Reality Check: where I stand on gender expression and the body

Reality Check: where I stand on gender expression and the body

Jim Fouratt·Wednesday, October 2, 2019

I am again being attacked on the internet for speaking truth to political correctness regarding gender
politics. I know I have little recourse to the slander. But I am putting this statement out there for anyone who may be interested in a reality check. Character assassination has always been the tool of fascism on the right or political correctness on the left. The goal, it would seem, is to stop political debate and public discourse.

I am being dissed for a simple statement of scientific fact, taken out of context. I have fought for the
right of everyone — most specifically for gender variant people — to be able to control their own bodies. I have actively fought for the right of individuals to have access to information that will assist them in making INFORMED choices about their bodies.

I am deeply troubled, and yes outraged, at the things homophobic and transphobic people will do to
harm, bully, brutalize and even murder persons based on their gender expression.

I stand with the person attacked for their gender expression, regardless of debate over theory.  

I challenge anyone to find evidence that refutes what I have written here.

I am deeply dismayed at the deep roots of the binary rules and misogyny implanted in all of us.
Detoxing these irrational poisons is a necessary first step to authenticity and freedom in gender
expression.

For me, gender variance is the norm, not the exception. On the arc of gender expression, there is
no correct expression. This is what feminism taught me.

Remember: we live in a world of social media manipulation. We also live in a world where the right to
be different and treated with respect, dignity and equality is under attack; here in the United States,
particularly in academia and through political correctness group-think; and worldwide, as we
gender-variant and same-sex-loving individuals, of a diversity of gender expression, become more visible. 

I suggest that before you attack someone like me, you speak to them directly; confirm what is being said
about them; or interview them to find out what they actually think and what their actions have actually
been — before you name-call, judge, character-assassinate and then erase.

My decades-long friendships with Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson have been called into question
and attacked.  Yes, Sylvia was my friend until she passed. Even in the midst of the early trans attacks on
me, Sylvia and I would meet privately and talk frankly. We had spent many activist moments together
and we both knew that despite any debate over theory, we had each other’s backs. 

I am amazed at the number of people who did not know either Sylvia or Marsha who refuse to listen to
people who did!

Want to talk?  Hit me up. We don’t have to agree. But then you will know the truth of who I am and not just learn fake facts and false and fabricated fantasy.

jim fouratt 10/02/2019

History Lesson KEEPING HOPE ALIVE Or how Hujar helps me keep hope alive + real history of 1st night of Stonewall rebellion

 KEEPING HOPE ALIVE:  In these days of chaos and darkness, I will share a few things over the next few days that make me smile and help keep open my heart. Yes, my life refracts my history, the places, and the events that have shaped me and impact culture and politics in the world I have existed in from my earliest youth until today. But the deepest meaning I have,I hope,is being a queer hippie at heart full of gay spirit. A radical fairy who lives in the real external world which nurtures the spirit of love, compassion and community that builds solidarity in a natural rhythm that fuels my heart .. not easy ..but the appreciation of beauty such as in this Peter Hujar image is one of the ways I try to stay balanced.

Blessed be we say! (Note: not religion based, but spirit manifest)

PETER HUJAR: This is an image from the Peter Hujar show at The Morgan Library & Museum in NYC ( it closes on May 20^th and opens at the Berkeley Museum July 11^th through November 13^th). Peter was my lover for 3 1/2 years at a critical artistic moment in his life. I am very happy that the Morgan's Photography Curator, Joel Smith, has brought forward Peter Hujar. While I, because of my personal relationship with Peter and my involvement in the culture Peter's work is immersed in, have different insights and would have made some different choices,  I highly recommend you see the Hujar show before it moves to the Berkeley Art Museum.

It is one thing to look at photography online and a totally, I think, different experience encountering an image directly. In particular with Hujar's work this I believe to be essential. 
I suggest you take the time to really absorb the multiple layers of a Hujar image. While there may be a certain frisson that happens when encountering a room full of, mostly dead, queer, pop culture icons that dominate the curator's selection, I suggest strongly you spend quality time with each of the images. The reward will be that you will see not just the surface but the multiple layers of humanity, empathy, personal statement, and communication between the subject and the photographer. Elsewhere I will speak of what I know about Peter's practice, but here  I repeat,  you will in doing so experience the work first before distancing oneself from the aesthetic conversation that the encounter can give to you before the academic analysis of intent. 

