Juan Pumpernickel Epstein meets MEChA

Juan Epstein, my first hispanic jewWhen I accepted the offer to present at a radical Chicano conference this past week, my first thought was: oh crap, now everyone there will know I'm not Dominican enough. I don't speak Spanish, my Jewish nose  makes my olive skin look more Ashkenazi than Latina and most importantly, I have never felt totally at home when I visit Santo Domingo. This is less about the fact that no one there seems to look like me, but also, because when I'm down there (ha), I feel just how American-brand a queer I am. I didn't know if it was right for me to go and present for students about sexuality when I am so often at odds with my own Hispanic experience. So, selfishly, I decided to go for myself.

Sin Cadena's (Without Chains) was a conference on sexuality and identity put together by MEChA, a radical chicana/o student organization. The day was a collection of workshops and panels kicked off with a commencement speech by Philadelphia's LGBT liaison Gloria Casarez. Students came from all over America to discuss what is was to be young, sexual, thinking folks. I was excited to see what would come of the hour we were given to present.

Together with my friends from Galaei, (an amazing organization dedicated as much to pleasure as it is to sexual health) we put together a workshop, which would be a self-run situation. We all agreed that we wanted to stay away form defining anything about sex- a topic as slippery to get into as a diaphragm. Instead, one of my colleagues suggested we do a fishbowl. This is a facilitation game in which a question is asked to a small group for discussion and folks listening can join by tagging someone else out. She thought it might be good to start with the question "do you ever not feel latina/o enough?" It was a staggering moment. After I crapped my pants, I remembered the lesson I keep having to learn over and over again: everyone struggles with feeling like not enough. For those of us who have strong cultures pulling us in different directions, it’s hard to sometimes feel the smooth blend that all those cooking/culture metaphors refer to. Sometimes you’re less a melting pot than a rock sitting in a bowl of porridge… sometimes the rock is porous, sometimes it is a porridge rock, sometimes the rock is a guy named sue. Wait, sorry, I was taking life seriously again.  But suffice to say, sometimes a mixed experience is merely a fractured one that, in turn, becomes it’s own whole experience.

During the fishbowl, I awkwardly acknowledged not feeling like enough. And I didn’t disappear into a puff of smoke and shame. In fact, I stayed in the fishbowl speaking to these bold and articulate students. I was struck by what one person said after he tagged in on the question “what does queer mean to you?” I had discussed ScrewSmart’s blog uproar around the idea that someone straight could be queer. This guy agreed with the sentiment and went on to liken it to his own understanding of what it was to be Chicano. He said that at a certain point it stopped being about where you were from and became how you politically aligned yourself. My mind was officially blown. Maybe this was a new umbrella term that I could actually begin to own as my own. One that was malleable as, well, as porridge. A global word that could encompass as my own experience as a true whole as opposed to a part of a fractured sum. And so this is me, Juan Pumpernickel Epstein, chicana-at-large, saying thank you to all the brave young thinkers who present us with the words that get closer to being seen.

a small cry

terrifying suburbsPumpernickel at 14, buffaloI'm not that scared walking through industrial areas, or walking in cities, i'm not that scared in the woods (well, maybe a little), but nothing terrifies me like walking around sleepy suburbs when everything is quiet by ten. I grew up in East Amherst, a suburb of Buffalo in the early 90's. It was mostly affluent, mostly white and often voted the second safest neighborhood in America. But as a teenager finding solace in late night coffeeshop sessions with my friends, I came to realize that while the streets might be fine, no one I knew was truly happy at school or totally safe home.

bells supermarket in buffalo, nyJamey Rodemeyer in his room, 14, buffaloThis week, Jamey Rodemeyer, 14, took his life in Buffalo. He was both part of my Buffalo community and part of my gay community. He went to the neighboring highschool that I used to watch Peter and the Wolf and the growing christmas tree at during the holidays. I know his hallways and I know the gas stations and grocery stores he used to walk around. I can't shake the insidiousness of our shared experience, because it’s so easy to imagine being in that town again, a place that always feels like it’s holding its breath. Maybe everyone’s hometown feels unyielding because you’re rarely as powerless as you are when you’re a child. I believe this is why individuals who offer help in a child’s life make such an impact: for adults it’s simply an extra effort, but for kids, it can be punching through a seemingly impermeable force-field.

In my time studying Social Work, I have certainly focused on how to deliver services to families who have experienced economic destitute but have rarely discussed how to reach families who have the means but not the will. There is a belief that to accept help is particularly weak and that the face of need couldn’t possibly be privileged face. The truth is that the folks who most commonly commit suicide are older white men, and for young LGBT folks, this risk is 5x as high. Suicide accounts for 12% of all deaths among 12-24 year olds, the time before the frontal cortex, or the part of the brain that weighs repercussions, is fully formed. Some of the saddest news for me is that Rodemeyer was seeking help from social workers and therapists. He had made a It Get’s Better video. He had hope, which, in my suicide assessment training, is the main component that one must try to instill in someone who is considering suicide.

