Marginalia: edge identities, 2004

Q: Mark Thompson, Port Phil­lip Gay Les­bian Trans­gender Inter­sex Advis­ory Com­mit­tee. Ques­tion for Rachel and per­haps sec­ond­ar­ily for Sue Ann. I was trying to frame this ques­tion because as an Anglo Iࢀ™m not quite sure about the exper­i­ence but then I real­ised Anglos did the same thing about reific­a­tion of the home­land and as the people who came to Aus­tralia we regarded Bri­tain as this ideal­ised home coun­try and very often it seems to me that also other immig­rant com­munit­ies who come out to Aus­tralia ideal­ise their home­land to a situ­ation where the homelandࢀ™s chan­ging and grow­ing through the ages whereas within Aus­tralia some of those values actu­ally stay the same. My sug­ges­tion is that these hybrid iden­tit­ies of other com­munit­ies rather iden­tit­ies that actu­ally feed­ing into those com­munit­ies are actu­ally per­form­ing the same func­tion as they would have in those countries.

RB: I know what you are saying and I think there are quite a few the­or­ists who kind of talk about, you know, the micro com­munit­ies, as I said [it] does end up being this idea that the micro com­munity has been a replace­ment for the coming home. And cer­tainly we often talk about the Gay & Les­bian com­munit­ies as family and that there is this notion of family and home­land and being able to come into this bosom of this family. Unfor­tu­nately my exper­i­ence of going into those com­munit­ies as a late teen­ager and my early 20s was con­stantly being ques­tioned about my legit­im­acy there and my authen­ti­city there espe­cially within cer­tain womenࢀ™s circles where in one par­tic­u­lar case people went round the group and said, you know, ࢀoewell, Iࢀ™m here to make les­bian artࢀ and ࢀoeIࢀ™m here to do thisࢀ and ࢀoeIࢀ™m here to do thatࢀ and I kind of went, ࢀoewell, Iࢀ™m here to explore issues of bisexu­al­ity and artࢀ and they kind of all went ࢀoeOhhh, we need to have a vote on whether youࢀ™re allowed to stayࢀ and voted that I wasnࢀ™t per­mit­ted to stay in that group and that was an Out Art thing in 1991 in Sydney. So those ideas of coming home, yes I under­stand that you are then saying ࢀoeOK, well, maybe the place that home is for me is going to be where there is some­thing for meࢀ. But thatࢀ™s the prob­lem: it gets tiny until youࢀ™re a group of one and so I want to avoid those situ­ations where my response to that is to say ࢀoewell, Iࢀ™ll find the people who look exactly the same as me and form my own little homelandࢀ and instead say this is the wrong thing to be doing, trying to find the home­land, instead letࢀ™s share, spread, be diverse, prac­tice these things and have per­meable spaces rather than seek home­lands at all.

Sue-Ann Post: Actu­ally I meant to say because after Iࢀ™d listened to your paper I sort of looked at mine and went ࢀoeI should rip it up and write a new one all over againࢀ. Just a short answer thing. Iࢀ™ve actu­ally worked on the theory, I donࢀ™t know if you were there last night, but Iࢀ™ve whacked so many labels myself I love it. I want more. I want as many as I can get until Iࢀ™m like an old 50s suit­case just covered all over the place until they become mean­ing­less, until people just look at me and go thatࢀ™s Postie, sheࢀ™s weird but OK. Thatࢀ™s sort of where Iࢀ™m aiming for and also I didnࢀ™t actu­ally get the ideal­isa­tion of Hol­land. Part of the reason we never made a fuss about is my mother hated being Dutch. She denied she was Dutch the insane old bat. And she kept telling me the most hor­rible things about them. She made me swear that I would never marry a Dutch­man because they were all pigs. Itࢀ™s the only thing Iࢀ™ve ever obeyed her in.

RB: Can I also just say I did actu­ally go ࢀ” I refuse to say go back to because I never went there in the first place ࢀ” but I went to Kiev last year to go to my grandfatherࢀ™s birth place and to trace my grandfatherࢀ™s birth place. Not because I was look­ing for some ideal­ised home­land but because I wanted to walk on soil heࢀ™d walked on, because Iࢀ™d never met him and I think that was a really fas­cin­at­ing tra­ject­ory to trace his move­ments back­wards. Iࢀ™m not saying we shouldnࢀ™t find out who we are and Iࢀ™m not saying I want some bland world in which weࢀ™re all the same because we have abso­lutely no dif­fer­en­ti­at­ors either. Cool.

