Busting Binaries: A Reader
Table of Contents
About the Authors ............................................................................................ 2
Busting Binaries: A Personal & Political Manifesto ................................... 3
Fear is the Fuel That Leads To Our Exclusion .......................................... 5
The Importance of Reframing Anti-Semitism:........................................ 10
Putting Bridge Building into Practice.......................................................... 10
Busting the Lens and Collapsing the Binaries: .......................................... 13
Reframing Class ............................................................................................... 13
Lisa’s Stories .................................................................................................... 19
Part I: Person of Color: Race and the Mixed Body ................................................... 19
Part II: Good Girls, Radical Femms: Gender and the Mixed Body ........................ 22
Part III: Jewish, Arab, Home: Confronting Anti-Semitism ................................... 25
Part IV: Generations: Mixed Class Realities on the Mixed Body .......................... 27
Ana’s Story ....................................................................................................... 31
Part I: Morena, Ven Pra’ca: Race and the Mixed Body ............................................ 31
Part II: Butch Fag Dyke Woman: Gender and the Mixed Body ............................. 34
Part III: Reframing Anti-Semitism ............................................................................. 37
Part IV: Cheles and Cents: Class, Race, Nationality and Place ............................... 41
Call and Response ............................................................................................ 44
TRAINING CURRICULA ............................................................................... 45
About the Curriculum ....................................................................................................... 45
About the Authors
Ana Lara is a writer and organizer. Her critical essays have been featured in numerous
journals and anthologies. She received her BA from Harvard University. Her critical work
focuses on the social constructs arising out of colonization and the Middle Passage, and on
documenting forms of community resistance. Her creative writing includes numerous short
stories and a novel, Erzulie's Skirt (Redbone Press, 2006). Ana-Maurine has over ten
years community organizing experience, both on the front lines and in training and political
education.
Lisa Weiner-Mahfuz has a degree in Women's Studies and Political Science from
Wheaton College in Norton, MA where she began her social justice activism as a student
organizer. For the past decade she has been working across movements for social justice
as an organizer and trainer. She has an extensive background in anti-oppression training
and education, workers rights, LGBTI issues, organizational development and coalition
building. In 2002, she was published in an anthology entitled Colonize This! Young Women
of Color and Feminism as well as in Fireweed Magazine's Mixed Race Issue. She currently
lives in Washington, DC with her partner of 6 years and is working as an organizer in the
LGBTI and feminist movements.
What activists are saying about Bustingbinaries.com:
"Bustingbinaries.com promises to be a heart pulsing, engaged and gutsy site for orgaizers, healers
and visionaries. Based on their many years of writing and organizing, the bustingbinaries.com
creators are offering a breath giving location for people to grapple with ideas and issues that are
vital for movement building. It promises to be an "everybody is talking about it" site.
~ Becky Thompson, author of A Promise and A Way of Life:
White Anti-Racist Activism and A Hunger So Wide and So Deep
2
Busting Binaries: A Personal & Political Manifesto
I’m a light skinned, mixed race, Jewish/Arab-American, lesbian, feminist.
For many people, I defy their realities.
I’m a mixed race, US based, Jewish, Latina, butch lesbian of African descent.
For many people I defy their realities.
I enter into People of Color spaces and it is presumed that I am the tragic mulatta or `simply’ a
Black American. My history as a Jewish Latina of the African Diaspora is largely ignored and
discounted as irrelevant. Given this definition of Blackness and its assumptions, it is then deemed
safe to talk about immigrants taking over the country, Jews taking over the neighborhoods, Arabs
as terrorists or mixed people as lost causes.
I enter into People of Color spaces and I am often considered to be too light skinned to be a
“legitimate” person of color. I’m told that I could not possibly experience racism and I am actively
silenced- the door literally slammed in my face.
I can’t enter and don’t desire entering into predominantly white spaces except sometimes when I
am with other Jews, and even then whiteness is not the same as it is among non-Jews. Yet, despite
what we have in common, the internalized notions of who constitutes a Jew is unearthed and I
become the other. In the few white spaces I have entered, it is clear I am there conditionally,
always conditionally.
I enter into predominantly white spaces and I am not to be trusted because I explode and disrupt
notions of whiteness. White people become enraged by my presence as someone who looks white but
is “other”. I am treated with contempt and distrust.
I enter into LGBTI spaces and I am over-sexualized: the mulatta who gives it away, the Latina sex
object. When I dare to speak, it is met with much consternation. According to many in those rooms,
I am also not really butch - my hair is locked, not chopped;
my aesthetic is not stiff enough to pin down.
I enter into lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex spaces and I am not a `legitimate’
lesbian because I am femme - being mixed race, Jewish and Arab does not sit well with folks either.
The presumption is that I’m trying to fit into the status quo by
passing as a white and heterosexual woman.
We are dykes who feel strongly that transphobia and biphobia are unacceptable and must be
challenged with vigilance in all levels and aspects of our movement, including in
the creation of movement history.
We are feminists and Jews. To the discomfort of many, we disrupt and challenge sexism.
This enrages both men and women.
We are Jews who feels strongly that anti-Semitism must be challenged and that its definition
should move beyond anti-Jewish sentiment to include prejudice, genocide and violence against any
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community that does not practice Christianity. Many feel that we are operating from a place of
internalized anti-Semitism and that we are bringing disrespect and dishonor to the Jewish Diaspora
- in particular the Ashkenazi community.
We are women of color who believe that the boundaries of racial and ethnic identity must collapse
and be reconstituted to fit the complexities of past, present and future generations.
We want a new alternative to black and white binary thinking.
We are saddened that our existence defies reality for many people. We think that the reason this
happens is because many people are caught up in the blindness of binary thinking. Bridge people –
those of us that transgress socially sanctioned boundaries and communities – are lightening rods
and targets of other people’s anger because we disrupt notions of identity, place and belonging. We
must continue to disrupt these notions without taking away from or diluting the experiences of
other oppressed communities. However, we must also work to ensure that the framework in which
we are operating is wide enough to allow for peoples’ wholeness, complexity and reality.
This is our call for multiplicity.
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Fear is the Fuel That Leads To Our Exclusion
We have been thinking for quite some time about the relationship between fear, dualistic thinking
and oppression. From our experiences, dualistic thinking leads to simplified, essential
interpretations of identity that fail to grasp the complexity of a situation or experience. This kind
of either/or rather than both/and thinking is embedded in U.S. culture and often leads to
perpetuating fear. As organizers, we know that fear comes from a person’s lack of understanding,
experience or information about something or someone. If a person is thinking and operating from a
dualistic framework this increases the likelihood that they may be fearful of something or someone
that does not reflect their reality, way of thinking or their experience.
In other words, dualisms give us very limited options as to how we relate to one another and to the
world around us because this framework does not allow us to see the nuances or to fully accept a
reality that may be different than our own.
Fear of bridge people, people whose very existence transcends categorical definitions, lies at the
heart of a culture that constantly perpetuates violence on bodies that are not been deemed socially
"acceptable" Brown, Black, young, female, gender variant, differently-abled bodies. This violence
finds its roots in fear: fear of difference and fear of people who are working to integrate the mind
and the body. This is not new: the body has always been a location for perpetuating oppression and
violence. Lynching and rape are two very painful and historical examples of this. We believe that
what people fear about mixed race and gender variant people are our androgynous, gender variant
and multi-racial bodies. And as a result, we experience violence in our bodies: verbal and physical
assaults, exclusionary actions and policies that deny our existence.
Fear has also come to us in the forms of exclusionary politics that hide under the masks of inclusive
language. We can't tell you how many times we have confronted this hypocrisy! Two examples come
to mind: First, the use of language such as LGBTI in movement contexts where Bisexuals, Intersex
and Trans people are not actually welcome, present, spoken with, considered or when where they are
merely tokenized. The second example is specific to the Feminist movement, when time and time
again, Women of Color have been invited to sit at the table, and then promptly excluded from the
conversations that surround them - including in the development of the agenda.
We find politics that insinuate separation of self so offensive: the use of language that gives the
impression that we are welcome to join agendas that are not respectful or inclusive of our
experiences or realities.
For example, within the Feminist movement, Lesbians have been welcomed; Women of Color have
been "welcomed" into separate spaces. When Lesbians of Color have confronted the lack of
integrated spaces to address our lives, we are asked to separate ourselves, and we have been told
our issues are not relevant. Though this serves as one example, the same can be said of most
movements at this time. We have, in our efforts to appear to be doing the right thing, developed
language that seems inclusive when in reality our actions are divisive and painful: many people who
are anti-racist still cannot deal with mixed race individuals; many people who are anti-homophobic
and feminists still do not see Trans, Intersex or Bisexual peoples’ lives as related to their own
because it’s simply too complicated.
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Moving the Movement Beyond Identity Politics As We Know Them
"If we are interested in building a movement that will not constantly be subverted by internal
differences, then we must build from the inside out, not the other way around. Coming to terms
with the suffering of others has never meant looking away from our own."
~ Cherrie Moraga in the Foreword to the 2nd Edition of
This Bridge Called My Back
We believe we must move beyond identity politics in their current form. We know that this
statement may shock, disturb and upset many people. We make this statement from a place of deep
respect for the powerful and visionary people who pioneered the thinking and practice of identity
politics. For many oppressed communities identity politics have given us a fundamentally important
way to forge sense of belonging and solidarity within and between communities.
We must move beyond identity politics because the current framework is suffocating us. What once
was revolutionary has been appropriated and used as a tool to further divide our movements. We
have misused this beautiful, important and necessary concept so much that we have created narrow
boxes, appointed individuals and built institutions to police the boundaries of identity.
Unfortunately identity politics have not evolved as a result because many of us are not open to
adding, expanding, throwing out, re-creating, re-envisioning identities. We are simply holding onto
the identities and categories we know and feel comfortable with - leaving others outside the door
trying to make their way in. The more complex one's identity, the less likely it is that they will get a
`pass' from the gatekeeper that deems them acceptable and legitimate enough to enter the room.
We must revise not just the concept, but also the practice of identity politics. What do we mean by
the practice of identity politics? We may want to find a way to define what we mean by practice.
The amazing people who revolutionized the way that we think about identity, community and
belonging never intended for us to get stuck in static categories. In reality, their theories and calls
for action were quite the opposite. Where have we gone astray?
We seek to build alliances with anyone who is committed to busting binaries because we believe that
we must all have the freedom to live as whole people. Until we are able to integrate all of who we
are into the framework of what we do, we will remain actors in the service of maintaining a divided
world.
The key to our survival lies in our abilities to create whole selves and whole communities and to undo
the divisions that have been drawn across our lands and bodies. However, before we can achieve
this kind of solidarity, it's important to highlight the kinds of bridges that need to be built and the
binary busting that needs to be done before we can forge the kinds of alliances that deepen our
understanding and practice of identity politics. We offer the examples of our own experiences as
mixed race feminists who see busting binaries around race, gender and Anti-Semitism as starting
points in the re-visioning of identity politics.
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How Our Mixed & Gendered Bodies Bust Binaries
Gender variant and mixed race people are bridge people. Although we are not the only communities
to be confronted by rigid identity politics, our communities and struggles serve as examples of how
bridge people have and will continue to change the nature of identity politics.
Our bodies and experiences bridge, challenge and change the very essence of identity politics. Our
being is unsettling to the identity police who misread, violate, exclude, ignore and fear us because
we cannot be shunted into narrow either/or identity frameworks. This is what mixed race and
gender variant people have in common: we bust long established binaries to the discomfort of even
the most "progressively" minded people. Transgender, bisexual, intersexed and mixed race activists
face similar questions of legitimacy, priority and belonging within larger, more visible movements.
We both have had experiences where our belonging and legitimacy have been questioned, as the
following statement from Ana indicates:
"There have been so many pieces of my life that have highlighted the ways in which fears function
to hurt, limit and violate people: being mixed race, perceived as Black in some contexts, as white in
others. Being a butch Lesbian, sometimes perceived as a man and sometimes as a heterosexual
woman. Being Jewish and being perceived as not. These limits of perception have taught me about
what other people fear as a result of how they have perceived me. Based on these perceptions,
people have made decisions as to whether or not I am `allowed' to participate, and how I am
supposed to participate - usually without consulting me. Issues I bring to the table are not seen as
valid because of whom I am perceived to be. People also have made decisions as to whether I am
`normal' or not, and have acted accordingly."
Lisa's experiences tell a similar story:
"I have been to many feminist conferences and `women only¡¦ spaces where there have been heated
confrontations brewing about whether Trans women `belonged' and were going to be `allowed' to
participate. At the same time heated confrontations were brewing about whether mixed race
women `belonged' and were going to be `allowed' to participate. This clearly highlights how binaries
can be operating simultaneously in ways that completely distract us from the real conversations we
need to be having. As a light skinned Woman of Color, I am fully prepared to engage in hard
conversations about my privileges. Yet, what I often encounter instead is a heated conversation
about whether or not I am legitimate enough to even be in the room. Where does it get us as a
movement when a critical mass of potential allies are left standing on the other side of a closed
door while the "truly legitimate" police the lines of identity? The conversation and work ahead is
not about legitimacy. Rather, it's about power, privilege and oppression. When will we stop busting
out litmus tests and start having the necessary conversations we need to have to hold ourselves and
one another accountable?"
These experiences have led us to raise serious questions about the impact that binary thinking and
practice has had on our movements. These questions include: What role have dualisms played
historically in our movements? How have dualisms led to our misuse of identity politics? What
questions do we need to consider in developing a vision for moving forward?
