Musings
By Brandon Astor Jones
"Some say there are nine Muses: but they're wrong. Look at Sappho of Lesbos: she makes ten." — Plato
After Plato, I read Rosanne Bersten's "Male-only space" letter (Green Left Weekly, March 25) in which she wrote about "Lisa Macdonald's article about male-only bars [being] a tad misguided". So Bersten is my muse today, but she has completely missed the point that Macdonald made so well.
Bersten asks, "Why do women want to go into gay male spaces?". The point Macdonald made has little if anything to do with whether or not women want to go into gay male bars.
For example, as an African-American man, I would not want to go into an all-white (good ole boy) redneck bar, no matter what its patrons' sexual inclinations might be. The issue is not whether I want to go into such a place; rather, it is whether I should be denied access — because of the colour of my skin — to yet another public venue.
We should be giving more access to those people who have historically been denied access most, not less.
Specifically men of colour, and in general women, have been denied too much already. I have been in prison for a very long time. I am completely heterosexual. If I were to be released today, you could bet your last money that I would not be headed for a lesbian venue, no matter how beautiful its patrons might be. Yet, I feel that if a group or an individual lesbian denied me access to such a venue their behaviour would be no different than the racist behaviour of the Ku Klux Klan.
If I could speak with Bersten, I would urge her to lighten up a "tad" when and if "straight women" approach her and others (yes, in admittedly bad taste) with "Oh what a waste!"
For it seems to me that she would be much better off in being briefly in the presence of such women instead of a sexist, racist and homophobic white/black/brown male good ole boy, who may well be inclined to bash her for no other reason than the fact that she likes women just as much as he does.
[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He welcomes letters commenting on his columns. He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G3-77, Georgia Diagnostic & Classification Prison, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA. Brandon and his friends are trying to raise funds to pay for a lawyer for his appeal. If you can help, please make cheques payable to the Brandon Astor Jones Defence Account and post to 41 Neutral St, North Sydney NSW 2060, or any Commonwealth Bank, account No. 2127 1003 7638.]