{"id":1989,"date":"2011-05-08T17:08:29","date_gmt":"2011-05-08T17:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.qwocboston.org\/?p=1989"},"modified":"2011-05-08T17:08:29","modified_gmt":"2011-05-08T17:08:29","slug":"we-will-not-be-unwritten-preserving-queer-women-of-color-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/test.qwoc.org\/?p=1989","title":{"rendered":"We Will Not Be Unwritten: Preserving Queer Women of Color History"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally posted at www.spectraspeaks.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/em>A few weeks ago, the Fenway Women’s Health Team posted a blog on\u00a0Bay Windows<\/a> about their upcoming 2nd annual women’s health fair. <\/strong>QWOC+ Boston had organized and tabled at this event for the past three years.\u00a0Yet, written in an authoritative third person omniscient voice was the line, “Thanks to the dedication of a single woman, Fenway Health is proudly hosting its 2nd Annual LBT Women\u2019s Health Fair…\u201d<\/p>\n

The women’s health fair wasn’t in it’s second, but third <\/em>year<\/strong>, and long before the dedicated efforts of a single woman, an entire community of queer women of color, myself included, had worked with Fenway Women\u2019s Health Team via a series of conversations and community-building initiatives to delimit access to health resources for queer people of color.\u00a0This ultimately led to the planning and execution of the first<\/em> health fair, appropriately titled, “A Little Less Talk, A Lot More Action<\/a>,” and hosted collaboratively by Queer Women of Color and Friends (QWOC+ Boston<\/a>), Queer Asian Pacific Alliance (QAPA<\/a>), and Somos Latinos<\/a> (now Unid@s, under the umbrella of Boston Pride).<\/p>\n

But, if you’re one out of the 55,000 people that follows Bay Windows, firmly established as New England’s largest LGBT newspaper, you wouldn’t have known any of this.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A Brief History Lesson: <\/strong>The inaugural health fair took place on Thursday April 30th, 2008, exactly three <\/em>years ago<\/em>, during which various organizations tabled at the event, presenting a plethora of resources from free breast cancer screenings, safe sex toys, HPV vaccination information, and acupuncture. The main part of the event, the panel on the impact of stress, addressed health disparities between women of color and white women, from varied perspectives, including public health, mental health, socio-economic status, and more.<\/p>\n

Additionally,<\/strong> the inception <\/em>of the\u00a0first health fair happened almost\u00a0four <\/em>years ago at the inauguration of QWOC+ Boston’s Pride Festival — QWOC Week — during a panel focused on health issues in WOC Communities. The QWOC Week Panel<\/a> featured inspiring and touching personal stories and perspectives from\u00a0an older generation of Black Lesbian activists (a few of who are my mentors\/sheroes —\u00a0Lula Christopher,\u00a0Jacquie Bishop,\u00a0Reverend Irene Monroe, and Lisa Moris) and was moderated by Dr. Konjit Page, then a Psychology PhD candidate focused on the mental health of queer women of color. The room was bursting with inspiratio<\/span>n and empowerment when the panel ended. So much so that Reverend Irene Monroe even published a piece about it called\u00a0Sisters are Doing It For Themselves
\n<\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n

The chronology of these dates, collaborations, and events are important to note as they weave together an important part of history for Boston\u2019s queer women of color community,<\/strong> highlighting the actionable steps that we took together to improve access to health resources for queer and transgender communities of color.<\/p>\n

Yet, in one line, history had been omitted, or in this case, un-written<\/em>. <\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>It is also important to note that even though our initiative had originally set out to empower LBTQ women of color, the\u00a0language that had been previously used to indicate a conscious targeting of this marginalized group had been dropped completely, however inadvertently, under the umbrella of empowering all women<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Given the context around the origination of the health fair (at a queer women of color festival), and its subsequent success — a small but important piece of history — you must imagine my deep disappointment at the ability of a single blog post to completely erase almost four years of hard work<\/span> that had actually resulted in a tangible benefit for the LGBT community.<\/em><\/p>\n

