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Psychological secession

A “blue” print for half of the country’s future after the devastation of November 2.


In decades to come, historians will look back on the 2004 election — November 2, 2004 — as a turning point in the history of the United States. We crossed the Rubicon — or was it the River Styx? We are witnessing the beginning of the end of one country with the flashpoint as two divergent visions of morality and their implementation.

We have had a 229-year run, and history has taught us that nation-states are largely fragile, artificial constructs and finite. Within the context of human history, the United States’ influence is disproportionate to its physical size, population and duration, and it may prove to be insignificant and waning in influence as it retreats from any consideration of progressive issues facing the world.

Indeed in a few decades, we may well have another American revolution with the residents of so-called blue states revolting against taxation without representation in the very red federal government and declaring their independence from religious tyranny. Maybe such will lead to the physical division of our nation through blue state secession. In the meantime, I argue for something subtler: a mental separation, a psychological secession.

If our pretense to democracy was put on life support in 2000, conservatives just pulled the plug, proving that the most corrupt of administrations can lie, spin and buy their way out of the direst of electoral predicaments. Even when most Americans think that the country is on the wrong track, the current president has done a lousy job, and that most of the current administration’s policies have failed, some of those same Americans will still vote for him out of fear of something, whether it be terrorists or fags or feminists or gun-hating liberals or church-state separation or having to pay a fair share in taxes.

This year’s election was supposed to be the one in which  we made a cosmic correction. A few optimistic souls projected that more than 120 million would vote. Instead, roughly 115 million Americans voted out of nearly the 200 million eligible, meaning that about 40 percent of eligible voters did not vote in what was recognized as one of the most important elections in our lifetime. That is a travesty. Even more devastating is that we are celebrating the “high” turnout.

The Republicans’ plan for the 2004 election was twofold: increase voter turnout among conservatives in the swing states and suppress Democratic voter turnout in the same. While Republicans may not have been successful in suppressing the “Detroit” (read: urban and minority) vote, their threat to challenge the rights of over 50,000 newly registered Democrats in Ohio almost surely had a chilling effect on voter turnout in poor and minority neighborhoods in that state and probably others, which was, of course, the desired effect.

Intent not to be left on the sidelines, the corporate-owned media did their part to discourage voting with unfounded rumors of terror alerts, unsupported reports of an election-day attack, constant reminders about paperless voting machines not subject to recounts, horror stories of widespread voter irregularities, and cautionary tales of 500,000 too few poll workers by federal estimates. Increased anxiety coupled with just enough predictable voter apathy made for the perfect election storm favoring an unpopular incumbent. Maybe many were so afraid of terrorist attacks that they went shopping instead.

Were the exit polls in Florida and Ohio (and other states) really that far off? I’m sure we will never know as we can rest assured that this is not a story that our country’s media is interested in pursuing. As we witnessed in 2000, stability in election outcomes is more sacred than the accuracy or legitimacy of the election process itself. Four years ago, our country’s political power structure learned how patient the electorate would be in the face of an election crisis. Not only were we willing to affirm the legitimacy of an election where every vote was not counted, we would even allow the Supreme Court to choose our president for us.

During the time since the previous election, our corporate and political elite never wasted an opportunity to remind us how important it is for Americans to accept whatever result our faulty election process spits out. Markets like stability; whether your vote was counted correctly or counted at all doesn’t matter. The fact that we have a “clear” winner is more important than ensuring the integrity of the process that determined the winner. Despite the growing clamor for an investigation of the inconsistencies and potential fraud of November 2, 2004, none will be forthcoming. The proponents of transparency in our elections are now painted as poor losers or worse, conspiracy theorists.

Despite all their dirty tricks and the many who flouted their civic duty, the bottom line is the Republicans are still in charge. And if any doubt from 2000 lingered that we live in a deeply divided nation, it was vanquished on November 2. We now live in two countries, and rather than involving ourselves in the spectacle of the national Democrats’ self-flagellation in hopes that Republicans won’t treat them too unkindly, we need to think about moving in a new direction, our own direction. We must determine to decide our own destiny.

Abandon national politics

The national Democratic Party is now irrelevant and already scurrying to the right, dropping inconvenient progressive causes along the way, as if conservatives are ever going to choose a faux Republican when they can have the real thing. Make no mistake, we now have one national party, the GOP, which is set during the next four years to complete its work of crippling the federal government’s ability to aid those in need; its decades-long goal of destroying the New Deal and any remnant of the Great Society will have been met.

While Senate Democrats could filibuster proposed regressive legislation or votes on ultra-conservative judicial nominees, they won’t. There are just enough senators from red states who will be so frightened of losing their seats (a la Tom Daschle), that they will be quite compliant. Any way you look at it, the Republicans have a comfortable majority with which to bring about their revolution. They may not be passing constitutional amendments banning flag burning or gay marriage (at least not before the elections of 2006), but judicial nominees will sail through, our tax system will be “reformed” and what’s left of the social safety net will be unraveled.

The most useless act you can commit at this point in our nation’s history is to vote in a national election. And by the way, stop giving money to national political parties. Your time and money are better spent supporting the various charities and civic organizations that will have to expend their scant resources fighting back the red tide on every issue from civil liberties to environmental protection and filling the vacuum of leadership in Washington.

We must learn to expect nothing from the federal government except its disdain. Many say that we are now heading towards a theocracy, but I would argue that we are living in a corporate theocracy. The corporate powers that be that are running our government have promised conservative Christians a theocratic social agenda in exchange for their political support. So the corporate oligarchy gets less public regulation while the social conservatives get their desire for more regulation in the private sphere, which is the opposite of our clear blue vision for the country. Personal freedom is out; corporate freedom is in.

Support state and local organizations financially

If you are one of the lucky few to benefit from the current administration’s tax cuts, then your state government had better become your new favorite charity, especially if you live in a blue state. State governments will have to fund any public policy program that does not dovetail with our national government’s extremist agenda. And while the red states may be in for a federal tax-dollar bonanza, the blue states will be picking up the tab.

Most certainly, environmental protection will fall completely to the states, always subject of course to the feds overriding anything they don’t like; state’s rights only apply to the red states. States will have to replace Medicaid/Medicare and, eventually, social security. Corporate oversight, disaster relief, housing assistance, education assistance, and protections of civil rights and civil liberties will become the burden of the states as the funding for the federal agencies historically charged with such will be diverted to deeper tax cuts, defense and faith-based (read, Christian) charities.

The way Bush has insidiously interwoven faith-based initiatives throughout cabinet level departments is nothing short of ingenious. It can claim that the Department of Education’s budget has been increased without acknowledging that all of the increase will be earmarked for faith-based initiatives only. The same is true for Health and Human Services, the Commerce Department, and a host of others.

Thinking about ourselves in a new way

We must look to alternatives by buttressing the independence of our state and local governments and increasing our support for organizations that will be forced to absorb the responsibilities that the feds are and will be shirking or creating some sort of extra-federal system or regional systems of government or coalitions of blue states to supplant the role of the federal government.

We must also get more involved state activisim and do whatever we need to do to make blue states a haven for those fleeing the theocratic tyranny of the red states, and to create a bulwark against encroachments by our federal corporate theocracy. We must ignore the national media outlets with their democracy plazas and glib talking heads.

As media become more consolidated under the control of a handful of corporate interests with Bush’s dismantling of Federal Communications Commission corporate oversight, getting your news and information from independent and varied sources becomes paramount. Corporate media in the United States have the journalistic integrity of Pravda during the Soviet era. They act as a mouthpiece for the government, which in turn rewards them with further tax breaks coupled with less regulation of their corporate structure.

Possibly the most important task will be reigning in corporate influence in state and local politics as the failure to do so on the federal level has been a significant contributor to the demise of responsive government. We must not allow our states to follow suit; they are our last hope.

We need to overturn the most undemocratic of initiatives: term limits. On the state level, such as in a large, complex state like California, they wreak havoc on our representatives’ ability to legislate effectively and intelligently. A six or eight-year term is barely enough time for a new representative to understand fully the intricacies of a handful of issues before being banned from the statehouse. And with new representatives unable to look to veteran legislators for mentoring, the friendly neighborhood lobbyist will be more than happy to explain legislation to them and even tell them how to vote. Lobbyists, by the way, are not subject to term limits. Can you imagine firing your doctor every six years because she has been practicing too long and knows you too well?

True campaign finance reform in the blue states will have to come from the ground with our demanding the end of corporate influence money. A start would be limiting campaign contributions to natural persons only and not corporate “persons” granted personage through the pernicious legal fiction of corporate citizenship. This would not cease corporate influence completely, but it would severely restrict the flow of corporate money into politicians’ coffers. Coupled with a ban on in-kind contributions, we could forestall in the blue states what has happened in Washington and see the beginning of a new era of responsive government.

Be patient, but vigilant

Our new blue state revolution will not happen within a few months, or even years. The first step is easing into the mindset that we are on our own and will now need to fight to preserve the rights and liberties we value. And remember, you have not abandoned your country — it has abandoned you.

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President Bush’s plan
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Between nostalgia and fundamentalism

Does democracy matter? Philosopher Cornel West returns to the beginning of the great American experiment to find the answer.


For those of us just emerging from the hangover of an election gone awry for the Left, a proclaimed “mandate” from the people, and a string of fun new political appointments, the worst is yet to come. After a long night of ill-fated political exuberance , we roll over to find out we went home with John Kerry. The deed is done and there is no time for regret. Finding ourselves emerging from the haze of a series of embarrassing one night stands with the shrieking Vermonter, the slick Hip-Hop-savvy general, and pretty-boy Edwards — may demand a moment of clarity.  

None of these men seemed like out and out bad people. Their agendas all stood starkly in contrast to that of George W. Bush. Each candidate had his own nostalgic connection to a progressive era we missed. They opposed the war as it was being fought, made gestures towards labor, and even questioned the necessity of the Patriot Act’s most invasive measures. But none were men of substance. The shame of our brief affair with mainstream democratic politics is how little these men stood for. I am embarrassed that I voted for someone who crafted his position on gay marriage in the gutless language of states’ rights. And who responded to the increasingly genocidal violence enacted in the name of U.S. democratic principles with the phrase “find them and kill them.”  

How did it get so bad? Why were so many leftists and young people motivated to campaign and vote for people who represented them so poorly? (The media spinsters who have constructed the “people’s mandate” for Bush will fervently disagree, but as Michael Moore correctly points out, more young Americans voted in the last election than ever before.) What seems obvious now is how convinced we have all become that there is no alternative. What is missing is any kind of real dialogue over the issues.  

Even the “hot button” values issues such as abortion, gay marriage, and prayer in schools were not debated. Both the vice presidential and presidential debates where characterized by vaguery and moralizing, as opposed to reasoned discussion. In a pre-election appearance on the “debate” show Crossfire, Daily Show anchor Jon Stewart pleaded with host Tucker Carlson to stop “hurting America.” What seemed appalling to both the Democratic and Republican hosts on Crossfire was Stewart’s claim that they did not actually debate on the well-rated CNN talk show. Stewart was, of course, correct. The show that is supposed to provide “partisan balance” does exactly what it sets out to do: It gives exactly equivalent doses of pre-prepared democratic and republican sound bites.

A requiem for lost souls

Most of us know that a vote for Kerry was largely a vote against Bush. We found ourselves desperate and hopeless enough to believe anything would be better. In the past decade of an increasingly conservative Democratic party, many have begun to believe the Religious Right’s assertion that the history of America is a conservative Christian history, leaving the Left to settle for “anything but Bush.”

It is with this newfound nihilism that esteemed Princeton Professor Cornel West takes issue in his new book, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism. In a sweeping survey of American history focused on what he calls a “Socratic and Prophetic tradition of truth-telling,” West returns to the oft-heralded founding artists and thinkers of radical democracy — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Melville, and their inheritors, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison, amongst others, to resuscitate the rich American tradition of questioning and dialogue.

West’s well-known wit and brusque style immediately call out the Democratic party, dubbing them  “pathetic” and “spineless.” He argues that, as a nation, we suffer from a “deadening nihilism.” As West defines it, American nihilism has taken on three forms: evangelical, paternalistic, and sentimental. All, he says, demonstrate a “cowardly lack of willingness to engage in truth telling, even at the cost of social ills.” The sources of this nihilism are not surprising. Citing the increasingly violent and yet directionless infotainment of CNN and other major media sources, West argues that while they show the tragedy of the world, they prevent a “reckoning with the institutional causes of social misery.”

It is difficult to dispute this fact. Consider, for instance, the vice presidential treatment of the domestic AIDS spread. During the 2004 vice presidential debate, moderator Gwen Ifill asked both candidates to comment on the increasing spread of AIDS amongst African Americans and young people domestically. She added that their responses should specifically not address the AIDS crisis in Africa. Both Cheney and Edwards, of course, quickly redirected the question towards Africa. Finally, Cheney admitted that he was not aware that AIDS was spreading more rapidly amongst African Americans. However, he showed no remorse for this ignorance and instead enacted what West seems to mean by “sentimental nihilism.” Cheney used this opportunity to repeat with heartfelt sincerity the “tragedy” of such occurrences, as if such a compassionate performance was sufficient to address the AIDS crisis. West has aptly identified the role that admitting the horror of social ills has come to play in postponing any significant response to modern day injustices. His assessment of the Democratic party is equally correct. Edwards’ predictable response simply attacked Bush’s policy toward the AIDS epidemic in Africa, rather than taking the risk of proposing aggressive alternative solutions or even answering Ifill’s question.

