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I am not your “ally” (or am I?)
Today’s blog entry is a stream of consciousness rather than a finished entry with an introduction, middle and conclusion. It’s something that has been puzzling me for sometime, trying to work out why the term “ally” discomforts me and yet, not really coming to a firm conclusion. So I thought I’d explore it through a blog entry and would welcome anyone’s input to help me clarify and refine my own thinking and either embrace or reject the term.
Anyone that knows me, knows I love reading and of course, I love words. I love to play with them, say them, write them, discover new ones and trace the etymology as far as I can. Equally, I do not hide the fact that I try to understand the world through both pacifism and feminism. This makes me rather susceptible to interrogating and challenging the things that I see around me, including the written and spoken word.
The most obvious place to start when exploring words, is a dictionary, and this blog entry does similar. According to the Cambridge English Dictionary the term “ally” has three distinct definitions:
“a country that has agreed officially to give help and support to another one, especially during a war”
“someone who helps and supports someone else”
“someone who helps and supports other people who are part of a group that is treated badly or unfairly, although they are not themselves a member of this group”
Now for obvious reasons, I find the first definition problematic, put simply for me, war is a crime. The act of waging war includes multiple violences, some individual, some institutional, some structural and all incredibly harmful decades, or even centuries later. Definitions which have roots in the military and warfare leave me cold and I hate the way in which they infiltrate civilian discourse. For example “the war on drugs”, “the war on poverty”, “officer to the meeting” and the reshaping of the term “ally” for the twenty-first century” I definitely don’t want to be the “ally” described in that definition.
Definition two is also problematic, albeit for different reasons. This definition seems far too broad, if I hold the door open for you, is that me being an ally? If I help you carry your heavy bags, can I say I’m your ally? This seems a nonsensical way to talk about everyday actions which would be better described as common civility, helping each other along the way.Should I say “thank you kind ally” every time, someone moves out of my way, or offers their seat on the bus? It seems evident that this definition does not help me explore my reservations.
The third definition appears to come closest to modern usage of the term “ally”. This term can be applied to many different groups (as can be seen from the badges below and these are just some of the many examples). “whilst I identify as cisgender, I’m a trans ally”, whilst currently heterosexual, I’m a LGBTQ+ ally”, despite being white, I’m a BLM ally” and so on. On the surface this is very positive, moving society away from the nonsense of people describing themselves as “colour-blind”, “gender-blind” or such trite phrases as “we all bleed the same”, ignoring the lack of equity in society and pretending that everyone has the same lived experience, the same opportunities, the same health, wealth and happiness. Buying into the hackneyed idea that if only you work hard enough, you will succeed, that we live in a classless society and the only thing holding anyone back is their own inertia.
However, maybe my problem isn’t with the word “ally” but the word “I”, and the fact that the two words seem inseparable, After all who decides who is an ally or who is not, is there a organisation somewhere that checks your eligibility to be an ally? I’m pretty sure there’s not which means that that “ally” is a description you apply to yourself. After all you can buy the badge, the t-shirt, the mug etc etc, capitalism is on your side, provided the tills are ringing, there’s every reason to sign up. Maybe a tiny percentage of your purchases goes to financially benefit the people you aim to support, for example the heavily criticised Skittles Pride campaign which donated only 2p to LGBTQ+ charities (and stands accused of white supremacy and racism). Of course, once you have bought the paraphernalia, there is no need to do anything else, beyond carrying/wearing/eating your “ally” goods with pride.
All of the above seems to marketise and weaponise behaviour that should be standard practice, good manners if you like, in a society. Do we need a special word for this kind of behaviour or should we strive to make sure we make space for everyone in our society? If individuals or groups gain civil rights, I don’t lose anything, I gain a growing confidence that the society in which I live is improving, that there is some movement (however small) toward equity for all. Societies should not make life more difficult for the people who live in them, regardless of religious or spiritual belief, we have one opportunity to make a good life for ourselves and others and that’s right now, so why seek to dehumanise and disadvantage other humans who are on the same journey as we are.
Ultimately, my main concern with the use of term of “ally” is that it obscures incredibly challenging social harms, with colour and symbols hiding inaction and apathy. Accept the label of “ally”, wear the badge, if you think it has meaning, but if you do nothing else, this is meaningless. if you see inequality and you do not call it out, take action to remedy the situation, the word “ally” means nothing other than an opportunity to make yourself central to the discussion, taking up, rather than making, room for those focused on making a more just society.
I still remain uncomfortable with the term “ally” and I doubt it will ever appear in my lexicon, but it’s worth remembering that an antonym of ally is enemy and nobody needs those.
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Mundial: Why I won’t be watching the World Cup this time
It has been called the beautiful game; in the past even during war the opposing sides played a game; it has made some of its players stars and household names, football or soccer has a global appeal. From the townships in South Africa, to the Brazilian Favelas, the makeshift pitches the world over to the highly pristine pitches in academies, kids the world over learn to kick a ball, and play the game that requires speed, agility, and dexterity in the feet. Kids who just play for fun in an after-school club or to bond with friends. The appeal of this game has been intertemporal.
