Marginalia: edge identities, 2004

Q: Mark Thompson, Port Phillip Gay Lesbian Transgender Intersex Advisory Committee. Question for Rachel and perhaps secondarily for Sue Ann. I was trying to frame this question because as an Anglo I’m not quite sure about the experience but then I realised Anglos did the same thing about reification of the homeland and as the people who came to Australia we regarded Britain as this idealised home country and very often it seems to me that also other immigrant communities who come out to Australia idealise their homeland to a situation where the homeland’s changing and growing through the ages whereas within Australia some of those values actually stay the same. My suggestion is that these hybrid identities of other communities rather identities that actually feeding into those communities are actually performing the same function as they would have in those countries.

RB: I know what you are saying and I think there are quite a few theorists who kind of talk about, you know, the micro communities, as I said [it] does end up being this idea that the micro community has been a replacement for the coming home. And certainly we often talk about the Gay & Lesbian communities as family and that there is this notion of family and homeland and being able to come into this bosom of this family. Unfortunately my experience of going into those communities as a late teenager and my early 20s was constantly being questioned about my legitimacy there and my authenticity there especially within certain women’s circles where in one particular case people went round the group and said, you know, “well, I’m here to make lesbian art” and “I’m here to do this” and “I’m here to do that” and I kind of went, “well, I’m here to explore issues of bisexuality and art” and they kind of all went “Ohhh, we need to have a vote on whether you’re allowed to stay” and voted that I wasn’t permitted to stay in that group and that was an Out Art thing in 1991 in Sydney. So those ideas of coming home, yes I understand that you are then saying “OK, well, maybe the place that home is for me is going to be where there is something for me”. But that’s the problem: it gets tiny until you’re a group of one and so I want to avoid those situations where my response to that is to say “well, I’ll find the people who look exactly the same as me and form my own little homeland” and instead say this is the wrong thing to be doing, trying to find the homeland, instead let’s share, spread, be diverse, practice these things and have permeable spaces rather than seek homelands at all.

Sue-Ann Post: Actually I meant to say because after I’d listened to your paper I sort of looked at mine and went “I should rip it up and write a new one all over again”. Just a short answer thing. I’ve actually worked on the theory, I don’t know if you were there last night, but I’ve whacked so many labels myself I love it. I want more. I want as many as I can get until I’m like an old 50s suitcase just covered all over the place until they become meaningless, until people just look at me and go that’s Postie, she’s weird but OK. That’s sort of where I’m aiming for and also I didn’t actually get the idealisation of Holland. Part of the reason we never made a fuss about is my mother hated being Dutch. She denied she was Dutch the insane old bat. And she kept telling me the most horrible things about them. She made me swear that I would never marry a Dutchman because they were all pigs. It’s the only thing I’ve ever obeyed her in.

RB: Can I also just say I did actually go — I refuse to say go back to because I never went there in the first place — but I went to Kiev last year to go to my grandfather’s birth place and to trace my grandfather’s birth place. Not because I was looking for some idealised homeland but because I wanted to walk on soil he’d walked on, because I’d never met him and I think that was a really fascinating trajectory to trace his movements backwards. I’m not saying we shouldn’t find out who we are and I’m not saying I want some bland world in which we’re all the same because we have absolutely no differentiators either. Cool.

Q: I’ve got a question that kind of addresses some of the issues that Rosanne raised but if other people have got comments that would be great. I share a lot of the concerns about identity politics that you spoke about and I also attended a paper before that Audrey Yue was also raising questions about identity politics. I share those concerns but one of the things that I try and do is think about identity as a strategic positioning and one of the examples I guess is this very conference where we’ve all come together under a particular banner which has actually given us a platform from which to speak about particular issues and I guess in that way strategically even though we’re all very diverse and we’re using an identity to speak from a particular position. It’s given a voice to some issues, drawn some boundaries around what it is that we want to come together here today to talk about. I don’t want to fix identity and I don’t want us to include and exclude but I wonder if you had any comments about how strategically in our current political context that can be useful.