The dreams that stuff is made of

West responds to this darkening political landscape with vigor. He identifies Ralph Waldo Emerson as the dreamer of American potential and Herman Melville as the dark oracle foretelling where American exceptionalism will lead in pursuit of our great white whale —global military control. West synthesizes these two historical referents into what he calls the “tragicomic position.” Or a historically rooted political ethos that owns up to the troubled and often violent history of the United States, a democratic experiment as indebted to notions of freedom as it is to enslavement and genocide.  In a description of what West feels few Americans are willing to accept, he describes our nation as a “complex intertwining of democratic commitment and nihilistic imperialism.”

West is frank and unflinchingly honest about the troubled histories of our brightest moments in democratic progress. The agrarian-led Populist movement, the social reforms of the Progressive era under Woodrow Wilson, and the Labor movement spearheaded by Eugene Debbs — all of these leaps forward for social justice and class equality also contain a shadowy and often forgotten history of racism, sexism, and profound xenophobia. Many of these advances occurred under the Wilson administration, which reasserted the Monroe Doctrine and exported American Manifest Destiny to Cuba, Guam, and the Philippines, while renewing racism at home through increased segregation and the re-segregation of Washington, D.C. In emphasizing the at times schizophrenic policies of reform and democratic struggle, West hopes to carve out a new space for politics that can be hopeful without the willful ignorance of nostalgia and sorrowful without the melancholy of nihilism.  

West impressively displays the breadth of his historical and philosophical knowledge throughout Democracy Matters. But he sets this work apart from other detailed histories of American progressivism like Richard Rorty’s Achieving our Nation by maintaining a truly global scope in his sources in hopes of renewing the American democratic tradition. Unlike Rorty, who champions the universal human spirit found in Emerson and Baldwin along narrow class lines at the exclusion of race and sexual politics, West devotes the second half of his book to the voices of dissent amongst three groups who are often represented as being united behind their dogma: Muslims, Jews, and Christians. It is this move to disrupt the predictable Christian, Jewish, and Muslim responses to global problems of injustice that makes this book a must-read. What West attempts is a truly ecumenical approach to politics that resonates with the religious and nationalistic tendencies of Americans while holding tightly to the truly cosmopolitan scope of his dream for global democracy. This is a Herculean task that tests the mettle of West as a thinker and a writer.

It is difficult to say West succeeds at the task, however. Democracy Matters concludes as more of an invitation for further striving than a final proposal or policy statement. But West’s attempt to reclaim the ossified history of the American renaissance alongside the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.’s liberation theology, now mostly forgotten by mainstream religious dialogue, gives pause to cynics who have replaced hope with vitriolic aspersions toward the faith-based communities of this country. Democracy Matters is important because it starts an honest and fearless dialogue between the religious traditions that seem to draw the starkest lines of global division and conflict and have gained undeniable power, whether it be direct theocratic rule or the proxy wars of the Religious Right. West’s invitation to Judaic, Christian, and Islamic thinking is not one of banal respect or politically correct multiculturalism. Rather, it is an engaged, committed search for a common history that demands social justice and ethical lives in a world many have given up on. He crosses the lines into religious and spiritual debate that our “born-again” leaders run from as they profess their religiosity. Engaging new power centers of American politics within their belief structures presents political possibilities that Democratic leaders have not even considered. Given the new political landscape of values and beliefs, it is difficult to imagine competing with the church-led grassroots Republican organization until opposition leaders can dispute their claims to righteousness. West lays the groundwork to develop such a political vocabulary, concluding that “to be a Christian is to live dangerously, honestly, freely — to step in the name of love as if you may land on nothing, yet to keep stepping because the something that sustains you no empire can give you and no empire can take away.”

Out of curiosity, I wondered what the opposition response would be. I went to the Christian Coalition website, and typed into the search box, “What is a Christian?”  I received the following response: “Sorry, your search for ‘What is a Christian?’ yielded no results. Please try again.”  

Luckily, despite the confusion, I still received an invitation to make a donation using my Visa, Mastercard, or American Express.

Player Haters and Hater Players

Given that West intervenes in questions of capitalist greed, military empire, racial subjugation, and the fate of our nations souls in ways that have gotten many men shot, it is not surprising that his work should stir controversy. What is troubling is that the controversy has centered around his competence as a scholar rather than the validity of his claims. In a recent media frenzy over West’s scholarly credentials started by Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers, one of the most accomplished men of American letters has had to defend his significance.  

Democracy Matters, however, lays those question to rest. The trajectory of this work points to a corpus of new philosophical developments that address the continuing legacy of American arrogance and political nihilism. For those like Summers who criticize West for his forays into Hip-Hop or appearances in movies such as The Matrix: Revolutions, bravo, you are correct. The man has no mic skills in that department. (His music reminds me of Christian rock; it is awful and embarrassing to listen to.)  But what makes West’s work exciting is his willingness to put himself on the line for what he believes. He finds hope in the possibility of a democratic youth that most politicians and thinkers write off all together. His attempts to speak in the idioms of science fiction or Hip-Hop are laudable, if not successful. Although his attempts at infiltrating popular culture have had mixed results, West’s invocation of Christian grace and generosity is undeniably powerful even amidst the best arguments for civic secularism.

West confronts the Left with a deeply powerful and difficult question, one that it must engage in a world increasingly dominated by theocratic politics. What must be discussed further is how well West can maintain his spirit of ecumenicism in an increasingly divided world.  

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Rainbow and red

Queer American Indians from New York to San Francisco are showing both their spirits.


What surprised Sabrina Wolf, when she came out to her American Indian grandmother, was the older woman’s lack of surprise.

“I started by telling her, ‘I’m different,’” the white-haired, soft butch activist recalls. And she had this look of, ‘Yeah, I know.’ And then she said, ‘There’s people like you at home [among Indians], and it’s a good thing.”

In addition, her grandmother advised her, “You’re gonna hear … a lot in your life, that’s it’s a bad thing, here (among white people), but it’s not a bad thing, and you’ll know about it later.’”

Wolf, a lifelong San Franciscan and “urban Indian” of both white and Native ancestry, was taken aback by her grandmother’s nonchalant response — a response which, she later learned, was representative of many Native groups. The idea that various American Indian tribes historically recognized and even gave special roles to untraditionally gendered tribe members was written about in 1968, in an academic article by Professor Sue-Ellen Jacobs. But its wider acceptance has come about more recently with the development of vocal groups of queer Indians who, in addition to mining Indian history for traces of their presence, have created a modern name for people like themselves: “two-spirit.”

Coined in 1990 at an annual conference of queer-identified Native people, the International Two-Spirit Gathering, the term “two-spirit,” encompasses various American Indian traditions of tolerance and celebration of gender-variant people. Unlike modern concepts of sexuality, two-spiritedness refers less to sexual orientation than to gender, reflecting the idea that in a single person, both masculine and feminine energies may reside. Prior to the conference, the concept was referred to by different terms in each tribe: For example, winkte in Lakota, a Sioux dialect, nádleehí in Navajo, or problematically called berdache, a French word sometimes translated as “slave boy.”

As an active member of the Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits (BAAITS), a group organized in 1998 out of Gay American Indians (a product of 1970s San Francisco), Wolf now knows that two-spirits have a long and respected history within many North American tribes. With her own knowledge of two-spirit tradition, Wolf’s grandmother was receptive to the news that her granddaughter wasn’t straight. In contrast, Wolf hardly considered coming out to her white family, who seemed hostile to queer sexuality.  

Similarly, Miko Thomas, a Chickasaw member of BAAITS, originally from Oklahoma, was relieved by his Native father and grandfather’s nonchalance at his coming out —  a far cry from his white mother’s unease.

But not all Indians have been accepting. The tradition of giving respected roles to specially gendered tribe members came under attack from colonization and Christianization, was all-but erased in official histories until the 1950s, and still finds resistance today. Reclaiming two-spirit identity is an enterprise fraught with intertribal tensions — made still more difficult by the political endangerment of the Native community. And yet it offers American Indians a unique queer space, one both cozily familiar and excitingly new, organized along different principles than the mainstream, majority-white queer world.

Harlan Pruden, founder of the Northeast Two-Spirit Society, decorates his office with photos of people who are out, proud, and Indian.

Creating a two-spirit community

In New York City, the challenge of organizing two-spirit communities has been taken on by Harlan Pruden, the square-jawed and impeccably put-together founder of the newly-formed Northeast Two-Spirit Society.  Leaning back at his desk at New York’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Community Center, where he works as a coordinator of an anti-addiction program, Pruden muses on history, surrounded by splashy photos of drag queens and powwows.

“There was a time on this land in which we did have full equality,” he comments. “There was a gender analysis with an open acceptance of same-sex couples and relationships. There was a place for all of it, and I think that it’s a shame that it’s been ignored.” Pruden sees this history as crucial to current two-spirit identity. “There is a model there that can be reactivated, claimed and worked on”, he says, although he adds hastily, “There is no going back to a traditional model.”

Much of Pruden’s own knowledge of Native practices and attitudes regarding queer people comes from anthropologist Walter L. Williams’ 1986 book, The Spirit and the Flesh. Drawing on interviews in a variety of North American tribes, primarily in the United States, Williams highlights how, prior to colonial interference, two-spirit peoples were privileged to traverse the gender line by walking freely between gendered tents, for example, or taking on both types of gendered work — hunting and beadwork. In many cases, specific ritual roles, like holding the eagle’s wing or blessing marriages, were designated for two-spirit people. Compensation for ritual services meant that two-spirit people often prospered within their communities, and could use their financial wherewithal to support adopted children.

Pruden notes that the current LGBT movement traces its history from events that are largely European, Western, or relatively recent, like New York’s 1969 Stonewall riots, in which gay bar patrons protested a police raid. Of this limited perspective, Pruden says, “To me, that’s bullshit.”

And there is evidence to back him up. The 1980s and 1990s saw a host of publications and research on gay Native traditions. Yet, while Pruden hopes to raise awareness of Native communities’ traditional acceptance, tolerance, and even reverence of gender-variant people, and to draw strength from an authentic queer history, he has no illusions that a complete history can be uncovered, or should be.

According to Pruden, the history of acceptance toward queer identity in American Indian culture has been concealed by two major factors: colonial suppression of Native sexual tolerance, and Christian Indians’ rejection of traditional practice.

Thus, for most American Indians, identifying as two-spirit is a process of discovery, not an organic outgrowth of living in modern communities. Pruden explains that, “even if there is a reactivation or an honoring of two-spirit people, sometimes there’s not even an explanation because of the stigma associated with it.”

Pruden recalls being approached, after a lecture on his Woodlands Cree reservation in Northeastern Alberta, Canada, by a woman who said she finally understood why, during the men’s sweat lodge, the medicine men permitted her gay cousin to hold the eagle’s wing — a role of honor traditionally accorded to a two-spirit person. “[T]hat elder was reactivating and staying true to the tradition,” explains Pruden, “by finding someone who was queer-identified and giving him that high office.” Prior to Pruden’s talk on two-spirit traditions, however, the man’s cousin “had no point of reference, as a straight woman, to know what was happening before her.”

“You have to start looking for things that are incredibly subtle,” continues Pruden, “and if you’re an outsider, or it’s not of your tradition, you can’t even see what’s going on.”

Seeking suppressed traditions of tolerance

Jeannette Torres, the only female member in the nascent Northeast Two-Spirit Society, angrily recounts the violence visited upon two-spirit people in the colonial era. Torres is of both Peruvian and Puerto Rican heritage, but she identifies mainly with her Incan lineage, having been raised by her father’s Peruvian family who immigrated to the United States in the 1950s. With her pixie haircut, men’s clothing and lipstick, she seems an apt illustration of the gender play inherent in the two-spirit idea. Her black eyes flash as she describes the brutal treatment of two-spirit people by European colonists. “When these colonists came, British and Spanish, they practically decimated us,” she says. “The communities kind of hid what was left of their [queer] people — either hid them, or kept it on the down-low.”

On top of colonial persecution came Christian rejection of the two-spirit tradition. Miko Thomas was combing through his great-grandfather’s Bibles in his native Oklahoma when he found a sermon condemning a Choctaw stomp-dance leader who “either condoned homosexuality or he himself was homosexual.” For Thomas, it was proof-positive that two-spirits had existed previously. “This was the first time that I ever saw anything like this about my tribe.” Previously, a Christian elder in his tribe had told him, “‘There are no gay Indians. There were never any gay Indians.’”

