Reflections in Construction

AS I sit by glass,
I notice the inlaid cross
on the apartment building
looming over the
construction scene,
as they tear up something
that didn't need fixing,

or at least something
I didn't see as broken:
sure, cracked pavement
and uneven sidewalks
casting surreal nighttime
shadows,

but such is the essence
of this city,
describe dually as
the city time forgot
and the city that has
been breathing forever--
heavy and laboured
through weather--
but always breathing,

and now they are destroying
it in the name of a
sickening word:
gentrification, acrid on
tongue, gentrification,
I repeat with maddened intensity,

contemporary capitalistic
kitsch, always ending up
looking inauthentic,
Cobblestones!
Cobblestones on Oak St.

It has never been broken,
melting pot of citizens
frequenting local business,
but now they're replacing
this strip of pavement
for broken bricks better
suited for horses.

At what cost? I ask as
functional concerns
dissipate into ethical
considerations.

Why are we spending money
on a street of the city
that seems bustling, day
and night, when other wards
remind me of grotesque
post-apocalyptic imaginings:

symbolic markings for dead
still visible on fronts of collapsed
houses, cracked windows,
untamed grasses reminiscent
of wilds, startling darkness
as sun descends beneath the horizon,

taken wholly to represent
gross injustice that has not
petered after Katrina,
sad fact that the people who
made the city,

the people who struggled
under the weight of slavery
in Quarter houses,
terrible tales of being stuck
in ovens because of indiscretions,

are subjugated once again,
under a different cloak, yes,
but subjugated once again,
left abandoned, out of the city
or in abject conditions,
barely living and nothing is
being done.

Incompetence has
not faltered, broken levees
replaced with fast fading
dreams,
the city that stood forever
seeming more forgotten
with each day.

AS I stare at the scene,
confusion bending to anger
bends once again to sadness,
remembering canvassing
on election day for Obama,
as I was in one of those
apocalyptic neighbourhoods.

Every single person I talked to
was going to vote,
each of them expressed renewed
optimism in the wake of failed policies,
and yet the sight today
reminds me that the national
political arc doesn't necessarily
represent local realities:

governors, mayors, congressmen
are responsible for the welfare
of the people, especially a people
so marred by disaster,
and they have failed,

as they replace usable pavement
with cobblestones, in the
name of gentrification
they demonstrate their commitment
to tourism but not reality.

My heart breaks, staring at the
construction workers who could
be reviving culture rather than
replacing it,

but I must go now.
I no longer belong to the city--
this cannot be my fight--
but please, somebody else
take up arms.

Surreal shadows and
unmatched spirit depend on it.

Listen, I am Feminist Too: A Queer Male Perspective

“I hate to say it, but the images of high school come rushing forward, images of the bigger, stronger guys, roosters in every right, images of who I should have been by social standards. In an instant I scoff at such an image, imagining myself sweating inside some rooster costume, wishing I could just use my brain, that I could just let my voice, steady and effortless, be something I am proud of. But then I realize I am not the rooster anymore; instead I am naked, stark naked, in the hallways, homo tattooed on my stomach, intellectual emblazoned on my arm; and all I can hear are the laughs, uproarious, as a new tattoo appears suddenly on my face, lachrymose, the perfect description for my state of mind.”

These words were part of a story I wrote over the summer. While it was a work of fiction, and the words themselves were an obvious dramatisation of actual events within the story, their core holds an undeniable truth in my own life. I do not write what I do not feel most strongly. I came out as gay at the age of 16 in October of 2005. I was in my second year of high school. For three years prior, I had been engaged in an inner battle, a battle that has shaped the very person I am as I put these words on a page. The quote at the top of the page reflected, for a time at least, the intense self-consciousness I felt over my sexuality. Before I came out, I was worried about other peoples’ responses. I was worried about being rejected, worried about being cast out to sea on some lonely raft, by all people, even those closest to me. But I was also worried about another threat, the threat of the roosters, of violence against me by men because of my proclaimed sexuality.



