The Bilerico Project

Refusing Universal Narratives: Andrew Haigh's Weekend

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 11:00:00 -0500

This movie made me ask: have I ever seen a movie representing contemporary gay male casual sex/dating culture that felt realistic? That I could relate to? And, I'm not sure. I don't even know if that was something I was looking for, but then I saw Weekend, and I started to wonder. So I went back to watch it again.

I'm not saying that this movie is necessarily groundbreaking or earth-shattering, just that it feels authentic in its intimacy, in its gaps, in the way it depicts those gestures towards and away from self-expression that we all make when we meet someone new and we don't know whether it will lead anywhere but we do know there's that jittery nervousness in between or even during those moments of connection. So then we wonder, keep wondering, wonder about this wondering.

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A Right to Be There

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 09:00:00 -0500

I notice that when I talk to friends in other cities, most of them are not nearly as excited about the Occupy movements. I wonder if I'm just excited because I live in a place where anything feels better than nothing.

I watch all these pundits from the left speaking at Occupy Wall Street, and of course that makes me suspicious. At least Cornel West gets arrested with protesters, and Jesse Jackson comes down with his supporters to keep the medical tent safe. Most of the pundits refrain from giving advice, and that's a welcome development; maybe something is changing.

My second visit to the Occupy Santa Fe campsite, this time during the day, and it's a totally different crowd - some younger and punkish, traveler types I haven't seen before. I'm only there for a few minutes, but it gets me excited again - I mean, it's exciting just to have a place to go. I return at night, and this time it's a whole other crowd - mostly men in their 30s to 60s, various races. Something just happened where they had to tell someone to leave because he was too drunk and people felt threatened, so everyone is on edge. Some of the women felt threatened, that's how I hear the story told.

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Something Like a Dream

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 10:00:00 -0500

As soon as I send out an announcement for the Occupy Canyon Road meeting, I start getting responses from people with various concerns.

Someone is worried about interrupting business on Canyon Road, a lot of artists depend on those galleries - this person doesn't think the gallery owners are part of the 1%, maybe the 10%. Someone else wants to occupy Whole Foods, which sounds like a fine idea, but kind of irrelevant to this particular idea. Someone else says that, other than Gerald Peters, she doesn't think there are many plutocrats who art gallery owners.

No one actually responds to say that they plan on coming to the meeting, or at least not for the first few days after my email, and then people start worrying that because this meeting is at the same time as the general assembly that seems to happen every day, they're worried about "splitting the group." But wait - this is a working group, it was announced at the general assembly meeting twice - it's a brainstorming meeting, and afterwards we will go to the general assembly with our ideas. That's what a working group does, right? I can't change the meeting with one-day notice - what if someone shows up at my door?

But, back to the We Are the 99% rhetoric, which does seem to be a bit limiting if people are only wanting to target the 1%. Should we ask gallery owners on Canyon Road for their tax statements? The point of targeting Canyon Road is that Santa Fe is run by the art market and the tourist industries. This is a town of 70,000 people with an art market neck in neck with LA, a city more than 50 times larger. Do you understand the significance of all that money? The commodification of creativity; the way everyone is wrapped up in it.

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To the Rest of the World, We Are the 1%

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:00:00 -0500

Sixty people at another general assembly meeting, I'll admit I'm impressed at this continued commitment! A majority are white people in their late-40s and older, once again - now, in other cities it may be true that participants in their 30s are on the older side as far as the organizers, but if I see any of that type of media coverage displayed in Santa Fe, it will certainly be a time for endless laughter.

For some reason, the same people seem to facilitate every time - people in their 30s and 40s who seem to have become the unspoken leaders. I'm not sure that any of the working groups have actually met yet, but perhaps there should be one about facilitation. Or, as skillshare, right?

Although one teenager who seems to know many of the older people there volunteers to take stack. Calling on people, that is - first he asks me: what's stack? Good question - no one exactly takes time to explain things here.

Like consensus, for example. At one point, someone asks, and one of the facilitators says at Occupy Wall Street it meant 90% in agreement. But wait - that's not consensus at all! But no one stops to talk more about the process, perhaps this will happen in the future?