Q: Iࢀ™ve got a ques­tion that kind of addresses some of the issues that Ros­anne raised but if other people have got com­ments that would be great. I share a lot of the con­cerns about iden­tity polit­ics that you spoke about and I also atten­ded a paper before that Audrey Yue was also rais­ing ques­tions about iden­tity polit­ics. I share those con­cerns but one of the things that I try and do is think about iden­tity as a stra­tegic pos­i­tion­ing and one of the examples I guess is this very con­fer­ence where weࢀ™ve all come together under a par­tic­u­lar banner which has actu­ally given us a plat­form from which to speak about par­tic­u­lar issues and I guess in that way stra­tegic­ally even though weࢀ™re all very diverse and weࢀ™re using an iden­tity to speak from a par­tic­u­lar pos­i­tion. Itࢀ™s given a voice to some issues, drawn some bound­ar­ies around what it is that we want to come together here today to talk about. I donࢀ™t want to fix iden­tity and I donࢀ™t want us to include and exclude but I wonder if you had any com­ments about how stra­tegic­ally in our cur­rent polit­ical con­text that can be useful.

RB: Itࢀ™s a huge ques­tion and Iࢀ™m going to respond with another example. Yes, I think that we can stra­tegic­ally do these things and I guess to some extent this is embar­rass­ing to say I think Iࢀ™ve given up to some extent and thatࢀ™s a sad thing, because I feel like Iࢀ™ve been doing this for a fair while and Iࢀ™ve just gone, ࢀoeOK, Iࢀ™m going to write this big thesis about it and say OK hereࢀ™s my pos­i­tion, now Iࢀ™m going to take a breakࢀ, but one of my responses a while back when I first had all these exper­i­ences in the vari­ous com­munit­ies of being rejec­ted from them and going ࢀoeOK, well, what do I do now?ࢀ, was to try and create a group which I called Love is Bound­less which came out of the first Queer Col­lab­or­a­tions, where five of us in my flat at one point, and I mean I wasnࢀ™t the person who came up with the idea but it ended up being in my flat, and the five of us came up with this thing called Love is Bound­less where we wanted to try and create what we at the time called the Queer com­munity without pre­ju­dice, where we wanted to say ࢀoeOK we want to get rid of the labels, what do we want? Letࢀ™s create the com­munity we actu­ally want now,ࢀ ltࢀ™s do this, letࢀ™s have this idea that we can still have a com­munity ࢀ” at the time we called it a com­munity, now I would want to call it a col­lectiv­ity because I would want to engage with polit­ical prac­tices instead and move out­side just these issues and say OK weࢀ™ve got all of these huge issues, border poli­cing and the rub­bish thatࢀ™s going on in this coun­try and every­where with skir­mishes around eth­ni­city and sexu­al­ity and increas­ing right wing Chris­tian con­trol of the Senate and on and on. Letࢀ™s engage out­side of this, letࢀ™s create com­munit­ies that we want to live in right now and yes by all mean use these things stra­tegic­ally but now I donࢀ™t use iden­tity stra­tegic­ally, I use prac­tice stra­tegic­ally. I now talk about being inter­ested in any­thing that moves rather than saying Iࢀ™m labelled partly due to find­ing as I was saying to Sue Ann before, at a Mardi Gras party a few years ago kind of watch­ing some gor­geous tranny and sheࢀ™s going, ࢀoeOh God how did that fit in, oh yeah Iࢀ™m not bisexual am I?ࢀ OK Iࢀ™ll do any­thing. Iࢀ™m saying my interests are diverse.

Q: I just wanted to throw in a quote I read from I think was a black Amer­ican fem­in­ist back in the 70s. Itࢀ™s almost the quote Iࢀ™ve tried to live my life by and I just love its sim­pli­city; the best way to bring about the world you want to live in is to pre­tend you already live in it and treat people accordingly.

SAP (?): Per­haps I could just respond with two points that you raised one of which is I feel very at home at this con­fer­ence and itࢀ™s like a family con­fer­ence in the sense that this is the 3rd con­fer­ence Iࢀ™ve been to in a week and a half, the 1st one was an inter­na­tional con­fer­ence of $2000 regis­tra­tion, Sydney Con­ven­tion Centre, did I talk about myself? No. The 2nd one was in Can­berra (indis­tinct) Edu­ca­tion Con­fer­ence. Do I dare divulge too much about myself? No, it took 3 drinks. Here I just arrived and I feel very much at home and I could talk about whatever I wanted to with anyone I wanted. I could look at any­body, Iࢀ™m at home.

