Queer Blog
30.4.04
Não, não me esqueci de vocês...
Este blog tem andado mortiço mas não é por esquecimento, é mesmo por falta de tempo.
Quem tiver interesse em ler o trabalho a que me tenho dedicado pode ver a secção de Notícias da Opus, sempre pobrezinha graficamente, eu sei (não sei fazer melhor), mas agora ainda mais actualizada.
Inversions
Inversion de sens, récupération ; de la notion de fierté au rainbow flag en passant par le mariage, tout a basculé au fil des années. Inventaire de quelques valeurs gay renversées...
> COMING OUT
Face à la culture du secret, le "coming out", intraduisible, représente le geste symbolique premier pour affirmer son homosexualité. Par extension, il est en passe d’entrer dans le vocabulaire courant, pour proclamer n’importe quelle identité.
> COUPLE
Dans le vocabulaire des années 70, le couple est éclipsé par l’individu et le groupe. La fidélité sexuelle n’est pas un impératif. Mais l’épidémie de sida met le couple homo au centre du débat politique. Le PaCS lui accorde un début de reconnaissance, et déjà les associations demandent le mariage. Aujourd’hui encore !
> FAMILLE
En 1972, le philosophe Guy Hocquenghem écrivait qu’il faut "que chaque homosexuel se ressente comme une fin de race". On rompt avec sa famille et il n’est pas question d’en fonder une. Un quart de siècle plus tard, l’APGL crée l’homoparentalité : les homos se réconcilient avec la famille.
> FIERTÉ
La fierté homosexuelle est sans doute ce qui a fait le plus flipper les hétéros dans les années 70. Normalement, les homos devraient au moins avoir honte ! Depuis quelques années, ce mot tend à désigner tout mouvement identitaire ou revendicatif, surtout dans sa version anglaise, "pride". Maintenant, on a même droit à la " vegie pride " (fierté végétarienne) !
> GHETTO
Ce terme renvoie à la notion d’espace géographique clôt. Il se substitue facilement et péjorativement au terme "communauté". Etrangement, il ne suscite aucune réaction, alors qu’il ne faut pas déconner : le Marais en 2004, c’est pas Varsovie en 1942 !
> HOMOPHOBIE
Bizarrement, ce terme est récent. On se demande comment on a pu penser la situation des gays et des lesbiennes dans la société sans lui. Comme s’il représentait quelque chose de tellement profondément ancré que ce n’était même pas la peine de le nommer.
> MARIAGE
C’était l’institution à abattre, la quintessence de l’hypocrisie et le symbole de l’oppression dont étaient victimes les femmes, comme les homosexuels. C’est devenu la revendication phare des mouvements gays, au prix parfois de contorsions intellectuelles délicates.
> MÉDIAS
Alors que les nouveaux médias pour les homos préfèrent s’afficher "gay friendly" ("Préférences" ou la future Pink TV), on a tendance à oublier qu’il y a vingt-cinq ans, le simple fait d’entrer chez un marchand de journaux pour acheter "Gai Pied" était, en soi, un acte militant.
> MILITANTISME
Les militants gay historiques voulaient changer le monde et la société homophobe. Leurs successeurs, plus modestement mais moins réalistement, ne cherchent plus qu’à changer les règles internes des sociétés dans lesquelles ils travaillent.
> PÉDOPHILIE
Dans les années 70, les militants gay faisaient constamment référence à la pédophilie. Maintenant, tous les militants gay la rejettent, en l’assimilant systématiquement, comme le reste de la société, au viol d’enfant.
> PÉNALISATION
Jusqu’en 1982, c’est l’homosexualité qui est pénalisée, ou plus exactement les relations entre un majeur et un mineur de plus de 15 ans. Depuis le déferlement de propos homophobes pendant le débat sur le PaCS, c’est la pénalisation de ces propos qui est en discussion et qui doit être votée cet été.
> QUEER
A l’origine, ce mot désigne les pédés. Par un curieux retournement, dans les années 90 il désigne justement ce qui est au-delà des pédés. Jusqu’à quasiment s’opposer à "gay".