RB: It’s a huge question and I’m going to respond with another example. Yes, I think that we can strategically do these things and I guess to some extent this is embarrassing to say I think I’ve given up to some extent and that’s a sad thing, because I feel like I’ve been doing this for a fair while and I’ve just gone, “OK, I’m going to write this big thesis about it and say OK here’s my position, now I’m going to take a break”, but one of my responses a while back when I first had all these experiences in the various communities of being rejected from them and going “OK, well, what do I do now?”, was to try and create a group which I called Love is Boundless which came out of the first Queer Collaborations, where five of us in my flat at one point, and I mean I wasn’t the person who came up with the idea but it ended up being in my flat, and the five of us came up with this thing called Love is Boundless where we wanted to try and create what we at the time called the Queer community without prejudice, where we wanted to say “OK we want to get rid of the labels, what do we want? Let’s create the community we actually want now,” lt’s do this, let’s have this idea that we can still have a community — at the time we called it a community, now I would want to call it a collectivity because I would want to engage with political practices instead and move outside just these issues and say OK we’ve got all of these huge issues, border policing and the rubbish that’s going on in this country and everywhere with skirmishes around ethnicity and sexuality and increasing right wing Christian control of the Senate and on and on. Let’s engage outside of this, let’s create communities that we want to live in right now and yes by all mean use these things strategically but now I don’t use identity strategically, I use practice strategically. I now talk about being interested in anything that moves rather than saying I’m labelled partly due to finding as I was saying to Sue Ann before, at a Mardi Gras party a few years ago kind of watching some gorgeous tranny and she’s going, “Oh God how did that fit in, oh yeah I’m not bisexual am I?” OK I’ll do anything. I’m saying my interests are diverse.

Q: I just wanted to throw in a quote I read from I think was a black American feminist back in the 70s. It’s almost the quote I’ve tried to live my life by and I just love its simplicity; the best way to bring about the world you want to live in is to pretend you already live in it and treat people accordingly.

SAP (?): Perhaps I could just respond with two points that you raised one of which is I feel very at home at this conference and it’s like a family conference in the sense that this is the 3rd conference I’ve been to in a week and a half, the 1st one was an international conference of $2000 registration, Sydney Convention Centre, did I talk about myself? No. The 2nd one was in Canberra (indistinct) Education Conference. Do I dare divulge too much about myself? No, it took 3 drinks. Here I just arrived and I feel very much at home and I could talk about whatever I wanted to with anyone I wanted. I could look at anybody, I’m at home.

What to do about what’s going on in the world? Well if we need to remind ourselves if we are reminding ourselves that sorry if we are concerned about is it called the Family First movement? If we are concerned about them, if we are concerned about what they say about whoever we think we are then maybe we need to remind some people maybe the Minister this morning who has put the Family First into Victoria, I think it might be the preferential voting of the ALP. So there are some things that we need to remind ourselves about historically, locally, there are things we can do we need to talk out but it’s really handy when we can talk about those things amongst our families, our communities in which we are comfortable.

Q: My name is Orian. As I was waiting and listening to other people’s questions I thought yeah that’s kind of what I was going to ask and yeah that’s sort of what I was going to ask too and I guess it’s directed at Rosanne and your presentation around identity and I’ve really been challenged by what you’ve said particularly given that as coming out as a lesbian woman is such for anybody lesbian bisexual gay people transgender whatever, it’s such a struggle to do that and that as we do that we always have to claim our identity back from the mainstream or claim a part of the mainstream that fits for us and I guess I’m also a psychologist and I think there’s identity on a micro and macro level within our own personal identity and also identities that we have within the community in which we live and I think by getting rid of the concept of identity and micro communities, for me that would be enormously difficult because I would feel very isolated and alone and potentially unsupported from the micro communities that I have around myself to support me in my ongoing struggle out in the mainstream to actually live my life on a day to day basis and I just thought I found your paper really making that differentiation let’s talk about our practices rather than our identities I think that’s good but at some point I think we do need to have some grouping or community of people that enables us to feel safe and welcome and validated and I don’t know how we can I know you talked about your community but I don’t know how that can be mirrored on a bigger basis on an ongoing basis because I think just by the very nature of wanting to be surrounded by people who are same or similar to us, we automatically set up that polarisation and I just wanted to I guess wonder if you have any more thoughts about that and whether I guess your paper is saying that the micro groups are not the way to go and that they’re not necessary I think is wanted some clarification on.

