Putting the Eich in Eichmann

The rumblings about Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich’s donation to the campaign against gay marriage reached me through a facebook posting by my friend Sarah N.:

“So first I couldn't use Firefox to access the Obamacare website because it kept crashing. Then I couldn't use it to access OKCupid because OKCupid is protesting the Mozilla CEO's anti-gay stance. Time for a new browser, clearly. But I have not been able to find a good way to block annoying pop-up ads on Safari. Recommendations.”

Oh, no, I thought. My two least favorite issues – gay marriage and “free speech”, colliding – and in the middle of it all, I’m going to have to find a new browser?  (Though in the five years I’ve had an OKCupid profile, I’ve gotten exactly one date.)

You can imagine how relieved I was when Mozilla caved into the pressure and accepted Eich’s resignation.

Great.  Crisis averted.  I barely had to think about it, and now I could go back to using Mozilla searches to figure out why well-informed Americans can’t see the problem in trying to broker “peace” between Israelis and Palestinians while arming one side to the teeth. 

Then the media firestorm began.

It was not surprising that Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh launched into tirades about liberal fascists.  For better or worse, that’s their job.  I don’t think they even believe it any more.  They just do it because that’s what keeps the lights on in their mansions.

But when the liberal media joined in the condemnation of the “intolerance” of “the New Gay Orthodoxy”, I had to check back in.

Christian Science Monitor:  “The resignation was greeted with cheers among many in the gay community and beyond…But others are drawing a different lesson from what happened to Eich, likening the events to a “scorched earth” policy that’s antithetical to a society where tolerance for opposing viewpoints is a mainstay of the Constitution.”

REUTERS:  Tech workers in Silicon Valley debated on Friday whether Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich got the comeuppance he deserved or was himself a victim of intolerance when he resigned under pressure this week amid outrage over his opposition to same-sex marriage.

Andrew Sullivan appeared on Stephen Colbert, arguing that gay people got our rights by showing how nice we are.  Hey, Sullivan, that thing we commemorate every June wasn’t the Stonewall Ice Cream Social, it was a riot.

But again, Sullivan’s line wasn’t surprising – his claim to fame is that he’s the gay conservative.  More upsetting was that Colbert, reading between the lines of his conservative “character” to glimpse the real Colbert (who I don’t think will make it as David Letterman – but that’s another rant), seemed to agree with him.  So did Bill Maher, talking about“The Gay Mafia.” 

Sullivan’s argument, besides the “catch more flies with honey” baloney is that “when people in the workplace feel threatened for things they do completely outside of the workplace, their political views – I mean, in California, if you actually fired someone for a political view you disapproved of, it would be against the law.”   
He further expounded on his blog:

“When people’s lives and careers are subject to litmus tests, and fired if they do not publicly renounce what may well be their sincere conviction, we have crossed a line. This is McCarthyism applied by civil actors. This is the definition of intolerance. If a socially conservative private entity fired someone because they discovered he had donated against Prop 8, how would you feel?”

 There are a few problems with Sullivan’s reason-ing and the liberals who are so comforted by it: 

• There is no such thing as “McCarthyism by civil actors.”  McCarthyism, by definition, was about a government conducting political interrogations and purges.
• This is why I hate discussions about “free speech”:  almost no one understands what it is.  Freedom of speech is supposed to mean one thing:  that we can’t be imprisoned for what we say (doesn’t always work – ask Sami al-Arian or Lynne Stewart).  Freedom of speech does not exist in the workplace.  I work for a corporation – I know.  They might not be able to fire me – in California – for voting Green but they sure could fire me for insulting one of their clients.  Refusing to do business with someone because I don’t like their politics is not violating their freedom of speech.  It’s exercising my right to choose who I want to associate with.  Drowning someone out in protest is not violating their right to free speech.  It’s just rude.
• OK Cupid pressuring Mozilla to get rid of Eich is not the same as AIPAC and CAMERA pressuring universities to fire professors who criticize Israel (or, in the case of Iyemen Chehade, showing an Oscar-nominated film that makes Israel look bad).  Those professors are not advocating that some people be denied equal rights; they’re advocating rights for people who currently don’t have them.  Moreover, they are not the leading face of the university.  For every professor who supports Palestinian land rights, there are ten who don’t – more’s the pity.
• Professors and teachers are fired, all the time, for their political beliefs, and I don’t recall Andrew Sullivan or Bill Maher springing to the defense of Debbie Almontaser, Ward Churchill, or Shannon Gibney.
• The CEO of a company is not a “worker.”  It’s not like Mozilla went and checked the political affiliations of the people in the mailroom.  The CEO is a symbol of the company.  Mozilla did not fire Eich for his opinion. They pushed him out because his actions made them look bad.  Here are a couple things that happened last December: 
• "Media company IAC has "parted ways" with company PR executive Justine Sacco over her tweet: "Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!" 
• Lululemon CEO Chip Wilson resigns in wake of controversial remarks.  “In an interview last month, Wilson touched off a flurry of criticism by suggesting to Bloomberg TV that production issues may not be the only issue. “Quite frankly, some women’s bodies just actually don’t work for it,” he said. “It’s really about the rubbing through the thighs, how much pressure is there.” 