> SIGNES OSTENSIBLES
Les signes et les symboles gay ont deux destinées possibles : l’extinction ou la récupération. Ainsi le "lambda" a connu une petite gloire sur les campus américains des 70’s, avant de tomber dans l’oubli. Le "rainbow flag" est devenu un sticker à coller sur une vitrine pour rameuter le gay CSP+ ou, plus récemment, le symbole des anti-guerre (dans ce cas, surtitré "pace").Le ruban rouge, symbole de la lutte contre le sida, a été détourné en vert lors des manifs contre la loi contre le voile islamique, puis en noir par les madrilènes choqués par les attentats. Quant au triangle rose, apparu dans des circonstances horribles, il n’est plus de mise.
> TRAVESTIS
Les Gazolines, fer de lance de l’homosexualité revendicative, provocante et joyeuse de l’aube des années 70, ont laissé la place à des drag queens futiles, festives et follement consensuelles.
E-llico
27.4.04
Afinidades electivas eribonais
“Hérésies – Essais sur la théorie de la sexualité", Didier Éribon, Fayard, 2003
Este foi um dos dois ensaios lgbt que comprei recentemente em Paris. O outro é sobre a representação do par feminino na pintura.
Este livro de Éribon criou em mim uma certa desconfiança. O autor começa por dizer que este é um livro de textos inacabados, de hipóteses academicamente menos rigorosas, muitas delas em “ruminação” conjuntamente com o “Refléxions sur la question gay”, e remata a introdução dizendo que vai procurar nos discursos teóricos e literários que vai analisar uma marca do desvio sexual, das pulsões, da sexualidade desviante do seu autor.
Ora, por mais que muitas obras criem em mim a sensação de estar perante um autor lgbt, sempre considerei a pertinência desse facto do lado da recepção, e não da produção ou autoria; ou seja, considero importante que a obra possa ser considerada interessante por outros lgbts, que possa ser apropriada pelas culturas lgbts, mas não vejo nisso uma identificação com @ autor/a.
Nestas situações, não me parece importante saber se @ autor é lgbt. Mas Éribon fala doutros casos. Daqueles que são de forma visível lgbt mas cuja interpretação nega qualquer importância desse facto na sua obra, mesmo quando existem referências explicitas à sociabilidade lgbt ou a uma linguagem amorosa lgbt levando, por exemplo, a que se “neutralizem” traduções. Éribon fala do apagamento académico da vida lgbt de determinados académicos e intelectuais. Fala do apagamento do seu “irracionalismo gay” (p. 31), no sentido em que são autores de combate a uma determinada ordem racional dominante e estabelecida (isto para autores que ele coloca numa linha de Gide a Foucault), autores de resistência (aos poderes, através duma re-construção de si, duma estética da existência, que é sempre uma experimentação colectiva dum determinado estilo de vida, um nós, portanto), autores de desconstrução das técnicas sociais de sujeitamento. A impressão suspeita que dá é que todos os homossexuais, por o serem, são subversivos, o que não deixa de ser ridículo.
No entanto, Éribon fala também dos que não o são ou desejam ser, mas que não deixam de viver a sua homossexualidade como uma subversão a combater, ou então, aqueles que realizam um esforço para demonstrar o contributo social da homossexualidade, o carácter pedagógico dos “bons” homossexuais (os que são como eles, claro).
(a re-escrever)
26.4.04
When gay lost its outré
Homosexuality has gone mainstream -- but with the daggers sheathed and sex unmentioned, it's a dull party.
By Mary MacNamara
In 1988, when Divine showed up at the pop-cultural cocktail party, escorted by John Waters and the cast of "Hairspray" the movie, people were not quite sure what to do with her … him … her. Dubbing the film a "cult classic" made things a little easier — cross-dressers and drag queens were traditional hallmarks of a "cult classic," along with zombies, incestuous relationships and ax murderers.
Now of course "Hairspray" is a Broadway smash, billed as the Feel-Good Musical of the Century, and Harvey Fierstein reprising Divine's Edna Turnblad is considered much more charming than avant-garde — the man served as the unofficial grand marshal at last year's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. In a big red dress. As Mrs. Claus.
This was probably not the morning in America Ronald Reagan had in mind. Ten years ago, the sight of steely eyed Terence Stamp wearing a big, pink wig-hat and glitter eye shadow, mouthing the words to "Dancing Queen" in "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" left middle-of-the-road moviegoers gasping for air.
Since then, gender outrageousness has become more commonplace, sifted and stirred into the mainstream by everyone from Jerry Springer to Oprah to "The Lion King's" Timon ("Whaddya want me to do, dress up in drag and dance the hula?"). Between Nathan Lane, who voiced Timon as well as Snowbell in "Stuart Little 1" and "Stuart Little 2," and Eddie Murphy in "Shrek" ("I'm a donkey on the edge!") many American children will be conversant in camp by the time they're 6.
