My First Trail Run After COVID: Connecting the Dots Between Ongoing Colonization, Taylor Swift, (White) Lesbian Lore, and How Representation Won’t Save Us
I slam my car door shut after stringing my key to my shoelace and tying a double bow. It’s Sunday around 5pm and the parking lot of this state park I frequent for trail runs is nearly full. A group of highschoolers spill out of the car next to me. After a few arm swings, I start up the trail that wastes no time gaining elevation. I had to show these punks who they were dealing with so I launch into my regular pace up the rocky hill. Am I the asshole? Yes, yes I am.
Growing up I always insisted I wasn’t competitive. I dabbled in soccer, track, cross country, and I have four siblings. Anxiety would swell in my chest at the idea of competing, or my performance being compared to others. This is why I’ve always gravitated towards more solo sports like running, climbing, and mountain biking. Of course, all of these can have a competitive manifestation, but when you do it recreationally it’s not like you’re competing against a team.
“I’m not competitive at all,” “I hate competition,” I would assert. But now in my older, wiser 34-years of age I realize this might’ve all been a ruse to distract from the possibility that I’m so competitive I’d rather not even compete at all to avoid the risk of losing. When I was younger I also struggled with the desire to be liked, and being competitive didn't seem like a good strategy for making friends. But thank goddess my desire for likeability has always lost out to my values and integrity, and my conviction to never compromise my truest expression. I’ve refused to let my yearning to be liked obstruct my commitment to speaking truth to power, which has created lots of ruptures and upheaval in my relationships on and offline – something I’ve had to learn how to navigate, accept, and grieve.
Halfway through this uphill that usually feels casual, I’m struck by the fact that I’m still recovering from my first time with COVID that I caught a week and a half prior. My lungs and chest began to heave. They hardened and turned metallic. I was being stabbed from the inside by multiple, freezing, dagger-like icicles. I made it to the top, unusually out of breath, shaking, and nauseous. Not even “Pretending” by Fletcher could keep me going.
What made me even more nauseous and disturbed is thinking about how irresponsible our government has been about this ongoing, ever-present pandemic. Like many disability activists have stated, COVID is a mass disabling event, and like all of our society’s ailments, this disease particularly and exponentially impacts Black and Brown communities.
Between COVID, the genocide in Palestine, Sudan, the Congo, and countless other countries, as well as the death of my last grandparent, my Grandma, I’m thinking about death, dying, legacy, living, and life constantly. I no longer feel like the same person I was last year.
Adding to this feeling of death and rebirth, I finally came out of the hazy slumber that is compulsory heteronormativity and embraced my bisexuality last summer. “Hazy slumber” feels somewhat accurate because I feel more awake, attuned, and alive than ever, but it’s also too benign because compulsory heteronormativity is metaphorically, and sometimes literally, suffocating with its heavy-handed suppression and repression.
As I clambered over the uneven terrain, I found myself thinking about that feeling of suffocation, while simultaneously, very literally, having a difficult time breathing. COVID is definitely not like other girls. COVID isn’t the flu or the common cold, yet the CDC and so many in our society still want to treat it this way.
COVID is the Only Girl Who Can Say, “I’m Not Like Other Girls”
This internalized misogynistic phrase, “I’m not like other girls,” is at once a plea to be adored by the male gaze, to be seen as different, better than, and more desirable than other women, and also a way to view each other as competition – only. It’s an intentional tool of the white, cisheteropatriarchy that walls us off from being true comrades and confidants in solidarity with each other in our shared struggles.
Even more, this further reinforces compulsory heteronormativity. If the goal is to “not be like other girls,” and to compete with each other to win the attention of the male gaze, then we’ll never come to know women as potential romantic, sexual, or life partners. In every realm inside of white supremacy and capitalism we’re conditioned to compete with each other and aspire to be individualistically superior. White cisheteropatriarchy also creates real and/or imagined scarcity. As women we’re conditioned to believe that we’ll only be safe, successful, and resourced if we’re partnered with a man. We’re conditioned from birth to believe that our purpose in life is to procreate (this is usually not overt conditioning). Women cultivating sexual and romantic relationships with each other is bad for capitalism, and therefore, bad for white supremacy.
