- Welcome, welcome, all of you sex fiends. (audience laughs) We didn't see you at any of those other intellectual conversations. (audience chuckles) It must be the transgressive sexuality. I'm reading a quote from Pat Califia's, one of my favorite books, "Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex." "Being a sex radical means being
defiant as well as deviant. It means being aware that
there's something dissatisfying and dishonest about the
way sex is talked about or hidden in daily life. It also means questioning
the way our society assigns privilege based on
adherence to its moral codes. And in fact, makes every sexual choice a matter of morality." I'm just kind of crazy and
awed to be here with Chip, otherwise known as Samuel Delaney, 'because I tell him... (audience applause) I am the sex radical
that I am because of him. (audience laughs) It's all Chip's fault. (audience laughs) He's been such an amazing person, opening up new frontiers
of thought for us. So where's our introducing person? - [Tamara] Right here. Hi. - Those drugs I took
earlier must be kicking in. (audience laughs) - Bienvenidos y bienvenidas. Welcome. It is an honor to be here. Thank you to the organizers of
this series and of this panel on transgressive sexual practices. Gracias Stephanie Browner,
Dean of Eugene Lang college, the New School for liberal arts, and Jennifer Wrigley,
Associate Director for visibility in college-wide
event coordination, for making this happen. And thank you to students
of the New School, and Lang specifically, who
inspire us on a daily basis through dialogue and action to explore anti-oppression work and social justice. (audience applause) And thank you to the panelists.
Bell Hooks, Marci Blackman, Samuel Delaney, and M
Lamar for the explorations we're about to embark on together. My name is Tamara Oyola-Santiago. I work at the New School
within wellness and health promotion, which is the
public health component of the university student health services. I co-lead efforts with Rachel
Nache, and we work together, hand in hand, collaboratively with student leaders at the New School. We strive for an engaged pedagogy, where we dismantle banking education. We realize that there is a
hierarchy at our institution and work actively to deal with
and battle microaggressions, cissexism, racism, ableism, fatphobia, and other forms of oppression we encounter that our students deal
with on a daily basis. Two student groups that I wanna mention that I work with closely
are peer health advocates. One of them is the Sexy Collective. They're students from
the Lang program mostly, but also collaborate with Parsons and New School for Public Engagement. They work towards sexual positivity, safer sex, and prevention
of sexual violence. The Queer Collective, our
students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans,
queer, intersex, asexual, and gender nonconforming,
and their allies. They co-lead safe zone
programs at the university and organized events such as
the HomeComing-Out Ball, which is tomorrow night. So I reached out to these
peer health advocates, as I prepared for this presentation and asked them about
transgressive sexual practice. Nathaniel Phillips, who
is also co-chair of the university's Social Justice
Committee, wrote back and said, "So often racialized and
queer people and bodies are taken and used for
the sexual gratification of the oppressor and just as quickly
exploited and cast aside. My transgressive practice
is dismantling these systems through my sexuality. It is transgressive because I
challenge the world and myself through the expansion
of my sexual desires, tastes and appetites." Jasmine Cuffy, sexy coordinator shared, "Transgressive sexual
practice means forgoing socialized sex norms and stereotypes and instead following
your heart and your head to seek your own form
of sexual expression." And yet another Sexy leader wrote, "Anything outside of the heteronormative culture could be considered transgressive, and that's not even necessarily sexual. I don't think that sexy is
necessarily transgressive, but I suppose that because we
accept and encourage diversity within our sexuality, that
we could be transgressive." So today's panel. Simply
wonderful, Marvelous. We have Marci Blackman. Marci Blackman's first
novel, "Po Man's Child"... (audience applause) Marci's first novel, "Po Man's
Child", received the American Library Association Stonewall
Award for best fiction, and the Firecracker Alternative Book Award for best new fiction. Her second novel,
"Tradition", was noted as one of the Band of Thebes's
best books of 2013. Blackman's short fiction
and poetry have appeared in numerous anthologies, and
Blackman's first nonfiction title, "Bike NYC: The Cyclist's
Guide to New York City", was published in 2011 on Skyhorse Press. We have Samuel R Delaney,
novelist in credit who lives in New York city and teaches
in the English department at temple university. His nonfiction includes Times Square Red, Times Square Blue and about writing. His most recent novel is
through the valley of the Nesta spiders. Welcome. We have M Lamar, M Lamar is a counter tenor, composer, video artist and sculptor. His first New York solo exhibit
"Negro Gothic, a manifesto." The aesthetics of M Lamar opened the fall season at participant Inc and is on view through October 12th. Most known for his music
and performance space work, this physical installation,
cross references romanticism surrealism, horror,
pornography, gospel, metal and early silent film to propose radical potentialities of blackness. Welcome. - [M Lamar] Thank you. - All right. And we have Bell Hooks. Bell hooks is a among the
leading public intellectuals of her generation. Her writings cover a
broad range of topics, including gender, race, teaching
and contemporary culture. This fall marks the 20th
anniversary of the publication of "Teaching to Transgress, Education as a Practice of Freedom." Dr. Hook's seminal book
on educational practices. This week long residency is an opportunity for the new school community to directly engage with Dr. Hooks and her commitment to
education and learning as a place where paradise can be created. Welcome. Final thought. Lang is provocative, focused on social activism to
the lens of theoretical rigor. We are proud to present this dialogue. Thank you. (audience applause) - I just wanted to start with just a couple of little comments. One is just a kind of reminder and it may even be a
voice from a dare I say another generation but it's the one I got, The more we consider and analyze and try to understand love, the greater our inclination
is to forget power. That's because we live,
we inhabit a discourse, which for better or for worse, underneath everything tends to say that power is bad and love is good. And so we get caught in it,
even when we don't want to. One of the things that I
remember from just my own life that might be interesting, or then again it also
might be incredibly dull. I've been listening to these
programs on the live screens and it's one of the things
I'm very much aware of is how so many of the
young people that you have on the program. And when they're talking
about themselves, say "I didn't know anything
about feminism until..." and then they say 1725, whatever the age is. And of course I think that wasn't me. I knew about feminism from
before I can remember. I can't imagine anybody
coming to a Bell Hooks event, who is not aware of this Sojourner Truth "Ain't I woman" speech. I could recite that thing by
the time I was 13 years old. And I'm very glad that I did and one of the things it also did is that speech makes very, very clear that feminism and racism are intimately and integrated into one another. You can't have one or another one. As much as I am glad that... Bell frequently reminds us of the.... what is it? The white supremacist? - [Bell] The imperialist. - The Imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist, capital patriarchy. But is the black one, any
patriarchy any better? I don't know. - [Bell] No, of course not - Exactly. And so by the time I was 19, I had decided, I was in the midst of writing my first novel. And if you read it, you can probably get the hints of it, that the position of women in the world was the most important
political problem we had. This was... when was this? This was 1961. When I was 19, I had just been married. I had surprise, surprise married a woman. And that's all we talked about for the first three
years we were together. Day in and day out women's problems. That's all any of the women talked about who came through our front door. Marilyn's friends, the problems they had as women
getting jobs, all of this. And I sat there and listened. And I hope I learned a few things. So this became what I wrote about for the first few years I
wanted to do it indirectly, why? Because I was scared to do it directly. I really was. I was terrified. There was no feminism per se that had the word attached to it. We'd been married two or three
years before Betty Fiedan's "The Feminine Mystique" came out and I'd published four novels. But when it did, it was a great confirmation that, yeah there's a reason we've
been talking about this for all this time. So it was a... just let me say it again. Once again that.... as we analyze love, we tend to forget power but it also of course
works the other way around as we analyze power, we tend to forget, we are inclined to forget love. And what we have to remember
is that in the larger scheme, both of them are neutral. This is a little hard
to wrap your head around because we do have this
discourse that says good and bad and wants to
put them on opposite sides but love can kill you, power can kill you. Power can make you uproariously happy and love can make you uproariously happy. And what you have to do is, think about them both. - I was waiting for the
man to get to the sex. - [M Lamar] That's what
I was thinking too. I was like, "wait where's
the sex coming in?" - Well, the other thing is part of the... - [Marci] That's part of the power - Well, the other thing is because this is what trans... you
really want? We wanna talk? - That's what we're here to
do transgressive sexuality. Yeah, ring it. - Well again, at one point in fact, it's one thing I was wondering about at one point again, when
I was listening to this, you used the phrase
transgressive sexual practices, and you talked about pushing the perimeters around this notion. And I thought well, the language changes. There's
no way you can stop it. If you wanted to stop the changing of language. And you're like king Cnut at the shore, haranguing against the sea. But for me that's not
what transgression means. Transgression means there's a line there and you have to cross that line and go to the other side. If you cross it enough and you bring back enough information, possibly you can move that line, move the perimeters, but you have to start by crossing it. And the only way you can do
it is you have to seize power. That's the first thing that you need to do and then you have to cross
