{"id":6316,"date":"2012-06-29T11:00:22","date_gmt":"2012-06-29T15:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.qwoc.org\/?p=6316"},"modified":"2012-06-29T11:00:22","modified_gmt":"2012-06-29T15:00:22","slug":"queer-rage-from-lgbt-students-of-color-poetry-performance-critiques-marriage-politics-and-is-badass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/test.qwoc.org\/?p=6316","title":{"rendered":"“Queer Rage” from LGBT Students of Color: Poetry Performance Critiques Marriage Politics, and Is Badass"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted with permission from Stanford student publication, Static<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Queer\u00a0Rage by Janani Balasubramanian, \u201912, Alok Vaid-Menon, \u201913, and Cam Awkward-Rich, graduate student in\u00a0Modern Thought & Literature<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

This poem, \u201cMarriage\u201d, also known as \u201cQueer Rage\u201d, is a critique of gay marriage politics as a strategy of liberation. Obama\u2019s\u00a0endorsement<\/a>\u00a0of same-sex marriage (or anyone else\u2019s) is not where the struggle ends, or even begins, really. In the piece we call for a consideration of race, class, and other systems of control that complicate and intersect with queerness. We also point to the increasing corporatization and overwhelming whiteness of gay marriage politics. Overall, we point to a more critical consideration of violence and material oppression that is linked to queerness, and how insufficient marriage equality is in this regard. This piece was performed by the Stanford Slam Poetry team at the\u00a02012 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational<\/a>. Video and transcript below.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no place like homo
\nThere\u2019s no place like homo<\/p>\n

somewhere over the rainbow
\nway up high
\nthere\u2019s a land that I heard of
\nonce in a lullaby<\/p>\n

Wake up honi
\nit\u2019s called san francisco
\nwhere white bourgie bitches getting gay married
\nbut my ass ain\u2019t got an invite sha hoo~<\/p>\n

Somewhere over the rainbow
\nBlue birds fly.
\nBirds fly over the rainbow.
\nWhy then, oh why can\u2019t I?<\/p>\n

BECAUSE YOU\u2019RE BROWN HONEY GURL<\/p>\n

I\u2019m bout to sassy gay friend this ish ~
\nNot gay as in happy but queer as in fuck you
\nRainbows are just refracted beams of white light,
\nGay marriage activism is a temper tantrum:
\nMommy I\u2019m going to buy an \u201cI\u2019m a second class citizen\u201d American Apparel v-neck to go with my corporate internship and some ass<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t always think this way
\nCuz philadelphia taught me everything i still know about shame
\nthat my queer body was something to \u201ccorrect\u201d
\nthat looking like \u201ca faggot with a cunt\u201d only meant
\nI was looking for trouble<\/p>\n

So in high school I laced my shoes with rainbows
\nand preached the gospel of equal rights and pride
\nThat tell us marriage will finally untangle
\nour love from shame, will legislate us wholly human<\/p>\n

But the day same sex marriage was legalized in New York, DC, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Iowa it didn\u2019t get better because \u201cSomewhere over the rainbow\u201d there\u2019s a pot of Goldman Sachs
\n**DUN DUN DUN DUN**We are gathered here today**<\/p>\n

for richer, for poorer
\ntell that to El\u2019Jai who lost his job last year
\nHis state is one of only 12
\nwhere you cannot legally be fired
\nfor having a body that doesn\u2019t sit right with your heart
\nbut his job \u201ccould only be done by a man\u201d
\nand his genitals did not conform to his employers expectations.<\/p>\n

[I do not know if he won the court case, only that he has a son,
\nand that being brown and trans means being 4 times less likely to find work]
\nbut who needs money for bread when you can eat wedding cake!<\/p>\n

in good times and in bad
\ntell that to Temmie Breslauer a transwoman who was arrested for using
\nher father\u2019s discount subway card.
\nthe NYPD chained her to a wall for 28 hours and called her a he-she
\nto have and to be held
\nthis is what marriage means for queer people
\nas we send the government wedding invitations to incarcerate our love<\/p>\n

till death do us part,
\ntell that to asher brown who at thirteen took a gun to his head
\nas if it was an act of patriotism because in texas
\nbeing gay is a death sentence
\nit is nights spent whispering secrets to open skies
\nit is the sound of your mother crying because she wonders
\nhow that thing came out of her<\/p>\n

and i do, i do, i do
\nnot believe that a marriage certificate
\ncould have stopped the bullet<\/p>\n

Remember,
\nRemember,
\nRemember,
\nThere is something beautiful about being lied to:
\nRainbows are just a trick of light,
\nThey make us forget the storm is still happening,
\nWhen walking towards the end of the rainbow, it will always move away.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Cam, Janani, and Alok are all members of the\u00a0Stanford Spoken Word Collective<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Check out this performance from queer students of color: \u201cMarriage\u201d, also known as \u201cQueer Rage\u201d, is a critique of gay marriage politics as a strategy of liberation. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6320,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,17,77],"tags":[624,779,823,836,951,952,961,1086],"class_list":["post-6316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activism-and-politics","category-featured-blogs","category-youth-special-series","tag-lgbt","tag-poc","tag-queer-rage","tag-queer-youth-of-color","tag-stanford","tag-status","tag-student-performance","tag-youth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/test.qwoc.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6316","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/test.qwoc.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/test.qwoc.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/test.qwoc.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/test.qwoc.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/test.qwoc.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/test.qwoc.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}