By Jerimarie Liesegang

From David Bacon, http://dbacon.igc.org/

The following is a take off on Yip Harburg’s Brother, Can You Spare A Dime.  However, it is been adapted to reflect today’s current situation of those who helped “build a nation” and now being pushed cast aside as criminals.

They used to tell me they were traveling to the land of freedom, and so I migrated with the others.
When there were vegetables to be picked, Or when there were loved ones to be cared for,
When there were homes and offices to be tended, Or when there was construction to be done,David Bacon
I was always there, day and night, sad or happy, right there on the job.

They used to tell me I was traveling to the land of freedom, with happiness and security ahead.
So why should I be standing in shackles, denied basic human rights, waiting for injustice?

They used to tell me I was traveling to the land of freedom, with happiness and security ahead.
So please tell me what I did wrong, why I am being called a criminal,
So please tell me what I did wrong, for simply working for a better life for my loved ones and myself?

Once I helped feed a nation, I toiled long backbreaking hours with little to show,
Once I helped build a nation, I cleaned your offices and I tended your lawns with little to show,
Once I helped build a nation, and now I am in jail, told I was a criminal when just hours before I helped build a nation,
Brother, Why Can’t You Spare Me These Raids?

Once I built a road, so that many loved ones could shop, could visit and could earn a living,
Once I built a road, and now that is done, and now I am in shackles in ICE detention,
While my loved ones ask of where I went, and what did I do wrong in help building a road?
Once I helped build a nation’s infrastructure, and now I am in ICE detention, told I was a criminal when just hours before I helped build a nation,
Brother, Why Can’t You Spare Me These Raids?

Once in our festive best, gee we looked swell, full of that Melting Pot Dream,
We are laborers, we are custodians, we are farmers, we are caregivers, and we are many,
Half a million migrants who went toiling in factories, in farms, in offices, in sweatshops, and through Hell,
And yet we made time to celebrate life, celebrate family, celebrate freedom, and I was the kid with the smile!

Say, why don’t you remember me; I have taken care of your families, I have fed your loved ones,
Say, why don’t you remember me, for you knew I had toiled to be free like your ancestors,
Say, Why don’t you remember, why do you arrest me, I’m no different than your ancestors,
They were called by many different names, in many different languages,
They were allowed the American Dream, yet you say there is no room for me now that my work is done,
Brother, Why Can’t You Spare Me These Raids?

Once in our festive best, gee we looked swell, full of that Melting Pot Dream,
We are laborers, we are custodians, we are farmers, we are caregivers, and we are many,
Half a million migrants who went toiling in factories, in farms, in offices, in sweatshops, and through Hell,
And yet we made time to celebrate life, celebrate family, celebrate freedom, and I was the kid with the smile!

Say, why don’t you remember me; is it because my skin is not white like your ancestors?
Say, why don’t you remember me; is it because I crossed land and not an ocean like your ancestors?
Say, why don’t you remember me; is it because I am poor and speak a different language?
Say, why don’t you remember me; is it because you have achieved the dream and now no one else can?
Say, why don’t you remember me; is it because you have so quickly forgot the struggles your ancestors shared like me?
Say, why don’t you remember me; is it because you have so quickly forgot the true meaning of humanity?
Brother, Please Why Can’t You Spare Me These Raids?

Say, haven’t you read what your famed Statue of Liberty proclaims:

cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Say, are these famous words only for you and your ancestors and not for me?
Brother, Please Why Can’t You Spare Me These Raids?
Brother, Please Why Can’t You Spare Me These Raids?

by Michelle R. Kaufman

Sex. I think about it all the time. Constantly. I read about it, I write about it, I analyze it, I discuss it. Am I a nympho?

No, I am a sex researcher. More specifically, I’m interested in women’s sexual behavior—how women enjoy sex (or, as is often the case, not enjoy it), how they protect themselves when having it, why they engage in certain sexual behaviors.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how lucky we are to live in a society that allows women to be sexual beings (generally speaking, of course. Many feminists would say we are not truly free to express our sexuality). But I’m talking about the ability to talk about sex, to talk about what we like with our partners, to pleasure ourselves if necessary. The freedom I have to research it and write about it. I’ve come to appreciate this because over the past few months I have been living in a society that does not allow these sorts of freedoms for women.

Since October, I have been living in Kathmandu, Nepal as part of a grant to study women’s sexual health. Through interviews with women and ethnographic re- search, I am learning that in Nepal, women are denied their sexuality. Most women do not talk about it, initiate it, or expect to find pleasure in it, and sometimes they learn to disregard it all together. Many of the women I’ve spoken to never even learned about sex until their wedding day. In school they are simply taught about the sperm and the egg—the yin and yang—and the rest they are forced to figure out on their own. Or rather, they learn from their husbands, who are expected to
be more experienced and teach women.

Through my work I’ve been educating these women about how Americans approach sex. After each interview I conduct, I give the women space to ask me ques- tions. Several of them wanted to know how many sex partners a typical American has, how to please a man so that he won’t leave his wife for another woman, and in what kind of positions we have sex (Nepalis tend to stick with missionary—and only the man on top). I’ve gotten questions (and looks of shock at my responses) about oral sex, dildos, and pornography. Last week, one woman I spoke with was shocked that in the U.S. we have entire stores dedicated to sex toys. In Nepal, it is illegal to even buy or sell pornography.

