Queer Gnosis

by Troy Williams

I’m off this week with an estimated 50,000 new-edge arty hipster types to partake in the annual neo-bohemian love-fest known as Burning Man.  The celebration is a phantasmagoric trip into the fringe mindscapes of the culturally unhinged. And since I know many of you love a glorious psychedelic adventure, I thought I’d share my recent interview with psychonaut, Daniel Pinchbeck. We discussed the role of psychedelia in our collective consciousness and how a quantum shift in our world-view might side-step what many believe is our pending ecological and societal collapse. Who wouldn’t be up for that? His recent book, 2012: The Return of Quetzacoatl navigates the psychic terrain of edge-culture shamans, Hopi prophecies, end day scenarios, indigenous wisdom and occult speculation. 

TW: One of the themes in 2012 is the idea of synchronicity. Three years ago I was in a bookstore in Big Fork, Montana, and I saw your previous book, Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism.  I felt compelled to buy the book. Later that afternoon I was wrestling with my nephews in their basement, and I fell over and literally broke my head open! Blood was everywhere – the very day I buy your book, Breaking Open The Head!

DP:  (laughs) Yeah.  I’ve got the sense from a lot of people, that the books I’ve written are energetic synchronistic vortices for people.  They come into their lives at certain moments. A lot of people tell me that the books helped catalyze a change in direction or the way they are thinking about their lives and the world.

TW: Breaking Open the Head really stopped me from being so cavalier with drug use.  I really recognized a lack of the shamanic tradition in the west and had some really bad drug experiences that were reflective of my carelessness in using drugs recreationally. 

DP: Definitely.  I think psychedelics need to be considered sacramentally.  I do see an underground understanding of indigenous shamanism, the kind of power they have and why they constructed ceremonies and rituals around these substances.

TW:  This beautiful guy in Malibu gave me this psychotropic bread and I ate it and had an incredible trip — but then as the night progressed I started astral projecting and opening up dimensions and really having an intense hallucinogenic experience. Then physically my entire body felt under siege by an invading force.  It was painful, terrifying and it left me sick for three weeks after the event. 

DP: Yeah. What seems to happen is that a lot of people get a few free tickets to ride. They have great early psychedelic experiences and then at a certain point there is something like a reckoning and more shadow material rises up.  At that point you need to give up the pursuit or go into a more shamanic practice.  For me, it’s clear that when you connect with a shamanic lineage it has a protective energy around it.  You are connecting with what Rupert Sheldrake would call a morphogenic field of people who use these things carefully and benevolently. It makes a huge difference.  In the end of my new book I talk about going to Brazil and working with a religion that uses ayahuasca as a sacrament and for me that was a very healing and positive experience. 

TW: You argue that human consciousness is rapidly transitioning to a new state of awareness of both time and space and that according to the Mayan and Toltec civilization we are reaching the end of a great cycle which includes a massive shift in the human psyche by the date December 23, 2012.  How do we begin to unpack that?

DP: For me it’s clear that we are in this accelerated transformation process and for a lot of people that I know, the realm of the psyche is becoming more available in terms of synchronicity, telepathy, and other non-ordinary state experiences.  Reality itself is becoming less materially dense and more psychically responsive.  On the other hand, people who haven’t been experiencing this think you are nuts.  But you can also look at the material manifestation of this situation.  The accelerated evolution of technology, which in several years keeps meshing us together as a global brain and giving us instantaneous access to each other’s consciousness through text messages, emails, etc.  And the third aspect is the destruction of the biosphere which is making us increasingly conscious of the deviant path we have taken and the necessity to do a major course correction as a species if we’re going to survive.  We have to make a very large-scale shift in consciousness.  For me it’s this other element of the psyche coming through that is showing us a positive dimension.

TW: Let’s talk pragmatically — how we raise consciousness with a lack of shamanic tradition and no easy access to underground psychedelics?

