Love's Labors Lost: Intersections: Race, Gender, Sexuality, Class

March 10, 2010

Intersections: Race, Gender, Sexuality, Class

African Americans First Gay Couple to Marry in Washington

I think that it is important that all see this video. There is so much talk about homophobia in the Black community, that those who are same gender loving, who are both gay and Black are erased. Their stories and their truth is ignored and silenced in order to push the grand narrative. Let their love stand as a testimony that gay rights are an issue for people of colour because Black gays and lesbians are affected by homophobia.

LGBT Athletes of Color: Intersections of Racism, Sexism, and Heterosexism

Addressing discrimination and prejudice against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) athletes and coaches requires an understanding of how other identities besides sexual orientation or gender identity affect LGBT experience. Every athlete and coach is more than their sexual orientation or gender identity. Race, economic class and religion are among the many other aspects of social identity that add to the complexities of addressing discrimination and prejudice in athletics. The interactions of these identities complicate the experiences of LGBT people in athletics and make the experiences of individual LGBT athletes and coaches different from each other.

Is Homophobia the Same as Racism-Sexism?

For example, at the University of Texas at Austin, I had a roommate who took a race relations class. He was white. For some reason the professor brought in a young gay male who stated that he knew what it was like to be black because he was homosexual. I assume that he would probably argue that he knows what it is like to be a woman as well. That is problematic for me because I do not think he knows what it is like to be an African-American or a woman. Likewise, I do not know what it is like to be gay. It is easy to think that racism is just like sexism, homophobia, and classism. That is an easy way to think about the problems of discrimination. Then we do not have to think about the distinctions in those persons due to whatever unique characteristics he/she possesses. In academia people are taking the easy way out. What is easy politically can be intellectually dishonest.

The Other Black Unwoman (at TransGriot)

One of the things I thought about was how Black women are considered by society as the 'unwoman'.

Black women aren't considered beautiful vis a vis the vanilla tinged beauty standard. We're considered 'angry ' just for speaking our minds, less than intelligent despite having advanced degrees earned with summa cum laude grades, and when we excel in athletic endeavors we're presumed to have either cheated or it's dismissed because of 'natural ability'.

Black feminism wiki article

Homophobia and racism: the failed policy of ranking oppressions

The Truth That Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender, and Freedom

African Ancestral Lesbians United for Social Change

1 comment:

Monica Roberts5/22/2011 3:25 PM
thanks for the link love
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Words, Words, Words

. . . a lot of it [fostering rather than smothering students' playwriting] has to do with finding a way to construct a dialogue about ongoing work that empowers the writer. A lot of it has to do with making sure there's a diversity of voices around you. A lot of it has to do with thinking of the writing program as a brain trust for writers, not as some infantilization in which the dramaturg gets the power. And basically trying to find a place where everyone's aesthetic in the room grows larger rather than smaller. There are many ways to do that. It's really not a hard thing to do.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

Here is what seems to me an elementary truth that must precede any other: namely, that the theater, an independent and autonomous art, must, in order to revive or simply to live, realize what differentiates it from text, pure speech, literature, and all other fixed and written means.
--Antonin Artaud, letter, 9/15/1931

I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all I need for an act of theatre to be engaged.
--Peter Brook, The Empty Space

My work is characterized by one thing above all --- invention. In theatre we imagine the world, we do not record it, we are not documentary makers. I hold all social realism and journalistic theatre in contempt. It is a sordid habit. And the social realists have the impertinence to pretend they are 'telling the truth…'
--Howard Barker, interview

Women and writers of color are still seen as threats because, in essence, when a woman or writer of color is defining a play world, there's another definition of what our society is, and that's very threatening.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

Through this experience [working on " . . . and last week it was a mountain"] I learned the importance of the life and the dynamics under the words, and began to see the power of working from the silent space within - the emotions, the images, the experience and the feelings - rather than relying on the words.
--Sande Shurin, Transformational Acting: A Step Beyond

How does it happen that . . . the Occidental theater does not see theater under any other aspect than as a theater of dialogue?
--Antonin Artaud, Theater and Its Double

All conventions are imaginable, but they depend on the absence of rigid forms.
--Peter Brook, The Open Door

I never 'say' anything in my work. I invent a world. Let others decide what is being 'said'. Nor do I claim to tell the truth or enlighten people. We are suffocated by writers who want to enlighten us with their truths. For me, the theatre is beautiful because it is a secret, and secrets seduce us, we all want to share secrets. That is also its politics, if it has any politics at all. And modern democracies hate secrets, they want everything transparent. Obviously the critics collaborate in this desire to expose everything to the light of day, they are the police force, after all.
--Howard Barker, interview

I think that form is content . . . I've always been more interested . . . in the formal devices and the structure rather than in the subject matter . . . I really am a follower of Viktor Shklovsky, who said that in some ways the subject matter doesn't even matter. It's whether or not we see the subject matter anew that matters.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

I am well aware that the language of gestures and postures, dance and music, is less capable of analyzing a character, revealing a man's thoughts, or elucidating states of consciousness clearly and precisely, than is verbal language, but who ever said the theater was created to analyze a character, to resolve conflicts of love and duty, to wrestle with all the problems of a typical and psychological nature that monopolize our contemporary stage?
--Antonin Artaud, Theater and Its Double

The mediocre artist prefers not to take risks, which is why he is conventional.
--Peter Brook, The Open Door

"Transcendence became my life theme. I wanted to be lifted beyond everyday circumstances and everyday reality."
--Sande Shurin, Transformational Acting: A Step Beyond

I actually think of writing for the stage as not writing . . . It's about structuring, about gaps between the language that are really filled in by the collaborators and the process. It's all about indirection rather than a direct statement . . . It's like a three-dimensional chess game in a way. If I say this, will the director go in this direction? If I say this, will the actor respond? And one of the delights of the process is actually not having your intention fulfilled, but finding out at times that other people's interpretation or intention is actually more interesting than you originally thought of.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

The person who has an idea of what this language is will be able to understand us. We write only for him. --Antonin Artaud, letter, 9/28/1932