More Thoughts on the Relationship of Sexuality to Revolution

Editor’s Note

September 1997

Dear Friends,

 We are proud to be publishing our second Queer Notions Bulletin. Our effort to bring together various queers and friends interested in revolution has been quite fruitful during this past year since the publication of our first bulletin. As you read, you will discover the voices of people nationally and even internationally, who have different approaches to the queer dimension, and yet who all share the desire for a freedom filled future where we are not defined by this oppressive heterosexist, racist, classist, sexist, capitalist society.

We invite submissions and comments on an ongoing basis, both on this website and via "snail mail." Below you will find the addresses for all the various ways we can be reached. We look forward to hearing from you all!

 For Freedom!

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by Sharon Cannery, Bay Area News and Letters Committee

I feel privileged to present this groundbreaking bulletin on ‘Queer Notions; thoughts on the relationship of sexuality to revolution’. This is a compilation of unedited essays written by Feminists, Anarchists, Queer Activists, and Marxist-Humanists and which directly grew out of a group that has been meeting now for over a year and a half called the ‘Subjectivity of Sexuality’ group. It is an off-shoot from the Bay Area News and Letters Women’s Liberation Committee. There is a ‘Dear Friends’ letter in the very front of the bulletin written by Julia Jones who gives a condensed yet, very accurate depiction of the group’s background and vision.

What the group set out to do is, by no means, a small task. Mostly because discussions on the revolutionary relationship of sexuality have historically been seen as personal and therefore, minor within the broader scale of "the more serious issues" such as, women’s rights, labor and minority struggles. We are here to set the record straight or not-so straight if you follow my meaning…there is a hefty bit of digging into history that needs to take place alongside theoretical development within the whole subject of sexuality if we are ever have a chance to uproot the old and pose a vision of a totally new human society.

The way I am going to go through this bulletin will be simply, front to back, picking out the key points that I feel was the intent of the author. I’ll try to be as accurate and insightful as possible, however, I am not going to ramble on because to tell you the truth, I am looking forward in hearing everyone’s opinion of the bulletin and if you are a visitor, I welcome any comments on my presentation or on anything brought up during discussion period.

O.K. The first essay after the ‘Dear Friends’ letter is mine. I have entitled my piece, "Raya Dunayevskaya’s 1953 Letters on Hegel’s Absolutes and the Gay/Lesbian Liberation Movement". Here, I was trying to convey the importance of not separating theory from practice. That going back to Hegel’s Absolutes, as Raya did in 1953 and in her letter to Grace Lee Boggs (one of her comrades in the Johnson-Forest Tendency) will help move and deepen our analysis of the lesbian and gay movement. I came from pure activism and I certainly had no trouble in seeing the limitations of pure practice. When theory is placed along side practice, a fluidity of thought occurs where practice informs theoretical development and theory informs activity.

Diving into the Absolute Idea is crucial in informing revolutionaries because it is revolution in permanence and without it an incomplete analysis will occur. As I quoted Raya, "in Hegelian dialectics, the philosophic moment is the determinate: even if the person who was driven to articulate the Idea of that ‘moment’ was very nearly unconscious as to its depth and its ramifications, it remained the element that governed the concretization that follows the laborious birth that poured forth in a torrent nevertheless." See, under capitalism ideas have very little value as we are forced to conform to rigidity and add to production thereby, losing any sense of how creative we could really be. I outlined the actual movement of the Absolute Method by using myself as an example. I stated how important it is for all that is part of my history which challenges our current oppressive society come with me in transcending every stage of my confrontation of the objective world.

Our accurate understanding of all that has come before us is vital. The actions of determined souls that lay bare our contradictory world need to penetrate present day struggles, thereby moving us toward a richer understanding of our movement. This movement of the Absolute Method, in my case, of going from individual(lesbian) to particular(gay bashing) to universal(lesbian and gay movement) and philosophy of "Revolution in permanence" is fluid. It is a two way road which can go the other way as well: Universal, Particular, Individual… a continual movement that is never ceasing. To quote Raya, "History is enriching and concentrating itself upon itself." Our internalization of the Absolute Method too, must be ever deepening.

The next essay is Jennifer Pen’s "Subjectivities of Sexualities and Revolutionary Subjects- a review essay". Here Pen, in the beginning gives a general history of the period of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgendered history since Stonewall. Marking how the earlier homophile movements were replaced by an ever increasing separation between lesbians and gay males. Gay males, generally, veering off towards creating safe havens of personal freedom and ‘gay pride’ where, the lesbians tended to pour their energies into the feminist movement where it was thought best that their lesbianism be toned down for fear of side-tracking the movement as a whole.

Pen then goes onto explain the process of change that took place including lesbians determined not to be silenced and the shift back to gay men and lesbians fighting against the genocide of the AIDS epidemic. She points to a new kind of direct activism found in groups like ACT-UP, Queer Nation, Women’s Action Coalition, and Women’s Health Action Mobilization. Pen correctly notes, "While there have been plenty of tensions over issues of sexism, racism, and class privilege, gay men and lesbians have increasingly worked together since 1982".

Jennifer goes on to point out the reformist swing of the energies of the movement since Clinton took office and the limitations of some of the approaches to change. Gay conservatives primarily being white, male, middle-to-upper-class, and employed in white-collar or executive jobs. "The multi-issue forces," Pen writes, "are often equally reformist in their goals, and while there are more women, more people of color, and a wider range of class interests represented, they shy away from revolutionary language." A further philosophic deepening of our critique of glbt struggles world wide is needed…what and how does the queer dimension adds to revolutionary subjectivity?

Now, what Pen brings up next is what our group is intent on seriously discussing and what I believe is key in our analysis. She says, "It is the self-definition inherent in queer subjectivity that is the location of the dialectic." You can see how the movement of the deepening of the dialectic shows through in even how Jennifer responds to Julia Jones’ review of Vera Whisman’s ‘Queer by Choice’ which will be discussed next. This is what can come from constant exchange of ideas and dialog. How Pen picks up on Jones’ whole critique and how she says that the claim that "I had no choice does not challenge the heterosexist status quo, and leaves intact insidious assumptions that homosexual behavior is amoral, undesirable and unnatural". "This, says Pen, is a defensive move, which eats away at the subjectivity and self-definition that queer liberation can propel." In other words, lesbians, gays, bi-sexuals, and transgendered people have a very real subjectivity that by no mistake brings them to support other struggles and is so very important to flush out. The very act of coming out, which is something that is never ending, let me tell you, forces you to confront your world in a very concrete way and in my opinion is always a mini-revolution every time you do it. Pen then asks the question to what extent does the coming out process question and negate the totality of what exists, and, if it does, to what extent does it also spiral one in the direction of second negativity, to the positive in the negative, to a new, more human world?" The self-definition that is part of the coming-out process and how the self-critique is also an essential part of revolution in permanence was wonderful to read in Pen’s piece. She then proposes a new pamphlet on subjectivity of sexuality as an opening for the discussion of these ideas and as instrumental in informing today’s perspectives in other struggles.