DP: My answer to that has nothing to do with whether psychedelics or shamanism are available to anybody.  It’s really just about paying more attention to reality and being more discriminating.  I really feel that is what we are called to do right now.  In the kabala they talk about discrimination as the key virtue on this earth plane.  And we are being bombarded with so much material and information, entertainment and distraction.  But if you can be discriminating and find the core crucial elements in the threads that lead you forward, that is very empowering.  I also think that incarnating the self is the softening of ones ego desire for this or that and being connected to the sense of being conscious aspects of a planetary ecology.  We have to think of reality from those terms.  How do we help the planetary ecology sustain itself?   It’s not going to do it unless there is a radical shift in values, intentions and practices.  I think that new consciousness is crystallizing right now.  And once it crystallizes it moves out very quickly. I feel we are potentially here for a very large-scale fast transformation of consciousness.

Qcast complete interview with Daniel Pincbeck:

2012

By Troy Williams

The following presentation was given during a panel discussion at the 2007 Sunstone Theological Symposium on August 10 in Salt Lake City.  The panel was titled, Kissing the Damned: Embracing a Queer-Positive Sexuality in the Heart of Zion.

I’ve been thinking about gay shame in a Mormon context – and specifically how gay shame has become embedded in the discourse that shapes our lives.  And by that I mean the ways in which we tell our stories.  So often the stories detail rejection from family members, mocking and gay bashing from peers, reparative therapies and excommunications and in many cases a lonely sense of nihilism and internalized self-loathing.  Suicide attempts become the endpoint of despair.

These stories are real. They exist in many people’s lives.  But we are here today to share a new story.  We here to tell the stories of men and women who have come in one way or another out of Mormon culture, and have been able to embrace a queer-positive world-view.

Despite what the Church and so many other anti-gay activists have to say, queers can passionately embrace their sexuality, fully enter into the gay lifestyle and live happy, successful, joyful and yes, spiritual lives. 

Now I was not always the self-actualized and confidant man that you see standing before you.  I was once a timid kid filled with fear, self-hatred and sexual anxiety.

   
I grew up Mormon, and returned with honor from my mission.   And let me tell you – I was expert at

repressing my sexuality! In fact I was absolutely terrified of my sexuality!  I read Spencer W. Kimball’s
book The Miracle of Forgiveness – and he made it very clear that if you entered into the gay lifestyle, the next step was going to be sex with animals!  Now as a boy you must understand I was especially sensitive to this because I grew up on a farm.  And when you are taught to literally believe everything the prophets say, well, you can see my dilemma.  So I afraid of my nascent sexuality because I thought that if I
acknowledged it, or expressed it – my natural desires would overwhelm and destroy me.

But at eight years old I remember thinking – why can’t two boys fall in love and get married? I have felt gay desire since I was a little kid. And with that I have also felt a deep connection to that unseen presence that many people call, “God”.  These two strong impulses were entwined together.  They co-existed in my childhood but were severed in adolescence.

I became tremendously skilled at shutting myself off.  I turned off my body – turned off potential lovers – turned off my creativity.  And in a very real sense I turned off access to my soul.  But all of that energy had to go somewhere right? 

Freud was right about that whole sublimation thing – I came off my mission and was then faced with the expectation to get married!  So I became a turbo Mormon – and by that I mean a real freak. In order to prove my righteousness I followed the teachings of then prophet Ezra Taft Benson to the patriotic extreme and started volunteering for The Eagle Forum. I had read all of Benson’s talks supporting the John Birch Society – and well, Eagle Forum was the closest thing I could find at the time.  Yes, it’s true – I, Troy Williams, that apostate super fag producer of liberal talk radio, used to hang out in the home of Gayle Ruzicka! 

Well it’s funny where self-loathing will take you. 

And thankfully after a very short while I just couldn’t fly high with the Eagle Forum. I didn’t like the person I was becoming in their nest.

But still I continued to sublimate my libido in other ways.  I once fasted for five days with no food to know if the truth claims of Mormonism were true. Five days! Who does that?  I mean true — that was way back before The Secret, and I didn’t know how else to attract my desires – but still.  It was a bit over-the-top.  But hey it worked.  Because every spiritual witness — every gut instinct kept screaming at me: Get the hell out of the Church! Your emotional and spiritual survival depends on it!   

