The chain booksellers, like Barnes and Noble, began to dominate the market, and they instituted a “gay and lesbian” section in many of their branch stores. This section was never positioned at the front of the store with the bestsellers. It was usually on the fourth floor hidden behind the potted plants. What this meant in practical terms was that those of us who had the integrity to be out in our work found our books literarily yanked off of the “Fiction” shelves and hidden on the gay shelves, where only “gay” people wanting “gay” books would dare to tread. It was an instant undoing of all the progress we had made to be treated as full citizens and a natural, organic part of American intellectual life.
…I felt very strongly, and still do, that authentic lesbian literature should be represented at all levels of publishing, including taking its rightful place as a natural organic part of mainstream American intellectual life. The corporate lockdown went into overdrive just at the moment that this integration was beginning to take place. This positioning is essential for so many reasons, least of which is the right of writers of merit to not be excluded from financial, emotional, and intellectual development simply because they have the integrity to be out in their work. Second is the right of gay people to be in dialogic relationships with straights - where they read and identify with our work as we are asked to with theirs. And finally, that even at the height of the strength of the lesbian subculture, most gay people find out about gay things through the mainstream media.
Tags: heterosexism queer-lit
...people are no longer interested in analysis. They all prefer catharsis now. They all prefer to say that they are helpless and can’t change other people, i.e. the world. Marxism has been replaced by postmodernism. Psychoanalysis has been replaced by twelve-step programs. It was the end of the content.
Sarah SchulmanTags: freud psychoanalysis marxism postmodernism 12-step-programs
All along, he had believed instinctually that his broken heart had something to do with the collapse of culture. He wanted to blame it on economics instead of on the fact that she was a fucking bitch.
Sarah SchulmanTags: love
I realized that I’m not a lesbian anymore. I realized that women don’t have fun together. I realized that that’s not love. I realized that men are heroes after all…”
“What is your definition of a hero?” she asked.
“A hero is someone you can be proud of,” the woman said. “To be proud of someone he has to be bigger than you so you can look up to him. You can feel safe when he is near you. Especially a man who has soft skin. When a man is near you who has soft skin, soft and sloping like a woman’s, then you can feel safe.”
“But he’s not a woman?” “No.”
…She knew this word he. She’d heard it before in every circumstance of her life. But what did it mean? What did it really mean?
“What’s your definition of fun?” she asked.
“Fun,” the woman explained, “is when you get what you’ve always imagined. When you’ve always known what you want and then you get it. With a woman you can’t have this because you’ve never imagined what you’ve wanted. There’s no gratification. No gratification at all.”
…”There’s something very important that I don’t understand. How can I be a woman and still be happy?”
“Shut up,” the woman said. “Don’t tell me what to do.
Tags: heterosexism internalized-homophobia
I dreamt that I took William Burrough’s penis and tied it up with piano wire. I hung him like a Chagall painting…In the next part J.G. Ballard swam through streets of female urine. The girls read his book Crash and then mowed him down with their Volkswagen, crushing his chest slowly against a brick wall. As he screamed in agony larger than representation can accommodate, they referred to his text and had orgasms. Later, they jumped up and down yelling, ‘You’re not a hero. You’re not a hero. You’re not. You’re not. You’re not.’ “
“How do you analyze that part of the dream, Anna?”
…”I guess I’m nervous about my birthday.
Tags: dreams psychoanalysis sexism j-g-ballard bohemianism william-burroughs
Some people have sex by putting fishhooks in each other. Couple this act with a simple understanding of the basic function of all living creatures to expand and contract. Now, try that with fishhooks.
Sarah SchulmanTags: sex
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