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...
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