Hick Like Me: On Southern Identity and the Politics of Erasure

     Among white people with Southern accents that have attended college outside of the deep South there seems to be one narrative that is almost universal to all of us (it may be nearly universal as well or completely different for people of color but I cannot comment on that as it is not something I have any personal knowledge about). It appears to happen whether we are male or female, LGBT or heterosexual, cissexual people, liberal or conservative, fat or thin, able bodied or disabled, religious or atheistic. This is what occurs: We are having a conversation with someone or with a group of people. We are often trying to make a serious point about politics, economics, society, or our personal lives. In the midst of our soliloquy on neoliberalism's effect on the poor, our views about Obamacare, poverty in Africa, gender roles in society, the prevalence or lack thereof of racism at our university, or how we are going to handle challenges in our personal relationships we are interrupted with comments about our accent. It soon becomes immediately obvious that no matter the wisdom or unwisdom of what we were saying about the war on drugs, social hostility towards interracial and interfaith couples, or the legalization of same sex marriage we might as well not have said it because no one was listening to the content of our speech. It is frustrating at best and infuriating at worst.  

   I have loved every Southern professor I have ever had regardless of what I thought of their teaching abilities, politics, or grading policies. While some of them have been upstanding instructors others have not. What I have loved without reservation about all of them, however, was the fact that they spoke with a voice of authority that sounded like mine to a class of people who by and large did not. When I first ran across the concept of "stereotype threat" and read that women and people of color are more likely to identify with instructors that look and sound like them, thereby deflecting the risk of stereotype threat, it made intuitive sense to me that for many people this would be the case. After all, what better way to defuse the stereotype that women, blacks, Latinos, or rural people are stupid than by positioning a member of one of these groups as an epistemic authority?

   Like bisexuals, trans people, disabled people, and people of size, rural Southern people are almost never depicted in the media except as a punch line or a curiosity. What is reflected of us in the media is the notion that we possess sub par intelligence, revel in religious extremism, and are to a person racist, sexist, homophobic antisemitic raving lunatics. Like any other stereotype, it is damaging, often inaccurate, and morally wrong.

   What is frustrating about these prejudices is that it causes people to misread one another. A rural Southern person's political, social, economic, and religious views are almost always read in the context of their Southern identity. I by no means intend to imply that all people are not shaped in significant ways by the cultural contexts of their environments. But it is a factor, not necessarily the factor. And interpreting every belief a person holds in the light of one superficial identity marker is bound to make those who do so oblivious to what they are actually seeing and hearing from Southern people. Frustrated by these attitudes, some of us even decide that if we're going to be credited with embodying the worst of Southern stereotypes (even when we do not) we might as well embrace our inner racist, sexist, homophobic, antisemitic raving lunatic. Like all people, we often internalize the images that others have of us, thereby perpetuating these stereotypes even further.

   By way of example, I have been frequently critical of the state of Israel. My reasons for this are similar to those of many liberals. I think it is ludicrous to pretend that a society that drafts its young people into near constant warfare, that does not allow interfaith marriages to be performed on its own soil, that allows for the existence of an apartheid regime, and that is run by clerical fanatics is a free society by any reasonable definition. Were Israel in Europe and not the Middle East the savagery of all this would become immediately apparent, but because Israel is located in one of the most dysfunctional regions of the world it looks fairly good by comparison since it doesn't stone people for witchcraft or hang people for homosexuality. I would like to think that these views are understood as the informed perspective of someone who studied religion and Middle Eastern politics a great deal in college but alas they are all too often interpreted as a product of the secret antisemitism I must harbor as a Southern American. It is rank prejudice and it is completely infuriating. This is but one example and I could write about many others from my personal experience as well as that of others.

   Like almost all Southern people I know, I have a curious relationship with this aspect of my identity. Sometimes I appreciate the attention that comes my way as a result of being a Southern person and it is an aspect of my identity I have unapologetically leveraged when I have believed it has been advantageous for me to do so. Other times I wish that it was something that could recede into the background when it becomes too much of a distraction. And from what I have heard, most members of marginalized groups tend to feel the same way.

   Rural Southern people face many of the same obstacles as members of other marginalized groups: poverty, less educational opportunity, lack of positive and realistic media portrayals, and negative stereotyping by the dominant society. But for various reasons we don't talk about these issues. There are cultural, socioeconomic, and other reasons for this phenomenon which deserve a blog post in their own right. But I want to end this post by saying that is important we start talking about rural Southern erasure in our media, politics, and elsewhere. It has been a major phenomenon in many of our lives and it is time we give it the sustained analysis we have given to so many issues regarding marginalized groups in American society.

An Intersectional Analysis of the Constance McMillen Debacle

There has recently been a lot of talk in the media about the whole sad, soap opera-esque saga that has been the Constance McMillen prom debacle. It is generally agreed by reasonable, decent people that what happened to her was cruel and deeply lamentable. It is generally agreed, athough not without some dissent, that Constance would do well to leave Fulton, Mississippi after high school graduation and never look back. But what has repeatedly amazed me is that, for all of the LGBT and feminist blogosphere's talk of intersectionality when it comes to issues of ethnicity, an intersectional analysis of the Constance McMillen debacle has thus far not been forthcoming - at least not from Feministing or the Bilerico Project, which is the primary place I would expect to read those sorts of things.

While a term like "intersectionality" is all too often used in vague and nearly meaningless ways that lack specificity, I do believe that it has some value in analyzing many situations in which discrimination against an individual or group of individuals is primarily supposed to operate due to one or two primary characteristics but in actuality operates due to a confluence of factors that define the identity and/or experience of a person or group of people.

