Trikster Blog

Gay marriage. Adoption. Handbags. Gaybies. U.S.A. Obamamania. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell? Well…

The queer activist-author Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore has re-published a thought provoking and immensely funny round table discussion entitled “Why Gay Marriage is the End of the World (or the queer world at least)” on the status of queer politics in a conservative US climate. The text was first printed in the October issue of the DIY punk zine Maximum Rocknroll (“The Queer Issue”), and is now luckily available online on Mattilda’s blog Nobody Passes, darling.

It includes the SF-based activist filmmaker Hilary Goldberg, the Chicago activist Yasmin Nair, and the NYC-based activist and organizer of the radical club Switch Gina Carducci as well as Mattilda. It is quite a read. Here is an excerpt on babyboom and adoption:

Mattilda: (…) Kids are the next big thing! How do you feel about the issue of gay adoption, and child-rearing in general, as a central preoccupation of the so-called “movement?”

Hilary Goldberg: Why don’t Madonna and Angelina, in their gay wisdom, adopt some adult queer artists and activists instead? For a fraction of what they spend on a handful of appropriated transnational youths, they could adopt queer artists en masse, and foster a global queer trust fund for the movement. No need for nannies and we’d love them even more than their children, and could be just as dependent, if not more so. Average gay couples could do the same thing, direct their money towards something more expansive and useful than a handbag—I mean a gaybie. I’m thinking of a website that pairs queer artists with gay couples who have big hearts to share their love and help.

Gina Carducci: Yeah, no need for pacifiers, no need to push us around in strollers, and you don’t have to wait nine months for us. We’re right here! Mommy!!!!

Yasmin Nair: If you’re white, beautiful little blonde children are the best, because then you’ll look like a normal and natural family. But adopting one can be next to impossible! Little brown babies make the best gay accessories. Although, like every gay fashion accessory, babies have shifted in trends. I think Mongolian babies are now much more hip. Central and South American countries were once popular, maybe NAFTA opened up free trade in cute Latin babies! Until they discovered that some of those babies were most likely kidnapped. Awkward. They may not have those pesky rules in Mongolia. Of course, if you can adopt an HIV+ African baby whose mother is still around to waste away in the last throes of the disease, so that you can show the world what you rescued the baby from, all the better. (…)

Read more about this, and much more on gay assimilation on Mattilda’s blog.

If you hunger for more perspectives on why marriage in general might not be the coolest thing in the world to promote - and you can read Swedish - don’t forget to read Anna Adeniji’s fantastic book: Inte den typ som gifter sig? Feministiska samtal om äktenskapsmotstånd (Not the marrying kind. Feminist conversations on resistance to marriage). This is one of the best books I’ve read this year. It is fantastic fun to read, and it performs critiques of marriage from a wide variety of perspectives, highlighting all the different privileging discourses this “ritual” is entangled in: migration and racism; heteronormativity and coupledom; legal and economic issues; capitalism and consumerism; religion, etc. It is a mandatory read. For a great critique of the book, see Lene Myong Petersen’s text at FORUM.

I Trikster #2 kan man lese et reisebrev fra aktivistene Christoph Fielder og Elin Sandström Lundh som i 2007-2008 reiste Nordamerika rundt for å snakke med queerfeministiske aktivister. Nå har Christoph og Elin samlet inntrykkene fra reisen i boken Vi är misfits! – Queerfeministisk aktivism och anarkistiska visioner, som er utkommet på NORMAL Förlag. De beskriver boken slik på forlagets hjemmeside:

Efter åtta år med historiens minst omtyckta president reste vi till USA för att intervjua queerfeministiska aktivister. Vi sökte efter människor som står upp, som gör motstånd, som slåss och som visar oss andra vägar att gå. Andra än de som styrs av normen. Den vite heterosexuelle mannens norm. Resultatet av vår resa blev Vi är misfits! En bok som blandar intervjuer med aktivister med våra egna betraktelser och funderingar kring anarkism, anti-assimilering, rasism och intersektionalism.

Vi är misfits! är en inspirationsbok för alla som ser att denna värld radikalt behöver förändras för att vi ska kunna överleva. Den är ett queerfeministiskt manifest och den är en samling berättelser om människor som gör praktik av den ofta så teoritunga queerfeminismen. Den vill bråka, vara jobbig, den vill sporra läsaren till att aktivera sig. Överallt, alltid.

Vi är misfits! er et must for queerfeministiske aktivister og forskere, og boken inneholder blant annet denne oppsangen fra den fantastiske aktivisten og forfatteren Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore:

Ett tecken på att du gör rätt när det gäller queeraktivism är om folk blir upprörda! Och, var beredd på att förstå saker och ting på ett mer komplicerat sätt än du någonsin trodde var möjligt. Om något eller någon verkar vara din fiende, tänk en gång till, vem är det egentligen som är vår fiende? Öppna upp för möjligheten att tänka om allting du någonsin tänkt.
- Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore