the 941

Some articles take all-night stamina to write, or gymnastic dexterity with court records. This week’s UrbEx however, just took a whole lot of self-restraint.
While I was as disappointed as the next that there would be no Gay Pride event in Sarasota this year, what disappointed me even more was knowing that there wouldn’t be nearly enough print space for all the strong, proud, opinionated voices I encountered during my research.
I’d give you all of them if I had more time, but I feel like I’d be cheating you if I didn’t provide at least a taste of these two interviews, both of which had to be reluctantly left on the cutting room floor.

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INTERVIEW ONE: MATTILDA a.k.a. MATT BERNSTEIN SYCAMORE

(photo: Jeffrey Walls)

Mattilda, aka Matt Bernstein Sycamore, is a direct-action activist, regular contributor to the San Francisco Bay Guardian and Bitch magazine, and editor of four political anthologies on the queer experience. When she’s not too busy touring colleges across America as a visiting lecturer, mattilda is kicking ass in the Castro with her unique blend of anarchist performance-art rebellion.
And get ready for some irony: One of the institutions she’s is most apt to rebel against is itself an insurgence of sorts. As one of the pioneering members of Gay Shame, a national movement that protests Gay Pride’s “assimilationist” rhetoric, mattilda seeks to challenge the gay establishment’s consumerist branding and bring its mainstream hypocrisy to the fore.
“People need to step back and challenge and dismantle everything that is normal,” she once informed the San Francisco Chronicle. “That’s the gift that queers have. But all that’s being thrown away, discarded, just for a taste of straight privilege.” On the phone in California, the transgender agitator at first seemed primed for the usual diatribe, ready to tell me exactly why we don’t need organized Pride in Sarasota. And then she broke from tradition.

I’m honestly fascinated by this Gay Shame thing. How’d it get started?

Gay Shame originally arose in New York City in 1998, and the idea was instead of an endless procession of corporate floats and endless opportunities for target marketing to the highest bidder, we wanted to create a space where radical queers could create culture on our own terms — and share strategies for resistance.
Originally it became something of a challenge to Pride; it would happen one day a year at this anarchist performance and living space called DUMBA.

What would you do?

Basically we would have performances. We would have people talk about the radical issues of the moment: welfare so-called “reform,” gentrification of New York City; there would be drag performances, and free food — everything would be free. People would bring things to give away. It was sort of a festival of resistance.
And in San Francisco a few years later, we started it with a similar idea but took it a step further and had it be outdoors in a public space. And so the first Gay Shame in San Francisco was at this place called Tire Beach, which is like this industrial wasteland/wetland. At the bay in San Francisco, they dumped so many tires they called it “Tire Beach.” Based on that, we thought, oh let’s create our own culture out of ruins, like the one that exists there right now.
That event was really successful in a certain sense, but what we became concerned about was that we were also creating something that people could consume without necessarily identifying with the radical politics. You know, the anti-assimilationist challenge to the status quo. Like we were worried that it had just become like, “a cooler version.” You know, an alternative to Pride that was “cooler.”
And so we thought, well, how can we connect the politics to the spectacle so that they can’t be separated? And that was sort of our original goal, through which Gay Shame became more of a direct-action activist group willing to challenge all hypocrites.
And the first thing we did on that line was we had the Gay Shame Awards. That was in 2001.
We had “Helping Right-Wingers Cope.” We had “Making More Queers Homeless.” And we had “Eviction Couture” — oh, no, that was a different event. But basically we were awarding the assimilationist gays. We went to the center of the Castro in San Francisco, and how the whole spectacle worked was we burned rainbow flags and again, we had free food and free art. And then, when we were done, we took to the street and blocked traffic with sofas, and had a sort of festival of resistance dance party. What we were doing was combining the early militancy of Act Up — with the focus of public space, of reclaiming the streets — and the pageantry of ’70s drag shows like The Cockettes…

[Laughing] Sounds awesome. But I’m still not sure I get what it was specifically you were rebelling against.

Basically, Gay Pride to me had become an endless opportunity for target marketing that outweighed any sort of celebration of resistance, identity or culture. And so we were saying, “Well we’re not interested in Budweiser Pride or Smirnoff Pride or Botox Pride, or sweatshop-produced rainbow flags” — or in the central messages of Pride parades. You know, marriage and military service and adoption and the whole yearning for straight privilege at any cost.
And instead of this endless opportunity for consumerism and assimilation, we wanted to create something radical and challenging and outside of the status quo. So that’s how it started.

In Sarasota, we’re in sort of a different situation, because we never really had a big, ritzy Pride fluffed by corporate sponsors. But I do think an argument could be made that Pride organizers here are seduced by this idea of what you might call “straight privilege.” What’s interesting to me is that our Pride has somehow become more about how the straight community might perceive the queer community, which sort of defeats the point. That’s what I think of when I hear terms like “vulgar” thrown around.

Exactly. First of all, this notion of public displays of sexuality as “vulgar,” right? For me, what’s “vulgar” about Pride parades is how they become a celebration of consumerism over resistance. And I think what’s also vulgar in this particular case is the self-censorship.
It’s a really interesting example of what I would call “border wars” within the queer community, in the sense of a sort of assimilated mainstream; a mainstream identity that’s beyond consumerism, but which replicates mainstream values — like “trying to do it better” than the straight people. “How do we have a nicer picket fence? How do we have cuter adopted children?”
From my point of view, it becomes almost more dangerous than, say, Christian Right ideology of “They’re all gonna burn in hell.” It’s like a battle of the Christian Right, like “Who can do it first?” [Laughs]
The whole “we’re just like you,” that whole mentality. But the question is, “Who is ‘You’?”