it and see what's there. And then if you are brave enough to be articulate about what you find, then maybe the line will move. - That was beautifully said, but I didn't get to the sex in that. - Okay, well. - [M Lamar] A point. - Wait, didn't I just say this was the man from whom I learned so much. - Sex radical that's right. - Yeah but go ahead. Well. - Okay. Well, the thing is. - Lamar wants to say so - Okay, please, please. - Listen I was going
to ask you a question. - Okay. - Because earlier you said, Bell was like, when were in Stephanie's office, "do you all consider
yourself sex radicals?" and were all like, "oh yeah." And then you were like, "no," so why not? because we've read Times square, we've read your work, - Right. - It seems a little sex radical to us but why not? - I don't know. I just do
the things that I want to do. And I try to do them as
intelligently as I possibly can. This is sometimes, I am one of these bizarre people. If you wanna know, I like to suck Dick. - Me too. - There you go Bell, there's your sex. - Are you glad that I said it now? - Yes, yes, yes. - All right good. I'm really oral. I love kissing guys. I like putting my tongue
way down their throat. - Okay. He's going too far. - All right. Well, you wanted me to do it. - Well no but one of the
things that's so moving to... - M Lamar he was not finished. (audience laughs) - And all of those things but the other thing is this and this will be my concluding. And then I will turn it over to you. - No I just wanna ask
you another question, but go on. - Okay, one of the things, when I'm always saying to the students that I come to talk to. And it's usually because of Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, they call me in and they say, "well look, don't you
feel embarrassed about talking about liking to suck Dick, liking to do the various
things that you do?" To which my answer is, look, because I'm a child
of the age generation, where being honest about
what you do is a matter, if you don't, you're complicit in murder. So that was a big change
in the early eighties. And if I had any modesty before that, that kind of threw it out the window. And I also said, "I don't feel that I
lose any of my dignity by telling people that I have a sex life, Like everybody else" - Honey It was all that pee and stuff in - That's right. - Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, that kind of questioned what tiny bit of bushwa sensibility I might have. I was like, "oh, oh, oh." - Actually it was the pee that me and my boyfriend were reading, earlier we had dinner. And then we're sitting at cafe but... - Where is the boyfriend? Is he out there? - My boyfriend's Sabin. Stand up Sabin, so she can see you. That's anyway, 10 years in. But we were reading the pee section of Times Square Red, Times square Blue And I had this moment... - I didn't remember
there was a pee section. - Yeah There is. And I was thinking, this is so different
than Dennis Cooper's work because I thought that
the sex radical dimension of your work, I think is
that there's no exploitation, I feel like in all the
sex that's happening, where I feel like... - Yeah, that's why we like him. - That's right. So to me is the radicality to me that is so sex radical in that you can have explicit sex, We're not saying no to the sex or the pee or the falling asleep
while giving a blow job. Those things. We're not saying no to those things but we don't have exploitation. - [Marci] Well, it's also. - Yes Marci. - It's also you spoke about power. So it's also I feel in these acts of doing what you like to do, is a form of taking the powers. When we talk about taking power, we're not taking power from somebody else. - [Bell] Does Marci need to
stand up? She's sort of quiet? stand up please. - Nobody else had to stand up, so why do I have to stand up? - [Bell] You're just
kind of a quiet voice. - Do I really have to stand up? How about if I just talk louder? - [Bell] We wanna see you, you're so cute. - [M Lamar] You are cute. - Thanks. When we talk about power, we're not talking about taking power from somebody else or some other places we're talking about the
radical act of exercising our power over ourselves and over our minds and
over our own bodies. And so when we do things that we like, like for Samuel, it's sucking Dick, and for M Lamar maybe sucking Dick. That's not my thing, right? - Yeah. - Do you have some dicks that
you strap on? Is that...? - Absolutely? - How many you have? - I have several. - [Bell] Oh please Lamar, stop it. - I do. I have several. And the ones that I tend to like, I've been told are a little too much for necessarily the
partners that I'm with, which kind of gives me a little bit more of a neurotic high. But my point is, you're doing it because you like to and that's in the sense is
was what makes it radical because you're doing
something that you like, that someone else has said, "no we're not supposed to be doing." - Marci... - I wish I could show you all images from the graphic memoir "Bread and Wine" because it's such a great example of incredibly explicit, sexuality that is not pornographic. That is not about power over, but that is very, very there. Sorry to cut you off. - No, not at all. Marci I would just take
up one point with you and you say, "it's not taking power away from anybody else when you do that." And when you just do what you want. But you are when yo do... - [Bell] Uh Oh, Uh Oh come on. When you do what you want and it's on the other side of that line, you are taking power away from the people who put that line there. The people who say, "no, you can't do." - Sure, absolutely. But the power that you're taking back is the power that they took from you by putting that line there right? So if we are now gonna cross that line to take that power back over ourselves, we are taking it back. We are taking a power back,
that was ours to begin with. Where they attempted to take it from us. So when I say that, we're
not taking it from them, we're not taking their power over their bodies and
minds and souls from them. We are simply taking back
what was ours to begin with. - Okay that's one way to look at it. That's one way to look at it. However, but the people who put the line there will very often tell you, "the reason I put that line,
there was for your benefit, it was to help you to keep you safe, that's why I put that line there." And you say, "well, I
didn't ask you to do that." And also, allow me, you're saying now, to take the responsibility
for my own body, for my own actions. All of those things that we are
familiar with from feminism, that's where we learned
to do that sort of thing. And I think that's quite
wonderful that we did. I would like to hear more
from Marci and more from Bell because one other quick thing as important as I have
always thought feminism is, I have never called myself a feminist. I'm a feminist sympathizer but I don't think men can be feminist. I still am of that generation that says, "give us a microphone and we'll
take over the whole show." And that's what I'm doing here. (audience laughs) And given what we are here to talk about, I'm gonna shut up for a while. - Well, I wanna be clear that I'm not into being feminist, I am feminist. I am interested in the
active practice of a politics that we name as feminism. That is not an identity. And I think that what has taken us in many wrong directions
has been the notion of feminism as an identity. As women can be feminists, men cannot or all of that, rather
than the question is what is your politics? As it relates to feminism. What is your active practice in your life that is working against
patriarchy, sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression? because we are in the "name
yourself anything" generation. And so what do these names mean? It's what my therapist always tells me, "Don't listen to what people
say, look at what they do." So to me, that field of feminist politics is the field of action of what you do. And I do agree with Chip that in terms of that question of action. Feminism is one of the few
contemporary left politics that has put that on the table. Let's have existential self-reflection about what we are doing. I mean all of us in this
room would not be talking about race as we do, If women of color, active
in feminist politics had not called out the
incredible white supremacy of mainstream notions of feminism. (audience applause) Now Marci, I hope will. I don't know, I feel like there are
people in this audience and I have to get on your case that haven't read Marci, that have not read Samuel Delaney. And I tell you Times Square
Red, Times Square Blue is one of the most amazing
theoretical discussions of sexual freedom, sexual liberation. I mean it will really turn
your mind upside down. So I wanna encourage all
of you to read these works. And in fact that's part of why we wanted to talk with Samuel Delaney because his vision has been so expansive. We will not allow you to take
patriarchal control over us, will we Marcy? that's not gonna happen. But we will hope that you will offer us some of the amazing wisdom. Okay, let me tell you
a Samuel Delaney wisdom that just knocked me back for months. Is he suggests that women
will not really ever achieve true sexual freedom until we have the capacity to have what you call it, anonymous sex? Or like when he's
describing all the places that men go to have their sex
with strangers or whatever. And that really made
me turn my head around to think about that whole question of female sexual freedom. - Well I would shift a
bit of the nuance of that, which is to say, I think
it should be a choice. - Oh yeah. - It's not a case of all women have got to go out and do this nor is it a case of now all men have to go out and do this or all gay men have to go out and do us. A lot of us do, a lot of us enjoy the hell out of it. I've been one of the people who has enjoyed the hell out of it. And my only point is I don't
want to make it impossible for other people who want to enjoy it. Now at various times since 1962, I think is the first time I encountered this is again, before there
was a concerted feminism. There were places where women, there were gay bars, they had their female women
nights, their lesbian nights, and women would come in and some of these nights
were kinkier than others. And some places were kinkier than others. So this has been tried and some women have said,
"wow, this was really great, I had no idea. This was as fun as it was." And other women have said, "I was just totally uncomfortable, this is just not what I wanted to do, this is not my idea of of sexual freedom." To which I have no
argument with any of it. One of the things that men
also have a tendency to do when they start talking about feminism "is explain to women
how they ought to do it" which is not the point, the point is to let people
figure out what they wanna do, what their needs are, how they want to constitute
themselves in the world. This means whether you like it or not, it does mean shutting up and listening. I'm so glad to hear Bell
say again and again, "listening is so important." - Marci, can you... Marci is the person up here who most recently in her writing, writes incredibly explicit sexual writing. The person who does in fact
write more than any other, certainly black female I know about the politics of power and sexuality. Different... Would you call
