This is one of the “Hell hath no fury” blogs, so as it is a bit of a rant, if it is not your cuppa tea today, you might just want to mosey on by and miss the tea.
In previous blogs I have lamented the loss of real history in the Gay Community.
Again, I use “Gay “as it is only 3 letters, not 12 or more, and faster to type and more of an acknowledgement that the rights we have now were won under that word for both men and women as well as those groups that were unknown or unexplained in the past. If the young ones can demand I accept being Called “Queer” regardless of history or the baggage the word carries, they can just accept that I use the word “Gay” and they need to read the real history to learn why.
I took that cross country trip in the spring, arriving in cities where I had been a Gay Rights Activist and wanted to see how far along each place had come and what they did with what the earlier warriors had won for them.
Sadly, as noted before, the further I went back into my past and away from the present in a sense, the further away from true history were the stories that replaced reality because reality was sometimes nasty and people would prefer the rainbows and lollipop version of events.
Stonewall was a nice bar for Gay people. No, it was a mafia run dump serving a need illegally by serving Gay people alcohol.
Gay people ignored Transgender people back then and ignored them that night. It was 1969 and Gender Dysphoria was as unknown to most Gay people as it was to the general population. Information that is ignored today when it is easily accessible was not that easy to come by in the actual historical time of 1969.
There was neither a brick nor shot glass, and the offered defense of the shot glass reveals further lack of history by claiming this was seen from the street when the bars in those days had the blind wall entry so no one could be seen from the street, something the youth seem not to know and the person who threw it, by her own admission, had arrived after the bar doors had been closed by the police. You cannot begin something already in progress, you can only join in.
In my case, from 1997-2009 when advocating for the non-heterosexual students being included in school policies on bullying, harassment, and nondiscrimination, I had advocated, was dismissed by the school board for that, got the job back in a court case, the district added the words “sexual orientation” and “gender identity”, harassed me for another year and a half, I left when the language was secure and I was superfluous, and eight years later, having experienced no problems, with no broo-ha-ha, the district added “gender expression” when its education had led them to see the need on their own without pressure.
It was evidence of growth.
When I read the draft of the biography that was to accompany an exhibit by a university of my art and legal papers from the advocacy years which would be the one that remained after I am dead, it had me advocating and then leaving after having accumulated all the necessary information which enabled others to add the words “sexual orientation”, “gender Identity”, and “gender expression” at the same time a few years after I left. They had lumped the two language additions into one in spite of the first addition happening years before the second and denying the importance of the first addition and that of the second that was its own story of growth but would not be seen as that if people thought it had happened at the same time as the other words. They had accidentally stripped me of my real history and presented a history with a totally incorrect timeline, and, upon my objecting, I found that basically these three terms, being common in 2023, were assumed to have been so from 1997 to 2009 and because they did not realize vocabulary grows over time, two of the terms were included as they existed, the third could not have been advocated for because the term was not as solid then as it would become.
Other less friendly terms that we had to deal with in those days were changed to less triggering ones and as a result, the warm fuzzy, non-triggering history was totally wrong and had to be corrected.
They also used terms whose modern meanings may have changed somewhat over time and they saw no reason why, for the sake of the modern audience, they should not use the modern terms and not the ones that applied at the historical moment. The end result was, after reading the biography I had no idea what I had done or why it mattered.
It took time, but history got restored.
The people at the front desk of the umbrella LGBTQ Community Center, which should be aware of Community history, are unaware that from 1985-1996 their own city had a very well respected Gay Men’s Chorus that, among other things, had been the first non-Disney entity to be allowed by them to perform songs from Little Mermaid for which they gave approval at the opening performance which allowed us to continue that section of the show in later performances, being under 30, had no idea that the chorus had existed and only knew of the one that took its place in another city when a large number of the members of the original chorus, who had been very active when it came to all the AIDS business of the time, succumbed to the virus and are now unknown. They were aware the knew chorus and assumed it had been the only one and never checked on that.
Pitiful.
I found that whaling ship log entry I wrote of previously and had sat on it for a while, putting out feelers to see if my claim of having found the first written record of homosexuality on a whaling ship would be refuted, and after returning from my trip, and after coming upon another entry in another document regarding a woman, I began formulating the proposal to have a committee of volunteers at the New Bedford Whaling Museum who will delve into the historical documents and find us.
There is an LGBT umbrella group in town, as in most cities, so I contacted them to see if they had a history committee to make sure I was not stepping on toes and could perhaps get them involved in my proposed committee, and was informed that they had a Heritage Committee and I was welcome to join. I wrote back asking to join and was informed the first meeting would be in the middle of August.
I know a blow-off when I see one. An “Oops, we gotta do something to look like leaders” was what this was as, if an active committee existed and did not come into existence until I asked my question, they would have been meeting or they would have at least met once. As it was, this meeting was schedule for two months after my inquiry.
I collected the information I had, attaching it and the blog on Steward Scott and Captain Weeks to my return email so they could see what I had found and how we could get the New Bedford Whaling Museum to help as the charter of its parent organization, the Old Dartmouth Historic Society, says it exists to curate the history of the Community and we are part of that community, and sent it to the people listed in the address box of the email I had received and received silence in response.
