Did you hear that the “Gay Girl in Damascus” isn’t actually a gay girl in Damascus but a straight white man in America? Or that Paula Brooks from Lez Get Real isn’t really a lesbian deaf mother of two? Of course you have (because even our very own Vivian did a special report on Paula Brooks- What? You missed it? Read her article first before continuing!). The Internet’s abuzzing with the latest interpretations of the effects these fake lesbians have on the online world and on our LGBTQQIA community.
One thing that most of us agree on is that these men-Tom MacMaster, in particular-posed a real danger to our community. The voices of real lesbians in Syria have been overshadowed by MacMaster. The voices of real lesbians in the world are now being called into question- Are lesbians even real?
Yes hell, we are real (at least on The L Stop), and they don’t speak for us!
Even as I write my piece on The L Stop, I’m cognizant of the fact that I do not speak for other Asian-American lesbians or femme queers in Chicago, or anyone else. My voice is my own.
I’m reminded of my personal reaction to the latest Asian American story: Wesley Yang’s Paper Tigers: What happens to all the Asian-American overachievers when the test-taking ends? Nearly everyone remembers Amy Chua’s article, but do you remember the book written by a white man (John Howard Griffin) titled Black Like Me? Yang’s story was the cover story, and on the cover of New York Magazine, it read Asians Like Me.
As queer-identified Asian American woman, my initial thoughts were: Wait, hold on a minute, Yang! Not every Asian American goes through an identity crisis. Not every Asian American feel that there is a disconnect between our Asian and American culture and values.
I’m reminded of a self-identified ex-gay female minister that I know. Her testimonial video was plastered all over my Facebook wall because my first crush was the producer and director of this video. The video made me angry. I was angry because she tried to speak for all gays! I felt as if she was invalidating my personal experience.
No, you can self-identify as a transgender queer woman (though I highly doubt those two men took it that far), a banana, a twinkie, or ex-gay all you want because if that’s your living experience, then it is what it is. I’m not going to invalidate your living experiences. However, you cannot speak for me. Yang, you do not speak for me! (The funny thing is that both Wesley Yang and the ex-gay minister both have the same last name. I’m not sure if they’re related). Neither do you, MacMaster, nor you, Bill Graber (“Paula Brooks”)! Likewise, I don’t think that black people were very happy with Griffin’s book when it was published in the 1960s. What could a white man who passed as black (with the help of a doctor) possibly know about living as a black man? What could a Korean American straight male who passed his school exams with flying colors but ended up “nowhere” because he’s socially awkward possibly know about living as a Chinese-Vietnamese-American queer petite woman who didn’t experience everything as he had? What could an ex-gay female minister who stopped going from woman-to-woman as though they were her drugs possibly know about living as a sex-positive queer woman who genuinely loved her girlfriend and did not go from woman-to-woman as though they were drugs? And what could straight white men possibly know about living lives as lesbians (and in a completely foreign country in MacMaster’s case)? The answer is nothing, or very little.
So to MacMaster and Graber (and others like them): It’s okay to speak out on what you perceive to be injustice against our community as an ally. It is not okay to pretend that you are one of us. And last time I checked, straight white men are taken very seriously by all types of people all over the world. Please don’t invalidate our living experiences.
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About JT
JT is originally from San Francisco, CA. She graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in psychology, focusing primarily on gender and sexuality research. Seeking a change in 2008, she moved to Chicago, and what a change it has been! Currently, she works for a nationally renowned magazine publishing company. During her off hours, she can been seen walking and yelping about various Chicago neighborhoods. JT identifies as queer and bisexual, and she is currently dating a straight man. She has an unapologetic love for civil rights, whether it’d be for racial, gender, sexual, or political socioeconomic equality. On weekends, she volunteers with Howard Brown Health Center to promote safe sex in Boystown.
Spot on!
You can be sympathetic to my cause but you will never know my struggle!
Posted by alesa | June 20, 2011, 1:28 pmHear hear!
Let us all exercise our OWN voices!
Posted by arrozc0nleche | June 20, 2011, 2:17 pmWhile I agree with most of what you have said about these authors, watch out with how fast you write off “straight white men”.
I’ve been married to my wife now for going on 10 years. She was technically a man when we first got together. She was a very depressed person at that, living in poverty, with ‘supportive’ friends who wouldn’t even use correct pronouns and endlessly talked behind her back. It took years of support to help build her self-confidence from where society, life, her ‘family’ and her ‘friends’ had left it. (She had an accident that left her unable to walk and speak for almost a year while her parents kept her hormones away from her, which had quite a bit to do with it as well.)