it? well How would you name it? Sadomasochism? - There's some of that. - But I mean, this is why a lot of people
find your work disturbing because it doesn't fit with
the conventional notions of lesbian fiction, lesbian sexuality. - Yeah. I mean, I don't know about that just because I read all kinds of things, my tastes are eclectic. And so I don't really know
what the conventional notions of lesbian sexuality are. I don't really feel
like I can speak to that but I do know that I tend to explore sexual practices and
sexualities with my characters, as well as my characters
who are not necessarily well they're definitely not
mainstream by any means. And they are often crossing the line as Samuel noted, going
into this other territory. And in my first novel, the main character Poe engages in SMX, she's black and her lover is white. And her lover, she's white, but she's of... a better off economic class than Poe is. And Poe chooses to bottom to this person and which is problematic
for a lot of reasons but it brings up a lot of issues for her around slavery and racism and all these things. And so that was interesting
to me to explore. At the time that I wrote this book, I lived in San Francisco when there was a very big, dyke SM scene, but
it was predominantly white. I was talking to someone
earlier today and I said, I think there were three of us who weren't and we all knew each other. And one of my friends
bottomed all the time and I couldn't understand it. I was like, "how can you do that? How did your mind not
get in the way for you?" Because my mind would not let me go there. - What was her answer? I don't even remember what her answer was is that it was erotic for her, that's what she enjoyed. And she remembered from the first time that she was a little girl
that she asked her friend to tie her up and it went from there. And she didn't think about the historical ramifications or that thing of what she was actually doing. And for me it sparked this interest where I wanted to explore because I didn't feel like I could do that in my physical practice but I felt like, well maybe I can explore
this with my characters. - [Bell] With your imaginative. - Yes. - I want to jump in here just because I feel like I'm dealing in very similar ways with SM questions that are very much racialized. My show up right now, Negro gothic manifesto at participant Inc deals a lot in these plantation fantasies is what I like to call
plantation fantasies. Where people are acting out various SM dynamics with
whips and with chains, a whip cracker. My cracker is this thing
that I play around with. But that cracker comes from the whip cracker on the plantation. And there's this whole image where I'm inserting all these
whips in boy's asses sort of all out the maple... - [Bell] In white asses? - White asses. Well one of
the boys is here actually. Do you wanna stand up? But part of the point... Is your girlfriend's
here with you too right? You can also stand up girlfriend. who allowed me to put those whips in. Anyway but part of the
point is to try to sort of understand what a plantation dynamic, a homosexual plantation
dynamic must have been like. There's not a lot of research on homosexual plantation dynamics, sexually. And so I'm sort of trying in these films and in these images to
try to sort of understand what that must be like. Bell can't deal with those. You're giving me this look. (audience laughs) - You're wrong about that? There is nothing Bell can't deal with. Didn't I say I was a
student of Samuel Delaney. - Well, may I throw something in here? And I hope this isn't taken
as some kind of derailing of the central thrust of the conversation. Seriously I am a very
conservative Freudian and one of the things. - That's very disturbing. - Yes. Oh, thank God, I'm glad. But Freud had some very
interesting thoughts about this kind of thing. And one of his thoughts
was that a perversion is the opposite of a neurosis. And as far as he was concerned, which was the healthier
perversion or neurosis? And he said very clearly, "perversion is far
healthier than neurosis, neurosis get in the way. And they make you up your entire life. Whereas perversions, you
do it when you get in bed, you enjoy it. And then you forget about it or you don't forget
about it, this case maybe and you go on. And this explains things like why so many gay men, their
closest friends are women. In the way that straight
men often find it very hard to be friends with women
because they do sexualize them. And many, many other things
get explained by this. And I think Freud was right, Freud was concerned with
the situation of women. He really was. The first psychoanalyst that he trained was Emma Eckstein, was a woman. He welcomed women into his movement. Thomas Henry Huxley was giving lectures at Oxford and would come
in and wait for the guards to take all the women who
would come to hear him and conduct them out of the room. Freud on the other hand
wanted as many women as he possibly could. His patients were women, the
people he liked were women. - He did. - He did No. He really, really did. And point is... because many of the things
that he said about women, many of them came from his women patients and he was quite willing to take their.. - Okay. - Alrighty. Okay, well. - I think I have to stand up on this. - Oh Okay, go ahead. - I'm interested, I think in part because I was sitting here thinking I've never been with four people of color, four black people speaking
about sexual transgression. And I wondered myself
if some of our laughter are veering away, has to do with this moment where
a great silence is breaking is shattering right before us. Because when do we black
people ever get to talk about sexual transgression in any sphere? Let alone the New School. And so I do want us
because we'll talk till six and then we'll have lots
of question and answer time to really try to think
about those vagaries of sexual transgression that I don't know about Mr.
Delaney and Freud but I can testify that in so
many ways he provided a space for me to think transgressively
about sexuality, about pleasure. The amazing thing about "Bread and Wine" is that it's so tender. And I think that we are
still trying to figure out how can we create sexual images? How can we create images of
the penis that are loving and tender and not about domination? And I think that we praise his name we praise him because of those visions that he has provided in his work. And I don't know about
those of you who don't know this man is a great
science fiction writer. Because some people, the people are saying he's a novelist. Yes, he is a novelist. But he is up there in his science fiction. And so we honor him so
much as so many of you have honored me these
past few days in terms of what my work has meant to you. I was a bit like, "okay, Bell, how you gonna handle this?" Because you bowed down to this man. And when I first called Chip and asked him if he would be on the panel, I was like, "I adore you." My first big problem was calling him Chip, I just don't think I can do that. And so I just wanted to clarify that, So people understand that
there is a dynamic up here that has to do with Chip as our elder, as our progressive visionary. And so we cut him some slack, unlike me cutting those guys
last night, too much slack, just so you understand. So I hope that Marci
will jump back into this and stand up again with her fine self. - Am I picking up where
I, where I left off? Is that the thing? - Yes. - Well, I wanna kind of
go back to the play that M Lamar and I had just for a second, when you picked up about this idea of being a black person involved in a predominantly white practice and for many reasons. And there's something about in my writing and also in my own life
of when I'm involved with someone white, sexually and they want me to do
all kinds of crazy things that I can find a place
where that is okay. In my body And that I actually, not only am I doing it for them, but I get off on it and I enjoy it too. But when I'm with women of color who then want me to do
all kinds of crazy things. - Your multiple penises. - Yes, exactly. And, and other things. I've become a little
more hesitant and I think it's the history sitting
in the room with me that makes that happen. - See around Chip's point
about perversion though, it's just to ask you a question. I believe and I agree that it... - [Bell] Slow down, please. I had to talk with him earlier. - Yeah that's what's right. - [Bell] Don't start talking so fast that we can't understand you. - I just get so excited. - [Bell] I know - Especially about sex, but perversion, this thing that perversion could be a healthy thing. But it's part of the point of me having these plantation narratives within my work is to sort of have a place of recovery or so that we can have these moments where we can talk about white male desire for black men specifically. One of my trips is that, I say, all white men in our culture are obsessed with black penises. And now we know the history of lynching and we know that these
white men were cutting off and making trophies out of black penises. But we also watch pornography hopefully. Well just for research
purposes on the internet, and if you go to Pornhub or XTube or any of these places you
might consume pornography. You can see all these films where my wife got by a big black cock or my first big black cock. And then you have to go
another step and say, "well, who is producing all of this big back black cock pornography and it's white men. And then you say, "well, these white men
themselves are not obsessed with big black cock." But they realize there's a
market for big black cock. And so then someone is
obsessed with this fiction. I wanna talk about this
fiction of the big black cock that we needed. And I also wanna say that the flip side of this obsession with big black cock is when you know this
police officer in Ferguson who shoots down a black boy or George Zimmerman, who
shoots Trayvon Martin. And I think that this obsession with, and this invention in
the white imagination, the white supremacist
imagination of the black cock is this very thing that's leading to the death of so many black people. And so I think all the black men.. - [Bell] Lamar could
you slow that one down? And as we say make more
clear what you mean. - That I think that this
same obsession sexually with black men and that obsession is with black men somehow being more male, somehow more masculine, somehow
more virile than white men. There's so many times I
used to do sex work too so, there's so many times I
heard these white men say, "oh my penis is so small
and yours is so big and I just wanna worship it." - [Bell] But link that to
Ferguson and Trayvon Martin. - Well, but I think that very obsession with that kind of masculinity, that jungleised masculinity is the flip side of this
overly violent black man who will just devour me. - But it's not just an
obsession with black men and black men's penises. Yes it's there. And it's a given and it's
been there all the time but there's just as big an
obsession with black women and black women's pussies and I'm sorry and the jungle bunnies
and the whole thing. And with white men and equally,