I have never connected romantically with women.  And I thought — oh my god, I am going to die without ever knowing what it’s like to fall in love. That scared me.  I don’t care what the Church says about life-long celibacy – you simply cannot mature and grow emotionally without physical and sexual intimacy. Prolonged sexual abstinence stunts your emotional growth.  Repression messes with your mind.  Sharing our bodies is vital to our psychological, emotional and spiritual wellbeing.  And without the fulfillment of this primal basic need I was becoming a painful bitter wreck of a human being.

And I thought to hell with this – I want to experience love.  So I excommunicated the Church from my life.  I removed my name from the records.  And yeah – it was sad. I loved the Church – and in a very real sense I owe my life to the Mormons.  My dad was a convert who met my mom in sacrament meeting.  They married in the temple and conceived me!  Without Joseph, Brigham, The Book of Mormon, the pioneers and all those missionaries – I wouldn’t even exist today. 

So one day I thought to myself – I’m going to try out this whole gay thing.

And soon after I met my first boyfriend.  He was a tall, handsome, gentle guy who I met in college.  We became friends and started hanging out – and then we started “hanging out” – which led to making out, which resulted in my first full-on sexual experience with a man – and at long last, my first love.  I was sixteen again for the first time.   

I noticed something profoundly different about this guy.  He wasn’t Mormon.  He didn’t have a religious background. His parents accepted him.  He told me that when he came out to his parents his dad said to him, “son, you will have many obstacles in your life because of your orientation but we will not be one of them.”  He was the first gay man I ever met who actually loved being gay – and he never wanted to change.  If there were some pill to make you straight – he wouldn’t take it.  He saw being gay as a gift – and he taught me how to deeply and truly love that which I feared so much.

And the joy I felt when we were together — holding him, sleeping with him, loving him was so powerful and sublime.  For the first time in my life, I felt authentic. 

The things within us that are the most terrifying are often the things within us that are the most powerful.

Joseph Campbell said: “My definition of a devil is a god who has not been recognized.  That is to say, it is a power in you to which you have not given expression, and you push it back. And then, like all repressed energy, it builds up and becomes completely dangerous.”  My inner demon was dangerous. But facing it, embracing it, loving it – was life transforming. As Prospero says of Caliban, "This thing of darkness, I acknowledge mine".

Jesus is quoted in The Gnostic Gospel of Thomas as saying, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

And when I hear of gay kids committing suicide – or married men having risky gay sex on the down low – or gay men strung out on crystal, I know that can be true. 

Since coming out and embracing my authentic queer self – everything in my life has changed.  I’ve become a talk-radio producer working for social justice.  I’ve started a film career.  I’ve become a columnist writing in various papers. I am living my life with passion and conviction – and I am happy. 

So how do I react when I read the Church’s new pamphlet, God Loveth His Children? It’s simply not my reality.  The Church requires gay people to live celibate lives to be included in full fellowship. They want docile and obedient eunuchs in their pews. No thank you. I don’t want to change the Church to accommodate me. They can require their members to do whatever they want.  I don’t care.  It’s only when the Church enters the political realm and actively works to restrict our civil liberties, then I will raise my voice.

Well the Church claims the right to speak out on moral issues – like marriage.  For example, Brigham Young, Ezra Taft Benson and other general authorities once taught that black people should never marry white people.  Bruce R. McConkie wrote:

"Caste Systems have their root and origin in the Gospel itself, and when they operate according to the divine decree the resultant restrictions and segregation is right and proper before the Lord. Ham and the whole negro race have been cursed with a black skin, the mark of Cain, so they can be identified as a caste apart, a people with whom the other descendants of Adam should not intermarry."
(Mormon Doctrine, 1958, p 107-108)

When the Church today uses Christ’s Gospel to justify their attacks on gay marriage — I always remember these words, and the words of so many more like them. 