What to do about whatࢀ™s going on in the world? Well if we need to remind ourselves if we are remind­ing ourselves that sorry if we are con­cerned about is it called the Family First move­ment? If we are con­cerned about them, if we are con­cerned about what they say about who­ever we think we are then maybe we need to remind some people maybe the Min­is­ter this morn­ing who has put the Family First into Vic­toria, I think it might be the pref­er­en­tial voting of the ALP. So there are some things that we need to remind ourselves about his­tor­ic­ally, loc­ally, there are things we can do we need to talk out but itࢀ™s really handy when we can talk about those things amongst our fam­il­ies, our com­munit­ies in which we are comfortable.

Q: My name is Orian. As I was wait­ing and listen­ing to other peopleࢀ™s ques­tions I thought yeah thatࢀ™s kind of what I was going to ask and yeah thatࢀ™s sort of what I was going to ask too and I guess itࢀ™s dir­ec­ted at Ros­anne and your present­a­tion around iden­tity and Iࢀ™ve really been chal­lenged by what youࢀ™ve said par­tic­u­larly given that as coming out as a les­bian woman is such for any­body les­bian bisexual gay people trans­gender whatever, itࢀ™s such a struggle to do that and that as we do that we always have to claim our iden­tity back from the main­stream or claim a part of the main­stream that fits for us and I guess Iࢀ™m also a psy­cho­lo­gist and I think thereࢀ™s iden­tity on a micro and macro level within our own per­sonal iden­tity and also iden­tit­ies that we have within the com­munity in which we live and I think by get­ting rid of the concept of iden­tity and micro com­munit­ies, for me that would be enorm­ously dif­fi­cult because I would feel very isol­ated and alone and poten­tially unsup­por­ted from the micro com­munit­ies that I have around myself to sup­port me in my ongo­ing struggle out in the main­stream to actu­ally live my life on a day to day basis and I just thought I found your paper really making that dif­fer­en­ti­ation letࢀ™s talk about our prac­tices rather than our iden­tit­ies I think thatࢀ™s good but at some point I think we do need to have some group­ing or com­munity of people that enables us to feel safe and wel­come and val­id­ated and I donࢀ™t know how we can I know you talked about your com­munity but I donࢀ™t know how that can be mirrored on a bigger basis on an ongo­ing basis because I think just by the very nature of want­ing to be sur­roun­ded by people who are same or sim­ilar to us, we auto­mat­ic­ally set up that polar­isa­tion and I just wanted to I guess wonder if you have any more thoughts about that and whether I guess your paper is saying that the micro groups are not the way to go and that theyࢀ™re not neces­sary I think is wanted some cla­ri­fic­a­tion on.

RB: I under­stand what youࢀ™re saying about that. I think I said this when I very first star­ted: one of the reas­ons I was nervous about it, I really do under­stand that a lot of people feel these micro com­munit­ies are abso­lutely vital to psy­cho­lo­gical sur­vival but then you go on to say you are look­ing for people the same or sim­ilar and the prob­lem is Iࢀ™ve never met anyone the same as me. Never. And it ends up that I, then, no matter which of these groups I move towards, Iࢀ™m going to be isol­ated and itࢀ™s almost like, you know, that when people say, ࢀoewell why do you need a Womenࢀ™s room?ࢀ, you say, ࢀoewell, because the men have the rest of soci­etyࢀ. Itࢀ™s all very well for the person who feels com­fort­able in their Juda­ism and is les­bian because then the Jewish Les­bian, great that works for you but every­body else whoࢀ™s got slight dif­fer­ences from that and who is strug­gling with all of these other things and then so I feel that to some extentࢀ¦ and I know it sounds like Iࢀ™m just grip­ing : ࢀoeIࢀ™m too dif­fer­ent and I canࢀ™t find anyone to play with meࢀ and I donࢀ™t want that to be what Iࢀ™m saying. Nor am I saying ࢀoeso, OK you guys dis­solve your group, you guys dis­solve your group, there we are prob­lem solvedࢀ because thatࢀ™s ridicu­lous, Iࢀ™m fully aware thatࢀ™s use­less. So what am I saying? How do we get to my lovely world that we want to have where every­body can just talk about prac­tice and nobody feels isol­ated? I guess one of the steps is places like this in which we are able to talk about the sim­il­ar­it­ies of exper­i­ence between the Greek & Gay group and the Jewish les­bian group and say, ࢀoeHang on a second, I donࢀ™t have to be the same as youࢀ. We donࢀ™t have to be both women because I think Greek & Gay is mostly guys. We donࢀ™t have to be exclus­ive because there are bisexu­als and les­bi­ans and we can talk about that and we donࢀ™t have to both be Jewish, we can be Jewish and Greek and we can talk about and pre­sum­ably a lot of the Greek people are coming from a Chris­tian back­ground and a Greek Ortho­dox back­ground and we can talk about the sim­il­ar­it­ies of exper­i­ences without neces­sar­ily seek­ing the mirror. So thatࢀ™s step one. Then once weࢀ™ve got those kind of group­ings we can start to say, ࢀoewell, hang on a second, how am I sim­ilar to the people over there who are het­ero­sexual and Chris­tian and white?ࢀ What sim­ilar exper­i­ences, how do we branch across this and how do we then engage in polit­ical dis­cus­sions, polit­ical engage­ments on sim­ilar issues again of prac­tice where we say, ࢀoewell, hang on, I want to be able to love equallyࢀ or ࢀoeI want to have donor insem­in­a­tionsࢀ or whatever it is that is an issue-based thing we can get together on and have col­lectiv­it­ies that arenࢀ™t based around ࢀoeyou look the same as me, you are the same as meࢀ.

