City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS) Centers & Institutes

2010

An Excerpt from the 2009 Kessler Lecture: Ties that Bind: Familial and its Consequences

Sarah Schulman CUNY College of Staten Island

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This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Despite the emphasis on a position of lesser value, than to marriage and parenthood that learn from us and be elevated by our has overwhelmed our freedom knowledge. 0 vision, how gays and are treated IN families, is far more Because of the twisted paradox of influential on the quality of individual dominant behavior, gay people are lives and the larger social order, than being punished within the family how we are treated AS families. Tonight structure even though we have not I will try to articulate how and why done anything wrong. This punishment systems of familial homophobia operate has dramatic consequences on both and more importantly, how they can be our social experiences and our most changed. trusting loving sexual relationships.

Imagine if a family responded to the Strangely, I am saying this in a moment coming out of one of its member like when most people will tell you that this: "things are getting better." The AIDS crisis forced Americans to start the They discuss as a family their special process of acknowledging that gay responsibility to protect her from people exist. Thus, even though there pressures and cruelties that they are many institutions today that still themselves will never face. They pretend that we do not exist, there are promise not to exploit or enjoy privilege other institutions that acknowledge, Sarah Schulman that she is denied, and to commit their in some form, that we do exist. It's a family's resources to accessing those bizarre set of daily contradictions that and distortion pervades, have more privileges that she is denied, and to gay, , bisexual and negative meaning than it did sixty commit their family's resources to people must balance and internalize. years ago when there was no visible accessing those privileges for her and Some television shows have central movement? I think it's obvious that other queer people-who she treats like characters who are homosexual, deliberately excluding people when you full human beings. And they insist that other television shows convey entire know they exist is a more destructive their gay family member treat other worlds in which homosexuality is never and sadistic action now than it was queer people with accountability as acknowledged, still others show us only in the past when so few of us were well. In their larger family, friendships, as pathological and predatory. You never known. Knowing queer people, seeing workplaces, in their production and know what you're going to feel around our wish for justice, and still denying consumption of culture, in how they each corner. us basic legal rights, denying us integration into the public conversation of the culture and excluding us from authentic mainstream representation, We'vebeen bombardedwith so many false is a condition of oppression that should no longer exist. Considering how messagesabout howmuch better off we are, much work we have done and how enormous our effort to create social that we'vegotten confusedabout what we transformation has been-we're not really deserve and what both Liberationand where we should be. Change is not the same thing as progress. Don't Equalitywould actually look like. confuse them. Yes, the ways we are contained are different. The ways we are situated as lesser-than are far more sophisticated than they were when I was vote and what laws they both support 8, 16, 25. But compared to where we and access, they intervene when queer However, the acknowledgement, when should be, right now we are no where. people are being scapegoated by it does occur, is often problematic. directly addressing the perpetrators. Does the fact that openly gay people We've been bombarded with so many are allowed some rights in some false messages about how much This is not an impossible scenario. circumstances mean that "things better off we are, that we've gotten Yet today families are more likely are getting better?" Or does the fact confused about what we really deserve to "tolerate", that is to keep us in that so much profound exclusion and what both Liberation and Equality

1 6 CLAGSnews I Spring 2010 would actually look like. And how truly Showtime and Ellen. We have let all this is one every 2-3 years? Because, in the possible they are. Being niche marketed capitalist noise obscure what we are process of self-deception, we make the a product is not citizenship, it's the end really experiencing. crucial mistake of dismantling our most of autonomy not the beginning. effective apparatus: For example, when I look at what I -Subculture that produces authentic Now, it is true that there will always be am really experiencing today in the representation of our true some people for whom monogamous American Theater and US Publishing, experiences coupling for life is the best option. And things are worse for authentic work with -The Culture of Opposition in which we gay people on that path should have full lesbian protagonists than they have ever refuse to be lied to or about equality. Of course, many gay people do been in my lifetime. How can it be that -The Community Relationship which not equate monogamy and marriage, "things are getting better" if there is not has historically been our richest and just you wait until straight "allies" a single lesbian play in the American and most humanizing creation. figure that one out. But whatever repertoire? Not a single multi-character ··marriage·· means to anyone should play with a lesbian protagonist, taking If we had lived in privatized family units be fully legally protected. Obviously. place in an authorial universe, where in 1984 in the way that we are told But there is an ideology emerging from people talk to each other with gravitas to do in 2009, we NEVERwould have our paid leadership positioning the like the work of Tony Kushner or August been able to respond so effectively to pretense of monogamous life coupling Wilson, allowed to succeed in New the AIDScrisis. Could we rise to the as the best and superior and most York, performed around the country, occasion so magnificently today? If you desirable way to be gay. Even though that actresses study in scene work in look at our recent track record-losing straight people vociferously refuse to conservatory. We are still relegated 31 out of 31 anti-gay ballot measures­ vote for equal rights, even with these to cutesiness, solo performance, or now that "things are so much better", dire requirements, they are happy to vaudeville-like direct address and kept today we are unable to win anything. let it become our only visible public out of the blue-ribbon format. How can This twist, calling a constant state of things be getting better" if in the early injustice "Progress" gets played out image. And because we now believe 1990's mainstream publishers allowed in a number of distorting ways, as we what corporate America tells us about 5-10 novels to be published annually pretend that we are accepted when we ourselves, there are now some queer with lesbian protagonists, and today it are not. people who now negotiate acceptance by their families as long as they get gay-married and have children. As a feminist, I have to say that I am appalled by any ideology that tells women to get married, gay or straight.

This marketing of marriage has gotten us off track of thinking critically about the truth of our own condition and how to create radical social change that we need to be see as real. Very little is known about how our oppression is constructed and its consequences on us. Our reconceptualization of our own destiny has only just begun. The most progressive impulses in American Life: Black Power, Feminism, and Gay Liberation, were rooted in agendas that came from real people's true lived experiences in contrast to the lie of who they were being told they were. But we, LGBTpeople in the year 2009, are listening to everyone but ourselves. We listen to corporate culture, corporate media, Hollywood,our president, our insipid national organizations,

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