The third essay is by Julia Jones and it is review or ‘Queer by Choice; Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Politics of Identity’ a book written by Vera Whisman. An edited version of this piece appears in News and Letters from July 1996. What is so exciting about Julia’s reading of this book is that she challenging those interested in queer liberation to start from a very radical and inclusive feminist position open to conceptions of sexuality as a choice. I myself, have always believed that sexuality is a choice. However, this position that sexuality is a choice is by and far a very unpopular stance.

Jones sums up Whisman’s position by saying, "She calls for a non-essentialist politic which broadens the range of sexual possibilities while disrupting the assumptions of societal norms." She continues by stating that "Queer theory which rests on deterministic assumptions necessarily regards the current state of anti-human separation and degraded relations between men and women as, ‘natural’, and misses the enormous wealth of possibilities in store for humanity if we take responsibility to work at overcoming all alienating divisions." This critique is important to me because it stresses that to rely on biological determinism is starkly in opposition with the self-determination of radical lesbian feminist thought

The next letter is a response to Jones’ article and though the author, Sonia Bergonzi may have named it a contradictory letter, I simply see it as part of the necessary dialog that our group is clamoring for. Bergonzi’s approach to the creation has this layering effect where she says that she "sees the question of choice as a process of self-development, of freeing ourselves from the nature that’s been created for us and re-creating our own nature on the basis of the recognition that our ‘nature’ is opposed to the ‘nature’ society has given us. But, thankfully, Sonia doesn’t just stop at acting in opposition but, rather points to the Absolute movement of Becoming. I quote, "Raya’s point is that you begin from the absolute-which includes all of human development in the struggle for freedom-but that it’s not absolute until its completion and that it’s completion is really a new beginning. The new society isn’t until it is, yet there are glimpse’s of it everywhere." I would like to hear people’s response to this idea of Absolute movement of Becoming and its relationship to queer subjectivity.

The next one…entitled "Kissing in the Face of the Machine" written by K.S. Here he starts off with his own personal history in recognizing that loving a man was also an option for him. He celebrates the fact and is puzzled by other gays and lesbians who feel a sense of wrongness about their feelings. K.S. then offers some historical details of where the concept of homosexuality came from etc., however, I feel a bit more expounding could be done as far as his take on Greek philosophy. The Greeks attitude toward women was a tad misogynistic. Women were only good for having children and were not thought as anyone worth having any meaningful relationship. Did not have anything serious to say. So, I would not hold the Greeks up as a society I would wish to follow, which by no means is what K.S. is suggesting but, I thought a little clarification on that point would be good. I loved what he wrote when he described his first sexual experience. "I was 13 years old and Brian approached me as I stood beneath a towering Maple tree. ‘Are you gay?’ he asked. And I did not have to think at all. Although I had never actually used the word gay to describe myself, I knew that, at that moment, the word described who I was. That act, of joining my hand to his, was one of the most sexually charged acts I have ever experienced. In my heart, I know that it was also a direct act of revolution." A very good illustration for the title, "Kissing in the Face of the Machine". K.S. also brings up some very insightful questions. "What were the social forces that brought about a limited concept of pleasure and sexuality?" The economy he explains is a great driving force of heterosexism. "Queer subjectivity help to dismantle the machine that is society," he explains and I would like to also add, "What is going to be there as an alternative way of thinking after the dismantling is done? This is what lies on our shoulders for today.

Julia Jones is back for the next essay which she entitled, "Marx’s Philosophy of ‘Revolution in Permanence’ and the Revolutionary Queer Dimension". This was a sub-report that Julia gave during our News and Letters’ class series last spring. She asks what can we learn from Marx that could aid us in our own philosophic development that is so needed for a total uprooting ? Well, Jones points to Marx’s ‘Economic-Philosophic Essays of 1844’, his work in ‘Capital’, and then finally, his writings on pre-capitalist societies in the ‘Ethnological Notebooks’. Jones: "Marx was working out new theoretical pathways to total human emancipation and searching for new Subjects of liberation who would work together to create a society where everyone can be truly free." So true, so true.

This is why it is essential to take responsibility for the ideas of the humanism in Marx. So that Marxism no longer remains reduced to pure materialism. Julia talks about Raya Dunayevskaya and what she saw in those 1844 essays was no less than the philosophic moment of Marxism, the total humanizing Reason and Practice. Where Marx was writing on the Hegelian dialectic and grounding Hegel’s Idea of Absolute Freedom with the living breathing human being. Jones then moves on to detail how historically, Marx and Hegel chopped up in tiny bite size pieces at best, and called to be driven back into the night at worst. Cutting of Marx’ youth, sloughed of as just a young optimist or Stalin ordering that Chapter 1 of ‘Capital’ be left unread where Marx reveals the true character of the commodity fetish and the subjects for its overthrow. This essay was very helpful for me in learning a bit about the history of Marx, how leaders chose to read him, how they divisively used his philosophy and how Raya maintained that Marx’s humanism is throughout all of his writings, every chapter. Julia quoted Raya: "Dialectics, of course, is the method of development of each and of all, objective and subjective, whether that new-won force came out of the actual struggle for the shortening of the working day, or in discerning the law of motion of capitalism, with both a look back to pre-capitalist formations—from the communal form through slavery and feudalism—and look forward at what will follow capitalism: ‘freely associated labor’ taking destiny into its own hands."

Julia then moves onto discussing various lesbian writers, such as, Margaret Randall and Adrienne Rich and their responses to Marx, Engels, and Dunayevskaya. This particular page is one not to miss because it confronts many of the misinterpretations feminists have of Marx and further poses what Dunayevskaya caught as the movement of philosophy. It is very important that remain patient in our critique with both history and the dialectic because as Jones mentioned throughout her report, doing anything less lends itself to misguided analysis and a repeat of the past in one form or the other. As Julia simply states, "News and Letters is an organization which is committed to working out these new beginnings in thought as well as in reality. The readings for today point to the need to be creative with the development of theory which comes from people’s struggles for freedom, and to constantly be grappling with the difficult abstractions of Hegel’s Absolutes. We have to be open to new revolutionary subjects along side the revolutionary philosophy which is ever changing and ever developing to meet the challenge of the times."