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Occupy Santa Fe: Maybe This Is What It Means to Really Live Here

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:00:00 -0500

Occupy Santa Fe, weekend three: this time it's moved to the Roundhouse, the State Capitol, and it feels kind of like a be-in. People are sprawled out in the grass - someone yells out: who wants to discuss healthcare? And a group forms.

By the street, people are lined up to face the traffic again - Jessica wants to see if anyone mentions decolonization. No, no, no - oh, wait! Someone with a huge handwritten sign that says Occupy Wall Street - Decolonize America. Brilliant! And, Jessica knows the person, one of her students, a transmasculine young queer with a shaved head. Later, I will have a discussion with this person's lover, who points to the people drumming on the corner, white hippies of a certain age, and asks: who does that exclude?

A lot of people, I think, although to tell you the truth I appreciate the music and the enthusiasm, but this person adds: who is excluded by the way they are using and I'm sure misusing those instruments?

It's this kind of question, even if only asked once at this gathering, that makes it feel important to me. Once again the crowd is vastly white and straight, mostly 40s and older, and knowing that this age demographic would probably not be the case at almost any of the other Occupy gatherings, I'm intrigued not just by the limitations but the possibilities. But then a gesture so apparently small as drumming on the side of the road where once again people are facing the street with signs in order to get the cars to honk in support, and to think about its ramifications.

If anything will come of all of these gatherings - over 1000 now, simultaneously - of course we will have to grapple with the layers of ramifications, the (intentionally and unintentionally) colonial gestures of bodies attempting to resist, the question of who is excluded - not just from the big picture, but from every decision made and unmade.

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A View from Occupy Santa Fe

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 10:00:00 -0500

Occupy Santa Fe - inspired, of course, by Occupy Wall Street and the resulting movements across the country - started two weeks ago after a call-out on Facebook for a Saturday protest in the parking lot of a Bank of America branch on one of the busiest intersections in Santa Fe (busy for cars, that is, but certainly well outside the visible commercial center of Santa Fe's tourist industry).

That first protest was pretty festive - music and signs, about 70 people when I was there, mostly in their 40s and older I would say, overwhelmingly straight and white, a few people in their 20s and 30s, and several straight couples with kids. The second week was similar, although twice as many people and a wider range - high school and college students, a contingent from the Taos Pueblo, a horrifying hot pink Hummer filled with older gay men and lesbians. Both weeks, the whole action centered around getting the attention of all the cars driving by, a little strange for me since wasn't Bank of America the target?

The third week, the protest moves to the Roundhouse, New Mexico's State Capitol, which unfortunately has way less visibility on a Saturday, even if it does wield more symbolic importance and is closer to the center of town. I went to the meeting to organize Saturday's protest, held at a new encampment directly across the street from the Bank of America parking lot. I'll admit I was skeptical about this encampment, which apparently has received the blessing of both the Mayor of Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Police Department - a blessing I assume came because it's not in the Plaza, the symbolic center of Santa Fe, or interfering with any tourist photo opportunities. But, when I arrived, it was pretty fascinating to see the infrastructure that had emerged in just a few days - tons of free food and water, several tents and an Airstream trailer.

And then, when I entered the tent where the meeting was taking place, maybe 15 minutes after the start, I couldn't believe it was packed with 50 people. 50 people at an activist meeting in Santa Fe, a town of less than 70,000 - that's pretty impressive!

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We Die, You Get Married

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 08:00:00 -0500

"Coming Out for Change," Richard Kim's recent piece in The Nation (July 18/25, 2011), starts by talking about the risks that Pulitzer Prize-winning gay Filipino journalist Jose Antonio Vargas took when he recently came out as an undocumented immigrant in the New York Times Magazine. Coming out as the definitive act of gay identity has in recent years lost much of its power - while some still use the act as a brazen challenge to status quo normalcy, often it's a self-congratulatory ritual of initiation into a vapid consumer gay culture more concerned with accessing straight privilege than challenging social norms. But when Vargas and other immigrant rights activists (both queer and straight) come out as undocumented, they consciously use this act of disclosure as a challenge to racist, xenophobic immigration laws.

