The first summer after I moved out of my parent's house and into a tiny apartment in downtown Edmonton I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. His story about journeying to a place of peace within a world that was against him resonated with me. Although I am not comfortable with reductionist comparisons between black and queer experiences, I do see similarities and am still moved as a queer man by a speech Malcolm X gave in which he asked the audience, "Who taught you to hate the colour of your skin to such extent that you bleach it to get it like the white man? Who taught you to hate your own kind so much so that you don't even want to be around each other?"
When I first heard these questions I easily applied them to my relationship with the gay community and my own queerness. That first summer alone I was both so enthralled yet scared of who I was and the world I could belong to that I would wait until 2 or 3 am on Friday and Saturday nights to walk down Jasper Ave, circling around 104th Street just to catch a glimpse of people leaving The Roost. I remember the tired, alive smiles of handsome boys I thought I would never get to kiss illuminated by the collateral light of phone booths and outdoor store signs, the sounds of diva shouts and eruptive laughter, the smell of booze and too much cologne wafting in the cool summer air. Years of feeling trapped in suburbia made those nights seem surreal—so much so that I couldn't allow myself to be a part of them. I worked at being invisible, never saying "hi" or even smiling at my queer bothers and sisters as we passed each other in the night.
So much of my fear and loathing around the gay community and myself has been, and continues to be, my own sliding scale of discomfort in my queer body; my funny voice, my nelly mannerisms, my often uncontrollable exuberance. Who taught me to hate this about myself?
Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965 at a meeting in Upper Manhattan. Across town at the Stonewall Inn in the West Village four years later (still part of the same turbulent decade), a riot broke out. A motley crew of queers, queens, freaks and their admirers refused to let cops prematurely end their night at one of the few places where they could gather in private. Back then there were no gay clubs, only Mafia-owned holes-in-the-wall that made quick cash on watered-down drinks served on the bar owner's terms: no touching, no dancing and expect to be blackmailed at any time if you weren't willing to pay or play by the rules. The bar owners were in cahoots with the cops and some of the cops were corrupt. But on June 29, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn, the gays disrupted this power sharing by fighting back, by refusing to go quietly into the night. Cars were overturned, bricks were thrown, crowds gathered, bodies were slammed and the gay rights movement, already well underway, found its tipping point. Interestingly, mere months earlier Canada, thanks to Bill C-150, had decriminalized homosexuality.
Leading the way that night at the Stonewall Inn were the limp-wristed of the bunch, the squeaky-voiced slight boys with the least to lose since they had nothing anyway. It was the gayest of the bunch that refused to get up, be strip searched to have their gender confirmed. Isn't that always the way? Think today on elementary school fields; who's the first to get picked on, have insults hurled at them before anyone else? Sissies, always the sissies—and yet gay culture increasingly attempts to mock the sissy, ignore the sissy in representation unless they are the butt of the joke.
In part it is this denouncing and ignoring of the sissy that answers Malcolm X's questions that echo in my head. It is a culture, both gay and straight, that tells me that sissies are bad, that effeminate is ineffectual. Part of what we have lost in the fight for gay rights is the ability to be different. With growing acceptance has come increased assimilation. For some this is comforting, for me it is sad because it is the sissy that is being left behind, and lest we forget, sissies led the revolution.
We need sissies now more than ever. Decades after the civil rights movement began, 40 years after Stonewall, America may have elected their first black president and Canada may be home to same-sex marriage and gays in the military, but we in Alberta are still living with a government that seems hell bent on being on the wrong side of history by denying life-saving services to transgender people and making room for teachers to continue to disappear homosexuality away.
As we revel this week in all the glory that is the Edmonton Pride Festival we need to get our sissy on and fight for our rights to be flamboyant, fabulous and free! How we show our pride, change this province for the better and make the world a more tolerant place is by allowing ourselves to be as gay as we want.
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