Next, we have once again Ms. Jennifer Pen and her essay entitled, "The Black Dimension and Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Liberation: a preliminary report. Here she explains how the queer movement has deep -seeded roots within black history in America as well as the Civil Rights Movement. She refers to the book American Civilization on Trial and quotes, "(I)t becomes imperative, therefore, that every freedom movement re-examine its past, and map out its future in direct relationship to the continuous, the ceaseless, the ever new black revolts." Pen goes onto talk about Black lesbian thinkers who rose to prominence in the 1970s. Pat Parker and Audre Lorde. Through her recounting of their history as well as a long list of other prominent Black writers and singers, Pen easily reminds us all how Black thought has been so central to lesbian and gay freedom movements. This self-determination of the queer movement did not come out of the blue. We saw what was being done in the Civil Rights Movement and recognized that we too, had the right to speak up and fight. But, it cannot stop there. A thorough working out of the movement of Black thought and determination needs to come with the queer movement especially today when such a severe concretization of the dialectic is needed.

Sheila Garden from N.Y. gave us a piece on how the demonization of all oppressed people should be seen all at once. She calls for serious theoretical work to be done along side serious practical work. Sheila states, "Choice is crucial to the fabric of being fully human and free. Choosing to be bi-sexual, homosexual, transvestite-whatever- is a form of revolutionary evolution in this patriarchal society. I had the opportunity to speak to Sheila at the News and Letters Convention this year and she sends her support for our subjectivity of sexuality group and is looking forward to having a continual dialog with us.

The next essay comes from Dana Ryan who is a former prisoner and who has offered some illuminating words of her experience from within the walls. She speaks of the inmate society where women seek out other women for relationships as a form of maintaining some piece of control in their lives. I quote: "As a former inmate I understand the emergence of this inmate society as a response to and as a resistance against the destructive effects of imprisonment. A world is created in which the participating inmates are able to preserve an identity which is relevant to life outside the prison." An identity that is relevant to life outside the prison. That is a seriously complex statement. It makes me think of the absolute powerlessness we all feel under the wheels of capitalism and how these women concretely recognize the level and the depth of their struggle. I have a lot of admiration for Dana because many of the women who get out of prison often do not want to talk about it. They want to, as quickly as possible, try to blend in. They already are feeling like they have this brand upon their forehead that says former inmate. Dana recognizes how her struggle is never over. She bravely fights for the right of present day inmates. But, then she goes one step further and sees how valuable her words are and her participation in our group is so needed to have an ever deepening analysis and movement of thought that will help lead the dialectic.

"Thinking Out Loud" the last essay in our bulletin was written by Mara Math and is her take on Male to Female transsexuals. Her position is that, "We may be able to surgically alter our futures, but we cannot surgically excise our history." In other words, she is concerned that MTF transsexuals are wrongly reaping the benefits of male privilege.

So, there is an overview of our bulletin. Again, we welcome comments to add to our collection of writings as we travel down the path of the deepening dialectic. Make no mistake about it, this work is essential if we are ever going to reach the New Society. This report was not an easy one to write. The issues that were presented were so condensed and filled with thoughts that felt like they have been bottled up for a long time. And they have. Now is the time to let them flow.

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Presented by Tom Williamson, AIDS activist, to the Chicago Local of News and Letters Committees, Spring 1997

This bulletin has been very exciting to read, as well as to participate in the development of, with both members of News and Letters (N&L) and non-members. I was happy that I was able to elicit an essay from my personal comrade Kevin S. from Chicago (who grew up in a Detroit suburb), who doesn't know anything about Marxist-Humanism, but does know about his oppression, and the oppression of queer people. I read his story first because I still struggle with philosophy, and I knew I would be able to understand his writing. I am thrilled to say that after reading the bulletin cover to cover, I was able to understand, and to apply all of the articles within the bulletin, to my unique experience as a gay person living in a capitalist society.

Before getting right into the bulletin stuff I guess I want to start with some ideas I had about the changes in the Who We Are Statement in the News & Letters newspaper. Although I am not a member, I have been a friend and a reader for the past ten years. Initially I was very excited and pleasantly surprised to see the change which included opposition to a heterosexist society, but further exploration and discussion revealed that it’s not exactly clear how this change came to be, and how the organization philosophically reached this point. I think its important that the organization state that they oppose heterosexism, and although it has been proven over and over again, to myself and to the organization, that the queer dimension is revolutionary in nature, I'm not sure that the organization has philosophically internalized that, with a full understanding of what it means to oppose heterosexism, or what the responsibilities are that come with a statement like that. And that's just regarding the Who We Are Statement, which I know, I asked to be changed two or three years ago.

But let's just say for a moment that at some point the body of N&L says "Yes, we are finally convinced that the glbt dimension is revolutionary both in force and in reason and we are now willing to change our constitution to include the queer dimension as the fifth force of revolution alongside Black, women, labor and youth". Now, I thought that I read in the Constitution that if someone in the organization is racist or sexist then they can be kicked out of the organization. So what are the ramifications to be for being heterosexist? What are the challenges that this dialogue could actually bring to the organization and its members and friends? Are we up for it when we aren't even sure how we are anti-gay/anti-lesbian/anti-bisexual and anti-transgendered? I support the decision and the effort, but this is not going to be easy.

Is N&L a safe space for workers to fully participate? For Blacks? For women ? For youth? I believe that it is. How do we make it a safe space for queer people? How do we make it safe for queer members to come out of the closet, at least within the confines of the organization? It is not just in changing the Who We Are Statement, which is a place to start, but in changing who we are.

I also want to briefly touch on something from the paper that I found really helpful. The recent column by John Alan in the Jan/Feb 97 issue, of the paper, re: Ebonics and the Oakland schools. This was absolutely inspiring to me as a gay person. He states that in an estranged society divided by class and race, and "estranged" language will emerge to express that estrangement. And I noticed in the March issue of the paper someone sent in a Reader's View with that same sentence as a valuable quote for them as well. I guess I've always known that the language and speech patterns of marginalized communities help members of those communities to communicate as well as to identify each other, but I never thought about how: this applies to the queer communities as well.

I started thinking about those other queer kids in high school who I knew were gay but I was afraid to talk to. And then I thought of another more recent example. And I need to stress that this has nothing to do with "lisping" or stereotyping of gay men, but just kind of acknowledging that there may be some commonalties in the way we communicate and use language. Ways that I've been abused for many times. When I was in Cork, Ireland there was a young gay man working in a butcher shop with about 15 other men. I identified him as a gay brother of mine when the woman next to me ordered some meat. The lady friend who brought me to the market heard him speaking to his customer and, without realizing that she was able to identify him as gay only because she knew me, turned to me and said in a hushed voice "I hate it when gays talk that way, why do they have to talk that way, it gives me the creeps."