I think with black men. So I feel like when we're talking about transgressive sexual practices and we're talking about
doing these things, I think what I was trying to get at was that yes, we can call it transgressive when we cross this line and we do things that we're told we're not supposed to do, but as black women we've also been told, we're not supposed to have this connection at this vulnerable, very,
very deep place inside, which is transgressive for me
because that's a taking back something that was denied. And so when I can be in a kidnapping scene with a white chick, right? And then I can set up a time where I can basically just mess with her mind and say, "okay, look, you know,
there's gonna be a week and at any time in this week, I can come for you and kidnap you and that's our agreement
and that's our contract and that's what we're gonna do. Right?" And I can do that and I can go there and I can do that with him but the place for me, because there's something about, you often talk, when you talk
about the James Brown movie about flipping it. And there's a place for me in that, where I'm flipping the script. And the other place for me, with black women and women of color, I'm flipping the script
because we are expected to be, the big sort of jungle, booty call thing. that's what we're expected to do. We're expected to do this stuff. But what we're not expected
to do is go down to that very, very, very, very
deep, deep, deep, deep place and affirm each other down there. And that to me is transgressive. - [Bell] I think we have to remember too that the black woman
booty as it is represented is very passive. That was one of the things
that struck me about the Nicki Minaj video anaconda that it's a passive booty. It not active. It does not have a voice. - Wear me out, yeah. - So that's why our panel
was whose booty is this because we are still as black women trying to find that
space where we can claim the desires of the booty, whatever they may be
and speak those desires. Go jump on in here. - Oh, okay. One of the things I would
just like to mention because everybody from
about the third row forward can't see is we have an
intervention going on and I would like to thank you guys for doing what you were doing. Could everybody in the first three rows, just look to the back and would you please hold up your signs again? Thank you. Thank you, we have to be
aware of these things. - [Marci] Awesome, that's great. - Okay, all right. Thank you. I don't mean to exhaust
it with that by any means, maybe at some point we can even have someone talk about it a little because I think God
knows it has to be done. Oh yeah. I'm one of these gay men who
likes women is my friends. I always have been. One of my best friends is my daughter who is now 40 years old and a doctor and is a wonderful person. And the other one is my sister, whom she looks exactly alike. - [Marci] She looks like you? She looks exactly like
you or your daughter? - No my daughter looks just like my sister and my sister looks just like my daughter. I don't know how that happened. The gene sort of did that. So that's the way it happened. But so I want my friends
to have a good life. And as I said, not only is it a case just of thinking it's the most
important political problem in the world today and everybody seems to be trying to it up. - [M Lamar] Do you talk to
your sister and your daughter about their sex life. - [Bell] Lamar, please. - He can, no it's a perfectly reasonable. - [Bell] Except that you weren't finished with your sentence. - Yes okay. No, that's a
perfectly good question. I suppose, from time to
time I do with my daughter, my sister's a more private
person and I respect her, the boundaries she's comfortable with I never came out to my sister publicly. However at one particular
point I was giving a talk at the library and I looked down and there was my sister and my mother's best friend. My mother at that point had had a stroke and was in the hospital, as she was till the end
of the end of her life. And I was giving a talk
of gay fiction in the 80s. This was a long time ago. And I was talking about
things that had happened in the Saint Mark's Bas'
and all these things. And I'm thinking, "well,
there's my sister, that's kind of interesting." And then I was so busy looking at her, what I didn't do is realize that there was at the other end of the auditorium, which was about four times
the size of this one, there was a bunch of women
who looked vaguely familiar. And as soon as the talk was over, they all came running
forward and they said, "chip, chip, we really liked what you..." And I realized it was
my mother's bridge club from Harlem, and so I, "thank you." And they were all so
appreciative and what have you. And I walked home, and I thought, "golly, if I wasn't out
before, I am sure out now." Because when you are out to
your mother's bridge club, you are out. But it goes along with, you're
also out to your friends and that's what happens. And so it was a good thing and I was very glad that it happened. - And I didn't mean to interrupt you. - Yeah, no, I'm sure. - But the only reason why I bring it up is because we were talking
about women empowering their sexuality and I
didn't want us to leave that because I can talk about
big black dick all day but I think that... - [Bell] We know. (audience laughs) - But that it's a much more
difficult thing to talk about. I think women's sexual subjectivity. And so I don't know how
we get deeper into that. Whose booty is that? I came to "Whose booty is this" talk because I wanted to know whose it was. and also I said in that talk that the Anaconda thing is really... because the Anaconda in the original text, is all about again, the penis. And so that really the Nicki Minaj moment is a moment where she's
recentering the phallus. - [Bell] But in a passive way. - In a very passive way, yeah. Because I guess yeah, she could be featuring
it in an active way. - She could have some whips coming out of her ass or something. I'm sorry, I was teasing
him about his art project. - Which you have all
figured out as a commentary on the Robert Mapplethorpe,
famous what Robert May.... - Well, I would like us to think about that part of why it has
been so difficult for us as black females, cross multiple sexual
practices to feel liberated within any kind of transgressive sexuality is the whole issue of reframing because we've been so consistently framed within the sexuality of rape victim, lustful prostitute, what have you? Remember Lorraine Hansberry told us "I could be Jesus in drag and you would still think I'm selling." And she kept reiterating that
phrase to emphasize how deep those frames go in our life. And those frames are there for all of us in this
room as women of color, black females specifically, then how do we break out of the
frame, create another frame. Meaning that to me is why
the issue of transgression is important because as I
think that line is drawn, that, that is the frame, the line. And so the question
becomes, "how do we move?" And that's what I see in Marci's work the effort to move past that frame and to create another frame and to problematize our relationship to the sexualized body, the white body that may want
us to dominate it, et cetera. And so you wanna jump in here? - Yeah, I think this is sort of a, I'm a broken record and
it's sort of a running theme just throughout, not just
my work, but also my life. And that is I tend to like to think that I
move through the world, on my own terms and in a different way. And I don't really buy into
any of the trappings out there. Having a conversation with
someone a few days ago was talking about being
concerned with what other people thought of something that she did. And I said, I just sort of flipped in, kind of off the cuff said, "yeah, well, you know, we all care about what people think about us" and she went, "you don't." And I thought about it. I was
like, "that's really true." I don't actually really care
what anybody thinks about me. And I think that's kind of
what I'm trying to do with pushing the line is basically that I am trying to basically go, "I don't really care about your lens." What I care about is being able to sort of interact and connect. And that connection, when I talk about going deeper into a vulnerable space, I'm not talking about vanilla sex. That's not what I'm saying. I'm talking about being
able to create a space where we can take risks and be vulnerable in that risk with each other and cross that line that way. And so that's what I'm trying
to do is I'm trying to make those acts as normal for my
characters in these stories, as they would be for a
heteronormative couple who goes to bed and does it
in the missionary position and goes to sleep. That's what I'm trying to
trying to do with that. And I'm also trying to juxtapose it with all of the other human
emotions that are universal to all of us. So while you might be
shocked and disturbed, as a lot of people were, I had to agents basically go, "I love this book but will
you take out the SM stuff?" And I was just like, "well, then I don't have
a book if I take it out. So no, actually I won't," And so a lot of people were
really disturbed with that. And, and that is also my point. I personally find it very
problematic when I see all these white women going around
topping black women without the conversation
including without it, including a conversation about
what's really happening here and juxtaposing it to this
sort of non-consensual SM, which we call slavery. - [Bell] Wow. - Can I, is there like a butch
fem dynamic in one of these? - Oh yeah - Because one of the
things that occurs to me is that queer women, with Bells talking about looking for these different models that queer women provide. So I think so much of
a different model for how we look at femininity in general, or even queer trans women, trans women who are not, sort of having sex with
or attempting to catch the male gays. Women who are constructing
themselves and their identities to be looked at
primarily by other women, to me is a very interesting
and exciting place because that also de-centers a lot of
the patriarchal stuff that we seem to be talking about. That's why this is so exciting
to me where I think about, some friends that I have
here who seem to be defining themselves and their
female sexuality outside of patriarchal male gaze. And it's because they're
having sex with other women. - [Bell] But then are
you trying to tell us that women cannot have a patriarchal gaze? - [M Lamar] No. - That's not what I'm saying. - Thank you. Because I also think
that the butch fem thing I think is also, I'm outside of it looking in, but it also seems to be a
problematic sort of construction within dynamics of patriarchy. In terms of a queer kind of sexuality, nothing against my fem
friends who are here, but I think there's always this... because one of your lovely
points has been that patriarchy has no gender this week. I listen, I pay attention and that women obviously can
internalize all these ideas just as much as men can. - And not just internalize them but actually act out on them. - Exactly, - In a book I'm working on right now, there's a dynamic between a
character who is trans F to M and a character, who's
