The gift of Chai

This month’s issue of The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide features an interview with Chai Feldblum, a professor of law at Georgetown University. Feldblum was appointed in March 2010 by President Obama as the first out lesbian commissioner on the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Feldblum, in my opinion, is a rock star when it comes to LGBTQ activism. Although her activist efforts have fanned out in various directions, she’s probably best known for her role in drafting and advocating for an inclusive form of the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which, if passed, would prohibit discrimination in hiring and employment on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. This – the topic of ENDA – was the major focus of the Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide article.

But there’s much more to Chai Feldblum than ENDA. Born into an Orthodox Jewish family (her father was a Holocaust survivor), Feldblum’s social justice work began early in her career. She clerked for Harry Blackmun, author of the Roe v. Wade majority opinion (and who also wrote the dissenting opinion in the Bowers v. Hardwick anti-sodomy case). She served as Legislative Counsel to the AIDS Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. She was the legal director for the Campaign for Military Service, a group which lobbied to overturn policies forbidding gay and bisexual people from serving openly in the U.S. military. And just five years after she graduated from law school, she was the lead attorney on the team that drafted the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

Of course, Feldblum herself, who is an avid tweeter, provides the most concise biographical sketch (in 140 characters or less):

First out lesbian EEOC Commissioner (and with a disability); Georgetown law prof (on leave); tweets on civil rights; discrimination buster.

In Feldblum’s Twitter profile, her disability status is included as a parethetical. In the Gay and Lesbian Review article, it isn’t mentioned at all. If you Google “Chai Feldblum” along with “disability,” you’ll find lots of information about her role in developing the Americans with Disabilities Act – and you’ll learn about other ways she’s been active in disability rights. However, the only place you’ll find anything about Feldblum’s own disability status is – you guessed it – in her Twitter profile. It’s not mentioned on her EEOC page (which isn’t surprising, since personal information like that isn’t typically included on federal government websites). But it’s also not mentioned in most LGBTQ publications that have written stories about her.

In the political sphere, keeping visible disabilities on the down-low certainbly isn’t a new thing. During his presidency, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s public appearances were carefully choreographed in order to conceal any evidence of his disability. But this disability down-low isn’t unique to the political arena – in my opinion, the LGBTQ community is not particularly disability-inclusive. Few LGBTQ disability organizations exist – some have fizzled out entirely (such as BFLAG, for blind LGBTQs), others are entirely volunteer-run (such as the Deaf Queer Resource Center [DQRC]). And yet, disability is something that the LGBTQ community needs to be paying attention to.

For one thing, LGBTQ people are certainly not immune to disabilities. In a recent study published in the American Journal of Public Health, Karen Fredriksen-Goldsen, Hyun-Jun Kim, and Susan Barkan of the University of Washington found that, in a large-scale population-based sample, the prevalence of disability is higher among lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults than among their heterosexual counterparts. In fact, according to Debra Harley of the University of Kentucky, it’s estimated that 11% of LGB individuals – about 4 million people – have a disability. In more than a few cases, homophobia may have a direct causal link to one’s disability. Being victimized by a violent hate crime can result in a temporary or permanent disability. Being subjected to the chronic and ongoing stresses of homophobia is thought by several researchers to be associated with various autoimmune conditions, such as chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. Disability status and sexual minority status, it seems, share some common ground.

Even though the rates of disability are high in the LGBTQ community, there isn’t really a climate of inclusiveness for these identities. The fact is, homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia exist in the disability community, and stigmatization against people with disabilities occurs in the LGBTQ community. Because of this, LGBTQ people with disabilities might face an allegiance dilemma: should I identify as “disabled,” align with the disability community, and get involved in disability rights – or should I identify as queer and fight for LGBTQ rights? There is great pressure for people with multiple minority statuses to reduce themselves to a single identity – a dehumanizing force that contributes powerfully to social isolation.

The irony in all of this is that disability politics probably aren’t all that different from LGBTQ politics. People with invisible disabilities face the dilemma of whether to “come out” about their disability status. The disability community, like the LGBTQ community, debates whether the disability rights movement is best served through assimilating into mainstream, able-bodied culture, or by demanding acceptance of differences. The disability rights movement – just like the LGBTQ rights movement – has relied on both legislative actions and various forms of radicalism and civil disobedience. And, even with these striking similarities, the LGBTQ community has done little to align itself with disability rights.

In Hebrew, “chai” means “life” – a word and symbol that is a cornerstone of Jewish culture. I think Chai Feldblum has lived up to her name – her activism continues to breathe life into both the LGBTQ rights and disability rights movements. And if anyone understands the lived experience and challenges of intersectionality, it would be her. If I get lucky enough to secure an interview with her, you’ll be hearing more about this lived experience in my upcoming book.