This fear of rejection and violence did not come without an intense period of reflection. Before I came to define the person that I was as gay, I was involved in a lengthy reflective process over what it meant to be gay. I came to find that gay meant only that I was attracted to other guys, but that it was also composed of a constellation of noticeable gendered behaviours reinforced for at least a century. It became clear that the homosexual was an anatomically male body with a female psyche, an idea developed at the very beginning of the creation of the modern homosexual by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in the late 1800s (Terry 43). While such a distinction is less articulated in society today, the stereotypical images of the gay man as effeminate, characterised by a particular voice, mannerisms, dress, and interests, remain. In this realisation, I began a self-consciousness process of evaluating my own actions and behaviours. What types of clothing was I wearing? What were my mannerisms? Did I fit the stereotypes? I began policing my own behaviours out of fear of being ridiculed or harmed.



Nevertheless, in October 2005 I reached a point where I felt that articulating a gay identity publicly would at least free from a silence that was tearing me up psychologically, allow me to find a community I belonged to. While there were positive effects from coming out, the emotions expressed in the quotation did not disappear in any sense. By coming out, I did not free myself from the fear of rejection or ridicule; if anything, these feelings were intensified. In brandishing myself as homosexual, I made myself an open target of examination and judgment without fully having the courage to articulate what I believed. In this state of fear and concern for myself, my state of mind—lachrymose as I put it in the story—led to the development of my feminist consciousness. The purpose of this essay is thus to define feminism in the traditional sense, utilizing various theorists, and explore a new feminist ideology that may seem more congruous to my own identification as queer and male.



According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, feminism is both a “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes,” and “organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests.” The two key aspects of this definition are “of the sexes” and “women’s rights and interests.” The first is important because in its definition of gender equality, it uses the word sexes, a term which immediately comes to my mind as meaning the “uncomplicated” categories of male and female, thereby limiting access to feminism to those of specific genders. As Riki Wilchins points out in several chapters of GENDERqUEER: voices beyond the sexual binary, anyone who chooses not to identify as male or female have “completely vanished from civil discourse” and have “for political purposes…ceased to exist” (54). This is erasure is further supported in the definition by making women the centre of organised activity, because it fails to acknowledge those who do not identify as women who nonetheless deal with gender inequities on a daily basis.



This definition of feminism is not merely confined to a dictionary; it has pervaded feminist writings since the 1950s. One of the earliest examples of this is Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, a hallmark text of feminism. In it, she boldly challenges male privilege and explores women’s status as Other, lacking any subjectivity of their own. Revolutionary for the time, it clear now the ways in which de Beauvoir’s theory is limited and how it is tied to the dictionary definition of feminism. The first clear tie is de Beauvoir’s reliance on both sexes, whereby men are the oppressors and women are the oppressed. This idea is demonstrated clearly when she states that “he is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other” (44) and that “the division of the sexes is a biological fact” (47). The second is in her heterocentric tilt. Throughout the introductory chapter, she describes heterosexual relationships exclusively and seems unable or unwilling to challenge the basic idea that the feminine is the object of masculine desire and vice versa. In supporting a particular ideology of gendered inequities that places women as the object of feminism, de Beauvoir unwittingly reinscribes a heterosexual matrix and denies voices outside of this model the chance of being heard.



Feminist theory evolved in short order after de Beauvoir, but such a transformation, rather than being wholly positive, brought women as the object of feminism to a new extreme. It is true that lesbian theorists challenged compulsory heterosexuality. Nobody better attacks heterosexual privilege than Adrienne Rich in her essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Experience.” However, she continues to assert women as objects of feminism, and particularly lesbian women as objects of feminism. Like other theorists of this nature, Rich also emphasizes something called “women-identification,” which does not include merely lesbian sexual interaction but also “women’s passion for women, women’s choice of women as allies, life companions and community” (199). Another theorist, Monique Wittig, in “One is Not Born a Woman,” goes a step further in asserting that “lesbianism provides for the moment the only form in which we [women] can live freely” (20). Thus women remained objects of feminism more strongly than eve; men, by and large a homogeneous category of persons, remained the oppressors; and the genderqueer remained completely silenced, hiding in some closet.



