Thinking about Icons

GCN’s recent uninspiring or should that be uninspired list of queer icons got me thinking about the kind of people who have fulfilled that role in my own life:

I take my queer icons seriously. Maybe because coming out in 1980 meant you had to take yourself seriously because by God every homophobe within a 10 mile radius took the presence of a queer seriously. So seriously, they sent you death threats. And in a place like The North, where 1 in every 10 was much more likely to have access to guns than a homosexual orientation, you took the threats seriously.

I lost count of the death threats a long time ago, the ones that linger in memory are the more creative ones: opening up the community centre one morning to find that the early morning Brit Patrol had left a rather graphic depiction of what I needed to make me straight spray-painted on the wall, the postcard from Alicante signed with the pseudonym used by loyalist paramilitaries, sent to my mother’s address where I no longer lived, telling her that I was HIV positive and should be erased ( I still have that postcard), or the phone call at 3am in the morning to my family home to communicate the intention that a better job would be done on me than on Bernadette Devlin ( who had just survived an assassination attempt.

So having queer icons to respect, to emulate and gain strength from was a lifeline that kept me afloat. I was reminded this week of one of the earliest people who threw me such a lifeline because she has just paid a flying visit to Dublin. I first saw Peggy Shaw and her partner and co-performer, Lois Weaver in 1984 in the Old Museum Arts Centre situated near the junction of what was the nocturnal wasteland of Belfast City Centre and the entrance to the Lower Falls Road. Split Britches blew me away. I had never seen two mature, challenging, elegant, articulate dykes stand on a stage in the full power of their butch and femme personae to critique with style, intelligence and such incredible sexiness the society and culture we lived in that denigrated queers and women who refused to conform. None but the brave came to Belfast in those days and these two women were heroic. Split Britches were the first activist-performers I had ever encountered and my world stretched and luxuriated in the possibilities that their very existence presented.

In the years since, I have been privileged to meet, hear, see and be mentored by a panoply of diverse women and men who taught me to question accepted views, take courage in who and what I am, to understand the importance of celebrating the perverse and to revel in the unorthodox. People who demonstrate the art of the possible by using the experience of discrimination to envision change. They are my icons, not all of them queer, but who gave this queer faith- the strugglers, the dissenters, the architects of challenge and change, trade unionists, poets, musicians, journalists, inner city community activists and even an Irish President; those who speak, write and sing out, naming shame and calling it oppression, the questioners of authority who call out hypocrisy and refuse bigotry a hearing. Women and men who stand for the weak and the vulnerable, embracing those of us perceived as different and dangerous.

My icons have to inspire me, to teach me, to include me, to lift my spirit and keep me hopeful. And there aren’t too many of those chatting on couches on RTE daytime television.