The gay aesthetic has long shaped the arts, especially the performing arts. But some within the gay community feel that the mainstreaming of certain aspects of gay culture, including drag and high camp, has come at the cost of its political edge. Outlaws of all sorts define the middle by creating the boundaries; through outrageousness, they tinker with the definitions of acceptable. What will the world have come to if Fierstein, whose 1982 Tony-winning "Torch Song Trilogy" blew the closet to pieces and dumped New York's bathhouse scene into the laps of theatergoing Middle America, becomes just another portly man in a dress?
Madison Avenue to Main Street
It isn't just drag and camp that have gone mainstream. Madison Avenue has recently recognized the gay and lesbian market, tailoring same-sex ads first for gay publications, then for billboards on bus stops and along the 405. Thom Filicia of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" is shilling for Pier 1, and Grand Marnier has included in its new "conversations that matter" campaign: "Your sister is finally getting remarried. Her fiancé's name is Jill."
For 15 minutes, thousands of people were actually getting married in San Francisco and now the "gay agenda" is a keystone of the presidential campaign and daily comic strips that are not Doonesbury. "Metrosexual" has become shorthand for straight guys who shop, and decorate, and groom themselves like gay guys; and the word "queer" has been transformed from a pejorative to a semi-snooty school of thought — in even casual conversation, "queer" is likely to be followed by terms such as "cinema" or "aesthetic" or "studies."
Such are the manifestations of the much-scrutinized Growing Acceptance of Gays in America. This attitude shift has been obvious in the zeitgeist for several years, keeping the cast of "Will & Grace" in a perpetual state of Emmy nomination, making "The L Word" the new "Knots Landing," "Queer Eye" the new "Queen for a Day" and recently allowing the butch and smoldering Frank Langella to perfect the art of swish in the just-opened play "Match" without causing little old ladies from Tenafly, N.J., who just loved him in "Dracula," to faint at the mere prospect.
Gay culture has always been tricky to define, now more than ever. Paul Rudnick was recently taken to task in the New York Observer for littering the New York stage with trashy gay plays in the name of social equality. And Fierstein, who caught flak from gays and straights for "Torch Song's" premise that gay men might want something like a nuclear family of their own, agrees that much of gay culture seems too concerned with the mainstream and not enough about the quality of the art.
Although he was thrilled at the response his Thanksgiving Day appearance evoked —"millions of people just screaming my name, and with the Macy's parade, millions isn't even an exaggeration" — Fierstein was very aware that this was the only way he, an openly gay man and longtime gay rights advocate, was going to get on a float. "Having Edna Turnblad play Mrs. Claus made it safer," he said in a phone interview from New York, "like we were all in on the joke. But the only real person there was me, a gay man."
He sees much of the popularization of gay sensibility as "winks to straight people. We used to raise up the nation, now we're trying to prove that we too can wear T-shirts that say 'I'm With Stupid.' "
The old joke, he says, goes: "What do you get if you put three gay men in a room? A musical"; now "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," essentially a product-driven makeover show, has become emblematic of a community that used to pride itself on its devotion to the high arts. The show is fine for what it is, Fierstein says — a fashionable security blanket for the straight community. "It's saying 'You're OK, we're OK, it's OK, we're going to get through this,' which is a necessary step. Not the prettiest step, not the highest we could reach for."
But progress often has a price. "In our efforts to homogenize," Fierstein says, "we've dumbed down gay culture."
A window on the world
"The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony," wrote Susan Sontag in her seminal 1964 essay "Notes on Camp."
Or, as Oscar Wilde put it: "It's absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious."
For so long, the queer voice has been an outsider's voice, outraged and outrageous, keeping tabs on what was really going on at the party, all the undercurrents and hypocrisies, the mysterious exits and rustlings off stage. Tony Kushner did not just deconstruct the impact of AIDS in "Angels in America," he took on marriage, motherhood, politics, racism, true love, religion and the nature of heaven — all through the prism of a disparate assortment of people. In the work of Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Tennessee Williams, the repression of sexuality is symbolic of the many lies society tells its members and its members tell themselves. The French film "La Cage aux Folles" was not so much about drag diva-dom as it was about the absurdity, and impossibility, of trying to regulate everyone into some sort of gender sameness and about the strange nature of love. (The American remake is a good example of what happens when the gay sensibility is dumbed down.)
