt's president leaves, sharia law will be instituted and women will be beheaded in the streets of Cairo.  After seeing so many women boldly rising up, screaming at male police, demanding the present leave, organizing a revolution, and getting involved in changing their country at the grassroots level, I don't think the women of Egypt would stand for it.  We Enlightened Western Liberals don't need to save them.  They're saving themselves.

(I don't want the comments on this post to turn into a debate abut Islam or religion in general, so save it for one of my posts that specifically address religion and sexuality, okay?  PS: Tracy Quan has also written about covered Muslim women.  See her 2006 piece here.)

I've had Toby Clark's Art and Propaganda in the Twentieth Century sitting on my shelf for ages, but only finally started reading it.  There were two stories in the women's art section that I thought were especially interesting and worth sharing with readers of my blog.  The book appears to be out of print, but I'm thus far enjoying it, and would recommend tracking down a used copy if you're into art and politics.  Here's excerpts on two people I liked, with the accompanying imagery:

Most of those who produced propaganda for the suffrage movements were not professional artists, through the implications of their work sometimes challenged dominant ideas about art.  Some even took on the art institutions directly, and adopted them as the stage for political actions.

The British campaigner for women's suffrage Mary Richardson did this in 1914 when she took a small axe into the National Gallery in London.  She used it on The Rokeby Venus (c. 1650) by Diego Velazquez (1599-1660), smashing the glass and slashing the painting a number of times before being restrained and arrested.  She explained at her trial that her motive had been to draw attention to the treatment of the suffragette leader Emily Pankhurst, who had been on hunger strike in London's Holloway Prison.  It was not an isolated event but one of many propaganda activities which the militant wing of the suffrage movement had carried out in Britain since 1905 to gain the vote and oppose wider discrimination against women.  The attack on the painting would have been partly understood as an extension of the suffragettes' tactic of smashing department store windows, which assaulted the feminized spaces of consumerism like a parodic inversion of shopping.  By moving the battle to the nation's foremost art museum, Richardson brought the values of the state's guardians of culture into the line of fire, and choosing a famous picture of a nude woman, she targeted the point of intersection between institutional power and the representations of femininity.

Richardson's act provoked a complex set of meanings and effects.  At first sight, it looks like an attack on the control and exposure of the female body as an object of male erotic pleasure.  Richardson remarked that she had disliked the way the way men in the gallery had "gaped" at the picture.  But she admired the painting itself, comparing Velazquez's Venus with her own political heroine, saying, "I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful women in mythological history as a protest against the Government destroying Mrs Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history."  Yet Richardson had not destroyed the picture, but altered it, making a new image - the slashed Venus - which was widely reproduced in photographs in the national press, as Richardson had surely anticipated.  Though the newspapers' response was hostile, demonizing "Slasher Mary" as a monstrous hysteric, Richardson had succeeded in using the mass media to disseminate "her" picture of a wounded heroine, in effect a metaphorical portrait of the martyred Plankhurst and of the suffering of women in general.

And:

Born as Lucy Schwob to a family of Jewish intellectuals, [Claude Cahun (1894-1954)] engaged in a varied career of art, acting, poetry, and political activism.  She became involved with the Surrealists after meeting them as members of a group of communist artists in 1932.  At this time, there were serious tensions in the Surrealists' relationship with communism.  [...]

Cahun left the communists in 1933.  Much of her artistic activity depended on the radical transformation of her own appearance.  She had worked on montages and photographic self-portraits since 1914 as a student at the Sorbonne, and from 1919 she wore dramatically short hair, sometimes dyeing it pink, green, and gold.  Alongside her adoption of various pseudonyms, her self-portraits explore a repertoire of playfully shifting identities, portraying her as a soldier or convict with shaved head, or as a wild parody of the Hollywood good-time girl, or as a circus acrobat.  Like Hoch's art, Cahun's work was closely allied to her lesbianism and to a practice which involved a parodic masquerade in a series of stereotypically feminine roles which only emphasized her adamant refusal to conform to them.  Until recently, these activities lacked a context through which they could be widely understood as "political."  As a form of propaganda, they are certainly oblique, although at an everyday and popular level the adoption in public of a non-conformist appearance has been readily understood as a form of political statement since long before the age of the hippies and punks.  As it transpired, Cahun's most explicit propaganda work would be as a member of Resistance forces against the Nazi occupation of Jersey, where she lived during the war, engaging in four years of anti-Nazi activities which included flying a banner from a church which read, "Jesus is great, but Hitler is greater - for Jesus died for the people but people die for Hitler."  She was arrested in 1944 and condemned to death by the Gestapo.  Despite a reprieve, she spent nearly a year in prison from which she never fully recovered, physically or mentally.