I never heard of either of those people, and I doubt most of you did either.  So why have we heard so much wailing about poor Brendan Eich?

In the end, what our liberal friends are saying is, “Gay rights aren’t really that important.”  If Brendan Eich had donated $1,000 to the Nazis, I don’t think Frank Bruni would have written, “Something remarkable has happened — something that’s mostly exciting but also a little disturbing ... I’m referring to the fact that in a great many circles, rejection of the Nazis has rather suddenly become nonnegotiable.”

Remember Anthony Wiener?  Most of the liberal establishment supported Nancy Pelosi in forcing him to resign from Congress.  So apparently, it’s okay to fire someone for taking pictures of their dick, but not for being one.

Gay Marriage, or why I hate the equals sign

We need to ask ourselves why same-sex marriage is building support, even among conservative Republicans, at the same time that:

• Tennessee is about to punish poor kids who don’t do well in school by starving them.  
• 16-year-old Kimani Gray has become the latest symbol of the non-stop assassination of young people of color by police
• 41 states have introduced 180 laws to restrict voting rights in the last two years.  A majority of African Americans in Michigan are living under unelected leadership appointed by their governor through emergency powers.
• William Bratton, who brought “Stop and Frisk” to New York and Los Angeles, is on the march in Oakland.  Bratton says that cities who don’t use stop and frisk are “doomed.”  In New York, over 85% of those stopped and frisked were Black or Latino, and over 90% were not breaking any laws.
•  At least 41 of the prisoners in indefinite detention in Guantanamo are on hunger strike; some advocates say it’s more than 100.  Ten of them are being force-fed, in violation of international law.  Most of them were cleared for release years ago.  The military is refusing to give press access to the hunger strikers.
• Obama and Kerry are poised to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, despite the major spill when a pipeline broke in Arkansas last week.

Street art from a few years ago - some things never get stale

Whatever else it is or isn’t, the marriage rights movement is not the “new civil rights movement.”  Civil rights are for everyone.  Marriage is about broadening the class of people eligible for certain privileges, most having to do with who gets your stuff when you die, and how much they get taxed for it.  Every possible benefit of marriage – health care? immigration? could be more effectively established by demanding genuine equality for everyone.

The marriage cases are also not comparable to Loving v. Virginia.  Loving decriminalized relationships between whites and non-whites.  It was more analogous to Hardwick v. Georgia than Hollingsworth v. Perry.

I don’t have anything against people getting married – hey, I’m going to a gay wedding later this month.  But what does it mean to demand equality in a country that is so fundamentally unequal?  Once you have your equality, what are you going to do with it?  Buckle down to abolish the prison state and raise the minimum wage?  Fight for teacher unions and against high-stakes testing?  Don't you see that they're just trying to buy off those of us they think are acceptable, to recruit us into the war against people who aren't? 

The Human Rights Campaign just had to apologize to one of the speakers at the rally on the Supreme Court steps last week.  Just before Jerssay Arredondo went on stage, a staff person told him not to say he was Undocumented, because it would "hurt their image" and "distract from the issue."  Might want to take that equal sign off your facebook profiles.

My friend Elana says:  “Sometimes there's a neon sign: if this is the result of your actions, you better rethink those actions.”

Come on, my queer people – start rethinking!

A dialogue on Gay Marriage

I turned off the TV in disgust on Sunday night.  I knew it was going to be a week filled with a subject I can't stand talking about.  But you can't fight a rising tide ... I had an interesting email discussion with some friends (one here, one in India) -- see below -- and found a few interesting things to read.

I made this poster decades ago, but
it just never goes out of style.