There's much to critique about the mainstream immigrant rights movement, especially its obsession with portraying all immigrants as flag-waving patriots who just want to "clean your floors" and "grow your food," or maybe go to college on scholarship and get a good job at Morgan Stanley. The DREAM Act, the signature piece of legislation that many undocumented immigrants risk deportation in order to promote, would offer a potential path to citizenship only for those "of good moral character" who arrived in the United States before age 16 and are able to complete a four-year college degree or enlist in the military for a six-year term. When questioned about whether this is just another opportunity for the U.S. military to use people of color as cannon fodder in unjust wars, DREAM Act activists, mostly of the hyper-achiever college set, steadfastly maintain that everyone should have the "right" to join the military. In spite of this limiting rhetoric, there is no doubt that, when undocumented immigrants come out about their status with the hopes of enacting social change, they are risking their lives, or at the very least their future in this country.

When Richard Kim compares Jose Antonio Vargas's brave act of publicly declaring his undocumented status to that of gay couples "willing to weaponize their personal lives" in the fight for gay marriage in New York, it's a strange comparison. What exactly were these gay couples risking with their disclosure? Certainly not deportation.

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Lt. Dan Choi & I: Together at last on Democracy Now

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 15:00:00 -0500

I'm moving to Santa Fe on Sunday, and what could be a better going-away present than an appearance on Democracy Now? And, not just that, but in conversation with Lieutenant Dan Choi, about one of my favorite topics! And, after writing a scathing critique about Choi's repeated appearances on the program without critical engagement.

It does give me hope that Democracy Now actually responded to the critique, and brought me on the show -- and I loved it! Of course I'm ready for more -- perhaps a debate on gay marriage?

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A one-question interview with Sassafras Lowrey

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 15:00:00 -0500

Mattilda: You recently edited Kicked Out, an anthology of stories by current and formerly homeless queer youth (including yourself) -- one of the dominant themes in the book involves the chosen families that youth create in order to challenge, undo, and survive the violence of birth families and the trauma of living in a world that often wants queer youth to die or disappear. I'm wondering if you think that the current focus on marriage within national gay organizations detracts from funding for queer youth services and also perpetuates the vulnerability of chosen families.

Sassafras: I'm horrified by the way in which we as a community have shifted to being very single-issue focused, and that single-issue is marriage. I get frustrated when I look at the millions of dollars that our community has pumped into state after state in losing battles. Every time I hear about the financial cost of fighting for marriage, I think of how many beds that would buy in shelters for homeless queer youth, and quite frankly how many lives we could have saved by allocating our priorities and resources differently. 40% of homeless youth in the United States identify as LGBTQ, this is an epidemic our community cannot afford to ignore.

On a theoretical level there is the argument that approving gay marriage will make mainstream cultural more friendly to queer youth. But that only works abstractly and doesn't address the immediate needs faced by our kids this minute. I challenge anyone in the community to go have a conversation with a homeless queer youth and come back and tell me we need marriage more than they need food, shelter, or just a supportive ear to listen.

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A Fine Romance: Democracy Now's Amy Goodman and Lieutenant Dan Choi

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 19:00:00 -0500

I never thought I would start crying while listening to an interview with Lieutenant Dan Choi, the Iraq war veteran who recently received notice of his honorable discharge from the US military for publicly acknowledging he's gay. But here I am, crying. I'm watching Democracy Now, and during a break in the conversation the show is broadcasting images of Dan Choi at various actions in favor of the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell.

"Universal Soldier," Buffy Sainte-Marie's classic antiwar song, plays in the background. While Sainte-Marie sings, "And he knows he shouldn't kill/ And he knows he always will kill/ You'll for me my friend and me for you," Dan Choi is pictured in full uniform saluting a crowd at the National Equality March, removing tape from his lips to declare:

We love our country, even when our country refuses to acknowledge our love. But we continue to defend it, and we continue to protect it, because love is worth it. Love is worth it! ...But when we're telling the truth about our love, our country slaps us in the face and orders us, "Don't ask," and orders us, "Don't tell." Well, I am telling you that the era and the time for asking is over. I am not asking anymore! I am telling! I am telling! I am telling...because in the face of injustice and the face of discrimination, patience is not a plan. In the face of discrimination, silence is not a strategy.