When the Church pushes out vibrant writers, authors, painters, intellectuals and philosophers, it’s ultimately their loss. With so many creative mavericks exiled from the fold, LDS culture suffers considerably. Mormon music, Mormon art, Mormon theology and scholarship even Mormon cuisine have all become painfully bland and uninteresting.  This is why retention is such a massive problem.  In the 21st Century, misogynistic homophobic patriarchy no longer inspires the masses. 

I don’t want a vanilla flavored religion.  I want a faith and relationship with God that is rich chocolate with rainbow colored swirls and lots of nuts. I want a theology that denounces war and rallies for peace and a congregation that sings for social justice.  I desire a spirituality that takes me to the edge of life – that expands my capacity to love the outsider – and that celebrates the beauty of intimate queer sexuality.  I desire a faith that can include and embrace all people.

The Church leadership admits that they don’t understand the origins of homosexuality – they don’t know how to make a gay person straight.  They don’t seem to know much about the issue.  When it comes to the gays, they are blind guides who use pejorative words like “affliction”, “temptation”, or “inclination” to describe homosexuality.  But I use adjectives like “joyful”, “creative”, “gifted”, and “blessed”.  I love my life.  And I believe queers are here to share our gifts with the world. This is the story that the Church is not telling you! Gay is Good and yes – queer sexuality is a gift from God.

And queer youth are emerging with more confidence, more strength and more attitude than ever before.  And they have a big vision for the planet.  Together, we are envisioning a new future – a new world – not just for gay people – but for all marginalized people.  We are working to expand the blessings of this nation to include and embrace the least of these. 

I talked about my inner work to embrace that which I feared.  As within so without.  Imagine what could happen if Mormons, this nation and the entire planet where to embrace that which we collectively feared: women, gays, blacks, Muslims, Arabs, undocumented Latinos, polygamists, apostates and on and on and on – I believe our fear would be transformed into our power and we would truly create a new world of peace and justice.  Our weary war-torn and polluted little earth desperately needs us all to raise our consciousness and embrace a much larger and grander world-view. 

As an adult I feel again the steady intertwining of my spiritual and sexual desires.  They are wrapped together like a lover in an erotic sacred embrace.  We must all awaken our body and soul to this sensual-sexual-spiritual world.  We must love the condemned and embrace our deepest, darkest secret fears. 

I’ve become friends with Amy Ray from the Indigo Girls. Her queer anthem Fugitive sums up so much of what I feel –

I’m harboring a fugitive – defector of a kind, and she lives in my soul and drinks of my wine – and I’d give my last breath to keep us alive.  I stood without clothes, danced in the sand, I was aching with freedom, kissing the damned, and I said remember this is how it should be.

By Troy Williams

The following presentation was given during a panel discussion at the 2007 Sunstone Theological Symposium on August 10 in Salt Lake City.  The panel was titled, Kissing the Damned: Embracing a Queer-Positive Sexuality in the Heart of Zion.

I’ve been thinking about gay shame in a Mormon context – and specifically how gay shame has become embedded in the discourse that shapes our lives.  And by that I mean the ways in which we tell our stories.  So often the stories detail rejection from family members, mocking and gay bashing from peers, reparative therapies and excommunications and in many cases a lonely sense of nihilism and internalized self-loathing.  Suicide attempts become the endpoint of despair.

These stories are real. They exist in many people’s lives.  But we are here today to share a new story.  We here to tell the stories of men and women who have come in one way or another out of Mormon culture, and have been able to embrace a queer-positive world-view.

Despite what the Church and so many other anti-gay activists have to say, queers can passionately embrace their sexuality, fully enter into the gay lifestyle and live happy, successful, joyful and yes, spiritual lives. 

Now I was not always the self-actualized and confidant man that you see standing before you.  I was once a timid kid filled with fear, self-hatred and sexual anxiety.

   
I grew up Mormon, and returned with honor from my mission.   And let me tell you – I was expert at

repressing my sexuality! In fact I was absolutely terrified of my sexuality!  I read Spencer W. Kimball’s
book The Miracle of Forgiveness – and he made it very clear that if you entered into the gay lifestyle, the next step was going to be sex with animals!  Now as a boy you must understand I was especially sensitive to this because I grew up on a farm.  And when you are taught to literally believe everything the prophets say, well, you can see my dilemma.  So I afraid of my nascent sexuality because I thought that if I
acknowledged it, or expressed it – my natural desires would overwhelm and destroy me.