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Even though our movements have rested on the rhetoric of inclusion, for the most part, they have
adopted the dualistic framework of our society. There are many historical and contemporary
examples of this:
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The Abolitionist movement silenced black women (even though black women were central to
the work);
The Suffragist movement removed itself from the cause of abolition;
The labor movement (until recently) did not recognize the issues of immigrant laborers of
color;
The Civil Rights movement has addressed issues of Blacks and whites in the U.S. without
touching the issues of the LGBT leaders and activists within the movement - to the point of
disassociating with them;
The current anti-war movements demonstrating the use of swastikas by people of color and
Jews as symbols of protest.
Our movements have not only disowned or ignored the ones who challenge our causes, they have also
developed narrow definitions: of womanhood within the Feminist movement, to the exclusion of
queer women, women of color and trans folks; of race, to the exclusion of those not fitting a clear
black/white dichotomy, including immigrants, mixed-race folks, and other people of color; of sexual
orientation and gender identity, to the exclusion of bisexuals, transgender and interrex folks and
people of color.
Building Bridges with Our Mixed and Trans(cendent) Bodies
How is it that we stay whole in the face of all of this? There are some really powerful tools that we
have developed to confront the violence, fear and isolation we often face. These tools include:
developing new language to identify our own experiences while challenging the language and practice
of oppression; creating communities where wholeness is the central value; telling the stories of our
lived experiences; and taking actions against oppression based on the truth of our realities. These
are tools that bridge people use to hone and shape and mold new layers to our skin and backs.
Our lived experiences have proven that we ARE possible and not a theoretical aberration. In turn,
we believe that bridge people have developed abilities to be compassionate when others around us
are subjected to violence: we recognize its many forms, and feel the pain as it reverberates in
others¡¦ experiences. The understanding that we are all human beings, worthy of dignity and life is a
powerful tool, and the fact that we must often face rejection and misunderstanding from the
people who birthed and raised us makes us stronger on our own paths and unafraid to confront false
demonstrations of love. And finally, it is our realization that the constructs around us are not real,
but maintained by those who create and confront injustices. And, when it comes down to it, a lot of
us are healers (traditionally and socially) and on the path of healing ourselves and others.
It is also our history of struggle and vision that continues to keep us whole and strong. It was Trans
folks who literally kicked off the Gay Liberation movement. It was their belief in their right to
exist as who they are that gave them the strength and conviction to stage an outright battle with
cops. And they were Trans people of color, living in the center of who they were and would become
(not in the margins as many would argue). It was women of mixed race/ethnic heritage, such as
Cherrie Moraga, Gloria Anzaldua, and Audre Lorde along with others, who were able to enter the
spaces of Feminist Movement and pick up on the subtle and not-so subtle ways in which women of
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color were excluded. They gave us new language to identify our own experiences while challenging
the language of oppression.
Gender variant and mixed race communities are just two examples of why movements for social
justice need to move away from rigid identity lines. Though we recognize the historical and political
values of those identity politics, we must be honest about the limits of our movements. We must sit
at the table, develop new alliances and push the rigid lines of our movements into softer molds.
Before us lies a fundamental question: How can stronger bonds of solidarity be fostered between
binary busting activists, specifically mixed race and gender variant activists, so that we can
formulate a collective strategy for challenging dualisms throughout our movements? We know that
we do not have all of the answers to this question. However, we do think that an important place to
start is with dialogue and sorting through what strategies have and have not worked across
communities. For example, we know that single-identity movements (traditional Marxist
movements), while strategically very powerful, often end up losing more people than not. While
cross-identity movements and practices, for example the Color of Violence Conference and its
outgrowth - INCITE!, build strong, grassroots energy for social justice work.
We also want to say up front that we do not believe that the mixed race and gender variant
communities are the only communities challenging dualisms. We constantly need to expand the circle
to include as many people from various perspectives as possible. Together, we believe we can begin
to build solidarity in the face of the barriers we encounter.
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The Importance of Reframing Anti-Semitism:
Putting Bridge Building into Practice
Jews are a complex people:
We are not just Ashkenazi-we are also Sephardic, and Mizrahi.
We are not just “white”-but mixed and People of Color
We are not just straight - but gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex
We are not just US/European born-but living all over the world and are of many cultures
We are women and girls
We are of all class backgrounds
We are not all able bodied
We are practicing and non-practicing Jews
Some of us have converted some of us born
We are not the only community to experience Anti-Semitism
All of us Jews.
The narrow way that Jewishness is framed inside and outside of the mainstream Jewish Diaspora in
the United States is highly problematic for many of us and is a clear example of how dichotomies
stymie our social justice work. The mainstream U.S. based Jewish Diaspora, for the most part, does
not recognize our diverse expressions of Judaism, our many cultural and racial backgrounds and our
complex experiences of Anti-Semitism. As a result, those of us who are not Ashkenazi, white, US
born and straight are marginalized and made invisible within the Diaspora; our opinions are
marginalized and de-legitimized by Jews and non-Jews alike. And still we are subject to antiSemitism as well as to narrow definitions of anti-Semitism.
Many of us radical Jews, mixed race Jews, queer Jews, trans Jews, Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews
work to challenge the sexism, racism, classism, homo/bi/trans phobia, xenophobia and other forms
of oppression that are perpetuated within our ranks. Yet, this is not where our struggle ends. We
are still confronted with all of the -isms (including anti-Jewish oppression) that are perpetuated by
folks outside of the mainstream Jewish Diaspora.
Our social justice movements are not exempt from these binary forms of thinking, or from antiSemitism. We believe it is imperative to begin asking questions about agency and accountability
within our movements: Anti-Semitism is not a dead issue; it is alive and well in both its internalized
and externalized forms and affects our ability to organize across communities. Jews with white
privilege cannot substitute white guilt for Jewish identity; Jews of color within our movements
exist and are a necessary and powerful force for confronting oppressions in their multiple forms.
Our experiences of our Jewishness and of Anti-Semitism highlight this point:
Ana:
“I cannot separate my experiences of Anti-Semitism from racism in particular, and to a lesser
degree from sexism or homophobia. It is the assumptions that all Latinos are Catholic/Christian; or
that all black people are from the United States; or that there are no Jews of color; or that being
mixed makes one “less than” or “half” of something that is supposedly whole; or being Jewish means
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you own Brooklyn; or that Israel is homogenous; or that being queer means you don’t belong. It is
being asked the question “So, is your mother Jewish?” (other Jews who have converted but who
have white-skinned privileged are not subjected to this question) or having my mixed race identity
being boiled down to a black, white and Jewish equation. These kinds of assumption and experiences
have ALL affected me, and yet, they do not diminish my personal relationship with Judaism and with
positive social interactions that serve to affirm and confirm my sense of Jewish community and
identity. These assumptions will never make me less of a Jew.”
Lisa:
“I can not separate out the anti-Jewish oppression that I often face from Anti-Arab racism,
homophobia and sexism. As someone who lives at so many intersections, it’s very difficult to tease
out or isolate the particulars of how one form of oppression manifests itself because what many
people react to the whole package – Jewish/Arab-American, lesbian, women, mixed race. However, I
also know when Anti-Semitism is part of the equation. It’s like I can smell and taste it. It’s an
automatic response from my gut. What automatically comes up for me are those feelings I felt in
Temple as a young child listening to stories of the Holocaust. Those painful and sick feelings that
act as a clarifying force in my life and interactions with people. What I find interesting is that
these feelings have given me what I need to take agency in situations where Anti-Semitism or any
other form of oppression is present. They guide my actions, consciousness, my deep and strong
desire for solidarity and determine who I form relationships with.”
Using Anti-Semitism as Fuel for an Exclusionary Agenda
The bottom line for both of us is that framing Jewishness and Anti-Semitism in narrow ways only
furthers two very troubling premises: that all Jews are Ashkenazi, white, straight, wealthy and
US/European born.; and that Jews are the only community to be targets of Anti-Semitism. The
first premise only serves to perpetuate racism, sexism, homo/bi/trans phobia, classism and
xenophobia inside and outside of the Jewish Diaspora. The second premise prevents the building of
solidarity between Jews and other non-Christian communities who are targets of Anti-Semitism in a
particular form. It is our belief that the reason why Anti-Semitism is framed in either/or ways is
specifically to feed an imperialist/neo-colonialist and exclusionary framework that shatters all
possibility of solidarity between non-Christian, mostly of color, communities.
Our stories highlight how problematic the first premise is. There is so much diversity in the Jewish
community that it is impossible to define Jewishness and the experience of Anti-Semitism in
simplistic ways. In addition, there are many Jews, including Aurora and Ricardo Levins Morales and
Elly Bulkin among many, who have contributed significantly to challenging and deepening our
understandings of the complexity of Jewish identities.
What we rarely see explored, is how narrowly Anti-Semitism is defined. Narrow definitions of AntiSemitism get used as a tool of oppression and as justification for not building bridges of solidarity
across communities. Why can’t we begin to make a distinction between the particularities of antiJewish oppression and the collective experience of Anti-Semitism that many non-Christian/Catholic
communities face? In not making this distinction we perpetuate the notion that Arab Jews,
Muslims, Hindus etc...do not exist and furthermore do not experience racism and Anti-Semitism
simultaneously. These dichotomies and erasures not only serve to perpetuate a reactionary and
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conservative neo-colonialist/imperialist agenda worldwide but, within the framework of Zionism,
they also fuel the Israeli government’s justification of the occupation of Palestine. In other words,
with the ways in which anti-Semitism is currently utilized within our language and frameworks, the
Israeli state does not have to own its racist actions because the occupation of Palestine is a
necessary tool in combating Anti-Semitism and maintaining the Zionist project.
What we are calling for is an end to these false dichotomies. A misuse and abuse of identity politics
by our movements has created a culture in which we risk our spiritual, physical, emotional and
economic lives naming these intersections and dichotomies. Why are we so intent to separate
ourselves from one another when we have enough pressure from outside of our movements to
remain isolated and divided? This kind of reactionary politic must stop because our passion and
vision for justice is being suffocated by this kind of thinking and practice. We are missing so many
opportunities to band together, honor our humanity and have the collective awareness to
understand the depths and complexity of the issues our communities face in facing the broader,
sweeping forms of anti-Semitism.
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Busting the Lens and Collapsing the Binaries:
Reframing Class
Through the lens of binary busting around race, gender and anti-Semitism we have been able to see
that class is one of the areas of experience and identity where a binary framework is not
maintained. As a result, we have come to the conclusion that not all issues of identity and
experience require binary busting in order to systematically dismantle oppression.
In the United States there is an intentional and strategic murkiness around class that enables the
majority of people to believe in the social contract of the American dream. Part of signing onto
American identity is agreeing to the baseline of the American dream, which as a social contract,
assumes that we are all able to attain this middle class ideal. However, that ideal is unattainable for
most of us, and as a result, there is a blurring of the boundaries around what it means to be middle
class--despite the fact that we have all been lured into believing that class is static and moves only
in one of two directions: up or down. If that were true, those of us, other than the top 1%, would
have a much clearer picture of where we fall on the class ladder.
Class in the United States always begins with race and gender as social and political markers. The
dominant culture uses race and gender as two axes by which to appoint class standing, so that,
depending on where you fall on the grid, you have greater and or lesser social and political power.
This is where the collapse of the binary becomes dangerous: we actually begin to believe that these
two markers are real and that they inherently determine where we fall or rise (and that this
movement is up or down). And this creation of a class grid has been done so effectively that we’ve
come to think as race and class as caste markers. These ideas can become so internalized that we
can perpetuate ideas of who has a right to speak, to participate, to work, to have children, to make
decisions about their own life based on where they fall on this grid. In contrast, however, using
class as the primary frame for analysis has often failed to take into account the ways in which class
has functioned in this society, in particular with the US history of immigration and undocumented
labor, as well as with the constructs of race, gender and sexuality.
The impact of maintaining a murky framework around class is similar to the impact that we witness
when issues are framed in binary terms. Class is used--as is race, gender etc--to divide us so that
there is little basis for solidarity, collectivity or resource sharing. Not framing the class in binary
terms, which we advocate for with most of the other issues, still bolsters the project of domestic
and international supremacy perpetuated by the U.S. What this leads us to ponder is what does it
mean for our overall premise around binary busting we see that there is no class binary framework
to bust and that doing so has only fueled supremacy and maintained the notion of our current social
contract as an effective one?
In all of the conversations we have had around binary busting over the years, we are clear that
when a binary is busted it must be done with the utmost accountability, clarity and solidarity. Binary
busting, as we know, can be a very dangerous act because it can--if done outside of an antioppression framework-- further divisions and tensions between communities. Therefore, when we
speak of binary busting we are NOT advocating for a complete break down of frameworks like we
see around the issue of class. Both extremes--maintaining rigid binaries or breaking down
frameworks without clarity, accountability and particularity--lead to the same outcome.
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In the case of class constructs within the U.S., we must challenge ourselves to dig deeply at the
roots of the particularity of our experiences so that we can create a framework around class that
is complex (not dualistic) and holds us accountable to whatever class privileges we hold. Class has
been kept intentionally murky so that we don't engage in these class conversations across all lines
of difference—thus keeping us divided.
We think it’s important to sit with this idea of an “inverted” binary. Or, a binary collapsed onto
itself. It’s like holding a thread between our fingers and pulling it in two very opposite directions
and going so far that they end up meeting again in the middle. The key, then is finding those spaces
in between that allow for the complexity of our experiences while giving us the language to frame
and to do our work in accountable, sustainable ways. Given this, how do we then begin to talk about
class within our movements in ways that change the underlying frameworks we assume to be true?
This is where we are trying to push ourselves to seek out new models. What we have come to learn
in our movements haven’t answered our questions thus far.
As it relates to class itself, we think that it is critical to talk about class as multi-dimensional,
intersectional and rooted in a particular experience. What we think most organizers (and people in
general) need help with is defining class in complex ways as well as developing the skills and
consciousness to understand how to break down their class experience with particularity and
clarity.
For example, around the issue of race, we have developed some skill in our movements around
dismantling racism and understanding our place within the US race construct. Despite the
limitations to some of the work that has been done in this area, we can point to an emerging praxis.