I realize that I'm a couple of weeks late to the fight in publishing this rant, but I was so angry when people first starting attacking Dan Savage's It Gets Better Project, I decided I needed to let this sit on the back burner for a bit.  Rather than being rendered irrelevant by the passage of time, I'd like to think it's the opposite.  Now that the feminist whine-o-sphere has moved on to bitching about other grievous injustices, the distance actually serves to show how little the haters accomplished, and how beautiful it has been to see It Gets Better grow and touch lives.

Allow me to start with a personal story.

I grew up in a part of the country that's - how do I put it delicately? - well-represented on PeopleOfWalmart.com.  My grandmother and J's grandmother were best friends, they lived on the same street in a middle class neighborhood.  J and I spent a bunch of time hanging out as kids.  He was a gentle, kind, effeminate boy, who always seemed somewhat lonely.  We drifted, as people do.  We went to different schools and spent less time hanging out at our grandmother's homes.  All I knew, beyond our childhood friendship, were the embarrassed whispers of family gossip that he was a homo and had "problems" dealing with it.

When J was 17, he put a gun in his mouth.

One of my only serious regrets in life is that I didn't make an effort to keep hanging out, keep making a point to see him, to hopefully maybe in the best of worlds to have changed the ways things turned out for him.

In 1999, my life was no picnic, but I knew it wasn't going to be like that forever.  My best friend at that point was the most gay-bashed kid in our school, who was repeatedly assaulted by bullies, including while teachers watched without intervening.  Dropping out and fleeing flyoverland was one of the best decisions I've ever made.  Even though I had a thick skin, I saw zero reason to purposefully keep subjecting myself to an environment where people hated me, called me a slut, and threw food at me.  I wish J has still been alive when I left, wish I could have brought him with me, I wish I could have shown him what I suspected all along - that there is a whole world outside of this shithole hometown of ours.

Even though I wasn't able to be there for J, I wish someone would have told him, "It gets better".  And with the rash of queer youth suicides in the media, Dan Savage decided to step up and do just that, for all the other kids just like my childhood friend who ended his own life.

There is not a person alive today with more drive and ability than Dan Savage to tell the world - through his column, blog, podcast, and television appearances - that it's okay to be queer, or kinky, or non-monogamous, and to embrace their sexuality.  Dan Savage a powerhouse of a sex-positivity activist, frequently maximizing his widely-syndicated sex advice column and popular podcast to drum up support for important issues.  I especially appreciate that he's consistently implored straight readers that they need to pay attention to anti-queer bigots and politicians, because those types aren't just after The Gays, they're out to take rights away from straight people, too.  So, with his ability to have an impact on public discourse, Dan launched the It Gets Better Project last month, based around a video channel on YouTube, for anyone to upload messages of love and support for isolated and struggling queer kids who may be thinking of taking their own lives.

The videos I have watched are so moving and inspiring, and positively radiate care and love.  Participants get choked up over telling the world about how they'd tried to kill themselves, how glad they are to be alive today, how they have amazing partners now, how they've come to meet so many other great queer people, and how important it is to just stick it out, because it gets better.  Internet celebrities like blogger Perez Hilton and porn star Buck Angel both tell viewers that they're welcome to email them and they'll gladly offer their personal support.  (It bears emphasizing: I didn't see a single person who was attacking the It Gets Better Project put themselves out there to offer their personal support to queer kids.)

I've only watched a dozen or so of the videos, but the ones I've seen are just so damned beautiful and filled with love for lonely and bullied queer kids.  I've cried watching some of the videos I've clicked on.  It's one of the best, most direct, and most effective activist projects I've seen in ages.

So, in harsh contrast to all that support and hope, I witnessed many people in the feminist whine-o-sphere predictably became enraged at the offensiveness of it all.  The nerve of that asshole Dan Savage!  Using his fame and popularity to reach out and try to prevent queer kids from killing themselves!