-----Original Message-----

From: Preeti

Sent: May 11, 2012 12:46 AM

To: Lisa, Kate

Subject: so what do you two think about this? Kate I expect you will blog about this :)

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/05/10/obama-supports-same-sex-marriage

President Obama Supports Same Sex Marriage

Yesterday, during an interview with ABC News, President Obama said, “I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

----------------------------------------------------

On May 11, 2012, at 11:06 AM, Kate R. wrote:

I'm sure it is a good thing in general.  There's no upside to some people not having equal rights.  The problem is that people keep talking about it as "the last bastion" and even pretty savvy African Americans like Cory Booker talk about how racial inequality is now unacceptable in this country, and no one in the mainstream is talking about the massive racial inequality that exists and persists and is getting worse.  (The Oakland cops just killed another kid in East Oakland the other day.)

From what I heard, it's all about money.  I heard someone say, "Gay money has replaced Wall Street money," meaning that as Wall Street has abandoned Obama, even though he's been great for them, gay fundraising has stepped up to fill the voice with big bucks.  And that is just so depressing.  It's very much like the Jews, not at all like African Americans, who never had that ability.  It's proof that you can get the equality you can pay for.  But as I say, it makes no sense to lament equality.  I can lament that people want to be equal in an unequal society, but they do.

What do you think?

-----Original Message-----

From: Lisa

Sent: May 11, 2012 11:49 AM

Subject: Re: so what do you two think about this? Kate I expect you will blog about this :)

I actually think gay marriage has helped to kill  gay community.. and the more people are being pushed into making a single relationship paramount and primary the less people make  friendship and community important..  or perhaps the opposite that the less community has met people's needs the more they have turned to primary relationships to do so.. personally i feel gay marriage has been a detriment to all lgbt people and is just a symbol of how far we are from creating a vision of  what we want that is separate from the mainstream society.  i would like  to talk more openly about what  our real needs are and what kind of society or  community we want to meet them   and whether marriage or  raising a one on one relationship over other relationships is really going to meet our needs and desires..

-----------------------------------

On May 11, 2012, at 12:40 PM, Kate R. wrote:

But you can't fetishize gay marriage for that.  It's not that people made a choice to push for marriage and that killed community, it's that as gay people became more accepted -- and acceptable -- in mainstream society, they felt less need for community with one another.  That happens with all marginalized groups in this society.  You see it with the Jews -- I keep bringing that up because I know it intimately -- as we got more social power and experienced less discrimination, people stopped living and socializing in predominantly Jewish communities and started intermarrying in much higher numbers and Jewish communities got weaker.  And sadly, the two main forces against that have been the rise of religious fundamentalism and Zionism, and the third has been white flight to parochial schools.

Gay people are not more pro-marriage or less communitarian than straight people.  It's just that not having access to the nuclear family for a while forced queer people to look for alternatives, but it's always easier to fit into mainstream society than to fight it.  If there's one thing that I think is responsible for the hegemony of marriage and the nuclear family -- in the face of the fact that most people are not living within them -- it's the death of the women's movement.

----------------------------------------------------

At May 11, 2012 11:34 PM

Preeti wrote:

I think listening to the news on radio and tv stations here outside the US makes it seem much more larger and historic than it probably is within the US, as this article attests. It is definitely a boost for gay groups  working in very marginalized, homophobic context to get this affirmation from the US govt. I heard some really interesting debates and discussions on BBC radio here in Muscat where I am now (visiting my parents) and to be able to talk about/hear about gay rights being discussed so openly is quite liberating.

p

--------------------------------------

May 12, 2012 12:30 AM

Lisa wrote

i appreciate everyones input on this..  seems like we all are really agreeing that marriage is a problem that needs to be re-examined whether we are gay or straight. and   while we may differ on some of the specifics i think what is important is what is our common vision and how we can articulate that and implement that vision. 

one thing i would phrase differently is that I don't see gay marriage as about equal rights.. rather as creating benefits for another small privileged group of people.  statistically those in long term relationships in the queer community are most likely to be well off white people and least likely to be poor african americans.  so it is just creating another privileged class and to me is much more about class privilege.    

while i can't read people minds it does indeed seem like the emphasis on marriage is  about the desire to assimilate whether that be for parental approval or for economic benefits or societal approval.. i don't know if it is  about feeling more assimilated and thus feeling less need for community or a feeling that there is no community that is providing the emotional support people need and turning to marriage to provide it.   maybe it is both and for those who are feeling privileged they feel less need for community.  and for  poor queers, queer foster youth,  etc  i think there is a feeling of  a lack of community and family and they are desperately looking for that.  . either way the emphasis on marriage seems to  ultimately lead to less community  both for queers and straights and generally in my experience seems to  lead to people devaluing their other relationship for a relationship and institution we  know is an illusion.. just as the whole romantic myth of forever after  is a myth  that we are feed from childhood and just  seems to end up leaving people feeling bad about being single or divorced or confused why they haven't found happiness in their marriage.  …

lisa 

Is It All About Money?