All of this has gotten me thinking about how different my work on sex is back in Connecticut. Before I left, I was maintaining baskets of free condoms in the South End as a part of the Teens United in Health project to get teenagers to use condoms in order to lower teen pregnancy rates. I continue to work with Big Sisters in the Nutmeg Big Brothers Big Sisters program on strate- gies for talking to their Little Sisters about sexual health issues. And, as always, I am an advocate for women’s reproductive rights.

For as many problems as we have with school cur- ricula lacking proper sexual education, a lack of access to services for teenagers, and the constant struggle to maintain women’s reproductive freedom, compared to women in Nepal, American women have it all. It is very sobering to discover that while we are worried about whether our sex lives have slowed down too much or why our partner cannot make us orgasm (very legitimate concerns, by the way), women on the other side of the world are too embarrassed to even visit a gynecologist because it would mean having someone look directly at their vaginas.

The other part of my work is even more serious and depressing—sex trafficking of girls and women. Throughout all of my trips to Nepal over the past few years, I have been studying sex trafficking in South Asia and the anti-trafficking movement that has taken place over the past 12 years in Nepal. I have met girls who have been taken across the border, worked in Indian brothels, and had to perform services on several clients a day to pay off the debt to the trafficker or brothel owner. And as the political situation in Nepal has gotten worse, more girls and women have been trafficked.

So the next time you have mind-blowing sex, or you reach over into the night stand drawer for your rabbit, or your partner goes down on you, give thanks to the fact that we live in a society where such things are celebrated. Be thankful that we are able to talk about such things, write about them, and learn about ourselves as sexual beings. Because at this moment on the other side of the world, a young bride is for the first time learning what having sex really means.

Michelle Kaufman is a doctoral candidate in social psychology at the University of Connecticut who spe- cializes in women’s sexual health issues. Her research focuses on the sexual behavior of women in Nepal, South Africa, and the U.S. In her spare time, she enjoys photography. You can see an exhibit of some of her photographs from Nepal at Jojo’s Café in Hartford.

by Jerimarie Liesegang

I was asked to provide a brief account of my making of a documentary about the Hartford “Houses” and associated Balls that were so prominent in the early ‘90’s. This documentary was titled: While Paris Was Burning, Hartford Sizzled and was shown to a packed audience at the 2004 Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Film festival.

One glorious day, in the pre-gentrification times of Tisane’s, I was having a cup of coffee with the love of my life Anja and we ran into Dr. Richard Stillson, aka “Mucha Mucha Pleasure” the mother of the former Hartford House of Pleasure! As Mucha and I chatted, I had lamented the lack of Trans social organizations or events in Connecticut. At that point, Mucha began to tell me a little about the Hartford Houses and Balls that were prominent in the Hartford LGBT scene in the early nineties. This was the first I had ever heard of these and was totally enthralled by the story and the visions the Balls evoked. As I expressed a deeper interest in this topic, Mucha relayed to me that there were videotapes that were taken at these balls. At that moment, I truly gasped and said to Mucha, “we must document this vital queer history of Hartford!”

That took us on the road to creating this docu- mentary on the Hartford Houses and Balls. I should note that I, nor to my knowledge Mucha, never did a documentary before and had no idea how to go about this. Though this did not deter us, and for the next several months, we (Mucha, Anja, Kevin and my- self) met for several hours every Friday to create this documentary. Mucha was the creative genius behind this film by drafting the format and chronology of the documentary. I still have all our original notes from this endeavor and reviewing these recalled that our initial step was to present the documentary in the following sequence: Introduction to the Houses and Balls, what is Fem Queen (Face/Body), what is Real Woman (Face/ Body), what is Butch Queen (Face/Body), a tribute to those in the Houses who died of AIDS, what is Vogue, the very first Gay (Ball) Wedding in Connecticut of Ms. Lola Pleasure, a closing finale from the Circus ball and then closing credits.

With this sequence laid out, the hard part began. We identified folks from the houses (House of Bush Fire, House of Pleasure, House of Trailer Trash, House of Freedom, etc) that we interviewed to provide details around the various Ball categories, as well as their involvement in the Houses; And importantly how the Houses and Balls provided them an important vehicle in expressing their sexuality and diverse genders. We then videotaped many hours of interviews, viewed many hours of tapes from the balls and then my and Anja’s role was to cut and splice all this material into a documentary. Each Friday, Anja and I would show Mucha and Kevin the documentary as we put it to- gether and as a group critiqued it, edit yet again and do more interviews. And importantly to find the right music to overlay on many of the pictures and videos from the balls. Finally, we ended up with a 40-minute documentary that became: While Paris Was Burning, Hartford Sizzled!

If anyone wants a free copy of the video (though free will dona- tions to TransAdvocacy are always appreciated), please contact me at jerimariel@yahoo.com.