The two key arguments against It Gets Better seem to boil down to a) "privileged" bullied queer kids thinking of killing themselves don't matter anyway, and b) if an activist project doesn't instantly fix all problems for everyone, it is therefor a horrible idea and shouldn't be done at all.

Dan Savage has addressed critics by blogging,

To the angry folks: I admit that IGBP doesn't do the impossible.  It doesn't solve the problem of anti-gay bullying, everywhere, all at once, forever.  The point of the videos is to give despairing kids in impossible situations a little thing called hope.  The point is to let them know that things do get better.  For some people things get better once they get out of high school, for others things get better while they're still in high school.

[...]

Nothing about letting kids know that it gets better excuses or precludes us from pressing for the Student Non-Discrimination Act, demanding anti-bullying programs, confronting the bigots who are making things worse, or supporting the Trevor Project.  But we're not going to get legislation passed this instant or get anti-bullying programs into schools in rural areas—particularly private Christian schools—before classes start tomorrow.  Doing all of that is going to take years of hard work and dedicated activism.  In the meantime, while we work on all of that, we can get these messages of hope in front of kids who are crisis right now.  And we must use the tools we have at our disposal right now—social media and YouTube and digital video—to get these messages of hope to kids who are suffering right now in schools without GSAs and kids who are trapped schools that will never have GSAs and kids whose parents who bully and reject them.

There's nothing about this project—nothing about participating in this project—that prevents people from doing more.  Indeed, I would hope that participating in this raises awareness and leaves people feeling obligated to do more.

When I saw people expending their energy attacking It Gets Better, the dynamic felt all too familiar.  Just another group of elite politically correct liberals who prefer to focus on honing and touting their perfect theories, rather than taking real tangible actions.

My childhood friend I mentioned earlier?  J was a white guy, middle class, able-bodied, and presumably cisgender.  In the eyes of the feminist whine-o-sphere, I guess it that this means his life wasn't worth saving, and he didn't deserve receiving a message of hope and support during the darkest days of his life.  After all, he was just some privileged gay kid, not a caricature of perfect oppressions, a lab-created layer cake to salivate over, like a transgender wheelchair-bound black queer kid who grew up in a slum in Rio.

J's suicide is a very personal reason I want to slap every insipid armchair pundit who devoted time to attacking Dan Savage and the It Gets Better Project.  These critics blithely dismissed the campaign because they viewed it as only reaching out to privileged queer kids, which tacitly argues that those kids don't really matter and don't really suffer. Activists in first world countries often forget - while ironically often accusing others of being "too privileged" - that there are actual lives involved in the issues they theorize and pontificate over.  Kids who get bullied to death and are physically attacked by tormentors are not abstract concepts to me, they're people I've known and cared for.  They're living, and dead, reminders of why I didn't need to read The God Delusion to form an analysis of how religion poisons everything.

Growing up as a picked on queer kid isn't easy for anyone, even if they are non-poor caucasian able-bodied cisgender boys.  If life is so gleefully "privileged" for them, why do these queer kids kill themselves?  What if my friend J had been deaf?  What if he was Hispanic?  Would his life have been worth caring about then?  What does it take to get some simple fucking human decency towards the misery of people like J, or my other "privileged" friend who dealt with assault at school on a regular basis?  When you dismiss reaching out to "privileged" kids (and I dispute the accuracy of that allegation anyway), you dismiss and belittle the pain of those kids, plain and simple.

Samuel Johnson famously quipped a delightful observation - that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.  I shall now famously quip that "activism" which centers on accusing others of being too privileged is the last refuge of the lazy.

You know what's not lazy?  The It Gets Better Project.  Go submit your own video message, support initiatives in your area that address bullying in schools or provide funding for queer youth services, and donate to organizations such as The Trevor Project or  The Ali Forney Center.

Stick it to the feminist whine-o-sphere: actually do something.

"The membership restrictions of [The Foundation for Personality Expression], and the form and the content of its meetings, demonstrate a familiar pattern in minority identity politics in US history- it is often the most privileged elements of a population affected by a particular civil injustice or social oppression who have the opportunity to organize first.  In organizing around the one thing that interferes with or complicates their privilege, their organizations tend to reproduce that very privilege."

-- Susan Stryker, in her book, Transgender History.

I thought it was interesting to see a historian observe this about the trans rights movement - since similar criticism has also been pointed at white middle class sex workers.

