Paula Ettelbrick, executive director of the International Gay
& Lesbian Human Rights Campaign, said some conservatives often use lesbian
baiting to try to discredit some women’s organizations, even if they have
nothing to do with gay civil rights.
Dem activists say they’re doing more than ‘toeing a party line’
Out local leader faults gay group for lesbian’s primary loss
Dem document calls for end to ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ DOMA but omits the ‘g word’
Judge rules ‘nothing inherently prejudicial’ in ballot wording
Colorado’s Polis poised to become third out representative after primary win
Mukasey: No prosecutions in Justice Dept. hiring scandal
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EARTHA MELZE
Friday, March 25, 2005
During the 1992 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton felt the need to publicize
her chocolate chip cookie recipe. One gay rights group claims she was trying to
counteract sexuality baiting.
The story of the former First Lady and current New York senator is among the
examples offered in a recently released report by the International Gay &
Lesbian Human Rights Campaign and the Center for Women’s Global Leadership
at Rutgers University. It is titled, “Written Out: How Sexuality is Used
to Attack Women’s Organizing.”
Clinton commented in a 1992 interview that she had chosen to practice law rather
than “stay home and have teas.” She was immediately criticized by
some in the media for not being a proper female role model and persuaded to
go into damage control mode — suddenly ‘Hillary Clinton’s
Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe’ appeared in papers across the country.
The 193-page report, which is being distributed in academic settings, to activist
groups and on the Web, explores how “baiting” or the use of sexual
orientation-based smears, is a tactic leveled universally against politically
active women and organizations that advocate on women’s issues and sexual
rights issues.
“Written Out” describes a high-profile instance of baiting from
2003 in which Patricia Ireland, former president of the National Organization
for Women, was dismissed as director of the Young Women’s Christian Association
after a public campaign by the Traditional Values Coalition urged the YWCA to
fire Ireland to protect girls from Ireland’s “radical, bisexual,
cross-dressing, and pro-abortion agenda.”
This sort of name-calling is cheap, and with the Internet ever-easier, and
according to “Written Out” is being used to silence rights advocates
and divide coalitions.
“We get caught between a rock and a hard place,” said Paula Ettelbrick,
executive director of the IGLHRC. “As a lesbian and a lesbian activist,
one of the most devastating aspects of this is that it frightens off straight
allies.
“We hope that this report will offer a way for women to understand this
dynamic,” Ettelbrick said. “It is not pure and simple homophobia.
There are reasons why women are afraid.”
In some situations being called a lesbian cannot only hinder human rights organizing,
it can have economic and security ramifications, the report notes.
The policy that bans gay men and lesbians from serving in the U.S. military,
for example, makes all women in the military vulnerable to lesbian baiting.
“Written Out” quotes the Secretary of the Army’s Senior Review
Panel Report on Sexual Harassment:
“Female soldiers who refuse the sexual advances of male soldiers may
be accused of being lesbians and subject to investigation for homosexual conduct.
… Women accused of lesbianism believe that that the mere allegation harms
their careers and reputations irreparably.”
“Written Out” reviews the situation in the military. In 2003, females
represented 15 percent of U.S. service members but 33 percent of people discharged
because of their sexual orientation.
Baiting is also used against non-governmental organizations — advocating
for sexual rights by providing, for example, condoms or sexual education is
characterized by governments as “threatening to political order.”
“The mere threat [of being classified as a terrorist group] has been
enough to make some people back up, make people afraid to stand up for what
they know is right,” Ettelbrick said.
This report describes battles going on over sexual rights in a sphere that
remains invisible to most Americans — the U.N. and international law.
The report claims that when groups meet to advance agreements recognizing sexual
rights in international law, U.S. based conservative groups have filled meeting
rooms with loudly praying friars, hijacked video displays with images of dead
fetuses, and conspicuously copied attendance sheets at lesbian caucuses, threatening
to out people.
Spokespeople for the Concerned Women of America, one of the groups accused
of such tactics, were reached seeking comment. They said they wanted time to
study the report and would offer their comments later, but did not do so by
press time.
The rise of fundamentalism around the world is also identified by the report
as a factor in the rise in sexuality based attacks. In meetings at the U.N.,
the report said, “alliances by the Bush administration and conservative
and extremist governments within the Organization of the Islamic Conference
have had a deleterious effect on sexual rights advocate capacity to advance
from agreements made in the 1990s.”
“The U.S. is now a global leader in suppressing women’s rights,”
Ettelbrick said. “This administration promotes a climate of fear and when
people live in fear they become afraid to speak and back off from some of the
contentious issues.”
Men are also experience baiting.
Evan McDoniels, co-president of the College Feminists at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
wrote via e-mail, “Being a leader of a feminist group, people act like
I’m just doing it to be a stud … so from my perspective there is
even some distraction from activism for men in feminism, too. It’s not
as much about questioning me as queer as it is people being suspicious of me
as if I’m the rooster of the henhouse or something perverse like that.”
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