Interview with Bill Bowick

Bill Bowick's Lady Baltimore cupcakes are almost--almost--as famous as his really awesome spectacles. When you ask any given Charlestonian if they've been to Sugar Bakeshop, they'll say, "Oh, is the place run by the guy with the really cute spectacles? I love those things!" But besides the beloved eyewear, there are many things to love about Bill. For example, he moved all the way to Charleston with his partner, David, from New York City, to bestow the cookies and smiles readily available at his bakeshop upon us undeserving philistines. What else is there to love, you may ask? Well, read on, fair patron, and see for yourself...that is, if you can get past the most awesomest spectacles ever.

Tell me a little bit about yourself, where you’re from.

I was born in Cartersville, Georgia, but I was only there for a few months. My Dad is a Baptist minister, so my family moved a good bit when I was young. I grew up mostly in Chattanooga, I would spend my winters and fall there, and my summers in Charleston with my Dad. My parents divorced when I was eleven, and my Dad’s family was from Charleston and my Mom’s was from Chattanooga. So I would come to Charleston when most people were leaving because of the heat. It was a very interesting place, it was a different city then. I’m glad I was here then. At the time, I wasn’t very well entertained, I was pretty bored, but in retrospect it was a pretty interesting time to know Charleston, it was more off the beaten path.

So what brought you back here?

I really wanted to be in a smaller community where I could make more of an impact. And I knew Charleston. It’s such an interesting, charming, vital city, especially for a city of its size. I actually like the small size of it. When I was younger I wouldn’t have appreciated that but I do now. I had this idea of opening a business, but the idea of doing that in New York sounded so cut-throat, and maybe more difficult than it really needed to be, and we were kind of looking for a whole lifestyle thing, so for all of those reasons Charleston came up on our radar.

What motivates you to do what you do?

I like to do things for people, I like to make people happy. There are a lot of people with negative energy in the world, and it’s hard to be negative all the time. The whole time I lived in New York I had to remind myself not to smile too much. I feel like here I can just be myself and be happy and I can do this thing that I love to do for other people, thereby making them feel good. And baking is creative. In architecture, a creative thought might take a year or two, minimum, to be implemented. So I love the instant gratification from baking, it’s great and it’s very aesthetic, even in the approach, and in the final result.

Tell me about your original idea for Sugar, and how it’s developed.

The idea for Sugar is that we would sell small baked goods, and we wanted everything to be fresh, and local. I know its so trendy right now to be local. We see that as a sea change in the way people think. I hope that in the next few years, it won’t even be that big of a deal to identify as local, you’ll just expect that it would be. But we did want that, too. We wanted it to be local, fresh, and made from scratch. So that was the major concept. The name ended up being one of the most difficult things for us to decide on. We hit upon “Sugar” because, as architects, we like things that are pure and elemental. I like the idea of things that can be read in two ways as well, and there’s a lot of that in “Sugar, it’s a term of endearment in the South. So people can read it in two different ways, and appreciate it in both.

Tell me about an interesting experience you’ve had as a result of being in the community in such a public way, and owning a business.

Well, recently there was an article in the paper about us and out of the blue, we got a little note from another couple saying how great it is to see a positive impression of a gay couple in the community. That’s something that we really made an effort towards when we moved here. I have to admit, having grown up in the South, it was a little bit scary, because I had grown up here years previous, and I wasn’t sure what kind of reception we would get. I thought people might even avoid our store because of that. And we just decided that we were going to be--not in your face--just natural, and even in New York, sometimes you have to strive to make that happen. It feels real comfortable to us. We’ve had lots of positive interactions from people coming into the shop.

How do you define community?

To me a community has to be people who are bonded and working together. My utopian community is that everybody is there. I am not an elitist, I really want everyone to be there. Thats a good thing, to me, whereas a lot of people don’t want certain elements. That’s community, everybody is there and you’re dealing with each other.

What are three things you would want to see happen in Charleston in the next year?

Gay marriage would be a nice thing. I would also like to see more gay clubs in high schools, more outreach programs to younger people. I know there’s some of that, but I’d like it to become a normal thing, rather than an unusual thing. I would like to see a gay pride parade in downtown Charleston. I really am so happy that the parade happened this past year, but I feel like to really own it in this area, the parade needs to be downtown.

What projects are you currently involved in in the community?

I’m organizing the Halloween parade and fair, which is something that is new that I came up with because of community. This is a busy area, with a lot of streets that run through it, and we’re trying to create a cohesive community rather than something you just pass through. We’ve reached out to all different groups, we hope everybody will be there. I really want it to be a creative thing.

We also give our leftovers away to My Sister’s House and a soup kitchen. We also help with the YMCA.

Tell me what you think about the state of the gay community in Charleston. What do you think we have going on here? What do you think we could work on? What do you think are our strengths?

Well one of the greatest things is that campaign that AFFA had along the interstate. The thing is that--not just in Charleston but in the South--people really hid. I had friends who I grew up with, who stayed in the South, and they really lived through difficult times because of it. What I’m really looking for in the Charleston gay community is for people to feel at ease to be themselves. I really want that to happen, not for my own reasons but for everybody's happiness. They should be free to live their lives and not worry or live in fear or hide. They shouldn’t have to hide...One of the things that other cities have that I wish we had was a gay publication. they have them in lots of places, even Savannah has one. A little publication, a great guide, that really helps gel the community, it has ads for people who live and work here, it has events that are going on, it has ways to meet people, groups that are meeting. It’s a one-stop thing and you can take it with you.

