Author: MF

These images are from photographer Nan Goldin’s (born 1953) most well known exhibition, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. The pictures above are captured from MoMA’s instillation of Goldin’s slideshow. This almost 700 portrait slideshow is Goldin’s distinct and personal narrative crafted from her experiences during the 1970s and 80s.  Her subjects were friends of hers captured in intimate moments spanning from drug use to sex. In describing her work Goldin claims that “people commonly think of the photographer as the voyeur, but this is my party, I’m not crashing.” In stating this, Goldin identifies herself along with the subjects of her artwork, blurring the relationship between outside photographer and inside subject. She gains more explicit permission to photograph and publicize her subjects simply because she knows them more intimately than many other photographers would know their subjects. Of The Ballad of Sexual Dependency Goldin states that this, “is the diary I let people read. The diary is my form of control over my life . . . it enables me to remember.” Her very raw and very personal images are part of her own constructed narrative and she chooses to share that narrative with the world.

images & info courtesy of MoMA website:  https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1651?#installation-images

#NanGoldin #MoMA #photography #GoldinsBallad #lgbtqexperiencesusa

-MF

This image is from Family Equality Council’s annual fundraising gala in New York City. Initially called the Gay Fathers Coalition when founded in 1979, the now known Family Equality Council changed its name to include all types of families and started as a volunteer grassroots chapter-based organization dedicated to supporting LGBTQ+ parents and their children. Each year at the Night at the Pier gala FEQ chooses people and organizations to honor for the work they have done for the LGBTQ+ community. This image is from last year’s event (May 2017) which I attended with my family. They honored ABC’s mini-series “When We Rise,” and a mental health counselor, Dr. David Baker-Hargrove, who was largely influential in responding to the Pulse shooting and is the co-founder of Two-Spirit Health Services in Florida. Among the honored guests were performances from Broadway cast members from Dear Evan Hansen, Miss Saigon, and Come From Away. In addition to the musical performances, Rosie O’Donnell (whom I met) and Edie Windsor attended the event as guest speakers. The gala also includes an auction which helps to raise money for the organization.

Information and image courtesy of FEQ website:  https://www.familyequality.org/get_involved/events/annual_events/night_at_the_pier/

#FamilyEqualityCouncil #FEC #NightattthePier #ChelseaPiersNYC #lgbtqexperiencesusa

-MF

This book, Reframing Bodies: AIDS, Bearing Witness, and the Queer Moving Image, by Roger Hallas, recounts the ways in which queer films can “bear witness” to the AIDS epidemic and its social, psychological, and political effects on the LGBTQ+ community. His book includes examples of different types of queer media, including various examples of film, portraits, and relational art, in an attempt to convey the most honest depiction of HIV/AIDS possible. In an example of relational art, Hallas discusses Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s “AIDS-themed installation art,” Untitled, (Portrait of Ross in LA) (1991), which invites viewers to take a piece of candy with them, actively involving them in the representation of his partner’s life with AIDS. Hallas explains that gallery visitors are encouraged “to partake in their literal consumption, an act of both dismemberment and communion that blurs the distinction between the body of the artwork and its beholder” (230).

#lgbtqexperiencesusa #queerfilm #AIDSepidemic #bearingwitness #felixgonzaleztorres

(photo of cover taken by me of a book from RR Library. Work Cited: Hallas, Roger. Reframing Bodies: AIDS, Bearing Witness, and the Queer Moving Image. Duke University Press, 2009.)

-MF

In watching the film Major! About Miss Major Griffin Gracy, I was reminded immediately how corrupt our criminal justice system is, especially in dealing with trans women of color, many of whom should not be in prison in the first place. A statistic from the film indicates that in combining the number of people who are in prison with those who are under parole or probation, one in every 31 adults is under some form of correctional control. With this, based on statistics from 2008, 58% of all prisoners in the US State and Federal prison population are people of color, even though they only comprise about 25% of the total US population. Another horrible fact I learned about the prison system revolves around the overuse of the Secure Housing Unit. According to the UN, solitary confinement in greater use than 15 days is considered torture. Janetta Johnson, a trans woman of color from the film, was in the Solitary Housing Unit for her “protection” for six months of her three-and-a-half-year sentence for a nonviolent drug crime. Continuing on the subject of the US justice system, it is also important to note that “crossdressing was considered a criminal offense” and all throughout the 1960s and beyond, police officers would raid gay bars to arrest people. After watching the film, I would like to know what is being done about the prison system now. I was also curious about TGI Justice, but after finding their website online I learned that they are still operating, however Miss Major has since retired, and they are currently looking for many volunteers and workers to join their program.