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In her book, The Witch and Caliban, Silvia Federici explains the history and motivations behind witch hunts and how before these events women were practicing mutual aid, and helping each other survive, even providing contraceptives or abortifacients. Federici and Alice Markham-Cantor illustrate in this Scientific American article that when the powerful and wealthy began privatizing land, water sources, forests, etc. women of medieval Europe and much of the Global South were cut off from their close relationship with the natural world where they would harvest food and medicinal herbs. Federici also describes the connection between the oppression of women’s sexuality and capitalism, and the image of women that was being constructed and engineered in the literature of the 17th and 18th centuries.
“Many women had their own gardens,” Federici elaborates in an interview.
“They knew the properties of plants…of roots, flowers. And they were the doctor. So, these were women who had a certain power. Often, they predicted the future. So, there’s the figure of the healer and she represents something in the community. And you have an attack on popular powers. You have an attack on mutual aid…There’s also the woman who is supposed to be promiscuous. There is a whole campaign on the question of sexuality and procreation. So, I’m trying to show that the witch hunt is also a way for the state and capital to begin to exert a new type of control over the body of women, control procreation. Make sure the procreation is productive…that women used sexuality in a productive way to give birth.
Federici continues,
“And also, sexuality has to be controlled. Sexuality is seen as something that can subvert social order. It can subvert people’s relation to work. It can subvert class differences, so that the body of women begins to be portrayed as something that is dangerous. It’s [a] place of dangers that have to be neutralized…Out of the witch hunts comes a whole new disciplinary regime. It’s clearly what becomes the norm for women in capitalism. The witch hunt is a defeat on the power of women…an attack on the social power of women. And it’s also a preparation of women to take on particular tasks. She becomes the unpaid workers. She is the one who is portrayed as not having much reason, being weaker in a reasoning power and needing to be controlled by men. The witch hunt is really the condition towards the new sexual division of labor. ”
In conclusion, we all already knew that being lesbian, bisexual, and queer is a threat to social norms, but did you realize it’s a threat to our capitalist economy — the ability of those in power to accumulate, exploit, and profit from labor?
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I’m not proud to admit that my bout of COVID allowed me hours and hours of scrolling on Instagram and Tik Tok, but the blessing (and curse?) was that I went down, down, down the Lesbian Lore rabbit holes (I’m still processing). We are as feral, chaotic, and problematic, as we are beautiful, magical, and powerful.
I’m a “baby queer” as they say, and so I find myself obsessively researching and absorbing all the lesbian and queer media I can. As a later in life bisexual/lesbian, I feel behind. I had to pause and stop myself at 2am one night. I’m on a Lesbian Lore diet for a little while now (until after I’m done writing this essay). Of course, it makes sense: this urge to play “catch up,” to grieve what feels like lost time, and resentment and rage at the systems that have kept me from my truth all these years.
The biggest gut punch is the fact that this is probably why I've not been able to build a real, lasting community – because I've been trying to fit myself into straight spaces, and build relationships with people who are striving towards cis, heteronormative, nuclear family goals. This never resonated with me because the nuclear family is one of the tools that white supremacy and capitalism use to divide and isolate us. (You can learn more about this here, here, and here). I was never quite able to execute my assigned role in this play. I’d like to thank Uranus opposing my Venus, as well as the Venus Retrograde last year, for the much-needed, albeit messy and sometimes very painful, shake-up.
We Should Still Be Continuing to Mask – Even If We’re the Only One
COVID is the only girl who can say she’s not like other girls because it’s not the flu, it’s not the cold, and it’s not a seasonal virus. I feel the need to say it again: COVID a mass disabling event. This ever-present pandemic is the result of the negligence of the United States government. The genesis of this disease is the result of ongoing colonization, not bats or China (a racist claim).
At the top of the trail, finding myself suddenly coughing (when this was not even a symptom I had when I was COVID positive), panting, and needing to sit down for a while, I look out across the Mnisose, the so-called Mississippi River.