Right.

Anybody who defines gay identity along a hetero-normative axis. So those are the kinds of questions that come up for me. And it’s interesting because it’s sort of the exact reverse of the critique that I would have of Pride. It’s saying, “Oh, Pride is too much.” [Laughs] It’s like “Oh, no! There’s this sexual behavior!” Which is, of course, the point.

So you think it is the point?

Well, Pride originally was not called “Pride.” Here in San Francisco, it was “Gay Freedom Day.” In many places, it’s “Gay Liberation.”
Pride is a different thing than liberation! [Laughs] So I think it’s always been an opportunity to flaunt, that was the goal of Pride.
I think now, the problem is that people sell out for it. It’s like, “Oh, look, some muscle boys hired by MAC cosmetics!” Or any number of endless sponsorships. The Botox one I thought was fascinating, because that was the sponsor of Pride in Ottowa, Canada.

Jesus.

Or Budweiser was the primary sponsor of Pride in San Francisco in 2002. The Pride slogan was the same as the Budweiser slogan, or almost identical. The Budweiser slogan was, “Be yourself, make it a Bud”; Pride’s slogan of that year was “Be yourself, change the world.” So you know, everytime you drink a Budweiser the world changes.

In Sarasota, one of the organizers’ key points was that they were shooting for a sort of inclusivity: They wanted to enable parents of young children to come. They want a clean — or “G-Rated” — Pride, without the overt sexuality. Which to me, is sort of a bizarre way to celebrate a liberation. If you take sex or sexuality out of Pride, what is left?

I think it’s this whole definition of “family,” and I think one of the amazing things that “queer identity” has provided is the ability to create families and communities and cultures on our own terms. So family doesn’t have to be about “the mother and the father and the kid,” or “the father and the father and the kid.” It should be about creating “communities of care” the values we grow up with in a straight, silencing, hetero-normative culture.
I think it’s fascinating in Sarasota, and I think it’s true in a lot of cities where the pressure to censor Pride comes from gay people themselves — and not from straight homophobes. And I think that type of self-censorship is so short-sighted. It’s like you said, what is the point of sexuality without sex? [Laughs] Or of a queer identity that looks exactly like straight identity? You just shift the body parts a little, or something…

[Laughs]

And I think that says a lot about the violence of assimilation. And why marriage and adoption and the military are the hot causes of the gay corporate establishment. Well, those are straight issues.
I mean, what about police brutality? That’s what Stonewall was all about in the first place, wasn’t it? The notion of police control over gay lives. Or healthcare? How about that?
That’s where I think the assimilationist agenda is really short-sighted, because it all rolls around the whole desire for straight acceptance. The idea is that somehow if we have all these things, we’ll be less threatening to a middle-America straight person. I think if the actual things on the agenda were things like police brutality and housing and healthcare and gentrification, then so many more people would be like “Oh, I get it.” [Laughs]
You have situations like lesbians gaining entry to the golf clubs — and they’re the ones we’re making our gay role models! It just fits into the whole rhetoric…

Hmm.

And I think similarly, you were talking about sexual liberation. I think the irony of gay liberation is that it’s made it possible for straight people to express more fluid gender and sexual and social identities. Meanwhile, mainstream gay people are busy salivating over Tiffany’s wedding bands.

Not to get all FOX News on you, but I’m still feeling pretty haunted by the original “What about the children?” question. It’s an argument organizers keep making to explain their Pride cancellation. My own personal opinion, to be honest, is, well, that I don’t really see a problem with exposing young children to so-called “vulgar” behavior. But I’m still open to the idea that these feelings may change, and it’s hard for me to come up with a tolerant-sounding rebuttal.
How would you respond to that question?

Kids are subjected to lewd behavior all the time. And the violence in our country is that children really have no rights at all, for self-expression or for self-determination. You know, the real violence towards kids is actually happening for the most part behind closed doors, where kids are being beaten up and raped and molested, and have no way of getting out of that situation.
Kids are not afraid of public displays of sexual affection between consenting adults. Or between consenting teenagers or consenting whatever. And I think it’s actually pretty exciting, to go somewhere and see that such behavior is a possibility. [Laughs]
And I think especially when you’re talking about children of gay families: What are they so afraid of? Do they cover their mirrors at home? I think that’s what’s really frightening, and I think the behavior that’s actually “vulgar” is coming from government censorship, it’s coming from self-censorship within queer communities, and it’s coming from behind closed doors.
What’s threatening to kids is to have to be paraded in front of an endless display of “Buy this! Buy that!”
Now, that would be an interesting critique, if parents were like, “Oh, I don’t want my kids to be subjected to this vile, rapacious consumerism at such an early age.” That’s a legitimate cause: Banning corporate sponsorship that teaches kids to become compliant, thoughtless consumers.

What a wonderful world, right?

And in fact, I think the fact that Gay Pride was cancelled this year does open other doors, like chances for people to come together, outside of that sort of Pride sponsorship network, and say, “Let’s create something better! Let’s bring out the politics and the sexuality and the self-expression and the extravagance — let’s cultivate all of this and create something else.” They got rid of Pride, but look! It’s a whole year of opportunity to create alternatives.

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