But let me be clear: I don\u2019t for a second imagine that this near erasure of history happened intentionally. <\/strong><\/em>The blog about Fenway’s Women\u2019s Health fair sought simply to highlight the efforts of their team to preserve the health fair in the face of funding cuts and limited resources. And, for that, they have my deepest gratitude and support. Without their hard work and dedication, there would be no women’s health fair at all, and the future we\u2019ve worked so hard to create would dissipate right in front of us.<\/p>\n

\"\"Still, as our community continues to push against the walls of oppression, whether funding cuts, racism and homophobia in the health system, and other social justice fronts, we must remember that preserving the stories of our past is just as important as fighting for a better future<\/em><\/span>; <\/strong>history is the only way the world will ever know about the many battles we have fought, about the battles we have won, and most importantly, the only way we can leave a clear path for the generation behind us to follow.\u00a0In the words of Audre Lorde, \u201c It’s a struggle but that’s why we exist, so that another generation of Lesbians of color will not have to invent themselves, or their history, all over again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It is from this place that I could not stand by while the contributions to the improved livelihood of queer women of color in Boston by community members — including my own mentors, women whose shoulders I am proud <\/em>to stand on — were at risk of being erased<\/strong>, and not just due to an inadvertent error with dates. Perhaps Fenway failed to appropriately contextualize the event, but Bay Windows\u2019 carelessness (or complete absence of) fact-checking, and the general callousness that I find in mainstream media outlets when covering issues affecting women, people of color, transgender people etc., isn’t a problem that I see going away any time soon.<\/p>\n

So, as a leader I have to acknowledge my own role (or lack thereof) at arriving at this juncture i.e. my neglect for the past five years to formally document gains QWOC+ Boston has made as far as increasing visibility for queer people of color and the movement of embracing diversity we’ve created in Boston, save this blog.<\/p>\n

\"\"As LGBT people (esp. members of marginalized groups: women, people of color, transgender, disabled etc), we all need to do a better job of telling our own stories, and in effect, writing ourselves (back) into history.<\/strong> As I learned from this experience, we’re not just at risk of being completely ignored by mainstream\u00a0media, but about having our history being talked over, our pronouns mixed up, our hard work being told in passive voice i.e \u201cIt happened.\u201d We do a disservice to each other when we fail to affirm the actions of the generations closely following behind us, when we fail to let them know that “We were here,” and as such, that they can do it better, and get further down the path to equality than we ever imagined possible.<\/p>\n

I can’t say this enough: Get to it. <\/strong>Start a blog. Create a Youtube channel. Write a book — you can self-publish. Support organizations like the LGBT History Project<\/a> who work tirelessly to record our histories (orally if need be). But whatever you do from this point, remember the words of Audre Lorde, “Your silence will not protect you,” or the words of my mentor, Letta Neely<\/a>, if you like your wisdom plain, “Write that shit, down!”<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Spectra <\/strong>is an award-winning activist and writer about all things race, gender, sexuality, leadership, and diversity. S\/he is the Founding Director of QWOC+ Boston<\/strong> and host of the new podcast, Kitchen Table Conversations<\/strong>. You can read more about Spectra’s work at www.spectraspeaks.com<\/a> or follow her tweets at\u00a0@spectraspeaks<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As LGBT people (esp. members of marginalized groups: women, people of color, transgender, disabled etc), we all need to do a better job of telling our own stories, and in effect, writing ourselves (back) into history. Read this opinion piece from founder, Spectra, on preserving QWOC+ Boston’s history.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,26],"tags":[194,225,410,417,418,554,660,838,875,943,1066],"class_list":["post-1989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activism-and-politics","category-history","tag-audre-lorde","tag-black-lesbian-history","tag-featured","tag-fenway-health","tag-fenway-womens-health-team","tag-jacquie-bishop","tag-lula-christopher","tag-qwoc","tag-reverend-irene-monroe","tag-spectra-speaks","tag-women-of-color"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/test.qwoc.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/test.qwoc.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/test.qwoc.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/test.qwoc.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/test.qwoc.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/test.qwoc.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/test.qwoc.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/test.qwoc.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/test.qwoc.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/test.qwoc.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}