Around class, no such praxis or skill building exists on a movement-wide level. Most of us just seem
to be lost when it comes to understanding class and our place in it in complex and multi-dimensional
ways. As we said earlier, this only perpetuates classism and supremacy.
Rather than framing our work around class as binary busting--we thought to frame it as busting
through the intentionally murky and linear framing of class. Clarity, particularity and
intersectionality must be a priority when framing and developing models around class.
Classism in Movements for Social Justice
Classism is a huge issue within movements for social justice. In every organization in which we have
worked, class and race barriers have prevented poor/working-class and People of Color from being
in leadership positions. Over the years we have experienced, in multiple ways, how classism is deeply
embedded in social justice work and how classism intersects and colludes with other forms of
oppression to stymie social justice work. Below are just a few of the experiences that have shaped
our understanding of classism within our movements:
Lisa's Movement Experiences:
”Years ago I worked for an LGBT rights organization that required its national board members to
pay up front for their travel and expenses to board meetings. Many of the working class and poor
folks who were either on the board or prospective board members said that they could not attend
board meetings if they had to front the money to attend the meetings. The “fix” to this “problem”
was that the Executive Director told board members that if they needed financial assistance they
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needed to call the office to get their reservations made on the organizations credit card. Why
couldn’t this be done for everyone so that it did not single out the working class and poor folks on
the board?
Years later I worked for a feminist organization whose “progressive rhetoric” would have led anyone
to believe that they were anti-racist and totally about the business of worker justice. The funny
little thing was that they had a long history of union busting. The pay scale between upper
management and the lowest paid “junior staff” (as we were called) was over $100,000. The pay scale
between the lowest paid “junior staff” and the highest paid “junior staff” was over $20,000. Most
of the lowest paid staff members were young and People of Color. Feminism has surely come a long
way.
I have organized a union in every social justice organization in which I have worked over the past
decade. What I know from my experience is that union busting is one of the most revered pastimes
of the progressive movement—including the labor movement. Ironic, right? Every organizing drive I
have been in has turned into a blood bath with management viciously targeting union organizers in
the workplace to try and break morale and momentum. Simply put, most social justice organizations
do not want their workers having bargaining and economic power.
What does this have to do with class? Simply put many of the practices and ideology of our
movement organizations are based on the same class hierarchy (the same goes for race, gender
etc…) as the society around us. Unions are just one tool for trying to challenge and dismantle the
institutional class privilege that permeates our movements. Yet, union busting is typically how the
ruling class in our movements send the message that they will not share resources or power with
the people whose backs they are standing on to delicately craft the politically correct rhetoric of
“social justice”. In the end, the hypocrisy reeks of injustice and oppression. Busting the binary in
our movements means stopping the union busting. It means taking seriously the work of ending
classism in all aspects of social justice work. We must continue to tell our stories around class and
challenge our movements to develop a class consciousness that dismantles barriers and paves the
way towards access to resources for all.
Working with folks who have class consciousness in our movement is a very different experience
from working with folks who lack it. For example, when I was for that LGBT rights organization I
referred to earlier, we had some huge challenges around class. The board was majority white and
upper class. However, there was a small contingent of young, working class, multi-racial and trans
people on the board who were constantly challenging the class dynamics. There were all kinds of
assumptions embedded in the board’s policies and practices that were totally exclusionary and
impeded access along lines of class and race. Some of these policies and practices included:
Implying that board members should pay their own way to meetings in different parts of the
country. Board members who "needed assistance" were told that they had to ask the ED to use her
personal credit card if they did not have a credit card or if they "could not afford" to cover the
cost of attending meetings. Another incredibly disturbing situation emerged around the election of
a new board president.
There were two candidates: a wealthy, white, male doctor and a working class, differently-abled,
woman who had a nursing background. The woman, who I will call Jane, was known nationally for her
LGBT rights work. The man, who I will call Robert, was only known in his home state. Just prior to
the election there was this buzz about how Jane may not be an "appropriate president". Many of us
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on staff were concerned about this buzz because we knew Jane's reputation and outstanding work.
Come to find out, the buzz was totally rooted in classism and ableism. Some members of the board
did not think that Jane was "presentable enough" to be the board president. There were disgusting
things said about the way Jane dressed and about how she was periodically bound to a wheel chair.
It was absolutely disgusting.
A small group of us on staff were allied with the small group of working class, multi-racial and trans
folks on the board. Together we did some of the most intersectional and radical work the
organization had ever seen. However, we were all marginalized in our different areas of the
organization for backing one another up and for challenging the class and race dynamics.
We were all very vocal about naming what was happening... Yet, the folks in power used their power
to marginalize and silence us. Not surprisingly, none of us are involved with the organization today.
Another interesting example occurred when a small group of us on the staff of this organization
started a union organizing drive. As usual, the small group of working class, multi-racial and trans
folks on the board fully supported and understood the reasons behind the drive. Yet, those in power
did all that they could to bust our union organizing efforts. In the end, we unionized, but the scars
of that time period run deep for all of us who were in the leadership of the unionizing effort. So
much of what fueled the board’s efforts to bust the union was based on adultism, racism,
homo/bi/transphobia and classism.
What I learned from this experience was the important role people with a consciousness around
complex identities can play in busting binaries and breaking down class dynamics. I find it no
mistake that the folks in the group that was most vocal in challenging the race and class dynamics in
the organization were multi-racial, trans inclusive, young, working class and mostly women (feminists
and womanists).
Recently my partner and I went to see Leslie Feinberg speak at the University of MD. Leslie gave
multiple examples of how the most radical and intersectional work in our movements has historically
come from the Left wing of the LGBT rights movement. This is where folks have made the
connections between LGBT issues and workers rights, women's rights, reproductive justice,
immigration rights and disability rights. For me, it's critical to work with folks in our movements
that have class consciousness. Without it, I don't believe that the most radical intersectional work
can happen.”
Ana's Movement Experience
”Class has come up for me throughout my movement work. Mostly because in my work, everyone has
come to the table with different class backgrounds which implication is not addressed in doing the
work. It has often been assumed that because we are mostly women, or queer or people of color
that we have similar class experiences, and therefore come to the work from the same perspective.
But class, race, gender and national dynamics become immediately apparent in how the work is
broken down: who ends up doing what, how and why. I have learned, over and over again, that class is
proving to have the greatest challenges for our relationships. Both our class backgrounds and
consciousness or lack thereof affect how we relate to each other, how we do our work, what we
work on, how we engage the space and how we relate outside of the space.
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In most groups with which I have organized or work, I am walking in with a lot of class privilege – I
have a college education, two parents who are still married and had a role in raising me, and have
traveled. Over the last 10 years, I’ve had health insurance for six of those years and I’ve owned a
car, cell phone and have a credit card. This is often reflected in the majority of the group’s
leadership as well, regardless of race, sexual orientation or gender. And it is because of this that
class has such a presence – whether or not it is spoken.
In one particular experience with a group of radical artists and organizers, what was so intense was
that four out of the six butchest people in the room were the ones who also had the least economic
privilege, with the exception of myself and one other genderqueer/masculine person, who actually is
from a very wealthy immigrant family and grew up in a gated community. Out of the four other
butch people (besides myself and the other person) three had a high school education, were raised
working class or poor and are currently on public assistance and out of these four, two are
chronically ill and on disability. And what’s even deeper is that the people with the least economic
privilege are all butch – though not all queer. For me, there is a direct connection. I think that this
dynamic between gender expression and identity and class privilege is present throughout our
movement: the leadership of butch women is a double edged sword whereby women can either be
seen as a threat, illegitimate leaders or as the ones to do it all. And because we are in women’s
bodies, the assumption and expectation has been that we’ll do it without support, compensation or a
net to address the issues that directly affect us. I also think that it’s not a coincidence that the
only two people with chronic illness are working class.
Making these kinds of connections have been important for me in terms of defining accountable
relationships – for example, I’m usually one of the butchest people in the room, but because of my
class privileges, I often make a point of stepping back, listening and validating the other butches’
experiences as a way to create a bridge of solidarity where our experiences of gender and class
based oppression become points of connection. And, for me personally, and because of my own
mixed class experiences, there are many points I can often relate to within organizing spaces – such
as the stories and realities of poverty’s affects on the body, the value of work, and the direct
impact of US international policies of xenophobia and imperialism (globalization) on family and
communities.
More often than not, the structures of our organizations are implicitly classist and class-based, and
those with the most education, income and access to resources (i.e. the wealthiest) have the
greatest access to the structures of leadership. This happens in all organizations, even the ones
with class consciousness. Take, for example, organizations doing work in communities of color,
recruiting from the communities in which they work – but generally only compensating the Executive
Director (who may or may not be from the community), the Development/Money person (who serves
to feed the organization’s professional, i.e. legitimate, structure – usually definitely not from the
community), and the Program person (who may be from the community, but has often worked for an
excessive number of years as a volunteer or intern for/with the organization, left and came back to
the community, or learned program development in college). The many people who actually lead the
organizing efforts within schools, communities, projects, neighborhoods, etc are compensated by
knowing they’ve done good work – but the expectation is that that is where their role ends.
I don’t speak to this out of disgust, but rather out of frustration that we continue to replicate the
larger patterns of society. This, of course, is inevitable given that organizations have become our
primary avenue for organizing, and that the non-profit glut has served to enable the growth of a
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large class of people whose “professional” work is in organizing – and this group of professionals is
college educated and from middle class backgrounds. It is because of this that I decided – because
it is a choice for me, and one I consider with great gravity – to step out of paid movement work.
Because the non-profit structure was not only limiting, inevitably it also invited the
disenfranchisement of the very people with whom I was working to change social, economic and
political conditions.
I, of course, do not advocate nor suggest this path for everyone. But I do put forth the question of
how, why and with whom we do this work. I also have witnessed the damage done by people with
extensive degrees and access to resources and power not fully utilizing those resources to
strengthen the work. So it goes in many ways, it’s not simple, is what I’m getting at. But because it
is not simple does not mean that as organizers, we don’t have to ask the question.
What I’ve been looking for over the years, since I stepped away from paid organizing, is the ways in
which people are doing the work that does not contribute to class hierarchies and inevitably,
economic/political oppression. I have seen that in the most disenfranchised communities, we are
organizing ourselves in completely different ways, utilizing completely different models based on
completely different values. And I appreciate these models and have been stepping back to learn
from them. What I am learning, within these models, is that everyone is expected to be present in
their truth and to listen to each other, and no one person has a greater value than any other. And
that, I believe is part of the key of reframing how class affects our movements, and undoing the
learning around money and personal value that we have all, for the most part, internalized.”
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Lisa’s Stories
Part I: Person of Color: Race and the Mixed Body
I have very vivid memories of celebrating the holidays with my Muslim Arab grandparents. My
grandmother was born in Detroit Michigan, the daughter of Syrian immigrants, while my
grandfather immigrated to the United States from Lebanon during the Depression. My Jido and
Sito (grandfather and grandmother in Arabic) celebrated Christmas rather than Ramadan. They
decided that this was one way that they could try to fit in to the predominantly white Christian
New Hampshire community in which they resided.
Every year, my Sito would set up her Christmas tree in front of a huge bay window in her living
room. It was always important to her that the neighbors could see the tree from the street
outside. In other words, it was important to find some way to signal publicly that our family was
assimilating. Yet, my grandmother was running around the kitchen preparing dozens of traditional
Arabic dishes, the house smelled of kibbe and rice and cigar smoke. The volume was loud, the
vibration was frenetic. Family members were debating, speaking passionately and running from room
to room while Arabic music played in the background. Christmas day was not a day when we went to
Church - there was no religious aspect to our gathering. The day was about family, food and a hot
and heavy poker game was always the main activity. Privately our world was very different than
what was being publicly communicated by the strategically placed Christmas tree in the window. It
took me years to untangle and understand this public/private dichotomy that was so much a part of
my growing up years.
As I continue to unearth memories like the one with my Jido and Sito during the holiday season, I
have realized that my history and identities have been shaped by razor sharp and politically
charged dualisms. I am a Jewish-Arab American, mixed race, mixed class, lesbian feminist. When I
walk into a room of strangers it is often assumed that I am white, straight and middle class. Some
might assume that I am Jewish, but rarely do folks assume that I am Arab as well. I have learned
two important lessons from living this reality. The first is that things are not always what they
appear to be. In other words, we cannot determine another person's reality or lived experience by
just looking at them. The second is that perceptions are very powerful not only from the
perspective of the person who holds the perception, but also from the perspective of the person
who is being perceived a certain way. For example, white people feel free to say racist things to me
assuming that I am white. They are quite surprised when I not only challenge them on their white
supremacy, but also when I let them know that they are talking about me, half of my family and my
community. The perception that I am white gives me the opportunity and responsibility to challenge
racism, yet at the same time it does not negate the fact that I am mixed race and that racism
personally and painfully impacts my life and the lives of Arab people.
We live in a white supremacist culture that banks on dichotomous thinking and ways of operating to
keep people divided and fragmented within themselves. As a result, those of us that do not fit into
either/or boxes experience an enormous amount of pressure to choose one "side" of ourselves over
another. I am committed to the work of understanding that the only reason Jewish/Arab,
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public/private, visible/invisible, Black/white, privilege/oppression, pride/shame are dualisms is
because of the socially constructed either/or framework within which we live. In other words,
these false separations do not exist within me, but are imposed upon me by the society around me. I
am a whole, complex person that experiences all of these realities. I am not fragmented parts.
However, the struggle for many of us that carry multiple identities is to not internalize and become
paralyzed by a society that rejects our complexity all in the name of keeping things simple and easy
to categorize. As a result, my work personally and politically has been about learning how to use all
of the socially constructed dualisms that have been imposed upon me as a tool to challenge their
falseness, live as a whole person and to work for a more just society.