This was a friend. That’s Catholic Ireland for ya. Of course I've had the same experience right here with 'friends" and family in Chicago as well. Because she knew me, my speech and language wasn’t a threat to her. For example when I called her "girlfriend" she would laugh and give me a big hug, but if she heard this stranger say it, she would have been repulsed. I don't totally get this, but it seems like we have a great example of the fear and disgust people have with the unknown world of the closet and how people are strongly resistant to sexuality being in the shared space of a butcher shop. Obviously, his "estranged language was a very threatening thing to her world.

Anyway, he recognized me immediately and we both knew that it was not a safe space for us to connect, but we did connect, we knew, we saw each other, and we were very careful, for his job and his safety were quite possible at risk if we were to speak to each other. I went over to the doorway on the other side of the store and asked my lady friend to give him my card (from Stop AIDS Chicago) so he could contact me if he wanted to, or if he ever came to Chicago. When she went to hand him the card, he didn’t even see her, not in a sexist way, but he looked straight at me way over by the door as he took the card from her. He couldn’t look too long for fear of being exposed, but his eyes said he was grateful for my effort. It was a terribly beautiful moment like from some awful war movie.

It was also a revolutionary moment, for as Kevin S. writes in his essay from the Queer Notions I Bulletin, Kissing in the Face of the Machine, about how denying people a shared experience is how capitalism continues to oppress people, the gay man in the butcher shop and I, although we made a tiny spark of contact, had a shared experience ripped away from us. We didn’t get to talk about how he was getting through as a gay person in his country, or if he had a boyfriend, etc…

Which reminds me of the one sentence in Kevin’s essay that really helped me understand this idea of being separated from other queer people by the capitalist machine. Its in his statement that he tells people that he "is proud to feel sexual gratification through being penetrated." I thought of my two heterosexual brothers and how much they let everybody know how much they liked penetrating their girlfriends. A shared experience for them, that helped them build community and establish relationships and build positive feelings of self-esteem. It was important for me to be reminded by Kevin that even after being out for 10 years, there are still parts of being gay that I need to talk to other gay people about and I can’t sit around waiting for permission from the machine to do it.

There also seems to be a relationship to sexism here, because my 3 heterosexual sisters never talked about how much they liked to be penetrated, well they never talked to me about it anyway. I wonder if they’ve talked to each other, because if they haven’t then they are being denied a shared experience too, if in fact that is their experience, that then they could be oppressed too. It’s all so alienating isn’t it?

To quote directly from Kevin’s essay, which I won’t be doing a lot of because I assume you’ve all read the bulletin: "Queers are still hated, still targeted, bashed and killed. But every time we wear a pink triangle or hold our lovers hands or talk about our sexual experiences we are bashing back. We are bringing a sexually driven discourse back where it belongs, not in the realm of the private, but in the shared realm of the public. Perhaps eventually no one will feel uneasy or different about their sexual orientation. More importantly, perhaps in the future people will be comfortable with their desires. Until that time, people will fight to stay in their closets; they will continue to deny themselves a true sense of self and a commonalty with all people. They will be kept separate. As a Queer man, I am perpetually committing acts of revolution. Each time I hold my boyfriends hand or feel his lips against my own, bricks come tumbling down."

It sounds like Kevin is talking about creating a truly free society with new human relations, which is so great to participate, in the development of. I feel like I participate in the development of the new society through being a gay person who is struggling for survival, for myself, and for my people in this system of heterosupremacy. I am in an HIV prevention worker for gay and bisexual men who also deal with substance abuse problems. The rates of substance abuse related issues among gay people are outrageous. The general population deals with substance abuse somewhere between the rates of 1 in 7 to 1 in 10. Although it is not uncommon for marginalized populations to have elevated rates of substance abuse problems, Gay and Lesbian people struggle with substance abuse issues on a daily basis at the rate of 1 in 3. This is horrifying to witness, especially when you explore the relationship that chemical use has to HIV transmission. Let's talk genocide.

It is estimated that 70% of all male to male transmissions of HIV happen after at least one of the partners has used alcohol or other drugs. This is really frustrating when the people who fund many of our community events are liquor companies. Miller Lite Proudly Supports Gay Pride 1997. The Coors boycott of the 1980's is all but forgotten because they’ve become "a friend of the community". Talk about sitting on the fence, Coors has extended domestic partner benefits to its employees while still giving the Christian Coalition the same amount of funds, dollar for dollar, that they give to gay and lesbian causes. I wish someone would knock them off that fence, I for one don't want their blood money. Gay people are being duped and its costing us our lives. "They have really nice ads." To paraphrase Julia Jones with some help from Marx, "Our own contradictions and limitations keep us from full freedom."

I've been struggling with this idea that I am a part of "the movement", which feels at times like a movement without form. Although there have been recent legislative things happening both for and against gays and lesbians, the parliamentary-type of reforms that Jennifer Pen speaks of in her essay, there hasn't been any direct action that holds much interest for me. "Getting out the vote!" just doesn't cut it. The last time I remember there being any action to speak of was the anti-violence march of last year, which is becoming increasingly smaller and somewhat of a joke for the GUPPIES of the Lakeview neighborhood. (Even the Queer Irish in Chicago who have marched in the St. Patrick's Day Parade here for the past few years have disbanded and are referring people back to Queer Nation.) I've been forced to see my participation in the movement as a very personal thing, in the way I live my life, in the ways I do my job.

At work there are many young people of all sexual persuasions who come in for support services as well as to do really great volunteer work. One, of them is a young man named Jimmy, who is queer. He is 14 and attends an all-boys Catholic high-school on the north side of the city. We spend a lot of time trying to undo all the negative stuff that is in Jimmy's head about the way he should feel about himself because he’s queer. This isn't part of our job, but its how we participate in the movement. Although his feelings of low self-esteem certainly can increase his risk for HIV transmission, so maybe it is part of our job. Anyway, his sister, who he confided in, is black-mailing him and making him do her chores or else she "will tell mom." He recently stayed out until 2 am on a school night wandering, and when he comes to Kevin or me for support, we are told by our conservative homophobic manager that Jimmy is identifying with us and that we need to be careful and watch our boundaries. Like we're bad people to be identifying with? Or that we would want to have sex with Jimmy? Which really pissed us off.

I wish I would have had two strong, openly gay men with nice hair who I could have talked to about how high school sucked when I was I4. I was left with contemplating running away or suicide. Kevin and I both said screw the homophobic system of this gay health organization that we work for and made a commitment that we would be there for Jimmy to utilize so he could get a little bit farther towards a being a free person than Kevin or I could have been at his age.