Generations of kids, begged their parents to stay longer out to play with their friends, asked for another ball, shoes or shorts and each family responded according to their means. After all, football is/was a working-class game. The relative low cost makes it accessible; it allows plenty of kids to play together and build relationships. Football was an equaliser that did not care who you are or where you come from.
I remember as a kid, year after year playing in the summer with the same kids in teams between Greek and Yugoslavians. We were keeping score and the losing side was buying the other side ice-creams. Not quite the golden ornate cup but a wager worth playing 10 games across the summer. We called each other’s teams with the name of the country we came from. My lasting memory was the last time we played together before the civil war in Yugoslavia erupted. The Yugoslavians won and they were chanting “Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia”. Those kids did not come the following summer. In the next summer, the same kids would be carrying the flag and arms of one of the opposing sides armed to kill each other. When football is not the game, disputes are resolved in brutality.
In the past decades, football’s appeal made it the game to watch. The transition to professional football made the game lucrative, some clubs acquired big budgets and of course attracted a finer audience. The pundits, as a former footballer put it, started eating “prawn sandwiches” an indication of their more expensive tastes. Still people stick with the sport because of their own memories and experiences. My first ever game was with my grandfather. We went to the stadium of the club that was to become the team I support for life. The atmosphere, the emotional roller coaster and most importantly a shared experience with someone very dear, that even when they are gone, you carry the sounds, the emotions with you forever.
Some footballers started earning enormous fees for playing the game; the club colours became trademarked and charged over the odds for a simple scarf or a top. The rights to the games sold to private companies requiring people to pay subscriptions to watch a simple game. People objected but continued still to support, although some people were priced out of the game altogether. The game endures because it still resonates with people’s experiences.
In particular, the national games have kept some of their original appeal of playing for your country, playing for your colours! Football is an unpredictable sport and in international events you can have an outsider taking the cup against the odds! Like Greece winning the UEFA Euro in 2004! The games in international tournaments leads to knock out games, with the drama of extra time and of course the penalty shootout. Nail biting moments shared with family and friends. These magical moments of personal and collective elevation, as if you were there with the players, part of their effort, part of their victory.
When the host country was announced some years ago that will be hosting this year’s world cup there were already calls for investigation into the voting process raising concerns. Since then, there have been concerns about the safety of those who work on the infrastructure. Thousands of migrant workers, many of whom are/were undocumented have worked in building the stadiums that the games will be played in. There are accusations of numerous deaths of migrant workers (an estimate from The Guardian comes to a staggering 6,500 deaths). This has raised a significant question about priorities in our world. It is unthinkable to put a game above human life. This was later followed by “the guidelines” to teams and visitors that alternative sexualities will not be tolerated. Calls about respecting the host’s culture adding to the numbers of people calling for a boycott. So why I won’t be watching this time around?
We have been talking for years about inclusivity and tolerance. Women’s rights, LGBTQ+, immigrant rights, worker rights and all of them being trampled for the sake of a competition. Those who have been asked about the issues from the football federation, former footballers and even governments have played down all these concerns. In some cases, they opted for a tokenistic move like rainbow-coloured planes or include the rainbow on national team logo. Others will be issuing rainbow bracelets and some saying that they will raise issues if/when given the opportunity. This sounds too little considering what has happened so far especially all the fatalities caused building all the constructions. If we are not to uphold civil rights and if we are not ready to act on them, why talk about them?
I remember the game for being inclusive and serving to get people together; this competition is setting an incredibly horrible precedent that human life is cheap and expendable; that people’s rights are negotiable and that you can stop being who you are momentarily, because the game matters more than any of the above. It does not! Without rights, without respect, without life there is no game, there is nothing, because there is no humanity. These games do not bother me, they offend me as a human being. If people died to build this stadium then this space is not fit for games; it’s a monument to vanity and greed; hardly sportsmanlike qualities.
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Days to mark on our calendar!
It is common practice to have a day in the year to commemorate something. In fact, we have months that seemed to be themed with specific events. I look at the diary at the days/months which are full of causes, some incredibly important, others commemorating and then there are those more trivial. Days in a year to make a mark to remind us of things. An anniversary of events that brings something back to a collective consciousness. Once the day/month is over, we busily prepare for the next event, month and somehow between the months and days, I cannot help but wonder; what is left after the day/month?
When International Women’s Day was originally established, at the beginning of the 20th century, socialism was a driving political movement and women’s suffrage was one of the main social issues; since then other issues have been added whilst the main issue of equality remains on the cards. Has women’s movement advanced through the commemoration of International Women’s Day? Debatable if it had an impact. Originally the day was a call for strikes and the mobilisation of women workers. Today it is a day in the calendar that allows politicians to utter platitudes about how important the day is, and of course how much we respect and love women these days! It is hardly a representation of what it was or set out to be. Like so many, numerous other events are marked on our calendar, but wehave lost sight of what they were originally set out to be.