One thing that I am personally latching onto in terms of hope was that Jamey was inspired by Lady Gaga's message of being "born this way"- so much so, that his mother is burying him in a shirt with these words printed on. After his suicide, Lady Gaga made a public announcement over twitter and followed it up with a message to the president that bullying must be made illegal. Ironically, Jamey killed himself on the same day that the president was at the Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention Summit. In response Gaga started the #MakeALawForJamey trend, asking for folks to step up to what she rightly refers to as a hate crime.

I don’t think there’s any easy answer. I just know that my community members, the young folks who are supposed to be in training to help us keep up the work are dying off. I can’t bear to think about suicide taking away a stratum of my family the way that AIDS took away a whole stratum of thinkers, artists, activists and everyday folks in the 80’s. With this said, perhaps some of these resources could be of help to you or someone you know, please do feel free to write in with more.

• If you know someone who may be a danger to themselves: National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
• If you're in Philadelphia and need to contact a Emergency Crisis Center so that a friend can get an assessment, West Philadelphia: 215-748-9525 or Center City 215-829-5249
• If you’re a teacher please consider downloading a safe space kit: http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/library/record/1641.html
• If you’re a guidance counselor please read more about how to talk about suicide with LGBT folks: http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/news/record/2736.html
• Support for Gaga's anti-bullying effort #MakeALawForJamey
• government anti-bullying page: www.stopbullying.gov

Soldier of Madonna

For some, it is spirituality that leads their hands to do good. For others, academics maybe, their hands are guided mostly to the keyboard by the search for a provable truth. But there are other options to answering to a higher power. There is Madonna, who, by example, instructs the hand into the two-fingered self-salute and reminds me that being fabulous and self-satisfying creates sustenance of its own. It a lifestyle of over-emoting, over-accessorizing, over-thinking (comeon, remember the video for Bedtime Story?) and above all, over-crotch-action. That is why I consider myself a soldier of Madonna. 

I first saw Madonna when I was five; watching her coo in Venice and dance around with white gauze I knew that I had something to teach her about acting "like a virgin." For one, buck-toothed virgins hung out indoors and formed strong opinions about stars like Madonna combating Cyndi Lauper for the heavyweight MTV babe belt. I always went in for Cyndi; I had more in common with a wafflized haircut, rejection and dancing around with my friends then Madonna's bravado... But admittedly, I sensed that zany was utterly unsexy; there was an impossible part of myself that wanted to be more like Madonna.

But I was destined to still be in the V-club when I heard about another big "M" Madonna. I was 20 and attending art school when I learned about the “whore and the Madonna" theory- and this time, Madonna was cast as a mother and was very much like a virgin. The Madonna of my youth was off having limosex waaaay at the other end of the sinful spectrum. The premise of the theory was that women are often fallaciously cast in art and books as either being totally pure or total jizz-wranglers. While this binary is obviously laughable, it does play out in the real world. i.e. when pregnant folks get stripped of their sexuality because they are all of a sudden somebody's mother; or in the abject dehumanization of women who do sex work. As a solo-sex performer only I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere on this scale either. I sensed that Madonna Louise Ciccone and I had again passed like femme-ships in the night. 

So now I'm in my 30's, doing what I love most: talking about sex and getting my masters in social work. I’ve learned how to walk in heels and bought myself crinolines, thereby reclaiming my sexy Lauper side. I've enjoyed my debased, sluttier side at night while teaching pre-schoolers by day thereby turning my back on any kind of purity gamut. And after feeling for years like I’ve been on a teeter-totter opposite from Madonna, I suddenly find that we seem to be on the same side (which ruins a teeter-totter experience, but who cares on such a sunny day?!). It is the complicated sexuality side, which declares that we can play many roles at once, at different times of our life, but ever-central is self-fulfillment

With that said, I bring my two-fingered salute up to the brow of my hat and offer all the Madonna’s in my head, heart and pants this flow-chart, just to keep it all straight.

Hook Up Culture and My Academic Hard-on

You know what gives me a hard on? Sweet academic presentations. Specifically, ones that that walk the line of presenting lots of qualitative research about target populations to the same target populations in such a way that is informative, light and gets people motivated to make a change (are you singing Man in the Mirror yet?). Lisa Wade, professor of sociology and all things bitchen, does it. Her research counters the belief that there is too much sex on college campuses and focuses rather on the epidemic of BAD sex. I'm sorry, do I smell a pleasure activist? Hard-on high five.

