The following is a transcript of a speech Haven Herrin gave at the women’s pre-conference during the 25th World Conference of the International Lesbian and Gay Association in December 2010.

My queer community can feel a lot like a linguistic playground. All the words and turns of phrase that we use to talk about ourselves are, in some sense, illusory, but they also point to the nuances of communities built out of ever-more complex and self-determined identities. It is a beautiful freedom to witness.

Today I want to talk about how language in part creates communities with its terroir. Certain words can locate one geographically, can’t they? I also want to address the tension between infinite possibilities for words and identities and the need for unity and collective struggle.

I will keep my comments to where I come from, the twin cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul in Minnesota in the United States. My sense of queer self and the words I use to convey that queer experience are borne out of this particular place. I can’t speak with much detail or honesty to other places and how they grapple with the evolution of language and to what ends people use it.
Some days I am a fag, some days trans, every now and then a high femme, never a woman, always female-bodied, a bit butch and nearly always genderqueer. I am a changeling but it is more an internal shifting than external changes for you to see. The Twin Cities is where I first began to really grow into my queer self. Specific places, ideas, languages, and communities of people have supported me there in becoming my whole self.

Even keeping my comments to the Twin Cities, I will get dangerously close to generalizations that obscure more than they reveal. It is difficult enough to even talk about my individual experience, let alone another human’s. But I will try to travel with you from the very personal to thoughts about how we can work to create solidarity, community and mutually supported liberation.

Me. In addition to my queer identities, I am 28 years old. I am white. I am usually able-bodied. I have always had more than enough resources. My language, my passport, my education and my familiarity with Christian culture have generally met with acceptance in the mainstream culture of the United States. In short, I carry much privilege where I live.

My community has helped me see this and has also challenged me to articulate where my politics and my way of life do not fit the mainstream model. In fact, this is one of the defining characteristics of the Queer/Trans community in the Twin Cities, to think and talk about identity from many angles all at once, support self-determination and deep reflection, and examine how identities are working in concert or creating dissonance vis a vis mainstream culture.

For example, I get incredible support around my gender identity. It’s common in my community – this Queer/Trans community – to ask, “What is the gender pronoun you would like me to use for you?” There are a lot of options: he, she, ze, they, none at all and more. I use “they” and “them,” and it feels pretty amazing to have friends who will honor that, English grammar rules be damned. I use it because it reflects the multiplicity I feel in my gender expression.

My chosen community challenges and cares for me. We share a lot of dinners as we organize for social change…topics of dinner conversation almost always touch on race politics, poverty, capitalism, patriarchy, ableism and classism in some way. We call each other out when needed, and it always feels like there is space to change and grow ourselves. We see each other as people with multiple, evolving identities. We are not singly defined boy our gender or sexuality, rather we are bound by principles…and this is how I have learned what solidarity can look like.

We do not live within singular identities, and our community’s struggle is not single-issue. I am learning how to hold space in a conversation for the complex reality that white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy all have something to say about gender and sexuality – and vice versa. I am trying to juggle all of it while not privileging some forms of oppression over others.

There are many communities in the Twin Cities that contain LGBTQI-identified people of course. Not all people in the Queer/Trans community identify as queer or trans per se. Many would identify as gay, for example. I will share a story to characterize the difference between the Queer/Trans group and the other main sub-culture, the Gay and Lesbian community. The organization that hosts the Pride Festival that’s been taking place for 20 years invited people in the Twin Cities to give their feedback on the festival and its future. I decided to attend because the Pride Festival is actually not a place I enjoy. I don’t feel it reflects my priorities: it is expensive, it has a lot of vendors who seem to want the “gay dollar” more than our liberation, and it is overwhelmingly white and male.

Around the same time of this meeting, I had been doing some work with my [queer] friends to unionize a chain of sandwich shops. It would have been the first labor union in a fast food restaurant in the United States. Their demands included an end to racism, transphobia and homophobia in the workplace and better pay.