But feminism has come to change. Not overnight, of course, but in time feminist ideology has become different, celebrating a postmodern ideology whereby we are all engaged in acts of gender performance. As Riki Wilchin’s says “gender refers not to something we are but something we do, which, through extended repetition and because of the vigorous suppression of all exceptions, achieves the appearance of a sort of coherent psychic substance” (24). What is important in this is that there is no essential masculine and feminine, only social construction of a heterosexual matrix, a matrix that places masculine in a binary with feminine, where all aspects of masculinity are seen in opposition to femininity. Necessary for this deconstruction of the heterosexual matrix, power relations are also reconceptualised through the theorist Michel Foucault. Rather than previous descriptions of power as held by men over women, power is opened up as “power relations,” relationships between people that are “mobile, reversible, and unstable” (Foucault 292). There is no holding of power in one’s hands. Power is no longer evil. This new model of feminist thought no longer “presumes, fixes, and constrains the very ‘subjects’ that it hopes to represent and liberate” (Butler 148). For once, there is chance of a politics that does not belong to a set of “ready-made subjects” (149). Women are not all victims, men are not all powerful, and the truly transgressive—the genderqueer—may very well have the greatest tools for challenging systems of gender inequities.



I have so far articulated at length a traditional view of feminism and provided a sense of this new feminism, but I must now resituate my self in this theory by talking about my own experience. In the beginning, I described how it was that I came to identify as gay and how my exploration of its meaning involved the realisation that to be gay is to be necessarily implicated in a series of perceived gendered behaviours, whether or not you actually practise them. These gendered behaviours arose from the construction of homosexuality in the late 1800s at a psychical inversion, an effeminate mind with a male body. I come back to this point because I believe that it is the foundation for movement into the world of feminist thought. Sexuality is gendered. I do not agree with other theorists (or those in my daily life) who deny a direct link between sexuality and gender. From its historical creation, the homosexual was entirely gendered. Just as important, these gendered stereotypes have persisted to the present day. Through this process of sexual identification, I came to discover gender inequities and became a feminist.



Let me be clear in saying that it is not merely because of my attraction to other men that I am feminist. Nobody just is a feminist by having an attraction or unexamined identity. To become feminist, one must reflect on hir own behaviours, actions and relationships with others. As once a self-identified gay man, I can say wholeheartedly that many other men who identify as gay should not be considered feminists for a very important reason. The heterosexual matrix I have frequently brought up in this discussion is anchored in a binary that places masculine desire for a feminine object and feminine desire to be an object of masculine desire together. Many (self-identified) men who have sex with men do not lose this heterosexual anchor. It takes only a quick glance on the Internet to discover the pervading top/bottom distinction during sexual acts, where one man’s interest lies only in an active role, the penetration of another typically more passive man. Throughout this process, misogyny is perpetuated and rigid sexual boundaries, heterocentric in nature, are re-inscribed.



What is it then that separates me from other men who have sex with men? I think the first lies in my rejection of rigid definition of my own sexual practices. I practise whatever sexual roles I see fit. I certainly have preferences (as I think any person does), but that does not mean I lack flexibility in what I practise, nor do I vigorously assert a particular sexual role. This action is my re-appropriation of sexual desire. It is itself a feminist act in my mind because it seeks to directly challenge the anchor of the heterosexual matrix. My re-appropriation lies in my belief that desire can indeed be flexible, not defined by an oppositional binary. That is to say, masculine desire does not have to be for a feminine object. What this desire can entail is expanded. But it also is my assertion that the sexual partners we have do not have to be the same (in their roles and desires) that it is also challenging. The heterosexual matrix functions on the belief in a constant and fixed identity; my re-appropriation denies constancy.



The other, perhaps the explanation for the switch of my identification from gay to queer, lies in my support and desire to organise politically with diverse groups of people. This identification—with women, transsexuals, and those who are genderqueer—is at the heart of a new feminist ideology. The function of feminism today is not a movement beyond gender oppression; this belief is unachievable and thoroughly utopian. The function of feminism today is thus adopting “games of strategy” to minimise gender inequities (Foucault 298). True games of strategy can, and ought to, be adopted on the level of individual subversion. For example, an individual who plays with gender such that there is no gender constancy is using subversion to challenge gender inequities and a heterocentric framework at a local level. This means of challenging binaries is effective.



