One of the ways I have watched my Myth shift is through our terminology, what we call ourselves; it is this terminology over which I was not so quiet at Oberlin over dinner with this youngman. I have watched the terminology shift and change and the common parlance become something other over the years. I have seen it go from the "Gay Community" to the "Gay and Lesbian Community" to the "Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Community" (GLB), and then when the Lesbians felt disenfranchised by their placement in the term, we moved them of the front of the line at their insistence to create the "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Community" (LGB) in order to appease them, and because we were afraid to say no, putting Lesbians before Gaymen out of respect, and perhaps also a little out of fear. Then, when Transgender folk began to feel some kind of empowerment, they were added to the mix, and we became the "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community" (LGBT) (I don't believe that we ever really liked that, though...we only went along with the tide of unspoken opinion).
Then, it was decided by someone (only God knows who), that we needed to add a "Q" for those Queer youth and Queer adults who were struggling with their identities and questioning who they were, so the "Q" went on the end. Now, we had the "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning Community" (LGBTQ). Then, along came some people who decided that the "Q" actually stood for "Queer", so that changed the wording yet again, and just to be clear, we added a second "Q". Now we were the "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning/Queer Community" (LGBTQ/Q)
Then, along acme the straight Men and Women (along came the spider who sat down beside them and ate all the Queers) who really liked us, who really, really liked us ( just like Sally Field said she was liked by the Academy upon receiving her Oscar--do you recognize a similarity here?), and they became our "allies". That word was then added to the long, disempowering list: "Lesbian, Gay, bisexual, Transgender, Questioning/Queer,. Allies" and we became the LGBTQ/QA Community.
Then, lo and behold, along came those people who were born with both genital organs in their one body, who insisted that they, too, were Queer and part of my struggle, so we added an "I" for "intersexed", and we had the "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning/Queer, Allied, Intersexed Community" (LGBTQ/QAI). But wait!!! There's more!!!
So, there I was at Oberlin College, a bastion of all that is politically correct on the radical Left within the great American Small College community circuit, and I hear "LGBTQ/QAIA" There was another "A"!! That was a big surprise, to say the least. "What is this?", I thought. "Surely this is a mistake, a slip of the tongue. Perhaps it was the person stuttering the "A". Where did that come from?" I asked the many-tinted hair youngman, and he was a very nice young Gayman, and he had the nerve to say to me, in all seriousness, "Oh, Roger, haven't you heard? That means asexual". "That means what?", I asked incredulously, disbelieving what I had just heard. "WHAT??? (asked more loudly)", being struck deeply by the homophobia of such a terrible thing as asexual people declaring that they, too, are just like me and are Queer, and they are part of my struggle and the struggle of millions of people over the centuries.
Now, understand, that I know my Queerness centers on my sex. That's blasphemous to say, I realize, and politically incorrect as Hell. I'm supposed to declare loudly "Oh, but I'm so much more than just my sex" in order to not frighten straight people (who are the ones who are clearly not "allies") away from us, but what I say is true, and it's true for most of us, I believe, if we are honest about it. The true fact is, sex touches everything we do and say, every relationship we have, even the sexless ones. So, I engaged this youngman in a conversation about this asexual thing, and, of course, he and I disagreed vociferously about such nomenclature. He insisted that asexual people have as much right to make a sexual choice as I do and call themselves Queer. He did not get that mine (and his) is not a sexual choice, and that declaring asexuality to be on a par with Queerness in terms of liberation and the struggle over the centuries is a thoroughly homophobic thing to do. I asked him if people who chose to be racist had a right to their choice and should be allowed the freedom of such a choice, and be allowed into the Rainbow Push Coalition or the NAACP? He insisted that it is not the same thing. So, now, in order to be politically correct, and to honor my sexually repressed brothers and sisters in this very sexually repressed and hate-filled country in which I live, I am now informed that there is a community of asexuals who feel themselves to be very Queer and very oppressed by society. Now I have to refer to my community, the community for which I have fought my ass off and had my head cracked open by a policman's billy club, a community for which I have shed my blood, as the "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning/Queer, Allied, Intersexed, Asexual Community".