-MF

This poster relates to our class in that it is calling attention to how critical education is. In the text down the side of the poster, it asks a question, directing the audience to read and wonder, which is an effective educational strategy. I find it interesting because it is entirely true. Education is a vital part of life; we are lucky enough to live in a place, and to attend a university, that so highly values education. There is an element of timeliness and insistence that the audience listen to the poster’s message because lives are dependent upon an understanding of a deadly illness. The poster elicits parents and families to pay attention, by declaring that education starts at home.

Source: University of Rochester River Campus Libraries Rare Books and Special Collections AIDS Education Posters http://aep.lib.rochester.edu/node/40820

-MF

This image is from the January 1982 publication of a newspaper called New Women’s Times. This specific section is titled “Abortion Briefs” and it contains six statements of varying severity on the limited access that women had to abortion clinics. It depicts the measures some women took in order to ensure that they would not have to have children. Many of the separate statements articulate how “anti-abortion bills [were] passed” or how there were bans on “state-funded abortions” – all indicating that people other than those who are pregnant were dictating the rules and regulations that must be followed.

#lgbtqexperiencesusa  #abortions  #stateregulations #awomansrighttochoose

[Image courtesy of UR’s River Campus Libraries Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation]

-MF

Although my social media post was on the same topic, I feel it is useful to mention, again, the journal entries from UR graduate student Jay T. Stratton. He provides insight into the coming out experience as a student at our own university. In his journals he mentions how attending a meeting at the Gay Liberation Front was one of the pivotal moments for him to feel accepted in a community with little representation elsewhere. With this, he specifically described an encounter where he was answering phones at the GLF office. In this memory, he recalls how nervous he was that someone, not unlike himself, would call asking for help that he felt unsuited to provide. His premonition was correct, as another student did call, and as his story unfolds, Stratton reveals to us that he and this other student helped each other more in there few-minute conversation than any other experience he had had leading up to this point. As a reader of this experience, a student in this class, a member of the Rochester community, I could only hope that our cultivated exhibition could do the same for someone else.

Entirely unrelated to the class visit to Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, I have thought frequently about the inherent exclusivity of my major, English Literature. The canonical works read in classes like British and American literature are almost entirely works written by cis white men. This, however, is neither a reflection on the professors teaching the courses nor is it a reflection on those who study these texts, but it is a reflection on the accessibility to education and publication in the 17^th through 19^th centuries (and also to periods before and after those just mentioned). While there are plenty of examples of iconic works written by women and people of color, there is a much greater focus on cis white men, especially in the way literature survey courses are structured. Frequently, and unfortunately, in order to study outside the white male writers, it is necessary to take a course explicitly designed to focus on people who are not cis, straight, white men.

-MF

This image is the first page of an excerpt from Jay T. Stratton’s journal, a graduate student at the University from 1974-1980. He begins his journal with a fabricated phone conversation about how he would try to come out to a “straight friend that [he] was falling in love with.” The entry continues by explaining that his coming out experience is more of a “declosetization” because many people in his life knew he was gay, and many others suspected it. Later on in the entry he explains that his primary motivation for coming out was that he “realized that not being gay was messing up [his] life far more than being gay could.” Throughout the following entries, the reader is given a more intimate look into a Rochester student’s coming out experience in the 70’s and 80’s.

