Hello Leftlinkers
Can you help spread the word about this exciting visit by Will Roscoe?
His work makes a very important contribution to socialist feminism.
Thanks
Alison Thorne
Freedom Socialist Party Radical Women
News release
Date: 23 January 2000
From: Freedom Socialist Party Radical Women
PO Box 266
West Brunswick 3055
For more information: Alison Thorne, Freedom Socialist Party, 03-9386-5065
Debbie Brennan, Radical Women, 03-9386-3230
For release: Immediately
Do not use after: 19 February 2000
Visiting Queer Historian to Speak on
Native American Women Leaders
U.S gay activist and award winning author, Will Roscoe, will visit Australia
in February 2000 when he will speak on 19 February at a special event hosted
by the Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women. The Way We Were, The Way
We Can Be will feature the slide show Woman Warrior/Woman Chief: The
Two-Spirit Women and Their Sisters.
Will Roscoe has been active in the gay liberation movement since 1975, when
he helped found Lambda, the first Gay and Lesbian organisation in Montana.
In 1977 he coordinated the Gay People's Alliance at the University of Oregon
and spearheaded the formation of the Oregon Gay Alliance, a statewide
coalition of Gay and Lesbian groups. In 1978 he served as voter registration
coordinator for the "No on 6" Campaign in San Francisco, registering over
10,000 new voters. Proposition 6, a citizen initiated referendum
orchestrated by Republican Senator John Briggs, was ultimately defeated. But
if it had been carried, it would have stopped homosexuals from being
employed in any capacity in the Californian school system.
In 1979 Will Roscoe attended the first radical faerie gathering in Arizona
where he met veteran gay liberationist, Harry Hay. He was influenced by Hay
and later edited a collection of his writings, Radically Gay: Gay Liberation
in the Words of Its Founder. Hay sparked Roscoe's interest in studying the
social role and status of cross-dressing berdache in Native American
communities. During the '50s and '60s, Hay had studied the American Indian
berdache role and came to view it as an example of a socially approved
pattern of sex and gender variance that allowed individuals to make a unique
contribution to their communities. In the '60s Hay interrupted this research
and shifted his energies to political organising in support of the
burgeoning radical Native American movement. But it was Hay's early research
and encouragement which prompted Will Roscoe to begin his own study of
alternative gender roles.
Roscoe became internationally known after publishing his book, The Zuni-Man
Woman. The book focuses on the life of We'wha, who is perhaps the most
famous berdache in American history. Through telling We-wha's story, Roscoe
creates a vivid picture of an alternative gender role whose history has been
hidden and almost forgotten. Roscoe also examines Zuni concepts of gender
and sexuality and describes the unique role and high status of berdache in
Pueblo culture. He characterises the berdache as neither male nor female,
but as a distinct third gender. The Zuni Man-Woman won the 1991 Margaret
Mead Award of the American Anthropological Association and a Lambda Literary
Award.
In 1984 Roscoe began seeking out Native Americans who might share his
interest in berdaches and respond to his work. He met activists from Gay
American Indians at a political rally and began collaborating. In 1984,
under the direction of the Board of Gay American Indians, he coordinated the
Gay American Indian History Project and helped edit the subsequent book,
Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology. He also began to look
for ways to make his research accountable to the Zunis and in 1987 he
received permission from the Zuni Tribal Council to give an illustrated
lecture in the village and at Zuni High School.
Will Roscoe has written a number of subsequent books on gender and his work
is ground breaking. Gender diversity, in the form of third and fourth gender
roles, is one of the most common and least understood features of Native
North America. Such roles have been documented in over 150 tribes throughout
the continent. Widely accepted, often considered holy, berdaches, as they
have been termed, combine the work and social roles of men and women along
with traits unique to their states.
In Will Roscoe's most recent book Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in
Native North America, he carefully reconstructs the place of these roles in
traditional tribal cultures and traces their history up to the present. The
result is a strikingly different view of native North America. Before the
arrival of Europeans, marriages between berdaches and non-berdache members
of the same sex were common place, and individuals sometimes changed their
gender because of a dream. In place of stereotypes of hyper masculine
warriors and submissive women, Will Roscoe's work describes individuals with
complex sexual and gender identities playing key roles in their tribes.
Sexual and gender differences were accepted because of the unique
contributions those differences made.
Roscoe has spent 15 years researching the Native American two-spirit
tradition. The talk he will present in Melbourne features over 100 slides
and explores the lives of women warriors and chiefs over the course of four
centuries. Although Europeans stereotyped Native American woman as dominated
by men, they were in fact more independent and powerful than women at any
level of European society. Throughout North America, Native women became
chiefs, warriors and shamans. Some, like Weetama of the Wampanoags and Lozen
of the Apache, were prominent leaders in native resistance. Others, like the
Kutenai Quanqon-kamek-klaulha, served as mediators and ambassadors. In the
far west, women who lived like men as a result of visions or dreams often
married other women.
Alison Thorne, Melbourne Freedom Socialist Party Organiser, will introduce
Will Roscoe and talking about the significance of his research to
contemporary Socialist Feminism. She explains:
"Roscoe's research builds on the pioneering work of Engels in his classic
The Origin of the Family Private Property and the State. Engels showed how
for 50,000 years society was matriarchal and communal and sexuality was
free. But with the rise of private property, mother right was overthrown by
father right, and women became trapped by monogamy inside the new
patriarchal family. Roscoe's study of women leaders and the two-spirit
tradition amongst Native American tribes is a fascinating view of life in a
world where defeat of mother right and rise of the state was far from
complete."
Says Thorne: "This special evening is called The Way We Were, The Way We Can
Be to highlight that women have not always been oppressed, homophobia is not
natural and class divisions and inequality are not eternal. All resulted
from the rise of private property, and all can be eliminated in a society
based on communal ownership."
The event takes place at the North Melbourne Library in Errol St. A Native
American-style dinner will be served at 6 pm and the program will start at 7
pm. Tickets are $16/$12 with dinner or $6/$4 door only. To purchase a ticket
call 9386-5065. Tickets will also be available at the door.
Will Roscoe will also speak at a book signing on Monday 21 February, 8 pm at
Hares and Hyenas, 135 Commerical Road, South Yarra. For more information
call 9824-0110.
To organise an interview with Will Roscoe or for photographs of the author
or images of Native American women warriors phone: 03-9386-5065
LL.VB
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