Consider the importance of a day to commemorate the Nazi Holocaust. Never again! The promise that such a mass crime should never happen; the recognition that genocide has no place in our respective societies. Since that genocide, numerous others have taken place, not to mention the mass murder, violent relocations, and the massacres and ethnic cleanings that have happened since. Somehow the “never again”, to people in Biafra, East Timor, Rwanda, Darfur, former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and many other places simply sounds ironic! We commemorate the day, but we do not honour the spirit of that day.
In this mixture of days and months we also have days for mothers, fathers, lovers, friends, hugs, happiness, and many other national and international events. To commemorate or to offer a moment of reflection. Somehow the reflection is lost and for some of these days, millions of people are required to purchase something to demonstrate that they care or worst still, to make something! How many mothers worldwide have had to admire badly made pottery or badly drawn cards from kids who wanted to say “I love you” on one specific day. Leaves me to wonder what they would want to say on all other days!
So, is it better to forget them? Get rid of these days and if anyone suggests the creation of another, we feed them to crocodiles? It would have been easy from one point to end them all. Social issues are never easily resolved so we can recognise that a day or a month does not resolve them! It raises awareness but it’s not the solution. In the old days when the Olympics started there was a call for truce. They did not allow for the games to take place whilst a war was happening. Tokenism? Perhaps, but also the recognition that for events to have any credibility they need to go beyond words; they must have actions associated with them. What if those actions go further than the day/month of the commemoration? Imagine if we respect and honour women, not only on IWD but every day, imagine if we treat people with the respect, they deserve beyond BHM, LGBTQ+ months? Maybe it is difficult but if we recognise it to be right, we ought to try. We know that the Holocaust was a bad thing so lets not just remember it…lets avoid it from happening …Never again!
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DIE in Solidarity with Diversity-Inclusion-Equality
As an associate lecturer on a casual contract, I was glad to stand in solidarity with my friends and colleagues also striking as part of UCU Industrial Action. Concurrently, I was also glad to stand in solidarity with students (as a recent former undergrad and masters student … I get it), students who simply want a better education, including having a curriculum that represents them (not a privileged minority). I wrote this poem for the students and staff taking part in strike action, and it comes inspired from the lip service universities give to doing equality while undermining those that actually do it (meanwhile universities refuse to put in the investment required). This piece also comes inspired by ‘This is Not a Humanising Poem’ by Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, a British author-educator from Bradford in Yorkshire.
Some issues force you to protest
the way oppression knocks on your front door
and you can’t block out the noise
“protest peacefully, non-violently”
I have heard people say
show ‘the undecided’, passive respectability
be quiet, leave parts of yourself at home
show them you’re just as capable of being liked
enough for promotion into the canteen,
protest with kindness and humour
make allusions to smiling resisters in literature
they’d rather passive images of Rosa Parks all honestly
but not her politics against racism, patriarchy, and misogyny
but I wanna tell them about British histories of dissent
the good and the bad – 1919 Race Riots
the 1926 general strikes, and the not so quiet
interwar years of Caribbean resistance to military conscription
I wanna talk about how Pride was originally a protest
I wanna talk about the Grunwick Strike and Jayaben Desai
and the Yorkshire miners that came to London in solidarity
with South Asian migrant women in what was 1980s austerity
I want to rant about Thatcherism as the base
for the neoliberal university culture we work in today
I want to talk about the Poll Tax Riots of 1990
and the current whitewashing of the climate emergency
they want protesters to be frugal in activism,
don’t decolonise the curriculum
they say decolonise
they mean monetise, let’s diversify …
but not that sort of diversity
nothing too political, critical, intellectual
transform lives, inspire change?
But no,
they will make problems out of people who complain
it’s your fault, for not being able to concentrate
in workplaces that separate the work you do
from the effects of Black Lives Matter and #MeToo
they make you the problem
they make you want to leave
unwilling to acknowledge that universities
discriminate against staff and students systemically
POCs, working-class, international, disabled, LGBT
but let’s show the eligibility of staff networks
while senior leaders disproportionately hire TERFs
staff and students chequered with severe floggings
body maps of indenture and slavery
like hieroglyphics made of flesh
but good degrees, are not the only thing that hold meaning
workers rights, students’ rights to education
so this will not be a ‘people are human’ poem
we are beyond respectability now
however, you know universities will DIE on that hill
instead,
treat us well when we’re tired
productive, upset, frustrated
when we’re in back-to-back global crises
COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, femicide,
failing in class, time wasting, without the right visas,
the right accents; Black, white, homeless, in poverty,
women, trans, when we’re not A-Grade students, when we don’t
have the right last name; when we’re suicidal
when people are anxious, depressed, autistic
tick-box statistics within unprotected characteristics
all permeates through workers’ and student rights
When you see staff on strike now,
we’re protesting things related to jobs yes,
but also, the after-effects
as institutions always protect themselves
so sometimes I think about
when senior management vote on policies…
if there’s a difference between the nice ones ticking boxes
and the other ones that scatter white supremacy?
