transcribed by Melissa Berney
When I think about the south... somebody gave me a quote one time -- it's actually taped to my wall in my room. My friend gave me this quote: "It's easy to join the crowd and run north, but to stay and fight is a true southern woman." And I feel like that about being a queer in the south. Which is, it would be so easy for me to go to some other cities where they have huge queer communities -- where it is okay everywhere you go. But honestly, the work we're doing here is so important -- Ida and Short Mountain, and not even just in Tennessee. I fucking give it to queer people who live in this place -- especially in rural areas. But it's not even just the south -- it's anywhere. Any queer person who can find the courage and strength to keep going in a place like this, because it can be very hard. We do have neighbours who show up with guns. It's happened. It doesn't happen a lot, but it has. Whatever.
It's not actually the older people you have to worry about. It's all the young'uns. They're bored, in the middle of nowhere and they ain't got nothing to do. What do they do? And they don't even harass us because we're gay. It's not like they're coming down here screaming faggot, they come down here screaming 'hippie'. They call our holler 'Hippie Holler'. But the thing is, people have been in this community for over thirty years -- in this area -- queers and hippies. I won't say that it wasn't scary. There are two people that are here right now that were shot at. And those kids got away with it. That's another thing about it. That was really hard. I should've been... we had a court date. Eight kids were arrested off our land and stuff, and I should've really gone to the court date, because I think people were too nervous to speak up about it. But, they got away with it. They claimed they just shot the gun in the air...
It's scary though... The way that I battle that... the way it is for me personally, like going into town and stuff -- they're taken aback by me more than anybody, as far as people that live here, because I do have the southern accent and they're like, "This is weird". Because there are a lot of people that... I kind of make a conscious effort to be nice. Just to remind people that -- Hey, guess what, I'm a person too. It's like, "Whatever man, come on, man, we're all people, I'll shoot the shit with you."
And the way I interact with our outside community is definitely a lot different than other people here. Especially because I'm one of the token actual southern queers that live here. Like, somebody will call and leave a message and somebody else will be like, "Becca, can you translate this? I can't understand a word they're saying." And I'm like, "OK, they just said your doctor appointment is at one o'clock on Tuesday. You didn't understand that? That's crazy. How do you understand what I'm saying? I don't know."
I think when a lot of people come here for, say, Idapalooza. We have this little Zine that we put out to inform people about things like snakes and chiggers and ticks and stuff, and I wrote a little thing about remembering where you're at. Because a lot of people aren't from the south. I'm not saying this is everyone, but people really do fail to remember how hard this is and how important this is and how we're not here to be slapping people in the faces when we go to town, and be like, "Look, we're fucking gay and queer and we're in the rural south and we're gonna take over." Actually it's about integrating ourselves in a way that's positive and healthy and we have a lot of good connections with our neighbours and stuff.
My whole family -- my roots are totally Texas and Codin and Balabatry Alabama. That's my roots. It's interesting. I don't know that I could really -- it's funny when I go other places. I was in San Francisco and, how the queers... I don't know, it's not everybody, but definitely there are queers that have this whole pretentious attitude about "Oh, I live here" or "I live there" and they would ask me where I'm from and I'd say "Oh, I live in middle Tennessee on 200 acres in a queer community" and even before asking me... and this happened several times... long before asking me, "Oh, awesome! What is your life like? What do you do?" The first thing that comes out of their mouth is "Why?" That's literally -- you know what I mean? As a southern queer, every time I go to different cities... it's interesting... I also have a deep southern accent -- I'm loud. I've got a big personality...
I'll just talk a bit about feminism and the southern woman. Because I feel like that's a really important thing. I have a very good friend down the road named Meryl, and I went to this queer feminist writers' conference. Because I used to perform poetry, and I went to this writers' conference and performed. It's been going on for over 30 years and a lot of the women that go there are feminist lesbian southern women. And it was a really odd big huge eye-opening experience for me, in the way that I had performed these pieces and I had southern queer women coming up to me... this one woman was almost crying and said, "I just want to thank you" and I said, "Why do you want to thank me?" and she said, "I've been a feminist for a long time, and the thing about the south is that we're viewed as weak, weak individuals. Southern women -- like we don't have a backbone..." and that's how even other feminists view us. And that's intense. "I'm from Mississippi. I'm sixty-five years old. Only in the last couple years have I even been reclaiming my southern heritage and even my southern accent. A long time ago I got rid of that. I really had to hide it in this lesbian community, feminist community."
I think that how we're viewed as women -- not even just like as people in general, or how families are viewed, or communities or anything like that -- women -- let's start there. Because that's a big fucking thing. And granted, I'll tell you this much -- a lot of it may be true. But that's like women everywhere... people everywhere. Doesn't even matter if you're a woman, man, anything. We've all got our weak moments, you know what I'm saying? But I will say from my own experience of southern women that we may be viewed as weak, but southern women are fucking strong, straight up.
This is a space for all kinds of things, different kinds of people. Yeah, there are people having sex in the woods and in the bushes and I'm glad that they can feel free to do that and not feel like... not feel bad about it or worried.