How do you define queer?

I am really infatuated with the idea of ownership of things, like when you talk about derogatory terms for someone. My partner David doesn’t really like me to use this, but sometimes I’ll use the term queer in a powerful way. It’s all about how you think about it. I do think we are different, and that’s a great thing. If a white straight guy was different he’d celebrate, and we shouldn’t be ashamed of being different, we should celebrate it and be happy about it. I don’t totally know the roots of the term, but it comes from otherness and difference. I think it’s a good thing, a term that we can use to empower us.

Name one stereotype that has been deployed against gay people and debunk it.

Let’s talk about promiscuity and relationships. In the seventies, people used to talk about that a lot. Most of society was in these monogamous relationships, and it was like look at these gay people, they’re sleeping with everyone they have no relationships, they can’t even do it, they’re too childlike, you’d hear things like that. What I really think is that what we were missing was the institution of relationships in gay heritage. There wasn’t much written about it, and people didn’t really even--you know, in my generation, we were inventing how to be a gay couple that would stay together for a while. So I think we have that now, we have that example, so I think, you know this whole thing about gay marriage--it’s not so important that we have to be exactly like everyone else, but we should have that capability, and I think that when you look at the fact that we are striving to be in these relationships and have them be named legitimate, that really debunks that theory. We’re the same as everybody else. We may have our faults, but humans are social creatures. So that’s a myth.

What is your definition of feminism, and do you think it’s important to the LGBTQ movement and community?

Yeah, I think, and I read something about this, that a lot of the feminist movement was tied in [with the gay rights movement], it just wasn’t really addressed that way at the time. I see it as equality and power for women. Ironically, I think that feminism has really--I know that in an earlier generation men had a lot of difficulty with it, but I think it’s freed a lot of us form boxes that we were living in... My mom was a feminist when I was growing up. I think I’ve mentioned this to you before, but one thing I really like about younger feminists is that you sew and knit and things, or maybe you like to bake, and you know it doesn’t make you any weaker. And I think the earlier generation felt like they couldn’t do that and still be a feminist. So I think it’s great that women are embracing that past knowledge. Even a few years ago there was a commercial that said “Real men don’t bake” or something and it just makes me so mad every time I see stuff like that!

Tell me about growing up gay in the South.

It’s interesting because I just tried to behave a certain way. Even when I was a little boy I used to behave a certain way. My family was always tolerant of it, or they might’ve tried to guide me certain ways, but they would give me dolls for Christmas. So from a family standpoint it was supportive. But there’s definitely a religious element in the South. In my opinion, a lot of the religious element isn't really based in scripture, it’s interpretation. If you look at, for instance, divorce, it’s so prevalent in our society, well if you read the bible that’s a pretty terrible thing. Eating shellfish is pretty bad, too, but people choose to focus on gayness. So that’s a cultural thing. And that was difficult. I just hid, I mean even in school I didn’t join the art club or take art classes because I was trying to hide my creative aspect. So from those things it was bad. I think a lot of creative forces have come out of the South, if you look at great writers like Truman Capote or many, many others; a lot of great designers like Paul Rudolph, the architect. And I think a lot of that is from the adversity they experienced when they were growing up. So through that anguish or difficulty, good things have come, so I always try to focus on that as well.

Tell me how you feel about the rhetoric of choice we use in the gay community?

I don’t see how anyone could help to be conflicted about that. In all honesty, if I had a child, and I wanted them to live an easier life, I would probably wish that they weren’t gay. It would be easier. But at the same time, we shouldn’t be ashamed of it, or be unhappy, if we were to have a child who is gay. Differentness isn’t bad. It’s just different, so regardless of the reason, we shouldn’t be discriminated against. I’ve certainly used that “I didn’t choose this” discussion with religious people, and I do think it’s true. I am constantly mystified by people who say that gay people choose it. They’re not gay, they don’t really know. There are a lot of religious people who are never going to believe it, but I don’t think that should stop us from putting ourselves out there. I honestly think that the more familiar people become with it, the less religious people will bring it up. Like with feminism or segregation. Billy Graham used to speak that segregation was laid out in the bible. But things change, things will change.

What group in the community is doing a really great job trying to achieve social justice?

I think AFFA. We were impressed and pleased to find AFFA here when we moved to Charleston, and I’m sure other people have felt that way. It seems to be a good, solid force. It’s interesting because it’s out there, but it’s not confrontational, and I think they’ve achieved things, already.

If you had to ask yourself an interview question, what would you ask?

I would ask myself if I am happy here in Charleston. And we are. At first when we got here we weren’t sure. David was still working away, and we didn’t know that many people. I knew Charleston could be kind of a closed place. I didn’t want to live in a city where we were here but not really part of it. So we’ve just been delighted to become part of it and feel at home here.

Thanks Bill!