However, individual subversion is not the limit of postmodern feminist ideology. While postmodernism makes problematic categories of essence, I think that it is wrong to attribute postmodernism only to individual action. A new politics of being can be created, but it will not function in the same way as modern liberal identity politics. Instead, it will be based in a dynamic process of continual re-evaluation of actions, goals and aims formed by a diverse coalition of individuals. There will be nobody speaking for a monolithic group, people will express their own stories and combat these gender inequities. Women will no longer be the objects of feminism; men will no longer be the only ones who can perpetuate unequal relationships.



As I have demonstrated, my own personal experiences (and the pain inseparable from them) have led to the development of a feminist ideology. From the very beginning of labelling myself as “gay,” I came to find sexuality as entirely gendered, operating within a framework that established the homosexual as psychically inverted. I fretted over the sweaters I wore, the music I listened to, the glances I took. I was afraid of the laughs, of hearing ‘faggot’ uttered, of being harmed because of this framework. My story, supported by postmodern theorists, demonstrates the ways in which this traditional view of feminism is inadequate. Women and men both have erased genderqueer and transsexual from civil discourse. Women have perpetuated hierarchies related to sexuality, ethnicity and economic background. Men too can face gender inequities. The feminist model I have proposed is one in which power is reconceived outside of subject/object distinction. It is a model that entails individual subversion and dynamic political organisation against a heterosexual matrix by all people who have bore witness to gender inequities. We cannot seek to remove ourselves from the world we live in, but being more open and limitless will allow us to more appropriately challenge gender inequities still achingly visible. In believing that “what is productive is not sedentary but nomadic,” we open up so much possibility for feminism and provide me with a chair at the table (Wilchins 36).

Wild(e)s

Oily rainbow streak,
across the skies of civilization:
nearly invisible
in the whispers of suspicion

to its brilliance today,
since the closet exploded
in 69, sex positions
multiplied in urban space,
Victorian sensibility roiled
in unapologetic pleasure palaces.

Or so the myth goes,
and what a myth it is,
I think, sitting in a rural
Louisiana town, catching
Wifi in a cafe.

Why a myth is the
first question sure to hit
me square in the gut
as I claim the rainbow hasn't been
so smooth (lacking an arc),

but patience, please,
listen to the words that flow
from pen to paper with ease:

it's path did not go from muted
to brilliant across a sky of ages,
and it does not shine now,
though it has had it moments
of radiance in decades disconnected.

A sad fact, yes,
but something better
than deluded sense of things,
not a dismissal of positive
changes but a recognition
of the lengths we still have to go
under a new moniker:
postmodernism in an otherwise
milky indifference.

First thought of support
for the sad fact is simple,

I have sinned,
or so they tell me
on Solemn Sunday,
part of a gray and black mass.

Nietzsche claimed
God dead long ago
but I don't believe him,
listening to words of religious
leaders float hate across
a land that claims
"life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

In all too many
nook and crannies
of the country, a single message
sits resiliently:

"God hates fags,"
from the mouth of
a grim reaper
who has no respect
for dead,
uttering damnation as
mourners weep in their own black garb.

Extreme example, yes,
but reflective of the feeling that
lingers under skin and in minds:
aversion to the oily rainbow
as it bends away from expectation.

The second support for
our sad fact,
this bending toward the middle,
postmodernism materializing
in political consciousness,
wondering why the focus
on marriage equality

when young teen boys
wash shame off hands,
having masturbated with
thoughts of sweaty male bodies,
tantalizing stubble against
chins,

when the lesbian woman
cannot listen to the sermon
she wants, foregoing faith
for Sunday cartoons and creamed coffee,

when kids like Lawrence King,
possessing identity
circumflex away from
expectation, are murdered
for nothing more than acting
as they feel comfortable,
reminding us of the Scarecrow
left for dead in Wyoming
a decade earlier,

to the person who sloughs labels--
plethora of possibility in
an opened box--
but is branded, cattle in human form,
as this or that against their
intentions: nomadic and free,

postmodern intensity building,
still more grievances, head
barely bobbing 'bove water,
but necessarily doing so,
soul somehow free from
the weight of deconstruction:

embedded racial issues,
souls who tore down the closet door
in true moment of
rainbow brilliance
now obscured by a snow white sheet,

evident masculine privilege
lost in gender's common conflation
with sexuality,
controlling movements and
lives, male voices silencing
others,

and further unapologetic
misogyny,
(masculine only) men
filled with brazen laughter
at limp-wristed, skinny,
femme "bois"

and Trans-- what is that?
Help me...help me....
help me...echoing from
Bangor to San Diego but given
no response, left to linger
as soul tears itself apart.