But at eight years old I remember thinking – why can’t two boys fall in love and get married? I have felt gay desire since I was a little kid. And with that I have also felt a deep connection to that unseen presence that many people call, “God”.  These two strong impulses were entwined together.  They co-existed in my childhood but were severed in adolescence.

I became tremendously skilled at shutting myself off.  I turned off my body – turned off potential lovers – turned off my creativity.  And in a very real sense I turned off access to my soul.  But all of that energy had to go somewhere right? 

Freud was right about that whole sublimation thing – I came off my mission and was then faced with the expectation to get married!  So I became a turbo Mormon – and by that I mean a real freak. In order to prove my righteousness I followed the teachings of then prophet Ezra Taft Benson to the patriotic extreme and started volunteering for The Eagle Forum. I had read all of Benson’s talks supporting the John Birch Society – and well, Eagle Forum was the closest thing I could find at the time.  Yes, it’s true – I, Troy Williams, that apostate super fag producer of liberal talk radio, used to hang out in the home of Gayle Ruzicka! 

Well it’s funny where self-loathing will take you. 

And thankfully after a very short while I just couldn’t fly high with the Eagle Forum. I didn’t like the person I was becoming in their nest.

But still I continued to sublimate my libido in other ways.  I once fasted for five days with no food to know if the truth claims of Mormonism were true. Five days! Who does that?  I mean true — that was way back before The Secret, and I didn’t know how else to attract my desires – but still.  It was a bit over-the-top.  But hey it worked.  Because every spiritual witness — every gut instinct kept screaming at me: Get the hell out of the Church! Your emotional and spiritual survival depends on it!   

I have never connected romantically with women.  And I thought — oh my god, I am going to die without ever knowing what it’s like to fall in love. That scared me.  I don’t care what the Church says about life-long celibacy – you simply cannot mature and grow emotionally without physical and sexual intimacy. Prolonged sexual abstinence stunts your emotional growth.  Repression messes with your mind.  Sharing our bodies is vital to our psychological, emotional and spiritual wellbeing.  And without the fulfillment of this primal basic need I was becoming a painful bitter wreck of a human being.

And I thought to hell with this – I want to experience love.  So I excommunicated the Church from my life.  I removed my name from the records.  And yeah – it was sad. I loved the Church – and in a very real sense I owe my life to the Mormons.  My dad was a convert who met my mom in sacrament meeting.  They married in the temple and conceived me!  Without Joseph, Brigham, The Book of Mormon, the pioneers and all those missionaries – I wouldn’t even exist today. 

So one day I thought to myself – I’m going to try out this whole gay thing.

And soon after I met my first boyfriend.  He was a tall, handsome, gentle guy who I met in college.  We became friends and started hanging out – and then we started “hanging out” – which led to making out, which resulted in my first full-on sexual experience with a man – and at long last, my first love.  I was sixteen again for the first time.   

I noticed something profoundly different about this guy.  He wasn’t Mormon.  He didn’t have a religious background. His parents accepted him.  He told me that when he came out to his parents his dad said to him, “son, you will have many obstacles in your life because of your orientation but we will not be one of them.”  He was the first gay man I ever met who actually loved being gay – and he never wanted to change.  If there were some pill to make you straight – he wouldn’t take it.  He saw being gay as a gift – and he taught me how to deeply and truly love that which I feared so much.

And the joy I felt when we were together — holding him, sleeping with him, loving him was so powerful and sublime.  For the first time in my life, I felt authentic. 

The things within us that are the most terrifying are often the things within us that are the most powerful.

Joseph Campbell said: “My definition of a devil is a god who has not been recognized.  That is to say, it is a power in you to which you have not given expression, and you push it back. And then, like all repressed energy, it builds up and becomes completely dangerous.”  My inner demon was dangerous. But facing it, embracing it, loving it – was life transforming. As Prospero says of Caliban, "This thing of darkness, I acknowledge mine".