In 2021, the CDC changed the COVID guidelines for staying home from ten days to five days after receiving pressure from Delta Airlines, and now they’re completely getting rid of any isolation period. This change in the guidelines is arbitrary, not backed by science, and only serve the country’s corporate interests and gains. If the government needs people to work to stay afloat then the CDC’s recommendations will reflect that. This change really just means that this country is intolerant to you staying home from work even if you’ve contracted a disease. A “profit over people” ethos will always be at the root of every decision this country makes, Toi Smith teaches.
Catching my breath, I play connect the dots in my head, as someone with a Lexapro prescription and a Scorpio stellium often does. My mind went from one dot to another: our capitalistic medical industry and how this pandemic is related to the AIDS epidemic. I thought about Jessica Pettway, and other Black women, who are routinely, exponentially killed by medical apartheid. I thought about the U.S. government’s complicity in the current genocide of Palestinians, and how Joe Biden knew the Settler Colony of Israel was indiscriminately bombing people, and targeting hospitals.
As I studied the texture of the limestone cliff band I was sitting on, the proliferation of cop cities across the nation sprang to mind, and how Tortuguita’s murder and the attempt to clear cut the Welaunee Forest is a glaring, devastating example of environmental racism, and how it’s always Black, Indigenous, and queer people of color who are on the frontlines fighting for liberation for all.
I’m currently living in the city of so-called St. Louis, Missouri and everytime I drive past the Arch I’m reminded of its violent, racist history. What’s now a “protected” national park, was once home to thriving Black businesses and neighborhoods. Look into the history of any city or suburb and you’ll probably learn a similar truth.
Are Queer, White Women Taylor-Swifting Our Art and Content?
This morning as I sat down to write this, (like the stereotypical Libra who loves gossip that I am), I was first compelled to look into some Lesbian Lore about Amber Bain of The Japanese House. I was “today-years-old” when I found out the singer behind The Japanese House isn’t Japanese and is, in fact, a white woman. As I looked at her pictures in my Google search, my eyes went wide and I felt lied to and cheated, shocked even. But it’s not really shocking because as white women this is what we do: claim cultures and names that aren’t ours. I really thought I was supporting a Japanese artist until today, and that is beyond unacceptable and truly harmful.
In this search, I also came across an interview with Amber Bain where she discusses her relationship with Matty Healy and responds to a question about his misogynistic, and racist remarks and behavior. She says, “...ultimately, here’s someone that on a personal level has been so supportive of me and inspirational – there is no denying that he is an incredible musician and incredible songwriter.”
I thought that we would all be on the same page about toxic, abusive, racist, sexist men after the virality of Tarana Burke’s #MeToo movement, but I guess not.
As white women, time and time again, we act as agents of the patriarchy and protect the cis, white men in our lives. We prioritize being likeable, palatable, and “safe,” over centering our morality, justice, values, integrity, and solidarity. The joke is on us though because being likeable never made anyone more safe inside of these oppressive systems.
Before realizing my queerness, I knew as white people we are all complicit in white supremacy. But it was this morning, as I compiled all of this data about queer white women, between people on Reddit justifiably calling King Princess and Taylor Swift mediocre, and reading up on the “eras” of Fletcher and Shannon, that it sunk in for me on a bodily, felt level that as queer, lesbian, gay, bisexual, etc. white women, we’re just too comfortable profiting and benefitting from white supremacy to truly challenge it. I’m hit over the head all over again by Ericka Hart’s words, “Being queer doesn’t absolve you of your racism.”
I’m curious about my unhinged deep dive into “famous LA queers.” I know it’s because I’m still figuring out my identity and this is me trying to find where I fit in the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. While I’m gentle with myself about this very understandable impulse, I’m trying to consume this content as mindfully as possible, remembering that social media and Youtube is almost solely sustained by parasocial relationships.
Celebrity culture is a form of white supremacy and while I let myself briefly indulge in this impromptu binge, I’m also reflecting on how Ericka Hart has time and time again illuminated the way celebrities, like Taylor Swift for example, are glorified and platformed in order to de-radicalize us. White women who have the biggest platforms in our society tend to stay away, respond with lukewarm platitudes, or adopt a “neutral stance” (which is a political choice in and of itself – in other words take Brene Brown off her pedestal) when it comes to the issues that really matter, like advocating for a permanent and lasting ceasefire in Palestine. This sounds like an obvious statement, but I think it bears elaborating.