I started doing social justice work almost ten years ago. I naively assumed that in progressive
circles one could bring their full self. After years of anti-oppression training and organizing work I
now know that many "progressive" people and organizations are just as invested in either/or
dichotomous thinking and in perpetuating oppression as the world around us. There are two
experiences that come to mind that highlight how difficult it is being mixed race in movements for
social justice.
Several years ago, I helped to found a challenging white supremacy organizing and training project
in New England. Although the focus of this project was on developing a cadre of anti-racist white
people to work in their own communities to launch anti-racist projects, People of Color guided the
direction of the work and held the decision making power. I happened to be the only mixed race
person involved in the process. Throughout the development of this project I discovered that many
of the anti-racist white trainers and organizers with whom I worked struggled with the fact that I
identified as a mixed race person. Because I did not "look like a person of color" (and particularly
because I am Arab) it was often expected that I identify as white. The fact that I identified as
mixed race and that I was involved in a project focused on challenging white supremacy work in
white communities seemed to be, in the eyes of some anti-racist white folks, a betrayal. In other
words, if I was truly a "good" anti-racist white person I would have identified myself strictly on the
basis of how I look, the privileges that I have and/or are perceived to have (once I identify myself
as Arab my privileges usually go out the window) and how the outside world perceives me.
I was told on several occasions that the fact that I identify as mixed AND actively engaged in
organizing white people to challenge racism was only a mark of my own confusion about who I am and
where I belong in the "racial scheme" of things. I was often told subtly and not so subtly that I
should just get over it and make a choice-"white" or "of color"! This "middle of the road" stuff -in
other words being mixed and messing with the neatly arranged racial categories-just made things
more complicated. One would think that recognizing my privilege, challenging white supremacy and
working to be accountable to mixed race people/people of color who are darker skinned than I am
would be exactly what I should be doing to be accountable. In my view, this would include
challenging white people and other light skinned mixed race/People of Color on racism. Somehow,
though, my insistence that I have a responsibility to challenge racism was somehow an "admission" in
the eyes of some white people and people of color that I am white. Shouldn't ALL of us--regardless
of race-- be challenging oppression in any areas where we experience privilege?
Five years ago I attended a conference in Boston, MA focused on race and racism. As with most
conferences there were many workshops to choose from. I chose to attend a workshop about
women, spirituality and anti-oppression work. During the course of the workshop the facilitators, a
white woman and an African-American woman with whom I had worked on other organizing projects,
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divided the group into two caucuses: a white caucus and a woman of color caucus. Just prior to
breaking up the group, I raised my hand and asked where mixed race people were to go. This
question opened up a flood of questions and challenges towards me. The white women in the room,
including the white facilitator, said that they felt that I should caucus with them because I could
pass for white. Most of the women of color concurred with this. Then, the facilitators spent ten
minutes talking to the group about the privileges of being able to choose. Throughout this entire
discussion the level of tension in the room was palpable. Finally, the group resolved that I could
"choose" where to go. By the time that the group broke up to go their separate ways, I did not feel
as if I had much of a choice because the anger in the room was so palpable. Many of the women of
color were angry with me. Many of the white women felt as if they had made an "anti-racist"
intervention by challenging me on my racism. Yet, as the group broke up, I walked towards the room
that the women of color were to meet in. As I approached the door it was quickly slammed in my
face. It was at this moment that I learned a very important lesson: moving beyond dichotomous
thinking and practice requires a great deal of forethought, knowledge of history and accountability.
All of which I was not mature enough politically to understand or deal with at the time. As a result,
I ended up deepening divides rather than bridging them.
These experiences were very painful for me. Yet, they have also made me understand how important
it is for me to be accountable to those that experience oppression in ways that I do not, and to
develop a deep political analysis of power, privilege, institutionalized oppression and assimilation.
More importantly, these experiences have challenged me to develop a vision of how each of these
situations could have opened up opportunities for both white people and People of Color to discuss
and deal with issues that we/they either avoid, experience as too painful or simply do not know how
to grapple with. In each of these situations I would have welcomed an opportunity to talk about the
complexity of race and the politics of skin color. I would have also welcomed an opportunity to talk
about the importance and limitations of identity politics.
Identity politics have given many of us an opportunity to define and claim ourselves as complex and
whole people and to build community with those who share common experiences in the struggle for
justice. Yet, identity politics have also limited our ability as progressive activists to build coalitions
and solidarity across movements for social change and between communities. Ironically, because
white people and people of color often use identity politics as a tool to "divide and conquer" we
simply replicate the racism/internalized racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, ableism and adultism
that we seek to eradicate in the world around us. This is something, irrespective of race, in which
we are all complicit. Having said this, I do not want to understate the institutionalized power that
white people have to enforce and perpetuate racism. However, I also cannot ignore how often we, as
People of Color/mixed race people, allow the chaos that is created by white supremacy to keep us
divided and pitted against one another. As such, we often look upon one another with suspicion,
distrust, anger and sometimes hatred. I yearn to have these discussions in a loving, direct yet
challenging way. I want us, as People of Color/mixed race people to do away with measuring and
challenging one another's legitimacy so that we can begin to go to those places that are difficult to
reach and that require each and every one of us to recognize and take responsibility for our own
contradictions.
In my own case I believe that being personally impacted by racism, sexism, homophobia and AntiSemitism while at the same time taking responsibility for where I have privilege is not a
contradiction. Audre Lorde, in an essay entitled: "Age, Race, Class and Sex", in her book Sister
Outsider, reminds us that exposing ourselves in the work and valuing difference can lead to
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transformation and solidarity. She states: "Change means growth, and growth can be painful. But we
sharpen self-definition by exposing the self in work and struggle together with those whom we
define as different from ourselves, although sharing the same goals. For Black and white, old and
young, lesbian and heterosexual women alike, this can mean new paths to our survival."
Over the past ten years, I have come to learn how difficult it is to struggle with my own
contradictions. However, I do so because I am committed to "creating new paths to our survival".
Along the way, I have been fortunate enough to meet people who are looking to "sharpen their selfdefinition" so that we may work together to create a world in which complexity and wholeness are
valued. I cannot control how others perceive or categorize me. However, I do have choices about
how I use everything that is real or perceived about me to work for justice. In other words, I have
come to realize that our contradictions, experiences of assimilation and/or internalized racism,
homophobia, classism, etc.... can all be used as tools for building solidarity and community among us.
We can use all of these difficult experiences to reach out to one another and to create new
paradigms for relating to one another as People of Color/mixed race people that do not replicate or
perpetuate white supremacist ways of thinking and being (the "divide and conquer" mentality) in our
own relationships, communities, organizations and movements.
Part II: Good Girls, Radical Femms: Gender and the Mixed Body
Recently, I was looking through some storage boxes and came across my high school year book. I
found myself more fascinated by the inscriptions than by the old pictures of classmates and
friends. Inscription after inscription made mention of my commitment to women’s issues and my
feminist politics. Reading my year book reminded me that my burgeoning awareness of gender—mine
and that of others—started young. Even before my time in high school.
When I was growing up, my sister and I spent a great deal of time with our two younger cousins
(one male and one female). Although our parents were very close and enjoyed one another’s company
tremendously, there was one significant point of tension between my mother and her brother that
persisted through the years.
I distinctly recall my uncle reprimanding my female cousin for "not sitting like or acting like a lady".
In his mind, "ladies" were supposed to keep their legs crossed or closed—especially when wearing a
skirt or dress. In the car on the way home from a day of visiting my uncle and his family, my mother
often talked about how disturbed she was at my uncle’s constant comments about being a "proper
lady". She would rant (justifiably) about how sexist she found his comments. She also spoke with
him directly about this on a number of occasions—yet the comments never abated. He felt justified
in making these comments because he felt that this was the way to educate my cousin about how to
be a proper and polite "lady".
This is not the only time that I remember noticing the role gender played in my family. On both my
mother and my father’s side of the family there were rigid and binary gender roles. On my fathers
side women were the matriarchs of their families. They were decision makers, encouraged to get an
education and often worked outside of the home. Yet, they still bore the primary responsibility for
raising children and maintaining the household. On my mother’s side, the opposite was true. Women
were not encouraged to get an education, work outside of the home or be involved in family decision
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making. All of these things were the domain of the male members of my family. Because of some of
these events I began to understand that I was a girl—and I understood what that meant within the
context of our society. It meant that I was going to be treated unequally because of my gender.
It wasn’t until I came out as a lesbian that I also understood that my gender was more complex
than just being "female". It was the activism that I began to do in the LGBTI movement,
particularly the friendships and mentoring relationships that I began to have with transgender
people, that challenged me to understand that I also had a gender identity and expression. I
express myself more on the feminine side of the spectrum than on the masculine. What I mean by
this is I feel—inside—more feminine than masculine. I strongly believe, however, that expressing
one’s femininity and masculinity happens on a spectrum. Therefore, there is more than one way to
be femm/feminine or one way to be butch/masculine. I also believe that there are a lot of gender
variant people out there that express themselves in both masculine and feminine ways
simultaneously. Hence, when I say that I am a femm, I don’t assume that other femms express or
define their "femmness" the same way I do. I also do not assume that butches, transgender people
and men do not feel—inside— some degree of femininity. I come from a place of understanding that
one’s gender does not automatically correlate to their gender identity or expression. For example, a
transgender woman may identify as straight and prefer being with other women. In other words,
this is not a "neat equation".
Being a femm is intrinsically tied to my womanness and my feminist politics. Being a femm is
expressing my strength, passion, vision, activism, and spirituality, and sensuality, commitment to
community and friendships to the fullest. Being a femm has less to do with the clothing or makeup I
choose to wear, if I like to be a bottom or a top or that I have been in a relationship with a Latina
butch woman for six years. None of these things, determine in an absolute way how I express my
gender identity. They might influence aspects of my gender expression–but they do not determine
it in a finite way. What determines my gender expression is how I feel emotionally, spiritually,
psychologically and physically in my own skin.
Although I outwardly appear as a femm in dress and demeanor and although my partner and I
appear to be a stereotypical butch/femm couple, we are not invested in maintaining a butch/femm
paradigm. My "femmness" has more to do with how I feel inside than with perpetuating stereotypes
or trying to fit into binaries. For example, I do not feel as if my partner’s butchness defines how,
when and were I express my femmness. I fully support and love her butchness. However, her
butchness does not determine my femmness or vice versa.
In the past six years I have worked for one national LGBTI organization and one broader social
justice organization where my primary focus was on LGBTI issues. This has given me the
opportunity to do work that I love and feel passionate about. However, it has also allowed to
experience up close and personal how deeply embedded gender binaries are in our movements.In one
of the organizations for which I was working, I was given the assignment of helping to secure the
passage of state and federal hate crimes legislation. (As a side note, I have a lot of serious
concerns about how these hate crimes laws lack any analysis of the race and class implications of
the prison industrial complex. This concern was something I integrated into this project.). This
assignment led me to working with grassroots activists throughout the country who were trying to
get hate crimes laws passed in their local communities. One of the biggest challenges I encountered
doing this work was the transphobia exhibited by lesbian and gay people who stood in front of their
local legislatures to argue that transgender people should not be included in “their” hate crimes bill.
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The other argument I frequently heard was that if gender identity and expression were added to
the bill along side of sexual orientation it would ensure the demise of the bill (by the way, this is
absolutely not true. Several states have passed transgender inclusive legislation without a problem).
Gay and lesbian people are the primary opposition for passage of inclusive bills (hate crimes bills or
otherwise) throughout the country. Their argument: ‘they’ are not part of ‘our’ community and ‘we’
will not ‘sacrifice’ our rights for ‘them’. After years of doing this work, I have come to realize that
many gays and lesbians fear transgender people because they often challenge/represent the fact
that gender is not a binary system. Many gays and lesbians—just like the rest of society—strive to
fit into an inflexible male/masculine, femm/feminine framework that allows us to “normalize” our
sexual orientation. As a result, a good deal of the oppression transgender people face is from gays
and lesbians who use their power and privilege as gays and lesbians to create an us vs. them
situation.
Several years ago I was facilitating a dialogue on transgender issues for an intergenerational and
multi-racial group of feminists (I’ve facilitated this same discussion many times throughout the
years). We first watched an excellent video that was geared towards generating discussion among
the group. After the video we opened up the space for discussion and questions. One of the
participants asked me what the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity was. I
explained that a person’s sexual orientation does not determine their gender identity and vice versa
and then proceeded to give the following example: “there are transgender men who identify their
sexual orientation as heterosexual but who prefer to be in relationships with other men.”
Once this example came out of my mouth, the reaction was instantaneous. All of the younger people
in the room nodded affirmatively as if they completely understood what I was saying. The older
folks in the room either looked perplexed yet interested or deeply concerned. At one point, one of
the second wave feminists raised her hand and very aggressively challenged my example by saying
that through all of her years of political/feminist work she came to understand that one’s sexual
orientation determines the gender of the person they sleep with. She flat out rejected this
example and plainly stated that it was impossible. Several of us in the room respectfully disagreed.
These are just a few examples of how gender binaries play out in our movements. Yet, in general,
like any other binary, they are used to maintain the status quo and to oppress anyone who does not
fit into an either/or framework. Any individual or group of people that is busting a binary in the
very essence of who they are face targeting, exclusion and rage on the part of others who want
things to be “neater”. Our movements, out of sheer fear and inflexibility, maintain binaries because
we are no better than people who are not activists at grappling with the role that our white
supremacist culture plays in our work and relationships with one another. We are just as guilty and
capable of perpetuating oppression and the status quo than anyone else. The lack of accountability,
the degree of self righteousness (I am a better person because I am an activist) and privilege that
guides this thinking only furthers the divides that exist among and between us. Binary thinking and
practice are yet another tool we use to chip away at the potential for solidarity that could exist
among and between communities fighting for liberation and justice.