This reminds me of Sharon Cannery's statement from the bulletin-"Its imperative that all that is part of my history which challenges our current oppressive society come with me in transcending every stage of my confrontation of the objective world. Our accurate understanding of all that has come before us is crucial." My boss has forgotten his own history as an alienated queer youth. I really think Cannery's quote speaks to where my philosophies are today, because I know that my history is and somewhere in this bulletin it talks about how just being uncomfortable or frustrated isn't enough, but that there must be intense fear to bring revolution. I don't know if that was Raya or Marx, but I get that. I really get that. Since I'm on the subject of teenagers, Jennifer points out that choice in sexuality is not confined to the realm of sexual activity alone. This has been illuminated for me with my recent work with teenagers, letting them know that they don't have to be having sex to be gay or lesbian, which many of them think is a prerequisite for a sexual identification. I explain to them that if I never have sex again, I will still be gay, and if my brother never has sex again, he will still be straight.

We talk about the idea of how in addition to having a sexual orientation, we also have an emotional orientation which is a part of the realm of sexuality . Sometimes they might be looking for a place in the world, and HIV risk is really elevated for 13 year olds' who are having sex because they want to fit in to an alienating society that doesn't want to talk about sexuality.

In Jennifer Pen's essay where she discusses how the self-definition of the coming-out process and the on-going self critique that is involved with that process is the hallmark of revolution in permanence, as well as Julia Jones's review of Queer By Choice. Both illuminated the way that the concept of revolution in permanence can be, and has been, for me a very internal thing. I was thrown back to a frightening moment (and now I mean in high-drama-camp gay-language frightening moment) when one evening while at my mother's home, a friend and I were discussing a news story about genetics and how horrifying it was to me that people might be able to eliminate gay people by terminating pregnancies if the fetus produced gay genes. My mother asked me what was wrong with that. I almost totally uprooted her house. But she was honestly confused, because after coming out to my mother in 1985 when I was 17 and telling her that "Of course I don't want to be gay" and "of course if I could be heterosexual I would," I forgot to keep her up to date on the revolution in permanence that was going on with me and how I had gained all sorts of new ideas about my sexuality and self-esteem and revolution and my beautiful queerness. How could she know, she was working with information I gave her in 1985. Fortunately, she finally figured out what the hell I was talking about, for which I am truly grateful. But this really showed me my constant revolutionizing of myself. And as Julia Jones reminds us in her review;, "Homosexuality is a perfectly reasonable choice to make." I love that. Someone remind me to let my mom know…

I was truly upset to read Mara Math's essay which although it claims not to, does indeed support the continued alienation of transgendered people. Her essay is peppered with all types of baiting the reader, with statements like "get the coals ready for me" and preparing herself to be declared a heretic. Whatever... First off, I can't think of anything more alienating in this society than to be transgendered. Math seems to miss the profound and paramount value of self-definition. A transgendered person who was born with genitalia that proves to be contradictory for their idea of who they are, are still identified by external forces as something they are not.

The female to male transgendered gay man that I know speaks of how he was never a girl, a female, a woman, He was always a boy, a male, and a man. The opposite is true for the male to female lesbian I know, who suffered great self-abuse because other people defined her with what was comfortable for them. A penis does not make a man, and I mean that in all seriousness. Math says she doesn’t feel safe in the presence of someone who used to be a man, but what she misses is that the transgendered woman in her group may never have been a man. Math is being guided by what I consider a limited definition of who this person is or was.

I must close by saying that the title of the bulletin, Queer Notions: Thoughts on the Relationship of Sexuality to Revolution begs the question: "What is the relationship of heterosexuality to revolution? Is there one, does it exist and if it does, what does it look like?

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Report on Queer Notions I: A History of Queer Radicalism

by Darrell Gordon, presented to the Chicago Local of News and Letters Committees, Spring 1997

I am connected with the Autonomous Zone, an anti-authoritarian anarchist community center, and with the Coalition for Positive Sexuality, a guerrilla street grassroots organization which hands out a booklet, "Just Say Yes," which addresses issues of teen sex education from a pro-feminist and pro-queer point of view and addresses birth control. I'm glad that News and Letters is finally thinking about coming up with a position on queer liberation and how it connects with Marxist-Humanism.

I have some concerns about Jennifer Pen's pieces based on some inaccurate information about some aspects of the movement. For example, she talked about how the gay liberation movement started out as a multi-issue movement, which is true. Within a year the Gay Liberation Front started to splinter into a faction headed up by white upper-middle-class gay men who didn’t want the movement tied to the anti-war struggle. The Gay Liberation Front also linked with the Black Panthers, as well as the women's liberation struggle. The upper-middle-class gay men split a radical, progressive movement. Another problem within the gay and Lesbian community was the treatment of drag queens.

One event changed the movement before even the '80s. The bar owners were originally the enemy of the movement, because the early movement fought for the right to dance and kiss in the bars. For their own support and sense of community, they used to have alternative dances. The gay and lesbian petty bourgeois bar owners found a way to co-opt the movement and somewhat finance service organizations. That started by 1974.

At that time the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force started. There was no more Gay Liberation Front. There was in 1975 a new publisher of the Advocate, and he stated that we're fighting for our rights; we don't want liberation; we don't want to change the world. There were some spurts of activism, like in 1977 with Anita Bryant's attack against gays in Florida. Also in 1980 there was outrage against the movie Cruising that created a negative stereotype. But the movement became a white middle-class gay and lesbian movement. Originally it was a grassroots working-class movement during the Gay Liberation Front days. People of color were involved in the movement as well, but it became increasingly white.

Then women, because of the way they were treated, decided to start their own groups and create their own 'zines. It was similar to the way women were treated in SDS and the anti-war movement and the white Left and even in the African-American Left.

I agree with Jennifer Pen about the impact the AIDS epidemic had on the gay and lesbian community. There was a meeting in Washington DC parallel to the lesbian and gay march where it was decided to start a national organization which became ACT-UP. They were successful in raising consciousness and fighting against reactionary legislation and for access to drugs, but there were divisions. Chicago ACT-UP was started by Prairie Fire, which caused an additional problem, because they think a predominantly white organization shouldn't do outreach to people of color. The white liberals joined ACT-UP; they weren't interested in political philosophy or discussion.

I disagree that the gay and lesbian communities worked together well. Here were white gay men who did not want to talk about people of color; they did at want to listen to the issue about women and HIV. Between '89 to about '91 splits occurred in the Chicago, Portland and San Francisco ACT-UPs because of his idea that they should concentrate solely on white upper-middle-class gay male treatment issues. In 1991 when ACT-UP and Queer Nation marched in the anti-Gulf War marches, there were people who didn't think that was their role.