Pruden likewise contends that he has “met elders that just lied to me — Christian elders, rather than traditionalist elders.” At an American Indian men’s health summit, Pruden says, he asked an elder what the word was for “the two-spirit folk. And he’s like, what is two-spirit? So I explained, and he goes, ‘I know what that is — the word is wiktigu.’ Wiktigu is a cannibalistic spirit … a way of keeping kids close to the camp.”

Harlan says his confusion cleared, however, when he heard the elder speak, claiming that the medicine bow is a symbol for the Christian cross, and that braided sweetgrass symbolized the holy Trinity. “I just dismissed what he said, and since then I went seeking actual, traditional elders.”

The lack of open, explicit dialogue about queerness in Native culture means that most two-spirit people, as Thomas laments, “have to go through a book to find where you’re represented as a gay Indian.” The dearth of research on specific aspects of two-spirit life can be frustrating; there’s a notable lack of information on two-spirit women, a gap that Pruden attributes to male privilege: “We live in a patriarchal society. Who has the choice and the power to sit around and write?” He points out that Walter L. Williams himself is a white gay man.

However, some two-spirit people have found that tolerance is nonetheless expressed in Native communities — if not through explicit practice, in quieter, everyday behavior.  Ben Geboe, one of the founders of Wewa and Barcheampe, a previous effort at two-spirit organizing in New York City, found that in his Native community, being queer set him apart but did not isolate him. Blue-eyed and pale-skinned, he is usually read, racially, as white, but is of both Sioux and Norwegian descent, and grew up on a reservation in Mission, South Dakota. Growing up, Geboe recalls, “People knew that I was very effeminate.” Though he was sometimes called winkte, a Sioux word that translates, roughly, as “woman’s way,” Geboe explains that “it was never derogatory, never meant as an insult. It was more a kind of joking, a subtle ribbing.” Both his Sioux and his Norwegian family were supportive of his coming out.

Torres shares Pruden’s frustration with the lack of research on women, and adds that she remains uneasy with some extinct two-spirit traditions, as uncovered in books like Williams’s. She explains that two-spirited peoples sometimes did not self-identify, but were designated as such. In a family of five boys, Torres posits, the youngest might be chosen to be two-spirit, and raised accordingly. Selection might be based on a child’s predilection to gender-bend, but it was nonetheless an elder’s selection.

Furthermore, the sexual aspects of some two-spirit traditions, not practiced today, are another source of discomfort for Torres. For instance, in some traditions, a male-to-female two-spirited person would be expected to take a formerly straight male lover. “This man considered it a privilege to be taken sexually or just picked, in general, by a two-spirit person as their partner —  it’s like being chosen by a god,” she explains. Sometimes this partnership was only temporary, its duration determined by the two-spirit partner, “And this man [the straight partner] would go back to being straight again.”

Torres is reluctant to revere such practices, which she finds incredible from a contemporary vantage point. “I can’t see taking on a straight lover even if it’s for a million dollars,” she muses. How could a straight man, she wonders, be expected to take on a gay one?

A gender emphasis – “it’s not about who you’re fucking”

Pruden acknowledges the tension between modern, sexuality-oriented identifications and the two-spirit concept. “It’s a gender theory — it has nothing to do with sexual orientation,” he says. “Some nations have as many as five distinct genders. Each has a role and a responsibility as well as a sphere within the context of the community.” However, because “today, it’s gay-identified Native Americans who are two-spirit identified . . . that component of gender is basically taken out in practice.”

For example, Pruden notes that while some two-spirits in reservation settings are taking up traditional two-spirit roles again, such as ceremonial cooking, healing, and telling sacred stories, they “do couple up with other two-spirited people in a contemporary way,” rather than taking a straight identified partner as was tradition. As Torres mentions, it’s not a change that most two-spirit people today would lament.

However, as Pruden points out, the traditional emphasis on gender, rather than sexuality, expands the discussion from sex to society. “It’s not about who you’re fucking — it has nothing to do with sex.” Unlike sexual orientation, gender “something that is distinctly ours — that we perform within the community,” argues Pruden. Two-spirit people, he says, must grapple with the question of “‘What is our role within the community at large?’ not just ‘Who am I sleeping with?’”

The emphasis upon a socially-situated role is, for many Native Americans, a welcome change from mainstream queer communities, which often focus on personal identity as separate from the political, cultural and spiritual spheres that form the foundation of two-spirit groups.

Due to the myriad modern threats to American Indian communities, such as marginalization, poverty, poor education, alcoholism and other diseases, Ben Geboe says, people who identify as two-spirit “are more concerned about the racial and ethnic issues than they are about gay and lesbian issues.” Issues such as gay marriage, argues Geboe, are petty compared to American Indians’ struggle to survive as an ethnic community. “We’re still fighting for land, we’ve still got these social problems, we have the highest incidence of disease,” he says.  

Thomas agrees that his primary allegiance, as an activist, is to the Native community. Growing up on his Oklahoma reservation, he explains, “this whole structure around you … says that you need to be politically active,” especially in the hostile political climate generated by anti-Native groups such as One Nation, which has advocated against tribal sovereignty.

Wolf agrees that “gay is second to our role as a two-spirit person walking in the world.” In her view, two-spirit identity is informed by the deep spirituality inherent in Native tradition. “A lot of two-spirit people view themselves as called to a kind of spiritual service,” she remarks.  

Wolf feels that this spiritual emphasis, compounded with the problems of “alcoholism and drug addiction on the rez”, lends two-spirit gatherings a different tenor than mainstream queer events. “Our meetings aren’t all about partying,” she says, noting that almost any two-spirit event will include a prayer or speech by an elder.

“There are people of color who are gay, and there are white people who are gay”

The communal concerns of two-spirit people can generate discomfort for them in mainstream queer communities. “The LGBT movement is fighting for equality,” argues Pruden, “but it’s equality in a model that is being basically driven by white privilege.”

Geboe perceives a racial divide in urban gay life: “You can be [white and] gay, live in Minnesota, and come to New York and feel that you’ve arrived in this mecca, and that everything in this world is there to promote your survival as a person.” In contrast, he continues, “You can come to New York as a Native American from South Dakota, and if you’re a person of color, immediately understand that there are two [queer] societies —there are people of color who are gay, and there are white people who are gay.”

Besides their shared political and spiritual concerns, two-spirit people take comfort in not being tokenized in Native settings, the way they frequently are in the larger queer community. Before Wewa and Barcheampe formed, Geboe explains, ”it seemed like we were doing more for the overall gay and lesbian community than we were doing for ourselves,” constrained to perform as ethnic “representatives” symbolizing the diversity of the gay community.

Wolf complains that “in the gay community at large, we’re sort of a novelty, or we don’t exist — because in mainstream society, we don’t exist.” Two-spirit gatherings are one of the few places where Harlan says he doesn’t feel a need to “take count” to determine his comfort level. Normally he says he asks himself, “Is this safe or is this not safe?  How many people of color are here?  How many other gays?” However, he feels, “When I go to these two-spirit gatherings, I never count. I don’t have to count. It’s very affirming.”

Two-spirit people also draw from experiences of poverty on the reservation that, Wolf notes, are typically far removed from the experience of white Americans. Thomas explains that, for rural gay Indians in particular, the cultural connection is essential as they seek new communities in larger cities. “For us it’s very important to connect with people we identify with. Growing up impoverished is something that unites us.”

Thomas reflects, “You can’t just joke around with Caucasian people, saying, ‘Yeah, when I was a little kid, I used to have to haul water, so we could take a bath.’” In his experience, such anecdotes are often met with disbelief or derision. For the approximately 1.2 million American Indians who live on reservations, however, “That’s just a part of our lives!”

Creating two-spirit culture across tribes

At the same time, the intertribal reach of two-spirit organizing presents its own problems. “Some tribes don’t have a tradition of tolerance of lesbian and gay activity,” Geboe remarks. Consequently, there are a number of Native people who view two-spirit traditions “as an outside thing coming in, and not as something that’s always been there and now is more visible.” He discovered this hurdle himself in an “uncomfortable confrontation” at a Native conference, in which “this elder got up and said that everything we [two-spirit organizers] were doing was wrong.” Intertribal respect, however, prevailed, and it was agreed that the tribes’ traditions differed.

Within two-spirit groups, tribal diversity can also be problematic, but, paradoxically, may produce greater solidarity. “When we come together,” Wolf explains, “we have different traditions around how you say the prayers, and how you have rituals and ceremonies. The interesting this is, when we get together and ask [those questions] we find that, you guys may do this little thing a little bit different” but there’s a basic “connectedness.” In a way, she remarks, “we’re creating two-spirit identity all the time.”

At a time when the queer community on the whole is grappling with its priorities and considering new privileges such as marriage, military service, and adoption, two-spirit organizations like Pruden’s offer an alternative model of queer empowerment.

Reflecting on two-spirit and mainstream gay communities, Geboe summarizes the difference: “The gay way,” he says, ”is that you become gay, you live in the gay community and you do things that identify you with the gay community. The two-spirited way is that you’re a Native American first, and that’s your culture, but there’s also this gayness. But it’s integrated with your culture. It’s something you don’t leave to become.”

Author’s note
Tribal names have been chosen in accordance with the preferred terms of those interviewed. For the purposes of this article, the terms ‘American Indian’, ‘Native American’, and ‘Native’ have been used interchangeably to describe persons descended from the original, tribally-organized peoples of North and South America.

In this article, the term ‘queer’ is used to describe all people who either do not identify as straight, do not identify as the same gender as their biological sex at birth, or both.

STORY INDEX >

The Northeast Two-Spirit Society meets on the 2nd Wednesday of each month, from 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at New York City’s LGBT Center.

BOOKS >
Purchase these books through Powells.com and a portion of the proceeds benefit InTheFray

Two-Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity, Sexuality, and Spiritualityby Sue-Ellen Jacobs, Wesley Thomas, Sabine Lang
URL: http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=28164&cgi=product&isbn=0252066456

Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America
by Will Roscoe
URL: http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=28164&cgi=product&isbn=0312224796

Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology
Edited by Will Roscoe
URL: http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=28164&cgi=product&isbn=031203475x

Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture                     by Walter Williams
URL: http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=28164&cgi=product&isbn=0807046159

ORGANIZATIONS >

Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits
URL: http://www.baaits.org
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center
URL:http://www.gaycenter.org

Northwest Two-Spirit Society
URL:http://www.nwtwospiritsociety.org/index.html

“

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Commentary

The gift that keeps on giving

With stores pushing “free” gifts down our throats this holiday season, I can’t help but wonder if they’re really gifts at all. Even if I do enjoy them …


Mass communications scholars assert consumers and advertisers are engaged in a never-ending struggle for attention and money. Consumers combat the relentless assault of ads by constructing defenses to protect themselves from unnecessary or even disturbing information. Advertisers’ livelihoods depend on toppling or circumventing those defenses, and they use all sorts of stealth attacks to accomplish that goal.

I just want to explain what’s really going on in the latest “movie” playing at the Amazon.com Theater.

Yes, Amazon.com, that amazing emporium of stuff — books, compact discs, software, watches, musical instruments, and whatever else you think you want — now has a “theater.” You don’t have to pay a cent to watch. Just let your defenses down for the five minutes it takes to see the short feature, which the generous owners of Amazon.com call a “free gift” to its customers.

I beg to disagree. I’ve never paid to receive a gift in my life, so I’m immediately suspicious when a store offers me a “free” gift. Usually that complimentary present is an enticement, a way to get me into the shop so I’ll buy something. So let’s be honest. This film isn’t a gift — it’s not even a film. It’s a commercial starring products that you can purchase at Amazon.com.

Don’t know what the products are? You can wait for the credits; they are listed with hyperlinks to another Amazon page where you can buy them. Can’t wait for even five minutes? Click the credits button. They will roll. You don’t have to be told outright to figure out what’s for sale.  

Watch “Agent Orange,” the second of five movies. Notice how the camera lingers on the orange girl’s watch. See how the cinematographer just happens to build the shot around male actor’s orange tennis shoes.

Notice I didn’t say leading man. There is no reason to wait until the end of the movie to buy the Orange Boy’s shades, or the Orange Girl’s boots. Click another button and you can link to the product on the Amazon.com site.

In these movies, the products are the stars and the actors are the props. The fact that a few live humans get top billing doesn’t prove otherwise; it’s just a ploy to get past one of those filters that we weary consumers use to separate wheat from chaff. Or commercials we want to watch from ones we don’t.

So why am I checking the schedule to see when the next movie will show? Because they are great little flicks.

The first one, “Portrait,” was a sophisticated, witty adaptation of the “Picture of Dorian Gray.” I’d give it two thumbs up. I couldn’t really get into the avant-garde camera angles in “Agent Orange,” so the piece gets one thumb up and one down. But that’s coming from a woman who still has oatmeal colored carpet in her living room. Maybe the flick was too bright for my taste.

Still, I stayed and watched until the end, and that is all the advertisers want me to do. Even though I haven’t bought anything, there are fewer and fewer shopping days until Christmas. I was intrigued enough by the movies to spend a couple of hours writing about them, and a lot longer thinking about them.

