Date: Sun, 22 Oct 95 12:10:44 ARG
From: ales@wamani.apc.org (Alejandra Sarda)

VISIBILITY DEBATE

Meeting held on October 17, 1995, at Tasmania Bar, Buenos
Aires, as part of the program of lesbians/ gays /transvestites
/transexuals meetings taking place since September (see
"Lesbians, gays, transvestites and transexuals coming together
in Argentina)

Monica Santino (Comunidad Homosexual Argentina - Argentinean
Homosexual Community): visibility has many faces, as many as
persons there are, each one lives her/his visibility as she/he
can. It's important for the Movement to be visible as such, as
a whole. We must talk about what the groups can do to help
more and more people to become visible.

Marcelo Ferreyra (Biblioteca Gay-Lesbica / Gay-Lesbian
Library): To be visible is to embody one's ideals, to carry on
those ideals. Nobody else is going to do that for ourselves.
This society has been destroying its own values, the
institutions are showing their lack of basic values. The media
have squeezed us out, but a homosexual person on TV stressing
her/his truth show a sharp contrast with other persons -i.e.
politicians- claiming to be what they are not. Society is
thirsty for true values. When we expose ourselves, what
becomes visibile is not just homosexuality, but truth itself.
Absolute invisibility is a fiction: there is always somebody
for whom we are visible, in spite of ourselves.

Cesar Vassari (Biblioteca Gay-Lesbica / Gay-Lesbian Library):
It's importart to elaborate a common discourse among all
organizations, to agree on it. In the beginning we did not
have scruples with the media, we felt we had to be everywhere.
Now it is important to have scruples, to come back to them
because we are being manipulated. We have to show coherence,
not to contradict one another. There is not self-criticism of
what we do and say through the media. We risk becoming TV's
clowns. I hate to see tranvestites and transexuals fighting
each other on the media. To clean a "cartoon-like" image might
take us years. The media eat us up, they are not goint to
negotiate with us. I propose to debate among ourselves what
was said, after each public appearance by any one of us.

Carlos Jauregui (Gays por los Derechos Civiles - Gays for
Civil Rights): Visibility is not the same thing as media
activims. Visibility is the strongest political strategy of
our Movement. There is always a good reason to tell someone
that you are gay or lesbian: that people stop thinking only
horrible people are homosexuals. It's political too: if people
knows her/his neighbor is lesbians, her/his coworker is gay,
it becomes harder for them to giver their vote  to reactionary
political forces. The new generations of activist might
develop a common discourse because their are cleaner, the
older ones can't. We do need a univocal discourse regarding
homophobia, police repression. It's very important to include
other groups that are discriminated against in our discourse.
Like the demonstration against police brutality we held last
week
(October 13), that was organized by us toghether with victim's
families, students, human rights organizations.


Julian (Gays por los derechos civiles - Gays for Civil
Rights): To center the question of visibility on the media is
to narrow the subject too much. We who appear on the media
don't realize how important it is for others, the impact it
has. We risk feeling like stars. It's just a more advanced
form of expressing one's visibility, but it is not always
backed up by a sustained activist effort. 

Alejandra Sarda (Escrita en el cuerpo/Lesbianas a la vista -
Written on the Body/Lesbians on Sight):
It's important to publicize our groups' activities in the
society at large, it's a way to impose our culture on the
public. We risk closing ourselves up inside the ghetto because
it's easier there, leaving outside those women who are not
part of the ghetto. It's also important to take visibility
beyond the mainstream media: into other organizations,schools,
neighborhood associations, etc. If media visibility does not
come together with many people being visibile in their
families, offices, schools, it's easy for the system to make a
caricature of "lesbian/gay" out of those of us who appear in
the media and dehumanize them. As the right wing advances,
visibility is no longer an option: it's imperative, it's the
only defense we have.

Kenny de Michelis (Travestis Unidas - Transvestites United);
For us transvestites, visibility is unavoidable. It's
important to give a serious image to society. To be seen as
human beings. We are exhibitionists, because we have not a
single right. Before we came out, the gay/lesbian movement did
not even mention us. We are still a taboo subject: it's easier
for people to understand gays or lesbians. I am not interested
on feeding exhibitionism to the public but on making them know
we are not allowed to work as anybody else does, that we have
no rights whatsoever. It's difficult to be on TV and not
believing you are a star. 

Ilse Fuskova (Convocatoria Lesbiana - Lesbian Call):
Visibility starts with yourself, accepting that what I am is
good; that takes time. Then you can become visible to your
family, friends and eventually to the media. We didn't look
for it, it came to us. I measure its impact according to the
answers I get. The message conveyed by lesbians is more
revulsive: we are saying that women's lives can be full
without a man to make them complete. It's important to have
many more faces on the media. Our message of women loving
women is still revolutionary inside patriarchy. Women come
close to us, they tell us about their lives. The message is
rightly conveyed. The most important thing is to give personal
testimony that being lesbian is right, a positive thing. If
you don't feel that yourself, people won't believe you.