Like Ericka Hart points out, Taylor Swift’s music, images, and brand is mass-produced in order to distract us, specifically white women (especially if you’re invested in Gaylor vs. Hetlor conspiracy theories or search obsessively for her Easter eggs), from being active participants in resisting systems of oppression. Celebrity culture breeds a fandom that allows no room for critical thought or nuance. Hollywood’s sole purpose is to actively distract us from being involved in freedom and liberation struggles.
Most famous white women queers are still subscribing to patriarchy and white supremacy. Through all of this content I’ve consumed I’ve yet to see one of them meaningfully address and call for an end to the occupation in Gaza (and all occupations globally, including the U.S., occupied Turtle Island). And no, a pin to a racist, misogynistic award show doesn’t count. I’ve never seen these “famous LA queers” talk about the fact that the water that gives them life comes from Payahüünadü, an issue that Jolie Varela, founder of Indigenous Women Hike, and many other Indigenous activists have been speaking about for years. LA’s water supply is a result of the ongoing “water wars” between the Indigenous communities of Pamidu Toiyabe (the Sierra Nevada) and Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP).
We Need to Stop Obsessing Over Representation
In an interview on the podcast Made it Out, Shannon Beveridge and Mal Glowenke talk about representation, and Shannon describes not being able to see the kind of queerness that resonated with her growing up. She reflects on how the only examples of lesbians she had to go off of were, “...Ellen, and my P.E. and volleyball coach. Great representation for some people. It was not hitting home.” And while I enjoyed this interview overall, this comment felt like a glossing over of what could’ve been a really rich, and much-needed discussion about harmful, lesbian tropes.
I saw myself in much of what Beveridge shared in this conversation because I’m also a queer, cis, white girl from an upper-middle class, suburban background who grew up under the social norms and codes of whiteness, religion, and patriarchy. But what also came up for me was the fact that neither Beveridge nor Glowenke mentioned the specific looming, overarching, root issue that they chalked up to “representation.”
The issue isn’t a lack of “representation.” It’s an issue of white, cisheteropatriarchy that has historically, carefully, and intentionally concocted a narrative and caricature of lesbians that demonizes and dehumanizes us. Beveridge continued her recollection of her P.E. teacher by sharing, “There was like a window to her office of the girl’s changing room, and I just remember everyone always being like, ‘Ew! She’s gonna watch us change!’” We’ve been force-fed, whether overtly or subliminally, the belief that lesbians are predatory, aggressive, and just trying to be men. Beveridge clearly didn’t approve of her childhood peers responding like this, but she also missed the opportunity to elaborate on why this was harmful.
It’s lazy and irresponsible for us as white women to have these platforms and not be pushing ourselves to speak about these issues with necessary nuance and critique. This, of course, didn’t seem like an intentional glossing over, but it’s important to note that there’s still an impact, and as white, queer women we’re still not getting to the heart of the matter. Yet, we want to have podcasts and create art that talks about gender and sexuality. We need to push ourselves to specifically and explicitly speak about interlocking oppressions that result in homophobia, and layer in analysis of how ongoing colonization and white supremacy are the culprits of this pervasive, societal fear-mongering of lesbianism.
While I could easily walk away from this kind of media feeling affirmed and seen to some degree because I’m a white woman and call it a day, I came away from this popular white queer media feeling like there was a giant void. I was left unfulfilled because any conversation that’s lacking substantial consideration of the intersecting impacts of race, class, and gender is incomplete. As white women queers (especially those of us with platforms) it’s our duty to interrogate and analyze how race and class have impacted our understanding of, and relationship with, sexuality and gender. Without this, it’s simply not the whole truth. In other words, it’s not a conversation based in reality.
Whether we realize it or not, the majority of us white women are trying to make art and content like Taylor Swift. We’re Taylor Swift-ing ourselves when we make art that, unwittingly or not, centers whiteness, and disregards our positionality and power.