So who won this battle?  Mass communications scholars also predict that advertisers will become so adept at sneaking through consumers’ barricades, anything can become a potential commercial.

I think the researchers haven’t gone far enough. The future is here; everything already is a potential commercial. Even columns like this.

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also:
 
Interviews

Louisa Achille on The Naked Feminist

A conversation with Louisa Achille, the director of The Naked Feminist.


What inspired you to make The Naked Feminist?

I became inspired to make The Naked Feminist after reading a magazine article on the famous porn star, Nina Hartley, declaring her feminist sensibilities and strengths as a sex entertainer and educator — a career spanning over 17 years. I wanted to know if Nina was a rare exception in this male dominated industry.

Feminism‚ is a somewhat contentious term that different people define in different ways. From your film, I get the sense that you define it in terms of being empowered and in control of oneself. Would you say that’s a pretty accurate characterization of your definition?

I think feminism for many women means different things, but for me it is essentially about choice and giving women a voice. I think once a woman has her voice and can make choices for herself, then empowerment, self-identity, and courage will follow.

Why did you choose the particular actresses you used in your film? They seem like a fairly close-knit group, which I found very interesting. It made the pornography film  industry seem much smaller than I imagined.

It was important for me to interview women who had a number of years experience in the industry so I could gauge the progress (or lack of progress) women had made in the adult entertainment industry.

Once I met Jane Hamilton and read about CLUB 90, I became completely inspired by this group of renegade female sex performers. They had created the first porn star support group for women. They have not only created a strong sisterhood amongst themselves, but [they] also have become incredible mentors and role models to other women in the industry. I consider these women to be the first feminists in the industry, and of course their voices are a crucial element in a film depicting feminist sensibilities within the world of adult entertainment. [Like Jane Hamilton,] Nina Hartley, Sharon Mitchell and Christi Lake … [have] all made incredible strides within the industry – Nina as a sex radical, performer, educator and mentor, Sharon co-founding the first medical clinic devoted to the health and emotional needs of people in the industry, and Christi through her political activism and entrepreneurial insight.

All industries are much smaller and [more] tightly knit than they seem, and this is fairly evident once you start working within mainstream Hollywood and similarly with the adult entertainment industry — especially within the same country. However, I think it is even more so with the adult entertainment industry as the people within that industry have been under attack from legislators, the government, and the public far more than any other industry and thus have banded together to fight for freedom of speech and other essential rights such as freedom of expression.
  
The adult entertainment industry is also an industry where the performers, especially the women, are breaking one of the biggest taboo a woman can break — that is having sex on camera for money … Since only a small percentage of women enter into this occupation, they are going to get to know each other and some will form bonds.

There is a peculiar absence of men in your film — aside from Seymour Butts — even though men are an integral component of the porn industry as both producers and consumers. The absence of men in The Naked Feminist seems to be a smart stylistic move to depict women as the agents of the porn industry and their stories. Did you consider interviewing other men besides Seymour, and if so, why are they not included in the edited version of the film? If not, why? And what is so special about Seymour that caused him to make the cut?

I interviewed a number of men — journalists, directors, writers, and performers in the adult entertainment industry, and they were included in every cut except for my final cut … I made this film to give women in the industry a voice, and I didn’t want to lose sight of that. Thus, if a woman spoke about a similar experience or point of view as a man [I interviewed], I chose to keep in the woman’s voice. This film is about [the women in the pornography industry] and their experiences, not the men’s. Even though I do consider [the men’s] viewpoints and experiences to also be incredibly valid, they essentially didn’t belong in this film.

Seymour Butts has one big specialty in my opinion. No, only joking. The reason I was so interested in keeping Seymour in the film was because of his huge female fan base. Even though his main target audience is men, he has all these women that love him and his porn films. When you go to the big adult entertainment conventions it is always astounding to see the number of women — of all ages and nationalities — waiting to get autographs from him. It was nice to illustrate this role reversal and disprove the right wing feminist mantra that no women like pornography.

I noticed that The Naked Feminist doesn’t explicitly address homosexuality and lesbian erotica. However, from what I have read, queer porn is particularly important for women and men who are questioning their sexuality or who are insecure about being involved with members of the same sex. Do you think there is any particular reason why your film ended up having a heterosexual slant?

I don’t think The Naked Feminist explicitly addresses heterosexual erotica either, but you are right, that it is the main genre of pornography that is delved into. That is mainly because heterosexual pornography is the most popular and most historic type of pornography out there. But this was not at all intentional. I did not look at sexual orientation when I made this film.  I was more interested in the female sexual pioneers and entrepreneurs who had made an impact on the industry and made working conditions for women better or who were making strides in today’s mainstream porn world. There are so many sub-genres in pornography and I am sure that many women and men are empowered by the different types. However, that discussion is, I believe, for another film. However, I would like to add that many of the women interviewed are gay, bisexual, polysexual and heterosexual. A wonderful mix really.

Your documentary argues that some pornography is in fact misogynistic and that such films are not the type of porn that the women you interviewed condone. How can one differentiate between misogynistic and non-misogynistic porn? The presence of violence? Consent (or the lack thereof)? Women both in front of and behind the camera? Or just the gut reaction of women involved in the film?

Subjectivity, taste, and consent will always creep into discussions regarding pornography and especially pornography and misogyny. I don’t think there is one exact definition of misogynist porn, and I don’t think there is a sub-genre [that] supports it. However, when I was making this film, I did encounter a disturbing trend in the industry to push the boundaries of sexual violence towards women as far as possible. I think this is mainly a knee-jerk shock tactic to gain notoriety in the business, and it might possibly exist as a backlash against the positive strides that women have made in the industry.  I don’t believe that the companies making this stuff represent the industry as a whole. However, the fact that this type of material (e.g. women being beaten to a pulp whilst being gang raped, made to vomit whilst giving oral [sex] and [being] punched around the head) is being produced saddens me, and in my opinion, it is misogynist as it is illustrating a hatred towards women.

Do you sense some urgency to disrupt the taboo associated with pornography in general, or is your goal merely to enable the women you interviewed to speak their stories and perspectives? What is it that you seek to contribute to the ongoing dialogue regarding sex and sexuality in Western culture (if anything)?

I made The Naked Feminist to give the women in pornography a voice. To me, the film is less about breaking down the taboo associated with pornography and more about breaking down the taboo associated with women who chose to be sexual educators and entertainers. When a man chooses to work in pornography, he is rarely viewed as being exploited or objectified. In reality the money shot and the penis are the most objectified aspects of the genre.  I really think it is time to get rid of this antiquated double standard.

What, if anything, do you hope to contribute to the independent film industry with The Naked Feminist? Is there anything you hope other filmmakers (adult entertainment or otherwise) will take from seeing your film?  Is there anything you hope viewers will take from seeing it?

I would like to contribute tolerance and acceptance to the [feminist] movement. It would be nice if some of the dominant women’s groups would accept these women’s choices, help them to change the system, and make it safer for women instead of denying them their voice and validity.

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also:
 
Commentary

Sufis of the Dargahs

A pilgrimage on the path to divine love and knowledge.


Click here to enter the visual essay.

“Nehi, nehi sahib…nehi” murmurs the elderly man as I step into the marbled area that houses the saint’s shrine. I stop in my tracks, and he pats his head repeatedly while pointing at mine. I belatedly realize that I should have worn some sort of head cover in deference to Islamic tradition. I search my pockets for a handkerchief to use instead, but the man removes his white cotton skullcap and hands it to me with a smile.

I am at the dargah of Hizrat Nizzamuddin Auliya, a shrine of the revered Sufi saint. It is situated in Basti, reputedly one of the oldest continuously inhabited areas in Delhi. To reach it, I walked along labyrinthine medieval alleys amongst colonies of maimed beggars, stopped to admire the dexterous handiwork of a professional ear-cleaner administering his craft to a client, ambled past countless butcher shops with gory displays of goat carcasses, dingy kebab eateries, and ignored the well-rehearsed entreaties of stall keepers selling skullcaps, rosaries and religious posters of Mecca and of Islamic calligraphy.

Sufism is generally known as “Islamic Mysticism,” in which its adherents seek to find divine love and knowledge through direct personal experience of God. The position of mainstream Islam towards Sufism range from dismissing it as an inoffensive faction to considering it as a dangerous heretic movement because of its open embrace of people from all religions. Nizamuddin Auliya was a 14th century Muslim mystic who withdrew from the world and whose message of prayer, love, and the unity of all matters was admired and faithfully followed by Sufis in the Asian subcontinent and beyond.

Leaving my shoes at one of the stalls, I entered the outer periphery of the dargah, joining a crowd of pilgrims carrying large trays of rose petals destined to be strewn on the actual catafalque of the sainted man. Some of the pilgrims were whispering verses from the Quran, and were careful not to jostle each other as they made their way towards the shrine. People lined both sides of the long narrow alleyway leading to the heart of the shrine; some were asleep, others standing and a few sat, chatting with abandon.

A small woman, with sad eyes, sits quietly with her back to the whitewashed walls of the narrow entranceway. I engage her in conversation by smiling a lot and nodding at her responses. A man nearby serves as an impromptu translator, telling me that her name is Halima, that she is a penniless widow and that she is here for the free dhal and bread doled out daily by the shrine’s organization to the needy. In fact, all of the people around us are waiting for their only good meal of the day. A fierce-looking gray-bearded man glowers at me, probably resenting my intrusion. But it is Halima who captures my imagination and interest.

Further along on a marble platform, a lone woman is deep in prayer and genuflects towards Mecca. Women are not allowed within the inner sanctorum of the shrine, but many are busily tying colored strings and ribbons to the white marble trellis carved by early artisans, which surrounds the saint’s tomb. It is the traditional way for supplicants to request favors from the saint. I am told that some of the women are expectant, and praying for a male child.

Wearing my borrowed skullcap, I stand deferentially before the tomb of Hazarat Auliya. Contrary to more traditional teachings of mainstream Islam, pilgrims prostrate themselves on the floor, murmuring prayers and supplications. Petals of red roses are strewn over the green silk shroud covering the marble tomb. I circumambulate the tomb’s perimeter, and make eye contact with a boy of perhaps no more than six. Ali has an earnest expression, and seems very serious. He is clearly dressed in his best clothes; a burgundy blazer and a spotless white skullcap like mine. I try to speak with him, but he just stands there transfixed by the sight of my cameras. His father hovers nearby, demonstrably proud of his son. Everyone in this area appears to radiate an inner peace, calm and a tangible tolerance for others.

It does not last for long. As I turn to leave the tomb’s site, a khaddim advances towards me with an open notebook. The shrine’s often self-appointed guardians are aggressive in their soliciting donations from pilgrims and visitors, and more often than not, donations end up in the wrong hands. He gruffly asks me for a donation of no less than 5,000 rupees, and using a technique that must have intimidated tourists before, proffers the notebook to show me hastily scribbled entries of donated amounts.

I ignore the theatrics, and greet him with the traditional Muslim “Al-salaam aleikum.” The book quickly disappears from view as he asks me for confirmation that I am a Muslim. His eyes are already darting left and right in search for another mark, and when he gets the confirmation, he slinks out of sight, muttering excuses and apologies. In Islam, charity is largely voluntary.

The skullcap weighs heavily in my hand as I look for its owner. All I know is that he has a gentle smile and a small white beard. I walk up and down the main entranceway, in the various other subordinate shrines and passages, and look among the pillars. But to no avail, the man has vanished among the ancient alleys of the neighborhood, having gifted his knitted skullcap to a stranger. “

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also:
A still from The Naked Feminist, a documentary directed by Louisa Achille. Louisa Achille
Austin, Texas
Interviews

Naked Feminists: A Conversation with Director Louisa Achille

Performers in the adult film industry are breaking one of the biggest taboos a woman can break: having sex on camera for money. Louisa Achille made her documentary The Naked Feminist to give them a voice.

By Laura Nathan-Garner
A still from The Naked Feminist
A still from The Naked Feminist, a documentary directed by Louisa Achille. Louisa Achille

Click here to read In The Fray‘s interview with Christi Lake, one of the subjects of The Naked Feminist.

What inspired you to make the documentary?

I became inspired to make The Naked Feminist after reading a magazine article on the famous porn star, Nina Hartley, declaring her feminist sensibilities and strengths as a sex entertainer and educator — a career spanning over seventeen years. I wanted to know if Nina was a rare exception in this male-dominated industry.

Feminism‚ is a somewhat contentious term that different people define in different ways. From your film, I get the sense that you define it in terms of being empowered and in control of oneself. Would you say that’s a pretty accurate characterization of your definition?

I think feminism for many women means different things, but for me it is essentially about choice and giving women a voice. I think once a woman has her voice and can make choices for herself, then empowerment, self-identity, and courage will follow.

Why did you choose the particular actresses you used in your film? They seem like a fairly close-knit group, which I found very interesting. It made the pornography film industry seem much smaller than I imagined.

It was important for me to interview women who had a number of years experience in the industry so I could gauge the progress (or lack of progress) women had made in the adult entertainment industry.

