Amy Ray -- October 1, 1998 -- Clemson University
I'm here to talk about being a lesbian. There...I did it, I came out, yeah!
A couple of years ago, Emily and I were asked to be judges in a high school
lyric writing contest. We agreed to do this and the
finalists, the semi-finalists, were sent in to us, and we read their entries
and what we read from them was basically a lot of
comments expressing that they were glad to have a chance to express themselves
artistically. They talked about being in love,
they talked about being abused by their parents, they talked about gang
warfare, drugs, suicide, you know, it ran the gamut. It
ran the socio-economic and race gamut as well. So we got a real perspective on
where high school students were coming from.
After we did this, we were thinking two things : number one we wanted to hear
more of what students were thinking, cause
we felt their hearts and their minds were open and it was very exciting to hear
them expressing themselves and number two,
we recognized that school arts programs, and arts programs in general, are
being cut and underfunded and music programs are
being underfunded. um...we went to school at a school called shamrock high
school in Decatur, GA, in Dekalb county. We
were very much a part of the music system there and it pretty much started our
whole career for us. We started playing in high
school, we were encouraged by our teachers, we played after school, we played
at talent shows, you know it was very fertile
grounds for the arts. And as I got older, my peers and people that I knew that
were younger than me were experiencing a lack
of arts programs basically in their schools and I felt it was pretty sad. So
we decided we would do a short experimental tour
to speak about the arts in schools, to support song writes and poets, artists
of every style who wanted to express themselves
we would go in and play 30 minutes during the school day, do a question and
answer period afterwards and then leave and we
would pay for this tour on our own, you know, fund the whole thing and
basically do all the logistics ourselves. We brought
in a sound system, made it like a real show so the students could understand
that part of the music industry, as well as student
groups would sponsor us so they would learn what it was like to sponsor a show.
We jumped through a lot of hoops and
came up with 5 shows in the southeast that's the only...thats as many as we
were able to get to begin with. As far as going
through administrative boards, parents and school systems and when we played
the 1st show, we went off and did a few other
dates afterwards, and I woke up to a phone call that Ermo high school in
Columbia had canceled citing sexual preference as
their reason. What happened is they received phone calls from 40 parents out of
4000 students saying that they weren't
comfortable with two lesbians performing at their school because we wouldn't be
positive role models for their kids and didn't
want their kids exposed to us. My first reaction to that was 'we gotta figure
out another venue', so that's what we did and in
the process of doing that, discovered that the students at that school were
rallying behind us and were organizing protests on
their own grounds and we also found out that two other schools were canceling
and citing profanity issues rather than sexual
preference issues. But we were informed later by the sponsors, the teachers
that sponsored those shows, that the principal
was more concerned about our sexual identity than that any profanity issues,
especially after I called the principal myself and
suggested a permission slip system where the kids would have to to get
permission from by their parents to come and I would
agree not to use profanity even though it was against my better
judgement...um...obviously that was a red herring because the
principal still wouldn't have us. The positive impact of this was we did
alternative shows in knoxville and in columbia...we
went in on the day of the show and we did a show in a club after school...all
ages..no alcohol and the students, teachers and
parents got in for free and what happened is that students organized at their
own schools and had walk outs and formed these
coalitions of people to come to our show and worked with local gay
organizations and had dialogue with their parents and
dialogue with their teachers and they understood what it meant to stand up for
something they believed in. Now ll of these
students weren't gay, you know, they were just open minded and they were just
willing to accept it and they were willing to
put their own... and you know how high school is, your reputation is really
important in high school, but these kids didn't
care, they were willing to stake their reputations on the fact they were going
to be supportive of us regardless of who we
choose to spend the rest of our lives with, sexually. I think that the
empowerment of that is something we can all learn from
because as a high school student, you already feel disenfranchised, you don't
have as much power, you already feel like
you're inferior and that your voice doesn't count. For those kids to stand up
and rally behind us was a very big deal for them
and it was the reason ..that's why a negative situation became a positive
situation and it was the reason why parents were
forced to talk to their children about this. It might not have been discussed
if the kids hadn't brought it up. I think along with
the positive impacts there were a lot of negative impacts and the main one I
was concerned about was that if I felt like the object
of so much vehement hate, how would the kids in high school feel who are either
gay or questioning their sexuality, or just a
little bit different, they go against the grain just a little bit, they are
vulnerable. Then they have this thing come up, it's trying,
but to see them stand up in the face of that, it made me feel hopeful. I think
one of the interesting things that has happened
also is that I read a lot of letters to the editor that were written after this
event, at Ermo high school especially, in the Atlanta
paper and various other sundry places, and a lot of them, were letters of
support, but what I noticed is that a lot of the letters
also had very subtle homophobic tendencies.. a lot of the letters of support
said that they supported us playing at the high
school because we weren't going there to talk about our sexuality, we were
going there to talk about the arts. This is very
subtle. But to me it was a light bulb. Its like 'oh, its ok for me to be gay
if i'm not going to talk about..its ok for me to be
gay, if your kid doesn't know that i'm gay but the minute that the the gay -
thing becomes an issue, it makes everybody
uncomfortable' and I think that's a very important point to remember, because
even myself, in defending our going to these
high schools, we had a tendency to say we weren't going there to talk about
being gay, we were going there to talk about the
arts. But what I did realize is that it was implied when we went there that we
were gay and that we believed in ourselves as
individuals and we were being role models as gay women for these kids and that
was ok. You know its ok to be
gay...basically and that's what I had to keep telling myself because I think
what happened...you know the next week, I live, I
live outside of Atlanta in a rather conservative town and I found myself
walking around feeling ashamed of being gay and I've
been gay all my life. I never really, I've never came out really. I've had an
evolution that's been really slow, I've always
believed in myself..I've always felt very pro-gay. I've never had a problem
with it and this specific incident made me
falter...I walked around thinking maybe I should dress differently, maybe these
people in this restaurant won't appreciate me
being there...you know, imagine what a kid feels like who has no clout, still
at home, still under their parents guise, you
know. So I think those are some important points for me that came out of Ermo,
that I wanted to mention.