Most important, the queer aesthetic provided a necessary alternative to the dominant culture, an insistent reminder that, as Shakespeare was so fond of pointing out through his gender-bending characters, all is not what it seems. "Camp was necessary because it provided a way to take control over the negative images of queer folk in the mainstream culture," says Thomas King, director of graduate studies at Brandeis University, who has written extensively on gender politics and the history of camp. "In this alternative world, norms of gender, domesticity, privacy and sexuality could all be replayed to new effects. Now, we're all fighting for privacy, domesticity and marriage at the price of a collective identity."
What is lost, he says, is the chance to use sexuality as a way to rethink social norms in general, to enrich society beyond the traditional definition of family. "In Provincetown these days you see men taking their babies to Herring Cove Beach," King says. "You wonder what will happen to cruising when men carry their babies to Herring Cove Beach."
It's gone beyond wondering; he has actually seen what will happen. "Men are being asked to police themselves, to keep themselves family-presentable. And there has been very little protest, which is too bad."
Not bad because King doesn't like children — he does and thinks gay parenting is good — but he worries that the pressure to get married and have children will put many gays and lesbians at odds with their creative desires.
"There can be a lot of homophobia around the investment this culture makes in children as the future," he says. "That is one way gays were marginalized — without children, they literally had no future. But that is also one of the reasons they were often so creative, to fight against that, to leave a legacy through the culture. It would be terrible if we lost those alternatives."
So what happens to the outsider when he's finally invited in, the sexual outlaw when he's suddenly made legal?
"One must mourn his passing," says John Rechy, whose books "City of Night" and "The Sexual Outlaw" were groundbreaking documentaries of gay life on the fringe. "But I hope gay people don't become so entirely assimilated that our very rich differences are subsumed."
An abiding believer in the outlaw aesthetic — "gay men should not adopt the sophomoric model of heterosexual dating; gay men should always have sex first" — Rechy is thrilled by changes that allow gays and lesbians to enjoy the full rights of society, but less happy about how popular culture has absorbed some aspects of queer culture while ghettoizing others.
"All these mainstream bookstores have their 'gay studies' departments and that's where all the gay writers go automatically," he says. "Most of my books are not about the gay experience, but that is where you will find them. If Proust were writing today," he added, "he'd be in the gay studies section."
Rechy fears gay culture is being neutered to make it more palatable for public consumption. He hates "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" — "the men are like gay nannies, catering to straight people, trying to make them prettier" — and "Will & Grace"—"Will never has sex. What kind of a gay man is that?"
Assimilation often courts obliteration and Rechy fears society is headed for a "dull, gray sameness."
"We are not just like you," he says, "any more than women are the same as men. If we try to get rid of the differences, we lose the richness of our identity. Liberation is not about sameness."
Still, it may be dangerous to too closely compare sexual assimilation with race or cultural assimilation.
"The edge between inside and outside has always been weird," says David Ehrenstein, author of "Open Secret: Gay Hollywood 1928-2000." "Gay culture has always existed within straight culture, unlike the blacks or the Jews or the Irish who were literally 'over there.' We've always been there, just no one's paid attention."
Now, he says, straight people have discovered that they need to know who is gay and what that means just to keep the conversation going. "One has to do a lot of reading," he says, laughing, "get the Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall CD and the movie list. It's a project."
But in the new world order, will Judy, symbol of the high-wire act between diva-dom and self-destruction, still be necessary? Of course, Ehrenstein says; there will always be drama. "If there isn't opera involved," he says, "I for one am not interested."
At home in the heartland
The biggest change may not be the personalities, but the setting. Until now, much of the art and literature that has come out of gay culture has been urban, the city as a crazy haven, a smorgasbord after the fast. "The gay story was all about getting out of Oshkosh and getting to the San Francisco or New York or L.A., the Emerald City, which is why 'The Wizard of Oz' is so resonant," Ehrenstein says. "Now the story is changing."
If you don't have to worry about getting arrested for having a party in your small-town or suburban house, he says, you might actually stay in that small town or suburb, and this will have an impact on your worldview, for good or ill. But even so, Ehrenstein is not worried that gay culture will lose its specialness. Cheever did OK in the suburbs, after all.
"Of course, if you don't have a giant opposition," he says, "you can't sit around and moan. Then it becomes more about how you can increase your fabulousness."