Alphabet City

Lately I’ve seen a lot of discussion in various Internet forums about the “gay alphabet” – the ever-increasing initials used to describe the queer community. While at one time the word “gay” or “homosexual” was the only available terminology, we have now, in the spirit of inclusiveness, dramatically expanded our nomenclature. Just to give you a sense of what I mean, here’s a sampling from UrbanDictionary.com’s “gay alphabet” entries:

LGB:  Lesbian, gay, bisexual.

LGBT:  adding “transgender” (probably the most utilized initials). 

LGBTQ:  adding “queer” or “questioning.”

LGBTQI:  adding “intersex.”

LGBTQIA:  adding “allies.”

LGBTQQIA:  adding “queer” and “questioning.”

LGBTQQIAAP:  adding “asexual” and “pansexual” – someone who is attracted to the qualities of a person, regardless of that person’s gender identity and presentation.

LGBTTIQQ2SA:  distinguishing between “transgender” and transsexual”; adding “Two-Spirit” (2S; a term derived from various Native American/Indigenous traditions of gender and sexual fluidity).

Whew! It’s hard to keep track of such a rapidly increasing list of initials. And, not surprisingly, there has been quite a bit of reactivity within the LGBTQ(QIAAP?) community. In fact, UrbanDictionary itself includes “gay alphabet soup” as an entry, with the following definition and commentary:

Going over-board with adding letters to the traditional “GLBT (Gay/Lesbian/Bi-sexual/Trans)” acronym (sic) to attempt to include every non-homophobic possibility. GLBT alphabet soup can become a very long, nonsensical acronym (emphasis added).

Now I’ll take the opportunity to weigh in on this, and to offer a counterpoint. It’s not the changeling, tongue-twister-like qualities of these initials that bother me, although I will admit that they don’t roll off the tongue very easily. I will also admit that it’s humbling to be teaching a class and using one set of initials, only to be outed by a student as not being on top of the latest nomenclature. But this doesn’t upset me so much. Rather, what’s unsettling to me is the venom behind the critiques of the initals. For example, let’s look at an exchange between two commenters responding to a Huffington Post blog about the “gay alphabet”:

 Wouldn’t pansexual be bi? I mean, there are only two genders.

 Actually, there are not two genders. Gender is a spectrum, not an either/or. There are people who identify at just about any point between male and female. Thus, pansexual includes genderqueer individuals, genderfluid individuals and others.

 Oh, WHATEVER (emphasis added). 

So here’s an attempt to educate a commenter about the diversity and complexity of our community, and the response is “oh, whatever.”  That, in my mind, is far more disturbing than any unwieldy set of initials. It’s a dismissive statement, and it reveals an unwillingness to accept the fluidity of our community.

Two issues come to mind for me. One is that visibility is critical to our community. Coming out and being open about who we are, if we consider UC Davis professor Gregory Herek’s research, has been one of the most powerfully effective tools in reducing homophobia, both on a personal level as well as on a cultural level. But, in my opinion, not everyone in our community is given the same opportunity to be open and speak their truth. Intersex people, for example, have been silenced by the medical community’s attempts to assimilate them into one singular gender category. The queer community still wrestles with whether to include the “I” in its nomenclature, largely because, well, they don’t fit easily into our existing paradigm. The queer community also wrestles with the inclusion of the “T,” even though it’s generally been included in the alphabet roll call for quite some time. Some see the “T” as the proverbial ball-and-chain of the queer community – if we use the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) as an example, adding gender identity protections ended up being a deal-breaker in the 2007 Congressional vote – and it divided the LGBTQ activist community, some of whom saw the trans community as stalling the path of progress.

I’d like to segue into another idea, and that is that visibility is not enough. If we’re including more initials so we can earn our political correctness card, but we’re unwilling to really listen to and be present for the issues of that community, then we are doing far more harm than good. In Geneva Reynaga-Abiko’s 2011 review of the book Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans & Queer Psychology by Victoria Clarke, Sonja Ellis, Elizabeth Peel, and Damien Rigg, published in the journal Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, she correctly notes that the terms “bisexual” and “trans” are included in the title of the book, but each of those identities receives only a few paragraphs’ worth attention in the entire book. Giving lip service isn’t enough. If we’re going to include the “T,” it needs to really be included. Sometimes there may be reasons not to include the “T,” or only to include the “T,” depending on what kinds of issues we’re focusing on. But these decisions need to be made intelligently and respectfully, not just as a way to appease our discomfort.

Several months ago, I wrote a couple of blog posts on the “don’t say gay” policies implemented by several public school districts. These policies have something of a “see no evil” mentality behind them – if we don’t talk about it, we won’t see it, and if we can’t see it, then it’s not an issue. If we make the gays go away, then life will be easier. If we make the ever-increasing list of initials go away, then life will be easier. In a community that is complex, fluid, and ever-changing, sometimes keeping things simple just doesn’t work. Instead, I’d like to see our community use the growing list of initials as an opportunity to connect, to listen, to ask questions, to learn, and to work towards ending invisibility, marginalization, and oppression of sexual and gender minorities.