I wonder if it’s about diversity, inclusion, and equality [DIE],
how come they discriminate in the name of transforming lives
how come Black students are questioned (under caution) in disciplinaries
like this is the London Met maintaining law and order …
upholding canteen cultures of policing
Black and Brown bodies. Decolonisation is more
than the curriculum; Tuck and Yang
tell us decolonisation is not a metaphor,
so why is it used in meetings as lip service –
why aren’t staff hired in
in critical race studies, whiteness studies, decolonial studies
why is liberation politics and anti-racism not at the heart of this
why are mediocre white men failing upwards,
they tell me we have misunderstood
but promotion based on merit doesn’t exist
bell hooks called this
imperialist heteropatriarchal white supremacy
you know Free Palestine, Black Lives Matter, and the rest
we must protest how we want to protest
we must never be silenced; is this being me radical, am I radical
Cos I’m tired of being called a “millennial lefty snowflake”, when I’m just trying not to DIE?!
Further Reading
Ahmed, Sara (2012) On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. London: Duke.
Ahmed, Sara (2021) Complaint. London: Duke.
Bhanot, Kavita (2015) Decolonise, Not Diversify. Media Diversified [online].
Double Down News (2021) This Is England: Ash Sakar’s Alternative Race Report. YouTube.
Chen, Sophia (2020) The Equity-Diversity-Inclusion Industrial Complex Gets a Makeover. Wired [online].
Puwar, Nirmal (2004) Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place. Oxford: Berg.
Read, Bridget (2021) Doing the Work at Work What are companies desperate for diversity consultants actually buying? The Cut [online].
Ventour, Tré (2021) Telling it Like it is: Decolonisation is Not Diversity. Diverse Educators [online].
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The Case of Mr Frederick Park and Mr Ernest Boulton
As a twenty-first century cis woman, I cannot directly identify with the people detailed below. However, I feel it important to mark LGBT+ History Month, recognising that so much history has been lost. This is detrimental to society’s understanding and hides the contribution that so many individuals have made to British and indeed, world history. What follows was the basis of a lecture I first delivered in the module CRI1006 True Crimes and Other Fictions but its roots are little longer
Some years ago I bought a very dear friend tickets for us to go and see a play in London (after almost a year of lockdowns, it seems very strange to write about the theatre).. I’d read a review of the play in The Guardian and both the production and the setting sounded very interesting. As a fan of Oscar Wilde’s writing, particularly The Ballad of Reading Gaol and De Profundis (both particularly suited to criminological tastes) and a long held fascination with Polari, the play sounded appealing. Nothing particularly unusual on the surface, but the experience, the play and the actors we watched that evening, were extraordinary. The play is entitled Fanny and Stella: The SHOCKING True Story and the theatre, Above the Stag in Vauxhall, London. Self-described as The UK’s LGBTQIA+ theatre, Above the Stag is often described as an intimate setting. Little did we know how intimate the setting would be. It’s a beautiful, tiny space, where the actors are close enough to just reach out and touch. All of the action (and the singing) happen right before your eyes. Believe me, with songs like Sodomy on the Strand and Where Has My Fanny Gone there is plenty to enjoy. If you ever get the opportunity to go to this theatre, for this play, or any other, grab the opportunity.
So who were Fanny and Stella? Christened Frederick Park (1848-1881) and Ernest Boulton (1848-1901), their early lives are largely undocumented beyond the very basics. Park’s father was a judge, Boulton, the son of a stockbroker. As perhaps was usual for the time, both sons followed their respective fathers into similar trades, Park training as an articled clerk, Boulton, working as a trainee bank clerk. In addition, both were employed to act within music halls and theatres. So far nothing extraordinary….
But on the 29 April 1870 as Fanny and Stella left the Strand Theatre they were accosted by undercover police officers;
‘“I’m a police officer from Bow Street […] and I have every reason to believe that you are men in female attire and you will have to come to Bow Street with me now”’
(no reference, cited in McKenna, 2013: 7)
Upon arrest, both Fanny and Stella told the police officers that they were men and at the police station they provided their full names and addresses. They were then stripped naked, making it obvious to the onlooking officers that both Fanny and Stella were (physically typical) males. By now, the police had all the evidence they needed to support the claims made at the point of arrest. However, they were not satisfied and proceeded to submit the men to a physically violent examination designed to identify if the men had engaged in anal sex. This was in order to charge both Fanny and Stella with the offence of buggery (also known as sodomy). The charges when they came, were as follows:
‘they did with each and one another feloniously commit the abominable crime of buggery’
‘they did unlawfully conspire together , and with divers other persons, feloniously, to commit the said crimes’
‘they did unlawfully conspire together , and with divers other persons, to induce and incite other persons, feloniously, to commit the said crimes’
‘they being men, did unlawfully conspire together, and with divers others, to disguise themselves as women and to frequent places of public resort, so disguised, and to thereby openly and scandalously outrage public decency and corrupt public morals’
Trial transcript cited in McKenna (2013: 35)
It is worth noting that until 1861 the penalty for being found guilty of buggery was death. After 1861 the penalty changed to penal servitude with hard labour for life.