Ah......there it is folks. The final say by the asexuals. LGBTQ/QAIA. How dare they?? How dare they throw such an insulting twist into the already muddy and disturbing mix? How dare they say that people can legitimately be asexual and be put in a label with my Tribe? THEY ARE NOT MY TRIBE!!! They are not Queer!!! Let them make their own fucking tribe if they are so inclined, but get out of mine. I don't believe, by the way, that a human being can be innately asexual. At least, he/she cannot be whole and be asexual. Perhaps one might choose celibacy as a legitimate expression of his/her sexuality, but one cannot be a human being and not be sexual. It goes with the territory, so to speak, perhaps more than anything else, in fact. Even celibacy is sexual. Celibacy is not asexuality. It is a conscious choice to not engage in sexual behavior, to sublimate the sexual urges into something other. It is this "asexual" business that galls me no end. In actual fact, this nastiness should knock all our Queer socks off. It not only knocked mine off, it turned them inside out in outrage.
I never liked the "Q" for "questioning" either, by the way, because I always thought if someone is "Q", they are really Gay or Lesbian or they would not have to be thinking about it or "questioning" it. Do really straight people ever question being straight, question whether they are straight or not, or why they are straight? Not in my experience do they do that. Only nascent Gay or Lesbian people question whether, in fact, they are or are not Gay or Lesbian. So, the question for me remains, why the "Q"? Get rid of it, I say. It's demeaning to me as a Gayman. Those that question whether or not they are Gay or Lesbian or Bisexual or Transgender do not question whether they are straight or not, so put them into the four basic sexual food groups of Queerness, and get rid of the "Q".
I also have to say here, that because I think bisexuality is a political choice, usualy made by women to a large extent, I believe, they do not belong there either. Most Men, certainly, are not bisexual, even those that claim that title. Straight Men may like to get their cocks sucked by a willing male mouth or have it encased in a warm asshole, be it male or female, but that does not make them bisexual. It simply makes them horny and an easy lay, and exploitive of Gaymen as sex objects and toys to be played with and then thrown away when the boredom sets in. I know that I am putting my head in a politically incorrect noose here, and will probably enrage some people, but I am beginning to think powerfully that I can no longer be Queercentric, as I have deeply believed I am over the past forty-six years or so. I am Gay/Lesbian centric (in that order, please note!), but here's the corker. I am supposed to joyfully embrace asexual people, who, by definition are lacking something very important in their very being and who can easily claim homophobia as part of their political bent, and legitimately at that. "Well...I just don't believe that homosexuality is right, because I'm asexual. I don't believe that heterosexuality is right either." Ah.....heterophobia.
I do not really care about this latter bias, but I certainly care about the former. Did the fact that I had my head cracked open on June 27, 1969 in Sheridan Square in New York City mean that because these asexuals CHOOSE not to screw, they are somehow part of my struggle? Absolutely not!!! They might as well be choosing Nazism or racism, and I'm supposed to embrace that because they, like I, have the right of choice as human beings I was told over dinner at Oberlin College, and I am supposed to fight for their right to choose. Because the right to choose is so tenuous in this country, whatever they choose sexually is now supposed to be part of the Queer struggle. My question is, if asexual people come out as asexual to their bosses at work, can they be fired, and who, in their right mind, comes out and says, "by the way, boss, I need to be completely honest with you and tell you that I'm asexual." Who in the world comes out and says, "I'm asexual and I'm oppressed"? I am so angry I could spit. Again, I have to ask, "How dare they?", and how dare that you Gayman with the colored spiked hair who is in a position of some, at least, small amount of political power on the Oberlin College campus, and whose voice is listened to with some respect and even, perhaps, some authority, how dare he tell me that I am politically incorrect to not include "asexuals" in that very large and now quite meaningless label. Well, come to think of it, if I am so angry about this, it must still have some meaning to me, or at least its earliest form has some meaning. In order to stop the conversation, because it was getting quite heated and our voices were getting tense, and he was clearly getting uncomfortable with me, he said that we needed to "just agree to disagree". Now there's a powerful stand, don't you think?
