Photographs from Cats (and their Dykes), eds. Irene Reti and Shoney Sien.
1. Beth Karbe, “Sister and Judy”
2. Tam Garson, “Tara and Phineas”
3. Cathy Cade
4. Beth Karbe, “New York City Cat and Susan”
5. Cathy Cade, “Jeri: Shalea and Omar, my New York and California babies, the constants in my life”
6. Cathy Cade, “Ours”
7. Caroline Overman, “Tee Corinne”
8. Beth Karbe, “Self-Portrait with Louise”
9. Susan Logan, “Marie and Tiffany”
…we know nothing about Sappho. Or worse: everything we know is wrong. Even the most basic “facts” are simply not so, or in need of a stringent critical reexamination. A single example. We are told over and over again that Sappho “was married to Kerkylas of Andros, who is never mentioned in any of the extant fragments of her poetry” (Snyder 1989:3). Not surprising, since it’s a joke name: he’s Dick Allcock from the Isle of MAN. It’s been over 139 years since William Mure pointed this out… yet one finds this piece of information repeated without question from book to book, usually omitting the dubious source, usually omitting any reference at all.
Holt Parker, ‘Sappho Schoolmistress’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 123 (1993)
You think of Mr. Rochester, mad wives
in attics, Jane herself, as plain as flan.
You don’t remember Helen Burns, Jane’s friend
from school. Reader, I married her. I pressed
my eighth-grade self between those pages like
a flower, left for later hands. Helen.
“I like to have you near me,” she would cough,
romantically consumptive, after Jane
sneaked to her sick-bed. “Are you warm, darling?”
We’ll always find ourselves inside the book,
no matter what the book, no matter how
little we’re given. I was twelve; gay meant
nothing to me. I only knew I’d go
to Lowood Institution, rise at dawn,
bare knuckles to the switch, choke down the gruel,
pray to the bell, if this meant I could hold
another girl all night, if I could clasp—
this even if she died there while I slept,
this even if I died there in my sleep.
I made some English subtitles since there didn’t seem to be any so far. I’m not sure how good they are, but: Download film – download subtitles Let me know if there’s a problem with the subtitles or the downloads!
I can’t believe the outpouring of support for this post. Thank you all so much.
so many people ask me these!
The only reason “coming out” is still even a thing is because it’s presumed that people are straight until they tell us otherwise. “The Other must identify itself, or else it is decieving us” is a fucked up, dangerous idea.
It also feels very similar to this when revealing you have an invisible or mental disability. People are somtimes angry that they weren’t told right away as though it changes everything about you.
knitting in the dark 