You’ll be delighted to know, I am not going to give any spoilers, you need to read the book or even better, see the play. But I think it is important to consider the many complex facets of telling stories from the past, including public/private lives, the ethics of writing about the dead, the importance of doing justice to the narrative, whilst also shining a light on to hidden communities, social histories and “ordinary” people. Fanny and Stella’s lives were firmly set in the 19th century, a time when photography was a very expensive and stylised art, when social media was not even a twinkle in the eye. Thus their lives, like so many others throughout history, were primarily expected to be private, notwithstanding their theatrical performances. Furthermore, sexual activity, even today, is generally a private matter and there (thankfully) seems to be no evidence of a Victorian equivalent of the “dick pic”! Sexual activity, sexual thoughts, sexuality and so on are generally private and even when shared, kept between a select group of people.
This means that authors working on historical sexual cases, such as that of Fanny and Stella, are left with very partial evidence. Furthermore, the evidence which exists is institutionally acquired, that is we only know their story through the ignominy of their criminal justice records. We know nothing of their private thoughts, we have no idea of their sexual preferences or fantasies. Certainly, the term ‘homosexual’ did not emerge until the late 1860s in Germany, so it is unlikely they would have used that language to describe themselves. Likewise, the terms transvestite, transsexual and transgender did not appear until 1910s, 1940s and 1960s respectively so Fanny and Stella could not use any of these as descriptors. Despite the blue plaque above, we have no evidence to suggest that they ever described themselves as ‘cross-dressers’ In short, we have no idea how either Fanny or Stella perceived of themselves or how they constructed their individual life stories. Instead, authors such as Neil McKenna, close the gaps in order to create a seamless narrative.
McKenna calls upon an excellent range of different archival material for his book (upon which the play is based). These include:
- National Archives in Kew
- British Library/British Newspaper Library, London
- Metropolitan Police Service Archive, London
- Wellcome Institute, London
- Parliamentary Archives, London
- Libraries of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons, London and Edinburgh
- National Archives of Scotland
Nevertheless, these archives do not contain the level of personal detail, required to tell a fascinating story. Instead the author draws upon his own knowledge and understanding to bring these characters to life. Of course, no author writes in a vacuum and we all have a standpoint which impacts on the way in which we understand the world. So whilst, we know the institutional version of some part of Fanny and Stella’s life, we can never know their inner most thoughts or how they thought of themselves and each other. Any decision to include content which is not supported by evidence is fraught with difficulty and runs the risk of exaggeration or misinterpretation. A constant reminder that the two at the centre of the case are dead and justice needs to be done to a narrative where there is no right of response.
It is clear that both the book and the play contain elements that we cannot be certain are reflective of Fanny and Stella’s lives or the world they moved in. The alternative is to allow their story to be left unknown or only told through police and court records. Both would be a huge shame. As long as we remember that their story is one of fragile human beings, with many strengths and frailties, narratives such as this allow us a brief glimpse into a hidden community and two, not so ordinary people. But we also need to bear in mind that in this case, as with Oscar Wilde, the focus is on the flamboyantly illicit and tells us little about the lived experience of some many others whose voices and experiences are lost in time..
References
McKenna, Neil, (2013), Fanny and Stella: The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England, (London: Faber and Faber Ltd.) Norton, Rictor, (2005), ‘Recovering Gay History from the Old Bailey,’ The London Journal, 30, 1: 39-54 Old Bailey Online, (2003-2018), ‘The Proceedings of the Old Bailey,’ The Old Baily Online, [online]. Available from: https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/ [Last accessed 25 February 2021]
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Bang! Smash! Pow! Representation Matters. #BlackenAsiaWithLove
A superhero walks into a bar.
A reporter walks up and offers a drink.
They end up spending the night together, and a love affair ensues.
*
A superheroine walks into a bar.
A reporter walks up to her and offers a drink.
They end up spending the night together, and a love affair ensues.
*
A Black superheroine walks into a bar.
A Black reporter walks up to her and offers a drink.
They end up spending the night together, and a love affair ensues.
*
A Black superheroine walks into a bar.
A Black woman reporter walks up to her and offers a drink.
They end up spending the night together, and a love affair ensues.
That’s Black Lightning.
*
Superman and Lois Lane got to love one another, and
Wonder Woman fell in love with the first man she met.
For generations of Sci-Fi and superheroes,
Everybody was straight and white.
The Star Trek franchise has been imagining a fairer future since the 60’s, but
It’s only now -on the newest Star Trek show – that
Yellow, black, white, red and brown people portray species from throughout the galaxy.
Finally, things as fickle as religion or gender identity aren’t barriers to love.
*
I earnestly wonder if it was the creators or the audiences who couldn’t see anybody else loved, but straight white people?!?
That only straight white men could save the day.
Representation matters.
Which superhero did you see at first?
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School Boys’ Crush #BlackAsiaWithLove
At first, he would just smile at me from across the room.
During classes, if I rose my hand to answer the teacher, he’d just glare at me as if I were accepting the Miss America title, or giving a rousing speech.
I always felt stronger in class with him inside.