an older butch lesbian, who's old school, white
who embodies patriarchy, and we come from a community
where this happens all the time and it's never talked about, white dykes can say the
most offensive things. - And they do. - And everyone laughs and loves them. And what's interesting is
there's a conversation, well, there's a scene with this character, who's trans who's wondering because now he's passing fully all
the time and he's being perceived as the man now. And if he were to say
the same things that were coming out of the mouth of this person, who's being exalted and held up, it's kind of like, "okay, how would that go down?" Probably not the same. There probably wouldn't be
the same giggles and laughs and "you're so cute. And
you're so funny and haha, let's go to bed." kind of thing, which happens over and over again. So yes, absolutely, it's there. It's just not talked about. And I think, that's something
that I'm trying to do with my work is basically
bring these things to the surface and say and I want you to be disturbed by it, I want you to take a
look at it and question what you're doing in your life. - Well, if we can't talk
about all these things, then we don't say a chance, if we can't even begin
to have a conversation about sort of master slave
dynamics in our sexual practice, in our daily lives, then we're lost. - I would like to go back to the sort of alternate question Bell about "Who's booty is it" because language changes and booty is not, what would you say? I think I knew what it was
about six or seven years ago. what are we referring to now specifically? Can I ask you that? And
then it be easier for me at any rate to think about whose it is. - I don't have an answer for
that precisely because I think there's a multiple understanding of booty. - Right? Okay. - From various positionalities? - Okay. - But I think the question that was posed "Whose booty is this" was posed more in as a kind of
reference back to Spike Lee's "Whose Pussy is This" to talk about? What we are experiencing as
black females is we are being told by media that this is our moment. Our sexuality is liberated. It's leading, it's at the forefront of progressive sexual practice for females. This is what a lot of
representation The New York Times everywhere we go we're
being told this right now. If you read the article on
the sugar baby or sugar mama? sugar mama and saw some of
the images on the internet of white people trying to
have sex with the sugar mama or mimicking sex. I think it's a curious time
for us because even this overt fixation on black female
sexuality is a form of silencing because for the most part it
is not us as black females constructing our sexuality
for what one might call a liberatory gaze, no matter the skin color of
the person who is looking. And that might be
another question in terms of transgressive sexuality, who's really looking at black females? And are we even really
looking at ourselves? Because isn't it at the core of an aesthetics of white supremacy that we are not allowed
to look at ourselves, certainly not with desire,
pleasure, exploration. And that's part of why we
can have this discussion and need to have this discussion because I don't think we have
figured out progressive ways to see ourselves sexually. You're gonna say something
then, Marci wanted to. - Okay. Well, it has
not always seemed to me but certainly for the last
10 or so, or 15 years, since I've been thinking
about the question directly that all sexual patterns
that I can see as being part of the public awareness are
contoured by capitalism. - All right. - That's what they are. - [Someone In The audience] I
don't know how that happened. I'm so sorry. - Yeah, how did that could possibly... Oh, I thought you were apologizing. Which I thought was very sweet. No but the thing is, recently I was teaching a Greek novel from 157, 8, you know, Christian era, Daphnis and Chloe. And at one point, Daphnis the young man gets set upon by a gay character and who tries to rape
him and he pulls away and it's supposed to be very funny and he runs away and then he thinks, "well" he says "he goats
never mount he goats." and "he sheep never mount he sheep." Well, we know if you've
ever been on a farm, that sheep and goats, not to
mention dogs and farm boys, fuck everything. And I thought, well, how did this happen? And then I remembered
all of the characters, including Daphnis and Chloe are slaves. - Wow. - They are slaves and
they are in the middle of a chapter where
everybody is concerned about the master is coming. What is the master going
to think of the farm? And so the only thing
they are concerned about is pleasing the master. So all these goats and
their what have you, and sheep belong to the master. So the only sex that is important is the sex that produces offspring. And that's why suddenly the rest of the sex becomes secondary. We don't mention it. And then it moves in two generations of we don't mention it and it's evil. And that's how that process works. And so capitalism is contouring
it back there in the middle of Daphnis and Chloe, and
it's contouring it today, with, dare I say, Miley Cyrus is twerking
and everybody else is for that matter, it's an economic force. - unless you're talking... - Rages through it. - Isn't that part of what you argue, I think in Times Square
Red, Times Square Blue that it is precisely that reality, that calls forth our need for subcultures. - Yes, absolutely. - And for subculture spaces. - Yes. - You can clap for me. - Yeah. (audience applause) - And they start off that their
value is that they are not used for what they say
they're being used for. They're used for something
else that seems to be in excess or outside of what their advertised, their
capital is approved. Reason is. - The other thing that occurs to me about Times Square Red, Times Square Blue is that the men coming into
all these places weren't identifying necessarily as homosexual. - No - They had wives. They had children. And I don't think it's as
simple as to say they were... - Like me - But I think it's as simple to say that they're repressing
themselves. They're in denial. But that particular subcultural space allowed for a flexibility of sexuality. - Yeah. - Which is what I'm like, this whole bushwa-like gay thing, I'm just not feeling any of it. I'm really wanting a fluidity of sexuality and a fluidity of practice. And I think that it's almost like I was talking to Saidiya
Hartman in Glasgow. We were there with her, me and Rena were there with
her and some other people. And she was just talking
about it as this utopia, like Times Square Red,
that she was imagining. And as I said, "well, I
don't know about that," but there's this inner mixing of classes, this inter mixing of races classes, there's intermixing races
and of sexual orientation, or of sexual practice. Sexual practice is much
better word than orientation. Like you were saying with feminism, it's about what you do. I think with sex, it's about what you do too. And not sort of like this
identity that we claim because that allows us to move throughout different spaces to transgress. - And try new things. And Try new things and explore and be okay. And it's okay to try
new things and be like, "yeah, I didn't like that so much." - I think that's the red alert because that's why people are working
to destroy those spaces, to make bushwa culture, be the pervasive norm and that
people who would occupy any other kind of fluid
space, will have no space. - So what we're coming back to and what it seems like we keep
coming back to over and over, whether we're talking about
sexual practices or whether we're talking about feminism or whether we're talking about
trans and queer issues is that we're talking about
binaries and we're talking about either ORs and doing something
that we are told we need to do to produce or support this
structure that's in place. And what we really need to
come back to is the fluidity of humanity and life and
how we need to be living. And that's gonna. - Well, I actually wanna ask, one thing that struck me, is it okay if I refer to your age? - Sure, please, yes. - How old are you? - 72. - I have never been on a
panel with somebody who's 72. - The only person on
this who is older than me is Gloria Steinham. - And I was thinking about that
because I was thinking about the question of worldview
and your worldview, that you have seen the
destruction of these spaces of fluidity, et cetera. And how do you see us articulating
and finding such places in this now? - Well, the world changes and it always changes. And so it moves to various other places. I gather things are getting
a little kinky in Queens. - They are. - Yes, they are. This is what I have been told
by people who should know. My partner is notably younger than I am. He's your age, So he's a mere baby and
I think of him as such. And he's this dear sweetie. But every once in a while,
he goes out and explores and comes back and gives me
the news of what's going on. I sit there and write my books. So that's the way that worked. - What I was talking about earlier, I was saying that one of the
things that moved me so much about "Bread and Wine" in comparison to, to Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, was the thought of would that
relationship with Dennis, your lover be possible
in the New York of now because of the ways in which the homeless are being criminalized. - Okay so we have to tell
people who don't know that in his sexual adventuring
and his roaming adventuring and his nomadic experience of
New York city as a younger man Chip fell in love, not quite
fell in love right away. - If I did it was within
seconds when I first met him. - With a white homeless man. And that's what Lamar is referring to. And they've been together for 20... - 25 Years. - 25 Years. And so that's part of what
"Blood and Wine" documents, - Bread and Wine. - "Bread and Wine." That was slip. - They're catholic. But I just wonder to what
extent would that kind of love and certainly we have homeless people now but they're being erased in
their current New York moment. And they have been for a while
this like that population. Would that be possible
in this current New York that kind of, and again, not to romanticize the past, I'm never one for romanticizing the past, but I do think that there's
something of violence that's going on in, in terms of the city and what's
possible in the city now, in terms of because
we're only interested in the ruling class. Because one of the
things about that story, you were saying that the
sexuality that was about appropriation was the
only one that mattered unless you were the master. If you were the master, if you were getting with those
slaves in some kinky way, that mattered. - Right. - And so that it was only the ruling class' interest sexually they're the ones who
get to be the perverts. - Yeah, when I used to have a
friend who he used to say that the only reason for slavery
was essentially for sex and that everything else was secondary. And this was a white ex Catholic who had read everything
that had ever been written and cooked divinely. - I also am gonna get on the bandwagon of loving "Bread and Wine." One of the things that I