And the last thing that I want to talk about is when we played in Columbia, the
majority of the protesters outside the venue
were not protesting homosexuality, they were protesting abortion. You tell me
what that means, I don't know! I'm not going
to talk about pro-choice and pro-life, but I do want to make a connection
between homophobia and sexism. In my career I
used to have a tendency to feel no one was discriminating against us because we
were gay, they were discriminating against us
because we didn't dress right, we were too mannish, too organic, too bohemian,
not feminine enough. Then, I realized that's
the same thing...sexism and homophobia. Sexism is when women are supposed to
be a certain way and supposed to be in a
certain place and men are supposed to be a certain thing. Gender identity.
Homophobia...males are threatened by gay
women are threatened for two reasons, I think. One, because they are vying for
the same positions and they are vying for the
same women! I mean, its kinda funny, but it's, I think it's a true thing. But
there's nothing to be scared of, that's not reality
and that's what the fear is coming from and I think the people that are afraid
of gay men...it's a fear of the effeminate side of
men and that's sexism as well....I think all of these things are connected in
control issues...people, other people, want to
control our minds, value systems, and our bodies and you should be in control
of your mind, your value system and your
body! They bombed the olympics in Atlanta, they bombed a lesbian nightclub,
and then they bombed an abortion clinic.
That's a control issue, you can feel differently than I feel, but you should
control your own environment and I'm going to
control my immediate environment!
I think this is a great vehicle and I appreciate your attention. I welcome
other opinions and I welcome protest. I welcome
dialogue because I think we can honestly learn from each other. Mentoring is a
two way street. W should be mentoring each
other. We should be helping each other learn. There is not one right way of
doing everything. There is not one true religion for
everybody...we should all have faith in ourselves and who we believe created us
and who we believe created this world and
we should love each other.
(Introduction to "Go")
I'm gonna play a song...I've been working on this song for a couple of years
and then I, actually, I think we were playing at
Clemson, there were all these people waiting out in line in the rain, it was
after the cancellations that happened, it was
super-supportive. So I finished the song because it...I don't know...it made me
feel good..
(Q&A session)
(in response to a question about her coming out process)
I fell in love with a woman, a girl, in my senior year in high school, we spent
a year holding hands, and consummated it later
in my freshman year in college..but that year in high school...it was
definately...I had a lot of support from a couple of
teacher...who understood I was going through something, they weren't gay, they
were just my friends, they didn't know
exactly what was going on. My mother, at the time told me she heard I was gay,
and i didn't even know what it meant, my
vocabulary was nothing as far as homosexuality. I didn't know what it meant to
be gay and all I knew is that I was in love
with somebody and that was a blessing because what it meant was that I had
something to hold onto, that I could defend and
that sent me on my path and basically my two older sisters are both gay. My
parents are very religious and conservative or
were conservative and they spent a lot talking to us about how sinful it was
and through dialogue and talking about it, they
came around to, as far as my father going to church and talking with the
minister about how we could be more accepting of
gays in the congregation, so it was hard work on my parents part, as well as my
older sisters' part. I was just kinda like the
person tagging along the whole time, doing my own thing...I just, definitely,
didn't have to suffer as much for it...I realize
Emily and I decided that we felt differently about whether or not to talk about
it. She felt like it was a private issue, I thought
we couldn't ask people to be individuals unless we were willing to stand up and
she didn't want to reveal details of her
personal life. I mean, she would talk about gay rights, she just didn't want
to talk about who her girlfriend was. At some
point though, about seven, six or seven, years ago, we were in the middle of a
college radio press conference on gay issues,
and Emily just stood up and answered it.... and that was it...and she said to
me outside...'i'm just tired of not talking about it,
it's too important not to talk about'. So from that point on, we sort of made
it more of an agenda and I think some of it...I
think, that time, in my career there was some homophobia in myself...I wanted
to be musically unordinary (?) ..I wanted to be
rock and alternative oriented and already i was taking the rap for being a folk
musician and I didn't want to take the rap for
being a gay musician too and that's a mistake on my part, because would say,
that it's just much better to do your thing and be
strong about it and as soon as that started happening, it was a lot clearer to
me too. These were subtle things, I was out with
my family and with my peer groups...it was just a matter of how much you talk
about it in the press, what you're willing to
stand up for and fight for. So coming out for me has been a long, long
battle...it hasn't been, it's been easy compared to
what most people go through.
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