As an aside, I am currently working on a documentary around the life of Sylvia Rivera, a pioneering TransActivist and patron saint to many of us in the Trans community. If anyone is interested in get- ting involved in this or other queer documentaries, please contact me at jerimariel@yahoo.com

by Stephen Bickford

When I was thirteen and going to seventh grade at Sun- set Ridge school in East Hartford, I was introduced to sex by a fifteen-year-old boy in my neighborhood. I didn’t know anything about sex before then but I knew that I liked what I did with him. We had a sexual relationship for about a year and then he discovered sex with girls and that was it for him hanging out with me. So, my sex life was put on hold until I was in my fourth year of college.

I worked in downtown Hartford as a security guard for the Traveler’s Plaza building. The other guards used to joke occasionally about the gay bar across the street but I was afraid to go there. I didn’t tell them that I was gay but they still suggested going across the street to the Chez Est for a drink after work. I never took them seriously, although deep inside, I would have loved to have gone to the Chez with them.

I remember going to the East Hartford public library on Main Street, near ‘Church Corners’ in East Hartford and finding just one book on the topic of homosexuality. It was called, The Sexual Outlaw. Lacking any books to read about sexuality, I read every woman’s magazine that I could get my hands on. There was Redbook, and the Ladies Home Journal and Good Housekeeping. They always had articles about sex that were for women to read. I guess for women and sexually frustrated teenagers and young adult men.

I had heard about gay men in San Francisco once on the radio when I was in East Hartford in 1976 but that was about the only place that I knew of to find gay men besides perhaps in the parks along the Con- necticut River.

So much for growing up gay back then in East Hartford.

In psychology and sociology books you can find statements like, ‘the governments have no business regulating human sexuality.’ But, of course govern- ments love to regulate human sexuality. They try to control it but they don’t often succeed. Thank goodness that adulterers no longer have to wear a scarlet letter or be put into stocks for sexual misbehavior. Thank goodness we don’t kill people for having the wrong kinds of sex like they do in countries in the Middle East (for example) or as is recommended in the Bible. But you have to wonder about the sex police who try to catch people ‘illegally’ having sex.

When you think about it, a human’s sex life is com- posed of their thoughts and experiences concerning sex. Therefore, when the police are paid to control sexual activity in the parks and in the alleys and along city streets, the sexual activity that they are attempting to monitor becomes part of their own sex lives. What actually happens to police officers minds when they spend time driving or walking around the city trying to locate and stop prostitutes? What happens to police officers’ minds when they walk through the fields and trees in parks trying to find and catch people in the act of having sex?

You know that their brains must switch into high gear when they find someone doing the wild thing. Thus, the police officer becomes highly aroused by at- tempting to monitor and control sexual activity. So, the police officer becomes a professional sexual voyeur. The police officer has to take his experiences home with him. Does he begin to think about prostitutes while he is having sex with his wife? Does he dream about finding gay men having sex in the woods? It’s interesting how the police officer’s mind becomes similar to the minds of the ‘sex offenders’ that he is trying to control. He gets turned on by the same things that he is trying to stop.

Have they ever done any studies on this? It was interesting to read in a University of Chicago study published recently that an estimated three percent of the time prostitutes spend working in

Chicago is devoted to giving free services to police- men. What’s up with that? Excuse the pun.

Another subject that I would like to talk about is the mainstream media’s resistance to publishing studies about homosexuality and its nature or genetics. There is a coordinated effort not to publish such information in the United States. I have read about twenty different studies over the last dozen or so years that show that homosexuality is biologically connected. Homosexual brains are indeed wired that way. But, of these twenty or so studies, only a couple have made it into press in the United States. They are almost always picked up by the press in Canada, England and Australia. They even print these studies more often in India.But, these studies often do not appear in a single newspaper in the USA. If you want, you can go to ScienceDaily.com and do a search for “homosexual” and find news reports about almost every one of these studies.

For some reason, when the subject of homosexu- ality comes up, the mainstream press goes and finds someone that has an almost 2,000 year old book called the Bible and sees what it says that is newsworthy. Interesting how these almost 2,000 year old writings if the American people knew the real facts behind homosexuality, they wouldn’t continue to think that it is just something that young people do to annoy their parents and the pope.

Selected Sources:

O’Hara, Carolyn. “In the Windy City, prostitutes sleep with police more often than get arrested by them.” Foreign Policy blog. 7 Jan 08. <http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/7582>

Associated Press. “Study: Chicago Prostitutes Say They’re Forced to Service Police Officers for Free.” Fox News. 11 Jan 08. <http://www.fox- news.com/story/0,2933,322032,00.html>

Braslavsky, Andrea M. “Pointing the Finger at Androgen as a Cause of Homosexuality.” WebMD Medical News. 29 March 2000. <http://www.webmd.com/news/20000329/pointing-finger-andro-gen-cause-homosexuality>

Brody, Jane E. “Homosexual Study Cites Hormone Link.” New York Times. 21 Sept 1984.

“Genetics Has A Role In Determining Sexual Orientation In Men, Further
Evidence.” ScienceDaily 8 Nov 07. <http://releases/2007/11/071107170741.htm>