found, aside from just the idea of the transgressive
practice of you hooking up with a homeless person and
falling in love with this person, is that just in the way
that we described it to the audience, we didn't
even say Dennis' name, we just said, he fell in
love with a homeless person. And that's how we see homeless people. Like it's a homeless person. We don't necessarily see story or see person afterwards. We see homeless person. And what I really, really loved. I love the whole thing, but what I really loved was
after you asked him to come with you back to Amherst - Yes. And he disappears you're to your friends kind of like, "I don't know, I guess maybe it was too much too fast." and he's actually out vetting you. - Yes. - He's actually out. - That's still good. - It's brilliant. He's actually out, basically "this dude could be an axe
murderer man, like what's the." "I need to find out about
this guy, you know?" And it's such a flip of
it's not just humanizing. He's exercising his own agency here. And that's a transgressive
practice right there. Is that this script was
flipped in this way. - That's right. - Yeah. - I think that's a good note
to open up the discussion and please do not give us lectures, ask your question or
make your short comment. Tell us what you're thinking about. Yes, - I actually, yeah sorry. So I was actually thinking
about HIV aids and about how fucking, falling in
love, loving somebody who's living with HIV
aids is now considered as a sexual transgressive
act in many ways and how HIV aids is criminalized. And so just that was echoing in my mind as I was hearing you all. So any thoughts about that? - I wish I knew more people right now who were in that situation. I could speak from firsthand experience. I do know, 10, 15 years
ago, I talked to people, who were known as bug chasers and that strange subculture that was very into, actually
sexualized the disease. Okay, I think it was a little nutsy. But again, it's your body, you have to be responsible for it. I might even sit down and argue with you. Do you really want to do that? And are you sure that
that's what you wanna do, when you have that kind of conversation, you have to leave open the margin. The person's gonna say
something you don't like and go to a conclusion
that you don't like, and sometimes they do,
that's all that I can say. There's not too much I
can say more than that. - [M Lamar] Yeah, I don't have anything. - [Bell] Okay. Your question
way back there, your name? - Hi, I'm Brandon. And my question is, and I don't want it to sound
like a conservative question. I think transgression
is what we are all here and we're all interested in but just the dangers of transgression and I don't mean risk of getting hurt but I think it comes back to
something Marci was talking about, about hesitating in certain spaces because you worry about replicating patriarchy and domination. And so my question is
just more specifically, can any acts... it sounded
like you guys really appreciate Samuel's work because all
of these acts were done but they weren't the same
manipulation and domination. And so your thoughts
on can any act be done? Just is it the way that it's
done or some transgressions, like we want to push past lines, but are some lines actually
making us more free? - [M Lamar] We have to
talk about consent first. I mean that anyone involved in
any action of a sexual nature or beyond the sexual nature, both parties or multiple
parties have to be consenting. That seems to be the key
thing with any of this stuff. We gotta make sure that everyone wants it. - Your name. - My name is Annie, hi. - Hi, Annie. I'll pretend I have a microphone. I think I'm a radical artist. I think a lot about the role and the rebrading of pleasure and of art making back into radical
movement building, because I think they've been divorced. And I just wonder if
y'all could talk more, you've been talking at
it and around but more explicitly about the
role and the placement of pleasure seeking and of
transgressive sexual practice in radical movement building and pushing the world forward to a better place. - Did you ever to do gay
shame stuff in San Francisco when I was... - Yeah back with Matilda. - Yeah, the only reason why
I was doing gay shame stuff is I was just looking for some, that was pre my current boyfriend. I was just trying to get laid. And so to me that was this interesting for those of you don't
know what gay shame was, it was this radical alternative to. - Matilda Bernstein. - Yeah, exactly. To the consumerist pride sort of thing. The gay pride had become
this very corporate activity and there were groups
of us in San Francisco. I think it may actually
started in New York, but there were groups
of us in San Francisco. We were taking that on and I thought, well if I'm gonna meet anyone of interest, it would have to be in some
kind of radical context, And so it seems to me that
radical community building and radical political action go
hand in hand with fucking. Right? - Yeah, again, one of
the reasons I suppose I hesitate to accept the label of a radical sexualist or whatever. - Sex Radical. - A sex radical. That's what you call it. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Lamar, but is because I am of the old Decardian school
that I don't think there's anything that shouldn't be questioned. I think there are even times when consent is not absolutely necessary. I think I can think of a
couple of times in my own life when it's both, when people
initiated sex with me, without my saying, "Hey" without us having any kind
of conversation about it or vice versa, where afterwards
everybody was very happy - That's such dangerous assuming. - It is very dangerous.
Of course it is dangerous. But the point is context is everything. Context is everything. For your default, I think you have to have a default mode of behavior. And I think for the
default mode of behavior, I think I consent is an absolutely sane, good default mode. - And safe words. - And relatively safe. - Marci said safe words. - Safe words. - And a safe word. I have written about
both and several times, but the point is nothing
obtains in a hundred percent of the cases, and that's scary. Because it puts the
responsibility back on you rather than on the, as long as we follow the
rules, everything will be okay. Well, there are no rules that if you follow them all the time, everything will be okay. Unfortunately that's called life. - That's the truth. And sometimes. - And the dangerous nature of desire. Is desire has that capacity
to disrupt the rules. - Yes and it does again and again. - For example, I'm less interested in the whole slave and master paradigm, the reproduction of that, as I am in what allowed
some of those relationships to become humanized, to evolve into loving contact because I feel something this dominator
culture doesn't want us to understand because that's
a real transgression when you shift. That we know that a lot of, for example, white males, masters quote, tried to marry the slave women
that they were involved with. And we know this because of
the many court cases where the families were wanting that
person to be ruled insane. - Yes. - Once again, we're back to James
Brown notion of "flip it" but we don't know how was it flipped. What caused the turnaround? Because we can't say that
people started at this equal, consensual place of desire. - That's right. - We started at a place of
inequality and domination and clearly defined lines. The question is how do
you disrupt those lines? Because I think it's only in knowing that, that we will be able to create meaningful, radical revolutions. Not in the constant deconstruction
of the old paradigms. - Yeah. - I'm sorry, your name? - Mona. Hi, my name is Mona. Thank you. My name is Mona Altahari
and I'm from Egypt. I'm a dual citizen but I moved back to Egypt
last year for the revolution. I know, It's for real. - [Samuel] It's wonderful, no it's great. - We're fighting hard. - [Samuel] Yeah. - Not the theoretical,
but the real revolution. - [Samuel] I know, right? - And I just wanted to
say as a woman of color, as someone from an Arab Muslim heritage, it's so important for me that
this is a panel of people of color talking about not just sexuality, but transgressive sexuality because I believe that
our revolution will fail unless it becomes a sexual
and a social revolution. And we're often silenced, those of us who are fighting
against a military hunter and a religious fundamentalism, both of which try to shut us
down all of our expressions, especially expressions of sexuality, by saying things like "this is
a white Western luxury and a privilege and you're
just trying to recreate these imperialist colonial structures." And for me as a woman, who's not white and not imperialist. It's really important
to have all your work, especially yours Bell. I was fan-girling you the other day going, "oh my God, I'm such a fan girl of yours" because we need that because
we can't privilege race or sex. We can't privilege race over sex, but we also can't be silenced
in those most sensitive and transgressive points. So for me, I fight against monogamy. I reject monogamy as a way to
reject military establishment and religious fundamentalism. So this is just me fan-girling all of you. Thank you. - Some of you may know of my aunts, my Bessie Delaney and Sadie Delaney, who had a best seller a decade ago. - "Having our say." - "Having our say." and they were far more
famous than I have ever been or will ever be. - And they probably made more money too. - Yeah, they certainly did. They did. What was the point I was gonna make? Come on Lord. This is what happens when you're 72, you start saying one thing and
then it all falls out of your mind. I was talking about Bessie. Oh yes, sure. The book talks about basically
them and their father. What they don't talk about at the same order of social granularity
is as their mother, their mother was the daughter of a white man and a black woman. And my father was taken to see him once when he was about six or seven years old, Mylan Beauregard. In fact, I almost was
named Mylan Beauregard because my father was quite desirous. That, that should be my name. And my mother only saved me
by naming me after my fathers. You figured you couldn't
get upset with that. But anyway, when you went
to see Mylan Beauregard, he had two houses and there was a walkway kind of like the
Skyway here in the New School that went from one house to the other and it had a roof over it. And his white wife lived in
one and his black wife lived in the other and he went back and
forth between the two houses. He had no children with the white wife. Apparently she wasn't... In fact no one knows
what the real story was. Many, many people guessed, he had several children by the black wife and he was very fond. In fact, his daughter, my grandmother was his favorite daughter. But on the other hand,
he was a social pariah. As far as the neighborhood was concerned, nobody would talk to him or what have you. He had almost no social life. He would go out and shoot
a squirrel in the morning and have it for breakfast,
that kind of thing. And he was apparently
quite a, quite a character but he's the transgressive
one in the family, much more so than her
