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	The Body Politic and Visions of Community
	Page 14 of 14 / Appx 1,650 words

What kind of world do you want?
A polemical conclusion

It is our distinctiveness, our many and various ways of being in the world, that is our true gift to the world -- a world too ready to demand conformity. Our battles have historically been for the turf -- the physical, emotional and political space -- in which to cultivate distinctive ways to live and love and think.

But it can be tough for distinct groups, cultures and communities to work together in claiming that space. We have our own turf wars -- even our own calls for conformity. Here's a bit from a 1995 Xtra story on the history of Pride Day:

While there were occasional Pride-type get-together in the 1970s, gay City Councillor Kyle Rae says he considers the first official Pride Day to have been held in 1981. ... In the beginning [1981, of course], no drag queens were allowed on stage. "Lesbians made it clear that they'd be offended," says Rae. "If it's an inclusive day for lesbians and gays, we shouldn't be offending anyone."

I'd be surprised if a few eyebrows -- even unpencilled ones -- weren't raised at that.

Yes, drag did and does raise all kinds of issues, messy and interesting ones. That 1981 "we shouldn't be offending anyone" solution didn't address any of them: it suppressed them all. Off on our own, away from leaders making rules for our "official" culture, we had some space to work on them -- and now we have not only drag queens but drag kings on Pride Day. In the last few years we've even had young queers going off and doing "alternative" Pride Day events. (Sound familiar?)

But in 1981 the message was clear: my distinctiveness -- even my definition of "offensiveness" and my desire to avoid it -- will come at the cost of yours. Your distinctiveness, your definitions, your desires, maybe even you entirely, must be put aside.

That's some call to solidarity. Especially if you have the power (and you probably do) to say: In that case fuck it, I'll just go have a drink. That 1983 Body Politic editorial is, I think, still apt:

Solidarity has never meant papering over our differences. It doesn't mean demanding that others accept your entire body of beliefs before you'll agree to go on talking with them. It means the sharing of common ground, with respect for each other's autonomy and opinions.

It also means recognition of power, our own and each other's, all of us having some, some more than others, but all of us responsible for how we use it. And power -- not to mention responsibility for how we use our own -- can often be a tough thing to face.

For too many people in Toronto, Xtra is not "our own press" but simply the gay division of the media establishment: powerful, remote, maybe even hostile. Xtra's responses have ranged from published ponderings about its role as a community player to occasional declarations of independence, rising above the fray.

In the November 10, 1995 issue, Xtra editor Eleanor Brown was criticized in a letter for having said, in a meeting to discuss coverage that had angered some people with HIV, "I play God," "independent of the community." In her response Eleanor said nothing about the paper's community role, independent or otherwise, but did try to clarify her own as an editor:

I did indeed say 'I play God' -- in the context that the nature of my job gives me enormous power over other people's lives and I acknowledge that. I carefully think through decisions I make.

It was a refreshing admission of power. If a bit nervous-making: as a defence against irate assemblies, the implication of divine right -- however judiciously exercised -- doesn't have a great track record.

The Press's Mission Statement commits it to engage, to "incite and entice, to challenge and to lead." Ken Popert, as president of the Press, urges writers, editors and even the people who answer the phones to regard those they reach not as customers or consumers, not even as readers or audiences -- but as citizens, active participants in the creation of the world. But that engagement is not always easy. We might say we want it, but we're not often sure how to make it happen.

We will have to learn: we're going to need each other. However we see community, we're due to see a lot more of that defining force that got us together in the first place: adversity.

Pink Triangle Press is still a not-for-profit creature in a world run for profit. If you think a $3-million budget means security, think again: the money often goes out faster than it comes in, the volume simply raising the stakes. The Press is still queer in a world tempted to rigidity even at the merest hint of difference, let alone when it's flaunted on the street. And now the Press lives in Premier Mike Harris's Ontario, where Tory slash- and- burn social policy aims to outdo even the American Right.

The state is unlikely to do us the favours it has in the past. And I'm not talking grants. In sweeping down in dramatic attacks on us as gay people, it galvanized us despite our many differences into an angry political force. But this time we're simply one troublesome "special interest group" among many and the tactic is more subtle: they will simply starve us, freeze us out, the weakest of us first and some of us even starved or frozen to death.

As we all dive for the shrinking pie (all of us having bought that it's shrinking even as corporate profits soar) the powers that be will sit back confident that we'll turn our knives not on them and not even on the pie, but on each other. That's what the rabble is like, you know: dreadfully poor table manners.

The fissures likely to open up among us now may not be along the divides of race or gender, but on a faultline just as old if rarely mentioned: class.

Many of us are sufficiently established (or so we think) to do very well by Mike Harris's Common Sense Revolution. How many will say, as John Herbert did recently, "I don't want your tax cut on the backs of hungry kids"? How many will understand that even their private comforts may not survive the collapse of public amenity and the demise of civil life? How many, knowing at least one brand of oppression, will see how many other kinds there can be? Will they care?

The 1994 spousal rights campaign here in Ontario did not give encouraging hints. Hardly anyone then asked (and those who did were ignored) what effect Bill 167 might have on two people living together, one in a marginal job and the other on social assistance. Now we know: if they happen to split the grocery bill and watch The Simpsons together, the welfare police will gladly honour their relationship as common-law, declaring one of them a dependent spouse. So: no more cheques.

Such is one benefit of state-sanctioned (and thus state-defined) relationships. Our eagerness to fight the benefits battle as one of "spousal rights," as one more step on the long road to "equality" with heterosexual privilege, made it a gay issue -- and as a gay issue it was defeated. Some of us may be thankful.

[By 1996, more than 10,000 welfare recipients in Ontario who had previously been deemed single were regarded -- against their will and to their detriment -- as spouses. The welfare police may land even on common-law couples of the same sex. On 9 Feb 1996, Madame Justice Gloria Epstein of the Ontario Court's General Division ruled -- in a palimony suit brought by a lesbian against her former partner -- that in family law the phrase "a man or a woman" must be read as "two persons."

[The Globe and Mail reported that Judge Epstein "also noted that since one objective of the legislation was to reduce the number of candidates for social assistance, extending its application to same-sex couples should decrease government expenditures."]

We might have fought the "spousal rights" battle as one of broader human rights and social justice -- not to evade "the gay issue" as some then charged, but in common cause with people in all kinds of relationships, some not homosexual and some not sexual at all. We might have built alliances that, for the moment anyway, would have rendered the whole question of community or communities -- who counts and who doesn't -- moot.

We might have said: However I define myself and my community; however I refine my identity, even down to a community-of-one -- what kind of world do I want? What kind of world am I willing to fight for?

We differ in background; we're not so sure about turf; but adversity can give us a common interest, still: taking power in the world to make it the world we want.

If Pink Triangle Press has a role to play now (and it does) it should be the role for which it was founded: not so much to define who we are -- we can use its media and the rest of our lives to do that for ourselves -- but to help us say what we want. And why. And what we can do to win it.

The Press's 1992 Mission Statement says it is must provide us with media we can use to express our sexuality, share information, debate ideas and advocate actions. In all this it is meant to help us do what that first Community Page urged in 1971: Come together.

And fight together for our lives.

End