This year was the first time since Covid that buses of people from Ne3w Bedford would be going to the Provincetown Carnivale, the town’s big Pride event, and I had put my name in for a ticket. It is a don’t miss community event, both the bus ride and the event itself with good local people. When I saw the committee meeting was scheduled for the same day, I wrote to the committee suggesting a schedule change to avoid the conflict but was assured in an email the meeting was still on and people would be there.
I canceled my ticket to Provincetown.
On the day of the meeting, I arrived at the meeting place a half hour early so I could calmly greet the other people and not have one of those last-minute, dash greetings before business, and sat there for an hour waiting for no one else to show up.
I finished the last pages of my e-book and rode my scooter over to Le Place to have a beer with the other person who was not in Provincetown but by choice.
Not only was there no meeting, but I had given up my plans to attend the meeting that wasn’t.
Remember, the only response to the request for a schedule change was the assurance the meeting was still on.
When I arrived at the bar I sent off an email to the committee voicing my anger, and received the standard non apology apology for any confusion while telling me my input is valued and the meeting will be in a week.
What am I, twelve?
What confusion?
They announced a meeting; they confirmed it.
I cancelled plans and showed up when they didn’t.
There is nothing confusing about it.
The apology had nothing to do with the offense.
Like claiming an existing Heritage Committee, it was a dismissive blow-off delivered to someone who knows them all too well but who was assumed to be an inexperienced neophyte in a field he does not understand so about which he can be fooled.
I was at the rodeo with Crawford.
They obviously just picked a “keep him happy” date, while having other plans, not really planning to have a meeting, but getting to say they had a Heritage Committee. Looks good on paper when in reality it does not exist and is of no real interest as was shown by this insulting fiasco,
I had already submitted a tentative proposal to the New Bedford Whaling Museum to have a Gay Committee just as it has for other community groups like the Cape Verdeans and Azoreans, also sub-communities in the larger community, and have a real meeting toward the end of the month with the President and Head Curator, neither of whom claimed that the Museum already had such a committee. I have also spoken of my proposal with other members of staff for input, and, so far, it is positive.
We transcribers, besides being taken off one project and put on another because the other might be subject to a deadline, are allowed to take on pet projects so long as they are relevant to the museum and add to its information, and I intend to get permission to put aside the rather boring assignment I am on now to do some follow up research on another person from the city’s past whose contributions to the country are great, but may be seen only through the tunnel vision of code words like “companion”, “roommate”, “close personal friend” and could be actually much greater.
Instead of leading the charge, the disinterested Gay umbrella group can help in the curating and archiving. If they show up.
They had their chance.
I am not a fan of organizations. Even the good ones get to a point where there are control freaks competing for the top of the hill and so limit what could be accomplished. They were of no use in Oklahoma and in 2023 were responsible for Trans students in Oklahoma City losing their inclusion in school policies that they had won in 2009.
They did not help get them but had no problem, when they ignored local history in favor of established and generic bullet points, losing them.
Locally for Pride Day, this organization had the one Gay bar in town and the only one on the South Coast of Massachusetts until you get to providence collect a ten dollar cover charge at a bar that rarely has them as a fundraiser for the organization so that in order to celebrate Pride with others in the Community, you had to pay to do it so the organization could continue to remodel the building they bought to be the Center without telling the Community we were going to be paying for it any way they could get a dollar.
They usurped Pride for money, limiting Community participation.
Other old fogeys in the Community and I, who earned our right to be proud, arrived before the cover charge was to start and passive-aggressively sat having drinks and conversation daring them to toss us out if we didn’t pay up.
That blog never had to be written. They took the hint
Once you got inside you could have your official Pride picture taken in front of a huge rainbow butterfly not bearing the word “Pride” as one would expect, but the name of the organization, so every happy Pride picture is an advertisement for them. The word Pride may have been on small flags at the festival, but the stage backdrop was the organizations logo.
We were not celebrating Pride, we were getting fleeced. We were a cash cow. They used our joy and our pride first to collect money for themselves with a cover charge and have a commemorative picture taken, but then, whenever anyone showed or posted their Pride Picture, there was nothing saying it was Pride related and could have been taken at any event, any place, at any time where the organization found a way to make money. It was just as useful for a Christmas card and any occasion as there was no specific theme just the name and logo.
They used Pride to raise money from a captive audience while locking out members of the Community their name claims they serve.
It was one thing to pretend there was a committee, select the day for the already functioning committee to meet for the first time, insist on the date even after a suggested date change with assurance of attendance, and then not show up, something that shows a tepid interest in the subject at best and total disrespect for the people involved, but it is another to treat someone like that, to have them sit and wait while not being able to do what he had planned because this was something that had to be done, but was of nominal importance to the committee, obviously.
They had other plans. I, apparently, did not.
How do you work with people whose first interaction consisted of this?
Do I really want to walk into a room of people who left me sitting in a lobby waiting while they were off doing whatever, perhaps doing what I had had to cancel since they did not change the date knowing they would not be there, pretending we are a cohesive group with the same goal, preserving history.
Perhaps they did not take me seriously enough as I did not require a cover charge.
In light of this and previous self-serving acts, I wonder if this soon to be but already existing yet to meet committee has as its goal a true, faithful archiving of the complete history of the Gay Community in New Bedford going back to when Bedford Village was all there was, ships and all, or will it be a glorified high school yearbook committee where the staff makes sure their memories are preserved.
Having the experience to suspect the latter, I will work with the Museum.
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