Death through social asphyxiation: How continuing boxes and norms are killing the LGBT community

You are killing me. Or I am killing you. I am sorry, somewhere along the way I got confused as to who was killing who. Wait, how is this, we are killing each other.

Shocking isn’t it? We are dying from social asphyxiation and we are both holding the pillows to each other’s mouth while we straddle each other’s one-dimensional “identity” between our legs. The person, our very being, in its most dynamic, multiple fluid forms is trapped inside of our bodies, screaming for air, screaming to be allowed freedom. Ironically enough, we both want our beings to be free, yet somewhere along the way, we were taught to keep it in the closet, that it’s not “normal”. Somewhere along the way we confused this idea of the normal, that it somehow exists; it’s this fairytale we convinced ourselves is there and we want to be it.

It doesn’t exist. I’m sorry to break it to you. I have finally realized it. Now please, remove the pillow from my head and allow me to be.

Now, you may wonder how I finally came to this conclusion. Was it drugs? No, fortunately this time it wasn’t. Was it idealism, liberalism or some other “ism” that has poisoned the mind? No, there were no “isms” involved. Where did it come from then? It came partly through issues of my own identities, class discussions, assigned readings and considering how social change comes about. For me, to a certain extent, this class wasn’t just about LGBT issues, but identity issues as a whole. I wanted to know how my numerous identities intersected each other and could join together in the movement for positive social change. I know, perhaps a bit idealistic, but allow me to take you through my personal, intellectual journey through issues surrounding identity.

To begin, I have considered how my various identities have somehow interconnected and clashed. I was told numerous times that my sexuality somehow separated me from my other identity as a Jicarilla, as a person of color and so on. Socially, I was also told that each of these identities were like small little buckets, separate from each other, that only shared the water it collected. In Lisa Kahaleole Chang Hall’s Bitches in Solitude, she considers this type of behavior as “exclusionary identity building,” as the excerpt below shows:

“There are at least two kinds of exclusionary identity building. One is the exclusion based on power and privilege, the ability not to have to take other people’s existences seriously. The other comes from the less privileged end of the spectrum. For some, identity becomes a fortress under siege that’s protected by denying connections with others and oversimplifying connections with “their own”.

As a woman of color with my certain sexuality, this was the exact case; the identity that others forced me to confront was a “fortress under siege”. I was to choose and define in precise words the “side” I was to be on, either the LGBT, or people of color. However, I never felt that either was my own and exclusive of the other.

I didn’t want to have to choose. Somehow I knew I shouldn’t have to; I knew that there was an interconnection between all these identities and it had to be more than this concept of the “normal”. Perhaps my mistrust of what “normal” is came from my cross- cultural experiences growing up on the reservation and then coming to Carleton (Blog Entry: Ideas of the normative that aren’t so normal.) In that blog entry, I hoped to argue that ideas and concepts that some commonly terms as the normative, like perspectives on sexuality, are different for other cultures. It is through a cultural and social lens that these normatives are created, but to assume that there is an overarching normative to confirm to, is something we as individuals have created.

Then the question came what to do with it. How is it that my individual identity, as a multidimensional dynamic being, could attach to society? Now enter Hall’s identity politics, which she nicely summarized in the excerpt below:

“For me, identity politics is about making connections between personal histories and larger political and social context. Basic but far from simple. Identity politics is important because it shatters the alienating slit that we’re taught exists between the realities of our personal lives and the public “political” reality. It’s important because paradoxically, not recognizing and acknowledging where we’re coming from makes it even hard to get beyond the limitations of our experiences. Both things are true, we are the world; we’re just not all of it.”

You see, that’s just it. Identity as we practice it today is thought of as one-dimensional and separate from each other. We are taught that “realities of our personal lives and the public “political” reality” is somehow different. ‘My actions are my actions and mine alone, and there is only the interconnections are those that I choose to create with you,’ is the overarching lesson the majority is taught through an American, western Judeo-Christian cultural sphere. Today, as a society, as Americans, somehow we are still stuck on this linear thought process of every man, woman and child for themselves as we move forward, and progress towards “normal,” the “ideal”.

How does this relate to the LGBT? It relates as everything does. Since it’s historical development in the U.S. gay men and women have strived to carve out a place for themselves in society (See Blog Entry: Development of the Homosexual Identity). From Stonewall, to today, where identity politics is still a heated debate where as a community we are trying to decide the “LGBT agenda” towards equality and freedom. Identity is still an issue. How is it that we define each other and how can we use that definition of identity to unite and move forward en mass as a group to conquer injustice and overcome oppression for all gay people? That’s it, isn’t it? We’re trying to overcome oppression and declare we’re “just like everyone else,” and that we are humans so accept us. That is what every oppressed minority person, group, thing demand, to not be define and confined to a normative that we really can’t define.

Then how does one overcome this perceived normative? How is it that we can share boxes? Identity politics is important because it awakens the person to the interconnections they share with other. When you can identity who you are as a being, then you are able to see how that being interconnects with other. Here, being is in the sense that it’s multi-layered and dynamic, human beings are “being” because they interconnect with what is around them and are in constant change. As Hall points out:

“Taking seriously the idea that identity is a complicated mixture of sometimes contradictory layers of gender, racial, sexual, and ideological identifications means that there exists a number of possible connections. Identity is as multiple as the communities we form.”