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Thoughts after a preview screening of We Were Here: Voices from the AIDS Years in San Francisco (a work-in-progress)

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 17:00:00 -0500

The thing that haunts me the most from this movie is the look in the eyes of one young guy in the hospital, dying at 22, and he's looking out at the doctor or the camera so stunned, so scared, like he's a little kid waking up from a nightmare begging for help, help me.

There is no help. Or, there is help, but it won't help. Nothing will.

That same look repeats itself over and over in the eyes of the guys in these photos, the archival footage from the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco, the look of mass trauma that replaces another look, another innocence, the one where shirtless guys lean against one another on the streets of the Castro and smile for the world, will this ever be the same? No, it will never be the same.

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Thoughts on The Owls

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 18:00:00 -0500

I'm always kind of stunned by the demographics of Frameline audiences. As I'm walking up to the Castro Theatre, almost every single person in line is a lesbian. Hundreds and hundreds of lesbians, mostly middle-aged, and of course this is great to see, but also I wonder: doesn't anyone else want to see a lesbian-themed movie by a lesbian director?

Especially a director, Cheryl Dunye, who is well-known in queer film circles for making perhaps the first black lesbian feature film, The Watermelon Woman, in 1996. And yes, this new movie, The Owls, was made specifically for a lesbian audience (as was The Watermelon Woman), but this makes it all the more important for other audiences to see it as well.

Of course, the demographics of Frameline audiences are symptomatic of divisions in gay/queer cultures, but it still surprises me to see how clearly the divides are marked.

But, on to the movie.

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Here I am on NPR, talking about -- yes, you guessed it -- marriage!!!

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 19:00:00 -0500

On Thursday, I was on the nationally broadcast National Public Radio program Tell Me More -- listen here, and tell me what you think...

Get hitched or get ditched!

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:30:00 -0500

The Skinny in Edinburgh asked me to write a short piece on marriage (no, my dear, you're not the only one), and here's how it starts:

My mother, a straight white woman in her early sixties, recently moved to a newly gentrified area of Washington, DC. The formerly black neighborhood is filled with young white professionals, and my mother's building is heavily populated by wealthy gay men. Not surprisingly, the busy pavement is a popular spot for canvassers. The other day, my mother encountered a smiling gay man inquiring, "Are you interested in gay rights?" When she stopped, he asked her to support gay marriage with a financial contribution.

My mother told him she believed gay people should have the same rights as straight people - hospital visitation, tax breaks, inheritance rights, healthcare, and the rest - but she didn't think this should only happen through marriage. The canvasser explained that marriage would help gay people to become part of the mainstream. My mother asked: what about gay people who aren't mainstream?

Read the rest here.

As Haiti crumbles, the US sends in troops -- get ready for a long occupation!

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:30:00 -0500

I'm standing in line at Walgreens and some white guy is yelling at one of the cashiers, a Latina woman, about Haiti, spouting racist corporate media lies about how Haitians are corrupt, they steal from their own people, they can't be relied on to manage aid, and the cashier is trying not to say anything in response. She probably doesn't want to lose her job.

It turns out this guy is screaming because Walgreens is now asking for donations to the Red Cross -- if only he was screaming because he thought the Red Cross was bureaucratic, bloated, corrupt, and ineffectual, and he wanted to make sure that his donation went to a responsible community-based organization like the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund. I wish he was using his energy to yell about the fact that this corporate drugstore is asking for donations instead of sending a stockpile of desperately-needed bandaids, medical gauze, peroxide, bottled water, and anything else required for basic needs. [Update: perhaps I'm factually wrong in this area -- a Walgreens press release does say that they donated six semi-trailers of this exact type of goods, although with $63 billion in sales last year, perhaps they could keep it going.]

But no -- this guy's just regurgitating Fox News. I think of yelling back at him that the corruption in Haiti comes from a century of US occupations, both covert and overt, not to mention the ire of the entire colonial world since Haiti became the first black republic when former slaves ousted the French in 1804.

This guy probably already knows that -- we're in San Francisco, and his ignorance is almost surely a conscious choice.

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