I continue to hold onto those old year books not just for the memories they hold, but for how they
remind me that I must continue to expand and deepen my commitment to justice and community.
Doing so means working every day to be as inclusive and expansive in my thinking and practice as
possible. I don’t want to loose any opportunities to build bridges nor do I think our movements can
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afford to loose any opportunities to build bridges. Our marginalized communities are under assault
and we need one another more than ever–why let binary thinking and practice be the dividing line?
Part III: Jewish, Arab, Home: Confronting Anti-Semitism
My father is an Ashkenazi Jew and a Zionist, my mother, a Lebanese/Syrian Arab. Their marriage
was an exercise in escapism. My father married to escape poverty by marrying into my mother’s
middle class family while my mother married my father in the hope of escaping the oppression she
felt as a woman in her own family. My Arab/Muslim mother converted to Judaism in a misguided
effort to end the religious, cultural and racial conflicts that existed between them. As a result, I
was raised Jewish. This conversion did not settle matters. My father’s combined racism, Zionism
and sexism was infused into every aspect of their relationship. This made for a volatile, complex
and often confusing family life.
My Jido (grandfather in Arabic) and my Jewish grandfather were the best of friends. They bonded
as ‘brothers from the old country’. As immigrants they took comfort in their common understanding
of the Old Testament and their shared experiences as Semites. They relied upon one another. They
understood one another. They loved one another like brothers.
The juxtaposition of these two sets of relationships is my gift–one that I inherited with a great
deal of pride and clarity. I constantly feel the presence of my grandfathers’ and their ancestors’
influence in my personal and political life. They continue to guide me in my day-to-day struggle to
understand the contradictions and intersections that have been bestowed upon me.
My grandfathers’ example has shown me what is possible between Arabs and Jews, while my
parents’ example has shown me the challenges of finding common ground. In the end, both sets of
relationships have taught me that it is just as important to challenge Anti-Jewish oppression as it is
to fight anti-Arab racism and the occupation of Palestine. As Jews and Arabs our fates are
intimately linked by a painful struggle in a shared homeland. We have two choices in how we deal
with our struggle: we either find common ground and work towards justice, or we continue to,
generation after generation, decimate one another’s souls.
I am often asked, by strangers and sometimes friends, two questions: “how did your parents meet”
and “what are your views on the conflict in the Middle-East”. The latter question is usually followed
by the following sentiments: “You must experience a lot of confusion” or “You must have a very
interesting perspective”. Both sentiments usually expressed from a place of pity, shock or intense
curiosity. My response to these inquiries is generally the same each time. I tell anyone who asks
that I have a lot of clarity about the conflicts of the Middle-East and that I don’t feel any
confusion.
I tell them that being both Jewish and Arab allows me to fight Anti-Jewish oppression and AntiArab Racism simultaneously. Lastly, I tell them that I do not support the state of Israel or its
occupation of Palestine, that I support the existence of an Independent Palestinian state, and that
I support the past, present and future peace movements that have come from both Israel and
Palestine. My stance is not negotiable nor do I stand around and argue the point to my own
detriment. In the end, the clarity of my position–which at its very core challenges dualistic
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thinking-- often makes people more confused than when they asked the question in the first place.
I see my Jewish identity as an important political, emotional and spiritual opening that has provided
me with the ability to understand nuance, complexity and intersectionality. Being raised Jewish in a
predominantly Christian society by a Jewish and Muslim parents has been a significant influence on
opening up my ability and commitment to busting binaries and living as a whole person. I know that
some people may find this outrageous and strange, but claiming my Jewish identity-outside of my
father’s Zionist framework-was fundamental to my process of honoring my Arabness and
understanding that my life’s work (internally and externally) was to move in the world as an ArabJew without internalizing what so many people believe: that I should not exist as a whole person.
Being a Semite on both sides of my family means that I cannot fully separate out the anti-Jewish
oppression from the anti-Arab racism that I often experience. Because of my strong views on
Palestine and the liberation of all Arab peoples, I have been accused by Ashkenazi Jews and nonJews alike of existing from a place of internalized Jewish oppression and self hatred. For many
Ashkenazi Jews, my strong commitment to challenging Anti-Jewish oppression is somehow negated
by my both/and perspective on challenging both Anti-Jewish oppression and Anti-Arab racism. I do
not find this reaction to be true among Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews of Color who seem to
intrinsically understand the complexity of Jewish identity and experience.
In contrast, I have also been held suspect by Arabs until I prove my commitment to an anti-Zionist,
pro-Arab stand. Generally speaking, once I share my political perspective and experience I am
released from being held suspect. Regardless of who I am with-- Ashkenazi Jews, non-Jews, Arabs
or non-Arabs--I typically experience a variety of legitimacy litmus tests around race, ethnicity,
political perspective, loyalty and identity.
Where I find home and comfort is with Jews of Color and with mixed race Arabs. When I was in
Boston, I found this wonderful group of mixed race, queer, feminist Jews. We would get together
once a month to celebrate Shabbat. The depth of our connection, solidarity and understanding was a
very powerful experience. We spent long evenings over a candle lit table littered with dirty dinner
dishes talking about the complexity of our lives as mixed race Jews, feminists and queer women.
Over the past couple of years, I have found a similar group for Arab women in the Washington DC
area. What I find interesting about my experience in this group is that a sub-group of mixed race,
queer, feminist Arab women has formed and meets on a regular basis. Although we are also part of
the larger group, we find strength and power in our connection as mixed and queer feminists.
Home for me consists of always having this kind of a space--a space in which I do not have to leave
parts of myself at the door or offer up any explanations about who I am. Finding home is a daily act
of resistance that is critical to my sustenance. Although I live a life surrounded by complexity and
diversity, I find that there is something very important about finding those spaces where all of the
litmus tests, questions and explanations fall away. In essence the categories and narrow definitions
become unimportant and unacceptable—while my lived experience and political perspective move to
the center. It's in these spaces where I can relax and peel back the layers of exclusion and
isolation in meaningful ways with lots of support, encouragement and guidance.
Each day is full of acts of erasure and invalidation for bridge people. Without creating a counter
balance of relationships and spaces that honor and respect our complexity we can lose our way
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personally and politically. It is tremendously hard to stay clear and centered in the face of
invalidation. This is why daily acts of resistance, such as spiritual practice, building community,
spending time with family and building bridges of trust and solidarity in the work, are critically
important for bridge people. They allow us to hold our wholeness and power as sacred. Daily
practices of resistance are how we can maintain our sanity and centeredness in a culture that is
intent on fragmenting and dismissing our realities.
Part IV: Generations: Mixed Class Realities on the Mixed Body
Class is a very volatile issue for both sides of my family over many generations. As a result, there
are deep generational patterns that have repeated themselves over many generations. Those
patterns are deeply rooted in a tension between money/class vs. family/community—patterns that
continue to play themselves out unresolved.
On my father's side my grandparents were immigrants. They lived in the poorest section of a small
New England town. Neither of my grandparents were college educated. My father went into the
army in order to gain veteran benefits so that he could get an associates degree. My father sold
carpeting for a living and eventually became part owner of a small carpeting business.
My father grew up in the poorest section of the small New England town. He went into the military
because he saw it as his ticket to getting an education. After he left the military he used his
veteran benefits to get an associates degree. Growing up poor left an indelible mark on him. I
remember him telling us stories of his childhood spent on a street that no one would venture down
except the people who lived on it. He often commented on how dirty the street was and how
decapitated the houses were. He told these stories with shame and pain in his voice. Decades later,
one of his sources of pride was seeing the street gentrified by developers and wealthy people who,
one by one, bought the houses, “fixed them up” and sold them for hundreds and thousands of
dollars.
My mother grew up in an immigrant working-middle class family. Her father, who came from a
wealthy Lebanese family, walked away from his inherited wealth when my mother was a baby. The
reason for this was because his siblings began to fight over the wealth my great-grandfather had
accumulated as an antique and oriental rug dealer in Cambridge Massachusetts. My grandfather felt
that family was more important than money and he simply refused to engage in the class warfare his
siblings had turned into a spectators sport. As a result, my grandfather picked up his family, moved
out of my great grandfather’s home, and moved to New Hampshire where he stared his own antique
and oriental rug store.
Class issues are at the root of why the relationship between my mother and her siblings is so
strained. Repeating a generational pattern, my mother walked away from her family partially due to
infighting around my grandfather’s well established business.
My grandfather died in the 1980’s and left behind a business that is, to this day, deeply rooted in
the community. Yet, upon my grandfather’s death, one of my mother’s siblings kicked all of the
other siblings out of the family business—a business they had all been trained for and groomed to
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take over collectively. When I look at how this displacement from family, community and collectivity
has impacted the three siblings that were displaced, I am reminded of how money and class can be
used to erode some of the most important aspects of our lives. Over the years this displacement
has eroded the very essence of my family. Everyone is in pain—including the uncle that spends most
of his time concealing it by achieving social prominence.
Reflecting on the generational aspects of how class has impacted both sides of my family highlights
for me the salience of class in our lives. Neither side of my family has been able to name its impact- yet class dynamics have shaped almost every aspect of family life. It has determined who speaks
to whom and how members of my family do or do not relate to one another.
Overall, it is clear to me that if we had been able to talk about class honestly on both sides of my
family less generational damage would have been done and certain patterns in my family would not
have taken such firm root.
My Class Experience
Throughout my life, I have had access to education, financial resources, health care and housing. As
a child I do not remember needing the basics. We always had food, clothing, education, healthcare
and a roof over our heads. Yet, when I dig deeper into my experiences I realize that even though
money has come and gone at various times of my life, I was raised by working class, first generation
immigrant parents that instilled in me a strong work ethic and values based on sharing and
community.
My immediate family (mother, father, sister and I) have had a very mixed class status. When I was
young my parents were solidly working class. My father sold carpeting and my mother was a
secretary before she began to work inside the home. They lived paycheck to paycheck with two
children until I was in my early teens.
Class was one of the things that brought my parents together, yet it was also one of the factors
that tore their marriage apart. My father married my mother in order to move up the class ladder.
My mother married my father in order to escape the shame and racism of being Arab. For the most
part, it was a marriage made of oppressive mutual convenience. The simmering pot of resentment my
parents had around their race, class and religious differences ended in a volatile eighteen year
marriage.
From 12-17 my fathers business began to do very well and we began to add additions onto our house
(including a swimming pool and master bedroom for my parents). We started to travel
internationally and my parents started taking us to cultural events and the theater. We had access
to excellent health care, education and resources. My parents’ divorce quickly ended all of that.
From 1991 on my mother, sister and I have all had a solidly working class experience--working
paycheck to paycheck, having sporadic access to health care and insurance, having little to no liquid
assets.
Although I have had the privilege of a college education, my experience has been mixed with both
privilege and barriers to access. I attended a small, private liberal arts college in New England. I
received an excellent education and access to many resources. Yet, the college that I was accepted
to only did so because they did not place emphasis on standardized testing. They looked more at my
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academic record and my interests than at my test scores. If I recall I only got accepted to a very
small handful of schools because my test scores were so poor. Having a learning disability has
definitely made my educational access a "both/and". Although I graduated from college magna cum
laude, I was rejected from almost all of the graduate programs that I applied for because of my
test scores and learning disability. As a result, my ability to use education as a way to further any
professional or personal goals I set for myself has always been tenuous. Not to mention that for my
entire primary and secondary education I was literally battered by public school systems. Both my
sister and I were labeled as "severely retarded" and "uneducable" (their language, not mine) by the
NH school system for years. As a result, my educational skill set is mixed. I have very poor math
skills and I was never deemed "worthy" of a formal English or writing class. I struggle to this day to
build up my skills in those areas.
In the late 80’s my parents moved us from New Hampshire to Massachusetts. The New Hampshire
school system refused to educate my sister and me because we had severe learning disabilities.
After a protracted battle with the NH school system my parents had two options: file a law suit or
move to a school district that valued students with disabilities. They chose to move to one of the
wealthiest suburbs of Massachusetts because the public school system in this community was
integrating students with disabilities into the classroom. My sister and I found ourselves plunged
into a white, upper middle class community overnight. The four years that we lived in this small
Massachusetts town gave us a broad range of access to material and economic resources.
In my junior year of high school my parents separated. One year later my father declared
bankruptcy in an effort to protect THEIR assets from my mother. My mother, who has a high
school education and very little work experience, was left on her own to raise two teenage
daughters. From this time period forward, my mother, sister and I have worked multiple jobs to
make ends meat. Each of us trying to support ourselves and one another. Not until I met my partner
in 1998 did I not have to work two or three jobs simultaneously.
My experience tells me that class and money are related but that one does not always determine
the other. In other words, even at times in my life where I have had money, my working class
sensibilities and experiences kick in. I am a saver, I do not like or need material extravagance and
when I have more than I need I’m always thinking about how it can be shared.
Although money can be an indicator of one’s class, I believe that the values and sensibilities that
shape who we are also figure into defining our class background. I think that this is where we need
to bust the binary around class. Many people think that the amount of money one has defines their
class background. Yet, I believe that class is a much deeper and generationally rooted lived reality
for most people.
In reflecting upon these experiences, I have come to realize how "up front" the issues of class and
race have been in my family. These issues--for many different reasons--have shaped my family
relationships and dynamics in very obvert ways. Yet, there has been very little ability on either side
of my family to have the hard discussions they need to have to work though their differences. So,
in essence there is a big divide between the volatility and pervasiveness of these issues and
everyone's willingness to discuss and work though these tensions/issues.
All of this has impacted the way I live my life now. I hate to fight around money because
relationships are more important to me than money. My red flag always goes up when I am around
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people who value money over relationships and community. It makes me feel very distrustful. I'm
big on sharing resources in any way that I can because my beliefs around community and solidarity
outweigh my attachment to money. Yet, I also feel strongly about self- care and about using
whatever money and resources I have to stay in this work and in my community for the long haul.