Wade combines her research with others on how satisfied college students are with all their alleged hooking up and it turns out to be: not very. When only 11% of men and women surveyed liked their hookups and 50% were ambivalent; when orgasm ratios run 2:5 in favor of men, when 70%-73% of folks reported that they'd like to be in relationships, one wonders what the problem is. Students report wanting one of three things from a hook-up: an emotional connection, pleasure or to feel powerful, but no one's getting it. WHY OH WHY are people hooking up if it doesn't feel good? Wade suggests the culprit is "hook-up culture" as opposed to "hooking up." A culture that says that you gotta flag drunk to show you're on the prowl or that bad sex where people don't ask for what they want is better than no sex at all. And you know, I can understand why. As a sex educator, I do a lot of work with adults to help them figure out what they want and how to ask for it. And as an adult who's trying to practice what I preach, I try to do the same and sometimes fall short of the mark. It’s scary to say “hey, will you put on this monster mask, grease me up and feed me a pork sandwich with extra onions”?, ya know?

IN DEFENSE OF HOOK-UPs: Hook ups can be amazing things. They can show you what you don't want. They give you practice. Before we go out into the older dating pool, it's probably good that we get a few digital exercises in there beyond our own bits. And also, this is freedom baby. Getting out of your parent's home and out into the world is the big open road; it's getting a car and realizing, finally, you can go anywhere. But first, you end up going to the local place because you know it and it's easy. So far, this list is good know thyself stuff that anyone would want to glean before making long-term magics happen. It's when one forgoes pleasure or respect that these hook ups become what is misconstrued as the norm. So piping up becomes the remedy to avoiding bad hookups, which can usher in STIs, depression, and possibly rape (note: I don’t mean that to avoid rape all one has to do is “pipe up”, but rather, a movement towards communication and self-determination may subvert the dominance of unsafe environments that populate hook-up cultureland).

So yeah. I'm stoked. I'm stoked that Wade is out there making the case for young folks to demand their right to pleasure. That pleasure should be taught in schools as a measure of protection for our children (yes, our children...you don't remember?) so that they aren't as inclined to stay silent about needs and interests. I'm, ya know, gunna take a second to put on my "perverted feminist" badge and say that we need more smart folks out there, talking to communities and preaching the gospel of self-knowledge through pleasure-based sex education. That ain't about putting anyone underfoot, that's all about everyone getting what they want, ya know, like on birthdays. So maybe, if you've read this far (oy, whadda rant!) make a promise that the next time you're putting on your horizontal mambo moves, ask for one thing that you want, even if they've said no before, even if you're afraid to say it out loud or if it comes out sounding funny. just ask.

check Wade’s presentation out here~

Common Hour: The Promise and Perils of Hook-Up Culture from Franklin & Marshall College on Vimeo.

wank off wednesday: Hide/Seek is Magic

indulge me, your friend pumpernickel, in my need to let slip my past life as an art historian.

where to start, where to start... In October 2010, the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian, curated an uncharacteristically progressive and queer-aware show, Hide/Seek.  It claimed to be "the first major museum exhibition to focus on sexual difference in the making of modern american portraiture." In November the NPG responded to a Catholic League post that the David Wojnarowicz, "Fire in my Belly" video with ants crawling on a crucifix was too much to smut for their tax dollars to bear. The NPG conceded and took the piece down officially signing their name in the big book of censorship that keeps on growing. 

here's the thing: I am secretly thankful to our conservative counterparts --not catholics mind you, just folks that align themselves with quieting personal expression. Thank you conservative letter writers for reminding me that magic still exists. Reminding me that what you see gets translated until it suddenly, magically feels fire in your own bellies. That sexuality is undeniably palpable and you feel it too and you are scared of it because it is just that heavy. That as the proverb goes: obscenity is whatever gives the judge an erection; such a real outcome from an idea is surely magic. Yes! In the way that Sarah Silverman meant when she said "Jesus is Magic". That way! In that way that believes that objects outside the body can still alchemically change once they hit your tongue. In the way that reminds me that art and sexuality, two elusive intangible sciences are still dangerous. Thank you for reminding me that others can see that and that I must take this news as seriously as humanly possible. Thank you because I sometimes forget that expressing oneself can be a matter of life or death. I sometimes get very tired of being an huberist that doesn't believe in magic, but it is times like this that I feel cured.

this is all just a pre-game speech to remind myself why it's important to be out there doing real things about very hard to pin-down topics. the reason we three screws are together doing the work we do is because there's not enough of us writing letters/blogs/curriculums/books/policies about the things that are important to us. there's room in this sandbox for all of us, we'd love to share if you want to jump in.