Junkie Pneumonia

Originally published in the Ann Arbor Agenda in April 1992.

Please note that all statistics are from that time.

In the late 1970s, while the epidemic known as “disco fever” swept through the U.S., an epidemic known as “junkie pneumonia” raged among injection drug users in New York City. Unlike disco fever, junkie pneumonia was not the subject of intense media scrutiny or public outcry. No movies were made. Few people were aware that large numbers of injection drug users were inexplicably dying of pneumonia. Those few who did notice these deaths did not feel compelled to investigate the public health puzzle they posed. Junkies die all the time. Nor did anyone bring this less danceable epidemic to the attention of the fevered populace. Bringing the epidemic to the attention of the public would not have made much difference. Undoubtedly, some people would have voiced the opinion that people who shoot drugs deserve to die while most would have shrugged and kept dancing. Investigating the epidemic as the potential public health menace it was, however, could have had a profound impact on hundreds of thousands of lives. Had anyone bothered to investigate the deaths of these drug users, they would have found that they had an immune system disorder that we now call AIDS.

Re-Membering Thanksgiving

Gloating and Gluttony Then and Now
by pattrice jones
Originally published 2004 on various IndyMedia sites.
Revises 2003 essay originally published by Press Action.

Thanksgiving, 2003 — Bush the executioner grins and pardons a turkey before flying to Iraq. He’s earned that self-satisfied smirk. All over his United States, citizens celebrate conquest over platters of flesh. Too full of turkey to think and too full of themselves to question, they let out their belts and watch TV. Tomorrow they go shopping!

***

“Body parts are everywhere!” That’s what one US soldier had to say about the saddest city in Iraq, according to an AFP report. It’s also an apt description of the state of US dinner tables during the festival of gloating and gluttony known as Thanksgiving.

This year, the United States celebrates Thanksgiving in the wake of the taking of Falluja. Waving “drumsticks” and fighting for “wishbones,” complacent Christians will gorge themselves without fear, safe from the threats of gay marriage and Iraqi self-determination. Stuffing themselves beyond satiation, they and their children will partake of the proud Puritanical tradition of ruthless, reckless expansion.

Colonization is nothing to crow about. When Columbus blundered into a hemisphere populated by 70-100 million people and countless unique species of flora and fauna, he set into motion a chain reaction of repression and rebellion that continues to this day.

Conquistadors of the Senses

by pattrice jones

First published 28 November 2006 by FreezerBox Magazine.

Throwing the homosexuals to the hounds sounds like a metaphor for the Republican Party’s electoral strategy of recent years, but it actually happened back in 1513 in what is now Panama. Then, governor Vasco Nunez de Balboa condemned 50 homosexual Indians to be torn apart by dogs.Seen by both Catholic Conquistadors and Protestant Pilgrims as a sign of godless animality, same-sex pleasure was ruthlessly suppressed throughout the process of the subjugation of the Americas. Today, the conquest of the senses continues, as billions of people and animals are forced to forgo all kinds of natural happiness so that a privileged few can enjoy the empty gluttony that has brought us to the brink of planetary catastrophe.

When Columbus blundered into the Caribbean, sexual freedom — including full acceptance of homosexuality — was the norm in the region.

Race-ism at the Games

This essay was originally published in March of 1994 as an OUT in Left Field column in the LGBTQ newspaper Between the Lines. OUT in Left Field ran from March of 1993 through January of 1995; Between the Lines was distributed throughout the state of Michigan, USA.

If the editors of Between the Lines ever want to get my column on time, they’ll have to come over to my house and destroy the television. Here I am as usual, way past deadline and outraged about something on the TV.

This time it’s the Olympics. I was all set to write about Tanya and Nancy when The Games themselves appeared on the screen. I couldn’t look away — it was like watching an accident in progress. From the opening ceremony, when South Africa was welcomed to the winter games without any mention of the international boycott which had barred it from previous games, to the patriarchal — OOPS, patriotic medal ceremonies…

Personality Complex: Eli Clare Dives Deep Into the Muddy Waters of Identity Politics

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.”

Interview with Jill Johnston

by pattrice jones

This is the transcript of a 1999 interview with lesbian feminist author and activist Jill Johnston. An edited version of the interview ran in the webzine LesbiaNation accompanying this profile of Jill Johnston.

pj: I’ve heard more than one lesbian of a certain age say, “there wouldn’t be a lesbian nation if it weren’t for Lesbian Nation.”

JJ: I saw myself as spearheading something back then, but there was also a group of us. I mean, there was a consensus. It’s just that I happened to have a voice, I had already established a space in a newspaper which was a radical newspaper so therefore I just happened to have that vehicle. A lot what I wrote depended on the people I knew who kept informing me of things I might not have known about. So it wasn’t me alone. And, of course, it was entirely dependent on the consensus that was developing. Any regrets that I might have are purely professional in that I did go way out on a limb and then created problems for myself.

Jill Johnston: (Con) Founding Mother of the Lesbian Nation

by pattrice jones

This profile originally appeared in 1999 as a featured article in the short-lived webzine LesbiaNation.

To say that Jill Johnston is a writer who was one of the earliest and most influential lesbian feminists is a little like saying RuPaul is a singer who had a hit record and big hair…true enough, as far as it goes, but by no means the whole story. Johnston’s 1973 Lesbian Nation inspired a generation of lesbian activists (not to mention the name of a certain website), but the book is both more and less than the political treatise one might expect. Similarly, Johnston herself is a paradoxical figure who contradicts all stereotypes about lesbian feminism.

Johnston was a popular columnist for New York’s Village Voice when she gained notoriety by becoming the first mass media journalist to come out as a lesbian in print. She immediately became a center of controversy not only in the “straight” world but also among feminists and early gay and lesbian activists, such as the members of Manhattan’s Gay Liberation Front.

Many factors fueled the fires. As Johnston notes in Lesbian Nation, her “east west flower child beat hip psychedelic paradise now love peace do your own thing approach to the revolution” was not yet backed by a sound political understanding. At the same time, she stepped right into ongoing struggles between homosexual and heterosexual feminists over the role of lesbians in the feminist movement.

Warlords & Condom Queens

This essay was originally published in September of 1993 as an OUT in Left Field column in the LGBTQ newspaper Between the Lines. OUT in Left Field ran from March of 1993 through January of 1995; Between the Lines was distributed throughout the state of Michigan, USA.

I was hard at work on the promised column on tactics for the queer rebellion when I heard something on the TV that pushed me over the edge. So, that column will have to wait while I ventilate.

What set me off was hearing yet another newscaster refer to an indigenous Somalian leader as a “warlord.” (If you’re thinking, “oh no, now she’s off on foreign policy . . . no wonder they call this column ‘out in left field,’” please bear with me and read on. The relevance to the domestic concerns of U. S. queers will become clearer as we go.)

Leaving aside the question of whether or not this particular so-called “warlord” is evil incarnate, let’s think about words and pictures.