Yasmin Nair

Gay Marriage Hurts My Breasts

I have no partner and have been against all kinds of marriage, gay or straight, since the age of 8. If I were to die or even begin to do so, most of my friends would not be able to come and take care of me simply because their ultra-progressive workplaces have policies in place for “partner/family leave” but none for friends, no matter how close. I can see R., flying into the U.S from Montreal, confronted by a US customs officer who smirks with one eyebrow raised, “You're here to take care of... a sick friend?” Or K. going to her department for leave and being told, “But you already live with a partner and S. isn't sick. Whom do you need to take care of, again?”

Ralph Richard Banks

Is Marriage for White People?

The title comes from a young African American boy in Washington, D.C.. When a journalist visited his 6th grade class, one of the other boys said he wanted to learn about being a good father. The journalist volunteered to bring some married couples to talk about child rearing, but the boy said he wasn’t interested in learning about marriage. Then his friend interjected, “Marriage is for white people.”

…

The title asks not only whether marriage isn’t for black people, but also whether it isn’t for white people. An understanding of the marriage decline as a society-wide development is a central point of my book.

“African Americans are the most unmarried group of people in our nation. Black women are more than three times as likely as white women never to marry. And when black women do marry, they are more likely than any other group of women to marry a man who is less educated or earns less than they do. In fact, more than half of college educated black wives have less educated husbands who are not.

While Banks highlights the implications of the black experience for people of all races, he also explores a puzzle particular to African Americans: Why, amid rising rates of interracial marriage, so few black women wed someone of a different race. Successful black women typically remain unmarried or marry down; they do not marry out.”

Leanne Italie

Marriage Rates Declining in the Developed World

"Men's real wages have fallen and they face a lot of job insecurity, so a woman who would have found a high school graduate a pretty damn good catch in 1960 now has to say to herself, `Would it really be smart of me to marry this guy?' She's choosing to focus on her own earning power."

A separate Pew survey released last year found that while nearly 40 percent of respondents said marriage is becoming obsolete, 61 percent of those who were not married would like to be someday.

"I need to support a future family," said Vince Tornero, a 23-year-old senior at Ohio State University in Columbus. "I want to have kids but I can't have kids if I don't have money."

Pew also found that marriage statistics vary by race, with 55 percent of whites, 48 percent of Hispanics but just 31 percent of blacks married.

Chuck Todd On Importance Of Biden’s Gay Marriage Comments:‘Gay Money Has Replaced Wall St. Money’

MSNBC’s Chuck Todd then shared a story about Biden having been moved after attending a fundraiser at the home of a gay couple with a child.

“Well, is that the first time he’s ever been around a gay couple?” joked Scarborough. “‘Oh, my gosh, they did not eat the child’s head! Maybe this is ok.’”

“This is the story they’ve cooked up to explain the evolution?” he added.

Explained Todd:

They are so sensitive to Biden doing this because, number one, gay money in this election has replaced Wall Street money. It has been the gay community that has put in money in a way to this President that is a very, very important part of the fundraising operation for the President Obama campaign. 

Keep your gay marriage, give me my Social Security

I don’t have a partner. Maybe that’s why I’m not excited about President Obama’s endorsement of the Respect for Marriage Act, introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Or maybe it’s because I know that close to half of all marriages end in divorce, a majority of U.S. households are headed by unmarried people, and about a quarter of the adult population has never been married. In some communities, and notably the African American community, those numbers are much higher.

So increasingly, the campaign for same-sex marriage is not about extending the rights of the majority to a minority, but about further enshrining the privileges of a shrinking minority.

But in fact, the benefits marriage activists seek are waning by the day. By the time gay elders can claim each other’s Social Security and Medicare benefits, those benefits will have been eviscerated. Social Security, as we all know, is probably at this moment being sacrificed on the altar of deficit reduction (which, of course, it has nothing to do with). While same-sex-marriage advocates insist that marriage rights will guarantee the right of immigrant couples to live together, immigrant families all over the U.S. are fighting to stay together and out of jail. The Obama administration has deported and detained far more immigrants – including legal immigrants - than the Bush administration did.

