Trigger Warning: Mention of Suicidal Ideation; Discussion of Structural & Interpersonal Violence
Making History
What is my history?
“How can I convince you… that everyday you wake up alive, relatively happy, and a functioning human being, you are committing a rebellious act. You as an alive and functioning queer are a revolutionary. There is nothing on this planet that validates, protects or encourages your existence. It is a miracle you are standing here reading these words. You should by all rights be dead.”
By all rights, I should be dead. I should have killed myself at age 12, age 15, age 16, age 17, age 18, age 19, age 20, age 21, age 22. Every instance that I wished I were dead, and yet managed to hold on for one more day, is an instance of my strength and the strength of the community supporting me. Every day that I have lived and defied the statistics telling me I shouldn’t, I have made history.
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On November 20, 2016, my grandmother passed away at the age of 78. She lived a life filled with adventures, pain, and triumph. When she became a memory to hold close to my heart, I inherited every single piece of her personal library — hundreds of books on history, politics, conspiracies, fictional adventures, and memoir.
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One book I inherited from my grandmother was American History by Avery O. Craven and Walter Johnson. The last sentence of content in the book reads: “The new administration which took office in January 1961, and indeed the American people as a whole, looked forward to a future full of uncertainties and challenge.” It is hard to believe that there was any form of US history that didn’t include the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Kennedy’s assassination, and where the only mention of Nixon is is his loss in November 1960. However, this text is a reminder that history is constantly being made, and that we cannot take advantage of our present moment. Every day that we are living, breathing, and surviving, we are making history.
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By including my grandmother in my name, I made myself a piece of her history. I am Andrew Patricia Weston, she was Patricia Ann Boland. By including my grandmother in my academic work, I make her a piece of my history.
Andrew and Pat, 1999. Photograph by Kat Weston.
What is herstory?
Herstory — the movement to reclaim male dominated narratives of the human experience -- has its origins in Robin Morgan’s 1970 anthology Sisterhood is Powerful. Herstory has been used in both derisive and endorsing ways by millions, and yet, it has not overtaken history in conventional usage. This is because the feminine generic has no role in the English language. Although “history” does not share an etymology with “his,” it nonetheless holds the same connotation.
Herstory has effectively become a piece of history. The Historical Dictionary of the Lesbian and Gay Liberation Movements reveals another layer to the concept of herstory that has been overlooked and rewritten to fit the historical narrative. Herstory was not just a feminist movement, it was a lesbian-feminist movement. Herstory has been straight-washed, alongside history.
Herstory puts itself in direct opposition to history. To practice herstory is to take what you have been given and question it. Who is being excluded? Whose experiences are being discounted? Why does this story center white, cisgender, perisex, heterosexual, and rich men?
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Herstorians do not rewrite history — they just reframe it to tell a richer story about human experiences, not just about white men’s experiences.
First Dyke March in New York City, 1993. Courtesy of Carolina Kroon.
What is history?
History is epitomized by one phrase: “history is written by the victors.” For decades, in a delightful illustration of its power, this quote has been misattributed to Winston Churchill, when, in fact, it has been around since at least 1746.
Our history has been written by oppressors, because they have “won” that right. In the United States, individual states’ Departments of Education set the standards for what basic information children should learn. Simultaneously, for hundreds of years, Departments of Education have been led almost exclusively by white, cisgender, perisex, heterosexual, upper/middle class men. This creates a hegemonic system where those in power can maintain their power through controlling who has access to information. Until very recently, elementary schoolers in America have learned about how the Native Americans greeted the Pilgrims with open arms at the first Thanksgiving, without any mention as to exactly how Native lands decreased from 1.9 billion acres before European contact to 100 million acres today.
The curriculum in the United States upholds hegemony and leads to a cycle of oppressed people becoming further oppressed. Another adage about history misattributed to Winston Churchill, actually conceptualized by George Santayana, is “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Our current historical system is designed to perpetuate the oppression it was founded on.
In 2016, when Donald Trump became President on his America First platform, many people I know were outraged. They could not believe how someone so rooted in racism, sexism, xenophobia, ableism, and transphobia could have become President. Yet those same people do not blink an eye when they pay for their groceries with a twenty dollar bill.
Trump did what thousands of other American politicians have done throughout our history: create a common enemy and defend Americans against it. From McCarthyism to the Vietnam War. Trump’s Border Wall and Muslim Ban policies are not radically different from historic American foreign policy. They are just modern reiterations of xenophobic protectionist policies. “In all of its parts, the most basic purpose of the 1924 Immigration Act was to preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity.”
In American history, there are few actual winners. When we exclude people from our communities, we create injustice for those who are excluded. We also create injustice for ourselves, and stop ourselves from reaching our true potential. When there are no winners, the story doesn’t get told, because no one is there to tell it. The only way for history to be true, is to tell all stories from our community.
Unknown photographer, unknown year.
What can our story be?
In hir afterword to the 20th Edition of Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg approaches the question of what pronoun to use when refering to hir. Ze ultimately states “But in recent years, I have become as concerned with the pronoun we as I am with the pronouns she, he and ze.”
Activists in America have been singing “We Shall Overcome” for decades, because we have been carrying our struggles for liberation together. However, that is not how the story is told. When children learn about this song, they learn of it only in the context of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. And they only learn about it in the context of the oppressors. They learn the names Martin Luther King, Jr., Ruby Bridges, and Rosa Parks, and then the governments who establish curriculum call it a day. In reality, though, “We Shall Overcome” was used by far more than these three people, and these three people accomplished far more than the narratives told about them. The Civil Rights Movement was not passive. It was radical, anti-capitalist, pro-Black, and revolutionary in how liberation was sought after.
By purposefully omitting authentic lives from the American historical and cultural canons, our systems have created a world where young people do not know their own history and cannot understand how the world around them got to be that way.
Imagine a world in which future generations knew the whole truth, not just the truths oppressors have picked and chosen for them. Imagine a world in which young people were raised to understand solidarity from the beginning, not just kinda get it when they learn not to tattle on one another.
As young activists, we must educate ourselves on the struggles of our activist ancestors; continue their work building solidarity across movements; create the social change that we need to thrive, not just survive; and maintain that solidarity for generations to come. Only then will we be able to truly tell our story.
Untitled, 2015. Photograph by Sheila Pree Bright.