Once I met Jane Hamilton and read about CLUB 90, I became completely inspired by this group of renegade female sex performers. They had created the first porn-star support group for women. They have not only created a strong sisterhood amongst themselves, but [they] also have become incredible mentors and role models to other women in the industry. I consider these women to be the first feminists in the industry, and of course their voices are a crucial element in a film depicting feminist sensibilities within the world of adult entertainment. Nina Hartley, Sharon Mitchell, and Christi Lake [have] all made incredible strides within the industry – Nina as a sex radical, performer, educator, and mentor, Sharon cofounding the first medical clinic devoted to the health and emotional needs of people in the industry, and Christi through her political activism and entrepreneurial insight.

All industries are much smaller and [more] tightly knit than they seem, and this is fairly evident once you start working within mainstream Hollywood, and similarly with the adult entertainment industry — especially within the same country. However, I think it is even more so with the adult entertainment industry, as the people within that industry have been under attack from legislators, the government, and the public far more than any other industry, and thus have banded together to fight for freedom of speech and other essential rights such as freedom of expression.

The adult entertainment industry is also an industry where the performers, especially the women, are breaking one of the biggest taboos a woman can break — that is, having sex on camera for money … Since only a small percentage of women enter into this occupation, they are going to get to know each other, and some will form bonds.

There is a peculiar absence of men in your film — aside from Seymour Butts — even though men are an integral component of the porn industry as both producers and consumers. The absence of men in The Naked Feminist seems to be a smart stylistic move to depict women as the agents of the porn industry and their stories. Did you consider interviewing other men besides Seymour, and if so, why are they not included in the edited version of the film? And what is so special about Seymour that caused him to make the cut?

I interviewed a number of men — journalists, directors, writers, and performers in the adult entertainment industry — and they were included in every cut except for my final cut … I made this film to give women in the industry a voice, and I didn’t want to lose sight of that. Thus, if a woman spoke about a similar experience or point of view as a man [I interviewed], I chose to keep [it] in the woman’s voice. This film is about [the women in the pornography industry] and their experiences, not the men’s. Even though I do consider [the men’s] viewpoints and experiences to also be incredibly valid, they essentially didn’t belong in this film.

Seymour Butts has one big specialty, in my opinion. No, only joking. The reason I was so interested in keeping Seymour in the film was because of his huge female fan base. Even though his main target audience is men, he has all these women that love him and his porn films. When you go to the big adult entertainment conventions, it is always astounding to see the number of women — of all ages and nationalities — waiting to get autographs from him. It was nice to illustrate this role reversal and disprove the right-wing feminist mantra that no women like pornography.

I noticed that The Naked Feminist doesn’t explicitly address homosexuality and lesbian erotica. However, from what I have read, queer porn is particularly important for women and men who are questioning their sexuality or who are insecure about being involved with members of the same sex. Do you think there is any particular reason why your film ended up having a heterosexual slant?

I don’t think The Naked Feminist explicitly addresses heterosexual erotica either, but you are right, that it is the main genre of pornography that is delved into. That is mainly because heterosexual pornography is the most popular and most historic type of pornography out there. But this was not at all intentional. I did not look at sexual orientation when I made this film.  I was more interested in the female sexual pioneers and entrepreneurs who had made an impact on the industry and made working conditions for women better, or who were making strides in today’s mainstream porn world. There are so many subgenres in pornography, and I am sure that many women and men are empowered by the different types. However, that discussion is, I believe, for another film…. I would like to add that many of the women interviewed are gay, bisexual, polysexual, and heterosexual. A wonderful mix, really.

Your documentary argues that some pornography is, in fact, misogynistic and that such films are not the type of porn that the women you interviewed condone. How can one differentiate between misogynistic and nonmisogynistic porn? The presence of violence? Consent (or the lack thereof)? Women both in front of and behind the camera? Or just the gut reaction of women involved in the film?

Subjectivity, taste, and consent will always creep into discussions regarding pornography, and especially pornography and misogyny. I don’t think there is one exact definition of misogynist porn, and I don’t think there is a subgenre [that] supports it. However, when I was making this film, I did encounter a disturbing trend in the industry to push the boundaries of sexual violence towards women as far as possible. I think this is mainly a knee-jerk shock tactic to gain notoriety in the business, and it might possibly exist as a backlash against the positive strides that women have made in the industry.  I don’t believe that the companies making this stuff represent the industry as a whole. However, the fact that this type of material (e.g., women being beaten to a pulp whilst being gang-raped, made to vomit whilst giving oral [sex], and [being] punched around the head) is being produced saddens me, and in my opinion, it is misogynist, as it is illustrating a hatred towards women.

Do you sense some urgency to disrupt the taboo associated with pornography in general, or is your goal merely to enable the women you interviewed to speak their stories and perspectives? What is it that you seek to contribute to the ongoing dialogue regarding sex and sexuality in Western culture (if anything)?

I made The Naked Feminist to give the women in pornography a voice. To me, the film is less about breaking down the taboo associated with pornography and more about breaking down the taboo associated with women who chose to be sexual educators and entertainers. When a man chooses to work in pornography, he is rarely viewed as being exploited or objectified. In reality, the money shot and the penis are the most objectified aspects of the genre.  I really think it is time to get rid of this antiquated double standard.

What, if anything, do you hope to contribute to the independent film industry with The Naked Feminist? Is there anything you hope other filmmakers (adult entertainment or otherwise) will take from seeing your film?  Is there anything you hope viewers will take from seeing it?

I would like to contribute tolerance and acceptance to the [feminist] movement. It would be nice if some of the dominant women’s groups would accept these women’s choices, help them to change the system, and make it safer for women instead of denying them their voice and validity.

Click here to read In The Fray‘s interview with Christi Lake, one of the subjects of Achille’s documentary.

UPDATE, 3/8/13: Edited and moved story from our old site to the current one.

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also:
Christi Lake flirts with a fan-turned-actor on the set.
Austin, Texas
Interviews

Sex, Lies, and Adult Videos: A Conversation with Adult Entertainer Christi Lake

Best of In The Fray 2004. Being a female sex symbol isn’t easy, but Christi Lake likes to do it. A conversation with the adult film star about reclaiming sex—on and off the camera.

By Laura Nathan-Garner
Christi Lake sitting with a fan-turned-actor
Christi Lake flirts with a fan-turned-actor on the set.

Click here to read In The Fray‘s interview with Louisa Achille, director of The Naked Feminist.

If sex is supposed to be a bad thing, then why did God make it feel so good?” Christi Lake asks as she puts on her mascara and gets ready for work. If you didn’t know Christi, her remark might sound like the battle cry of the 1960s sexual revolution. But for Christi, who is readying herself for another day at the office—that is, nude before a video camera, where she will have sex with one or two other men or women—this maxim cannot be repeated often enough.

Despite the prolific number of people who use pornography—or, as Christi prefers to call it, “adult materials”—and the virtual disappearance of cultural norms shunning the expression of female sexuality, women who earn their living through sex continue to be stigmatized. Subjected to a double standard that regards men who work in the adult entertainment industry as “real men,” women in the industry are typically characterized as inferior, powerless, and morally bankrupt—at least by outsiders.

Inside the industry, though, the women tell another story. As Christi and her colleagues suggest in Australian filmmaker Louisa Achille’s documentary, The Naked Feminist, just because women like sex and do it for a living doesn’t mean they’re oppressed. It would also be shortsighted to believe that these women were just getting paid to have sex, or that men were directing their every move. In fact, many women, including Christi, are executives, directors, actresses, mentors to other women in the industry, and advocates for safe sex, public health, and free speech. In the wake of the recent HIV outbreak in the industry, many of these women have been promoting condom use and safe sex, encouraging the temporary shutdown of film studios, and calling for change in the industry.

Christi, meanwhile, has taken a leave of absence from her work both in front of and behind the camera. But when I spoke with her recently—over two months after I first met Christi and her mom—her determination and her commitment to her colleagues, her fans, and the right to make and watch adult materials was as strong as ever.

Why did you choose this particular line of work?

Purely [out of] curiosity. I was a connoisseur [of adult entertainment]. I had watched adult videos for my own pleasure for a long time, but this became my profession purely by accident … It wasn’t a chosen direction; it just happened. I was a dancer; I went to a convention, went to some photographers, went to New York and did a photo shoot, and then after the photo shoot, I went to another convention where I met the videographers, and they asked me to come out and do a video for them. So it was really just a chain reaction, not planned. To be honest with you, when [a colleague] and I discussed how many videos we thought we’d do in a year, I thought, “I don’t know—eight? Ten? Fifteen at the most?”

It’s seventy-five.We were very new at this and had no clue what we were getting into. Little did I know.

So it wasn’t a chosen [career path]. It was destiny. I was destined to [be an adult entertainer]. Maybe somewhere down the line, someone watching one of my films sees that I have safe sex with a condom, and next time she is getting ready to have sex and her boyfriend wants to [have sex] without using [a condom], she will say, “No, I saw that film, and Christi used a condom.”

Many of the women in The Naked Feminist argue that one of the reasons adult film is so empowering is that it enables creativity. Is it simply that you’re acting, or do you think there are other reasons why you consider it to foster creativity?

Well, we love ripping off movie titles from the mainstream … and doing parodies. But we also feed the mainstream in a lot of ways. When you get a really bad movie, and they’re all talking about the pizza delivery boy—back in the 1970s, almost every other scene was about the pizza delivery boy. We play into mainstream parodies … and make fun of their movies.

[HBO’s] Six Feet Under is a classic example. When I got the script [for an episode of Six Feet Under‘s second season], I remember it said, “cheesy porno music playing in the background, female star moans and groans …” They were making fun of bad adult films, and I just kind of laughed. And when I did my read for them, I think the reason I got the part was because I have been in these sorts of films, I know what some of the cue words are … When it said “V.O.”—voice over—“moans and groans,” I said, “Is this where you want me to do ‘oh oh oh’ [imitates moaning sounds]?” And I started doing it really loudly and was really funny, and they all laughed. They couldn’t believe I went to that next stage. That had to be the reason they hired me for the part—because I made people laugh … I realize they’re making fun of us, and it gives them something to laugh about, and it was cool.

So [adult filmmaking] is art. It might not be high art, obviously, but some of it can be very creative … I just met a friend who did some of the most beautifully artistically done work with the foot fetish, pouring chocolate over a woman’s toes. And I [said], “You need to put this on somewhere. You need to have people see this; this is beautiful.” It’s so artistic because of the way it’s done. You don’t have to appreciate a foot fetish to appreciate the eroticism of it.  So I think we have a very artistic way of doing things …

Many people argue that pornography is oppressive to women because it is used solely for men’s pleasure. What is your response to that criticism?

First off, I hate the word “pornography.” I prefer the term “adult entertainment” … because [people typically associate the term] “pornography” [with] little kids being abused. They don’t remember or think that it’s adult entertainment. They just think of child abuse.

So when people argue that adult material is made for men, well, that’s just not true. I was a viewer myself before I got in the business. I meet more female fans that say, “My boyfriend and I just had a great time. We watched your movie—well, we sort of watched your movie, we watched it for five minutes …” It’s not oppressive to us. Women watch it all the time. I have a huge following of females, so I don’t believe that. I’ve had women say, “Of course we enjoy watching it. We like looking at the hot guys.”

… People use [adult materials] to stimulate foreplay; they use it to spice up their sex lives. Women watch it. They might watch different types of things—maybe—but not necessarily all the time. Because of the Internet and mail-order catalogs, there are at least as many women buying adult materials as there are men.

Many critics of pornography deem your line of work as misogynistic, as degrading toward women, and as targeted at securing pleasure solely for men’s purposes. As a woman in this industry who considers herself a feminist, how do you respond to these charges? Where do you draw the line between misogynistic and nonmisogynistic pornography?

[If the entertainment is] degrading toward the woman, [if it] manipulates [the women involved], then I consider it misogynistic.

If you’re in this industry, you’re told in advance how to approach this. You get an AIDS test, you watch Porno 101, and it is in your hands to decide whether you want to do this particular job or not. When the phone rings and someone says, “I want you to work for me, and I’m going to pay you this amount, and I want you to do this, that, and the other,” you have a right to say no at any moment in that conversation. And I’ve said, “No, I don’t do that type of work.”

[There’s] a man I enjoy spending time with—Max Hardcore. I have not ever worked for him as such, but we’re connected, we joke around. I support him insofar as he has the right to free speech and the right to make whatever he wants to make. Would I work for him? No. Why? Because I don’t enjoy the type of things he provides [for audiences]. He interviewed me to work with him once; he showed me his films. He told me exactly what he expected of me, and he told me he wanted me to do “this, this, and this,” and I looked at him and said, “Oh, no. I don’t think so. I don’t think I can do that. Let me sleep on this.”

I left, went to my boyfriend, who is wonderful, and called the guy the next day and said, “Thank you for the job offer, but that’s really not my thing, and I’m not comfortable doing that.” End of story. I’ve seen him many times since then, and there’s nothing different.