I expected Wednesday's headline to be, “Obama caves in on budget deal.” Instead, the headline was “Obama backs same-sex marriage.” Coincidence? I don’t think so. Gay marriage is being used as a distraction to appease liberals.

Gavin Newsom, who was elected mayor of San Francisco on a pro-corporate, anti-homeless platform, used same-sex marriage to liberalize his image. In 2003, Newsom fairly narrowly defeated Green Party candidate Matt Gonzalez, winning 53% of the vote after polls a day earlier showed a virtual tie. In 2007, fresh out of alcohol treatment and having being caught having an affair with a (female) employee who was married to one of his top aides, Newsom was reelected with 73% of the vote. The difference? Gay marriage.

Here’s how his own website (he’s currently Lt. Governor, after precipitously pulling out of the governor’s race without explanation), describes his mayoral career:

“In 2003, after a fiercely-contested race, Newsom was elected the youngest Mayor in San Francisco in more than a century.
“After only 36 days as mayor, Newsom gained worldwide attention when he granted marriage licenses to same-sex couples. This bold move set the tone for Newsom’s first term.…
In 2007, Newsom was re-elected with more than 73% of the vote.”

Same-sex marriage is an easy fix. It doesn’t cost anything, and a majority of the public, including a slim majority of Republicans, supports it.

I do too. Of course, I do. I’m a lesbian and I’m in favor of equal rights for everyone in all spheres. But it’s basically worthless to most people, including most gay people. I won’t even go into the ways in which it reinforces inequality. (I and plenty of others have gone into that at length over the years.  My point here is that the LGBQ community must not allow our fight for civil equality to be used to distract from the fight to the death, or really against death, that everyone in this country is in right now – a fight for our very survival.

Consider the moment. The latest poll shows Obama in a dead heat with GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney. 19 different polls show that a vast majority of Americans, somewhere between 62% and 80%, favor raising taxes on the wealthy to fund services and balance the budget. Obama refuses to do that. His one big legislative victory since taking office has been the health care reform bill. Who created the program that was based on? Hint: Romney’s Republican opponents have taken to referring to the Massachusetts health care plan as “Obamney Care.” So Obama needs something to separate himself from the Mormon Romney, and even just not being against gay marriage wouldn’t do it, because Romney has refused to take the “anti-gay marriage pledge” and offends "family values" voters by defending the separation of church and state.

Queer communities have been hit as hard in the recession as other communities - necessarily so, because we are part of every community. San Francisco’s cutting edge network of services for LGBT people and HIV-affected people, built through decades of community activism, agitation and organizing, has been largely decimated in the last two years. New Leaf, a 35-year-old San Francisco center serving the LGBT community with mental health, substance abuse, and HIV/AIDS services closed in October of last year. Lyon-Martin Clinic, the first lesbian- and trans-focused clinic in the country, nearly closed last year and is still on shaky ground. Just hours before the New York legislature passed the marriage equality bill, activists gathered in front of the Stonewall Inn, where the modern LGBT movement was born, to demand funding for programs for homeless LGBT youth.  Roughly 1,000 queer youth go without shelter every night in New York City, and Governor Cuomo recently cut the funding for youth shelters in half.

This is far from the first instance of minority groups winning rights as those rights, only to find their victories virtually hollow.

The standard of living for most Black South Africans has worsened considerably since apartheid was toppled. In the U.S., nearly fifty years after the Civil Rights Act was enacted, Black families with children have median incomes roughly half those of white families. Black children are three times as likely as white children to live in extreme poverty; 40% of Black children under 5 are living in poverty.

I’m not suggesting that the fight for same-sex marriage is the same as the fight for African American civil rights or the liberation of South Africa. But we should be aware of those histories, as well as many more. The unemployed youth of Egypt and Tunisia are now realizing that it’s easier to bring down a dictator than it is to break the stranglehold of neoliberal economic policies.

LGBTQ people need to keep our eyes on the real prize and not be fooled by the shiny decoy. If we don’t, the couples making their way to New York to take those marriage vows will soon be selling their wedding rings to keep each other in cat food.

When Are Radical Gender Activists Going to Get Out of Our Own Way?