One of the biggest disappointments for me of the Mogan Hujar show is the stripping of a photo that Peter did for me when the COME OUt cell of GLF decided we wanted to do a recruitment poster for GLF.   I organized the shoot with Peter.

I had asked Joel to include the poster next to the stripped image he had selected of people running in the street and to identify the brave women and men running, smiling and happy in the street. Brave because there was no legal protection for lesbian and gay people in the workplace etc. In fact to have homosexual sex was against the law. 

The photo was taken by Peter in a location he selected in what was then a part of Little Italy where mostly manufacturing building existed.   Later these buildings became artist lofts and the area renamed SOHO. Because of lighting etc, he later superimposed the running image on a location close to a loft we had on 16th street at Union Square. 
The story of who and why these people were in the picture and why they are all white is a story of the reality of racism and dual oppression. They all self-selected to be in the photo. Neither Peter or I excluded anyone who wanted to be in the photo.

Peter and I were lovers when the Stonewall Rebellion took place. 
By happenstance, I was on my way home that night from work at CBS/Columbia Records. At 10:30 P.M. I found myself in front of a sleazy gay bar around the corner from where I still live. I did not frequent the Stonewall Inn,  I was standing in front because as I entered the street from the subway and rounded the corner on to Christopher Street on my way home. I saw a police car parked in front of the Stonewall Inn, .Like any good radical of the '60's, (I had been involved in the Anti-war movement as an openly gay man and had been a co-founder ot the YIPPIES)  I went to see what was happening. I know what actually took place that might because I was in front of the Bar from 10:30 until the streets were re-opened to traffic around 12:15 P.M..

Around that time a group of 7 gay men met at the corner of Waverly and Waverly (yes!). It included Michael Brown, who later became with me one of the people to sit in at the Bakery on 13th street that we finally won from the City for a Lesbian and Gay Center in New York City, (rip-aids), Marty Robinson, my ex-boyfriend and a member of Mattachine's youth group. Marty became a founding member of GLF and later Gay Activist Alliance, (rip-aids), Mark Segal, who would form the Gay Youth cell in GLF and gay hippie and anarchist printer Ralph Hall (rip-aids). We decided to continue this moment the following night. We collectively organized to get the word out. Remember this was prior to cell phones, texting and the Internet etc. We succeded

What happened in the streets is for me the spark of rebellion that changed history forever everywhere for same-sex loving people.  It was not a celebration of another police raid on a gay bar, It was a rebellion against oppression both external and internal. 

STONEWALL  was NOT a riot. Stonewall was a REBELLION.! (WHEW!)
Note: when I use the word “beauty” I am not referring to “pretty” or “decorative.” I intend to be inclusive of empathy, humanity and visual excitement, I include the possibility of horror and shock as a component of beauty...when executed as an intentional aesthetic choice.

jim fouratt May 11, 2018 

I am also including  few images in color that apparently Joel did not have access to or thought were not representative of the Hujar he was curating

Vince Aletti and I on the beach on Fire Island.on a windy day.. that is a dried piece of seaweed I found in my hand, I was reading "Two Serious Ladies" by Jane Bowles and had it with me ...Peter always referred to this photo as "Two Serious Ladies."  

I just like this photo of me and Vince. We were close back then..He was a writer at RAT an alternative newspaper. I thought Vince was a brilliant short story writer.   I introduced him to Peter. They lived across the street from each other for years and Peter introduced him to the art of photography. They were best friends until Peter died.

Another fire Island trip when Peter and I stayed at Sam' Green's house in Ocklyville just past the Sunken Forest.  Sam's other guest was Greta Garbo and companion. (!)

How the iconic PETER HUJAR COME OUT image is stripped of its political meaning and used without context .. by a museum with good intentions

It is sad to see the misuse of a photo by the Leslie Lohman museum.