husband who was born a slave. My grandfather was a slave, not my great grandfather or
my great-great grandfather, but my grandad was actually
born a slave in this country. That's the part of the family
that tends to fascinate me, not because he was white,
but because he was so... - Transgressive. - Huh? - I said because he was transgressive. - Because he was transgressive, yes. At the time. And it was a real transgression. - I guess that brings
up or makes me think, what kind of white people do we want our white people to be? How do we want to
imagine our white people? And how can they divest of
imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy. And I mean, it doesn't sound
like he was doing that per se but he was beginning, that kind of rupture was
what Bell was talking about. So yeah. That's white people in the room. Like what kind of white
people do you want to be? - It's a question back there. Question back there. - Hi, my name is George Minacello. And I wonder if you
could expand on something you talked about before Lamar, maybe connecting the
dots between the killing of young blacks maybe caused
by the white obsession that you were talking about. - Yeah, I mean, I actually
go back to Bell Hook's text. "We real cool." When she talks about
the fact that black men could be desired, they can be admired for very sort of patriarchal sports reasons but very seldom loved. And I mean, I was like, "okay, let me sit with that for a minute" in my own life, my own sexual life. I think that it's so
ubiquitous in white supremacy that black men have this
sort of virile power that we play sports,
we do all these things that are sort of seen as hyper-masculine. And it's very simple, that
same kind of hyper-masculinity is in the white imagination. Is that fear that it
seems white people have, these police officers it's irrational. That produces that kind of like, "we need to kill this threat,
we need to put this down." That correlation seems really clear to me. Maybe I can make it clear. Maybe someone can help me this
overly sexualized black man, that we want to fuck our wives. And then eventually suck
the guys' dick ourselves. These porn fantasies, these fantasies, the pornography is so interesting because it gets inside of the psyches
of the people making them. And it it's this like private
thing that's going on that tells us a lot about ourselves. I think in terms of desire. - Well, I was thinking actually about the question of trauma because I was thinking
about Malcolm Gladwell, writing about the white males
who killed Amadou Diallo and the fact many of you in this room, if you're abuse survivors, you may understand more
fully the reality of trance and how people go into
trances when triggered or what have you. Because I think what really
struck me when Malcolm is writing about this, if
you haven't read his book is when they realized that
they had shot him so many times and he did not have a weapon, they fell on their knees and wept. But again, we don't really
talk about what did they see? we're back to that whole
question of who is looking? And what do we see? What did they see? And did what they see emerge from the fear that you're talking about Lamar? That the fear that is
triggered, that is so great, that then projects onto the other, that which must be destroyed. And we see that in so many of
these cases of people shooting people that they imagine one way. And I don't think we talk enough about the whole sort of white
people trauma around racism. I'll tell you what I think,
who has I feel represented this the best is, is Spike
Lee's "Four Little Girls." If you remember the over
white man who becomes a lawyer but when he talks about being
a little boy and hearing that his father and all these white
people that he's looked up to are actually implicated in the murder of the four little girls and how traumatic that is for him and how
that shapes his life because he can't get away from whiteness. It won't turn him loose. And so that kind of
deconstruction of that trauma, we do very little of because in terms of always talking about white privilege and white power, we don't wanna talk about how
damaged and wounded and insane white people are. I talk about patriarchy,
in psychological terms as a disease of disordered desire, but that is similar to, feeds into racism. How do we talk about that
on our television sets? How do we talk about the
projection, the trance that those men who killed John Crawford, were they unable to hear him? Or what did they hear? And it's almost like domestic violence. We know so little about the
heart of domestic violence in patriarchy. That is the violence perpetuated
by patriarchal men because they can't speak whatever
they're going through. They can't yet fully name. We are much more able to
name how we feel as victims, how we can articulate what happened to us. Than the people who are somehow driven to levels of violence, that they don't really
fully comprehend why? - I remember there was this Baldwin moment when he was giving a talk in 1986 and I think "The Color Purple"
the movie had just come out and then someone stood up and
asked him this question about "will everyone saying
that these are horrible representations of black men
and black men being violent? And so what do you have
to say about that?" And Baldwin said, "well,
I wanna know what happened to that black man." And again, this doesn't
excuse his violence, but I wanna know what
brought him to that moment of being this person who's acting out. and it's often these people who are deeply and profoundly wounded themselves. - Yeah. I just hope that the policeman who shot Amadou Diallo and fell to their knees weeping, were not weeping because they were saying, "oh shit. When internal
services get to this, there goes my fucking job." And that's what they may
have been weeping for that. I hope not. - [Bell] What a cynical person. - [Marci] But that's the line. - What about my life has made me such a cynical son of a bitch. - But that's the line, There's a video that's been circulating virally around the net. And I think it was either
in like North Carolina or somewhere in the south and actually no, it was New Jersey. I take it back, it's right here. It's New Jersey and it was caught on
dash cam by the police. This dude that they got
called to domestic violence. There's nothing, they found nothing there, so they left. And the guy who was there, left the house to go wherever and they
pulled him over on the freeway and rammed his car. Just pulled him out of the car, beat him. And as they were beating him, the guy was just like a
ragdoll being just beaten. They were yelling, "stop
reaching for your gun, stop reaching for my gun,
stop reaching for my gun." The dude, I don't even think
he knew where his hands were. Let alone to be able to
try to reach for anything because he was just getting pummeled and pummeled and pummeled. And my first reaction was "oh, they're setting it
up for their defense, that he was reaching for his gun." And then I was thinking about it later and I was just like, "or were they so programmed
that as just a black man? He was a threat. That of course that's
exactly what he was gonna do is he was gonna reach for the gun. So they were basically preempting it because they were so fearful." And that's the line, right? The line walks right between
cynicism and this trauma. - [Bell] Or stop reaching for my penis. if we wanna get psychoanalytic about it. And so what is that fear
of because then we're back to the usurping of the
dominator positionality that if you are supposed to be, nothing, we're back to Nikki
Giovanni's "Woman Poem" "I ain't shit you must be
lower than that to care." If you are the nothing. But I feel that you are
reaching for my masculinity, for my power. Then it behooves me to destroy
you, to hold onto that power. Another question. Yes. - My name is Marcello. Thank you. I'm interested in this
discussion very much. We rarely talk about sex muchless transgression on sexuality. But when you transgressed, there are a few things can happen. between pleasure and pain. But my point really on this
is what are we transgressing? Who put this line there? Why is it there? And why are we on this side of the line and being limited? - Well, I think that's what
dominated culture is all about. I think that's how we socialize children. children get socialized
very early about the lines that should not be crossed. And if we wanna talk
sexually children very much get socialized, not to
cross the sexual line, not even to acknowledge that
there is any kind of erotic feeling in their bodies and beings because bushwa culture of domination has decided that that is a
source of danger to everybody. So that can't be named in any healthy way, shape or form. So to me, I think about Fuco and the whole idea of
discipline and punishing. How do you construct the
world of the colonized that's so neat? How do you construct a world
where black people are still so hung up on color that we can't
hardly even get up in the morning without indulging in
some kind of weird perversities of color cast? Whether with our hair, with our bodies or with our gaze on someone else's body. So again, would take us
back to that whole question of reframing and urge us all to think, how do we resist and
reframe that imperialist, patriarchal white supremacist culture? Because I think that, when
I talked the other day about my house as a place where I am loved. - yes. - You wanna jump in here? - No, I was just, I
remember you were saying it. I saw it on the livestream. - I was thinking about how... because I always talk joke
about my looking for love but I was talking to
Stephanie and I was saying, "but on one hand, would that house love me if there was a man in that house?" even if he was a man that was
challenging his patriarchy or challenging patriarchy as a whole. Or is it simply impossible
within this construct of imperialist white supremacist, patriarchy? How do you feel about having
had a white male lover for so long but from the very beginning, Dennis was written out of
this grid of imperialist white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy. - One of the things that
I learned about Dennis, after we'd been together
for about six months, Dennis was very, very fond of his father. His father's best friend was
a black guy that he basically grew up and they were
practically his co-dads. It probably has something to do with why we seem to get along as well as we do. I also wanted to throw in
a little story about... You mentioned the way kids are socialized and this is about that. When daughter was about three years old, I used to worry about precisely that, especially in feminist terms. One of the things my daughter is now 40 but when she was 3, 37 years ago, there was a real dearth
of children's books with female characters,
a main female characters. Especially if they were
books about animals. And there was one of books
that I liked very, very much Called "Corduroy", maybe you know it. I see people nodding. Well, I thought I know what I'm gonna do. Cordaroy wore Oshkosh jeans. My daughter at three years
old wore Oshkosh overalls. And I thought, "aha, I have the solution. I shall quietly go with