Claudina Marek (Convocatoria Lesbiana -Lesbian Call): I know
from my own experience what is like living a double life, not
knowing if I were a man or what. And suddenly to see someone
on TV saying "I'm a lesbian, I'am a woman, and that's right".
It was like throwing a rock into a stream of muddy water:
suddenly everything got cleared up.

Alex (independent): It's important to stress to moral side of
us, all the things we are besides being lesbians/gays. In my
case, the effect of appearing on TV was more than positive:
blessings, caresses. Visibility benefits you a lot. The joy of
doing what you like to do, of being who you are, of helping
others. There is an image of homosexual people that is already
accepted, we have to reinforce it. But I know the person who
becomes visible has to endure loneliness, besides
satisfactions. 

Julian: I feel our public discourse should not say that there
is only one way of being lesbian or gay. It's important that
we speak about discrimination in a general sense, not just
about ourselves'.

Ilse: To say that women are second rate citizens in this
system is not banal, discrimination is not the same for women
than for men.

Marcelo: When you don't make discrimination specifical it
amounts to nothing. It might even become a media strategy: to
dilute us into a general "discrimination" concept in order to
make us invisible again.

Alejandra: To stress the specifical ways in which one is
discriminated against does not mean to exclude others, but to
make your discourse richer and also to reflect the complex
reality we live in: we all have several identities and so
might be discriminated against in many different ways.

Javier Hourcade (Act Up): People living with VIH are invisible
in the gay community itself, because it wants to preserve
itself. We did a lot of efforts to make AIDS a separte subject
from homosexuality, but reality is showing something very
different. We have to take into account the price people pay
for becoming visibile as VIH+. When we come into a disco,
"Mme. La Mort has arrived" and everyone leaves. In TV we are
introduced as "an AIDS carrier", a "lesbian"; we compromise
too much with the media. We have to reach a more mature
discourse, to stop playing victims, to go beyond testimonies
and raise the political level of our discourse. To give
testimony was a brave and important stage, but we have to go
beyond it. We have to negotiate with the media how they are
going to portrait us, otherwise they use us and we expose
ourselves to anything.

Eva Ruchstein (Lola Mora): It's good for society to want to
know more about us. They have the right to know which kind of
people we are. Now they are calling us because they need
rating, out of perverted curiosity, but as they know us better
they will integrate us.
 
Luciana (Lesbianas a la vista - Lesbians on Sight): There are
obstacles, not all are flowers. I enjoyed participation on the
demostration against police brutality, but at the same time I
was covering my face every time I saw a TV camera. Work is the
hardest part of it: sometimes visibility means being fired.
For us, young lesbians, everything is even more complicated,
because we are legally minors. If you are lucky to meet older
people you can use their experience but otherwise you are very
lonely.

Claudina: Like feminists say, the personal is politicial. I
wouldn't have understood a political discourse when I first
saw Ilse on TV; I undertood her because she spoke about her
personal life. I don't know how it is with me, but every
woman's life somehow has the capacity to touch other women
deeply, that's why for us testimonies are very important.

Cesar: Lesbians and gays have been the first to openly speak
about sexuality in Argentina. We have already acomplished
much: everyone takes care not to offend us when they talk in
public. But I think that discourse is exhausted, we need to
move on to something else. I don't agree with showing a good
image of gays or lesbians. Also, I think no frivolous approach
to serious subjects should be tolerated. We have to ask
ourselves if we are to approve of anything that a gay /
lesbian / transvestite says on TV. 

Alejandra: The problem of minors in the organizations: how to
do to work with them without exposing them and us to legal
risks, knowing as we do that they badly need support?
[Everyone agreed to deal with this issue in a next meeting,
devoted to proposal for joint work] I agree with showing all
our diversity, including those images that belong to our
culture but are not accepted by mainstream society like
butches and faggots. But, in those spaces that we do not
control, how do we do to avoind being manipulated? Like, for
instance, if we say that there are abusive relationships among
lesbians, how do we stop a homophobic commentator from stating
that "all lesbian relationships are violent" and end the
transmission there?

Monica: I suggest we meet before going to a TV or radio
programme and agree on a few basic points. We know from our
own experience that society does not come with us when we take
to the streets with our banners, even though we do it on
belhalf of a "general" cause. We were absolute majority in the
demostration against police brutality: many human rights
organizations did not come. Anyway, I was moved by the
lesbians making the traffic stop just with their bodies and
presence, by our strenght and resolution.

Carlos (Grupo NX): We all need to be sincere, to acknowledge
that we all have had to overcome a feeling of repulsion about
transvesties, because we are/were prejudiced against them; and
for men, to acknowledge machismo and that discrimination is
harder on women and different from ours'. Until we deal with
those subjects, no common discourse or work will be possible.





Alejandra Sarda
"Escrita en el cuerpo" - Archivo y Biblioteca Lesbica
Piedras 1170 - 1ero. B
(1026) Buenos Aires, Argentina
Telefonos: 54-1 307 6656/931 9648


--
ales@wamani.apc.org

< Fin - End >