To make this a little clearer: Constance McMillen is a young rural Southern lesbian woman. Let me repeat this again for emphasis: Constance McMillen is a young rural Southern lesbian woman. And that is different, and in many ways infinitely harder, than being a young LGBT person in most places in America.

In much of the Northeast and on the West Coast, as well as in many other areas around the country, it is becoming not unusual and perhaps even fashionable for young people to embrace an LGBT identity in middle and high school. There are Gay-Straight Alliances, LGBT community resource centers, and high school performances of the Laramie Project to facilitate their transitions. There are networks of other LGBT people, both their own age and older, in the community to serve as allies. Should these young people choose to pursue dating and relationships with members of their own sex, there are at least several others in the community they can choose to partner with.

This is not the world Constance McMillen is from and this is not the world I'm from either.

Perhaps the biggest difference between LGBT people who come of age in relatively urban, upper class communities (largely Northeastern and West Coast) and those who come of age in relatively poor rural communities (largely Southern and Midwestern) like Constance's and mine is how they experience the struggle for LGBT rights.

The difference in mindset breaks down something like this: For LGBT people in the former communities, their struggle is largely one of dismantling institutional discrimination against LGBT individuals and the LGBT community. In this struggle, issues like adoption rights and the legal recognition of same sex marriages by the state loom large. Relatively large LGBT communities mobilize around these issues and others, assuring that almost everyone in the larger community recognizes the existence of these subcultural communities. And while, unfortunately, bigotry is still a regular part of the lives of most LGBT people in America to some degree, the people in these areas a.) perceive themselves as belonging to an LGBT community with other LGBT people that can turn to for friendship, support, and potential romantic partnerships and b.) they recognize that while some heterosexual individuals and heteronormative institutions are their enemies, they also have some allies in the wider community and that opinion about LGBT issues within their wider area is relatively diverse.

Now let's look at LGBT people in the latter communities, communities like Constance's and mine. In these communities, institutional discrimination against LGBT people is still acknowledged by LGBT individuals themselves, but more likely they experience their discrimination as largely a product of hegemonic social and cultural forces. In such a context, issues like same-sex marriage and adoption rights for same-sex couples start to look nearly meaningless for many. After all, what's the use of a state acknowledgment of your marriage in a community where none of your neighbors will ever acknowledge it anyway? What's the use of adopting a child with your same-sex partner when all parties involved will face ostracism and bigotry?

Furthermore, even finding a same-sex partner can prove an insurmountable challenge in these communities where there are very few openly LGBT people. Finding friends to share your common experiences and challenges as an LGBT person is not a given, either. In these communities, there are no LGBT resource centers, no Gay-Straight Alliances in middle and high schools, no performances of the Laramie Project. LGBT youth are as likely to bullied by their teachers as their peers. Religious institutions play a seminal role in perpetuating bigotry against LGBT people and their influence is widespread. Young people are rarely openly gay, bisexual, or transgender in middle and high school. Both the forces of government and the forces of civil society appear allied against LGBT people in such a context and acts of resistance often have a feel of futility about them.

This is why the story of Constance McMillen cannot be understood without also understanding the context of coming out and living out in communities like hers. And while it now obvious that her age, sexual minority status, and regional heritage played a role in this situation, we must all consider the fact that her femaleness may also have played a role in her situation, in particular the pettiness of sending her and her date to the "fake prom," a pettiness of the sort all too often seen in middle and high school girls attempting to ostracize another girl. All of this is why intersectional analysis is a useful tool to understand the dynamics in any given instance of discrimination.

Of course, the obvious question then becomes: what to do about the dire situation of LGBT Americans in rural communities in the South and Midwest (or for that matter, anywhere else)? Encouraging LGBT people to come out in such communities no matter the personal costs to themselves or their families seems an awfully high sacrifice for those on the outside to ask of them. It is also one all too often made without a real understanding of what would really be involved in this isolating, ostracizing, even physically dangerous experience. Similarly, as the Constance McMillen case has taught us, getting national organizations like the ACLU or the Human Rights Campaign involved won't solve all of our problems either. However, two approaches seem to me to be potentially useful on this front. LGBT organizations should be encouraged to do community outreach in these areas that focuses on community building, organizing, and counseling. The logistics of this are difficult and would vary from situation to situation but it is imperative that there be a presence for LGBT people in these communities. Secondly, the media has an important role to play in these areas. While people in these communities may know very few openly LGBT people, the media still have a role to play in making sure that all of us - lesbian women, gay men, bisexual men, bisexual women, trans men, trans women - are portrayed positively and respectfully because they speak for us where we can't speak for ourselves. Organization like the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation must be vigilant about protesting media misrepresentation of all of these groups, in particular bisexual and trans folks, who are still all too often seen as acceptable targets in the popular culture.

I will close this post as saying that for all of those individuals who have suggested that at some point in time Constance attempt to make a home for herself in Fulton have no idea what they're talking about. No one can ask another person to be martyred, and ineffectually at that, for a wider cause. In doing what she did, Constance has already done all of us a great service and we should simply support her and be grateful. We have no right to ask her for anything more ever again. She has paid her dues and if she does nothing else for LGBT issues in her life - if she later decides to marry a man and live in the suburbs with two children and a dog - she has still done us all a great deed and she will still deserve to go down in history as a great champion of LGBT rights.

Secondly, I will note that I realize this post does not speak to all LGBT experiences. I have not commented on the experiences of those LGBT persons living in urban inner city areas or in U.S. immigrant communities or in any number of other contexts. Other LGBT people will have to fill in that gap with their own analysis. But I hope that this post has highlighted the importance of a truly intersectional analysis in understanding the problems of LGBT people.