Zeph: I just have a hard time believing there are any more people having sex in the bushes at Ida than at Bonaroo.
Becca: Oh hell no! Like, that's the thing. Not at all!
Zeph: I think maybe the difference is that at a place like this people are actively confronting a lot of shaming about it. So a place like Bonaroo, I'm sure people are...like, when I've lived at a community with straight folks, they're all fucking each other and having internal drama and all this shit but you never hear them. You know what I mean? In that culture, it's not that people are having any less sex, it's just that it's much more... people are quiet about it. And then queer folks, we're told to have all this shame around who we're fucking. And so, in a situation like this, it's not that any more people are actually having sex at this event than at any straight festival, but people are loud and out about it. And to talk about it and do it in front of other people or whatever... it's just like there's a whole community that's supportive of that -- that have officially given this outside... like, if I was going to go have sex with my lover in a creek bed at some straight festival I'd run the risk of getting beat up, or I'd run the risk of getting shamed for that, or whatever. So to me, I'm going to take advantage of being here where I don't have that fear. That's like the first thing I'm going to do.
Becca: And that's the fucking beauty in it, you know? You don't have to worry about those things. There's not shame around it.
Zeph: And literally, it's also a safety issue. If I was in nature anywhere that's not Ida, and being sexual in some place that's not in a bedroom, then... and even then, in some places, before they overturned the sodomy laws... you're not safe.
Becca: No, you're not. You run the risk.
Zeph: So that's something that people really do value about this space. I went for years to the Michigan Women's Music Festival, which is a big lesbian festival and it's very similar there. It's a very sexual culture and people are super-excited to be somewhere where it's safe to do that, and express it. But I don't know -- I've never been to Bonaroo but what I've heard about it is it's a giant college-kid Ôlet's get drunk and have sex in the bushes' thing, but nobody's going to point at that and ask about it because people just take that for granted.
Becca: People here are fucking more on top of consent and things like that, which is amazing. I went to Bonaroo to work... a couple of us from here went, and I broke down just crying, because of certain... like the performers... and I'm a performer... like, there was this man... we walked up because we were like, "Oh my god, there's people in hot pink latex outfits. What is this all about?" So me and my friend sit down in the front row and he has this big huge latex balloon that he's blowing up, and he's like, "I'm gonna need ten volunteers from the audience. But I only need women". And so the first girl volunteers and she goes up there and he's like, "Okay, I'm gonna have you get in this latex balloon and they have this thing blowing it up and it's huge and air's being put in it and they're like "But it's really hot in there and you're the first one so you need to keep this in mind -- like, you might want to take something off.
And slowly, one by one, he was pressuring these women to... he had thousands of people boo a woman off the stage because she didn't want to take her panties off. She had everything else off except her panties, okay? Then the last woman goes up there and... she was number ten, and the whole time I'm just like, [shakes head] "What in the hell... I can't believe..." and I knew I was going to talk to him after the show... and so the last woman goes up there and she's getting ready to get in and he's like, "Okay, well you might want to take your panties off." And she's like, "No! I really don't." And she was adamant about not taking her panties off, and so she went to crawl through the hole, and before she did that he looked at her and said, "Do you trust me?" And she was like, "No I don't. But I guess I'm gonna have to, because I'm crawling in this thing". And I'm front row, and I swear to god, man, she crawls through there arms and head first and when she gets down to her waist he yanks her panties off.
Zeph: Fuckin' asshole.
Becca: In front of thousands of fucking people. So let me compare a little space stuff, you know? Let me just compare the two here. They're... they get away with fucking misogynistic, patriarchal bullshit. That right there would never fly here. That's the difference. That's why people can feel safe to do what they fucking want. And why women... people... all kinds of people can come here and feel safe. Because that's not going to happen to them, because you know what happens if it does? People will come in large masses and confront it -- actually call somebody out versus being there and just like... Bonaroo, the largest music festival in this country. I wonder how many fucking women are fucking raped there every year. And how many people get away with shit like that? Because it exists and it is happening.
And that performance alone... and I talked to him about it... my friend and I waited for him and he thought I was just going to tell him how amazing his performance was and no, I didn't. I told him that what he just did in front of thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people was sexual assault... or not, you know -- call it assault, or what you will -- it's wrong. "She told you 'No' on stage in front of thousands of people and then when you ripped her panties off they all fucking clapped. They celebrated the fact that she said 'No' and then you took her panties off." What's the damn difference in some girl being so completely trashed that she doesn't even know what's happening and saying 'No' and it still happening? That's the difference between Bonaroo and Idapalooza, that's all I've got to say. Fuck Bonaroo. That's what I've got to say.
Zeph: I feel like in some ways... like, have you ever been here when a big festival wasn't going on?
Becca: Yeah, it's so fucking different.
Zeph: Yeah, Idapalooza is a week out of fifty-two weeks in the year. I mean I've been here when it's not Idapalooza and it was --
Becca: A different world.