RB: I understand what you’re saying about that. I think I said this when I very first started: one of the reasons I was nervous about it, I really do understand that a lot of people feel these micro communities are absolutely vital to psychological survival but then you go on to say you are looking for people the same or similar and the problem is I’ve never met anyone the same as me. Never. And it ends up that I, then, no matter which of these groups I move towards, I’m going to be isolated and it’s almost like, you know, that when people say, “well why do you need a Women’s room?”, you say, “well, because the men have the rest of society”. It’s all very well for the person who feels comfortable in their Judaism and is lesbian because then the Jewish Lesbian, great that works for you but everybody else who’s got slight differences from that and who is struggling with all of these other things and then so I feel that to some extent… and I know it sounds like I’m just griping : “I’m too different and I can’t find anyone to play with me” and I don’t want that to be what I’m saying. Nor am I saying “so, OK you guys dissolve your group, you guys dissolve your group, there we are problem solved” because that’s ridiculous, I’m fully aware that’s useless. So what am I saying? How do we get to my lovely world that we want to have where everybody can just talk about practice and nobody feels isolated? I guess one of the steps is places like this in which we are able to talk about the similarities of experience between the Greek & Gay group and the Jewish lesbian group and say, “Hang on a second, I don’t have to be the same as you”. We don’t have to be both women because I think Greek & Gay is mostly guys. We don’t have to be exclusive because there are bisexuals and lesbians and we can talk about that and we don’t have to both be Jewish, we can be Jewish and Greek and we can talk about and presumably a lot of the Greek people are coming from a Christian background and a Greek Orthodox background and we can talk about the similarities of experiences without necessarily seeking the mirror. So that’s step one. Then once we’ve got those kind of groupings we can start to say, “well, hang on a second, how am I similar to the people over there who are heterosexual and Christian and white?” What similar experiences, how do we branch across this and how do we then engage in political discussions, political engagements on similar issues again of practice where we say, “well, hang on, I want to be able to love equally” or “I want to have donor inseminations” or whatever it is that is an issue-based thing we can get together on and have collectivities that aren’t based around “you look the same as me, you are the same as me”.

Q: Thanks very much I feel that you actually operationalised what you were saying, the academic stuff, and actually put it into some practice so thanks.

Q (Jack Fairchild): Hi in theme with everyone else’s comments I’m going to respond to what Rosanne said (indistinct). I just want to make a comment that I’ve been recently working in universities. I go to Deakin University and I was one of the first Queer officers we had there and one of the huge problems that we had is that my perception is I became incredibly comfortable in our collective with our community and who we were but it’s impossible to see where people are hiding. Everyone out there is hiding, especially when the get to university. Deakin is a great space for people to hide. It looks really homogenous when you walk in there from the outside. You stare in and go oh well there’s the international students and there’s the kids from the country and that’s pretty much it. But moving through that space I discovered queers under every rock, under every staircase and there were more closets than you could possibly imagine and each time we made a statement each time our collective became more individual and we call ourselves Queerdos because everyone in our collective is a bit on the fringe, we completely excluded the people who kind of embrace a mainstream place and they don’t have a place in our collective. They really don’t. They come to us and there’s people with dreds and piercings and Goths and weirdos and trans people. To be honest we actually do have a problem with that we are a bit of a ghetto. I don’t know how we can do it but part of it is letting go and going I as an activist, I have to let go of what I’m proud of. I just want to say where do you think as an activist do you think I need to let go of where we are? Do we need (indistinct) to go out there and let go of ourselves and kind of do I know it’s a difficult question to ask.