Queer Nation started in '89-'90 because they felt there was a need to deal with more lesbian and gay issues. The problem was it was focused more on just identity itself without any strong ideas about where to go forward from there from a revolutionary point of view. It makes it easier for them to get caught into reformist legislative things. When Clinton got elected, people thought that the Democrats were going to save us.

There are class distinctions even among the African-American glbt community; we are not monolithic. There are people who aspire to be the gay version of the NAACP and Operation PUSH. In Chicago I have a hard time finding another African-American queer radical person who is proud of being both queer and African-American at the same time; it's always one or the other. In other places there are African-American gay and lesbian activists involved in the fight to free Mumia Abu Jamal. It's hard to be an African-American queer activist, and I come from a working-class background, so I always look at class too, which makes it difficult. If you want to build a philosophy that's based on Marxist Humanism and pro-queer, that's a good thing. I hope you recognize that there are different dimensions and subdimensions within the queer communities because of gender, race and economics as well.

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Letters from Franklin Dmitryev and Jennifer Pen

I would like to comment on Jennifer Pen's review-essay, the review by Julia Jones, and the response by Sonia Bergonzi in the Queer Notions I bulletin. What follows is a response to the whole discussion the three of you have in the bulletin.

I find very illuminating your efforts to draw out the significance of coming-out in particular. Your relating it to questions of identity and to first and second negation reminded me of my reaction to the film Tongues

Untied. Riggs' experiences spoke to mine, different as they were. So much of the film is about his search for his identity. There's a period of time where Riggs was into drag. He had rejected the old stereotyped forms of how a Black man was supposed to behave--a kind of first negation. Yet he did not know what to put in its place--no second negation--and ended up trying to fit himself into a different kind of stereotyped form. Why does this speak to me? Because my experiences brought home, again and again, how society wanted to force me into a mold I could not fit into. By an early age, I had a sense of being irredeemably different, a pariah. I knew I could never fit in, yet felt I had to at least try to imitate some aspects of "normal" behavior and keep my ways of thinking and feeling "in the closet" (if you don't mind my appropriation of the term) lest I be discovered to be not just weird enough to be excluded but so alien as to earn harsh punishment. Yet this amalgam of assimilation and rejection of the norm made it im-possible to establish an authentic identity. Rather, identity was defined by first negation and filled with alienation.

However, as long as one's identity is not positively developed but remains determined by what one has rejected, relationships will necessarily have some of the same character, no matter how much one has tried to establish them on a new and different basis. (That is, if I could not fully treat myself as a human being, how could I treat her as fully human? If I did not know myself, how could I know her?) The eventual realization that a great many youth rejected at least some aspects of this society was a liberating experience that made it possible to realize that life did not have to be a never-ending grind of unsuccessful resistance but could be totally transformed. It took several years of membership in N&LC to reach the point of being able to leave that closet behind. Which is why I liked so much the question of self-definition as a process, and as resistance to society's depersonalizing ways of forcing external definitions on people--as well as your formulation at the WL meeting that heterosexist (and I appreciated your explanation of the difference between heterosexism and homophobia, a difference I was not aware of) politics have revealed a view of the family as coercive, not voluntary, and as structure, not relation.

Still, Sonia makes a crucial point, that "the transformation has to be a new society...and not left at an individual's life experience...." That positive elaboration of individual human identity in and for itself cannot completely be, so long as our lives are shaped by this alienated society. That movement of self-development can only be absolute when we as society and as individuals are in "the absolute movement of becoming." Otherwise we are always in danger of the looming limits of the given leading to co-optation.

The logic of what Sonia wrote sends me back to Raya's summation of the WLM in RLWLKM chapter 8. It was not only the sum of individual acts of resistance, but a movement that explicitly and radically challenged both the society and the Left, and found wanting the latter's concept of revolution. All sorts of questions--human relationships, above all between men and women; sexuality; the family; the division between mental and manual labor; the meaning of revolution; how deep and total it needs to be--were re-opened. In the discussion of the meaning and contributions of queer liberation, let us not retreat one inch from recognizing what Raya already worked out as the meaning of the WLM. Upon which Raya took the full measure of its contributions as not only unique but unfinished, giving the impetus for a new return to Marx's philosophy of revolution in permanence, not just to make explicit what was implicit in the movement but to meet the challenge from the self-determination of the Idea. If one does "recognize an implicit drive toward second negativity in the coming-out process," is it a reach for something outside of one's individual experience, a "quest for universality"? Does this "process of becoming" also call for Absolute Idea as New Beginning, in order to reach second negativity and not stop short? In other words, is the philosophy of Marxist-Humanism needed not just to recognize the process of becoming but to propel it towards the needed transformation of reality that is total from the start?

I look forward to further dialogue and development of the projected new pamphlet.

Franklin Dmitryev

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Dear Franklin (copies to Julia, Sonia, and the Center):

It is a sign of how busy I have been that it has taken me a month to sit down and give due consideration to the issues raised in your letter of 9/16/96. Please forgive my tardy response, which in no way reflects the interest and excitement with which I and Julia and others received your involvement in the subjectivity of sexuality discussions.

I am going to start with a parenthetical remark you made, when you asked if I(/we) would mind your appropriation of the term, "in the closet." The answer is "Of course not!" (although some queers might disagree with me). But the reason I can answer with such emphatic certainty is that the universality of this term's potential (whether we are discussing the pain of being 'in the closet' or the self-developing freedom of 'coming out of the closet') is precisely a queer contribution to what it means to be human. Understanding the dialectics of the closet is not, in itself, the Absolute, nor is it automatically a revolutionary perspective. But, as you indicated in your autobiographical statements, choosing against the closet – any closet – is a significant step of first negation.

And, as both Sonia and I pointed out in our articles in the Queer Notions Bulletin, if that first negation is propelled by what I called a 'positive passion.' or what Sonia referred to as "a positive 'affirmation' or creation of self' in which "the creativity, the creating begins long before the choice is made," then both the recognition of being in the closet and the choice to be out of the closet reflect both a first and a second negation, even if, in some cases, these are implicit rather than explicit in each person's mind and activity.

Now, as I understand you, you make a strong case that this second negation cannot remain at the level of the individual and their life history only. Of course, I am in total agreement with you on this. That's why I drew on examples, from Israel, from South Africa, and from the Chicana writer Gloria Anzaldua, which showed sexuality as part of a larger movement in a person towards understanding of the totality and, therefore, the need for a total uprooting. There is also, as I said in my essay last October, a social dimension to queer existence – you can't do it alone – which is why coming out of the closet is so crucial in self-definition: it is not a self-definition in isolation, but a social self-definition which demands a different world than the one in which we now live. (BTW, that's another reason why I so often use the word 'queer' – it is inherently irreconcilable with what is, it can never be the norm, never be the status quo – it rebels against all who would 'straight-jacket' reality...).