Jesus is quoted in The Gnostic Gospel of Thomas as saying, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

And when I hear of gay kids committing suicide – or married men having risky gay sex on the down low – or gay men strung out on crystal, I know that can be true. 

Since coming out and embracing my authentic queer self – everything in my life has changed.  I’ve become a talk-radio producer working for social justice.  I’ve started a film career.  I’ve become a columnist writing in various papers. I am living my life with passion and conviction – and I am happy. 

So how do I react when I read the Church’s new pamphlet, God Loveth His Children? It’s simply not my reality.  The Church requires gay people to live celibate lives to be included in full fellowship. They want docile and obedient eunuchs in their pews. No thank you. I don’t want to change the Church to accommodate me. They can require their members to do whatever they want.  I don’t care.  It’s only when the Church enters the political realm and actively works to restrict our civil liberties, then I will raise my voice.

Well the Church claims the right to speak out on moral issues – like marriage.  For example, Brigham Young, Ezra Taft Benson and other general authorities once taught that black people should never marry white people.  Bruce R. McConkie wrote:

"Caste Systems have their root and origin in the Gospel itself, and when they operate according to the divine decree the resultant restrictions and segregation is right and proper before the Lord. Ham and the whole negro race have been cursed with a black skin, the mark of Cain, so they can be identified as a caste apart, a people with whom the other descendants of Adam should not intermarry."
(Mormon Doctrine, 1958, p 107-108)

When the Church today uses Christ’s Gospel to justify their attacks on gay marriage — I always remember these words, and the words of so many more like them. 

When the Church pushes out vibrant writers, authors, painters, intellectuals and philosophers, it’s ultimately their loss. With so many creative mavericks exiled from the fold, LDS culture suffers considerably. Mormon music, Mormon art, Mormon theology and scholarship even Mormon cuisine have all become painfully bland and uninteresting.  This is why retention is such a massive problem.  In the 21st Century, misogynistic homophobic patriarchy no longer inspires the masses. 

I don’t want a vanilla flavored religion.  I want a faith and relationship with God that is rich chocolate with rainbow colored swirls and lots of nuts. I want a theology that denounces war and rallies for peace and a congregation that sings for social justice.  I desire a spirituality that takes me to the edge of life – that expands my capacity to love the outsider – and that celebrates the beauty of intimate queer sexuality.  I desire a faith that can include and embrace all people.

The Church leadership admits that they don’t understand the origins of homosexuality – they don’t know how to make a gay person straight.  They don’t seem to know much about the issue.  When it comes to the gays, they are blind guides who use pejorative words like “affliction”, “temptation”, or “inclination” to describe homosexuality.  But I use adjectives like “joyful”, “creative”, “gifted”, and “blessed”.  I love my life.  And I believe queers are here to share our gifts with the world. This is the story that the Church is not telling you! Gay is Good and yes – queer sexuality is a gift from God.

And queer youth are emerging with more confidence, more strength and more attitude than ever before.  And they have a big vision for the planet.  Together, we are envisioning a new future – a new world – not just for gay people – but for all marginalized people.  We are working to expand the blessings of this nation to include and embrace the least of these. 

I talked about my inner work to embrace that which I feared.  As within so without.  Imagine what could happen if Mormons, this nation and the entire planet where to embrace that which we collectively feared: women, gays, blacks, Muslims, Arabs, undocumented Latinos, polygamists, apostates and on and on and on – I believe our fear would be transformed into our power and we would truly create a new world of peace and justice.  Our weary war-torn and polluted little earth desperately needs us all to raise our consciousness and embrace a much larger and grander world-view. 

As an adult I feel again the steady intertwining of my spiritual and sexual desires.  They are wrapped together like a lover in an erotic sacred embrace.  We must all awaken our body and soul to this sensual-sexual-spiritual world.  We must love the condemned and embrace our deepest, darkest secret fears. 