Q: Thanks very much I feel that you actu­ally oper­a­tion­al­ised what you were saying, the aca­demic stuff, and actu­ally put it into some prac­tice so thanks.

Q (Jack Fairchild): Hi in theme with every­one elseࢀ™s com­ments Iࢀ™m going to respond to what Ros­anne said (indis­tinct). I just want to make a com­ment that Iࢀ™ve been recently work­ing in uni­ver­sit­ies. I go to Deakin Uni­ver­sity and I was one of the first Queer officers we had there and one of the huge prob­lems that we had is that my per­cep­tion is I became incred­ibly com­fort­able in our col­lect­ive with our com­munity and who we were but itࢀ™s impossible to see where people are hiding. Every­one out there is hiding, espe­cially when the get to uni­ver­sity. Deakin is a great space for people to hide. It looks really homo­gen­ous when you walk in there from the out­side. You stare in and go oh well thereࢀ™s the inter­na­tional stu­dents and thereࢀ™s the kids from the coun­try and thatࢀ™s pretty much it. But moving through that space I dis­covered queers under every rock, under every stair­case and there were more closets than you could pos­sibly ima­gine and each time we made a state­ment each time our col­lect­ive became more indi­vidual and we call ourselves Queer­dos because every­one in our col­lect­ive is a bit on the fringe, we com­pletely excluded the people who kind of embrace a main­stream place and they donࢀ™t have a place in our col­lect­ive. They really donࢀ™t. They come to us and thereࢀ™s people with dreds and pier­cings and Goths and weirdos and trans people. To be honest we actu­ally do have a prob­lem with that we are a bit of a ghetto. I donࢀ™t know how we can do it but part of it is let­ting go and going I as an act­iv­ist, I have to let go of what Iࢀ™m proud of. I just want to say where do you think as an act­iv­ist do you think I need to let go of where we are? Do we need (indis­tinct) to go out there and let go of ourselves and kind of do I know itࢀ™s a dif­fi­cult ques­tion to ask.

RB: Itࢀ™s a huge ques­tion but I said in the talk I said one of these things is a fear of let­ting go of dif­fer­ence and Deleuze and Guat­tari said about the Jewish com­munity that ours is a pas­sional line, ours is the scape­goat line and to some extent that is, yes I acknow­ledge that as well, this fear of let­ting go of being dif­fer­ent because weࢀ™ve spent so long pro­tect­ing ourselves and turn­ing being dif­fer­ent into some­thing to be proud of because they told us ࢀoeyouࢀ™re dif­fer­ent, thatࢀ™s some­thing you should be ashamed ofࢀ and weࢀ™ve had to turn it around and say, ࢀoeNo way, Iࢀ™m dif­fer­ent and Iࢀ™m proud of it and Iࢀ™m com­fort­able with thatࢀ and you know to some extent I think thatࢀ™s when I was talk­ing about com­munity con­tinu­ity. Thatࢀ™s what hap­pen­ing. The Jewish com­munity is so accep­ted with main­stream com­munity now there is this ࢀoehow do we keep our kids Jewish?ࢀ. The Gay com­munity ࢀ” and I use that even though I know there are multi com­munit­ies ࢀ” the Gay com­munity in Sydney, the older Mardi Gras com­munity, has very much recently been saying, ࢀoehang on a second, these new young Queer guys who are so com­fort­able with them­selves and happy to just be who they are, well, hang on but we want a gay com­munity and we want our gay com­munity, our gay insti­tu­tions to look like they used to and we donࢀ™t want to let go,ࢀ and then of course we get the scary, the whole gay Lib­eral voter thing. You know, ࢀoeWhat? Theyࢀ™re main­stream? How did that happen?ࢀ So do we have to let go of it? Yes to some extent we do, yes itࢀ™s very scary. I have chosen to work within main­stream organ­isa­tions because I believe that they are to some extent more power by hiding within the main­stream organ­isa­tions to change the world rather than only, and Iࢀ™m not saying donࢀ™t lobby from the out­side in the weirdo sector because I do that as well, but cer­tainly yes, losing some of the dif­fer­ence and moving into the main­stream and sub­vert­ing it from in there is just as vital.