Unfortunately, people who are in this business for the money often make bad choices and then regret [making those choices] later on. And I feel bad for them, but it’s the same thing with someone going into a construction business when he had a bad back already. Well, that’s a bad choice, and you made it, and you have to pay the price.

So [for me] it’s not about doing something for the money. Yes, I do this for a living, but you have to draw the line somewhere in your value system. And most of us do, we really do. We have to. [But] you always hear the stories about “Well, that’s not what I agreed to.” If something makes you uncomfortable, then you should have stopped the film from going on and say, “Stop, that’s not what we agreed to,” and walk away or back it up, and say, “This is what we originally agreed to, and this is what I will do, and either we do this, or I stop.”

… I know girls who enjoy those types of choking holds and all that other stuff. Those are the types of girls who need to work for those types of people. But if you’re not doing it in your private life, you shouldn’t be doing it for your job. Period. That goes for everything. Unless you’ve done it at home and enjoyed the hell out of it, don’t do it for the camera because it’s not worth it.

Christi’s mom: Nightline [did a] documentary following this girl when she first started in the industry, and I was so upset when I saw that. She was into drugs and violence. She was a very extreme case. I had to call Christi and say, “This isn’t true, is it? This is horrible!” It really scared me.

Why do you think those sorts of negative characterizations of women in the adult entertainment industry are more prominent than positive representations of women like yourself, Christi?

Because that’s what people think it is. You have a right to your opinion, and your opinion is somewhat valid. You’re right. That’s one perspective, but there’s another perspective, and that’s that they want ratings. [Adult entertainer] Jenna Jameson has done some wonderful things [helping out with the current HIV crisis in the industry and doing fundraisers], and to me, her work is a true Hollywood story. But you don’t see her on Nightline. You saw the other girl on Nightline because that’s what the news people want to talk about. Who wants to see a happy porn star? It’s like a car accident. [No one wants to pay] attention to the traffic.

I’ve been asked to do many news interviews … but I say, “Unless you can tell me what the questions are going to be in advance and what your tone is going to be for the story, I’m not doing it.” Because if it’s going to be a negative piece, I’ve been burned too many times … I’ve done interviews where I was told this was going to be a positive thing or a mostly positive thing, and it came out negative with very little positive, and I was furious.

Once the guy actually called me to forewarn me that he’d screwed up and that he’d had no choice but to make it this way, and I was like, “Well, I’ll see it; I’ll watch it tonight.” I got phone calls from other girls who had seen it [complaining about the story and its characterization of the industry], and I was so angry and called his machine and filled it up twice. I told him, “I’m never trusting the news media again because of what you’ve done to me. You’ve betrayed me and my friends. How can you do this? You blatantly lied.”

So I think that the media tells people the bad stories [about the pornography industry] because that’s what they want to hear, that’s how they think it is. And by [misrepresenting the pornography industry], their poor little children will be safe at home watching cartoons, even though most cartoons are more violent than anything I’ve ever seen.

How do your parents feel about your line of work?

You know, maybe it’s not the first thing they ever wanted me to do in life—they’ll tell you. Mom?

Christi’s mom: [shakes her head] No.

Christi: But as my dad said when I told my parents what I do for a living, “Why would we be upset about you doing something that we actually watch ourselves?”

And I’m safe. I have a head on my shoulders. I don’t do drugs. I don’t drink alcohol in dangerous amounts. I teach a positive thing. I teach people how to be safe. I help people enhance their pleasure.

And I stand up for what I think is a fundamental right for everybody. It’s like the Mel Gibson movie, [The Passion of the Christ], that just came out … I’m not into religion in any way, shape, or form, but I know the story. I went to see the movie the opening weekend—not to support the Christian bandwagon, but to support Mel Gibson as an artist and to say, “You have every right, whatever your audience thinks, whatever you believe, to put this out there.” And that’s why I went. I always support other people’s [right] to make art. I might not like it. I watched [The Passion of the Christ with my hands] covering the violence and reading the words, and I sat through it. I did see most of it; there were just certain points where I couldn’t watch the violence, where I couldn’t take any more. But that’s okay. He had the right to make and distribute that film.

Tell me a little bit about your boyfriend’s feelings about your career. From The Naked Feminist, I got the impression that he’s perfectly fine with your job.

Yep. When we met, he owned a magazine, and he was interviewing me for his magazine a few years back—five or six years ago. I was already in a relationship, but [that relationship] was on its way out. We had our differences of opinions in terms of the way I wanted to see my career go, and as strong-minded as I am, I decided it was time to go my own way. And it worked out for the best; I’m confident of that. My ex-boyfriend and I are actually now friends and talk as colleagues in the business. We’re not best friends, but we’re colleagues in the business.

But then I kept running into [my current boyfriend] at charity events … so we started dating. And then the magazine wasn’t doing so great, and we were getting more serious. So then I asked him to work for me, taught him how to run the

camera. He already did photography for his magazine, so I taught him how to do the videography part, and he became partners with me.

He was already in the business when he met me, so there were no surprises. I wasn’t trying to say, “By the way, this is what I do.” He already knew, and he accepted it. He looks at me kind of like my mom [does]. I’m an actress. Whatever my job entails is just part of what I do. When the camera stops and the paycheck comes, I go home to him, and he knows that.

One of the things that struck me about The Naked Feminist was that all of the women – all of the adult entertainers – interviewed in the documentary seem to be very close. Tell me a little bit about your relationship with the other women in the industry.

… I’m not sure if I told Janie Hamilton that I was interviewing with Louisa [Achille, director of The Naked Feminist], or if it was the other way around. I don’t remember which way it happened. But either way, because we are friends, [we all ended up being interviewed].

Jane Hamilton is a director I’ve worked for many, many times, and I highly respect Candida Royalle for her initiative, business savvy, and enthusiasm. I mean, [these women] laid the path for my future … and so I know all of them very, very well, as people who respect our industry.

And we’ve taught other girls. Whenever a new girl comes into the industry and … is going through the dilemmas of “Do I want to do this? Do I not want to do this,” I’ll be the first one to take her aside and say, “Look, this is forever. If you have any doubts, walk out of this room right now. Don’t do it. Don’t ever regret your decision to be in this industry because the minute you have a regret, the vultures will tear you up and spit you out.” And I’m honest about that because it’s just like Howard Stern—if he has a guest on his show, and he can find a weakness, he will tear [that person] apart. Our industry is very similar to that … There’s good and bad in everything that you do, but you find the one with more good, the one that works for you.

At my first photo shoot, I met Nina Hartley. I sat and talked to her for a couple of hours. [I said], “Well, I’m thinking about it; I don’t know. I’m just going to do some photos today and see.” And she gave me her wisdom of who I should see if I ever did decide to go further and do films: “If you ever go to California, you’re going to need this, you’re going to need a test.” She informed me of all of the things I would need in advance. So I’m now like the heir apparent to Nina Hartley … and I guess someday [they’ll] need to find an heir apparent to me. [Laughs] So she taught me all of that, and now I make it a point to [mentor] other new women.

Tell me a little bit about why you agreed to be interviewed for The Naked Feminist.

… Actually, I’ve been interviewed for a lot of documentaries that have not seen the light of day, and I’m pretty sure that they were all for personal consumption, to say “look what I got someone to do,” or whatever the case may be. Basically a huge waste of my time.

So when Louisa said she wanted to interview me, I asked, “Well, okay, what is it that you want to accomplish with this?” … After [Louisa and I had spoken] for a while, I said, “I’d be happy to take some time to interview with you.” I met her and found that to be an interesting, wonderful experience in and of itself. We became good friends. It wasn’t about the documentary anymore. It was more about creating the friendship to me. And that’s why I’m here [in Austin at the South-by-Southwest Film Festival]. I normally require a fee for me to do appearances like this, but I told Louisa, “If there’s anything I can do for you, to help you promote your movie …” I would even email her suggestions because I wanted to help her get [The Naked Feminist] out there … And that was when I hadn’t seen the movie yet completed … So now she’s made this wonderful, interesting documentary that I want the world to see for her.

Making The Naked Feminist was a bit of a family affair for you. Your mother is also interviewed in the film. Did she want to be?

Oh, no, I didn’t offer my mother up as a sacrificial lamb. [Louisa] asked if I would ask my mother if she was willing to be interviewed. [My mom has] done radio stuff with me, when I’ve [been] interviewed on the radio, so I said, “Well, I’ll ask her.” So I asked her if she was [willing to be] interviewed on camera. It took her about forty seconds to think about it, then she said, “Well, sure, we’re going to be in town anyway.”

Were you nervous about what they were going to ask you?

Christi’s mom: Well, somewhat. But it wasn’t exactly the first time I’d done something like this. When she got the award a few years ago, she had my husband and I come up on stage with her to receive her award with her.

Christi: [Laughs] Yeah, it was a very proud moment. Every year the Free Speech Coalition presents an award to someone in the industry who has set a positive [example], an activist who has done good work to promote the positive face of adult entertainment.

Four years ago I was the recipient of [the award], and I asked my parents to come out and be there for me. But when it came time to receive my award, I looked at my mom and said, “Mom, do you want to come onstage with me to get this award? Because you’re the one who taught me right from wrong, and who I am, and what I’ve become today.”

And she said, “I don’t know, ask your father.” So I said, “Dad, do you and Mom want to come onstage with me when I [receive] my award?” And my dad said, “Hell, yeah!” He’d already had a couple of drinks, and he did the Rocky thing [putting arms up in the air] …

What is it that you would like viewers to take from seeing The Naked Feminist?

The United States was created due to a lack of tolerance. And then we come over here, and we’ve started becoming more stringent … now we’re back where we started.

These days there isn’t really a single definition of what it means to be a feminist. There just isn’t; it’s an individual interpretation of what feminism means. It’s the same thing with religion and anything else. But you have to tolerate the other person, [whether that person] is a lesbian, is gay, or whatever. If someone is straight as an arrow and has five kids, they aren’t any better than a lesbian. They just have different lifestyles, and we have to tolerate each other’s differences as such.

So when everyone walks in to see this movie, they’re going to have a set mindset. They’ll have their values and opinions. I want them to leave with a broader sense of tolerance and acceptance of other people for who and what they are no matter who and what they are. I hope viewers will be enlightened and more tolerant after seeing The Naked Feminist.

Click here to read In The Fray‘s interview with Louisa Achille, director of The Naked Feminist.

UPDATE, 3/8/13: Edited and moved story from our old site to the current one.

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also:
 
Commentary

The tragedy of the un-commons

On November 2, queer Democrats put our personal interests aside in deference to the Big Picture. Our loss and the subsequent calls for a rightward track by the Democratic party leave us with a tough choice: Abandon the party that would abandon us or stick with the Democrats to change their strategy from within.


For progressives everywhere, November 3, 2004, was a dark day. But in my little gay corner of my little gay neighborhood in Park Slope, Brooklyn, it felt like those Red State voters had delivered me a stinging bitch-slap before heading back to church in their flag-festooned minivans. It felt that personal.

I wasn’t prepared for a second Bush victory. The Bush administration’s blundering policies seemed so outrageous that no rational person could cast a ballot in their favor.  Even my father, a lifelong Republican, held his nose and voted for Kerry. “At least Kerry’s a professional,” he said.  “I didn’t want to vote for somebody who just swaggers around the world carrying a big stick.”    

And so did I, as a lesbian and a hard-line liberal, despite Kerry’s disavowal of my right to marry and transparent discomfort with homosexuality.  

The decision wasn’t easy. On political blogs like DailyKos.com, I defended my choice to would-be Nader voters who believed a Kerry vote was selling out. I was frequently the first to confront anyone advocating a ‘protest vote.’ This election, I argued, was too important. We had to put our ideals into perspective, and save the marriage issue for another time when wars were not being waged on false premises and when rich people were not lining their pockets with money skimmed from schools and healthcare cuts.

My rationale was that if we liberals could swallow our distaste for Kerry’s quasi-conservative social outlook, he would be forced to recognize us and our ideals for the sake of party unity after he was safely installed in the White House. Just as Republicans had made a sharp right turn in response to the realization that they could not win without their ‘conservative Christians,’ I believed that the Democrats would see that they needed to address the values of gay liberals to maintain power. I could never contemplate a loss long enough to wonder what would happen if Kerry didn’t make it.

Despite the endless election cycle nattering of “moderate” Democrats who worried that “the gays” were the new Greens, it was still a shock to wake up November 3 and find myself on the sacrificial altar of political strategy. In the time it took the pundits to declare that the election had turned on “moral values,” gay Democrats had been branded as traitorous wraiths who had robbed Kerry of the presidency. The “gay marriage movement” was blamed for the Democrats’ loss, and Democrats were angry — in the elegant words of one irate blogger: “Thanks homos, it won’t happen again.”

Everyone from the armchair activists in the blogosphere to party luminaries including Senator Dianne Feinstein and openly gay Representative Barney Frank were urging the party to “move right” on social issues to become electable for the next round. America is not ready for gay marriage, they argued. Feinstein claimed that gay marriage “energize[d] a very conservative vote,” saying “The whole issue has been too much, too fast, too soon.”