This morning, in observance of Corporate LGBT Pride Day, KPFA talk show host Philip Maldari actually devoted an hour to radical queer politics, or more precisely, to a critique of gay marriage. It was not bad. Of course, the two guests didn’t give credit to any of the people who have been making that critique and doing the activism to back it up for years, but they raised important issues. But then Philip, a gay man who until quite recently never identified himself as such on the air, said that he, and KPFA in general, never interviewed Harvey Milk back in the day because they considered Harvey too reformist for their then-revolutionary station.

“He was getting people to register to vote, saying ‘Forget about the revolution,’” Philip alleged.

Now first of all, that’s just not true. Harvey Milk was probably an arrogant jerk in a lot of ways, but he was very radical, and he never said anyone should give up on the revolution. He was pursuing electoral office, yes, but as part of a broad progressive coalition that briefly transformed San Francisco politics. He was the one who went bar to bar to get gay bars to drop Coors beer, building a coalition with unions to oppose Coors’ anti-gay and anti-labor policies.

And secondly, if that were the reason for ignoring Harvey Milk, you would assume that KPFA had interviewed a lot of radical queers to critique the mainstream gay movement. I’m pretty sure if you go back and look through the archives from that period, you’re going to find that they did not do that.

The real reason that the dominant group at KPFA didn’t interview Harvey Milk is the same reason they have not covered the campaign to get Israeli money out of the LGBT film festival or the Ban the Army, Not the Queers work: because they’re f***ing homophobes and have no critique of the patriarchy. It’s the same reason staff members like Philip are always trying to get rid of the one hour a week of gender-oriented programming KPFA has had for the last six years, and the reason KPFA has no queer show.

The Marxist left defined the gay movement and the women’s movement as bourgeois and reformist. To this day they refuse to pay attention to any but the most mainstream elements of those movements, and then use their bourgeois reformism to justify ignoring queer and women’s issues.

Neither of Philip’s guests challenged his revision of history. Of course, neither of them was living here during the time of Harvey Milk (I wasn’t either, but I moved here the year after Milk was killed, and got involved in the still-very-vibrant queer left within a few years of that), so they may not actually know either how progressive Milk was or how uninterested KPFA was in anything queer. They also didn’t challenge him because they are part of an unfortunate tendency by radical feminist and queer activists to collude in our own expungement.

The fact is that pretty much every social movement has its assimilationist mainstream, its radical and conservative wings. The queer movement is in no way unique in being painted in the mainstream media with the single brush that makes us look the most like the dominant society. But the women’s movement, and by extension the LGBTQ movement which grew out of it, may well be the most universally blamed for our own repression.

A couple weeks ago I went to a panel at the Queer Women of Color Film Festival where Erica Huggins, a leader of the Black Panther Party, spoke. She said that one of the things that contributed to the downfall of the Party was not dealing with misogyny and sexism in the group. I have heard a few women make statements like that before, but I’ve never heard anyone say that the main reason the Party ultimately failed to make lasting change was because of such internal problems. Clearly internal dynamics, including between men and women, contributed to a culture of suspicion which was exploited by the FBI in its COINTELPRO. But if divisions had not already existed, the FBI infiltrators would have set out to create them. Most of the left recognizes that it took a mighty effort by the government to bring down the Panthers.

Students for a Democratic Society, the Free Speech Movement and other parts of the student counterculture were as white and middle-class dominated as parts of the second wave women’s movement and the post-Stonewall gay movement. But I don’t hear people using the cultural and class homogeneity of the student movements to dismiss their achievements, despite the fact that they didn’t bring down capitalism or end U.S. wars for empire.

But when the women’s movement is discussed in left-wing circles, its failures are attributed almost solely to its racism and narrow class base. Hardly anything is ever said about the concerted effort to dismantle the gains of the feminist movement, a backlash as intensive and pernicious as COINTELPRO. (In fact, it bears mentioning that parts of the women’s movement were targets of COINTELPRO.) If you listen to the mainstream media, patriarchy’s resurgence can be laid at the doorstep of male-bashing sex-negative bra-burners. If you listen to left media, you’ll blame the bourgeois biases of Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem.

Young women who are products of Women’s and Gender Studies programs at prestigious colleges say, “I don’t call myself a feminist because feminism is a white thing.” That’s almost the only thing they know about feminism. They don’t know that Michele Wallace, author of Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman and a member of the Combahee River Collective, says “I’ve never understood how any woman could not be a feminist.” They don’t know that Egyptian doctor and former political prisoner Nawal el-Saadawi, said in a recent interview, “There are many feminisms, and I am a revolutionary anti-imperialist feminist.”