I lost jobs when I brought her around before her surgeries. (Not even “throwing it in anyone’s face”), there was no PDAs we just stopped in to eat at the place and poof the job diapered the next day.. even though one of the staff with the same job as me had called up the boss to bail him out after a beating that sent his wife to the hospital. Apparently that wasn’t enough for him to lose his job, but being in love with my (future)wife was.)
I was beaten so many times as a child, including by my own family, that I don’t want to count how many because it hurts too much to even think about. I lived on and off of the streets and people’s couches after leaving my parents place at 16. After I was beaten severely by my father (until I was unrecognizable to the people who’s house I ran too barefoot in the rain.. they had known me since I was a toddler) I had to stand up to the police, who wanted to press charges, and tell them it was a family matter… refusing to tell them my name or address so they could arrest him. Upon telling my mother I had done so for her, because I couldn’t stand to destroy my entire family’s life for my father’s mistakes… I was called a lair. Because of who I am, she has told me things like ‘I wasted 17 years of my life on you.’ Upon informing her I was 16 she told me ‘I spent a year carrying you in my body’.)
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I still don’t feel comfortable speaking to my family, I learned about my grandmother’s death a month after the funeral when I found my name in an obituary online. I’ve had things thrown at me from cars (small town), we’ve had at least 4 very serious death threats (in public, during the day mostly too). We’ve been treated like second class citizens by more government agencies in more countries then I care to remember as well.
Now that my wife passes, I get this ‘you would never understand what being gay is like’ from certain elements in the gay community when people don’t know me. I don’t correct them because my wife doesn’t tell people, and I respect her wishes.
For over a year we had a girlfriend, not a ‘purely in the bedroom once in a while fling’ sorta thing, but a ‘spend every day together, romantically planning on spending the rest of your lives together’ kinda thing. I still love both of them immensely, even though me and my wife are no longer with her. My life was very intertwined with this relationship between two women… but this even more-so solidified my straight identity in many people’s heads. (In reality I’m about as bisexual as is humanly possible. Gender just isn’t an issue my heart seems to bother concerning it’s self with.)
What I’m getting at is, simular to how these bloggers where very different people then who they appeared to be at first glance…
I’m quite sure that many lesbian women have written me off as someone who couldn’t possibly know anything about the the lives of lesbian women… but in reality, while I’m not a woman… I do actually know a great deal.
I’m just saying watch out judging a book by it’s cover. Not all the people you might define as ‘straight white men’ are as clueless as you think, and when I get treated like some second class citizen that ‘couldn’t possibly understand’ by members of the lesbian community it fucking stings. A sting that as an adult I’ve gotten all too used to. (It’s still a very small price to pay for getting to wake up next to my wife everyday.)
Posted by Mywifeisawomantoo | July 31, 2011, 10:39 amHi “My Wife Is a Woman Too,”
I’m sorry to hear about what you’ve went through, and I understand what you meant to say. I do, however, want to clarify that I don’t mean to say that I would automatically define a seemingly straight man as a straight man. I’m sorry that you misunderstood my message.
To me, a straight man would be one who identified as such. You’ll notice that I’ve never once called myself a lesbian; I identify as queer. I am in love with a biological woman who self-identify as a straight man. It is her wish, however, that I still refer to her using the female pronouns for the time being.
You’ve said so yourself that you identify as a (polyamorous?) bisexual man. Thus, that’s who you are to me. You are not in the category of straight white men that I described. Hell, even straight white men who were mistaken as gay men would understand more than straight men who have never experienced the type of discrimination that you and I and our community face on an almost every day basis just because we are who we are.
Yes, it hurts when people automatically assume and think that you don’t understand their plight when in fact you probably understand a great deal but in a different way, from a different perspective. Instead of feeling bad about this, why don’t you educate them as you’ve tried to done with me? Tell them, “I went through something similar. It may not be the exact same, but I can sympathize and I have your back.”
My essential message is the same: We want to be able to tell our own stories. No one else can speak for us because as much as other people can sympathize, they don’t know exactly how we feel about our different situations and stations in life.
I hope that clears up any misunderstanding.
Thank you for reading.
Posted by JT | July 31, 2011, 3:51 pm