Fabulousness is, of course, a relative term. James McCourt, author of "Queer Street: Rise and Fall of an American Culture, 1947-1985," thinks social justice trumps whatever the perception of queer culture is every time. "All those fabulous queens were, and are a small minority of the queer population," he said via e-mail. "In the lower-middle and working classes all those queer boys and responsible lesbians look forward to no longer living unfabulous lives of pain and exclusion and readily embrace the unfabulous lives of parents with day jobs who don't go out dancing at night, don't take Ecstasy and maybe listen to a little Beethoven."
In America, he adds, the tension has long been between society and the individual. "The great problem of liberation is how to make a benevolent aggregate out of multiple personalities (often disordered)."
Change also doesn't happen without, well, change. Outrageous behavior — that cutting humor, that stinging social deconstruction — is often a defense mechanism, as every fat girl with a great sense of humor knows, a way to take control of a situation in which you do not have much control.
"I've known quite a few fat girls, and they have tended to be gutsy," McCourt says. "I say be fat and flawless if that's you, but I've also found that when the pounds have come off, it wasn't. Turns out it was a tax on the heart after all."
An aesthetic born of oppression remains three-fourths oppression no matter how sophisticated, witty and insightful it might seem. Rechy believes that removing the outsider status will only encourage artists to move past chronicling the gay experience and create a broader canvas.
McCourt is not saying his rosary either. "Of course something is lost," he says, pointing out that after the French Revolution, the music of Jean Baptiste Lully, the longtime court composer whose work helped create French opera, fell out of favor. "But soon enough," McCourt said, "there was Berlioz."
LA Times, April 25
25.4.04
COMUNICADO DE IMPRENSA DA OPUS GAY A 25 DE ABRIL DE 2004
(R)evoluções, silêncios e vergonhas
A proibição de discriminar com base na orientação sexual é uma revolução na sociedade portuguesa mas corresponde a mais uma evolução que a Constituição tem sofrido.
A Opus Gay tenciona levar essa revolução o mais longe possível, nomeadamente, vendo reconhecido o direito ao casamento (campanha que já iniciámos e para a qual já temos muitos casais dispostos a lutarem) e à adopção.
Mas Abril é também ainda silenciamento: silenciamento de todos os actos homofóbicos que são perpretados diariamente neste país e contra os quais não temos uma legislação anti-homofobia. Talvez seja preciso um dia queimarem alguém vivo, como aconteceu em França, para que os políticos assumam este problema.
E é também vergonha: vergonha do PSD e PS em assumirem a paternidade deste direito que agora deram ao povo, ao não terem produzido, por incrível que pareça, nenhuma declaração sobre o assunto, nem antes nem depois desta conquista. Não percebem que são eles, com as suas cobardias, que envergonham o país.
Porque estes políticos têm vergonha da evolução dos direitos humanos no mundo. ESTES POLÍTICOS TÊM, AFINAL, VERGONHA DO 25 DE ABRIL.
24.4.04
Afinal, donde caiu o 13º?
Não é surpresa para ninguém que sou uma entusiasta da construção da União; e talvez também alguns já tenham percebido que sou daquelas que penso que, neste momento, de Alargamento, tem uma dinâmica imparável. É uma dinâmica em que, para mim, o processo tem mais vantagens que desvantagens (reconheço as desvantagens). É uma dinâmica de unificação, normalização, e outras coisas a que tenho alergia. Mas é uma dinâmica também mais facilmente "manejável" por redes europeias defensoras dos nossos interesses.
Nesse sentido, para mim, o 13º conquistou-se quando a Carta dos Direitos do Homem foi incluída na Constituição em proposta (que, para mim, é uma daquelas coisas que -neste momento, friso muitíssimo - é imparável, com o que de bom e mau tem). Isso e alguns acórdãos do Tribunal Europeu dos Direitos do Homem, foi o que tornou a coisa definitiva (por agora, como tudo na história). De facto, não vislumbro nenhuma boa vontade súbita dos nossos políticos - cederam naquilo que já estava cedido.
Quando se fala do Tratado de Amesterdão, o que penso é que foi um bom engodo argumentativo, usado pelos activistas e pelos Verdes. Porque, de facto, este Tratado apenas admite que, dentro daquelas que sejam as competências da UE à altura, as políticas postas em movimento por ela, por sua iniciativa, deveriam combater a discriminação com base na orientação sexual. Este Tratado não contém nenhum princípio geral de igualdade e não discriminação. A Carta e a futura Constituição contém.