It is hard to say when exactly a society is ready to correct the injustices of ingrained prejudice. America certainly was not ready to abolish slavery in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was elected; nor to grant women suffrage in 1872, when Susan B. Anthony was arrested for voting; nor for interracial marriage, even after the 1967 Supreme Court ruling that declared anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional. These social revolutions were brought about by the tenacity and conviction of their most passionate advocates, leaders — Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King, to name a few — who emerged from the crowd to focus a movement and achieve its objectives.  

I know Kerry would not have been a revolutionary, but I believed he would have assumed leadership with a sense of fairness that is utterly lacking in Bush’s far-right radicalism.  More importantly, I believed the he would have allowed change to happen, even if he did not openly advocate it. But in the wake of the election fiasco, the Democratic hand-wringing turned to blood-letting, and rather than reacquainting themselves with their core values of social justice and civil rights, Democrats tacked even harder right, attempting to capture the ever-elusive “swing-voter,” and leaving the rest of us dangling.    

It is a painful place to be. Being treated as a pariah in my own party felt like the sucker-punch follow-up to that Red State bitch-slap. But in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and across the country on websites and in cafes, we are licking our wounds and trying to regroup.  We are discussing strategy, getting involved in local politics where our voices can be heard, and strengthening our own ties in order to fortify us for the long battle ahead.

Perhaps it was foolish to hope that a radical shift in the cultural bias against gays was so near at hand. But it is easy to forget how far we’ve come.  When I was born, homosexuality was a mental illness. Now it is the subject of a popular sitcom. Gay couples have gotten married with varying degrees of legality across the nation, and we have innumerable pop-culture icons that are openly gay. These small things signify a greater cultural shift, and when a critical mass is reached, new leaders will emerge as they have in the past.

It took a bloody war to end slavery, the better part of a century for women to win the right to vote, and the fight for Civil Rights continues today. These battles were fought with bayonets and horses across the Mason-Dixie line, over kitchen tables in homes, and at lunch counters in the segregated South. Now, they’re taking place on the steps of City Hall. Last year thousands of gay couples lined up to be married in San Francisco, California; New Paltz, New York; Sandoval County, New Mexico; Portland, Oregon; Asbury, New Jersey; and across the state of Massachusetts.

Like any good homo, I know when the party’s over, but I am not quite ready to leave the Democratic one, despite the ugly turn it has taken.  I can’t shake the feeling that enough of us minorities together make up a majority. I can’t stop thinking that this party could get rocking again if Democrats would look back to their own ideals of protecting the rights of minorities and promoting equality for all, rather than routing out those voters who pulled the lever for Bush because the idea of two fags getting married made their skin crawl. I want to be there when it does.  

STORY INDEX

The writer
Keely Savoie, InTheFray Contributor

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Gerónimo walks to work through the morning fog near a Chiapan army base and a newly discovered Mayan ruin. (Outside Ocosingo, Chiapas, Mexico)
Photo Essays

Blurring the Lines

A look at indigenous cultures of Latin America through the lens.


Worshippers kneel on pine needles in front of open Coke bottles and melting candles. Colored ribbons hanging from pointed straw hats cover their faces. Faded wooden saints wearing silk stare from behind glass cases. Clouds of incense muffle the chants of the Tzotzil villagers in San Juan Chamula Chiapas, as busloads of Europeans wear a path in the tile. The tourists outnumber the locals, but they have come to witness the religious ceremonies of indigenous Mexicans.

Who are these “indigenous people” of Latin America, and what does it mean to be an Indian? Few countries in Latin America have tribal registries based on bloodline, and most do not have established reservations. Is the answer in the way people dress, the language they speak, the religion they practice, or the color of their skin? Is it valid to fear that indigenous ways of life are vanishing?

These questions are hard to answer, but need to be explored.

The lines that once separated the “indigenous” from the “Latins” are blurring. Hundreds of years ago, the Spaniards came to key cities of economic and geographic importance. They rarely ventured out of these established areas, allowing indigenous communities to develop in relative isolation. Today, however, cultural isolation is rare. As transportation continues to improve, migration occurs and languages disappear; cultures merge. Now only the extremes are obviously identifiable as “white” or “indigenous.” The majority lie somewhere in the middle.

The term “vanishing culture” is frequently used to describe a process that has been occurring for centuries. Cultures are fluid and in a constant state of change. What we now think of as “signs” of the indigenous, such as round, black hats on Aymara women, may not have been recognizable to the same tribes hundreds of years earlier. Many of these “signs” are imports from non-indigenous cultures. I show this cycle of cultural change by photographing isolated indigenous populations, peoples living in mixed cultures, and areas where Indians have become extinct.

For nine years, I photographed in areas of Latin America with large indigenous populations. I worked with Maya in Southern Mexico and Guatemala, Aymara in Bolivia, Quechua in Peru and Ecuador, Tarahumara in Northern Mexico, Guaraní in Argentina and Paraguay, Yagua in the Amazon, and Nivacle in Paraguay, to name just a few. I photographed the vanishing and merging cultures in twelve countries, from the southernmost city in the world in Tierra del Fuego, where the native populations were annihilated, to the Tarahumara cave dwellers of the Copper Canyon on the Mexico-Texas border.

These fifteen images are a small sampling of a larger project. They are documents of street life that show how people live, work, and lead their daily lives. The photographs show the merging of the Indian and Latin cultures and the changing ways of life. They question what it means to be indigenous.

Three children with painted faces underneath a tree
Yagua Indian children paint their face with seeds before performing ritual dances. (Pebas, Peruvian Amazon)

They say there is a city of dolphins at the bottom of the Amazon waters. A lost city. Time passes slowly down there. One day below equals one year above. The pink dolphins of the Amazon don’t have enough mates. So the male dolphins swim to the surface and steal Amazonian women, and the female dolphins steal handsome men. If you stay underwater and live the dolphin life, time appears normal. But when you return to the surface, your village is gone, and a modern city has taken its place. Your family and friends are dead. Eventually, you age as you should and turn to dust as your long-dead ancestors.

They call the pink dolphins “witches”—bad, pink witches.

Man sitting on dirt facing away from traveler
A Tarahumara Indian gives directions to a hiker in the Copper Canyon. (Posadas Barrancas, Mexico)

He gives a hiking tourist directions on how to reach the bottom of the deepest canyon in the world. Then the Tarahumara sits on his bench on the rim of the Copper Canyon and carves a stick and a ball. His shadow points the way.

Four women standing in front of a row of hanging slaughtered hogs
Quechua women line up to buy meat at a roadside stand. (Calderón, Ecuador)

Like musical notes, the pigs hang in an uneven line. Women inspect and decide on their favorite slabs. A cat hides around the corner, hoping for handouts. A man humming and whittling sticks waits for his wife to shop.

Old woman wearing hat
An Aymara Indian woman quietly crosses Lake Titicaca on a boat. She is making a pilgrimage to Copacabana on Easter to pay homage to the Virgin of Copacabana. (Lake Titicaca, Bolivia)

Easter morning on Lake Titicaca. A baby monkey grasps a necklace charm with a fuzzy image of the Virgin of Copacabana. Aymara Indian women in shiny skirts tease children by chasing them down the street with a stuffed frog that has colored stars on its back. Street vendors sell strings of fresh roses for twenty cents and images of the Virgin in barnacle-covered oyster shells. Believers pray for new homes while drunk, chanting priests perch faded plastic houses on their heads.

Children laughing and watching helicopter land
One of the first helicopters to land in Baños, Ecuador, is greeted by a crowd of screaming and laughing people. Baños is the gateway to the Amazon Basin in Ecuador. (Baños, Ecuador)

Blades slice thin air and squeeze between mountain peaks. Crowds race down cobbled streets toward the soccer field. Boys spin in circles with arms outstretched and little girls squeal and scream. Parents giggle and sprint ahead of the crowd. The helicopter descends, and the twirling boys push each other closer to the blades. An elegant leg steps out, and a rich visitor comes to town.

Three women wearing hats
Three Aymara Indian women, guests at a wedding, stand covered with confetti outside the chapel. (La Paz, Bolivia)

Confetti drips like melting snow from hats onto sour shoulders. The day is festive, but they are not. The bride walks out. A guest lifts a hat to sprinkle the woman with more flakes. But nothing touches their faces.

Man sitting on a canoe with a child standing nearby
A Garifuna man and child stare at the sea. Their ancestors were shipwrecked slaves who swam to freedom and mixed with local Indians. (Roatan, Honduras)

They stare at the sea. Their ancestors came on that sea—slaves—shipwrecked to short freedom and then shuttled to an island off Honduras. These are the Garifuna. They dance with the wind.

Clouds along the mountains with the tops of the church visible
Clouds blanket the Andes Mountains above a church. (Baños, Ecuador)

View from a damp hotel window. I lift off my blanket as the clouds unveil the town.

Man's hand carrying a pickaxe against the fog
Gerónimo walks to work through the morning fog near a Chiapan army base and a newly discovered Mayan ruin. (Outside Ocosingo, Chiapas, Mexico)

Gerónimo carries a pickaxe on his neck and smiles with a chipped tooth. He steps into the mist while his feet break muddy reflections. In the distance, army drums echo tunes of revolution.

Child and other parishioners in a line outside the cathedral
Chiapans enter the Cathedral of San Cristobal on “Human Rights Day” to celebrate the twenty-five years of service of Bishop Ruiz, a supporter of Chiapan Zapatistas and voice of the Indians. (San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico)

Two priests in white satin robes plant their feet in front of towering church doors. Patrons gaze from the plaza below while the priests stand silently for photos. Children with gladiolas and men carrying wooden St. Christophers on their shoulders bow their heads as they pass the priests. Shoe-shining Indian boys giggle behind the robes. Three lambs carved out of papayas with furry fruit hair greet people as they enter the church.

Man sprawled out on stone steps
A drunk man collapses on the steps of Guadalupe Church in San Cristobal de las Casas. (San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico)

Dozens of steps on the way to heaven. A drunk walks a few and dreams the rest.

Four children laugh as a tire burns
Children enjoy lighting fires in honor of their city’s patron saint during the week-long Fiesta de San Martín. Otavalo is a mestizo town surrounded by Indian villages. (Otavalo, Ecuador)

They light tires and cardboard boxes. They run through the flames protected by the spirit of Saint Martín. Children giggle. Parents smile. Fumes rise to heaven.

Couples dancing while others clap
Several families gather for a Mother’s Day celebration in a small Amazonian village. (Tamichiacu, Peruvian Amazon)

She’s sixty-four and dances like Chubby Checker. Green ruffles at the bottom of her dress twirl when she squats, wiggles her hips, and raises her arms. It’s Mother’s Day on the Amazon, and she shouts her motherhood as she celebrates with her family. She guzzles the beer-egg milkshake and opens her eyes wide. “You drink half, and I drink half,” she insists as she passes the bottle covered with lipstick smudges the color of cotton candy. “For Mother’s Day. To the mothers!”

Two young girls standing under a leafless tree
Two young girls stand by a tree in the old city of Quito. Quito was founded in the 1500s on top of the ruins of a major Inca city. (Quito, Ecuador)

Winding streets and twisted trees in the Old City. The Virgin of Quito looks over the city from the highest peak, guarding the children who stare through those branches.

Cow skull on a post
A skull welcomes people to the end of the earth, where the indigenous Fuegians were annihilated. (Tierra del Fuego, Chile)

Tierra del Fuego. The Land of Fire, where before they were extinct, the Fuegians warmed themselves by flames. Tierra del Fuego. The End of the World.

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Commentary

Onward, progressive soldiers

The Democratic Party was vanquished in this month’s election — or was it?


The nation is divided. After the last election, one party dominates the government. It has sustained its hold on the presidency and bolstered its majorities in Congress. Its newly elected president will likely appoint several justices to a closely divided Supreme Court. The situation looks bleak for the opposition, which during the campaign failed miserably to articulate what, exactly, they stood for. Their politics, scoffs one columnist, are “hardly more than an angry cry of protest against things as they are.”

But the opposition has been mobilized. The last campaign was an ugly, embittering experience, but it brought countless new soldiers into the party and into the cause. A journalist writes:

It was something more than just finding ideological soul mates. It was learning how to act: how emails got written, how doors got knocked on, how co-workers could be won over on the coffee break, how to print a bumper sticker and how to pry one off with a razor blade; how to put together a network whose force exceeded the sum of its parts by orders of magnitude; how to talk to a reporter, how to picket, and how, if need be, to infiltrate — how to make the anger boiling inside of you ennobling, productive, powerful, instead of embittering. How to feel bigger than yourself. It was something beyond the week, the year, the campaign, even the decade; it was a cause.

The election I have in mind is not the election of November 2, 2004, but the one of November 3, 1964 — when Democratic incumbent Lyndon Baines Johnson crushed his Republican challenger, Barry Goldwater. (Just to keep you on your toes, I substituted “emails” for “letters” in the quote above.) This was the pivotal election that ushered in the rise of the American conservative movement, an unlikely coalition of cultural warriors and economic elites who have dominated the nation’s politics for the last two decades.