RB: It’s a huge question but I said in the talk I said one of these things is a fear of letting go of difference and Deleuze and Guattari said about the Jewish community that ours is a passional line, ours is the scapegoat line and to some extent that is, yes I acknowledge that as well, this fear of letting go of being different because we’ve spent so long protecting ourselves and turning being different into something to be proud of because they told us “you’re different, that’s something you should be ashamed of” and we’ve had to turn it around and say, “No way, I’m different and I’m proud of it and I’m comfortable with that” and you know to some extent I think that’s when I was talking about community continuity. That’s what happening. The Jewish community is so accepted with mainstream community now there is this “how do we keep our kids Jewish?”. The Gay community — and I use that even though I know there are multi communities — the Gay community in Sydney, the older Mardi Gras community, has very much recently been saying, “hang on a second, these new young Queer guys who are so comfortable with themselves and happy to just be who they are, well, hang on but we want a gay community and we want our gay community, our gay institutions to look like they used to and we don’t want to let go,” and then of course we get the scary, the whole gay Liberal voter thing. You know, “What? They’re mainstream? How did that happen?” So do we have to let go of it? Yes to some extent we do, yes it’s very scary. I have chosen to work within mainstream organisations because I believe that they are to some extent more power by hiding within the mainstream organisations to change the world rather than only, and I’m not saying don’t lobby from the outside in the weirdo sector because I do that as well, but certainly yes, losing some of the difference and moving into the mainstream and subverting it from in there is just as vital.

SAP (?): And if I (indistinct) you’re a university student, you’re the most powerful person in the whole university structure. You pay the money, you call the shots and if you don’t call the shots you must, so don’t underestimate your own power. Work out what you want and go for it.

Q: I just wanted to thank all of the speakers I guess and all of the ones from today because I think I’ve been a bit challenged about the concept of family and as a prospective Lesbian parent, hopefully, not very prospective at this stage, I won’t be a biological parent and so I kind of just wanted to challenge the language around biology being that’s how you transfer culture and ethnicity and religion because in the family I’ll be a social parent and I think that is something about language that we need to be aware of that biology doesn’t transfer that necessarily. That’s just a postscript for everyone to take home with them. My child will have 3 parents, well 2 mums and a donor dad or Dod as we’re going to call him, 6 grandparents and numerous aunts and uncles and hopefully one day lots of other cousins. It has really challenged me I guess today about the fact that I haven’t really thought about the family history or the biological or sort of the cultural background enough of my donor, our donor, Dod to an extent where I feel that I could transfer that learning and history and feeling and whatever it might be, ownership over self to my child in the future so I think I’d just like to say thank you for challenging me on those and I’d perhaps just like to hear if there’s any ideas about how we do challenge, particularly now with Family First, the concept of family within our Queer Multicultural community.

Moderator (?): I’m not going to answer that question but to say perhaps you weren’t at the previous session because Margie Fischer got us thinking about those issues brilliantly so find her.

RB: I just want to say I hope that it wasn’t anything I said that gave you the impression of the biological family stuff because I’m also looking at a situation where if I’m going to have a kid it’s just either going to be me and donor dad and then I’m looking at exactly the same kind of issues about cultural background and cultural heritage and you know I love the fact that there’s a book out there at the moment called “Sometimes it takes three to make a baby”. Unfortunately that book has a heterosexual married couple who are using a donor rather than anything else but at least we are getting there with those kinds of notions of family and I certainly would celebrate ideas, I would hate to think I was giving the impression that culture is transferred biologically, I absolutely think it’s social culture and social history and one of the things that worries me about young activists is so how infrequently they know their social history about Stonewall, about anything that we fought for, about the fact that Suffragette activists were beaten and gaoled. You know we don’t know our social histories nearly well enough. We need to transfer those cultural histories and think of that. If we’re going to keep calling it family then we need to talk about those as well.