by pattrice jones
This interview and book review was originally published in the December, 1999 edition of LesbiaNation.
In her recently released book Exile & Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation (South End Press), lesbian feminist and disability rights activist Eli Clare explores the political and emotional terrain of disability, class and sexual orientation by means of personal narratives. In sometimes surprising ways, Clare brings together issues that on the surface seem separate but which she sees as parts of a devastating unified field: environmental destruction and the sexual exploitation of children, homophobic violence and the economic exploitation of workers, cultural bigotry and the exploitation of natural resources.
Some of us, Clare maintains, are more scarred by these things than others, but none of us are unscathed. As she points out, our bodies can be and are “stolen, fed lies and poison, torn away from us…. Stereotypes and lies lodge in our bodies as surely as bullets.” But Clare is not content to simply catalog the damage; she insists that “the stolen body can be reclaimed.” That grand hope amid grave circumstances is Clare’s gift to her audience. In return, readers are asked to join her in grappling with complex and often uncomfortable issues. It can make for grim reading at times, but Clare eases the way by writing in an engaging style and by mixing anecdotes and recollections with more abstract political reflections.
This slim volume is already having a big impact: Lesbian activists such as Suzanne Pharr and Mab Segrest have lauded Exile & Pride with much acclaim, while others, like sexpert Pat Califia have dismissed the book as “leftist dogma.” We spoke with Clare about her work and the mixed reactions it’s generating within the community.
In her review for Girlfriends magazine, Pat Califia wrote that in Exile & Pride “Clare bludgeons the reader with leftist dogma.” How did you feel when you read that?
Steamed. Not hurt, but stung. I’m really good at resisting messages from the dominant culture, but to have someone like Pat Califia using the words dogma and bludgeon tapped into some self-doubt. Now I can laugh and say that if I’m writing leftist dogma, it’s because the world needs leftist dogma. When did leftist dogma become a bad thing?
I guess I’m not surprised that Califia wrote a negative review of this book.
Right, right. I don’t know Pat, but her work, about 90 percent of it, makes me ask, What are you doing? She’s made her career by being very outrageous in terms of sex and sexuality. She’s basically said time and again, “Let’s erase all the lines; let’s stop judging behavior connected to sex in any way, shape or form.” And that equates things like child pornography with consensual sex between adults.
What do you think about the fact that some of Califia’s writing has been really influential, especially among younger lesbians? Specifically, in light of what you’ve written about being raped by your father, her book Doing It for Daddy.
She has been one of the people who really perpetuated this great divide about sexual politics that I write about in my book. There are two polarized positions: You’re either anti-pornography and called anti-sex and accused of being pro-censorship, or you’re pro-pornography and called pro-sex and anti-censorship. To carve a thoughtful political place between those two poles is really difficult. How do we talk about the roles of pornography and erotica? How do we talk about censorship and free speech? How do we talk about sexual damage and sexual pleasure at the same time and really create a complex analysis?
I think Pat has really furthered the polarization. She says, “Do it for Daddy!” without thinking about the implications of who fathers are and can be and have been in people’s lives; what sexual damage is connected to fathers. How can role-playing be part of a healthy, full, pleasurable sexual experience? She’s not doing that complex thinking about what sex means, what damage means, what pleasure means, and how pleasure and damage coexist all the time. And because she’s so wildly popular, her not doing that complex thinking means that people who think she’s great aren’t either. I think that damages us as a movement. So…I wasn’t hugely surprised by the bad review.
On the other hand, you’ve had some very positive responses.
Yes, yes. In general, I’m hearing nothing but good things.
In the book, you write a lot about how your queerness and class background interact.
When people ask me what the book is about, what I say is that it’s about identity and home. And, in the book, home is the body, home is community, home is place, home is politics. So I wanted to write about home, and writing home meant writing about rural Oregon to some extent and this little fishing/logging town I came from. And to write about that, I had to write about poor and working-class people and clear-cut logging. But I now live as this somewhat urban queer person. I have a lot of working-class friends, but the community at large is a middle-class community. I had to follow that chain to get to a point where I knew what the connection was between the urban queer person now and my sense of home in the backwoods of Oregon.
The book is so wide-ranging. I can see how queer readers might ask, since the subtitle of the book is “Disability, Queerness, and Liberation,” why the hell I spend a third of the book writing about clear-cut logging? The book explores a bunch of topics from clear-cut logging to gender identity with tangents to the freak show and pornography. But the theme through all of that is identity.
What do you hope readers carry away from Exile & Pride?
The ability to slow down and listen. That’s part of what I’m telling urban environmentalists about clear-cut logging: Slow down and listen to the folks who have lived logging for a century and a half. I’m telling queer urban activists to slow down and listen to rural people. I’m asking both queer people and disabled people to think about naming. What does it mean to name ourselves “crips?” What does it mean to name ourselves “queer?” What does it mean for some of us to name ourselves “freaks” and “perverts?” To think really complexly about naming and how naming is connected to our sexual history and to our personal histories. And I’m asking people to think as complexly as I’m thinking. And, yes…complexly with a very lefty center.