So I went to this meeting with the Pride organization, and for lunch we had the sandwiches from the same business I was helping to unionize. It was a rough meeting besides: no one asked my gender pronoun and they referred to me as “she” even after I told them I prefer “they.” That to me, right there, says that self-determination will likely not be respected in this space.

The leaders of the meeting asked us, essentially, why we think Pride tends to be very white and solidly middle class in what is a diverse city. I asked them how they determine what is and what is not a “queer issue.” Looking at my activism, you could determine that I see fighting racism and workers’ rights as queer issues. But there we were, eating the sandwiches that pay the people who perpetuate the unhealthy workplaces my [queer] friends go to 5 days a week.

I share this story as a way of describing the dividing line between the Queer/Trans community and the Gay and Lesbian community. The titles themselves are not meaningful, for surely there are people who claim varying identities within any and all kinds of communities. Like the Pride Festival, the Gay and Lesbian community in the Twin Cities trends toward being more white and more middle and upper class. The agenda is more narrowly defined to rights and protections attached specifically and only to sexual orientation gender identity and gender expression, such as marriage equality, being able to serve in the military, and hate crimes laws. These are the priorities, often to the exclusion of the difficulties LGBTQI people experience as a complex product of one’s class and race alongside sexuality and gender. Examples of these more complex LGBTQI issues may include poverty, homelessness, worker’s rights, healthcare, and job access. And the healthcare issue as seen from the context of marriage equality work is very different than the view from a place of poverty, undocumented status, trans identity, or being very young or old.

These latter issues seem to get more care and attention in the Queer/Trans community. I think it comes out of that sense of solidarity among many issues, identities, and social justice movements. All issues are queer issues, more or less, because we are just about everywhere. So when we are willing to have complex conversations about white supremacy and heterosexism and capitalism and ask people, “Hey what pronouns do you use?” we can see people as the multidimensional beings that they are. It becomes harder to fight one kind of oppression without fighting the other. If I am working for the liberation of my community, then I am working against more than just homophobia, am I not?

So if I were to generalize the differences between these two communities, I might say that the Queer/Trans community allows a lot of space for self-determination and bringing the whole self to the work. The Gay and Lesbian communities focuses less on the nuances of identity and more on the agenda that is circumscribed by sexual orientation and, to a lesser extent, gender identity and expression. To be transparent, I am sure there is an unhealthy amount of judgment from both sides about which community is more desirable.

So why do I bring this up? It is not just to point out yet another division and not just to play word games. Living in Minneapolis, I have seen the value in allowing the space for an infinite number of ways to self-identify and having an infinite number of words available to explain our lived experiences in the Queer/Trans community. This encourages identities to come first, then agendas and priorities to flow from that. In the reverse, to set the agenda and then expect identities to get in line…well, what I see is the clear delineation of the center and then the margin when our lives our organized in that way. The people at the margin continue to be the very old, the very young, the differently-abled, the people of color, the trans, the gender non-conforming, and any folks so bold as to uncategorizable.

The Gay and Lesbian community in the Twin Cities seems to put the agenda first, narrowly defined and not based in complex and diverse lived experiences. So, despite its simplification of what the movement’s agenda, I find it fracturing and divisive in the ways it excludes people who don’t fit a mainstream mold or aren’t served by a mainstream agenda. In my own queer activism, I find myself working on housing foreclosure, sandwich shop unions, bathroom and school access and anti-police brutality measures. The other option is to really see the people in our midst first, and then define our direction and agenda by what we, as a collective, care about and why.

I have framed this essay in terms of language and its power, not just in creating it but allowing room for it to evolve and to be heard, because respecting, embracing, and exploring with enthusiasm the maze of words – tomboi, bearded femme, diesel dyke, two spirit, fag, genderqueer, and on and on – seems to be way to invite in everyone to the center, supporting not chaos and fragmentation but unity and diversity.