*Also, a note of apology for my absence from the ranks of bloggers who update in a timely manner. Some of us have to graduate okay? But don't worry, I'm back in the game.*

Interview with Jenny Badman

Jenny Badman is one of those people whom other people say has "good energy". Maybe they can't put their finger on it, they say, "She's just...makes me feel good?" But if they're a self-respecting yoga-attending citizen, they'll say "good energy". It's kind of like being one of the Elect, this good energy thing. And Jenny Badman has it; she is easy to talk to, quick to smile, and has what I would call a comforting and well-adjusted world view. Jenny is also the author of a book of poetry called Rants. I guess people with good energy are allowed to say what's what when the what needs to be said--as long as they go straight to meditation afterwards. But enough of this rambling. Ladies, gentlemen, and ye of two spirits, I bring to you...

JL: Tell me a little bit about where you’re from and what you do.

JB: I’m from northern New Jersey, and I’ve been here almost eight years. I moved down here to be with an ex, picked up my little life and moved down to the sunny south. I’m a writer by trade, a freelancer, so I do marketing, advertising, websites and ads and brochures for a variety of clients downtown.

JL: Do you do any creative writing?

JB: I have a book of poetry I published back in ’02 or ’03 through a friend of my brother’s who has a bookshop and a little publishing house in Ohio. It’s free-verse, more conversational I would say, sort of short story in poetry form. I’m one of those people that people tell their stuff to, so I’m constantly barraged with this endless bevy of stories. So when you read it, you may think “This couldn’t have possibly all happened to one person!” And it didn’t. It’s called Rants.

JL: How would you define community?

JB: The first word that comes to mind is acceptance. But that still allows for disagreement, debate and conversation. It’s a network of people who have some common goals, who have decided collectively, a way of treating each other, a way of getting things done. I think Charleston is a great community and it has great sub-communities within the larger community. That’s one of the things I like best about it.

JL: What or who is your community?

JB: AFFA is definitely part of my community. I would say that through my work, the creative community here on a certain level is as well. There’s an interesting organization here called Parliament Charleston that puts on an event called Pecha Kucha. It’s an international organization; Pecha Kucha is Japanese for the sound of conversation, and the idea is you get all the creative folks together--poets, artists, architects, urban planners. You rustle them all up together and have some drinks, and you pick a group of presenters and they have six minutes and forty seconds to talk about what they are all about. They’ve done a couple here in Charleston, and one of my clients is heavily involved in the planning. It’s really been interesting, because even in a tight community like Charleston, the poets aren’t necessarily talking to the architects, and there’s so much to be gleaned form each other that way. So an emerging designer can talk to a graphic designer who is cranking away at a small company. That’s been really cool. And then my friends, they’re my community--they’re my family, I’d say.

JL: What are three things you’d like to see happen in Charleston in the next year?

JB: That’s a great question! There’s a project right now called “Battery to Beach”, which advocates the creation of a bike path that would allow people to be off the main roads and go from somewhere along the battery to Folly. I hope that gets realized within the next year. I don’t know if you heard about Edwin Gardner, who was killed on his bicycle this summer. I’m friends with his wife and I knew him peripherally, and it was so tragic and senseless. I do think there needs to be a better sharing of the road and mindfulness of one another. College kids tool around on their bikes, a lot of folks don’t wear helmets--it’s really scary, people just aren’t mindful of bikes here.

I’d love to see AFFA become one of the more powerful nonprofits in the city. My friend Kathy works for Crisis Ministries, and she jokes that the homeless are always going to win out over the gays. There are a lot of issues--there’s Darkness to Light, child sexual abuse, the homeless folks, Center for Women, people with cancer--they’re always going to trump what’s going on in the gay community. But, that being said, it’s our job to remind everybody that if it’s happening near you it’s happening to you, it’s not separate. Maybe what AFFA can do better in the coming year is continue to bring the straight community into the conversation.

Maybe bring Tori Amos back for a concert? That’s not very lofty. Maybe Joan Jett. Some cool rock n’ roll chick. Bring ‘em back to Charleston!

JL: Continuing in that same vein, describe a day in the Jenny Badman utopia world--everything’s perfect, what would it look like?

JB: A lot of acceptance, to feel comfortable anywhere holding my girlfriends hand in public. That people wouldn’t be defensive about conversation and healthy debate, that there’s room for every opinion, even the unpopular one’s, the one’s that make you cringe inside. To get a little hokey, I think that that is what the United States was founded on, that there is room for opinion, room for freedom of expression. News more like the BBC and less like entertainment. More accountability in general, in culture and in people personally. There’s a great organization here in town called Wings for Kids, it’s run out of Memminger Elementary school, and their whole deal is teaching emotional intelligence to at-risk kids. There’s really nothing more lofty than that in terms of purpose. It’s difficult to teach people who are in their 30s and 40s to be accountable when they haven’t lived accountably in many ways. So, emotional intelligence would be a curriculum. And I think everyone should have a chance to be near the water sometime in their life, because there’s something really magical about that.

JL: What would you say is something happening in mainstream culture that’s moving the conversation about queerness and queer identities forward?

