Flaming Idols

Last Sunday I vended Flaming Idols at Outfest Philly, an Autumn “LGBT Block Party” in Philadelphia's Gayborhood put on by the same group that organizes Pride every summer. It was predictably corporate – my friend Olivia and I shared a spot across from Fiat cars and PNC bank, and walking around I received free rainbow swag from Walgreens and Wawa.

There was even a table for GOAL, the Gay Officers Action League: a group for LGBT police officers.

It was disappointing to see this, but sadly not surprising. What I was not prepared for was two middle-aged white men coming to stand in the empty spot next to mine and Olivia's holding a 6ft x 10ft vinyl banner that featured an image of a Black infant, an image of an aborted fetus, and across the top said “All Black Lives Matter.”

When Olivia first pointed them out, it looked like they were waiting for someone, maybe not staying. “I'm giving them one minute before I say something,” I said. I was enraged that these (I believe cis) men would try to tell me what I can and can't do with my body. But I was even more upset that they would try to shame and control Black people with uteruses, namely Black women. Specific targeting of Black women by anti-abortion groups precedes the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Back in 2011 there were billboards put up in several U.S. cities proclaiming “The Most Dangerous Place for an Africa-American is in the Womb.” At the time Toni Bond Leonard, President/CEO of Black Women’s Reproductive Justice BWRJ, said,

“The groups behind these heinous attacks upon Black women care nothing about Black children or the Black community. These are some of the same groups who fought against healthcare reform and oppose government safety net programs that would directly benefit Black women, our families and our communities.”

The fact that these same tactics were being used by co-opting the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag in an explicitly queer space felt exceptionally insulting to me because I doubt they know that the creators of the hashtag and the founders of the #BLM movement are three queer Black women. I don't personally know Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors or Opal Tometi, but I've followed their writing and activism, and I am certain they would not be ok with this co-optation of their hashtag. They are radical organizers working to empower queer Black people and Black women, and this banner was doing the opposite.

When the men stayed put, Olivia suggested we place trash bins in front of their banner. I wanted to ask them to move and agreed that if they did not, we should take direct action. I approached one of the men and told him, “I don't want to see this, will you move?” He told me “We're on the sidewalk ma'am.” I said, “I don't care, I don't want to see this, you need to move.” He replied, “If you don't want to see it then you don't want to see The Truth.” Something snapped inside of me and I started screaming at him with every ounce of power in my body. I told him that I have a uterus and I get to decide what happens to it, and that other people with uteruses get to make decisions about their bodies, and he does not get to tell anyone else what to do. I don't think this was necessarily the most strategic message, it was just what came out of me. This only lasted maybe 30 seconds before a large Civil Affairs police officer inserted himself between us. He was also, I'm pretty sure, a cis man. He ignored the men with the banner and immediately began scolding me. He told me that no one had been paying attention to them before I started “making a scene”. This was not true, I'd been sitting at my booth watching people look at them before he arrived. He said that if I disagreed with them I should ignore them, that I was only bringing more attention to them by acting this way. I argued with him. When I refused to stop protesting, he said “So you want to promote them?” “STOP TALKING TO ME” I yelled at him. I looked at the banner. I wanted to run into it, to destroy it, but I was already leveraging my white privilege pretty far by yelling at a cop and knew it would be unfair to Olivia to push things further, get arrested and leave her with all my stuff and no way home. Completely deflated, I turned around and burst into tears. I crossed the street wandering amongst the people inspecting Fiats, sobbing, feeling alone and outcast.

As much as I felt I could not return to my booth, could not sit next to these disgusting men and the disgusting cop protecting them, I also knew I could not leave Olivia alone with all of our stuff not knowing where I was. I headed back, still sobbing. Now the two white men were being joined by about about 10 more people with banners. All of these people appeared to be Black, only one of them I read as being a woman. I decided I would pack up my stuff and leave early. As I maneuvered around the banners to get to my booth, I saw some of the anti-abortioners moving down a side street. They were leaving! I was approached by an Outfest volunteer who told me that they had planned a parade to target Planned Parenthood (which was about 1 block from where we were) without knowing that Outfest was happening, and that they were now continuing on their parade route. I was awash with relief.

I was relieved to have them out of my space, but I couldn't let go of the incident. I have had several traumatic experiences with police officers in my life, and each new one brings up the pain of the previous ones. I felt totally belittled by this pig's tone-policing and victim blaming. Instead of protecting me, a person with a uterus being bullied by cis men, he blamed me for “creating a scene” with my justified anger. He told ME to stop, not them. And of course he did, because he's part of a system built on white supremacy and suppression of liberation struggles. I shouldn't expect anything else. But it still made me feel like shit. After trying to breathe it out and calm down and failing, Olivia told me she would watch my stuff and I should go take a walk. I walked to an empty street corner, sat down and cried. A group of teenagers came by. “We saw what happened. Can I give you a hug?” asked a young queer who looked 16. “Yes!” I said, accepting. Throughout the day maybe 10 people came up to me and said something along the lines of “Are you ok now? I saw what happened before.” One person said “I understand what you were saying.” No one said “I'm glad you said something,” or “I wanted to say something to them too.” People were sympathetic in that they knew I was upset and sad, but they were not sad or upset themselves. No one had joined me in shouting at these people who invaded our space with messages of racism, misogyny and misogynoir. Even though I received sympathy, I still felt very alone. It wasn't until 10pm when I talked to my friend Suzy on the phone and she said “thank you for doing that Robin. Those people didn't belong there, they should have been chased out by a crowd of angry queers” that I felt understood and part of a community.

And in some ways, I get it – there are lots of times I see something fucked up and don't feel like it's effective to say something, or don't have the energy to say something, and I ignore it. Literally the day before this my housemate had invited me to protest Leif Erickson Day and I declined. I had a lot to do to get ready for Outfest and protesting a small group of Nazis gathering at a statue wasn't high on my list of priorities. I think what bothered me so much about this incident was that it happened at an explicitly LGBT (though conspicuously not Q) event. An event associated with Pride. The Pride parade that only exists because of Stonewall, the time a bunch of fed-up, angry queers, led by trans women of color, fought cops, threw bricks at them, locked them in a bar and nearly set it on fire. Sylvia Rivera was one of the people fighting back that night. I sell a candle of Sylvia, the proceeds from which go to the Sylvia Rivera Law Project.

Even just a few years after Pride had started, Sylvia and her friends began to be excluded from it as there was a conservative push for gays to appear respectable. And here we are. It's 2015, 45 years after the first Pride parade, and everyone wants a free rainbow bracelet from Walgreens but no one wants to tell misogynoirist white men to get the hell out of our space. And I understand that for people who are more vulnerable to police violence than I am, especially trans people of color, it may not have felt safe to have this type of confrontation. But there were 50,000 people at Outfest, many of whom were cis and white like me. There were more than enough of us to chase these people out.

So that's my rant. I don't really know what else to say except that I hope through selling the Sylvia candle and sharing this experience I'm able to help more people learn about our radical queer legacy and to feel empowered to fight for themselves the way Sylvia and others did at Stonewall. I'll end with this speech given by Sylvia at 1973 Pride in NYC after she had to fight to get on stage when cis lesbians tried to silence her. Sylvia, présente! Long live her legacy. <3

You'll throw your pie for them.

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Dolly Parton votive candle from Flaming Idols

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