Queerness Beyond Trauma: Where is our History? | Ira McIntosh | TEDxAUP
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfjc8hYKBAY Video ID: Lfjc8hYKBAY ============================================================ [Applause] Once Upon a Time queer people love these words whether we're in it for the villains or the heroes the princesses or Prince Charming something about those four words causes something deep within us to leap for Joy we're about to hear a story as humans we love to hear stories about ourselves we love to tell stories about ourselves even if ourselves don't actually wear Tiaras or have wings or breathe fire fairy tales begin to fail us as we get older however unless you're a Disney adult you don't really think about these stories as much so how do we satisfy our need for fairy tales who tells us our stories I was recently discussing the topic of social media with one of my friends and whether or not it has any positive Merit during the course of this conversation they said something that made me pause we live in a reality where social media exists and puts us under a microscope to whatever capacity we have signed up for we create history books on ourselves through social media we live in an age where not only do we have the pleasure as a general populace of listening to stories from our past but we also have the privilege of writing down our own stories for the future but before we had social media how was history codified my background is in music so I immediately have to think of someone who is considered to be the forefather of ethnomusicology Bella barok a brilliant composer in his own right he took to the road to copy down and digest folk music so it wouldn't be lost he took an active role in his community hearing stories writing them down publishing books and tones and volumes of tunes that were previously known only to a small portion of the world these Melodies were then able to be disseminated across the globe leading to a surge in scholarship let's pause for a moment and zoom in on bar talk he was a Hungarian composer who had made a name for himself by his early 20s composing completely original music even though he was successful he felt there was something missing he knew there had to be more than simply following the set rules of Music Theory and writing original Melodies over and over again he was introduced to folk music by another Hungarian composer zultan kayi who gave him a photograph and encouraged him to record record this music something awoke in Bart talk and he spent his days traveling all over the countryside writing down music interviewing the people who sang the music and becoming part of the culture but he didn't stop there he then went home and began to use what he had learned he began incorporating these folk tunes in his grander compositions interweaving large theoretical ideas with these seemingly simplistic rural Melodies and harmonies this opened a new door not only for his own work but also for the rest of the world to hear and appreciate something new all growing together in knowledge ethnography is one of the most important avenues for historical data collection going out into the world joining communities meeting them where they are and writing down their stories there are many ways to verify information but this is where history begins with the people who experienced it we can come across these stories in many different ways via interviews novels letters recordings even photographs and paintings any form of human communication can be coated and constructed into viable history this brings me to the concept of grafting I grew up in the United States in Washington state the far Northwestern most Corner uh and we're known for a lot of things Starbucks Microsoft Nirvana but our main export is Apples now if you've never had the chance to go apple picking or talk to an Apple farmer give me a moment to tell you my favorite fact about apple trees apple trees don't have to bear all the same kind of fruit well that's a lie they all have to bear apples but it doesn't have to be the same kind of apple in fact it's common practice for Apple Farmers to graft multiple types of apples onto the same tree trunk this allows you to have multiple flavors and uses of apples all in one place uh some for pie some for sauce some for eating whole each of these kinds granting their best traits to the rest of the tree making the tree stronger than it would have been otherwise Dr J Nome took this idea and ran with it currently the foremost author studying World War II era queer history Nome proposed this idea of memory grafting following the Holocaust this concept encapsulates how the queer people of New York City reached out across the Atlantic to gather stories from those who had firsthand experience of the Holocaust and were willing to share those stories grafting them together into a singular tree of knowledge the transfer of ideas memories and historical information is not static understandings of a topic change as they are introduced in a new setting into new audiences as we seek to make sense of ourselves and our place in the world we collect bits and pieces of memories narratives and histories bringing them together into a constant state of reassessment and transformation as we mold the boundaries of our identities he continues a bit further down the Page by saying that the metaphor implies that although memories May originate externally they ultimately become in meshed in one's own subjective memory and sense of place in history that is we require this grafting to occur in order to better understand our own sense of selves and find our place in the greater tapestry of history but there comes