All of this as "Masters" of a
this invisible community
sitting in buildings in
big cities contemplating
the next move to gain marriage rights,
tepid in their responses to criticism,
afraid of visibility,

in an instant confirming
what has been said:
the rainbow does not shine today,
save that one day a year
it is acceptable to de-robe
and parade material lust.

And yet, hope has not been lost,
the rainbow never
disappears across blue
sky now dotted with
the purple and pink
hues of puffy cumulus clouds,

Reinvent, Reinvent!
whispers the wind,
Reinvent, reinvent!
But what change?
When? And most importantly:
The result?

Go wild(e), it replies at once,
unfettered, confident,
in tones it says never to be
afraid of the
darkness,
the haze,
the grim,
the opposition expected
to the visibility:

setback is certain,
souls abyss bound
and others still extinguished
by the vehemence of others,

but the price of freedom
has never been greater,
recoloring the rainbow
a more difficult task
than first sending it across the sky,

difficult but important,
daunting, and yet manageable
if remembrance becomes a tool--
the words of past poets,
prize-winning authors--catalysts
for reinvention
and key to the
rapture of the soul,

not just temporary rapture
in sensual touch
or orgasmic shrieks piercing
through otherwise lackluster night,

no, rapture of the soul,
with the body and mind as
weapons, running wild(e)
through the urban alleyways
and winding dirt roads,
running wild(e) with
defiance of everything "natural,"
order disrupted in defense
of the fundamental right to be:

complete fulfillment may
be impossible, but in
recapturing a spirit,
in taking a look deeper
into the realities of a "community,"
unearthing recondite facts and
being unafraid to utter
four simple words:
"this is a lie,"

you once again recolor
the oily rainbow across
the swirling skies of today
and create some chance
of the pursuit of
life, liberty and happiness
to be fulfilled,

listening to the sounds
of Phelps peter to silence,

watching young men
no longer wash shame
off hands after they come
thinking about other guys,

seeing the lesbian woman
utter 'Amen' in confidence
and comfort,

witnessing creation of
a memorial for the
Scarecrows of the ages,
erected in D.C.,

and hearing a response
to the lonely "help me"
that echoes in every state now.

The arc will not be smooth,
the time will not be short,
but it never is:
only in the greatest moments of struggle
is one truly freed.

Reinvention (Part 1)

Braving bitter winter
I step outside-- Montreal
in mid-January, fresh
snow on the ground, glistening
from the sun, lofty
in the iced sky.

Noticing tiny paw prints in
otherwise untouched snow,
I know a stray dog has beaten
me to acknowledging
the beauty of a new day,

though cold-- temperature hovering
at half the freezing mark--
I am alive for the time in a while,

soul somehow satiated,
perhaps by the freedom this
place does afford me:
zooming underground on
rubber-wheeled trains,
slowly sipping espresso in
a city quarter that has flourished
for centuries.

But I wonder,
traveling underground now,
that it might just be the
vastness of it all--
being a speck on a city plane
that stretches for miles,
a part of something more
powerful than the atmosphere
I created for myself in Berkshire woods:

I escape from everything,
am nothing
(save an individual cell
in a larger honeycomb)
and yet I can become anything
I want to be, once again

breathing in cold air,
I reinvent myself,
exiting the Metro station
in a residential neighborhood
on the outskirts.

Less imposing buildings greet me,
initial calm as I am an explorer now,
determination to discover (something)
alight in my eyes.