Thats a hard one. Recently I saw the movie “The Kids are Alright”. A bunch of us from AFFA went together. It talks about a modern family, that family in this case being a lesbian couple who used a sperm donor, who was anonymous. It shows them having two children who become curious about their father, getting in touch with the father, and all the resulting relationships and angst and all the feelings that go along with that. It’s a really good movie, but it sparked a lot of conversation, even within our group, because there was some pandering to the straight community and assuming a lot of things about the gay community...I think sometimes gay culture is really hard on the ways we seep into culture through entertainment, because we get so afraid that we’re going to be painted in stereotypes.

I have a cousin who is transitioning, male to female, and he is sixty. He was married and has two children in their twenties. To hear him talk about it, well, it’s heartbreaking, just because I’ve known him my whole life as a man, but never knowing that he was struggling inside. There’s a lot of confusion and misunderstanding even in the gay community. Its always GLBT when we’re talking through AFFA, but the "T" part of our community, although it’s growing, is not well known. It’s not discussed a lot, there’s a lot of apprehension there, and confusion, and an ignorance, even within the space of the gay community. I think it’s an uncomfortable thing. AFFA used to have a reputation in town that it was for the rich gays. And certainly there are people with money in the space of AFFA, that’s true, and original people who were involved with AFFA happened to be “successful”. And way back when, that used to cause a rift, and still today, not all pockets of the gay community are talking to each other, and again what I think AFFA has really been trying to do in the past two years especially is to get that conversation going, keep that conversation going, and bring in people from every segment of the community. There should always be someone from the college involved, always someone from the gay club scene involved in what AFFA is doing, because you do have to be conscious of all of the voices. I think that’s a hard balance in any organization.

[SIDE NOTE: Anyone who can catch the punny in this past answer gets a prize!]

JL: What is your definition of the word queer?

JB: My definition of queer is probably not at all in-line with what academia is saying. I equate queer and gay as the same. In my mind, it’s a term for men and for women. As a word, I really like it, but it’s interesting because historically, it hearkens way back. I guess academia has to like, push the conversation about it into the spotlight. I mean, shouldn’t the New York Times Sunday section do a story on gender identity and the whole growing acronym thing? Academia all over seems to contain itself--they put their heads down and do the work, but some PR person needs to like, stick their head in there and be like, “We need to whip this out!”

JL: What’s your definition of feminism?

JB: It’s still such a dirty word isn’t it? I have a friend, Rebecca Traister, I always think of her first when someone says the word “feminism”. She and I worked together years ago, at a soap opera of all places, in New York City, and she is a fantastic writer, and she is a feminist. And I am, too, I identify as a feminist. I’m just not afraid to ask the question. I’m not afraid to say, “Why this way as opposed to that? Why are you assuming x, y, and z about me because I’m a woman, because I’m a gay woman?” We all assume things...it’s all about context. I’d really be interested to know who in my generation would identify as feminist, because I think it really started to take a turn for the worse, in terms of popularity. There are still so many stereotypes around it, rather than seeing it as an encouraging, uplifting, motivating sisterhood, which is how I would see it.

JL: If you could skyrocket someone to immediate fame, who would it be? Someone who everyone would be talking about and keeping their eye on?

JB: My mind immediately goes to all the baggage that comes with that sort of fame, and what you have to give up as a person, and would I really want to do that to anybody I respect? (laughs) I was thinking more along the lines of choosing someone who is a really great thinker, but how would someone like that respond to that? Hmm...I hate to say Warren, but I just think he has, well, everybody pokes fun at him all the time because he’s verbose, but I love that about him, and he loves a great story and is a great storyteller, and I think some of that comes from his former life as a priest. He can always bring stuff back around to make it applicable to somebody, he’s so good-hearted and so tireless in his pursuit of education, even for himself. I struggle with religion and faith to no end, but he stays so grounded in his beliefs and his faith, and I have a lot of respect for that even though I don’t always understand it.

JL: What questions do you think we should be asking ourselves as activists in the Charleston community?

JB: How can we continually bring in new people to the conversation? How do we do that, through what means? How can we partner with other like-minded organizations? Doug Warner, who is on the board now, is a power gay, if I can use the term. He and his partner are extremely well-connected in the community. They’re politically active, they’re socially active, they’re both on the boards of several non-profits in the city, and when I say that they are power gays I mean they’re the kind of people who when you meet them, they hear about what you like to do or want to do and they immediately say, “You know who you should talk to? Let me give you so-and-so’s email, you should really talk to them.” Not only do they say that, but then they make it happen. In two weeks you’ll get a phone call. Not all of us have the depth and breadth of relationships they do, but you look on Facebook, and its like, I have five hundred friends, a.)what does that mean, but b.) that’s 500 people who in some way are connected to me, so I think we need to ask ourselves what we are choosing to share with the people we already know. We’re always saying we need to meet more people, but what about doing better with the people we already know? That’s real work, and it’s a real opportunity for all of us.

JL: If you had to ask yourself an interview question, what would it be?