I’ve become friends with Amy Ray from the Indigo Girls. Her queer anthem Fugitive sums up so much of what I feel –

I’m harboring a fugitive – defector of a kind, and she lives in my soul and drinks of my wine – and I’d give my last breath to keep us alive.  I stood without clothes, danced in the sand, I was aching with freedom, kissing the damned, and I said remember this is how it should be.

By Troy Williams

In part one of my interview with genderqueer activist, Mattilda, we discussed the dangers of gay assimilation into the world of straight privilege.  In the second part, we discuss hur new anthology, Nobody Passes: Confronting the Rules of Gender and Conformity.  The contributors in the volume each share their intimate experiences along the gender-blur continuum of queer identity. The various essays explore transgender politics, class issues, immigration and race struggles, as well as S&M, inter-queer discrimination and more.  The book offers a wild ride through the turbulent waters of conformity and individuality. Ultimately these smart and insightful essays question the very nature of belonging.  The book also dares to ask about the possibility of choice in our sexuality and gender performance. 

TW: Let’s jump into your anthology.  This is an exciting and accessible book.  In fact, I’m going to go as far and say it’s even a dangerous book. 

M: Good!

TW:  It’s comprised of a series of personal essays where you engage the problem of identity and what one contributor calls the “ill-fitting nature of categories.”  And it seems that a thread that weaves through the various narratives is this conflict between personal authenticity and that deep desire to belong and be part of a group. 

M: Absolutely. What I wanted to examine with Nobody Passes is the kind of compromises we are required to make in order to find these elusive ideas of community and belonging.  What kind of violence lurks behind that?  All of the contributors are talking about these really complicated intersections of identity and categorization and community — and asking, why is it belonging that we are after?

TW:  It seems like this is hard-wired into us – to connect and be part of something larger.  And I’m wondering if this deep yearning to belong is actually what drives the assimilationist desires of the LGBT political movement?

M: Absolutely.  And that is where the violence comes in.  Especially if belonging means being the front-line of gentrification and moving into a neighborhood to get rid of the trannies and the whores and the drug addicts and homeless people.  And then if we really succeed, straight people will eventually move in and gentrify us out of the neighborhood!  Assimilation is cultural erasure.  When you succeed that means you’re gone.  And the essays in Nobody’s Passes are about articulating all of these complicated identities and places where we don’t belong. 

TW: You talk about the power of choosing your own gender, your own orientation and ultimately your own identity.  And I’ve come to reject the “born that way” argument because, well — women, poor people, Native Americans, other people of color — they’re all “born that way” and that hasn’t provided them any political capital in our culture.  Why do you think we so invested in this idea of biological determinism?

M: It’s arguing for acceptance on the terms of the people who want us dead.  And so it’s like, “oh wait, we didn’t choose to be this way!  I didn’t choose this dark and desperate and degraded and dangerous life!  How could I possibly choose this?”   It’s already accepting this pathology.  “We can’t change it, we’re sick!  So please accept us!” I think the real potential of queer identity is in enabling people to choose our gender, sexual and social identities.  That’s the real potential.  That’s the excitement, the glamour, the courage and the vibrancy.  Obviously we’re not at that place yet.  But for me, that’s what a queer analysis can do for something else.  How do we take apart all of these structures?  Not just the structures in the world around us, but the structures within ourselves. That’s what I am interested in — a politics that enables people to choose as many possibilities as they can and not limiting it around that whole “born that way” argument.  It doesn’t go anywhere — it’s a dead end. 

TW:  I was going to ask you what your vision of a queertopia might be – but that’s it, isn’t it?  It’s having the freedom to choose all of these things.

M: Yeah, that for me is the goal.  Though I’m a little afraid of utopias. (laughs)

TW: It’s a queertopia!

M: (laughs) yeah, ok.  Utopias often have a way of going the other direction.  But we have to have some hope for dismantling dominant systems of oppression. Whether those systems are as obvious as something like George Bush or our own social circles.   Even if they are radical outsider cultures. For me the real possibility is to be able to instigate and create something else.  That’s the point.  We can look at this horrible world and ask how do we create something else?

TW:  And that has always been the role of the fringe and the avant-garde  – to confront status quo, to provoke, agitate and summon something new for our culture.