Let me share from my own life. For me, my coming out – which was an explicit choice for women, and entailed ending a heterosexual marriage – was also a choice to be more politically engaged. This included everything, all dimensions, not just gay groups. I quickly (in under a year) became involved with a host of feminist/lesbian/anti-violence/environmental groups. I also began to engage philosophy with activity (I had done this before in developing a life and a theory around an engaged aesthetics, but it was most certainly a private enclave I was developing then, albeit a very progressive one). Almost at once, first through the thought of Mary Daly, then more through Audre Lorde, I insisted on the need to have more than an oppositional mentality.

To cite one instance, which I can definitively date prior to my first meeting with NLC, I made an anti-Persian Gulf War statement during my first year at Pomona College, which was less than two years after I had started to come out publicly. As the first shots were being fired, I stated that being an out lesbian compelled me to say that we could not merely oppose the war, but that we had to say what we stood for, and to struggle for that on all fronts. What I can tell you, with utter certainty from my own life, is that the courage and vision that I needed to say that, came from the totality of recognizing who I was as a lesbian, and what that meant. The range of meanings I gleaned, as a movement forward, from the creativity of my own sexuality, included that a) the world was structured in such a way that society tried to prevent affection, touch, and human response, b) that sentimentality alone was not philosophically sufficient, but c) passion about the world was a necessary part of the struggle, and while d) all oppressions were linked, they were not identical, e) yet all oppressions had to be fought at once, and f) movements for freedom were not about unanimity but about creativity. There's more I could say, but what it ultimately means is that for me, and for many other queers, coming out reveals much more than just a road to personal happiness and contentment.

While what I have outlined above as explicit directions in my thought due to coming out do not express the totality of Raya Dunayevskaya's body of ideas, I think they show why I was receptive to the shock of recognition which occurred when I did encounter that body of ideas. So when you ask, "If one does ‘recognize an implicit drive toward second negativity in the coming-out process,’ is it a reach for something outside of one's individual experience, a 'quest for universality?,'" I would answer strongly 'yes,' on the basis of my own life. In fact, just last Friday at our National Coming Out Day event on the San Jose State campus, I re-iterated this: coming out, for me, was about corning into consciousness of more than myself, but never without myself as an element in the world.

Still, the problem is one you put quite succinctly. "That movement of self-development can only be absolute when we as society and as individuals are in 'the absolute movement of becoming.' Otherwise, we are always in danger of the looming limits of the given leading to co-optation." Yes, certainly les-bi-gay liberation is in danger of co-optation, of being incomplete, even of being turned into its opposite. But that is true of any and all revolutionary dimensions. Your parallel to the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) is a good one, since queer liberation has often been closely allied with feminism. Like the WLM, glbt liberation has raised a range of questions, and has consistently critiqued the homophobia and heterosexism of the established Left, as well as the assimilationism of its own organizations (see the quotes from Cheryl Clarke and Audre Lorde in my Black dimension article in the bulletin).

The distinction you may be drawing (I hope I am not overstating your intent here?) between Raya's analysis of the WLM and what we are developing in the Subjectivity of Sexuality group and projected pamphlet, revolves around where you say that the WLM was not only the sum of individual acts of resistance, but a movement that explicitly and radically challenged both the society and the Left, and found wanting the latter's concept of revolution....In the discussion of the meaning and contributionsof queer liberation, let us not retreat one inch from recognizing what Raya alreadyworked out as the meaning of the WLM....not only unique but unfinished....

From a queer perspective, the story of individual acts of resistance in the lesbian and gay movements is what we refer to as the day. "before Stonewall." The stories from the fifties and early sixties, especially, tell of inspiring acts of courage, nascent communities, "loving in the war years" to paraphrase the Chicana lesbian poet Cherie Moraga. The explicitness of being openly gay is exactly what could only be wrought by a movement, what blossomed from the civil rights/WLM/anti-war/environmental movements of the 1960s – in fact, developed alongside them, since lesbian and gay people were active thinkers, participants, and leaders in all of those movements.

The axis along which oppression of homosexuals has taken place is invisibility/visibility, silence/voice, shame/pride. This is not a unique set of oppressions; one of the reasons there has been such a rich alliance between feminist and lesbian/gay/bi concerns is because women were silenced similarly in many ways. But one of the things that changed with the post-Stonewall movement was understanding these aspects of oppression, and naming them quite explicitly, especially when they hypocritically occurred on the Left. The murderous homo-hatred of the Shining Path in Peru, or the AIDS quarantine in Castro's Cuba, stand as two prominent examples where queers did speak up internationally, and refused to tolerate this. Marcos' inclusion of gay concerns has won him a better audience in queer communities, although (with good historical reason) gay people often adopt a wait-and-see attitude with any leader who claims to have our interests at heart.

The problem has been – as it is everywhere – the posing of a genuine alternative. So, to answer your implied question, it is obvious that the queer movement (again, like all the freedom movements) has contributed to where we are today, but that a philosophy of revolution, of total uprooting, of the Absolute as New Beginning, is necessary to overcome the limitations and the pull back toward the given.

Because News and Letters has consistently had a benevolent, encouraging, but underdeveloped perspective on queer liberation (publicly and internally), both during Raya's lifetime and since, much of the work we are doing in the subjectivity of sexuality group has included 'ground'-work: giving history and context, looking for the development of the Idea of freedom as manifested in queer liberation, without shying away from the contradictions and self-limitations of the movement, historically or in the contemporary world. I don't believe any of the NLC members in the subjectivity of sexuality group are retreating at all from Raya's body of ideas; I think we are trying to be continuators in an area which she said should be developed by lesbians and gays.

However, we can't fruitfully start from the assumption that what she worked out as the historic and unfinished contribution of the WLM is going to be duplicated in the GLBT movement. If it were, she probably would have indicated that to Adrienne Rich in their correspondence. Her response to Rich I quote in full:

how can I answer the specificity of sexuality...without seeming to slough it off if I reply: You are the one who must do it; workers work out their own emancipation and Blacks theirs, so must all the other forces of revolution – youth, women, and women not just in general, but the very concrete question of lesbianism, or, for that matter, all of homosexuality. (letter of 9/18/86)

As I read it, Raya is sensing both the continuity and the discontinuity between WL and gay/lesbian concerns. What we are trying to do in the subjectivity group is to consider this question from every angle, to look ceaselessly for the dialectics of revolution in queer struggles, and to bring Marxist-Humanism to that movement.