To be fair, I didn’t even know if he liked boys at first.
Or perhaps he was just grinning at me because I was foreign… exotic, and spoke English, the common tongue that everyone wanted to master.
Anyway, he was a foreigner, too, training to be a translator and interpreter and
Still had several languages to master; English was just one.
Our friend Sabine was pretty, blue-eyed, thin, buxom, wore form-fitting-flattering clothes, had long, flowing blond hair and was a native speaker of both French and Alsatian.
Surely, he’d go of someone like her.
Yeah, I threw in every doubt, but
I’d still wait outside for him before the one class we shared, International Relations and
All through the class he’d grin at me from across the room.
Or, I’d look for him when I knew his class was at the end of the hall.
Between classes, somehow, we’d find one another’s gaze.
I loved getting to go to class.
Twice a week, I even got to brush past him before the last period when it seemed that all the classes switched sides.
He’s taller than me, so as we brushed past one another.
Sometimes we would hold our heads up and catch each other’s gaze,
But initially this was too much for me,
I knew my knees would buckle if I stood that close to his deep brown eyes;
I doubted I could stop myself from reaching up and touching his dark curly hair.
I had to look away,
Or else I might just fall over and…
And he’d have to catch me.
Crap, then I’d surely faint!
So mostly I would look down as we passed in the hall between classes.
As he neared, he’d sigh heavily, and
So I could feel the heat of his breath on my neck.
He liked spearmint.
*Sigh.
Then, as we reached the opposite ends of the hall, he’d turn back and smile, and
He knew I’d look back, that I’d be waiting to catch his gaze.
I’d smile back.
Then, he’d turn away – look down – as if grinning to himself about a secret that only he knew.
I found myself on the other end of the hall doing the same.
Then one day, a good friend of his invited me over for her birthday party, and
Somehow, he and I kept creeping closer to one another.
We hadn’t yet formally met, so
He kept talking to his friends, and I kept talking to mine, but
As we shifted around the room, we got nearer and nearer one another.
As the party dwindled and everyone started making arrangements to walk someone else home that night,
I could see him waiting idly, quietly, to the side, until the end.
I wanted him to walk me home, which I had every right to demand, because,
Because I was a foreigner, and couldn’t really even tell you what part of town I lived in.
So, he agreed to walk me home.
And we ended up at his house.
I spent the night in his arms.
I spent the next six years there.
Over the years, he’d mastered and prepared dishes for me from all of the cultures from all the languages he was mastering.
I loved our international relations.
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A sissy works at the beer garden. #BlackAsiaWithLove
A sissy works at the beer garden I pass on the way home. In Vietnam, these common watering holes are called “Bia Hoi,” and this one sits at the intersection of two major roads, across from one of the city’s largest parks, on a corner adjacent to one edge of a university campus. To say that this place is a sausage fest would be an understatement. Like drinking holes in so many parts of the world, this is a space for men.
Men come here. Me, too. Although I stick out as a visible foreigner, I am part of the crowd of men. In every part of the world I’ve encountered, there’s nothing weird about a guy sitting around having a beer. Hence, it’s not uncommon for local groups of men to send one over, or invite me to their table for a drink. This has drastically different implications than men in pubs buying drinks for women, especially a woman sitting alone in a drinking hole, which is the LEAST likely thing to see here, despite the number of Bia Hoi’s owned and run by women in Vietnam. The majority here are either men in starched shirts and slacks stepping out, or other groups of guys crossing from the park to gather here for a post-match drink. I started coming here years ago with a man I met through work, and stop by every now and again. As compared to other masculinized spaces, there’s no competition here, and the primary resource – beer – flows freely.
The sissy wears an apron to serve the food and beer. He ties his apron tightly over the same loose orange T-shirt all the other guys wear to serve. This, of course accentuates his curves. While the others walk around baggy, clothes hanging loosely like a barrel sac, with this apron, the sissy has seriously upgraded the uniform with color, shape and flare. What’s more, his hips switch back-n-forth, too quick to be a pendulum. Naw, he switches like nobody’s business, and you really see this the way the beer garden is set-up with several rows of long tables. This is his cat walk. While the other servers seem to be drudging through the labor, the sissy flutters around like a butterfly. And he always looks at each customer, takes time to chat, and seems to have the patience of Job when it comes to their eventual drunkenness. Beer loosens tongues.
The sissy has to march back and forth the serve the orders like a busy bee. It’s hot, so the sissy fans himself with the menu, like it’s a prop, as he prances up-n-down the rows as if it’s his own stage. Everyone else pales in comparison, they’re just there to work. The sissy is there to ‘work’, or as Fergie says: “Make YOU work!” Life’s a stage, they say, and er’body gotta play they part.
The sissy stands at each table like a tea-cup, grinning, weight shifted to one leg, hips leaning to the side, back arched, hand on his hip, holding a pen waiting for the men to call out their food orders. Unlike the other servers who seem to just stand there bluntly to take orders, the sissy acts like a host, and actively shows folks their seats, offers that they take a look at the menu, and genuinely makes sure they are all satisfied.
