In the 6th grade he called me fat. (Yes, I was fat.) That night I looked into the mirror and hated every part of me that I could and could not see. I wished so much that I could be tiny, so that people would stop noticing me. I wanted to shrink away from everyone's hurtful gaze and just be alone.
The first day of the fourth grade I sat at the designated "girls' table". Later that day a boy told me that I was a girl, so I immediately stopped sitting with and talking to the girls to prove that I was distant from them, and thus should not be categorized as such. (My femme gender representation did not help with this attempt).
During college I had a job where I called alumni to ask them for donations. No matter how many times I mentioned my name was Matt, they would without fail say 'Thank you ma'am" at the end of the conversation. I once talked on the phone with one woman for over an hour about her education and we had a pleasant conversation. At the time I was interested in persuing a similar academic career, so she spoke at length about how it would be a wonderful school for me to go to. At the end of the conversation she told me that it was a woman's college, but I didn't have the heart to break it to her that I'm a guy. She told me that she wanted to take down my name so she could tell my supervisor that she had a nice time talking with me, so I told her my name is Matt. She was horrendously confused and basically hung up on me.
In high school a lot of the guys called me a faggot, and I knew they meant it in a way that was different from when they called their friends faggots. People I had never even talked to approached me to inform me that I was a bundle of sticks. Before I went to bed each night, I would pray that I was not and would never be gay. I thought that as long as I prayed hard enough, it would just go away.
My freshman year at private college I remember telling people where I'm from and getting pretty similar reactions: "That town is so dirty!" I would laugh nervously and look away, and tell them "You're right! It's so gross..." all the while wishing I was from a gated community in a Connecticut suburb.
She called me radical. Anger started to rise within me, but I stopped myself to think. I realized... she was right. I told her "Yes, I am.", to which she didn't have a reply.
Throughout all parts of my life, I have either run from or denounced parts of myself... parts of myself that I have come to realize are true and real (or at least were at the time). Why? Why did I feel the need to disown where I came from, who I was, and who I was becoming? I am gay. I am an angry feminist. I am radical. I am a femme and I do come from a family that is not oozing wealth. I was fat... although that has since changed, and people who knew me when I was younger congratulated me for no longer being fat, as if I had just accomplished something amazing (and we wonder why eating disorders are so prevalent in this country. Hm.)
These identities are labels that I have denied in hopes of passing as something else (masculine, straight) or labels that I have begrudgingly accepted only to hate (being from a working-class single-parent family). At the time of all these denunciations, I had grown convinced from my friends, family, teachers, strangers, and the rest of mainstream society that these are all things that one should not be proud of. With reflection, positive support from some amazing people, and swearing off corporate media, I've slowly but surely learned that hating parts of who you are is not exactly healthy.
Being radical and an angry feminist is somewhat of a recent development in my life. In the beginning of college, I was what I would call sympathetic to the feminist cause. I would correct people who said that feminists were all angry and militant by explaining that feminism is compatible with the mainstream lifestyle (whatever the hell that is. who knows what the fuck I meant). I've since learned that frankly, it's not. Feminism is not compatible with the way things are. Neither is the Gay Rights movement, and any other current social movement, for that matter. If they were friendly and gentle with the status quo, then what would they advocate for? Nothing. A social movement is not a social movement unless it advocates for some kind of change. Instead of criticizing a system that doesn't work, I tried to make Women's Rights more palatable to all people by saying it's not about being angry. I truly think that this was a big mistake of mine.
Let me be frank (as if I ever beat around the bush), being angry gets shit done. Being radical and advocating for an unpopular paradigm is not about trying to convince everyone that your movement is all cute and sunshiney and that bullshit. It's about facing very real and very dangerous problems in our society that disproportionately affect many different intersecting underprivileged groups.
What makes a social movement successful? I used to think the most successful social movements were the ones that had the most public support, but I've come to realize that this is not the case. An incredible danger that activists face is the pressure to make your movement seem more easy-to-swallow so that you don't piss off a lot of people... when pissing off a lot of people should be expected when you're challenging a dominant way of thinking. So many oppressed people avoid disagreement with the dominant paradigm so much that it can create internalized hatred ... think women who say they hate women (they may be known to say "women can be so catty", trying to distance themselves from "those" women in the social hierarchy).
A pretty clear example of this phenomena is the contemporary battered woman's movement, which emerged in the 1970s. Priya Kandaswamy explains in Innocent Victims and Brave New Laws (pg 83 of Nobody Passes) that within this movement, 2nd wave feminists began to theorize domestic violence was not simply an individual problem, but something that women experienced as a class. Unfortunately, with the introduction of the term battered women's syndrome in the 1990's, people began to pathologize and criminalize battered women by placing the onus of responsibility onto women who are battered, as opposed to the men who beat them.
In order to gain public support for their cause, activists attempted to convince the public that domestic violence was not just a problem of the impoverished, and that it can happen to anyone. Indeed it can, but this hyper-focus on presenting upper-middle class heterosexual white women as the ideal victims that would attract media attention actually ostracized so many other communities from the movement in the process (people of color, gay men, lesbians, poor people, immigrant women, transgender people etc.)
In fact, this exclusive focus on gender within the battered women's movement prevented a real cross-sectional analysis of how race, class, sexuality, body size, religion, disability etc. also play a part within domestic violence. If this were indeed a problem unique to people of color, or trans people, or poor people, then should the public care any less? I would argue that a movement shouldn't have to convince wealthy white heterosexuals that this problem affects them for them for them to care (obviously) but unfortunately, those in power may not give a shit if they feel like it only affects a particular marginalized group. Remember the AIDS epidemic, and how the public cared about it when white heterosexuals were contracting HIV, but not in the 1980's when gay people were contracting in high numbers (or even now, when african-americans are contracting in higher numbers... and people consider AIDS to be "over").
To sort of summarize this, does the feminist movement need to be considered less 'militant' for it to appeal to the public? Should appealing to the public be of any concern to a social movement? Does this concern for public image actually water down a movement's goals and exclude other marginalized groups in the process? Does a movement or identity need to be associated with wealthy white heterosexual people for it to be taken seriously and garner support (monetarily and otherwise)? What is a 'successful' social movement? Do some movements compromise on their original goals to become more "family friendly"? These aren't rhetorical questions. What do you think?
-Harvey Milk Jr.