Like Nina Simone said, “An artist’s duty as far as I’m concerned is to reflect the times…and at this crucial time in our lives, when everything is so desperate, when everyday is a matter of survival, I don’t think you can help but be involved…we will shape and mold this country or it will not be molded and shaped at all anymore. So, I don’t think you have a choice. How can you be an artist and not reflect the times? That to me is the definition of an artist.”
I’m disheartened that the majority of us queer, white women are still investing in individualism, white feminism, and navel-gazing. As anti-racist educators like Hart consistently teach, gender and sexual oppression in this country is a result of ongoing colonization. Queerness and transness is older than white supremacy and capitalism, and will outlive these systems of violence. As I’ve been consuming the queer media that the algorithm shows me, I’m grappling (again) with the fact that as white women we’re still failing each other, and our Black and Indigenous queer siblings, by not returning to this reality. Our conversations about queerness, sexuality, and gender should always include an analysis of race and class, otherwise we’re only helping ourselves and those whose identities match ours.
Queerness is a Politic as Much as it is an Identity
After sitting for as long as I needed at the overlook, I give into my exhaustion, listen to my body, and start walking back to my car down the hill.
COVID is not like other girls and she’s the only one who can say this, but I have a sneaking suspicion that as white, queer women we’re still struggling with wanting to assert to the world that we’re not like “those queers.” Or, we’re not like “those lesbians.” Otherwise, why wouldn’t we we have felt empowered by the knowledge that our really funny, encouraging, and warm P.E. coach (shout out to Ms. Edwards from Lake Zurich, IL) was a lesbian?
And herein lies the crux.
It’s not that we need representation of queer women who fit our aesthetic choices and style in order to be our fullest, most authentic selves. We don’t necessarily need “chapstick lesbian” or “lipstick lesbian” representation. We need a world where Indigenous children like Nex Benedict are still alive, safe, and protected. If we lived in that world, we wouldn’t feel disconnected from our lesbian P.E. teacher or volleyball coach. Because harmful lesbian stereotypes wouldn’t be the water we drink. If we focused less on representation, and more on dismantling the systems of white supremacy, capitalism, imperialism, and ongoing colonization we wouldn’t grow up encumbered by these suffocating, toxic white, European, colonialist, binary gender and sexuality silos.
In an interview for the The Michigan Chronicle, Ericka Hart said, “...visibility does not equal justice or freedom, and I think that we’ve been sold that lie by neoliberalism — that if you see yourself in the media, then that somehow means that you’re free. And it just couldn’t be further from the truth, right? 2021 is going to be the deadliest year for trans and non-binary murders, and we’re probably very visible in the media, and maybe the most visible in 2021 than any other year, but that didn’t keep us safe.”
I emerge from the (white) Lesbian Lore rabbit hole feeling underwhelmed and even a little disappointed because the white queer creators that have the biggest platforms aren’t interrogating the elephant in the room: whiteness. Just like listening to Taylor Swift, it’s fun, catchy, indulgent, and resonates because I’m also a white woman, but ultimately, I know it’s empty, void of true substance, and reinforces the status quo. Our ability to be our fullest, truest selves requires a constant investigation into our commitment to the construct of whiteness (something Kenya Budd, an Equity and Inclusion consultant in so-called Portland, Oregon taught me, and also something that is brilliantly discussed on the podcast Seeing White), because issues of gender, race, and class are inextricable and omnipresent.
“As folks who identify whatever way that you do, getting interested in yourself, in your own identities, how white supremacy plays a role in your identities, right? And then from there, like, if everybody’s doing that work, media’s gonna start reflecting some sort of self reflection, rather than in trying to, you know, make way or make space for an identity that they don’t share,” explains Ericka Hart. “But rather, they actually investigate and interrogate their own identity. Like, what actually opens up from doing that work?” More of us white, queer artists, writers, creatives, and content creators need to reflect the times, cultivate that self reflection Ericka Hart is talking about, and give up on the myth that visibility is going to save us.
Back at my car, I untie my laces, retrieve my key from my shoestrings, and drive home to the soundtrack of Black Belt Eagle Scout’s, “The Land, The Water, the Sky.”