a risk with this grafting sure we can mesh the best parts of History into ourselves but doesn't that also mean we can mesh the worst Parts as well who is to say what is important or not except for the individual this is the problem of representation in media when one thinks of queer Cinema One immediately thinks of the AIDS epidemic we think of works such as angels in America Dallas Buyers Club Philadelphia films and plays that talk about the queer community in crisis when one sees oneself represented as a victim that is the attitude one takes on we are shown versions of our real reality that however true they may be ignore the core Joys and Beauties we see in our everyday lives Mora Kelly at all studied this idea of collective trauma in their October 2020 paper publishing sexuality and culture in this study they were specifically looking at the queer community of Portland Oregon and trying to contextualize the effects of collective trauma that had been found in other marginal groups to determine if these effects held true for the queer community in the article they wrote and I'm just going to read the Bold Parts these events contributed to tension and disruption within the queer Community ultimately threatening the cohesion of the collective sense of community queer people do not often have other queer people in their families of origin there's a lack of access to intergenerational relationships and there is a lack of queer spaces it is due to a lack of safe spaces and intergenerational relationships that we are finding it difficult to deal with the effects of trauma on us as queer queer individuals how do we learn if we do not have a tangible connection to our past how can we cope when those who have come before us are not available to us either familiarly or because they were lost to AIDS or holocausts what tools can we create for ourselves if we have no blueprints we are raising consecutive generations of queer individuals who are not being given information about their history past the points of trauma that have so far defined us because we cannot see how our queer forebears handled themselves in their daily lives and celebrated with each other during times of Triumph we get embroiled in negativity and anger and begin to see our community as one of infighting and fear in 2005 Alan DS wrote a book entitled The Velvet rage in which he discusses this idea that shame is a key driving factor in many queer men's lives we are fiercely protected Ive of our experiences and our stories because we are so used to having to live double lives because of this we inevitably hide our real selves even from each other making it even more difficult for younger generations to learn from us or maybe even more importantly for us to learn from younger generations for it is this intergenerational interplay that is required to create community we were made to live in fear hiding between the emotional baggage in our closets we became bitter choosing to inflict this on we onto further Generations rather than focus on the beautiful parts of being queer the damaging part of learning to live your life in two parts whether in reality or fantasy cannot be underestimated it is an infection skill that you learned one that would eventually spread beyond the bedroom of your life life wasn't ever what it seemed to be on the surface nothing could be trusted for what it appeared to be after all you weren't what you appeared to be in learning to hide part of yourself you lost the ability to trust anything or anyone fully without knowing it you traded Humane innocence for dry cynicism our own internal conflicts prevent us from Gaining the emotional Clarity needed to maintain a safe and satisfying Bond working in bars I'd often hear young men making excuses for not talking to their Elders they would assume they were just going to be hit on or that they didn't have anything constructive to add to the conversation and they would just leave well enough alone this is an example of that distrust that loss of ability to open oneself to the possibility that someone else might have something important to say so where then does this leave us how do we pass on a history when the younger generation doesn't have access to information via their Elders what do we do when we live in a community that has been systematically destroyed dissected and disarticulated we must turn to the media the thing that seems to be failing us so miserably we create history books on ourselves and our timelines and through our images and video clips we go through journals and history books and letters with a fine tooth comb and reinterpret the Mythos of best friends and roommates so that future Generations s know that they never have to live in the dark again we have an obligation to our community to curate our online presence to whatever extent possible so that future Generations have a clearer picture of those who came before we have an obligation to Future generations to spend the time now to find those historical references collecting family stories about that as stranged uncle or that Aunt that lived on the farm with her best friend we have an obligation to make sure that states passing legislation to keep queer history out of schools are stopped so the coming epic can be one where children grow up knowing that they are part of a bigger story that is worth scholarship so they don't have to live a double life anymore and lose that oh so important ability to trust once upon a time there was a group of people who loved each other very very much and the world seemed to rise up against them tearing off their wings so they dusted off their tiaras and went to war breathing fire thank [Applause] you but