#lgbtqexperiencesusa  #comingout  #glf  #gayliberationfront

[Image courtesy of UR’s River Campus Libraries Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation]

-MF

In reading the collection of essays and interviews by Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson called, STAR: Survival, Revolt, and Queer Antagonist Struggle, and especially in reading the interview with Rivera called “I’m Glad I was in the Stonewall Riot,” I understood that there were many different movements involved at Stonewall all at one time. On this, Rivera, in her interview, says, “All of us were working for so many movements at that time. Everyone was involved with the women’s movement, the peace movement, the civil-rights movement. We were all radicals.” I think this is an important piece of information to point out, not only because it demonstrates that people from different places with different primary motivations were working together, but also because with the inclusion of so many different groups, the trans community is still so frequently neglected when talking about Stonewall. Even though there were other groups there, and there is documentation proving that, the trans community is still left out of many accounts. Additionally, in the second reading called “Movements and Memory: The Making of the Stonewall Myth,” Armstrong and Crage explain that often times inaccurate accounts of involvement make activism “seem ‘inevitable or mystical’” when in fact “gay liberation…spread through the numerous, deliberate activities of individuals and groups,” like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera.

Prior to the readings, I had only heard of Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson in relation to Stonewall. After the readings, however, I have learned that Sylvia Rivera, with the help of Marsha P. Johnson, established STAR, what was known in 1970 as Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, but has since been changed to Street Transgender Action Revolutionaries, which was dedicated to helping trans people and homeless youth. She actively protested and was a self-proclaimed “front-liner;” she gave speeches and marched for anything she could. In the STAR reading, she explained that since she left home at age ten, Marsha P. Johnson, who was older than she, took her under her wing and helped her to find a community in New York City. In an interview she recounted the night at Stonewall, saying “you could actually feel it in the air,” which directly opposed the “pig” with whom she was speaking, who said that “there was never any reason to feel that anything of any unusual situation would occur that night,” which points to the blatant disregard for the unequal treatment of everyone at the Stonewall Inn on the night in 1969.

-MF

In watching the beginning of the documentary, Shoulders to Stand On, in class, I was able to gain a better understanding of the immediacy of Rochester’s involvement, as both the city and the University, in the start of the gay rights movement. I learned that the UR students’ creation of the Gay Liberation Front entirely reflected the already divided political atmosphere in the 1970s with the Vietnam War. This was further emphasized when an interviewee commented on the “combative language” with the use of the word “front” in the organization’s title. According to those interviewed, the fact that the movement happened in concurrence with the Vietnam war actually made their fight easier. I also learned additional ways in which Rochester was at the forefront of the movement, such that the country’s first openly gay radio show, “Green Thursdays,” and the oldest openly gay newspaper, “The Empty Closet,” began there.

In looking for the date for the University’s “From Perversity to Diversity” exhibit, I first googled, “Perversity to Diversity exhibit at the University of Rochester.” Initially, I found a book, Femininity Played Straight: The Significance of Being a Lesbian, by Biddy Martin, which was published in 1996. In the chapter mentioning the University’s exhibit, Martin said, “A few weeks before writing this I had the opportunity to see an exhibit entitled, ‘Perversity and Diversity’ on the campus of the University of Rochester.” With that statement in mind, and the knowledge that the book was published in 1996, I knew it was likely that the exhibit was available for viewing a few years prior to the publication of the book, but that wasn’t an exact date. Going back to my initial google search, I then found another link about an artist, Cindy Smith, who was the curator of the exhibit. In her website’s bio section, which details the many exhibitions she has created singularly and in groups, lectures she has given, awards and grants she has received, and exhibits she has curated, UR’s exhibit’s date was listed as February of 1991.

The link to the book is: https://books.google.com/books?id=kTci6KBSJgYC&pg=PT103&lpg=PT103&dq=perversity+to+diversity+exhibit+at+university+of+rochester&source=bl&ots=2G47pRzld_&sig=JlobYz6zy85C2E_kNGMnpBIh_Dk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiJjcq75eHYAhUEylMKHSTLBK8Q6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=perversity%20to%20diversity%20exhibit%20at%20university%20of%20rochester&f=false

The link to Cindy Smith’s website is: http://www.cindysmith.org/bio/ (It’s necessary to scroll nearly to the bottom of the page before coming across works she has curated.)

-MF