This sissy has mad flavor, even in this part of his career – of which I know nothing – save for what I’ve seen of him serving beer in a local Bia Hoi. He makes such a flutter when he moves around, just doing his job, that I too, see him on stage, among peers, not drowning in this mundanity. I almost wish he would bring some Hot Lunch from Fame, for those hips are already singing the body electric. Those shoulders practically shimmering as he walks friskily across the pavement, arms stretched open, elbows squeezed, holding a beer in each hand – swish, swish, swish. I can see the musical notes floating around him as he makes his way, doing his job dutifully, albeit with Glee. “Just do it,” I want to say to the sissy. Free us from these seats.
In some places, even today, our existence is a crime.
#ProudBoys
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“A small case of injustice”
Pride as a movement in the UK but also across the world signals a history of struggles for LGBTQ+ community and their recognition of their civil rights. A long journey fraught with difficulties from decriminalisation to legalisation and the eventual acceptance of equal civil rights. The movement is generational, and in its long history revealed the way social reactions mark our relationship to morality, prejudice, criminalisation and the recognition of individual rights. In the midst of this struggle, which is ongoing, some people lost their lives, others fell compelled to end theirs whilst others suffer social humiliation, given one of the many colourful pejoratives the English language reserved for whose accused or suspected for being homosexuals.
This blog will focus on one of the elements that demonstrates the relationship between the group of people identified homosexual and the law. In sociological terms, marginalised groups, has a meaning and signals how social exclusion operates against some groups of people, in these case homosexuals but it does apply to any group. These groups face a “sharper end” of the law, that presumably is equal to all. This is the fallacy of the law; that there are no inherent unfairness or injustice in laws. The contention for marginalised groups is that there are presumptions in the law on purported normality that disallows them to engage fully with the wider community in some cases forced to live a life that leads all the way to segregation.
Take for example “entrapment”. Originally the practice was used by law enforcement officers to identify counterfeit money, later to investigate the sales of untaxed tobacco or the use of unlicensed taxis. The investigation in law allows for the protection of the public, non uniform officers to pose as customers in order to reveal criminalities that occur in the dark corners of society. The focus predominantly was to protect consumers and the treasury from unpaid tax. So, from that how did the law enforcement officers use it to arrest homosexuals? It is interesting to note we can separate the letter of the law as opposed to the spirit of the law. This distinction is an important one criminologically whilst for the law enforcement agencies evidently there is no such distinction.
The most recent celebrity case led to the arrest of George Michael in Los Angeles, US; the operation led to the outing of the artist and his conviction. As a practice across many years, entrapment played a significant part in the way numerous homosexuals found themselves arrested given a criminal record, loss of employment and in some cases ending up in prison. It is important to note that prior to the Sexual Offences Act of 1967, the biggest sexual crime in England and Wales was that of homosexuality (recorded as indecency or buggery). It took decades for that statistic to change, although historically remains still the highest category.
The practice of entrapment employed by the police demonstrates the uphill struggle the LGBTQ+ community faced. Not only they had to deal with social repulsion of the wider community that detested, both their practices and their existence, but also with public officials who used entrapment to criminalise them. This was happening whilst the professionals were divided about the origins of homosexual “anomaly” and how to deal with it, the practice of entrapment added new convictions and supplied more humiliation to those arrested. For the record, the criminological community was split along theoretical lines on this; the classicists such as Bentham argued for the decriminalisation of sodomy whilst the positivists namely Lombroso considered homosexuals to be in the class of moral criminals (one of the worst because they are undeterred) .
The issue however is neither theoretical, nor conceptual; for those who were aware of their sexuality it was real and pressing. During the post WWII civil rights movement, people started taking note of individual differences and how these should be protected by privacy laws allowing those who do not meet the prescribed “normal” lifestyles to be allowed to live. It emerged that people who were successful in their professional lives, like Alan Turing, John Forbes Nash Jr, John Gielgud etc etc, found themselves facing criminal procedures, following string operations from the police. This injustice became more and more evident raising the profile of the change in the law but also in the social attitudes.
In 2001 Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead addressed the issue of entrapment head on. In his judgement in Regina v Looseley:
“It is simply not acceptable that the state through its agents should lure its citizens into committing acts forbidden by the law and then seek to prosecute them for doing so. That would be entrapment. That would be a misuse of state power, and an abuse of the process of the courts. The unattractive consequences, frightening and sinister in extreme cases, which state conduct of this nature could have are obvious. The role of the courts is to stand between the state and its citizens and make sure this does not happen.”
This was the most damming condemnation of the practice of entrapment and a vindication for all those who faced prosecution as the unintended consequence of the practise. For the record, in 2017 under the Policing and Crime Act, included the “Alan Turing law” that pardoned men who were cautioned or convicted for historical homosexual acts. The amnesty received mixed reviews and some of those who could apply for denied doing so because that would require admission of wrongdoing. The struggle continues…
Regina v Looseley, 2001 https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200102/ldjudgmt/jd011025/loose-1.htm
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Mourning Travel. #BlackenAsiaWithLove
Mourning Travel.