Rick Perlstein (the journalist quoted above) chronicles the 1964 election in his book Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus. Goldwater was the candidate of the Republican wing of the Republican Party. He went down in blazing defeat, but his campaign galvanized conservatives across the country. “Scratch a conservative today: a think-tank bookworm at Washington’s Heritage Foundation … a door-knocking church lady pressing pamphlets into her neighbors palms about partial-birth abortion … an organizer of a training center for aspiring conservative activists or journalists … and the story comes out,” Perlstein writes. “How it all began for them: in the Goldwater campaign.”

Past is not always prologue, but what happened then does offer Americans some idea of the possibilities for changing what is happening now. The Democratic Party lost the last election, and the defeat was devastating. Yet amid all the confident declarations of its imminent political demise — that the party is a “national party no more,” that it lacks a clear message, that it must change its values to match those of Middle America — we may lose sight of the fact that Democrats are building, as the Republicans did four decades ago, a grassroots network. This fact alone should give Democrats hope moving into the second term of a second Bush administration, even though the fight remains a long and uphill one.

The Republican revolution

Americans have forgotten how sharply political attitudes have shifted in the last half-century. In 1964, conservatives were fighting to be taken seriously in their own party. The Republicans who did win national office were largely moderates. The Republican Party’s only winning presidential candidate in three decades, Dwight Eisenhower, presided over a substantial growth in federal government programs: the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the federal interstate highway system, the expansion of low-income housing. (He also declared his staunch support for the biggest “big government” program of all, Social Security.)

The blow dealt to conservatives by Johnson’s landslide victory left them chastened. The numbers (61 percent for Johnson, 39 percent for Goldwater) did not lie: The conservative agenda had been roundly — awesomely — rejected. A consensus had emerged, the pundits of the time said, in favor of government solutions to social and economic problems.

“By every test we have,” said presidential scholar James MacGregor Burns, “this is as surely a liberal epoch as the late 19th Century was a conservative one.”

Two years later, the Republicans seized ground in the House and Senate, and ten conservative governors were voted in. Two decades later, Ronald Reagan smothered his Democratic challenger Walter Mondale in a blanket of red, leaving only Washington D.C. and Mondale’s home state of Minnesota untouched. Three decades later, the Republicans swept into power in both houses of Congress. Four decades later, Republicans dominate all three branches of government.

The ingredients of the Republican revolution were, to some extent, the usual mix: wealthy financiers, charismatic leaders, a brain trust of conservative intellectuals. But the heart of the movement was its foot soldiers. Many had been baptized in the ruin of the Goldwater campaign; now they were raising money among their neighbors, running for local offices, and immersing themselves — with zeal and excitement — in the American political process.

In a word, they organized. “These low-budget, no-frills, volunteer driven, high-tech groups packed grassroots punch with blazing efficiency and little overhead,” writes Ralph Reed, one of the architects of the grassroots network of evangelical Christians that came to prominence in the 1980s. “Housewives at kitchen tables, home schoolers perched before personal computers, businessmen burning fax lines, and precinct canvassers identifying voters formed a grassroots network without parallel. At first few took notice of their existence, and the absence of many headline hounds in their ranks delayed their appearance onto the national political scene. Most felt uncomfortable with the limelight. They were simply citizens, parents, and taxpayers organizing others of like mind.”

Ralph Reed’s Christian Coalition started off by building a grassroots presence in all 50 states. Their candidates took control of local school boards. They fought ferociously over state legislation and local ordinances. “Rather than tune the rhythm of the group to election cycles,” Reed writes in his book Politically Incorrect, “we focused on the long-term picture, assembling a permanent organization that would represent people of faith in the same way that the Chamber of Commerce represents business or the AFL-CIO represents union workers.”

Slowly, power at the grassroots translated into power in Washington. In the 1992 election, the voter turnout of self-identified, born-again evangelicals was the largest ever — an estimated 24 million, or one out of every four voters.

The cultural conservatives lost that presidential election, but they made inroads at the state and local level. What’s more, the Clinton presidency radicalized evangelicals, bringing countless new activists to the movement. It was, in Reed’s words, “a wake-up call for many churchgoing voters who had retreated from the political arena after the Reagan years.”

The liberal president won a second term, but the cultural conservatives regrouped in larger numbers. They were the troops who voted George W. Bush into office in 2000. They were the ones who stormed the polls in 2004, again in record numbers, to keep Bush in the White House and keep alive the dream — afloat on the backs of 11 state ballot measures — that gay marriage would be outlawed across the land.

They succeeded on both counts.

A battle lost, a war begun

On the other side of the aisle, the question is, “What went wrong?” Much was made of Howard Dean’s grassroots-based, Internet-powered campaign that brought legions of young people into politics. Then the candidate stumbled in the primaries, and the “Dean machine” was written off as hype. Much was made, too, of the bloggers and small donors who gave a much-needed boost to the campaign of Senator John Kerry, as well as the unprecedented numbers of new voters who registered in the months leading up to the election. But when the votes did not materialize for Kerry on November 2, pundits pooh-poohed the Democratic Party’s faith in the not-seen. They shouldn’t have had so much confidence in young voters known to be fickle and unreliable. They shouldn’t have expected to win the ground war in Ohio and Florida. They should have known all along that ordinary Americans care about personality more than policy, values more than health care, terrorism more than the economy.

“Kerry was counting on millions of first-time Democratic voters to carry him through, and millions apparently did turn out, but probably not enough to make the difference,” went The New York Times’ postmortem. “… Only about half the voters yesterday had a favorable view of Kerry, about the same as for Bush, and he dueled Bush only to a draw on who would best handle the economy … Voters who cited honesty as the most important quality in a candidate broke 2 to 1 in Mr. Bush’s favor.” (Christian soldiers, on the other hand, came out in droves for their leader: This time, a third of voters identified themselves as evangelicals, and they voted overwhelmingly for Bush.)

It was not that the Democrats did not have a “ground game” — it was that the Republicans, having been at this for four decades, had a much better one.

Now, staring at the wreckage of the Kerry campaign, progressive activists have many reasons to second-guess their efforts over the last few years. They may be discouraged by their failure to build a winning grassroots organization. They may be tempted to soften their populist rhetoric of equality and opportunity, to retreat from their stands on controversial issues like gay rights — all in an effort to appeal to middle-of-the-road voters who apparently spurned them this last time around.

To some extent this repositioning will be necessary. Without a message that appeals to voters across the nation’s vast cultural and socioeconomic spectrum, there is little hope for victory at the polls.

But the lesson of the Goldwater campaign of 1964 is that political attitudes are not frozen in time. A well-organized network of citizen-activists can change minds and win votes, one person at a time. The triumph of one party and one ideology can, in a matter of decades, be utterly reversed. The good news for Democrats is that time is on their side. Like Clinton radicalized evangelicals, Bush has radicalized progressives. From MoveOn.org to Air America Radio, grassroots organizations and media outlets have sprung up in the shadows of Republican political dominance. They will continue to flourish now that a president as polarizing as George W. Bush will be in office for another four years.

There are leaders in the Democratic Party who recognize the importance of this street-level strategy. “Instead of doing this from the top-down, you need to make people feel they have power over their lives again,” said Howard Dean, speaking at a forum during the Democratic National Convention last July. “The way you win presidential elections is to make sure the local elections are taken care of first. We can’t win a national election unless we’re willing to take our case to Alabama and Texas.”

Democrats can also take heart in the long-term demographic trends in this country, which favor their party. John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira make such a case in The Emerging Democratic Majority — a book whose title alludes to Kevin Phillips’ 1969 classic, The Emerging Republican Majority, which presciently heralded the rise of the conservative movement. Like tectonic plates slowly grinding beneath the surface, the political realignment that Judis and Teixera describe may be gradual and barely noticeable, but they insist it is real. A browner population, a postindustrial economy, and a burgeoning class of educated professionals will help the Democrats win votes and reclaim lost ground over the next decade. With a white population that tends to vote Republican remaining static, the growing Asian, Hispanic, and African American communities can become the foundation for this uprising — if the Democratic Party establishes the grassroots network necessary to reach out to them and mobilize their numbers. (Younger voters, too, must be tapped: They voted in large numbers for Kerry and tend to be less conservative than their elders on social issues like gay marriage.)

Of course, there is no inevitability in history. The blogger revolution and “Dean machine” of 2004 might turn out to be just another political fad. A multicultural America could easily be co-opted by Republicans with enough savvy to shift with the tide. Younger voters, slightly roused by this last election, may very well sink back into apathy. Yet, the possibility exists for transformation — for a profound realignment of American politics. Like 1964, 2004 could be a turning point. Those who despair need only look at what Goldwater’s faithful accomplished in the years after their humiliating defeat. “You lost in 1964,” Rick Perlstein writes of the veterans of that earlier campaign. “But something remained after 1964: a movement. An army. Any army that could lose a battle, suck it up, regroup, then live to fight a thousand battles more.”

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

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Commentary

Looking for a silver lining

2004 Best of Columns (tie)

With a big gray cumulonimbus looming above following the 2004 election, consoling ourselves over the results is hardly easy. But Red Sox Fans, who know what it means to endure years of pain, have some wise ideas for coping with this strange new world.


I went to bed Tuesday night praying for a miracle.

I’ve spent the last year following and occasionally writing about the presidential campaigns. And all year — especially since covering the Democratic National Convention in July when I pretty much resigned myself to four more years of Dubya — I tried not to get my hopes up. I mean, if you can’t manage a simple balloon drop, how are you going to outfox Karl Rove?

When you grow up in Boston, you come to realize that no matter how much you pray that your guy will prevail, he’ll usually find a way to blow it. Until two weeks ago, our Red Sox hadn’t won a World Series in 86 years. In fact, just about the only reliable thing about the Red Sox was that they would find new and ever more excruciating ways to lose when victory seemed so close, so possible.

But that was our October surprise. This week, still elated — and partially blinded — by an improbable Red Sox win, I allowed myself to contemplate the possibility of a John Kerry presidency. By 8 p.m. on Election Day, I was actually confident of Bush’s ouster. On the basis of preliminary exit polls, the nit-wits on right-wing radio were almost ready to concede. On Fox News, droopy dog Brit Hume seemed so defeated that his face looked as if it was ready to slide completely of his head. What could possibly go wrong?

Of course, we know what went wrong. Somehow, Kerry found a new and more excruciating way to lose. The exit polls were wrong. But this time, the election wasn’t stolen — we lost it. Instead of waking up to a miracle, I woke up to endless clouds and a cold hard rain.

But if I’ve learned anything from being a Red Sox fan, it’s this: There’s always next year. Or in this case, there’s always 2008.

So it’s time to stop crying in our lattes. Every cloud, even the towering gray cumulonimbus that is the Bush presidency, must have a silver lining.

Right?

In case you need to be talked down off the ledge — or the next flight to Vancouver — here are a few things that might cheer you up. Maybe.

  • Maybe the Democratic Party will get its act together and realize that Howard Dean was right when he suggested that the Dems need to be the party for guys with “Confederate flags on their pickup trucks.” Ho-Ho took a lot of heat for that comment last year — John Kerry even demanded that he apologize. But Dr. Dean was right. A quick glance at the electoral map is proof enough that, for now at least, Republicans have that Southern white male constituency pretty much wrapped up. And Hillary Clinton probably isn’t the answer to carrying Mississippi.
  • While the Dems are learning valuable lessons, here’s another: George Bush isn’t the only incompetent buffoon who deserves to lose his job. It’s too late for George, but we can still show DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe the door. It’s debatable whether Fahrenheit 9/11 helped John Kerry at all, but it’s clear that establishment Democrats aligning themselves with Michael Moore didn’t play very well in the Heartland.
  • Remember: We still have The Daily Show. When you start to contemplate the fact that there 60 million people in this country who believe — despite four years worth of evidence to the contrary — that George Bush is the right man for the job, it can make you question your sanity. If you can’t afford a therapist and you need someone to tell you you’re not crazy, Jon Stewart is the next best thing. And he’s there for you — daily.
  • Thirty minutes of therapy not enough? Need 24-7 confirmation that you are not alone? Mercifully, we now have Air America, nit-wit radio for lefties. With four more years of lies, distortions, and disgraceful mangling of the English language, Al Franken will have plenty of fresh material.
  • On a more selfish and more satisfying note, we may have finally seen the last of Ben Affleck, self-appointed spokesman for both the Democratic Party and Red Sox Nation. Following a string of 53 awful movies in a row, and with J Lo out of the picture, maybe — just maybe — Baffleck will slink back into obscurity where he belongs.

    For those who are truly desperate, those for whom no baseball analogy is a comfort, those who believe that 2008 is way, way, way too far away, there is one last consolation: While everyone was trying to figure out which of his three Purple Hearts John Kerry actually deserved, George W. Bush let the assault weapons ban lapse. So when they start shutting down the libraries and museums, you’ll be well armed for secession.

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