Husbands and Husbands [and that's why we love kids!]

This video has been traveling fast on various blogs from the Better Blogging Bureau of Queer Canada (I like calling it this, but simply call it Queer Canada Blogs if you want!) So I thought I would share this video here too, though I am doing it for different reasons.

Lil'Gemmy, my nine year old gem of a house-mate (whom his brothers and I have been co-parenting four days a week, by the way, but this will come in another post later on) told me the other day that he felt very sad that I wouldn't be able to have children of my own in the future if I decided to get married to another man. He said he found it sad that two men couldn't have babies and he thought there should be some medico-techonological invention to allow them to carry babies. (I took it as a compliment and as a sign that I have been doing well in my co-parenting duties and with helping him with his math homework and with putting him in bed and reading him a story on and off etc.)

This child surprises me, for last December, when Mr Sculptor came to visit me, he actually asked his mum whether he was boyfriend. To this, his mum replied that he'd better ask me himself, and the next day, he came in the kitchen and happily asked me: "So, did your friend sleep over last night?!!" Ah, kids!

Here's the video:

The Danger of a Single Story [your saturday night video]

For those of you who, like me, on a Saturday night, may be sticking to themselves and the privacy of their bedrooms and/or may be stuck to a study table doing work and/or may be living in the spectral company of the virtual web instead of a more real one, here is a video that you may want to spend 20 minutes on during your coffee break. [Dare I say that it's the equivalent of an intellec(tex)tual quickie?]

It's the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaking about "The Danger of a Single Story." Her talk is very serious, yet playful, but above all it's nuanced and subtle and she provides a whole range of ways of engaging with 'a single story' in different contexts and settings without taking a preach-like tone, which is something that I admire. I've been thinking about it more and more these days: How does a brown me who does post-colonial work, being from an island midway between (post-)colonial Africa and (post-)colonial South-Asia speak of colonialism in its various forms-- old and new, small and big-- without falling into a blanketing binary? Without sounding self-righteous? Without sounding preachy? Or maybe without even sounding angry? [To that, add my idiosyncracies and quirks which include being an opinionated, almost arrogant kid with strong opinions that I like spitting out etc.]

What I like about Chinmamanda Adichie's talk, amongst others, is that she does not speak to a (white) audience in order to trigger some form of white-guilt in her listeners (call it colonial guilt, call it gender guilt, call it whatever you want.) Her tone and anecdotes are much more shaded and elegant. I think she really inspired me. So you can also watch the video by clicking here.

Jason Kenney Strikes Back: Canadian Citizenship & Immigration Minister Removes LGBT Rights from 'Citizenship Guide'

  "I plead guilty, I'm a racist." -- Jason Kenney, Canadian Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism

Back in October 2009, during a visit at McGill University, Jason Kenney brushed off questions from a group of activists by replying with a tinge of sarcasm: "I plead guilty, I'm racist." He clearly walked away with it: Isn't humor often the best way to brush off issues one does not want to face?

Kenney hit the headlines again today as it was revealed that he blocked any reference to LGBT rights in a new study guide for immigrants applying for Canadian citizenship. Canada decriminalized homosexuality in 1969, was the forth country to legalize same-sex marriage (in 2005), has been a haven for numerous same-sex couples from the USA and other parts of the world over the past few years, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom forbids discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Jason Kenney who strongly fought against same-sex marriage back in 2005 removed references to LGBT rights in the new version of the citizenship study guide, 500 000 copies of which will be printed and made available for applicants as from the 15th of March 2010. Kenney explained that he could not possibly include every moment of Canadian history and legal reforms in the guide.

Gay rights groups are outraged by Kenney's decision, particularly because Kenney said in December 2009 that the omission was an "oversight" and that it would be fixed. (Read more here.)

To read the full report on the issue, please click here.
To read about Kenney's visit at McGill university, please click here.

Out on the Streets: Queer and Homeless

There's a question to be asked, there's a reason why the question should be asked and there's a setting within which the question can/should be posed.

First, the setting:

In order to stay contemporary and rather transnational, let's put a big banner that says "same-sex marriage" as a backdrop that will stage the question. I say same-sex marriage because the latter seems to be a global phenomenon in constant expansion, with a new country hitting the headlines every week: This week, it's Great Britain attempting to lift the ban on same-sex marriages. (More details available here.) Same-sex marriage and its legalization or non-legalization is not my concern here. Rather, what I am interested in is: What allows us to make a claim for same-sex marriages? What are the factors and processes that make the "us" that are claiming "our" rights?

I am tempted to say that as a citizen of X country, I make a claim to be treated equally as any other citizen in that X country. Similarly for the Y citizen in Y country. So, I need to "belong" to a country to be able to claim a right in that country as a citizen; there's a relationship between the subject "me" and the bigger legal/geographical/economic etc. structure called "the State."