JB: What has coming out done to my life? Well, the answer to that is vast and varied of course, but it has meant everything to my life, it has been the most positive, although sometimes heartbreakingly difficult thing that I’ve ever done for myself and my life, and I think that, at it’s best, coming out is an act of self-love, of really being accountable, and nurturing of yourself, and by extension your family, and your community, and your world. I think ignorance and apathy and hiding who you are leads to all sorts of other problems, that I think we can point to directly in our society. It’s the greatest gift I’ve given myself. I had a conversation with my mother recently. She's seventy-two; she’s been a great mom. And she’s in a retirement community and she hasn’t told her friends that I’m gay. And I had to say “You have to understand that on some level, I feel like you’re ashamed of it.” I’m thirty-eight years old for God’s sake! And she was really taken aback by that, she really didn’t get it. But you don’t always want to be the daughter who is the free-lance writer and that’s all her friends get to hear about me. I know someone who is trying really hard to come out at work right now, and it’s really important to her that everyone likes her personally and thinks she’s an intelligent person before she comes out to them. I used to be like that, when I was first coming out in a work environment, but I’ve kind of switched that. I’d rather come out first, and then if they’re “okay” with that then they may also discover that I’m funny or that I’m an intelligent person. Because if I have to prove something to them through intelligence and behavior it’s like I’m being constantly graded as a person. I’m just a person! Gay is part of it, and I have green eyes! If you’re going to instantly write me off upon hearing that I’m gay, then it doesn’t really matter if you think I’m intelligent too, I’m just still gay...

JL: Thanks Jenny! I’m glad you’re gay! And I’m also glad you’re intelligent...or, as we like to call it here on Q&Q, intelligay...

Interview With Melissa Moore

Melissa Moore is that person who stacks up her plate so high at Thanksgiving she can barely carry it to the table, and to the delight and horror of everyone else, manages to put the whole thing to rest in a matter of minutes. This one is not afraid of commitment. That's why she's got a feeler or two in just about every organization in Charleston. She has the kind of lasting visionary passion that most people envy or don't understand. Too legit to quit, she's been on the Charleston front lines for years now. Read on to see what she is working on these days...

JL: Tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do.

MM: I’m Melissa Moore and I’m the program director for We are Family, which is an organization that provides support and leadership development for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and straight ally youth in Charleston, Berkeley, and Dorchester counties. I also work on a reproductive justice project called the South Carolina Access Initiative, which aims to increase access to comprehensive reproductive health services for women in the state. That includes helping the Women’s Choice fund raise. We also do workshops for frontline workers like for Lowcountry Healthy Start to try to teach values clarifications. Like you might not agree with certain things, but you need to offer your clients full-options counseling. If they come to you with an unintended pregnancy, for example, you need to tell them, in addition to adoption, what services are available to them, and how to access those services, whether or not you agree with them.

JL: And what motivates you to do what you do?

MM: Well, I have to say a sense of justice, you know, that it needs to be done. Especially with the work with We Are Family. When I was in high school I would've loved to have had a resource like this available to me. And you know just the tiniest bit of support, the tiniest little effort, with a kid who just needs somebody to listen to them, the tiniest bit of interest in whatever a kid is interested in, can sometimes make all the difference in the world. The tiniest little thing, to you, that you may not remember years later, is something that has made a huge difference in someone’s life, something they will never forget. By working to try to develop leaders, it’s making the world a better place exponentially. By the smallest amount of work, you’re developing these leaders and then they’re going and developing leaders, and it’s exponential and viral, in a good way.

JL: How do you define community?

MM: I guess there are a bunch of different ways to define community. Community is coming together for a common goal, the common good. Community is your safety net. Imagine a bunch of hands entwined, if you fall they’re gonna catch you. It is a sense of responsibility for other folks around you. Community is sort of a family outside of your family, it’s your chosen family.

JL: If you could pick three things that you would like to see happen in Charleston in the next year, what would they be?

MM: I would like to see more art that really turns me on. I wanna go to an art show or music show that reaches me in such a place where I’m like “Dang, I never heard it said that way before. That’s what I’ve been thinking always but I’ve never heard it expressed that way.” And poetry, I love spoken word poetry that reaches you like that. I want to see more passion in the people who are in office. I want to see them be passionate, I don’t want them to just be carrying the party line or status quo. I want to see more passion in the folks around here who are electing people. I want to see people in this community--all facets of this community--understand what is happening to them, be educated about the lies that they have actually absorbed and believe, and do something about it.

For example I want us to rise up against all the over-development that’s coming in here. Nobody can afford to buy houses, yet we’re allowing them tear down all these portions of forest and start building and developing these cookie-cutter communities with all these cul de sacs. And then they’re abandoning the developments because they’ve run out of time on their loan, or no one can afford to buy the houses, or the developers can’t afford to finish the houses and there, you’ve ruined an entire section of forest that you can’t get back, old-growth forest, especially in places like John’s Island. I want to see us rise up against that, we should take to the streets! I don’t understand why no one--I mean there are small segments of the community doing work against that, but theres not enough happening to combat the terrible atrocities that are being committed against our environment in the name of greed, especially in this coastal area. I want to see something to ward that off. We need to do more. I’d like to see a bi-partisan effort by the people who are already elected to come together on this issue. I’ve already seen some of them coming together, some people who you would never think would be working together are working together on this issue.

JL: Describe a day in the Melissa Moore utopia.

MM: Nobody has to agree, and I think healthy debate, and respectful debate is encouraged. It would be a true think-tank type of society, where everyone’s ideas are valued. Nobody has this homogenous way of thinking, everyone comes at it form a different perspective, and no one has drunk the kool-aid...