Revolutionary feminists and queer activists have an obligation to stand up for our own history. Everyone loves to believe they are doing something brand new and exciting, but the honest truth is, few of us ever are. It doesn’t make what we’re doing less valuable to give credit to those who came before us, and to those who are standing right beside us.

Where do queers go when we die? (For Andrea)

The other night I attended the memorial event for Andrea Lewis, renowned journalist at KPFA, New American Media and the Progressive Magazine. It was an evening chock full of inspiring performances, wonderful music, decent poetry (you know me and poetry) and heart-felt testimonials before a standing-room-only crowd of hundreds at the lovely First Unitarian Church in Oakland. The SF Symphony Chorus, of which Andrea was a long-time member, showed up en masse – that must have been 70 people right there, Poet Laureate Al Young performed some pretty good spoken word, and Krissy Keefer and Dance Brigade finished up (batted clean-up, as Andrea would say) with some amazing drumming that could have gone on a lot longer. And running throughout, the rich melodic tones of Andrea's voice, mostly from the radio.

Though I didn't know Andrea well, it was an emotional and satisfying evening for me. I interacted with her at KPFA just enough to admire her profoundly. I was interviewed by her once, on International Women's Day years ago; it was short and not memorable for either of us, though even then, I was impressed by her seamless transitions and easy manner in the studio. In retrospect, knowing what I do about the difficulty of doing live radio, I am more impressed because she made it look so effortless when it really is not.

Last night, in going through piles and piles of papers from the last few years in search of a paper I needed to travel to Canada (we won't go into that now, but suffice it to say that when Andrea's brother talked about her pack-rat-itis, I made a note to myself to try to throw some stuff away before I die), I ran across a handout from a class about interviewing. It said, "An interview is not a conversation, though it may sound like one after you've edited it." I always try to make my interviews sound like conversations, but they rarely do, even after editing. I've learned to use notes instead of a full script, but it's still too obvious when I'm asking a prepared question, and even my candid responses too often sound like speeches.

Andrea prepared superbly for her interviews – insofar as I did know her, it was because I do most of my work at KPFA on weekends, and when I was there on Saturday nights, Andrea was almost always there late into the evening getting ready for her Sunday show. But she always managed to make it sound completely spontaneous. I just listened to a bunch of her old shows, for a tribute that aired on Women's Magazine last week (pretty good, if I do say so myself – hear it at http://kpfawomensmag.blogspot.com). I was struck by how quickly she could create a rapport with her guests. Even if there were times when she didn't do all the research herself, but was handed a pile of papers by her producers – after all, that's what producers are for – but you could never tell. She would say, "I was looking at your website and I noticed …" or "The thing that really grabbed me when I was reading your book," and you believed it 100%. She would always find something to bond over, even if she was less than inspired by them. If she met someone for the first time at 7:35 and interviewed them from 7:40 to 7:45, it was five minutes of intimacy, and that intimacy was irresistible to the listeners. That's why at her memorial, when people tried to engage the crowd by saying, "Raise your hand if Andrea had a nickname for you," "How many of you got one of those 30-minute phone messages from Andrea?" only a few scattered hands went up. Hundreds of folks came out not because they knew her personally, but because they felt like they knew her, and more, because she had enriched their world.

When I started volunteering at KPFA, one of the things I hoped for was to get to know Andrea. I can't say that happened. We would say hi in the kitchen or downstairs, exchange a few words about our shows. Once she admired the Thai food I had brought for the women who were working on our show, and I invited her to join us. She declined, to all of our disappointment. I had two substantive interactions with her. The first was when Lisa and I were trading a DVD of "The L Word." Andrea asked what we were doing with it. Both of us were working on documentaries, and we were both basically using the TV series about high-fashion, mostly rich and white, lesbians in LA to illustrate everything that's wrong with the mainstream gay movement. Andrea defended the show. She had been at some of the shootings, I think, in LA, and had gone to a party to watch the last episode, and she said it moved her to tears. As a Black progressive lesbian from Detroit, she certainly didn't feel like those women represented her, but she just liked that they were out there, on mainstream television, being dykes and having sex. She was inclined, I think, to focus on the positive in popular culture and not expect it to be more than it was.