Identity is a mixture. Identity politics is then a mixture of one’s identities with the movement towards uniting and overcoming. Then why isn’t it working then, why aren’t we living in this utopia? It’s just that, we aren’t considering our own identities and how they connect. Hall hits it on the head when she says that we aren’t taking identity seriously enough.

You got the money, you got the cure!

The title of this entry lends largely to two aspect surrounding Antiretroviral drugs. First, I will address the popular misconceptions these antiretroviral drugs are a cure for AIDS and the associated social/personal consequences. Secondly, I will discuss that arguably, for many in America, the AIDS plague is over, but realistically, for many, the cost of antiretroviral drugs are too great to even afford “extended time” with the treatment.

To begin, the most popular “aids cocktail” of antiretroviral drugs is known as Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy” (HAART). HAART therapy is a combination of several drugs that follow a strict pill regiment accompanied by severe side affects. For HAART therapy to work, there has to be a strict adherence to the pill regiment because incompliance leads to drug resistance within the body as well as the body’s viral resistance not building up. It’s an extremely strenuous therapy regiment that is both resource intensive and expensive. Another words, HAART therapy is just that, a therapy that enables the AIDS patients to have a chance at longer-term survival with a combination of drugs that increase the body’s viral resistance. It’s not a cure to AIDS.

There are serious social consequences in associating HAART therapy as a cure for AIDS because first, it allows people to become complacent in the fight to find the cure. They assume one has already been found. There is also the aspect that is lowers people’s inhibitions to practice safe sex, assuming that HAART therapy can fix the problem. Essentially, it’s putting a bowl under a leaky pipe and not trying to fix the pipe.

The second critique of HAART therapy is that people consider it a cure for AIDS and that these drugs are accessible to everyone. They are not. For those from lower socioeconomic status, the chances of receiving HAART therapy are slim to none considering the enormous price. Don’t feel too at ease though, even Americans that consider themselves a bit higher up on the socioeconomic ladder have limited access to HAART therapy because it’s likely they aren’t insured. Consider this, as of the most recent statistics released in 2006 from the Census bureau, 47.0 million Americans are without health insurance coverage. What if one of them contracts AID/HIV, where are they going to find the money to afford HAART therapy that can easily run thousands of dollars? They might not have the money to afford to buy the “extended time” HAART offers its patients with increasing the body’s viral resistance.

Fig. 6 Number of Uninsured and Uninsured Rate: 1987 to 2006

Perhaps better rephrased, “you got the money, you get the time”.

A Personal Note to Andrew Sullivan

Dear Andrew,

Thank you, for in your ignorance, writing off the struggle that Native people, alongside other communities of color such as Black and Latino face with the battle with AIDS/HIV. Below, I've copied an excerpt written by yourself, in "When Plagues End," that helped me see my "place" as a Native person in a society dealing with AID/HIV.

“with inner-city black and Latino, with intravenous drug users, there was no similar cultural transformation, no acceleration of social change. And that was because with these groups, there had never been a myth of power. They had always been, in the majority psyche, a series of unknowable victims. AIDS merely perpetuated what was already understood and, in some ways, intensified it. With gay men, in contrast, a social revolution had been initiated. Once visible, they were now unavoidable; once powerful subversives, they were now dying sons.”

Sitting in the library, I read your article, initially amazed that with a few strokes of the keyboard, you have the power to write off an entire people’s struggle with a disease by not even mentioning it in the long list of victims. Then I realized, that’s just it, apparently, as Native people, we weren’t supposed to survive this long, and why mention us now? Alongside other people of color, our extinction, way of life, and culture is left to crumple, with the access to “added time” in the hands of the privilege few.

Thank you Andrew Sullivan, for making me realize that from “majority psyche,” I am just another helpless casualty.


Sincerely yours,



"Just another unmentionable casualty."

P.S. Above, I have attached shows for your viewing pleasure from youtube.com

A call to arms, "Gay characters disappearing from broadcast TV!"

Apparently gay people are an “endangered species on network television”. Excerpts from the article in Reuters are below:

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Gay people are becoming an endangered species on network television. A new report says a total of seven series on the five broadcast networks feature regular lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) characters this season, down from nine last season.

The number has dropped for the past three years, according to the annual "Where We Are on TV" study by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

"While we acknowledge there have been improvements made in how we are seen on the broadcast networks, most notably on ABC, our declining representation clearly indicates a failure to inclusively reflect the audience watching television," said GLAAD president Neil Giuliano.

So I know for many, there is a certain amount of validity in seeing characters on television that one can empathize with and connect on a personal level, may it be racially, culturally, politically, gender-wise, etc. But at the same time, is the LGBT movement moving forward with broadcast television? Are we really changing the minds of those in the hetero-dominant world by adding another stereotypical “gay” character to laugh at? Or is continuing participation in American consumerism furthering the idea of tolerance of gays, rather than acceptance?

I argue that yes, I would like to watch more lesbians on TV. Just as much as I would like to see more shows that are worth watching. Another words, for the LGBT community, our focus cannot be on superficial tolerance from the heterosexual majority by their “gay” character quotas. Rather we need to be striving to expand acceptance of all people, regardless of what identity categories, be it racially, culturally, religiously, sexually, economically or any other superlatives we can find to box people in.