The next point to keep in mind is that I claim my right not as Ms A or Mr B, but as part of a community that suffers the same injustices as I do. Let's be real and let's face the truth as it is: I cannot claim a right, I cannot change a form of injustice, I cannot alter the constitution solely and only on my own behalf. There is nothing that makes me more special that my other millions of fellow-citizens. As a consequence, a group of people who feel oppressed in the same way, who feel they all need to be granted rights in the same way (here the right to same-sex marriage) speak out and enter what can loosely be called a "social movement" in the hope of affecting the desired change.

Thus, to go back to the setting, Ms A and Mr B ask for their rights to marry whomever they want on the grounds that they are citizens of a X country (so they can change the law in X country) and on the grounds that they belong to a community of people who are all discriminated against in the same way.

And now the question:

If we have established that "we" fight for "our" rights to marry people of the same-sex as part of a community that we call LGBT or Queer, we are demanding that our rights be granted at two levels: 1- as citizens and 2- as queer/lgbt.

So my question is the following: If we are benefiting/will benefit of certain privileges that will allow us to have a better life and fulfil our desires as part of a community, isn't it also our duty to make sure we work for the betterment of others in the same community under whose aegis we are demanding our rights? Isn't it our duty to give back what is being given to us?

The reason why the question is being asked:

I just read this article from the Wisconsin Gazette and as I went on doing more research, looking for more census figures etc., I was appalled to learn that in the major North-American cities, 20-40 % of the homeless youth declare being part of the LGBT community. Besides the article from the Wisconsin Gazette states that homeless LGBT youth experience a higher rate of sexual violence than their heterosexual peers.

And this is why I question this notion of the "community." How far, how much do the members of the "community" really support each other?...

From the article:

"As a student at Nicolet High School, Kevin never fit in. An African-American who likes to wear a little make-up, he endured constant teasing and bullying. Eventually he transferred to The Alliance School, which helps students who are not succeeding in traditional schools due to harassment.

But when Kevin’s mother discovered he’s gay, she threw him out of the house. Determined to earn a diploma, he camped out on the streets near the Alliance campus and continued attending classes until he graduated. Last fall, an older gay man gave him a place to live in exchange for sex..."

Read more here.

There's Nothing Gay About Marriages [a small rant]

I am tired of them all calling it "gay marriage." What's so "gay" about marriage anyway? If there's a celebration, a party, good wine, beautiful dresses, alcohol and cake, we could call it a happy event indeed, but is that what they mean by gay marriage? As from now on, shall we make an effort and call it for what it is: same-sex marriage?

As I got irritated about gay marriage (a.k.a. homonormative male wedding-- yucks!) I went to dig into a book I had read over a year ago. Here's what Ruth Vanita says in her book Love's Rite:

"Commitment between two persons of the same sex is not inherently different from commitment between persons of different sexes. "Gay marriage" is a misnomer. A marriage is not gay (though the two persons may define themselves as gay). Being gay is just one dimension of a person, and marriage encompasses the whole person. (...) When people claim their right to marry, their sex or sexuality is not intrinsic to that right, although social prejudice makes it appear so."

-- Ruth Vanita in Love's Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005: 2)

France: Transsexuality No Longer a Psychiatric Condition [queer news highlight]

As it had been announced by the French Health Minister, Roselyne Bachelot back on the 16th of May 2009 (on the occasion of the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia-- a day prominently marked in France), France would remove transsexuality from its list of psychiatric conditions. An official statement was released on the 10th of February 2010 announcing that France had formally withdrawn transsexuality from its list of "long-term psychiatric diseases."

Joël Bedos, French representative of IDAHO (International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia) congratulated France on being the first country to remove transsexuality from its list of mental pathologies. The cost of health care for transitioning will still be taken care of by the government.

Link to IDAHO site: Click here.
Sources from the French newspapers Le Monde and Liberation: Click here, here and here.

"In fact, there is nothing simple about Mauritian identity."

I am reading this book by Miriam Pirbhai who is a Professor of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. The book (link here) is called Mythologies of Migration, Vocabularies of Indenture (University of Toronto Press, 2009), and it reached my mailbox yesterday morning and I've had my nose deep in it since the moment I opened it. And as I read about my own island, my own history, my own ancestry, as I let a ghost take possession of me and I get taken back to my native island-- where I spent the first 18 years of my life-- in the Indian Ocean, I come across this line:

"In fact, there is nothing simple about Mauritian identity." (Page 45)

I laughed out loud... I laughed and laughed thinking it was the most amusing line I ever read. And then, I cried, a bit, too. Indeed, there is nothing simple about Mauritian identity.

"Something There Is That Doesn't Love a Wall" [and yet, we keep building them...]

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall," said Robert Frost in his 1914 poem Mending Wall. Writing on the brink of the WW-I, the American poet was probably conscious of the walls that were being built between countries in Europe and Eastern-Europe while he was composing his poem... And yet at, the same time, walls were being destroyed (houses, boundaries, countries, walls of fraternity, walls of humanity, walls of dignity...) and others were being built in the shape of the giant body of the 70 million military personnel being deployed to go to war.