SAP (?): And if I (indis­tinct) youࢀ™re a uni­ver­sity stu­dent, youࢀ™re the most power­ful person in the whole uni­ver­sity struc­ture. You pay the money, you call the shots and if you donࢀ™t call the shots you must, so donࢀ™t under­es­tim­ate your own power. Work out what you want and go for it.

Q: I just wanted to thank all of the speak­ers I guess and all of the ones from today because I think Iࢀ™ve been a bit chal­lenged about the concept of family and as a pro­spect­ive Les­bian parent, hope­fully, not very pro­spect­ive at this stage, I wonࢀ™t be a bio­lo­gical parent and so I kind of just wanted to chal­lenge the lan­guage around bio­logy being thatࢀ™s how you trans­fer cul­ture and eth­ni­city and reli­gion because in the family Iࢀ™ll be a social parent and I think that is some­thing about lan­guage that we need to be aware of that bio­logy doesnࢀ™t trans­fer that neces­sar­ily. Thatࢀ™s just a post­script for every­one to take home with them. My child will have 3 par­ents, well 2 mums and a donor dad or Dod as weࢀ™re going to call him, 6 grand­par­ents and numer­ous aunts and uncles and hope­fully one day lots of other cous­ins. It has really chal­lenged me I guess today about the fact that I havenࢀ™t really thought about the family his­tory or the bio­lo­gical or sort of the cul­tural back­ground enough of my donor, our donor, Dod to an extent where I feel that I could trans­fer that learn­ing and his­tory and feel­ing and whatever it might be, own­er­ship over self to my child in the future so I think Iࢀ™d just like to say thank you for chal­len­ging me on those and Iࢀ™d per­haps just like to hear if thereࢀ™s any ideas about how we do chal­lenge, par­tic­u­larly now with Family First, the concept of family within our Queer Mul­ti­cul­tural community.

Mod­er­ator (?): Iࢀ™m not going to answer that ques­tion but to say per­haps you werenࢀ™t at the pre­vi­ous ses­sion because Margie Fisc­her got us think­ing about those issues bril­liantly so find her.

RB: I just want to say I hope that it wasnࢀ™t any­thing I said that gave you the impres­sion of the bio­lo­gical family stuff because Iࢀ™m also look­ing at a situ­ation where if Iࢀ™m going to have a kid itࢀ™s just either going to be me and donor dad and then Iࢀ™m look­ing at exactly the same kind of issues about cul­tural back­ground and cul­tural her­it­age and you know I love the fact that thereࢀ™s a book out there at the moment called ࢀoeSometimes it takes three to make a babyࢀ. Unfor­tu­nately that book has a het­ero­sexual mar­ried couple who are using a donor rather than any­thing else but at least we are get­ting there with those kinds of notions of family and I cer­tainly would cel­eb­rate ideas, I would hate to think I was giving the impres­sion that cul­ture is trans­ferred bio­lo­gic­ally, I abso­lutely think itࢀ™s social cul­ture and social his­tory and one of the things that wor­ries me about young act­iv­ists is so how infre­quently they know their social his­tory about Stone­wall, about any­thing that we fought for, about the fact that Suf­fra­gette act­iv­ists were beaten and gaoled. You know we donࢀ™t know our social his­tor­ies nearly well enough. We need to trans­fer those cul­tural his­tor­ies and think of that. If weࢀ™re going to keep call­ing it family then we need to talk about those as well.