The power of a community label is gone. It has been watered down to mean absolutely nothing. Even the LGBT Center On Halsted in Chicago, which cost millinos to build and which received incredible national publicity and acclaim for what it symbolized in our community has merely that emblazoned on the front of the building, an innocuous name at best for such a nationally famous Center that is supposed to be the model for other cities in the country to emulate. What, in God's name, was it going to say, "The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning/Queer, Allied, Intersexed, Asexual Center On Halsted"? How absurd is that, after all? And anyway, the way it stands now, it could be a center for anything...a center for the homeless or street people or African Americans or Native Americans or Latinos or housewives with strollers. There is nothing about LGBT anywhere on that building. How much do we dishonor the work of our forebears? How much do we laugh at the jailing and bloodied heads at The Stonewall Rebellion (the Stonewall what??...I'm not familiar with that event.")
I am thoroughly disenchanted with my people, because I am no longer sure who my people are. I can honestly say that I only think my people are Gaymen, and mostly Gay Leathermen at that. Even that community, however, is fast disappearing as well, but that's another essay completely. I know that I am probably going to lose speaking engagements over this. I have certainly lost references and recommendations, but I will never stop writing, and I will never stop speaking my truth, because I know my truth is true. In this 21st century, the Tribe is dying off. That's the truth. That's a fact. We are losing our identity at its very core. The "gayborhood" is nearly gone. We want to look like straight people now. We want to act like straight people now (read "straight acting/straight appearing" in the personal ads). We want to have everything and be everything straight people have and are, when, in fact, we are not like them. We are fundamentally different from them. We are glorious. We are colorful. We are interesting. We are majickal, and we are losing our history and our legacy; we are losing our Myth. We are losing our majick. Most of all, and most tragically of all, we are losing our Queer Spirit. Without spirit, the body dies. Will we die? Will our body die? Will our Queer Body die? The central fact is this and nothing more. We are already dying, and we are allowing it to happen all around us. We are even celebrating it as it happens, and hoping that it gets even more real. Are we crazy? Are we somehow twisted because we want to die and be "just like them?" Quite frankly, I am not just like them, and I do not want to be just like them. I am a Gaymen. Proud. Real. Alive. I am all possibility in a world of nothing but possibility. My sexuality not only informs who I am, it is who I am. Is that not the most extraordinary and remarkable thing?
The watered down alphabet soup of our community is very telling regarding the ongoing life of Queer Spirit. Asexuals cannot, absolutely cannot, know the power or the reality of Queer Spirit because they are not Queer, and that's a fact!! I say, stay off my turf you heterosexist, homophobic monsters. Stay out of my Center on Halsted. Stay out of my life. You are not wanted here, at least I don't want you here. By saying that one should not be sexual, as asexuals do say, then they are telling me that I should not be Queer. How dare they make such a hubritic statement. The gods hate hubris, and the price gets paid one way or the other. Icarus' hubris, when he flew too close to the sun, produced his horrible death when the feathers melted and he tumbled thousands of feet into the sea, all because he thought he was a god, and because he, like the asexuals, was arrogant and self-serving. The true facet is, for me, that I am Queercentric and I can be nothing else. I am a Queer nationalist, believing that Queer people should have Queer physicians, Queer dentists, Queer lawyers, Queer bankers, Queer hair stylists (that's not at all a stretch, is it?), Queer business partners, or, at least, Queer friendly business partners who respect my Queerness and the Queerness of those with whom I work, Queer psychotherapists, Queer police, Queer firefighters, etc. I people my world with Queer people, or, occasionally, with Queer friendly people, but asexuals need to stay away from me, they need to not come near me, or they just may get bitch slapped in my rage and pain.from this travesty of justice. Get our of my world, asexuals, and leave our struggle to us who have a struggle because we didn't choose our sexual expression. We were given it as a great gift at conception. Asexuals were not born asexual. They were born sexual, as every human being is born sexual, whether heterosexual or homosexual.. Asexuals have just chosen to live in fear of their sexuality and thereby choose to not deal with it at all and declare themselves to be asexual.Just get the Hell our of my struggle, boys and girls. Make your own community, and create your own world of unreal oppression. Stay out of my reality. You have no right to be there.
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