The need for Marxist-Humanism as the Absolute Idea for our age is a need that all dimensions of revolution share. The complementary need for Marxist-Humanism to fully comprehend the movement from practice and the movement from theory is equally vital to what we do philosophically. I look forward to your participation and appreciate your careful thought and involvement in these discussions.

Jennifer Pen

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I'm sorry I haven't answered your letter sooner. Memphis has been not just exciting but overwhelming. Now that I am on vacation, I want to respond briefly to your letter, which I appreciated very much.

It appears that you got the wrong impression about some of what I was trying to say. My intent is not to draw a distinction between queer liberation and WL, nor is it to draw a parallel. My main point is how intertwined these movements are and have been. In considering what the contributions of queer

liberation are, particularly when the queers involved are women, how do we work out to what extent these are the contributions of the WLM and to what extent of queer liberation? This is not to suggest an answer but to pose a question that I think is important.

When I stressed not retreating from recognizing what Raya worked out as the meaning of the WLM, it was certainly not meant as an accusation that the Subjectivity of Sexuality group was retreating! Nor that it was a question of duplicating what she worked out. Rather, my thought was that it would be important to work these questions out in relationship to Raya's view of the WLM's unique and unfinished contribution--not because it's the same or because it's different (I agree with your statement that, in her letter to Rich, Raya was "sensing both the continuity and the discontinuity between WL and gay/lesbian concerns") but because today's GLBT movement could well be seen as growing out of the ground of the WLM. I'd be most interested to know whether you share that view. Do you agree with my statement that the WLM reopened the questions of sexuality and the family, among others? I'm not lecturing you on the importance of basing today's theoretical work on Raya's body of ideas--one can see that's exactly what you're working so hard at doing. I'm only suggesting one part of that body that seems to me very germane, and no one anywhere has yet worked out how it might relate to queer liberation.

(Terry's critique is that we haven't done much to concretize it for women's liberation either.)

In that spirit, when I paraphrased Raya's statement in RLWLKM, p. 83, that the WLM confronts us "with two seemingly opposite facts--that the individuality of each woman liberationist is a microcosm of the whole, and yet that the movement is not a sum of so many individuals but masses in motion," it was not to draw a distinction but to emphasize that the GLBT movement too is not only the sum of individual acts of resistance but a movement that challenges the society and the Left. As for how explicit the challenge is, I'm sure you know more about that than I do. It's not only a question of actions of individuals in the movement but what the movement as a movement has done. You have done important work uncovering a hidden history of individuals and of movements, and I am arguing that working out what the contributions of the movement as a movement are is a difficult task--not least because, like any movement, it contains opposing tendencies, but not only for that reason.

Your analysis of coming out as a process of "social self-definition" that "reveals much more than just a road to personal happiness and contentment" strikes me as very beautiful and important. Yet, I can't help but ask, isn't that still an individual's life experience you're talking about, even when it has a social dimension? True enough, it can be a dimension of the movement, it can be "wrought by a movement," it can be part of what impels the movement, but isn't there more to the movement? This is not to say that you've ignored the movement. However, as you say, "Understanding the dialectics of the closet is not...automatically a revolutionary perspective." How does it go from first to second negation? How do we see that question in relationship to (1) the movement, and (2) Raya's discussion of how there is second negation at each stage?

This brings us to the unfinished nature of the WLM's contribution. It did implicitly contain second negation. As Raya wrote in RLWLKM, p. 108, it "involves the two pivotal questions of the day....They are, first, the totality and the depth of the necessary uprooting of this exploitative, sexist, racist society. Second, the dual rhythm of revolution: not just the overthrow of the old, but the creation of the new; not just the reorganization of objective, material foundations but the release of subjective personal freedom, creativity, and talents." If it's so great that it raises these two pivotal questions, and therefore implicitly (and maybe not always just implicitly) contains a movement of second negation, how can we say its contributions are unfinished? Yet she does say that—and not to belittle the contributions or make WL subordinate to any other force of revolution. If I understand your letter to me, we both agree that the answer to the problem is not just to make what is implicit in the movement from practice explicit--then there would be no need for Part III of RLWLKM. So how do we bring these insights to the question of queer liberation? Again, I am not suggesting answers but asking questions.

For freedom,

Franklin Dmitryev

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Reviews

Review of Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries, & Visions

by Julia Jones

Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries, & Visions, edited by Naomi Tucker with Liz Highleyman and Rebecca Kaplan. 1995 Haworth Press, Binghamton, NY. This review originally appeared in News & Letters. For subscription information, please call (312) 663-0839 or email nandl@igc.apc.org

Few people realize that a bisexual movement has been developing since the pre-Stonewall days of the 60s "sexual revolution." Though the gay and lesbian movements have achieved enormous visibility during the past quarter century, this visibility has largely been denied bisexuals until very recently. How bisexual activists and theorists have been a vital part of the development of gay and lesbian liberation is well documented in this recent anthology of bisexual history, politics, and theory.

What is also largely unknown even in the Women’s Liberation Movement is that Bisexual Liberation has mostly been spearheaded and carried out by feminists, many who formerly identified as lesbians but who refused to remain closeted from their coveted gay and lesbian communities. These women who had struggled with their gay male friends for inclusion and visibility in the gay liberation movement of the early 70s, now found themselves a decade later fighting the same battle again but this time for bisexual visibility and inclusion. Their decades-long struggle with both queer allies as well as the heterosexist outside world has resulted in a unique political perspective fascinatingly documented and debated by the 37 authors in this collection (31 of whom are women.)

Many authors write about their painful personal experiences coming out as bisexuals to themselves and friends after years of believing themselves to be lesbian. Many bisexuals were even rejected by lesbian and gay friends who accused them of "betrayal," or "sitting on the fence," between the two opposing "binary" worlds of gay/straight. These experiences have led many bisexuals to develop an identity politic which asserts the legitimacy of their fluid sexuality.

But what is most interesting and challenging about this collection are the essays by those who wish to go beyond identity politics, as well as "assimilationism" (making queerness seem more straight) to an "idea politics... based on a radical, choice-based, consensual, sex-positive, diversity valuing ideology rather than any specific characteristic-based identity." (Highleyman) Many authors have developed theories to challenge monosexismⁱ and genderismⁱⁱ and "capitalist patriarchy" within the context of a broad-based liberation movement. Moving past the debate over whether or not to include bisexuals in the gay and lesbian movements, feminist bisexual radicals are working to develop a transformative vision for humanity which sees beyond all oppressive societal divisions. This collection is a must read for radicals of all sexualities who are serious about developing revolutionary pathways to new human relationships.

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