Then, a couple weeks ago, I was working with some younger lesbians of color who have started producing with us. They were saying that there are not lesbians of color on the radio, which is certainly true in general, and I thought, "Oh, I should make sure they meet Andrea so they know at least they're not the only ones here." I was on my way downstairs, and she was in her office with Mickey, debriefing the show they had just finished and the door was slightly open. I was nervous about interrupting, but I stopped in and asked if she could come by on her way out. She said she was not feeling well, but she would try. When I came back upstairs, she was in our office chatting with Christine and Kiki and Olga about the Richmond homecoming rape, which Kiki has been organizing around. When she left she told them to let her know if they had any extra material that might be good for her show, or if she could help them in any way, and thanked me for making the connection.

If you asked me about Andrea, the first words out of my mouth would be African American Lesbian Feminist. So imagine my surprise when in three hours of people talking about her on Tuesday night, neither the "L Word" nor the "F Word" were spoken. There were a couple oblique allusions to her being lesbian – Larry Samuels said she referred to him as "her weird straight guy friend," and a number of people mentioned that she always called out "racism, sexism and homophobia" (always listed in that order). In the two tributes that aired on the two shows she worked on, The Morning Show and Sunday Sedition, the word "lesbian" was barely mentioned, and only Krissy Keefer spoke about how important the women's movement was to her.

It's pretty amazing because Andrea was not someone to whom feminism or lesbianism were unimportant. There are women at KPFA who are feminists, and probably even lesbians, who don't necessarily consider those core parts of their identities, but Andrea wasn't one of them. She got her start in Bay Area journalism working for a Plexus, a feminist newspaper. Krissy Keefer mentioned in her tribute that Andrea called her a good friend, though they never socialized, and Krissy said she thought that was because they were connected through the women's movement.

In a short interview Lisa did with Andrea about feminism, which aired as part of our tribute, she talked about how she came to feminism as a young teenager, admiring people like Gloria Steinem, and appreciating the songwriting talents of Carole King. When her father denied that a woman could have written all the songs on an album, and told Andrea she shouldn't waste money on college, Andrea says "I just knew he was crazy." She also talked about believing that lesbianism and feminism were "part of the same package, not separate." When I was looking for pieces for our show to illustrate this commitment to women's and queer issues, I didn't find a single show that didn't have something that would have been appropriate. No matter what she was talking about, she always brought those lenses to it.

So I left the memorial asking, "Why is the first thing out of my mouth about this woman I barely knew the last thing out of the mouths of the people who knew her well?" I wasn't alone. As I made my way out of the church, I heard other women talking about how weird it was. This is not the first time I've had this experience relating to KPFA. When Mike Alcalay, a gay activist and doctor who reported on AIDS issues, died a couple years ago, his brother was interviewed on Democracy Now! And did not say that he was gay. In Mike's case, it was even stranger, because he had been married (to a woman) and had twin sons, which was mentioned in the obits. At that time, I wrote in my blog, "When I die, don't let anyone talk about me and not say 'lesbian.'" And some of you were nice enough to make that promise.

I think there are several reasons this keeps happening. One is that, even in 2009 and even in progressive circles, straight people still have trouble saying the words "gay" and "lesbian." I believe they still feel like it's saying something negative. No one thought that saying Andrea was Black or African American or a woman was diminishing her, but I think they felt like alluding to her as a lesbian feminist would make some people not like her, or make her less important than focusing on her love of the arts and sports, her golfing, her singing, and her journalistic brilliance. There's still a belief, in left journalism as well as in the mainstream, that a "lesbian" journalist or a "feminist" journalist is a "niche" journalist, not as "universal" as a straight woman who doesn't identify with those angry, man-hating feminists. Which makes me think of Harvey Fierstein's comment in "The Celluloid Closet," that when people say, "Your work isn't gay, it's universal," his (private) response is "Up yours."

The other piece of this straightwashing phenomenon is that Andrea wasn't married or domestic partnered. If she had a lover or six, no one seems to know about it. If she had had a wife or girlfriend, that person would have been central to her memorial and on air tributes. But when single people die, in our coupleist, nuclear-family-oriented society, it's our families of origin that tend to be centered and most of our families of origin, in Andrea's and my generation certainly (she was 52, two years older than me), even if they are very accepting, are not that comfortable with our sexual orientation. It's like we revert to being kids, and kids are not seen as having sexual orientation.

I had hoped this would be the year when I would conquer my awe of Andrea and find a way to make her a friend. Maybe that's why her death has touched me deeply, maybe it's because I've been around so many others who are grieving deeply for her, or maybe it's the public Andrea I'm grieving: the publicly unapologetic fat lesbian feminist African American woman who incidentally sang and played golf.

Go in peace, cherished sister.