my little felt tip pen and my white out. And I will change all the Hes to she's. And so Cordoroy will become a story about a little girl bear. And Cordoroy seemed to
be a gender neutral name. And so I picked up one day, I said, "oh, you want, you want daddy
to read your book?" "Yep." So she sat on my lap and I opened a book, she had never seen Cordoroy before. And I started reading
and I got to the first... "Cordoroy, she" and she stopped and she said, "no, daddy, no, daddy, that's a boy bear." And I thought, "aha, I have her." I said, "Cordoroy is wearing
Oshkosh jeans and is wearing just the same Oshkosh
jeans as you are reading. So why can't Cordoroy
be a little girl bear?" And she looked at me and she
said, "daddy, that's a book." It's not about what I thought was her own internalizing of gender roles. Was her internalizing
about how books are made. Books have these things, It has nothing. And she had made the
separation between books and life at three. And I was really surprised. And I thought I actually felt much better, I felt much better because I realized it was because she knew more
than I gave her credit for rather than less. And she just knew how for in books, that's the way they did it. And I found this very
reassuring in, in the long run. And so I said, "well, can we
pretend that she's a, she?" oh, well she knew all about pretending. So she said, "okay, let's
pretend that she's a she." And so I went back and I read it all. And she was perfectly fine by that. Many years later when
she was about 20, 24, 25, I thought, "I wonder
if she remembers that." And I said, "do you have any memory when I read you the story when
you were three of quarter?" And she said, "no, I don't,
I really don't remember it." And she said, "but I was going
through some of my old books and I found a copy of
Cordoroy And for some reason someone had gone through and changed all the he's to she's and I wondered why in the
world had they done that." So that's kids. - Another question. Yes. - So I'm an Ed... Oh, I'm sorry. Okay so I'm an educator in Newark and I kind of wonder... - [Bell] Her name - Tracy, my name is Tracy
and I teach everyone from about 14 to 22, maybe even older. And I'm interested in
this question kind of on a personal level of safe
spaces for people to engage in a conversation about
transgressive sexuality. And I introduce that by
saying I'm an educator because on the one hand, when
I deal with my students and I see the way they
explore their sexuality or try on their sexuality. I waiver between being like, "oh my God, shocked and offended." And like, "Damn I'm kind of jealous." And I wonder like on a personal level coming from a very kind of old school, West Indian, Caribbean
Catholic background. So even just asking this question out loud is transgressive in my family. What are some safe spaces, that as an educator, I can
enter those conversations with my students as a woman, I can enter those conversations myself? - [Bell] You know I... - And not in theory, actually in practice. - But I actually have said earlier that at different conversations
that I think books, picture books are things
that are not about what you're reading, but again, about what you're seeing are
very useful tools for opening up the possibilities of
different discussions in terms of what you see, what you look at. Do you have a response? - And I guess I would add to that. So being in academic spaces, obviously getting to have
amazing conversations about, in theory. And kind of finding that I
find myself now bumping up into a wall between what I see
in my everyday experience. Like with my friends, who are kind of, I guess they would be
considered bushwa kind of traditionalists, vanillas. Known them for years and we
won't even have a conversations about sex and then coming into or being on the border
of awesome conversations like this, where there's
language and dialogue and there's a whole world of it but there's this kind of
space in between where it's the live life, the daily practice of it, where it becomes a little difficult to. - I think we learned last
night or yesterday afternoon, at some point we learned from
Dr. Hooks over here that... oh, no, I think it was
during Laverne's talk. That we learn that it is not that it's not so much safe spaces
as it's spaces of risk. And I think ultimately that's what it comes down to. It's about the safety is
yes, we want physical safety and we don't want, anything
physic physical harm or things like that to, to come to us. But at the same time, Do we want life to live us
or do we want to live life? And if we want to live life and we want to make those choices, then we have to basically
decide that we are going to risk the conversation that we are going to risk the dialogue in order to live
the life that we want to live. And so we can create a space, a room, where we can all come and
hang out and talk about it and we can promise each other
that no one in this room is going to be harmed verbally
or physically or whatever. But the space of what we're
talking about is gonna be a vulnerable space and that is one of risk. And you might feel some kind of way. You might have some feelings
about it and that's okay but basically that's what
we've been been programmed to believe is that we're not supposed to
feel some kind of way we're supposed to be able to just sort of move through
without any conflict, everything is supposed to be safe. Well I didn't get that memo. That life was a safe space, - There was this thing
that occurred to me, I don't know if you're
talking about black people, these people with whom you are relating, who are very bushwa. Of course, lots and lots
of bushwa black people. - [Question Giver] Yeah, no they are. There was this rapper, I don't remember who the rapper is, who I guess confessed or just admitted that he
likes to get this ass eaten. Does anyone know this story? - [Audience] Drake. - Oh yeah Drake, he likes
to get his ass eaten. To me, I was like, "so, like
that's not really a big deal." But for some reason, in like the conservative
world of hiphop or whatever it was this moment where
he was being feminized and it was like, what's... - What else is new? Yeah. - I mean, don't we all like
to get our asses eaten. I mean, Bell hasn't said much about that. You could go ahead and tell us. - He just has not been in the spaces where Bell talks about that. - This is true. I mean, we have to have this
sort of like radical openness. I think that's also a term
that I'm borrowing from you, about all this stuff. And just what feels good? Let's talk about what feels good. - Yeah but... you can make the space around
you as safe as you want it. Again, another child
kind of incident comes, five or six years ago. I had an assistant who
was helping me basically throw a lot of junk outta my apartment that needed to be taken downstairs. Very nice young man. And he had a child, he had a little girl, his little girl was a little
older than my daughter. When the incident, I just told. She was about six. And so one of the things,
my sister at the time worked for the Schubert organization. She's retired now. But I figured they might
like to go see the lion king. And she seemed about the age where she would really enjoy it. She very bright little girl. So we got the father and the little girl tickets to the lion king. And they were gonna stop
by and pick up the tickets before they went. Dennis likes model trains
and so the living room happened to be covered
with Dennis's model trains. And so this young lady came
by and somehow it came up that Dennis and I were gay. She was very uncomfortable
with that, this six year old. And she was saying, "oh no,
you can't be gay, that's bad." And Her father was very surprised. And he said, "well,
where did you hear that?" "Well, it's bad." And it was like, I don't
even want to tell you where I heard. But obviously it was something
that she had picked up in school and from the other kids. So what do you do? So no, I just told her,
"relax, relax, whatever it is, it's okay." She's six years old. And so she began to play with the trains. So she was playing with the
trains and what have you. And every once in a while
she would sort of say, "and it's bad, you're gay." And then she would play some more. And then they went off
and saw the lion king, which she loved of course. How could you not, it's
just as a theatrical, it was very easy not to actually yes, but as a theatrical
spectacle for a six year old and the first Broadway
play, she really liked it and it was lots of fun for her and for her father too. But the point is simply
you have a safe place, safe spaces where you
can say, do anything. You can say, "I don't approve
of this or that the other." And nobody jumps on you in the same way that you would jump on somebody else. - But then why do we... I think the word safe to me is so loaded. - Yeah. - And so I think part
of why I like the phrase "radical openness" is I think, "okay, what does it mean to have spaces of radical openness?" Those spaces suggest to me locations of unconditional expression. So that I think we have
to go back to Adrian Rich saying "language is also
a place of struggle" because as long as we hold
onto that notion of safety, we are still buying into that binary that there is something there
to be feared that has to be countered by our construction of safety. Rather than when we talk about
spaces of radical openness, we recognize that lots of different things are possible in those spaces. You may encounter something in
such spaces that delight you but you may also encounter
something that saddens you or terrifies you. - Yeah. - We are bringing this to a close, despite Lamar's desire to share. - [M Lamar] Let's quote
you, can I just quote you? - Yes, you may. - Once upon a time Bell Hook said, I think it's "Art of my mind." "Art does not happen
in a place of safety." - Lamar is really to me, the quintessential young black
intellectual in the making, artist intellectual. And so we hope for him that
he continues to transgress as a black man, because that is a space
that people do not want black males to enter. People would rather Cornell West be the buffoon cartoon character that they can laugh at one example. And they can invite him
to speak everywhere. And not that there could be cadres of young, black intellectual men who would not be shot down in the street because they know better than to have their asses in the street. And Imperialist white supremacists. - I stay at home a lot, I do. I'll save it.... - That was a very good point. And I'm glad Bell made it. - We thank the New School,
Stephanie, Jennifer, Heather for making it possible. We thank all of you for
allowing your innocent ears to journey with us in this
space of radical openness. And we especially honor and
thank Chip Samuel Delaney. (audience applause) - And we honor you Bell Hooks. We honor you, we praise you. You are our goddess Bell Hooks. keeping going for bell hooks. Stand out for Bell Hooks,
stand up for Bell Hooks. Seriously. Bell Hooks has changed so many lives, she's everything. (audience continue to applause) - [Bell] Stand up for that
sex radical dominatrix, Bell Hooks. We saw those tendencies
in her creeping out. Thank you again for coming. Thank you for being here. - [Samuel] Thank you.