I've long contended that one of the best "quiet acts" of sex worker's rights activism is for us to be out of the closet in our "real life" friendships and interactions.  I think it's a very powerful statement in and of itself, without even delving into complex politics with people.  I realize that it's not an option for all sex workers, but it is an option that I think more of us could and should take, even in baby steps like striking up a short conversation that involves you disclosing your occupation to someone you're sitting next to on a train/bus/flight and will never see again.

I'm out to pretty much everyone I come into regular contact with, and have outed myself to strangers countless times.  I personally draw my line at coming out to my neighbors.  It's too much of a safety concern for me to risk setting someone off who knows where I live.  (Although, a previous next-door neighbor found my blog last year and emailed me to say how much he liked it.)  I did, however, unsuccessfully lobby my homeowner's association from a libertarian perspective that we should drop a lease requirement that renters must not engage in prostitution on the property.

Being out will definitely create some awkwardness and tension with discovering haters in your extended social circles, but you're also doing loads of good by humanizing a stigmatized part of our society, of which almost no one openly admits they're either a creator/provider or consumer.  You can help dispel stereotypes simply by showing people that sex workers are not a monolithic caricature of abused, drug-addled illiterates covered in open sores.  As much as I'm loathe to hear people trot out the standard condescending "Wow, but you're so smart!" initial reaction, I know it's ultimately a good thing for everyone.  I also want to scare away potential friends and lovers as soon as humanly possible so I don't waste my time with them if they're decidedly anti-porn or anti-sex work.

Recently, Andrew Sullivan posted "Why The Gay Movement Is Winning" about a new poll.  He notes, "It confirms what we already knew - that ending the closet is the key to equality.  By far the best way to do this is as an act of positive affirmation."

I immediately wondered what such pie-charts would look like over the decades for how many people say they know a sex worker.  While the issues surrounding the struggles for queer rights and sex workers rights aren't perfectly analogous, I think there's much sex workers can learn from a movement that is, in many ways, hopefully where sex workers will be at within my lifetime.

When your opposition depends on secrecy and shame to influence public opinion, openness is a powerful weapon.

"My generation saw in The Graduate that there is one romantic strategy to use above all others: persistence.  This same strategy is at the core of every stalking case.  Men pursuing unlikely or inappropriate relationships with women and getting them in a common theme promoted in our culture.  Just recall Flashdance, Tootsie, The Heartbreak Kid, 10, Blame it on Rio, Honeymoon in Vegas, Indecent Proposal.

This Hollywood formula could be called Boy Wants Girl, Girl Doesn't Want Boy, Boy Harasses Girl, Boy Gets Girl.  Many movies teach you that if you just stay with it, even if you offend her, even if she says she wants nothing to do with you, even if you've treated her like trash (and sometimes because you've treated her like trash), you'll get the girl.

[...]

Even if men and women in America spoke the same language, they would still live by much different standards.  For example, if a man in a movie researches a woman's schedule, finds out where she lives and works, even goes to her workplace uninvited, it shows his commitment, proves his love.  When Robert Redford does this to Demi Moore in Indecent Proposal, it's adorable.  But when she shows up at his work unannounced, interrupting a business lunch, it's alarming and disruptive.

If a man in the movies wants a sexual encounter or applies persistence, he's a regular, everyday guy, but if a woman does the same thing, she's a maniac or a killer.  Just recall Fatal Attraction, The King of Comedy, Single White Female, Play Misty For Me, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, and Basic Instinct.  When men pursue, they usually get the girl.  When women pursue, they usually get killed."

-- Gavin de Becker, in his book, The Gift of Fear.

"Still, it does exist, and it's going to be a very... interesting experience socially when my voice drops to some extent and I'm consistently read by strangers as male. As it is now, if I'm walking down the street near a woman who's alone, she will read me as a male and act cautious, but when I say something, I'm immediately non-threatening and everything is okay. I'm predicting that I will have to adjust to suddenly becoming a threatening person for women, to being interacted with differently and expected to conform to a slew of 'male' stereotypes, so on and so forth. And it's sad that a lot of these stereotypes are based in truth."

-- Mel, in Frakking Gender! on humancomplaints.com

I like reading personal stories from trans folk.  I found this thought from Mel (yay - a fellow vegan!) on how women read him to be particularly interesting to contemplate.  (Pst - he's seeking help to pay for his top surgery, so read his blog and consider a donation.)

« Go to newer posts — Go back to older posts »