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Ana’s Story
Part I: Morena, Ven Pra’ca: Race and the Mixed Body
We sat at the back of the bus: I, a mulatta Dominican-American women of African descent with
dark caramel-colored skin; Imani, an African-American woman of African descent and beautifully
dark as coffee; and Valencia, a cocoa-skinned Pilipina - American woman. The white American and
Brazilian students sat at the front of the bus, joking and laughing together as we rode through the
desert of Northeastern Brazil. We were on our way back to our home stay city from Caninde where
we had gone to learn about and experience the yearly pilgrimage to the Basilica of Saõ Francisco, a
place where people from all over the Northeast go to heal. The irony of our own situation was not
lost on the three of us as we struggled to swallow the racism that had colored our experience
during the trip. This racism had left us isolated throughout the three days in Caninde, to the point
that when it came time to go home, we were left with the only seats available in the small bus.
We, the American students, were on an exchange program. The director of our program, a black
American man, had organized this trip to include us and a group of Brazilian university students in
order to facilitate inter-cultural dialogue and exchange between peers. The dialogue, however, did
not seem to be for all the students, but rather only for the white students - both Brazilian and
American. As the bus rolled along, Imani, Valencia and I sat segregated at the back of the bus,
generating our own dialogue with each other.
"Girl - is this what I think it is?"
"um hmm."
"Yeah - it is."
"Is this as WRONG as I think it is?"
"I ain't got nothin' to say."
"It's wrong."
We were not only segregated from the Brazilian students but also, consequently, the white
Americans. Not only were we sitting in the back of the bus, but none of our Brazilian `peers' had
spoken to any of the three of us over the course of our trip. It was immediately apparent to the
Imani, Valencia and me that this dynamic was about racism and, that to the Brazilian students, the
only true and valuable Americans to connect with were the five white-skinned ones sitting amongst
them. We realized that what was happening was as much a result of the Brazilian racism as it was
the white American students' participation in this racism. The white American students, people we
considered our friends and peers in this program, witnessed what was going on without fully
understanding or acknowledging it, and seriously lacked the tools to confront their own and others'
racism.
This bus ride had not been the first incident of oppression that any of the three of us had
experienced in Brazil. As I sat there looking out the window at the desert landscape, I tried to
digest what had already happened to me during the course of the program. I was no longer going
home to the original family I was assigned to. Instead, I was going to a family in the favelas, the
poor urban living areas in the Brazilian city where we were based. This had come about recently:
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When I `came out' to my original home stay family as Jewish, I was promptly treated to a series of
anti-Semitic epithets.
This same home stay family had also taken me to a gathering of their extended family and friends
where I was several times beckoned by "aunts" and "cousins" who had the impression that I was
brought along as the family maid. When my thick American accent spilled forth from my mouth in
the little amount of Portuguese I had learned, I was promptly dismissed with an embarrassed wave.
I was not only embarrassed but shamed and humiliated
The director, concerned for my safety, promptly removed me from this home and placed me with a
family in the favela. Imani and Valencia were also removed from their original families and placed
with families in the favelas. For all of us, it was due to similar reasons: For Imani, the darkest
among us, her home stay family ignored her for the first two weeks of the program. For Valencia,
her family spent less and less time with her as she got darker and darker in the Brazilian sun. On
the day that the director had driven the three of us to our new families in the favelas, he
confessed to us that this was not the first time American students of color had to be removed midprogram from middle class homes and placed with families in the favelas. I reflected on that
conversation as we made our way back home, and realized that I should have seen the university
student situation coming.
I looked around at the Brazilian students on the bus. All of them were light-skinned or what
Americans would call white. I assumed that they were all from the wealthier classes, as in Brazil,
private universities were generally reserved for the families that could afford them. I shifted in
my seat as I realized that the racism I was experiencing was a particular brand of Latin American
racism - where race and class are read as one and the same thing. And that in the other Latin
American contexts I was familiar with, when I was with peers, I was usually sitting amongst the
wealthier classes.
I looked down at my dark brown hands and curled them up into fists, sinking them into the seat as
my tears unwillingly escaped from me tinged with anger and the bittersweet flavor of selfrealization. I realized that up until that point, I had thought I still remained within the poor urban
class of the Dominican Republic - the class of my extended family; I had not yet understood that I
would be considered part of the intellectual middle class in the Dominican Republic due to my
parents' wealth and professional standing, my caramel-colored skin and U.S. passport. Therefore,
when I went to live in the favela, it felt familiar, like the summers I spent with my aunts in the
Dominican Republic. I not only blend in due to my color, but because I was extremely comfortable
with not having electricity, taking cold showers out of buckets, peeing in chamber pots and nonworking toilets, and sleeping in bare bones surroundings. I was used to washing my clothes by hand
and to the specific camaraderie of women who hustle in hushed whispers to make ends meet.
Despite all of these intimate familiarities, on that bus ride I saw that my own intellectual and social
formation had ALSO happened amongst the middle classes, as much as amongst the conditions of
poverty of my extended family. I hadn't known what this meant until that bus ride back to our
home stay city. It meant that part of my anger was not only about the racism that we were
experiencing, but about the fact that I understood exactly how engrained and unquestioned the
Brazilian students' thinking actually was. Because I had been amongst students like these before in the country of my birth, the Dominican Republic.
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Sitting at the back of the bus was not lacking in irony or symbolism for us as three women who were
black and/or identified with black Americans. For Imani, this experience on the bus resonated
historically with the struggles her family had lived through only 40 years before in Jim Crow
Georgia. Here she was, the first woman to go to college in her family, the first woman to travel
outside of United States, sitting at the back of the bus IN ANOTHER COUNTRY. For Valencia,
this confirmed for her what she had always experienced growing up on the Southside of Chicago that she was indeed `black' in the imaginaries of white people within the dualistic constructs of
race in the U.S., and that as a Pilipina she had a natural alliance with other peoples of color. For me,
living through this particular experience of segregation tied in my struggles as a black Latina Jew
to the struggles of African-American, Asian and Indigenous women throughout the Americas. Most
significantly, it was due to our perceived indigenous and black Brazilian (not American) identities
that middle class `white' Brazilian society was treating us so poorly and that the white American
students could forget about our existence.
It was in Brazil in 1995, only one year after Mandela's visit to Bahia, that I understood Apartheid
and black/white dualistic thinking as it applied to the Americas. While I had been hearing from
Brazilians, and reading from promotional materials and text books, that Brazil was a mulatto
society, one of racial democracy and freedom, my own experiences as a black-skinned American
Latina Jew were demonstrating that the truth was in fact, quite the opposite. Brazil, much more
than the United States, is a country deeply divided by class, which is openly and insidiously
determined by race and gender. And I immediately understood that if it was possible to experience
these deep levels of oppression in a society that claimed to be "racially democratic", then in the
U.S., where racial democracy was not even feigned nor publicly desired, Apartheid was even more
concrete.
I simultaneously learned that the racial stratification of a society such as Brazil's did nothing to
undo the underlying dualistic nature of racist thinking. Valencia, a Pilipina who went from "looking
Japanese" to being a "caboclo" (a derogatory term for dark-skinned indigenous people) and I (who
went from being a "caboclo" to being a "morena" to being "preita") both experienced similar issues
of authenticity, legitimacy and invisibility. For her and me, our racial identities carried a certain
ambiguity that led to multiple placements along the color stratum, depending on the context of our
experience and how dark our skin became. For Imani and me, we both experienced the nature of a
brand of racism perpetrated on black people in particular, one that carries the weight of a slavemaster/domestic-doña relationship within a historical colonial framework. All three of us sat at the
back of that bus, and would get off in the favelas. All three of us passed as Brazilian. In the black
and indigenous communities throughout the Northeast, and especially in Bahia where we three found
refuge for the last month of our program, passing as Brazilian allowed us to become immersed in
Brazilian society to a degree that our white American counterparts could never do. And it led us to
experience Brazilian society in ways that became our secret joys. For example, being embraced by
the black women's collectives, the candombles, and the artist and musician's communities in Bahia,
where we immediately felt the solidarity of struggle and resistance - an international solidarity.
Within the social circles that our program immersed us in (the middle class home stay families and
university students, etc), we were faced with significant social struggles that our black and
indigenous Brazilian friends and colleagues experience in systematic and long-term ways. However,
because of our U.S. passports we had access to these spaces in a way that our Brazilian
counterparts do not AND we could leave at any time. Even so, our invisibility rendered us stripped
of the voices that we would have otherwise used to confront the various forms of oppression that
33
exist within Brazilian wealthy society. And our allies, the white students in the program, lacked the
understanding and/or the tools to effectively intervene on our behalf as well as their own.
I looked out at the city that engulfed us as we entered the favelas. The bus driver, the only other
dark person on the bus besides us and the program director, slowed down to let the three of us off
closer to home. The American students said "see ya later." No one else said goodbye. We didn't
bother responding beyond a slight wave as we got off and started walking home. It would take
weeks for us to digest the full depth of our experiences on that trip to Caninde. The lessons would
become clearer as we made our way to Bahia, a town in Northeastern Brazil with significant
resistance to colonialism, racism and imperialism. We looked back at the bus as it sped into the
center of the city and breathed a sigh of relief. We were quickly absorbed and hidden by the brown
faces surrounding us, welcoming us back to the favelas.
Part II: Butch Fag Dyke Woman: Gender and the Mixed Body
I am a butch identified lesbian woman. My gender does not conform strictly to pre-scribed ideas
about what a woman should be or is.
One, because in the world in which I was raised, being a woman was and continues to be described
as being heterosexual. When I first came out, it was the most liberating feeling. Not only had I felt
like I was finally getting closer to who I truly am, but I let go of all the heterosexual paraphernalia
and expectations that had suffocated me my entire life. I was 16 when I came out. I hadn’t had a
lot of life lived yet at that point, but I was old enough to know that my gender brought a whole set
of expectations, the greatest being heterosexuality. All the makeup, heels and hairstyles that I had
fought for as a young 13 year old teenage girl, that were handed to me as a rite of passage at 15
(the magical quinceñera), became useless for me at 16, when I actively decided to shed the external
set of markers of my gendered, feminine identity.
Two, because my gender presentation and my identity don’t always match. I’ve been followed into
public bathrooms by cops who think I’m a Black man. White women have clutched their purses close
to their bodies when I pass them by, also seeing me as a Black man. To understand how profound
this experience is, we only need to look at the media to understand how Black men are treated in
this society, and what repercussions this creates on a female body that is read in this way. The
perceptions and actions of cops and white women on the street have affected the way I understand
myself and my gender identity. I don’t fit neat lines, and I clearly carry a stance that is
differentiated from Black and Latina femininity and femininity, period.
Three, because in the context of the greater U.S./white LGBT community, I am seen as femme by
people who read gender in purely black or white terms. My greatest shock was being told by women
in the Bay Area that I was femme because my hair was long (at the time they met me). But, in my
world, being around people of color, being butch went beyond the length of my hair to the stance I
had in life and the ways in which I walked through the world. Coming from a Latina context in which
assumed heterosexuality went hand in hand with an exaggerated performance of that sexual
identity through the use of stylized gender norms, breaking away from that in any way has meant a
departure from heterosexuality and femininity. There is nothing wrong with being femme in the
world, but for me, my struggle has been engrained in the claiming of space as a non-feminine person
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– and allowing for the possibility of my and others’ existence as non-feminine people.
I am also struck by how this particular negation of a non-white gender norm as a point of reference
is also mirrored in assumptions of what constitutes lesbianism – in other words, the ways in which
women relate to each other in non-white contexts requires the proving of a lesbian identity that is
usually assumed with white lesbians. The same goes with gender.
Though in subtle ways I identify with the struggles of the trans community, I consider myself a
trans ally because as a lesbian, I carry privileges that are specific to being a woman identified
female. It is from this place that I speak in critique of the experiences I have had within our
movements.
Within our movements, I’ve been angered by the ways in which gender has been used to justify
unethical behavior; and how a person’s gender identity plays a role in how they are heard or not
heard. When I was doing lesbian feminist organizing in Boston, I remember that one of our
organizers came out to us as beginning the process of transitioning in gender from woman to man.
The group I was involved with decided to have a series of discussions to talk about whether or not
trans people (on the female to male AND male to female spectrums) would be allowed to participate
in the group’s political activities. The conversation degenerated into a question of whether bisexual
women would also be allowed to participate and essentially, a fight to lay claims to who in the room
was a “real lesbian”. Not only was this conversation deeply disturbing in its own right, but it also
involved a “side” conversation about whether race was an issue that affected the group - the end
decision by the majority being that race was too much to deal with, and not directly relevant to
lesbian organizing! I left after that meeting, upset not only about the racism, but also about the
narrow ways in which sexual orientation and gender had been assumed and used to justify transand bi-phobia. It was also the first critical moment in which I realized that I needed, as a lesbian,
to be an active, not just a passive, voice in support of bisexual and trans-identified people.
I would have many opportunities to put this into practice, the least of which was an experience two
years following this conversation when an organization I was involved with was determining whether
to expand their mission to move beyond the LG to include B and T. Though it was the same
conversation, the outcome was different thanks to the unity of those of us present in demanding a
space for bisexual and trans people.
A few years ago, I moved from the east coast to California. As I became involved with LGBT
organizing groups in California, I was struck by the lesbo-phobia, homophobia and sexism of the
movement in the Bay Area. To identify as a lesbian within these spaces meant occupying a space of
relative privilege. It meant, too, that people made a very specific set of assumptions about my
politics and positioning with regards to the trans movement. It was the first time I was seen as a
femme, and that this was insisted on – and that this insistence had everything to do with my
identifying as a lesbian. It alerted me to the possibility of my own gender transgressions arising out
of very specific contexts that had nothing to do with white-identified gender norms that formed
the basis of LGBT gender determinations. And to the very limited, internalized dualistic
understandings of gender that even the most radical person I worked with carried. In other words,
if I didn’t actively identify as trans, then my identity was collapsed into a “simplified” femininity.