M: Absolutely. That’s the possibility for finding the connections and really actually making change that works.

By Troy Williams

In part one of my interview with genderqueer activist, Mattilda, we discussed the dangers of gay assimilation into the world of straight privilege.  In the second part, we discuss hur new anthology, Nobody Passes: Confronting the Rules of Gender and Conformity.  The contributors in the volume each share their intimate experiences along the gender-blur continuum of queer identity. The various essays explore transgender politics, class issues, immigration and race struggles, as well as S&M, inter-queer discrimination and more.  The book offers a wild ride through the turbulent waters of conformity and individuality. Ultimately these smart and insightful essays question the very nature of belonging.  The book also dares to ask about the possibility of choice in our sexuality and gender performance. 

TW: Let’s jump into your anthology.  This is an exciting and accessible book.  In fact, I’m going to go as far and say it’s even a dangerous book. 

M: Good!

TW:  It’s comprised of a series of personal essays where you engage the problem of identity and what one contributor calls the “ill-fitting nature of categories.”  And it seems that a thread that weaves through the various narratives is this conflict between personal authenticity and that deep desire to belong and be part of a group. 

M: Absolutely. What I wanted to examine with Nobody Passes is the kind of compromises we are required to make in order to find these elusive ideas of community and belonging.  What kind of violence lurks behind that?  All of the contributors are talking about these really complicated intersections of identity and categorization and community — and asking, why is it belonging that we are after?

TW:  It seems like this is hard-wired into us – to connect and be part of something larger.  And I’m wondering if this deep yearning to belong is actually what drives the assimilationist desires of the LGBT political movement?

M: Absolutely.  And that is where the violence comes in.  Especially if belonging means being the front-line of gentrification and moving into a neighborhood to get rid of the trannies and the whores and the drug addicts and homeless people.  And then if we really succeed, straight people will eventually move in and gentrify us out of the neighborhood!  Assimilation is cultural erasure.  When you succeed that means you’re gone.  And the essays in Nobody’s Passes are about articulating all of these complicated identities and places where we don’t belong. 

TW: You talk about the power of choosing your own gender, your own orientation and ultimately your own identity.  And I’ve come to reject the “born that way” argument because, well — women, poor people, Native Americans, other people of color — they’re all “born that way” and that hasn’t provided them any political capital in our culture.  Why do you think we so invested in this idea of biological determinism?

M: It’s arguing for acceptance on the terms of the people who want us dead.  And so it’s like, “oh wait, we didn’t choose to be this way!  I didn’t choose this dark and desperate and degraded and dangerous life!  How could I possibly choose this?”   It’s already accepting this pathology.  “We can’t change it, we’re sick!  So please accept us!” I think the real potential of queer identity is in enabling people to choose our gender, sexual and social identities.  That’s the real potential.  That’s the excitement, the glamour, the courage and the vibrancy.  Obviously we’re not at that place yet.  But for me, that’s what a queer analysis can do for something else.  How do we take apart all of these structures?  Not just the structures in the world around us, but the structures within ourselves. That’s what I am interested in — a politics that enables people to choose as many possibilities as they can and not limiting it around that whole “born that way” argument.  It doesn’t go anywhere — it’s a dead end. 

TW:  I was going to ask you what your vision of a queertopia might be – but that’s it, isn’t it?  It’s having the freedom to choose all of these things.

M: Yeah, that for me is the goal.  Though I’m a little afraid of utopias. (laughs)

TW: It’s a queertopia!

M: (laughs) yeah, ok.  Utopias often have a way of going the other direction.  But we have to have some hope for dismantling dominant systems of oppression. Whether those systems are as obvious as something like George Bush or our own social circles.   Even if they are radical outsider cultures. For me the real possibility is to be able to instigate and create something else.  That’s the point.  We can look at this horrible world and ask how do we create something else?

TW:  And that has always been the role of the fringe and the avant-garde  – to confront status quo, to provoke, agitate and summon something new for our culture.

M: Absolutely. That’s the possibility for finding the connections and really actually making change that works.