JL: What do you mean drunk the kool-aid?

MM: Jim Jones at Jonestown, the mass suicide. There was a cult, and he told them to drink the kool-aid, and they drank it, and died.

JL: Oh, that’s horrible.

MM: Well I kind of feel like everybody is drinking the kool-aid right now.

JL: Yeah, yeah...

MM: But you know, a society where people can think for themselves, and individuality and uniqueness is cherished rather than beaten out of you. In my utopian society, our education systems would value all different types of learning, rather than standardized learning and standardized tests, you’d include creative learning. We wouldn’t have a system where you sort children like, “Okay, you’re gonna go into the prison industrial complex, you’re gonna go into the military industrial complex, you’re gonna go into the service industry...” They sort children in public education, they do, and in my ideal society, we would respect the fact that there are different ways that different people learn. And in my society we would value teachers over basketball stars. We would pay our teachers more than sports people, because they’re the better role models, and we would make it lucrative for people to be good teachers. And there would be music and art and stuff...

JL: What projects are you currently involved in, besides your job-jobs?

MM: I’m involved in the pink party which is the LGBTQQAI queer fundraising arm of politics, we just started a couple years ago. We throw parties and we collect the checks people are writing to candidates. We bundle them and present them and we’re like, “Okay this is from the gay and queer community, you are accountable to us.” And I hate to say it, because I used to be so anti-capitalism, but you have to do it. It sucks. It really does. But it’s kind of cool when you collect these checks that people are gonna write anyway, and we’re like, “Hey, these are queer people who are writing checks to you, this is from our community and we’re feeding you so you’re accountable.”

I’m also just starting to be involved in the Coastal Conservation League, doing environmental work. I’ve done work with the Lowcountry Food Bank. I’m part of a community advisory board for the Charleston Area Men’s Empowerment Project. They do safe sex outreach for gay and bi guys, and I think I’m pretty much the only girl on that board.

JL: What about your band?

MM: I’m the bass player and I sing in the Big Bang Theory. We’re gonna play at the Windjammer on Oct 15.

JL: What is something happening in mainstream culture that you think is moving the conversation about GLBTQQAI issues forward?

MM: Well, about three years ago there was a conversation within ENDA where there was some debate about where or not trans folks should be included in the bill. I found it interesting that people in the gay community did not want to have a trans-inclusive bill. When I was with SC Equality we signed on in support of having a trans-inclusive bill. We got so much push-back from the gay community, it was insane. People were like, “Why should we support that? Make them fight.” You know, how can you say that? Our mission statement says “gay lesbian bisexual transgender.” We cannot leave out any part of this community, so it was like, I’m sorry, but you are wrong.

In the mainstream news media you have a discussion of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, which is soon to be repealed and I hate war and I’m all about peace, but as soon as the ban is lifted, you cannot deny gay people any other rights. They are fighting and dying for this country that does not give them the same rights. How can you deny people the right to marry people, the right to employment non-discrimination, housing, how can you deny these people basic human rights when they are fighting and dying along with everyone else?

JL: How do you define queer?

MM: Not straight.

JL: Pick a myth about queer people in general or some group under the umbrella and debunk it.

MM: That queer people are sexual predators and child molesters. It’s not true. Actually, statistics show that the majority of child molesters are straight. If you look, the percentage of straight people who are child molesters is representative of the population. There is no variance according to sexual orientation, it’s there in any population. A child predator is a child predator, and there is a difference between someone who is interested in someone of the same gender who is a consenting adult versus someone who is preying on a weaker vulnerable class who is not able to speak for itself.

JL: What questions do you think we should be asking ourselves as activists in Charleston?

MM: Why are you in this? What is your motivation? What is your end goal? Who is your target audience? What messages do you think they would receive best? How should you formulate your message? How should you deliver your message? What do you want to get out of it? How do you want your audience to respond? And how are you going to be sustainable?

JL: What is your definition of feminism and do you think that feminism is important to the LGBTQQIA movement and community?

MM: Absolutely. My definition of feminism is equality, across all races and sexes, mostly with regard to gender and sex, but it’s equality and it’s very important to GLBTQQAI organizing because thats our big thing, equality. I think that there is no better representation of feminism than in LGBTQQIA things, because the argument I have always heard against gay marriage is basically “But who’s the man? Who’s got the power? Oh my god, there’s equality? What? Who’s the man?” So now you have two people of the same gender, oh no! Now the whole dichotomy is thrown off, the whole power structure is shifted. The arguments against gay marriage are very sexist.

JL: What person, group or movement do you think is doing a stellar job of combatting an oppression in the charleston community?

MM: There are several groups, barring the gay and lesbian groups. The environmental groups, like the Coastal Conservation League--they combat environmental racism, the pollution in certain communities, water quality. Those issues are very pervasive, and it’s all about being self-actualized, and certain communities can’t be self-actualized if their needs are not being met on the most basic level. You can never move ahead if you don't have access to food, or if you don’t have clean water. That’s kind of the most basic need, and I think that groups who deal with the most basic needs are actually doing the most important work, so that the people they serve can move on, once basic needs are met.