Wow! I said to myself – isn’t this simplification exactly what we’re fighting against?
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I don’t pretend that it is always easy to maintain a complex understanding of gender. In fact, our
language makes it very, very hard (and so does Spanish, which is one of my other languages). I, too,
at times have fallen into dualistic thinking around gender, preferring to have identifiable categories
to deal with rather than accepting complexities and a lack of vocabulary. And I have usually fallen
into this dualistic way of thinking when my own complexity has been denied. But, I find that it is
necessary and urgent that we do continue to open ourselves up to new language and increasingly
complex forms of identification (including genderqueer, boi, trannie, etc), even when it’s hard to do
so.
With this in mind, I did and do identify as a lesbian because my desire and orientation is toward
women-identified people (this includes people on the male to female transitional scales and the
complex webs in between), as a butch identified female. In my work within the LGBT movement in
the Bay Area, I was struck by the responses I received from, primarily white, queer peers when
speaking from this place. It happened more than once that I was greeted with a severe
lesbo/homophobia and sexism masked within some deep transphobia.
At the same time, in non-LGBT social justice movements, I was upset by how butch women and trans
male identified activists were given power by (usually) the straight bio-men in power, and how they
were simultaneously silenced. This silencing occurred at the specific moments when attention was
brought to their gender variance. For example, the language used to do the work often lacked even
the most minimal sensitivity to non-dualistic thinking. Not only did this create an unsafe space for
trans people, it created an unsafe space for queer people, period. Gender variant organizers who
fell along the male scale specifically, were usually the first ones shut down when challenging the
lack of space for our mutual existence. Their shut down was quickly followed by the shutting down
of queer women, genderqueer or not. This pattern repeated itself anytime delicate issues of
priorities, belonging and reframing the work were brought to the fore. Organizers working primarily
on social and economic issues were encouraged NOT to discuss their queerness in terms of sexual
orientation or gender – for after all, these issues were framed as secondary to issues of race and
class. Which never really left much room for a majority of queer/genderqueer organizers of color
to fully live their existence. Nor did this way of framing things shed light on the multiple ways in
which race and class form layers to the oppression we experience along the lines of sexual
orientation and gender. In other words, even when I am struggling because of my race and class, I
am also still struggling because of my gender and sexual orientation. And there is a direct
connection between these things. How long can our movements continue to sustain themselves and
NOT consider these connections? Who is continuing to benefit by implementing and sustaining
sexism, homophobia and transphobia?
Being an Afro-Latina/mixed race butch, lesbian identified female in these multiple contexts has not
been easy. But it has also afforded me insight into the connections between oppressions. As a result
of my experiences, I have begun to understand in my flesh only a few of the challenges faced by
dark skinned men and people on the male scale of gender identity. As a result of my choices –and
primarily the choice to accept my lesbianism and gender-queerness – I have had to deal with my own
notions of what constitutes socially pre-scribed gender categories and ideas of what is “normal”. I
have had to shed not only the expectations of heterosexuality, but also the limitations of
homosexuality. For it is in that process that the complexities of my own experience and others’
experiences have become validated and valued.
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Part III: Reframing Anti-Semitism
I belonged to a community garden in the neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, New
York. Anyone familiar with race relations history within the last 15 years knows that Bed-Stuy has
been a hotbed of racial and ethnic tension for that time, if not longer. Bed-Stuy is a poor
neighborhood. Right now it’s being gentrified, but private developers haven’t yet bought the
projects and turned them into condos the way it’s happened elsewhere in New York City. They
haven’t yet buried the layers of history underneath cheap concrete and pressboard. Right now,
gentrification’s face is that of young, white hipsters – transplants from San Francisco and other
points west of the Mississippi. The block where my community garden is, is only a beginning
indicator. There are three gardens on the same block. Only one of them is a fully integrated garden.
The one I joined.
I first went to join the garden on the western corner of the street, but was immediately turned off
by the white woman whose first words to me were: “We’re going to put you to work.” - at which
point another white woman joked about her being a slave-driver. I walked out of that garden and
happened to stumble into the one in the middle of the block. I was immediately greeted and
welcomed by S.D., an African-American woman whose work is to be a vice-principle in the NYC
school system. And her welcome convinced me this was where I wanted to be. Not only because of
her welcome, but because when she saw my face, she knew what had just transpired.
This garden is not just a black and white garden. The members are of all ethnic, racial, religious and
economic backgrounds, and includes children and elders. It’s an amazing orb of community, where
each member holds the others in respect, and is accountable to the others as a whole. It’s been an
incredible space in the middle of Bed-Stuy, where tensions still run high. It is still a product of its
environment.
Six months into my membership, on a beautiful summer afternoon, I was standing in my bed of
vegetables when I straightened up and looked out onto the street. I saw a row of cars, and a group
of Hasidic men standing in a circle. I looked out and watched as they wandered into the building
next to the garden. It was not half an hour before I began to smell toxic fumes. I sat down and
swallowed my nausea, and in that moment, one of the other members of the garden, a Black-Native
American woman, walked in with a younger African-American girl by her side. They came and sat
down next to me. I asked her.
"What are those fumes from?"
" "The auto-body shop."
Pause.
"Auto-body shop?"
"Yeah, they run an auto-body shop. We’ve been trying to get them to stop, but you know."
At which point my eyebrow went up. I felt the skin on my arms bristle. I felt something coming,
something that was about to be real wrong.
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"What? Why won’t they stop?”
And there it was.
"You know them Jews and how they operate in this city.”
I had known it was coming, and yet I found myself struggling for words, for a response, for some
way to address this assault. Did she not know I was Jewish? Even if I wasn’t, what had led her to
believe she could say something like that to me? I turned to her and took a deep breath, ready for
her distrust to land at my feet.
“I don’t think that in NYC it has anything to do with being Jewish. Corrupt officials are corrupt
officials. It’s on them.”
"True,true. But, still…”
"But still nothing. There are like three auto-body shops in this area. I know this ain’t the only one
greasing palms."
"Yeah, I still don’t like that they’re trying to take over the neighborhood."
"Haven’t they been here as long as you have?"
"Yeah, but they’re building a settlement house and trying to fill it with their people."
"You mean, you’re upset because another project is going up?"
"No, it’s messed up cause they won’t let black people into the project."
"B. – it’s a project. Everybody’s in the same broke-ass situation."
She looked away from me, and I saw in her eyes that I was incredibly close to being pushed into the
“wanna be white” category of assumptions – that I was about to be disowned as a person of color. So
I shut up and tried to think about how to break it to B. that “they” includes me, and how to confront
what she was doing. The fumes were still going when the younger woman, C., began to talk about the
subways and she blurted out:
"Whenever I see one of them, I get off the train. I’m scared of them."
I had lost the thread of the conversation, but I tried to focus. I had to know who she was talking
about.
"Who?”
"You know – those turbans."
"Are you talking about the Sikh?"
"Whatever. The ones who look like bin Laden."
I felt sickness rising in my throat. And I had to say something. This was too much.
"This is some ignorance. How old are you?"
"Sixteen."
"You’re sixteen and you’re talking like you’re eight and have never seen someone different from you,
ever. What do you think other people see when they see black people?"
She fell silent.
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“I don’t think it’s the colored people you need to be fearing, y’all. What do you say to the fact that
I am Jewish? Trust – the issue is not about poor people, colored people, Jewish people. Those are
not the people with power in this country.”
I stood up and walked to the front of the garden. I felt them staring at me, but knew this would
blow over. That we might not trust each other the same way again, but that at least, a new truth
was out there. As I stood in the flower bed by the front of the garden, one of the Hasid men
looked over to where I was standing. I tried a smile. I tried to establish our connection. He looked
right through me, twirled his side curls with his fingers and turned away.
I felt a bitter taste in my mouth. I felt my vision of the multi-ethnic utopia that I had so
ephemerally experienced shatter. I had found the breaking point – the point where no matter how
many different types of people were put together – there lay an unspoken fear that somehow – we
would take away from each other. That we would lessen each others’ worth, existence, legitimacy,
life…simply by existing. This was the Bed-Stuy, uncovered, and I was there, raw and in the flesh.
∞∞∞
My experience of anti-Semitism goes beyond my Jewish identity.
I converted to Judaism in what was a very long process, over a series of years that began with my
acculturation into Jewish religious and social practice. It began with the people I called my close
community that included overnights with the YM-WHA youth group, going to all of my friends’ bat
and bar mitzvahs, going to synagogue on high holy days with my best friend’s (Sephardit) family,
living in Israel as an adolescent. My conversion was more formalized when I began college and
decided to study with Rabbi Sally Finestone – one of the first female rabbis in the United States
and a compassionate, dedicated teacher who was passionate about the Hillel’s mission. However, I
am a bad Jew. I never had my official mikvah and some would say that my conversion into Reform
Judaism doesn’t count anyway. But for me, Judaism is intricately tied into my understanding of
community, spiritual practice and tikkun olam – social justice.
Being a woman of color, an Afro-Latina, mixed with a white anglo-saxon U.S. American history, and
being a Jew has its complexities. The ones that are most palpable for me are the ones played out on
my body within a larger white, Christian society, and within the smaller circles of Ashkenazi
European “white passing” Jews and communities of non-Jewish People of Color.
White society in general responds to my declaration of Jewishness with the statement that I am
trying to be “white”, or with references to Sammy Davis Jr. And my experience of anti-Semitism in
the larger Christian fundamentalist world that is currently the United States is incredibly
frightening – for the anti-Semitism underlying actions against Arabs, people perceived as Arabs and
against Jews is compounded by racism against Black people and Latinos – all on/against/towards my
body. And specific forms of anti-Jewish anti-Semitism are played out around me all the time, by all
kinds of folks, who assume that because of my perceived race – somehow, I am supposed to be okay
with it. Even if I wasn’t a Jew, I still wouldn’t be okay with it.
Many white-passing Jews usually meet my declaration of Jewishness with the question of how it is I
came to be a Jew. My answer has become more graceful over the years, but it is a fundamentally
offensive question because it seems that I am asked not out of genuine interest, but because the
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questioner is trying to make sense of my skin color and Jewish identity (this is also my partner’s
experience – she is also a Jew of color, and specifically of African descent). To me, this question is
also fundamentally anti-Semitic because it denies the Semitic and multi-ethnic roots of many Jews
who are not specifically white-passing or of European ancestry. This includes Arab, Latino, African
and Chinese and Indian Jews. It includes me.
Then there is the question of Zionism. As a radical Jewish Lesbian of Color, I am fundamentally,
intrinsically, deeply committed to the creation and manifestation of a world free of oppression and
violence in all of its forms. That Europe has pushed Jews out of its nations/states and kingdoms
throughout history and onto colonial projects is a very jarring and saddening reality.
Many Jews who were forced out of Europe were sent to the colonies to serve as indentured
servants or as participants in the colonial enterprises of the Spanish empire. Many of us were
forced to become conversos and hide our Jewish identities in order to survive. Many Jews during
this time actively participated in the colonial project and the slave trade as owners of African and
Native American slaves throughout the Americas. The Spanish inquisitorial court not only had its
seat in Spain, but in the Spanish colonies. And this court tried Jews, Moors, witches and heretics
alike. Yet, this did not stop our own participation in one of the cruelest systems of genocide in world
history. My father’s black/miscegenated family is descended from Jewish slave owners. My own
living history is a questioning of this past.
I believe that history repeated itself in a new, uglier form with the formation of the state of
Israel following the Holocaust. Because of the way Israel was formed – through forceful action
rather than through deliberative, collaborative and democratic participation, we have been
struggling with the sum result of our actions ever since. And, it makes me angry that Europe failed
to continue its accountability towards Jews and instead “encouraged” a return to the homeland…a
political project that was essentially created to establish European and American political
strongholds in Southwest Asia with no regards to the actual human tolls.
And because I am a radical Jewish Lesbian of Color, I am fundamentally, intrinsically, deeply
committed to the creation and manifestation of a world free of oppression and violence in all of its
forms – and though I believe in the Jewish homeland, I also believe in citizenship and in the
liberation of Palestine and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. I believe as Jews
we have a right to live freely anywhere on this earth – free of persecution, violence and oppression.
I also believe that as Semites, we must be accountable to our cousins, our brothers and sisters of
the Southwest Asian peninsula, Jewish, Muslim and Christian and hold a united front against our own
eradication.
Therefore, anti-Semitism, and my own story of anti-Semitism cannot be divorced from my
perception of history, from my understanding of my national, racial and ethnic identities. From my
lived experience in a world where Arabs and Jews become targets whenever a colonial project is
underway, and one in which Jewishness is narrowly defined as Europeanness.
And this, we should never forget.
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Part IV: Cheles and Cents: Class, Race, Nationality and Place
In my life, money and class and status are all intimately linked but somehow not always overlapping.
Class in particular has been this somewhat elusive, abstract concept based on a set of unshared
values and histories all relating to how we spend or don’t spend money, how we display it, and how we
then use the power (i.e. privilege) we have once we’ve gained access to the spaces where decisions
about money in the large scale are made.
So in one sense, a lack of money on my father’s side of the family helped generate several
mythologies about how we were to go about living our lives. It also implied that everything my
father worked for had to be maintained and elevated – particularly the status of our family.
Therefore, money has often been an important and essential part of the formula as to how we would
maintain our status, but given my parents’ social values, a secondary part as well. Therefore, the
message always was to work hard, no matter what, to avoid going hungry. Because that was always a
possibility (in my fathers’ mind at least).