Without any constraints,
I linger on each step, catching
the hurried Quebecois French of
school children before arriving
at a market,
petite and ordinary from outside,
but something else entirely inside:

raw and somehow lived,
individual devotion to owned stalls,
energy felt on skin if not
entirely understood in tongue,

nothing less than sensory bliss
grabbing ripened fruit and brie,
brought in from somewhere far off,
but local to me as I see the wrinkles
and graying hairs on dying cells of a
city on a modern tilt.

I want to linger there forever,
bucking Time and everything else that
keeps me moving forward,
but I can only be an explorer
for so long in a city I will soon leave,

and so I moult the label
I affixed to myself,
teneral in a moment of indecision:
what will I be next? I ask myself,
softly though, realising this to be my
own life, journey I have undertaken
alone, for now at least, and
so I battle this question in my mind
before arriving at an answer:
cinephile.

A simple answer, but an answer
nonetheless.

It takes little time to decide on
Le scaphandre et le papillon.
How I have heard of Jean-Dominique,
fated to stroke and lose control of
everything but the blinking of his eyes,
blink blink, reduction of a mind
to the simplest of physical states,

I weep at the sight in the theatre
I braved an uphill climb on
slippery sidewalks to reach.
I weep, not just to myself,
(though I worry every day of
disintegration)
but for a soul so clearly tormented,
trapped in a diving bell with
the bright lights of fashion still
fresh in memory.

Exiting the theatre and out into
the cold again, I realise
I have wept for something else:
the end of my constant reinvention
looming closer with each passing day.

Of A City

Stoic woman in furs,

snow white, standing

on the corner of Seventh

waiting for the light to change.

Black skinned woman in

the Heights, huddled by

warm oven because of broken

heater, unfixed out of neglect.

They connect, these two,

in a strange way that seems

to connect us all

in this vast expanse of land--

United States of America--

supposed melting pot

That seems unstirred.

Connections in profound

disconnect. And yet connections:

two notes, discordant in

a larger musical piece,

but two notes a part of the same

city

Living together in time that

seems draped with a grey cloth,

not an extended winter but

an indefinite malaise, usual

obligations lost to survival,

survival of more than just people

but of a city.

Woman in furs lives well,

in immaculate loft blocks from

the Guggenheim, celebrating

life every day because she can:

untouched by the downturn,

unfettered, regardless of the

slowing cog of the city.

She stands on the corner

waiting for the light to change

to get to a Broadway play,

Kaufman's new production,

bridging Time, that speaks

on the significance of waltz

variations by one of the one

greatest masters of music.

It's a connection to the

non-mechanical of the city,

the whimsy of erased voices,

of artists struggling,

actions taking on

greater depth than initially thought.

African woman in the Heights

struggling, unlike woman in furs,

because she lacks a well of money,

because she is a transplant to this country,

four years ago to escape

crimson rivers of her land

at the promise of a Dream.

But now that Dream seems faded,

speaking fluent English she has

a job that barely allows her to get by,

collecting every penny and dime in

mason jars on the windowsill in hope

of being able to get lights

for another month,

in hope of having a bit of comfort

just a little while longer.

Abused by a landlord consumed with

the buck, she huddles in front

of the stove but does not weep or

have blood boil because,

now warmed by the oven turned up to 450,

she thinks of where she came from:

in slums that make this look like

a paradise, of seeing her mutilated

cousin's body in the street.

It is the escape of unparalleled sadness

to a land where it is more tolerable,

emotions having greater depth than

initially thought.

And so they are connected

in another way:

discordant in the lives that live, but

living more complexly

than initially seen.

Unfettered by downturn, marked in

snow white excess, and yet

walking in the cold to support

the whimsy of a city that could

so easily become mechanical.

And the refugee in neglected room,

sparsely furnished, but still hopeful,

because of a past not easily read

on the lines of her face,

staring at the glinting mason jars,

looking for something more.

And so as Megastore closes,

and transit rates skyrocket,

and so many people are pushed

to a point where their bodies

seem too much to inhabit:

an atrophy of the soul--

we have two people, discordant because

of positionality, yet reflective of

two extremes of a city.

The person who will never have to struggle,

and the one who struggles because they

made a promise to always

strive for something more,

reminding us that that the malaise

of a city dominates

but does not consume.