My interview of Robert Masaji Imada, who is currently a gay student at UCSC, enlightened me to the gay communities dedicated and passionate energy devoted towards positive activism. Robert is an active member of Queers of Color (QoC) which is one of the student groups that consult and meet with Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transsexual Center (GLBTC). The GLBTC is a group made of working students, administrative assistants, and a director. Their purpose is to mentor student groups. The GLBTC heads five individual but collectively working groups:
1) SAPPHO – Lesbian social support group
2) Stone Wall – Gay men support group (named after Stone wall Inn which was a gay bar in Greenwich Village, this bar was raided on Friday, June 27th, 1969 by Manhattan police, and consequently closed)
3) BI-THE-WAY – Bi-sexual support group
4) GenderationX – Transgender support group
5) Queers of Color (QoC) – Gender questioning group
Because Robert is part of QoC, he spoke mostly about what his group has accomplished and what its goals are. QoC is a social support group aimed to network queers of color, ethnicities, and minorities. One key difference Robert sees is between sex and gender, which are different things: sex is the physical make-up and gender is more about social constructs than physical make-up.
Membership to QoC is open to all races – however the group is mostly for minorities being Queers of Color. Robert noted that they have “one Caucasian ally” which supports and attends meetings of QoC. The group was established in 1995 and has five core members, which represent the head of the group. These members are “signers” who are students that put their name under SOAR as representatives for QoC.
The activities of QoC drive membership and activism within the group. Such activities include dances, lectures, and forums. Notably this past quarter, QoC hosted a dance in which Stanford minority groups attended. QoC promoted the event as well with advertisements on campuses, and emailing to ethnic groups and coalitions. The Committee for Ethnic Programming (CEP), which involved food and decorations, provided the funding. Many groups of the GLBTC came to support the dance as well – and Robert felt that was a positive move forward to a successful dance. In addition to dances, QoC holds educational forums, which discuss representation of queers in media. At these forums, the attendees discuss what the representations are and what they liked and didn’t like about them. The function of these forums is to educate and make aware of presumptions, assumptions, stereotypes, and truths regarding queers and media. The forums also aim at diversity training, social activists, support, and outreach.
One event in which Robert took immediate organization of was a homophobia-training workshop at UCSC. It was towards people of color and the cultural differences; it was positive to tailor to color people of heterosexuals and to make them aware of their homophobia. For this event, Robert trained with C.L.U.H. – Challenging, Learning about, and Undermining Heterosexism. Heterosexism is the presumption that everyone is born heterosexual. CLUH is mostly Caucasian and QoC is mostly minorities, so the fact that both groups worked together and joined forces to focus on the workshop represented that both groups could work together for the better: the groups challenged homophobia, heterosexism, and racial lines. In conclusion, Robert wanted to make it a point that different oppressions are interconnected; they are all derived from the same societal problems and constructs.
This work connected with “The Homosexual Menace” in Intimate Matters by John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman. The readings covered the homosexual history in America and how American Society has resisted against the gay liberation. World War II was the first time the nation had a “coming out” experience in which gay men and lesbians were able to exist within the services. From that came bars and bathhouses where gays could socialize and with larger numbers of gays recognizing their numbers, there formed a sub-culture in which they could identify with others and a “community identity.” With larger communities, “what had once appeared as a deviant form of sexual behavior on the fringe of society now seemed to permeate American life". However politicians were against homosexuality from the 1950’s and alleged that homosexuals were the cause of the national security problems, even going as far as eliminating them from federal jobs and harassing them with local police forces.
With the contraceptive revolution and gay subculture, marriage and the nuclear family in society came into question – would the family be lost in this threat to security? What history has taught us is that both contraceptives and gay subculture have not threatened security, yet there continues to be a resistance to homosexuality by the majority. What this reading revealed was the history of homosexuality and how it has pushed gays today to liberate themselves even more.
In “Gay Liberation,” it speaks of the gay liberation and the many organizations in the style of the “New Left” that aimed at homosexual justice. During the 1950’s, the gay organizations had a hard time existing due to lack of funding, pressure from police harassment, and few role models. Their aim was to “project a point of view about same-gender relationships that departed from the consensus of sin, sickness, and criminality.” At the same time, black power advocated were working for liberation of blacks, and they provided a role “model of an oppressed group that inverted the negative values of society.” They marched much like the Black Panther party in search of ending oppression; this helped the gay liberation revolution, connecting the fact that different oppressions are interconnected.
The Gay Liberation Front (GLF) of New York had a belief very similar to those beliefs of Queers of Color (QoC):
We are a revolutionary homosexual group of men and women formed with the realization that complete sexual liberation for all people cannot come unless existing social institutions are abolished. We reject society’s attempt to impose sexual roles and definitions of our nature.
Gayness itself was an act of political resistance to conventional roles, and perhaps there remains a social resistance to homosexuality. With the energetic and radical youth, organizations working collectively, homosexuality was seen as a “natural capacity in everyone, suppressed by family and society.” Gay liberation challenged the supremacy of heterosexual expression as the given. The self-styled revolutionaries worked against the resistance to gay liberation and to this day they work, revealing how strong the American culture fears homosexuality.
Additionally, Long Slow Burn by Kath Weston revealed specific studies and implications of homosexuality. Weston focused on ethnographic analyses, and how in the past decade, studies of homosexual behavior and identity have been on the rise. She was focused more on the lesbian aspect and the differences between gay liberation and lesbian/gay studies. Social stigmatization of homosexuality was more problematic than the “deviance” of homosexuality. Further, she covered gay migration, in which she asked how urban and rural relations related to constructions of homosexual identity and community; the American Society imaginary of homosexuals was created out of media interpretation. What was interesting was the fact that there were many individual communities of diversified gays and lesbians (gender, race, ethnicity) rather than one whole gay community. I related that to the five groups of UCSC organizations in GLBTC and how come there wasn’t one solid group, but rather five separate organizations under one name.
What I was curious to know was if homosexuality, seen as the deviance in American Society, was the norm in other cultures. Weston covered that issue in “Where the Boys Are,” with examples of the Melanesian groups. The Melanesian groups practiced oral sex and anal intercourse as ways of reaching masculinity and manhood. This was the societal norm and a ritual. Weston raised questions such as, “do individuals seek out the opportunity to exchange semen, eventually come to enjoy the practice, or simply endure it because it is culturally prescribed?” To answer those questions, it would require comparing American societal concepts of pleasure and desire to Melanesian settings. In Melanesian settings, homosexuality is a situational norm, and the society in which homosexuality is the norm is reality. Perhaps looking at other cultures could be of use for gay liberation organizations and American society alike.
My personal experience with this project was a growing and learning one. What I gathered was that everything was new – there isn’t really a specific model homosexuals can follow – they are not considered the normal, and even today, there is no mainstream way to live as a gay citizen in American Society. For that reason, I have learned of the brave hearts and courage that these organizations have. Robert expressed how difficult it was to bridge the private to the public, especially when so many in society have resisted homosexuality and see it as taboo, and kept quiet.
It was good for me to do this project because I personally have not been a full supporter of homosexuality. I had to drop my presumptions about gays and start from a fresh outlook without political and societal influences, which wasn’t the easiest thing to do because those presumptions are so deeply rooted in everyday life. I found that gay liberation involved questioning the nature of practices and desires, challenging heterosexism, building the gay identity, and concluding with the domination and oppression of sex. Class, Race, Sexuality, are just a few of the oppressions that we have to face. I found that Robert’s belief that all oppressions are interconnected is true.