A history of land and slave ownership on my mother’s side helped generate mythologies about how
we relate to other people in our lives. It also implied that without a doubt, anything we may have
lost was through no fault of our own, but rather through the fault of a great-great relative who was
not responsible with his money. In other words, we as descendents of the great land/slave owner
are entitled to all sorts of status and monies, we are the masters’ table.
I believe I may not naturally have an internal conflict on this topic if I were not from a culturallyracially-nationally and class-based mixed family. Perhaps, I would have settled very easily into
always working hard (which I do anyway) to avoid going hungry (which, interestingly enough is a
strong motivating factor). Or perhaps, I would have settled into life as an unconscious uppermiddle-class person who doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about (such as most of my mother’s
family has done, as a way of modeling for all of us what it means to be white and middle class/upper
class in America). But, regardless of what WOULD have happened had I not been mixed, I’d like to
focus on what it actually has meant in my life as a mixed-race-black-queer-butch-Latina-Jewish
activist and writer.
When I think about class, I think more about status than about money and this is because what I’ve
learned is that my class experience is not defined so much by the material items that carry
monetary value and would somehow give me “net worth”, but by the access created through the sum
total of my status-based experience. The fact that I even use this language is a sign, a marker of
my class. And it is the fact that my language, my clothes, my movements, the way I walk into a room
has all been shaped by the access created by my status that leads me to define class in this way.
Because of having a white mother, I was taught white middle class normative values in the larger
world. This has been useful. But when it comes to enacting those values in a black body, the
implications have often been unanticipated. Secondly, because of my parents’ hard work, and their
choices, I went to an elite private college (Harvard); I grew up in the world as a “UN Brat” –
traveling with my parents all over the world, going to elite international elementary schools, and
with a person in my home that took care of my every need until the ripe age of 14 (and it was not my
mother or grandmother). I speak four languages fluently and I have run through three passports in
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the last 12 years, i.e. I participate in the global tourist economy, whether I go somewhere as a
“traveler” or not.
My own income based class standing, as a sum total of both who I am and how I am perceived in the
world, is very different from the class standing my parents hoped to lead me to participate in. This
has both to do with my choices (and the sense that I have a choice), as well as with the ways in
which my sexuality has influenced my sense of self in the world, and my sense of what’s right or
possible.
As an organizer, my education has meant that I bring resources to the work, resources such as
language, writing skills (that are useful with other college-educated people in power) and an ability
to interact with white, wealthy people. But, my lived experience as a butch black lesbian has meant
that my friendships and personal life are composed of queer people of color and the children of
working class folk (and the overlap is grand). Somehow, it has been in these circles that I have
found the other people who work so as not to go hungry, but who were also taught to believe in
choice and entitlement and therefore experience a range of conflicts similar to my own.
Getting Deeper....
Because my father does not come from a moneyed family in the Dominican Republic, we belong to
the intellectual middle-class whose existence is tied into the universities, community-based
organizations and politics of the country. But this standing is very tenuous, again, because we don’t
have extended family wealth; my coming out as a lesbian in this context is one thing that
contributes to this tenuousness, specifically because I will not be marrying into another family, and
therefore, will not participate in securing the economic stepping-stones to continued wealth within
Dominican society.
Simultaneously, the fact of my mother’s whiteness, Americanness, made me different from my
Dominican cousins and my extended family and also secured my participation in international
intellectual circles. My norms were different and there were subtle ways in which I was treated
differently by our family members. This included which piece of meat I got at lunchtime – the
higher up on the privilege scale, the better the piece of meat.
My mother is an American with deep European roots in the United States that are directly tied up
into the master side of the slavery system. Because her family historically partook in the process
of defining American-ness AND whiteness, she knew what markers to teach us to enable us to
function as “white” children in the US. And her particular brand of whiteness is much embedded in
American upper middle class Christian values (my mother’s family is not upper class) that are
nuanced with histories of plantations and western expansion. This history was very much challenged
by our (my brothers’ and my) experiences as people of color. Because we know “white” norms, we’ve
been able to function in the social, political and economic systems here in the U.S., but because we
are people of color, participating in this system has meant putting ourselves directly in the line of
fire of racism, xenophobia, homophobia, sexism and elitism.
Add to this our particular experiences as international children, and it’s a very volatile combination
indeed. The fact of my having grown in a country not my own already makes me suspect as a valid
member of any community or society. Most people do not welcome strangers/foreigners into their
midst. And so I grew up finding my community with other people who grew up as I did. And even
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though neither of my parents was a diplomat (my mother was an ESL teacher and my father worked
in the UN Secretariat), it was the children of diplomats, wealthy American businessmen and
missionaries with whom I ended up going to school. As an adult this disconnect has impacted my
social circles, my work and my choices: if I am not part of any community by the simple fact of not
having a geographic base from which to relate, then how do I do community work?
So, I must say that it is not so much the dynamics around socio-economic status in my family that
has impacted me as much as the real history of my mother’s family, the poverty of my father’s
family and the status of my immediate family that has developed as a result of the choices my
parents made. My understandings of class are very much grounded in knowing that my family
perceives my lesbianism as a threat to what “little” my parents have gained - because their wealth is
mostly non-material, and that the same lesbianism as a person of color means that my alliances have
developed and been intimately connected to that of my peers: working class and poor queers of
color who have one too many bills to pay.
The biggest conclusion I have drawn out of my experiences is that I owe it to my dad to live my full
potential; and I owe it to my history to reclaim and be honest about how I came to be here, too.
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Call and Response
When we are de-legitimized by our movements it sounds like this:
other, fiction,
not real, not here,
not now, not ever.
that couldn’t have happened.
really?
shhh
We respond with:
compassion, openness
new language
fluidity
a storytelling
an embrace
When we are fragmented by our movements it sounds like this:
this is not our issue
this is too complex
we only have time to address...
We respond with:
belief in our right to exist
complex frameworks
becoming multi-lingual
a sixth sense that tells us when
we are about to be the target
When our movements are de-legitimized and fragmented it sounds like this:
the real agenda is race
the real agenda is abortion
the real agenda is class
the real agenda is marriage
the real agenda...
...is not your agenda.
Our movements can respond with
compassion, openness
new language
fluidity
a storytelling
an embrace
belief in the fight
complex frameworks
becoming multi-lingual
a sixth sense that tells us when mixed,
trans and other people who bust binaries are
about to be the target.
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TRAINING CURRICULA
The Busting Binary curriculum has been developed by Ana Lara and Lisa Weiner-Mahfuz. To
schedule a training, contact us at bustingbinaries@yahoo.com
The ideas and exercises from this curriculum are inspired by the works of leaders within
communities of color, including: Sharon Bridgforth (Finding Voices), Paul Kivel, Sharon Martinez,
Tema Oken, VictorJose Santana (Medicine Wheel/Circle: Conflict Resolution), the many trainers of
LLEGO’s Cultura es Vida workshops, the TODOS Institute, and the Peoples’ Institute.
This curriculum has been developed to address the current limits of language and critical analysis
within existing social justice paradigms as well as to provide participants and trainers with the tools
for developing innovative approaches to the development of critical thinking.
We believe that the answers to changing the paradigms that exist within our social justice
movements lie within the thinking of our organizers and our communities. Because we come out of
experiences of political-economic and social marginalization, we believe that it is important to put
the leadership and experiences of those who share those experiences at the center of the
conversation, and the approach to the conversation. Until the majority of our social justice
organizations mirror the make up of our society, what this means is that we draw the norms of our
work from the multiple communities with whom we share those experiences: communities of color,
immigrant communities, lesbian/gay/bisexual/trans communities, working class/poor communities,
womanist/feminist communities, indigenous communities, Semitic communities, visibly and invisibly
disabled communities, young communities. Point of Clarity: This does NOT mean we appropriate
those experiences or norms, it means that the work is based on putting the realities and responses
of those communities in the center of the conversation.
We believe that starting in this center will lead to monumental social change.
About the Curriculum
The workshops included in this curriculum all follow the idea of praxis, a term developed by Paole
Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) which means the development of ideas in action (no action
without thought/no thought without action). The application of praxis must happen within
individuals and within groups, simultaneously. This sounds difficult and - it is. These workshops are
not band-aids or one time solutions. However, they do aim to provide a beginning understanding for
participants about their roles in busting binaries. We have used the following guideposts as the
underlying elements of praxis within the Busting Binaries curriculum. These are:




Contextual Realities
Personal World View
Community Response
Application of Action Steps
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Contextual realities: No workshop can be implemented universally without the specific
consideration of the community or group of people, their experiences, challenges, goals, objectives
and resources. What we know from our bustingbinaries writing and activism is that the lack of
understanding around contextual realities is typically what leads to the exclusion of people whose
identities and experiences are located at the intersections. Trainers and organizers who do not
have the experience of being able to hold and honor multiple contextual realities simultaneously
often recreate binaries in their work intentionally or unintentionally. As such, the workshops are
designed with enough flexibility to allow for the specific applications of ideas, exercises and
discussions. In addition, it is fundamental that the trainer become sufficiently familiar with the
community (ies) prior to engaging in any training or workshop.
From our piece m"The Fear that Leads to Our Exclusion":
We have been thinking for quite some time about the relationship between fear, dualistic thinking
and oppression. From our experiences, dualistic thinking leads to simplified, essential
interpretations of identity that fail to grasp the complexity of a situation or experience. This kind
of either/or rather than both/and thinking is embedded in U.S. culture and often leads to
perpetuating fear. As organizers, we know that fear comes from a person’s lack of understanding,
experience or information about something or someone. If a person is thinking and operating from a
dualistic framework this increases the likelihood that they may be fearful of something or someone
that does not reflect their reality, way of thinking or their experience.
In other words, dualisms give us very limited options as to how we relate to one another and to the
world around us because this framework does not allow us to see the nuances or to fully accept a
reality that may be different than our own.
Personal World View: Each participant (and each trainer) in the workshop brings an entire world of
history, experiences, ideas, visions and norms. When we engage in bustingbinaries work we must
understand our own lenses and that others engage in this work through their own particular lenses.
Binary busting is not a linear act--in essence there is no one way to do it! World views shape how
and why we come to this work--as well as how our particular locations (world views) allow us to see
what is possible. Therefore, within the Busting Binary workshops, we attempt to address the
personal experience in order to push participants to a new understanding of themselves within their
contextual realities, communities and work. We believe that the personal is political--and that the
two go hand and hand.
From our Personal Stories Page:
We both believe that the personal is political. We also believe that telling our stories is a way to
highlight the intersections of identity, privilege and oppression. We see this section--our story
telling-- as grounding for our critical writing pieces. These stories are meant to give you insight into
how we arrived at certain places in our lives and in our thinking. We want our writing to show our
vulnerabilities and the rawness of our experiences.
We have written our race, gender, class etc. stories separately for two reasons: to deeply unearth
our feelings and thoughts; to create an easier format for our readers to engage in our story telling.
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However, by no means do we consider these stories to be separate. They are as integrated and
overlapping as we are in our identities, experiences and analysis.
Please note that this section and the critical writing section of this website are relational. They are
meant to be read, considered and engaged with together. Each section compliments the other
because, after all, the personal is political.
Community Response: Just as each participant has a personal world view, so must they also be
accountable to the members of their community. In all of our bustingbinaries work we stress that
binary busting unto itself is not a radical act without accountability. Binaries have histories-- and
even though their frameworks are often too narrow those binaries are rooted in histories of
struggle and oppression. Therefore each workshop has been developed to address issues of
community accountability, communication and conflict negotiation, starting from within. The idea is
that individual participants will leave with tools for maintaining accountability and a network with
which to initiate community responses to specific situations.
From Our Class Piece:
In all of the conversations we have had around binary busting over the years, we are clear that
when a binary is busted it must be done with the utmost accountability, clarity and solidarity. Binary
busting, as we know, can be a very dangerous act because it can--if done outside of an antioppression framework-- further divisions and tensions between communities. Therefore, when we
speak of binary busting we are NOT advocating for a complete break down of frameworks like we
see around the issue of class. Both extremes--maintaining rigid binaries or breaking down
frameworks without clarity, accountability and particularity--lead to the same outcome.
Application of Action: Praxis. Critical analysis and the development of our own visions, ideas and
the changes in our basis of information MUST go hand in hand with action. Binary busting work is
rooted in movement building. We can not move to a deeper and more intersectional framework
within and across movements for social justice without the act of binary busting. The whole focus
of this work is to build bridges of solidarity and trust among and between communities. In order to
do so, action is required. Binary busting, community and movement building are not passive acts.
They are acts of liberation that are central to our work.
Therefore, as part of the Busting Binaries curriculum, participants are asked to leave with concrete
steps/goals (the choice of which depends on the focus of the workshop) based on contextual
realities, personal world views and community response.
From our piece "The Fear that Leads to Our Exclusion":
How is it that we stay whole in the face of all of this? There are some really powerful tools that we
have developed to confront the violence, fear and isolation we often face. These tools include:
developing new language to identify our own experiences while challenging the language and practice
of oppression; creating communities where wholeness is the central value; telling the stories of our
lived experiences; and taking actions against oppression based on the truth of our realities. These
are tools that bridge people use to hone and shape and mold new layers to our skin and backs.
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Our lived experiences have proven that we ARE possible and not a theoretical aberration. In turn,
we believe that bridge people have developed abilities to be compassionate when others around us
are subjected to violence: we recognize its many forms, and feel the pain as it reverberates in
others¡¦ experiences. The understanding that we are all human beings, worthy of dignity and life is a
powerful tool, and the fact that we must often face rejection and misunderstanding from the
people who birthed and raised us makes us stronger on our own paths and unafraid to confront false
demonstrations of love. And finally, it is our realization that the constructs around us are not real,
but maintained by those who create and confront injustices. And, when it comes down to it, a lot of
us are healers (traditionally and socially) and on the path of healing ourselves and others.
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