É claro que, a nível nacional, o 13º assim proporcionará uma economia jurídica imensa, quer a nível processual, quer a nível financeiro. A Opus Gay tenciona aproveitar-se de ambas as vantagens:)
O que é importante agora é que todos saibamos movimentar-nos no xadrez desta cidadania social europeia, de forma a podermos optimizar as óptimas políticas sociais que, na minha perspectiva, são possíveis, mas não estão a ser bem combatidas. Organizemo-nos pois:)
Biblioteca on-line
Quem me dera ter tido isto no meu tempo de estudante:))
Olhem que não precisam de registo para aceder aos resumos e indicações bilbiográficas.
EUA - outras questões que não o casamento
Reproductive Freedom is a Gay Issue - Now, More than Ever
WASHINGTON - April 23 - This Sunday (April 25) the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force will join hundreds of thousands of Americans in Washington D.C. for the March for Women's Lives in support of reproductive health and reproductive freedom. The Task Force is the oldest national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights and advocacy organization.
"We are proud to be a part of the 'March for Women's Lives' this Sunday. For nearly 30 years, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has considered reproductive freedom a 'gay' issue," said Matt Foreman, Task Force executive director. "Today, that reality is more evident than ever before, as is the necessity that we join together. Our right to have private, consensual sex - won in last summer's U.S. Supreme Court Lawrence v. Texas decision - will be lost if Roe v. Wade falls under the right's persistent onslaught. Likewise, the enemies of reproductive freedom are the very same people we battle every day in trying to win equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Finally, the Bush Administration's war on gay America - including his support to amend the U.S. Constitution to deny equal marriage rights to our community - is inextricably tied to the administration's assault on reproductive freedom - from 'abstinence only' programs, to the multi-million dollar 'marriage promotion' plan, to his 'every child deserves a mother and a father' mantra."
Why We March
An Op-Ed from Matt Foreman, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director
We - along with thousands of other lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender people will be at March for Women's Lives this Sunday. Why? For the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, there are four overlapping reasons for our enthusiastic and unqualified participation.
First, the obvious: we march because like everyone else, LGBT people need, deserve, and demand the fundamental right to control our bodies without the interference of government. This is the bedrock upon which our movement exists. Our individual and family needs are inextricably linked with all other Americans - we love and have sex; women in our community get pregnant, need the assistance of fertility clinics to do so, or choose or need to end a pregnancy; both men and women in our community choose to - or choose not to - have children. This is not ideological rhetoric: according to the 2000 U.S. Census, 34% of female same-sex households and 22% of male same-sex households are raising children. (See the Task Force report, "2000 Census and Same-Sex Households: A User's Guide," available at http://www.thetaskforce.org/library and check out the U.S. Census 2003 report, "U.S. Census Bureau: Married-couple and unmarried-partner households: 2000 at: http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/censr-5.pdf.
Second, we march because the constitutional right of gay people to have private, consensual sex is inextricably linked to preserving Roe v. Wade. If Roe falls, so does the Supreme Court's recent Lawrence v. Texas, decision, which struck down consensual sodomy laws. The long line of Supreme Court rulings upholding and extending reproductive freedom - Griswold, Eisenstad, Roe, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey - all based on the concept of privacy and personal liberty - are the legal foundation upon which Lawrence is based. Plain and simple: without these decisions we would not have Lawrence; conversely, if Roe is overturned, there goes Lawrence.
Third, we march because the enemies of reproductive freedom are the same enemies of equal rights for LGBT people. We must stand together against them or we will lose. Every major organization or denomination seeking to limit reproductive freedom and overturn Roe seeks to deny LGBT people equal rights with equal vengeance. For decades, their two primary targets - and fundraising vehicles - have been choice and gay rights. Just as the forces of intolerance marshaled their resources to pass into law the so-called "late term abortion" ban, they are fixing their sights to amend the U.S. Constitution to write in discrimination against LGBT people.