A century later, we are still building the same walls. Now they cement themselves in the bricks of our skin-colour, in the solidity of our sexuality, in the slabs of our political views, in the stones of who we are and the concrete of what we think. On those walls, we sublimate our urges for defecation by naming the same walls that we built, by tagging them with graffiti: 'war on terror', 'collateral damage', 'national security'...

How far removed are we from Berlin's Wall of Shame? Twenty years after it was brought down, does the shame live on while the bricks have disappeared? The violence of spaces, of what is allowed in and what is allowed out, of "good fences make good neighbours," of what protects 'us' and 'them' and what protects 'us' from 'them'...

... And this is how on January 11th, the Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu has given his approval to build a wall along the border between Israel and Egypt. With the help of increased surveillance, the walls aims at keeping "infiltrators and terrorists" out of the Israeli state. Mr Netanyahu also added that the erection of the wall "is a strategic decision to secure Israel's Jewish and democratic character."

About 50-60 % of the Israeli borders are already fenced: the borders with Gaza, with Lebabon, with Jordan, and most of the West Bank. The cost of the project? $ 270 million. And while it should take two years to complete, the world may again sit and watch as yet another wall is being built and yet other 'good neighbours' are being made.

Read the full story here on Al Jazeera.

-----

And here's Robert Frost's Poem: Mending Wall (1914)

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Tasteless Chicken & Tasteless Ads [oh racism!]

In the midst of all our discussions on white guilt, I fell onto the politics of white meat! This is an Australian ad for KFC. Is it racist? I don't know. Is it offensive? Yes, it fucking is! (I never use the f-word on my blog. I do it only when I am very, very pissed or just appalled to the point where I just feel like effing between every single word.) I feel offended by it: Am I over-reacting?

White Guilt and Racial Fantasies in Southern France [a testimony, a guest post]

[As I posted/linked this article by Annalee Newitz about race fantasies, science fiction and Avatar a couple of weeks ago, the reaction was just as explosive as I expected. I received a particularly rich and insightful reaction from a young French reader. Since he agreed to sharing his 'comment' as a guest blog-entry, here it goes.]

----------

By Pascal
Aix-en-Provence
France

I remember making an essay at the end of Junior High School on sci-fi. You had to pretend you were the chief editor in a magazine and, in your column, you had to give a "political" opinion on a cultural subject. I wrote something clumsy about sci-fi movies being racist, because they were always about bad, weird-looking, aggressive invaders. My opinion was that since it was frowned upon to create menacing Arab characters (yes, white guilt, in Southern France, focuses on Maghreb more than sub-Saharan Africa), we transposed our natural hatred of the "unknown" on aliens.

The headmistress liked my piece but regretted that I had qualified these ideas as 'far-right', meaning in my mind, 'racist', especially because the French Nationalist Party had dramatically shaken the French political scene with their breakthrough at the 2002 presidential elections, throwing away the Socialists for the first time in thirty years. And the Sacré-Cœur School did not worship socialism.

White guilt will not disappear so easily. I was raised with it in mind, in a village where Arab children took different buses to go to the faraway barracks they had to call 'home'. There were two sinks in the school-yard where kids could drink, and one of them was the robinet des Arabes (the tap of Arabs) where the French-born kids never drank for fear of getting a disease or something. This was, of course, no initiative from the teachers, but from the children themselves. Racist jokes were daily ways of expression, although we all had an Arab friend somewhere in the school, and sometimes we made these jokes in their presence, saying at the same time: "Well, except for you, Ismail, you're not like this, haha," and Ismail laughed in an attempt to better integrate himself. [Apartheid, South Africa, 1960s? No. Southern France, 1990s.]

In this context, my family forbade these jokes and behaviors; parents taught us that racism was the worst thing ever, that we should love and respect everyone in the same way.

As I was the one in school who always got mocked and laughed at because I was weird (understand: gay, but not knowing about that yet), I was bullied by nearly everyone. I always shouted and hit back, which made me even more attractive as a victim because there always was some show.

There was this one boy I did not hit back, though. I nearly gave him the other cheek as a present. He was Walid and lived behind the hill, where most Arab families had moved to after their 'barracks' had been dismantled. And I did not hit back because I thought: "He's Arab, so he must be poor and be a victim of racism from White people like me. I gotta show him I'm different." (I didn't know at the time that Walid was rich as hell with a big villa and a pool.)

I was nine, he was seven, I had never heard the word "colonial" in my life. And still, as Walid would kick me hard in the leg, slap me in the face and laugh, I barely made a move.

So, getting rid of "white guilt" may take some time, especially in France where President Sarkozy would like to highlight the "positive effects" of colonialism in the French History schoolbooks.