I have been looking forward to New Paltz and Poughkeepsie since the formation of the Central Route because there is a long history of activism for marriage equality. Back in 2004 then-mayor Jason West presided over and affirmed dozens of marriages, joined by some strong pastors in the area.  The state took action against all of them for taking the stand that all couples deserve legal and social recognition.

So this was weekend to step into a long history and be humbled and learn from local advocates.  We stayed at Christ Episcopal Church, a glorious old building from the 1800’s where Reverend Blake Ryder welcomed us whole-heartedly.  One element of this campaign that I like is the community engagement from the intimate level of sharing meals to the sleeping arrangements on church floors to the coffee shop conversations.  We are not isolated from those who live here in New York every day and have been and will continue to be advocates.  We open ourselves up to new and deeper relationships when we walk down the street from the church to take a shower at Harvey and Mary’s century-old home.

We hosted a picnic in a park in New Paltz for anyone and everyone who cares about this issue to come be a part of the conversation.  I had hoped that someone opposed or undecided on the issue would bring their questions to Hasbrouck Park, but we were joined mostly by LGBT families, some pastors (gay and straight), coupled priests, college students, and Mayor Terry Dungan.  Speaking of history, Frank and Nino, the upstarts of the first college-based LGBT support group, the Student Homophile Leauge at Columbia University, also joined us.

I enjoyed meeting the mayor, as we did in Binghamton, because there is a level of frankness and personal conviction that is allowed into the conversation.  Dungan was as supportive of this cause as Mayor Matthew Ryan in Binghamton, and was interested to learn about what we are learning about ourselves as people and as advocates on this campaign.

Later in the afternoon, we borrowed some space from the New Paltz Cultural Collective to show the documentary “Freedom to Marry,” and have a Q&A.  The conversation took an interesting turn as we zoomed the lens outward from the specific issue of marriage equality to speak of institutions and how close one must become to that institution in order to change it. This came out of a conversation about assimilation versus affirmation and what it means to be “queer.”

I came down on the side of joining.  If one maintains integrity, I think becoming a part of a system in order to change it by living one’s truth within it can be very powerful.  For example, do you work on ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell if you do not like what the military is doing at any particular moment?  At the end of the day, I think it comes down to whether you are an optimist or a pessimist.  Do you commit to loving something enough to change it, or do you write it off and insulate yourself from it?

At the age of 25, still and idealist, still full of energy, I come down on the side of remaining committed to change.  I do not want to start dividing up society, building boundaries between myself and certain institutions….there is not enough fencing in the world to build enough separation.  I still dream of all the institutions and systems and people who create them fashioning a community.  Expansive thinking is essential to my ability to continue as an activist because it is my source of hope.

The thirty-five young adults of the Right to Marry campaign have gathered in Albany after driving up from New York City in staggered caravans.  As one can expect with the convening of that many people in one city from across the country, some arrived early and some arrived late. Some finally put their heads to a pillow at 5 o’clock in the morning.

Today we started our training.  In these three days, we need to cover a wealth of information before we hit the road on Tuesday, from talking points to group building to grounding ourselves within nonviolence.  I have been with Soulforce for over two years, but I always benefit from relearning and re-examining my integrity and cultivation of the principles of nonviolence.

On the Right to Marry campaign, there is a stronger political component than previous young adult campaigns.  So my question is how I reconcile that nonviolence calls me to be patient, to detach myself from immediate expectations, and to see our conversations as a process on a long continuum rather than a point-counterpoint style of debate in which each side tries to win points. In theories of nonviolence, we talk often of ‘the third way,’ meaning that a reconciliatory solution is not one-sided victory but forming a new community around a new vision of how life can be.  Not your way, not my way, but our way.  I feel I am going to learn ‘the third way’ for many of the tasks on this campaign.

Tonight I am polishing the documents we are printing for use out on the road. Right now I am tweaking the format of bookmark that explains the Right to Marry campaign and has quick reference to key facts that support marriage equality.  The usefulness of it may extend the presence of Soulforce Q and the eight or so young adults who stopped off in, say, Binghamton, New York for a day to share their stories and affirm the need for equality.