"Trouble with the Term or with the Lying"

My family, like many African-Carribean-

American families, was/is full of lies.

The lies of silence. The show-one face, live-another-lies. The we're-too-good-to-

live-around-these-poorly-educated, poorly bred, poor Nigger-lies.

The we're-better!

feet-lies.

The lies were

insidious.

-

just-getting-on-our-

pervasive,

and they were

We told them with regularity in and outside of our family until they backed up and choked some of us.

We believed our own lies. Indeed, we did not know we were lying. We

6

lied because being poor, powerless and Niggers (literate or not) was such a painfully denigrading status to have, that lying salved some hurt on a limited level. Lying also tempered the enragement that sometimes swelled and oozed from its dormancy.

Lying buffed the edges and encouraged us to self-present a false image of reality. Lying was a tranquilizer--an opiate.

I am a lesbian.

I incontrovertibly bond with wimmin on a vast multitude of levels including, yet not exclusively, sexually.

My images both verbal and visual are womon to womon (lesbian)

I am black. Reckon that makes me a black lesbian. A description, label, accusation and honourific title that I feel indubitably comfortable wearing.

I am not a piece of onyx, a black azalea, nor a petunia

Though I have used petunias, beautiful shadelight flowers, in a series of erotic drawings in celebration of Black wimmin. (Judy Chicago has her image of sisters, and I mine) I am, nonetheless, not a petunia; nor does the name petunia readily identify my political stance, my sure-fired uppitiness, nor my ever-ready obscene gesture at a society that is unmistakedly gyne-stifling.

undeniable

and

I am a womon. A black womon who chooses with unswerving deliberation and consciousness to identify with steadfastly love other wimmin. I am a lesbian,

as is my sister, my aunt (and Shh! don't tell anybody, but hear tell my grandmother may be too!)

We are close, we are committed to our bonds, and we've consciously opted not to continue the familial pattern of lying. It feels good.

Being a lesbian has helped elucidatively hone my socio-political and spiritual imagery. It's given form, spirit, colour, movement, aesthetics, honour, and depth to my vision. It is a process by which I bond politically, emotionally, philosophically, ethically, spiritually, hopefully egalitarianly and sexually with members of my own sex.

Yasmin A. Sayyed 1984

There are few titles that I've worn that feel as comfortable and as integrible as "lesbian". Lesbian is what I am; it's who I am; It's me.

То deny it would be self-affrontery.

I am a lesbian.

an

act of

It's not just a sexuality identification tag. It's an I'm-too-proud-and-too-damn- uppity-to-give-others-the-power-to-silence- me, and to-shame-me-into-being-less-than- honest-identification tag also. lifestyle describer, a welcomed identifier, a warning and I'm-not-too-

a

modest-to-flaunt-it honourific title.

I am a lesbian.

It's a

I bond on many levels with wimmin, lesbian and nonlesbian alike, with wimmin of various class, cultural, ethnic, vocational and educational backgrounds. It's an inclusive process that recognizes that the commonly shared and individuated concerns of wimmin as both a disadvantaged caste and an oppressed class are political and personal issues. It's political not to lie; it's integrible not to lie not to our sisters and not to ourselves; not to lie energetically nor to lie passively, for lying enslaves, suffocates and defines the limits of our bondings. Lesbianism is a way of perceiving internalizing planetary development.

――

and

It's wimmin being internally focussed. It's self-nuturing.

I suppose if I did not feel comfortable with myself, with who and what I am, that I might feel a smidgen more at ease (safe) with some misnomer, with some n'er-to-allude-to-what- I'm about name that would supposedly mitigate the impact of my being a black lesbian feminist with two sons in america.

I

I'm not minimizing the cost of visibility. simply believe the alternatives to be far more exhorbitant.

If I were not resolved, a flowery name might offer to mollify, on some miniscule level, that my daring to be my unabated self is much despised.

I am a lesbian,

and by any name, who and what I am is despised

GG

both in the Black community and the dominant culture.

I don't feel as though I need to give heterosexism power, nor homophobia credence by remaining "discreet" (closeted) ΟΙ renaming myself (lying)

I am a black lesbian.

An honourific title,

I'm not to modest to wear.

Yasmin is a 38 year old lesbian mother of two sons. She is a writer, visual artist and teacher who lives in San Francisco.