Background: 

the photo was taken in October of 1969. It is taken from a shoot that was arranged to provide an image for a recruitment poster the Come Out cell of the Gay Liberation Front wanted to make. My lover at the time was Peter Hujar. I asked him if he would do the shoot . He agreed. It was announced at the weekly general meeting of GLF for three weeks that we were taking a picture for GLF's recruitment poster. The location that Peter chose was Wooster Street in little Italy aka now SoHo. I announced at the meeting that it was to be shot on the second Sat of October.Anyone who would show up at 10 AM would be in the photo. It was Peter's idea to have a photo taken of people running in the street. On the day of the photo shoot the people that you see in the photo showed up as well as some others including a gay man of color Ron Ballard. Ron later told me when he rounded the corner to enter Wooster Street, he saw a group of us gathered together He told me that he saw his grandmother's face in front of him. He was not out to her. He said he also realize that he was working in the New York City public schools system; That he could very well lose his job if anyone saw this photo so he turned around and went home. It was my first lesson in understanding dual oppression. A series of shots were turned them over to the come out collective. A very typical deep GLF discussion took place within the cell about what the language on the poster would be.It was decided :

  It would say on the top, COME OUT and at the bottom JOIN THE SISTERS AND BROTHERS OF THE GAY LIBERATION FRONT. I don't think that most young people today realize for people to be out running down the street proclaiming their same sex love and affection fused with erotic pleasure was both dangerous and very courageous,. This group represented the end of the closet and assimilation politics that the homophile movement represented ,,GLF was not single issue and had gender parity in its organizing. We wanted to build a revolution for all people with Out lesbians and gays participating equally. . It was to be our version of the Black Panther party recruitment poster. That Leslie Lohman would appropriate a political photo, strip it of its essential meaning is very sad to me. I am sure it was well intended. Sad is how queer academia fails so often to correctly identify the critical symbols of our liberation struggle. The man in the striped shirt is not John D’emilio, one of my favorite historians, It is Stephen E Dansky. Dansky joined GLF in August of 1969 and joined the Trotskyist Red Butterfly cell. Also in RB were historian and author John Lauritzen, John Knoebel (who later worked for years in the Advocate business office) and John O'Brien. Dansky was active in GLF for about four months and left to join the Effeminists a group founded by the poet Kenneth Pitchford, a gay man married to leading feminist Robin Morgan. The Effeminists denounced the men in GLF as sexist and misogynist . Dansky soon after left active political life and became a psychologist . After his retired Dansky decide to record GLF's radical history. Unfortunately one of the things he did was claim that the GLF photo shoot took place in what is now called Chelsea and publish a series of articles based on his flawed research. When I brought to his attention that Peter had been my lover and I had set up the shoot and knew where it took place, he insisted although he could not remember the location that his research convinced him it was in Chelsea.It was frustrating having him be so dismissive of the actual historical fact., He told me I had made it up . Other than that nightmare experience, Dansky has made a valuable contribution to recording lost history . He did video record interviews with a group he selected to tell of their personal experiences of GLF and/or the first year of Gay and Lesbian liberation. I am grateful he did those interviews. Nicos Diaman , an original member of GLF who lives in SF also has done filmed interviews. He attempted to make a documentary.But could not raise sufficient money to complete it . But these archival materials have been preserved for a future historian, When Yale acquired my archives it contained the original mechanicals of the Come Out Poster. Among the brave and courageous people in this emblematic photo are : Bob Bland (rip), Earl Galvin (rip) John Erdman,jim fouratt,  Lyn Farley , Judy ? Fran Winant (one of the original subjects in Martin Duberman “STONEWALL” who he dropped when she refused to sign off unless he took out his psychological judgements of her out. He refused, she didn't sign and the book in my view lost the voice of a lesbian there at the very beginning. Duberman quickly recruited Carla Jay who had joined about the same time as Steven Dansky} Carl Miller, Dan Smith and Michael Yarr. I believe Lois Hart was standing next to her lover Suzanne but cut out for composition reasons from the photo There remain five women whose names at the moment I can't pull up but I am sure others will add.

Leslie Lohman should have never detached this image from its history and purpose.

Jim fouratt March 29, 2016

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