An Interview with Daniel Stone

Daniel Stone appeared to me in a vision, holding a large tome entitled: Concluding Unscientific Postscript by Søren Kierkegaard and wearing a t-shirt that read "Talk Nerdy To Me". I emerged from the vision knowing that I had to gain audience with this wise philosopher of impressive mane and ambiguous repute. Rumor has it that Stone can be found late at night wandering in hidden tunnels, searching for truth and adventure...lost, but not forever, in Kierkegaard's third realm of despair. No idea what I'm talking about? Me either. Read on.

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

I am 20 years old, I am from Columbia SC. I’m a junior at CofC, I’m a Biology/Philosophy major. I’m interested in all kinds of fun things like Kierkegaard, Marx, and radical environmentalism, and also ecology and conservation. I’m interested in the convergence point where people and the environment come together.

What’s your definition of community?

Community is a people willing to come together for some cause that is larger than their own.

What would you say your community is?

I am sort of a jack of all trades. I’ve got the queer community going on, I’ve gotten very in with the philosophy department and I end up hanging out with them a lot--and we get into arguments all the time, how philosophers will do! And I’ve still got my friends group from Columbia too.

What is your main role in the queer community in Charleston?

I helped with QueerFest, that was awesome. I am the vice president of the CofC GSA. I do organizing and stuff for We Are Family, and I just try to keep conversation going within the queer community and between our community and other communities.

Would you differentiate the queer community from the gay community?

This is probably the thing that interests me the most. I really didn’t start off identifying as gay, but queer clicked with me right away. I feel that the gay community is more a demographic than an orientation. The queer community organizes itself in way that if you feel you are part of the community, you are entered in to it, and there are so many factors that allow you access that community. Your membership doesn’t hinge just on you being attracted to the same sex. The gay community doesn’t really encapsulate the MSM community, there’s a lot of exclusion of bisexuals and pansexuals. It’s just more exclusionary.

What is your definition of queer?

Okay, let me put on my professorial suit. It’s not just a sexual orientation, it’s an approach to sexuality. I take a very Sartrean approach to what queer means to me--we are almost the sole creators of our sexuality. We find it, and we ascribe characteristics to ourselves. We are the people who constantly rewrite it and constantly reaffirm it over and over. It’s realizing that you can write something else, that you are in control of what you write, and what your character is, and that, coming with this freedom is the responsibility for this. Queerness means you are very actively responsible for your sexuality, for consent, for practicing safe sex, for all those things.

How would you say that this idea which you just articulated engages with the current debate within the gay community, and between the gay community and other communities, such as the religious community, about choice and sexual orientation?

My opinion on this is not very mainstream, as far as the LGBT community goes. I feel that tying the entire argument around the idea that sexual orientation is not a choice, and that therefore, we should have the same access to marriage or rights, frames the entire conversation the wrong which way around. I feel that the argument should be “I am human, and I deserve this,” instead of “I’m like you, but different, but I didn’t have a choice.” I get to take responsibility for liking whoever I like. It is my right as a human to like whoever I like and I should be allowed access for those reasons, not for some sympathy. I worry about framing the argument in the way of “I didn’t have a choice, I was created this way”. I think that’s dangerous as far as limiting access for other people goes. I have the choice to like anyone--how is this argument going to protect me? How will it protect pansexuals? Or bisexuals? Or trans people? And I’m worried about once and if gay marriage gets passed, who is going to fight for trans rights if the argument is framed this way? How will we fight for other freedoms and social liberties that we haven’t even discovered yet because our conscious social awareness isn’t even heightened enough for us to realize that our current way of framing things is drawing the line in a way that circumscribes our future options?

What is your definition of feminism?

I surrender! No more! My favorite definition of feminism, that I wish more people would subscribe to, is that it is the voice of oppressed people. I’m really into reading black feminist literature--they felt that because they were at the intersection of race, class and gender that it they were freed, everyone else would be freed too. I have some problems with the word itself, because it can cut off other people, and it seems to frame itself as what it’s not. Because recent feminist philosophy moves away from just being about women’s issues. It showed that it was moving past that. I’m definitely supportive of current feminist philosophy, even if I wish it had a different name.

Pick three things that you would want to see happen in Charleston in the next year.

Bikes everywhere. I mean they’re there, but I want a bike explosion in Charleston.

I also want a Queer Collective. The Charleston Women’s Collective started off as a women’s empowerment, safe-space organization, and then moved towards an activist organization, and then a few males started Men’s Collective for a hot minute, and now both organizations have pressed the pause button, and there is talk about things starting back up. There was some talk after Queerfest of possibly moving the ideas that motivated that event into a sustainable, ongoing organization and I wanted that to be Queer Collective, and I really want to get that off the ground. I want to keep building queer community, making sure everyone knows each other, making a safe space where people can talk about whats going on. Where Women’s Collective and Men’s Collective fall apart is that some people don’t feel comfortable talking in a single-gender space, like we had this one trans friend who wasn’t really comfortable in either space. I would feel more comfortable talking to a group of my queer peers than talking to just a group of males or females, because there’s an understanding there that isn’t encapsulated in just your group of guys.