One of the first casualties of Corona was travel. Nations immediately began controlling the flow of people in and out of ever-broader borders. First neighborhoods, then cities, regions, and countries all closed. As fear of the virus spreading spread, different parts of the world became associated with Corona, though bullheaded public figures even continued to call it “Chinese”
A few years ago, I got a 10 -year visa to China through work and had planned to travel there much more than time has allowed. Now, I am fearful of ever traveling there before my visa expires. I am unable to accept the many invitations to connect with my previous students who’ve returned to China and know of my interest in the region’s cultures. I have been to southern China on several study trips with students. We finally ventured to Beijing and its wonders on a later trip. Naturally, I did my happy dance when I reached a peak on the Great Wall just a few years ago. I am now on sabbatical in Hanoi, just released from lockdown.
It was a lifelong dream to visit China, I was raised on my godmother’s stories about growing up in Hong Kong, savoring the flavors of her homeland in her kitchen in Kentucky. I knew I had to see for myself. As a kid, she and I would go on shopping day-trips to Chicago’s Chinatown, a 7-hour drive each way. For those few hours in Chi-town, we’d be transported to a world where finally she was the insider. She spoke for hours in several dialects with all the people around that I didn’t understand, and we even browsed restaurants that resembled what she’d told me home was like. We’d go in and eat not from the tourist but from the Chinese menus – foods that were not nearly available in Kentucky.
Kentucky is pretty black and white, but there, in the heart of Chinatown, in the heartland of America, smack in the middle of the 80’s, I got to experience my godmother being in the majority. Growing up close to my godmother confirmed I could experience more freedom through travel. This was a key insight into the world for a gay kid growing up in the Bible Belt; I could just go away. Travel has always exposed me to new ways of being in the world.
Pride, Nehru Park, New Delhi 2008
“You’ve got to go to the city/They’re going to find you there…” -Flawless, George Michael
Travel is essential for the development of a healthy self-identity as a queer person. ‘Travel’ is, in fact, inseparable from the notion of a gay community. This is exemplified by having to leave our homes and communities to commune with others queers, and certainly the richness of gay tourism. One might also consider how gay identity uniquely depends on the very idea of gayness traveling far and wide to enter the minds of gays isolated everywhere.
Knowing gay people is a primal impetus for me to travel. Rather than just seeking to know ‘different’ people, places and cultures, I crave knowing how people like me thrive in those places. We’re everywhere.
Celebrating India’s decriminalization!
It has always struck me that as queer people of color, we too often must venture outside our ethno-cultural communities to meet gay people. I came out at 16 and by then only knew gays within my age-group. Fortunately, in that era of grand community building, a local charity had organized a gay youth group. There, in addition to comradery, the adult facilitation and guest speakers provided mentorship and what we now understand as inter-generational knowledge. They also alerted me to queer writers: Through Sister Outsider, I’d traveled around the world with Audre Lorde long before I stepped foot outside of north-America. This is a powerful glue that can sustain solidarity within any community.
By attempting to transport certain functions of the gay club scene into the virtual world, we have certainly lost a core opportunity for inter-generational bonding. The ominous gay club also functions as a platform for the exchange of knowledge and experience. This phenomenon is sustained by travel, particularly tourism, migration, immigration. Or, how long did it take for nations to consider asylum for queers fleeing in deadly homophobic regimes? Flawless:
Don’t you know, you’ve got to go to the city
You’ve got to reach the other side of the glass
I think you’ll make it in the city baby
I think you know that you are more than just
Some F-ed up piece of ass
Pride – both metaphorically and literally – has circulated the globe, first and foremost through travel and tourism, then through globalizing the fight against AIDS. By the mid-90’s, the attention of gay rights advocates had widened to confronting homophobia. If health was a human right, then surely freedom from stigma is, too. Mind you, this same argument fueled the successful campaign in India to decriminalize same-sex sex, which was based on colonial legislation. Rights advocates in India had successfully used case law to articulate access to healthcare as a civil right, showing how stigma impeded this for queers.
Sadly, the exact same Victoria-era law has been strengthened and extended in many African nations, legitimizing jungle justice! For many, travel is a lifeline, including asylum. For queers in the African Diaspora, this is yet another form of exile – banishment from the motherland.
Under the bridge downtown…
If there were ever a community consumed with travel, it would be LGBTQ+ folk. Our folk knowledge is transmitted in myth and music, for example, lyrics urging gays to head to the shelter of the city. Whether chants about finding a YMCA, or told to Go West to be “together” in the sanctuary, mythical San Francisco, for gays to achieve self-realization, we needed to ‘know’ urban life to counter traditional values in the homestead. “I think you’ll make it in the city, baby.” There -away- we’re promised a new beginning with freedom. I’m very proud to have seen this through.
Gay civil rights have advanced globally far faster than those of any other recognized minority group, and certainly, one factor is… (drumroll) …we’re everywhere, even where there’s no Pride! Like ether, our pride travels through the stratosphere.
Thoughts from the criminology team 