Finally, we march because our own government's unprecedented assault on reproductive freedom is not only obviously linked to "gay marriage" but also hits our community particularly hard. For example, the Bush administration is lavishly funding unscientifically-based abstinence-only-until-marriage programs while pushing the anti-marriage constitutional amendment - in effect saying that LGBT people should never have sex. "Abstinence only" programs also negatively impact family planning and undermine HIV/AIDS prevention. The current administration has effectively imposed an anti-LGBT gag rule by denying funding to research proposals containing the words "gay," "lesbian," "transgender," or even "men who have sex with men" while enforcing the "gag-rule" which prevents the distribution of a myriad of reproductive and sexual health services around the world. Similarly, his multi-million dollar "marriage promotion" plan and "every child deserves a mother and a father" mantra are both homophobic and connected to a partisan right wing attack on reproductive freedom. Future Supreme Court nominees? The Supreme Court Justice the President "really respects" is Antonin Scalia, the court's most virulently anti-gay and anti-choice justice.
Is reproductive freedom a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issue? Of course - it always has been - and now, it is more clear than ever before.
Matt Foreman, Executive Director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
22.4.04
Os nossos lugares de migração e exílio
Nina Bouraoui – “Garçon manqué", Éditions Stock, 2000 (6º livro da autora aos 33 anos)
O que impressiona mais neste livro não é a narrativa, apesar desta ser muitíssimo curiosa: a autora é franco-argelina (ou antes argelino-francesa) e escreve sobre esta dupla identidade, cruzando-a com um outro problema identitário, a dificuldade de distinguir (no seu caso) identidade de desejo sexual (e este cruzamento é também ele interessante pois que aparece fundado na cultura argelina).
Apesar da forte e subtil denúncia do colonialismo, racismo e heterosexismo do romance, o que mais surpreende nele é a escrita. Curta, tensa, hirta, entre soluços e punhais. Um ritmo poético que demora um pouco a pegar (eu que o diga que comecei por um romance dela muito anterior) mas que, depois, se entranha (penso que está muito mais apurado agora). Pensava eu que a Duras era a mestra das frases curtas...
Desconheço o estatuto literário de Bouraoui em França; mas só por colonialismo, racismo e heterosexismo não se tornará grande.
P.S.- sobre a forma como a migração e o exílio são processos de encontro e desencontro do eu consigo mesmo, saiu agora um livro que faz uma abordagem psicanalítica do assunto. Chama-se qualquer coisa como “Migração e exílio....”
21.4.04
ARTIGO 13º DA CONSTITUIÇÃO INCLUIRÁ A PROIBIÇÃO DE DISCRIMINAR EM FUNÇÃO DA ORIENTAÇÃO SEXUAL!
De acordo com informação da deputada Isabel de Castro dos Verdes, a orientação sexual será finalmente incluída no artº 13º da nova Constituição Portuguesa, conquista conseguida sob proposta dos Verdes e com o apoio de toda a esquerda e PSD. O acordo de revisão constitucional está a ser feito entre o PS e PSD, pois que exige a aprovação de dois terços dos deputados.
Esta revindicação é a mais antiga do movimento homossexual português, e tornava-se agora praticamente obrigatória e automática, após a inclusão do mesmo preceito no Tratado de Amesterdão e na Carta Europeia dos Direitos Humanos, esta agora incluída na proposta de Constituição Europeia.
19.4.04
LIVROS, LIVROS , LIVROS
Olá, espero que tenham passado bem. Não, não estive de férias. Ou antes, estive bem menos do que desejava, tendo em conta as trapalhices do banco que me está a dar o crédito para a casa e a campanha para o casamento civil da Opus - que vai muito bem, mesmo surpreendentemente bem, apesar dos diversos muros de silêncio com que se depara.
Ora, no meu regresso de Bruxelas tive ainda tempo de dar um saltinho à Les Mots a la Bouche, em Paris, e comprei bastantes livros, principalmente romances lésbicos (à falta de bons ensaios), de que vos irei falando.
Para já, e para me redimir de não o ter comprado, aqui está este artigo de hoje na e-Ilico sobre o livro de Pat Califa - e sobre a personagem, que tanto me fascina:
"Pat Califia
Thérapeute du couple et de la famille, pasteur païen, père d’un enfant et adepte du SM, Pat Califia est une figure du mouvement transgenre.
Pat Califia est un trans bisexuel. Il passe la première partie de sa vie en femme, puis devient une lesbienne radicale, et finit par entamer une transformation hormonale pour devenir un homme, au moment de la ménaupose, presque par accident. Il n’avait jamais envisagé cette mutation sérieusement auparavant.