The third thing I’d really like to see is recycling for downtown businesses. I’m at this one coffee shop all the time, and they have to throw away so many recyclables because the city won’t pick them up, and they would need them to be picked up almost every day. The funds aren’t there, and that’s for all of downtown, it’s ridiculous!

Describe your ideal world--what does the Daniel Stone utopia look like?

It’s so green! It’s also so queer...actually it wouldn’t even need to be queer anymore. That’s the whole beauty of it. My idea of the perfect utopia isn’t actually that radical. Everyone’s got a project, it doesn’t have to be crazy, doesn’t have to be huge. People are living with each other in harmony, they’re living with nature in harmony, they’re living with themselves. There’s no guilt, people get to be exactly who they are. It’s not that crazy, and it’s not that hard.

What pronouns do you prefer?

Lady. Mister. Mister Lady. I really don't care what you call me, Daniel is the best pronoun, hereby decreed. I really don't get offended. With my long hair I’ve been ma’amed my whole life. I’m so used to gender buffoonery!

Name one stereotype about LGBTQQIA people and debunk it.

The myth I am going to debunk is that males have to fall under either a gay or straight label, and that there is no gray area. I’m all about the gray area. So whether it’s in Charleston or on the national stage, we really don't have a lot of faces or voices of people to cling on to and realize that there is this gray area. There are a lot of examples of bisexual female stars, the endless array of Lady Gagas and such, but for guys, this is not the case at all. There are a couple of gay movies stars, singers, but as far as bi guys go, the only one I can think of is Patrick Wolf; he's awesome he's pansexual, he got arrested...but there are really no examples on the US national stage, or in Charleston. There are gay men running gay organizations and in the media, but there’s no room for flexibility, there’s no room for this playfulness that I'm after. And we’re out there! It’s just that we aren't on the forefront and in peoples faces, because it’s dangerous to what our society conceives as masculine and those who get to occupy that space. There is a pressure to choose.

Ok, I want to know why this issue of fluidity should be so important to the gay community--why is it important for there to not be a gay community, but a wider queer community? Why should the gay community become so inclusive that it is no longer accurate to simply call it gay?

Well on a practical political level, if the gay rights movement that is currently going on wants to keep the moral high ground, they have got to actually have that moral high ground, they have to be nonexclusive, they have to be accepting of all of the communities they say they represent. If they are representing bisexuals and transexuals and queers and questionings and intersexuals and asexuals and pansexuals, they’re gonna have to do it, they’re gonna have to step up, they are gonna have to not engage in double think and dissonance, they’re gonna have to do it.

I read zine after zine about queers who are angry because they feel excluded. They want to be part of the movement, but they realize that they’re being kicked off for a smaller and smaller and smaller minority of the mostly gay and lesbian community’s benefit, it’s like the white picket fence and adoption, thats what’s going on. There are so many issues that the community needs to worry about--youth homelessness, prison conditions, abuse, there are all these very politically real conditions that the entire community faces every day that are not middle class gay and lesbians getting married in the suburbs. I mean that matters too, but marriage is not our biggest battle, our biggest battle is changing how everything works. There has got to be a whole paradigm shift of how we see people. We need solidarity. You’re gonna have to have everyone linking arms and committing to the long haul. We’re gonna have to commit to fight oppression of all sorts in all areas. It extends beyond sexual orientation. There’s so much classism and racism and ableism and sexism within our communities. We can’t be fighting with each other if were going to be fighting something else on a much bigger stage.

If you had to ask yourself an interview question, what would it be?

That’s so meta! Ok, how would you open up discussion more with in the queer community? I guess I would try and figure out what the barriers are to conversation. I feel like a lot of people don't want to talk about these things. I feel like getting a conversation started can be super burdensome. There’s so much apathy, people thinking that it doesn't affect them, that it’s not their concern. People have to realize that even if something hasn't impacted them directly, it could at any minute. Kyriarchy affects you and you don't even know it, and thats the tragedy. It extends to a lot of our current issues, it’s like the tragedy of the commons. It’s a mess. It’s the idea that we’re in the middle of the issue and we are making it worse, and we don’t feel like we have the power to change it, and so we don’t do anything about it. You have to get people to believe that they are already involved; they are already making political decisions. Back to Sartre, you are responsible for everything you do--action and inaction are both choices. You are already changing how the discussion works by not doing anything about it. So we need to be working on that, because we are going to be responsible for not fixing it if we don't work on it.

Why should the environmentalist community care about queer issues, and why should the queer community care about environmental issues? how are those interdependent?

Oppression groups often end up being one and the same, there’s intersectionality. So from the environmental side, some things I am interested in are conservation and environmental justice, and ecofeminism. You look at things that are creating the needs for these movements: large scale international development, globalization, industrialization, (which is basically capitalism), the agro military industrial complex. Then you have queerness which could include the oppressions of racism and patriarchy and kyriarchy and class. Addressing this set of issues causes us to find their roots right in the middle of capitalism, industrialization, imperialism. So we may have very many very disparate symptoms, such as homophobia and a lack of clean water, but we find that they stem from a very few number of causes. It takes some unpacking to realize that a lot of the problems that I am interested in have the same source, it’s just that things get wider as they flow downstream.

Thank you so much Daniel, I always enjoy talking with you!