lesbian sandwich...

The woman in front of me pushed her breasts in my face while the woman behind me.. i was not sure what she was doing, while people were clapping. I had just won the raffle prize at the Hypergender Burlesque Power to the People show and was treated to a lesbian sandwich.
I have never seen burlesque, so this was good introduction to burlesque by women and trans people. It was for 1 May celebrations and I compared this with its political statements to the ones which must have happened in Guyana.
 Plenty woman jiggling and shaking their bits and pieces, some natural and some not so natural, and then a moving dedication to all immigrants which had a woman choking on the american flag while the national anthem was playing. It was gender bending at its best.. though some decorum still seemed to be observed, I still have to find out why the male performer could be nude, but the women had to cover their nipples and other parts . I use the term 'male' loosely.

So from performance to performance, earlier in the afternoon, the closing panel at Politically Queer.

I went to see if I could learn lil bit more what the word 'queer mean'.. a few people in the audience mostly people who dont have colour, or to have a crash course in queer theory.
Lisa Duggan talked about the evolution of 'gay liberation' from the early political days when gay liberation was closely tied to other liberation movements , to now when it seemed to be narrow and only about marriage. She reminded people about the GLF with their manifesto.
The other panellists talked complex things in complex language, one of them later saying she makes no apologies for her next being completely theoretical. Jasbir Puar talked about how the 'homosexual question' on immigration forms is now being used to distinguish between those who are civilised and those who are not 'civilised' .
Jonathan Katz talked about the history of heterosexuality.
At the end of the discussion, while I could filter through the dense language, or rather language not intended for those who are not at the 'academy', I got a sense that the old time 'queer' liberation issues were more than just the current 'human rights' framework. One thing which saddened me though was that it seems that the academic discussions will be inaccessible to those from outside who are activist. This is not a criticism of 'anti-intellectual' thought, but we have to remember Walter Rodney grounding with his brothers.


With those thoughts in mind, I then win a raffle at the gender bending burlesque and  I end my first Saturday in NYC on the train with my raffle prize - two works of lesbian fiction, a SoulTrotta cd and a bottle of intimate lubricant which lasts longer than a 'hollywood marriage'.. to keep my mind lubricated..