Quand il était lesbienne, elle fréquentait les milieu SM gay, et a beaucoup écrit sur le SM lesbien, notamment avec sa compagne d’alors, Gayle Rubin. Devenu un homme, il est en couple avec un autre F2M, assume une maternité, ce qui lui fait dire : "Nous sommes des hommes transgenres, mon ami est la mère de mon enfant".
En 1997, alors qu’il est encore elle, Califia publie un livre qui fait l’effet d’une petite bombe dans les communautés LGBT. "Le mouvement transgenre", enfin traduit en français. Califia y trace un historique du transsexualisme, établissant des passerelles avec le mouvement gay et lesbien, et donnant la parole à quelques pionniers des années 50 et 60. Puis il charge contre la transphobie des féministes radicales (qui voient dans les trans un complot de la médecine) mais aussi celle, plus subtile, de quelques intellectuels gay, leur reprochant de s’approprier des éléments culturels qui ne leur appartiennent pas. Comme les Berdaches indiens, présentés comme des "ancêtres" des gays, quant tout démontre que non seulement ils n’étaient pas considérés comme tels mais surtout que leur problématique relevait plutôt de celle du genre (des hommes biologiques dont le rôle social n’est pas celui des hommes) que de l’homosexualité.
Toute sa vie, Pat Califia s’est trouvé en décalage vis-à-vis de structures ou de systèmes de pensée qui finissent par s’attacher à une forme ou une autre de normalité. D’où de nombreuses controverses à son sujet, y compris des accusations de trahison, quand au contraire elle (puis il) restait le plus fidèle possible à une liberté individuelle avec laquelle il ne transige décidément pas.
Pat Califia, "Le mouvement transgenre", Epel, 24 euros"
5.4.04
CASAMENTO PARA TOD@S - BATALHA PELO CASAMENTO CIVIL HOMOSSEXUAL COMEÇA EM PORTUGAL E EM TODA A EUROPA
A Opus Gay vai iniciar em Portugal a luta pela legalização do casamento civil homossexual, que nada tem a ver com a questão religiosa.
Esta campanha de direitos civis, que utilizará a eventual recusa da emissão de licenças como motor jurídico, decorrerá também em muitos outros países, nomeadamente: Itália, Roménia, Grécia, Aústria, Eslováquia, Bulgária, Polónia e Eslovénia.
Na Suécia, Hungria, Estónia, Alemanha, República Checa e Finlândia, as organizações lgbt estão ainda a discutir o assunto nas suas Direcções, se bem que com perspectivas muito favoráveis.
Outras organizações, de outros países, vão ainda considerar a sua adesão.
Estes contactos foram feitos pessoalmente na reunião semestral da rede de ongs nacionais da Ilga Europe no fim-de-semana de 27 e 28 de Março, em Bruxelas, onde a Opus Gay esteve em representação do país. Esta campanha é uma iniciativa da Opus Gay. Esta rede de ONGs é a rede de ONGs sociais mais representativa de toda a UE, uma vez que tem representantes de organizações lgbt de 27 países, ou seja, de toda a UE, já alargada, e ainda os países dum futuro Alargamento.
A campanha propriamente dita terá início numa semana ainda a estabelecer, em que em todos estes países serão realizados pedidos de licença. O que se encontra já em andamento é o recrutamento de casais.
Esta campanha pretende usar o exemplo de casais homossexuais mas também de casais transexuais. É uma campanha pelo direito de todos ao casamento.
Esta campanha tentará concentrar informação e casos já em decurso, incentivando-os a ir o mais longe possível.
Esta campanha pretende utilizar o agendamento possibilitado pelas eleições americanas, mas também a campanha espanhola (que se incluirá nesta até Zapatero legislar o casamento) e a campanha francesa, a iniciar em breve casamentos nas Câmaras Municipais.
A Opus Gay está, portanto, a aceitar inscrições de casais ou pares que desejem ajudar-nos e ser por nós ajudados (a Opus Gay arcará com todas as despesas processuais, a não ser que os casais em causa entendam poder eles pagar os nossos serviços jurídicos - não está ainda descartada a hipótese de se encontrar um advogado que o faça a título gracioso). Dependendo dos casais em questão e da sua vontade, assim a questão será mais ou menos mediatizada. O processo pode decorrer discretamente, por procuração junto do nosso advogado e sem publicitação de nomes, uma vez que, pelo facto do casal não ser hetero, não atingirá essa fase da emissão da licença. Será dada relevância mediática à ideia duma campanha europeia que decorre também em Portugal e não aos casais em si, a não ser que estes o desejem.