Zeph: -- completely different. It's not a big party.
Becca: It's not. At all.
Zeph: People are not fuckin' in the woods, necessarily.
Becca: Some...most of the time people ain't fucking at all, because guess what? There's eight of us in the woods and everybody else is gone. Alright? Hey! If this is on film, "Come visit me! My number is double zero." I'm just teasing.
Zeph: You'd like to be fuckin' in the woods, but...
Becca: Let me tell you! Tie me to a tree, please! We've got a lot of them! We've got some cedar...
I think that, living in this community, it's hard to have relationships because your lovers live far away. And maybe you... it's hard to have... you're not ever going to have this normal relationship, especially the way straight mainstream society views relationships. I don't want to have relationships like that anyway. I don't. But, it's just different. Unless your lover lives here, you have long-distance situations and monogamy is like -- who's going to have a monogamous relationship with someone who lives on the other side of the country? There are a lot of queers that do have monogamous relationships -- I know somebody out here in Tennessee that have monogamous relationships. I think that it's harder to negotiate that stuff when you do live near each other. In the city, you have space. It's like, "Oh, we have an open relationship, so..." You're not stepping over each other every two seconds.
Out here -- I couldn't imagine. I just can't. There are people who do it. I'm also one of those people who's like, "I will never have sex with anyone who lives at Ida." Nope. I am not asking for that drama. I have seen it enough. It's just hard. When you live in a community like this and all of a sudden you break up, you need space, dear. That's a reality. You break up, you need space. And living in a small space like this you can't get that. I think that for the most part, people try to not take sides. You can't really take sides in a situation when it's such a small place. Although people I'm sure do. It's just a matter of being supportive and remembering where you're at and remembering that there's not a lot of us. But I would be like that in a city. If I had friends that broke up I would be supportive. I don't know. It's definitely hard to be here. There's not a lot of space.
Zeph: So, a lot of queer folks who are interested in doing rural projects for instance or are interested in farming or sustainable practices...all that sort of stuff... end up going to those sorts of communities -- that are more heterosexual... where the majority of the population is heterosexual people. And so, they go to a community where they may be isolated as a queer person, but because they're interested in sustainable gardening, sustainable livelihood or more ruralised lifestyles... and so, Ida is the only one that I know of that exists in this country that's friendly to women and to trans folk. There's a small network of gay male communities in the country but this is the only one that I know of that's --
Becca: And several of those communities don't allow...when those communities were just started they didn't allow women to live there. And then there's communities that were all women and lesbians, but then trans folks can't...you know what I mean? Ida is all about creating an amazing space for queer and trans people. That's mixed. That's not just like, "This is only a trans community," or, "This is only a gay male community".
Zeph: This is a space that mixed with gay men, lesbians, and there's a lot of trans folk that live here too. When I think of trans folk -- like, you could define that a lot of different ways but generally speaking -- anybody who, walking out into the mainstream world, people are going to be like, "Is that a man, or is that a woman?" And maybe there's a lot of different answers to that question, but when you're out in the mainstream world, that's going to be... that you could get harassed, you could get beat up, you could get arrested because you're in the 'wrong' bathroom or anything like that... there's a lot of shit that people take if they don't fall neatly into one category or the other. Maybe they're a very tall, very square-jawed woman. Or maybe they're not really one or the other. Maybe they're a very short guy with no facial hair. I'm just saying there's a lot of variation there and that this mainstream world doesn't accept a lot of that variation, and so folks that really fall outside of those categories -- those might be... some of those folks might consider themselves to be trans in one way or another. And some of those folks... this is a community that's welcoming to those folks.
Becca: Personally, I think it's better to live in a very mixed community. I'm not going to say that I don't think that it's important for... you know, if gay men think that they need to have... this is actually, if I may also say, something that's come up recently because one of the other communities... there's a community on the west coast -- a radical faerie community -- that is trying to push for all-male gatherings again. And it's been the debate. And I do feel like it's important to create safe space for... if gay men feel like they have to have a safe space for just themselves then that's... you know, I'm gonna respect it, but at the same time, I have different political views on that. Especially when it comes to gay men needing their own space and women not being allowed in that space.
We're a queer community. Queer doesn't mean that we're only gay or lesbian or trans or anything. There are straight people that come here. What are they like? What do you mean? People who fuck people of the opposite sex? That is what we are trying to change. That right there is what Ida is trying to change. Is that gender is bullshit. Is it straight, gay... you can be all of that in one. Really you can. It's called queer. And that's why I'm not here to... we're not sitting here to be like, "Oh, can I check your card as you walk into Ida? Hey, are you straight? I'm sorry, you can't come in." That's not what we're about. Queer, honey.
But at the same time... how do I explain this... We actually had this conversation, because somebody wrote a letter to the wider community expressing worry of straight people coming to Idapalooza... At the same time, they definitely have to be on top of their shit. We're not going to let, oh, some frat boy wants to come live at Ida -- oh, hell no. What does it mean, to be on top of your shit, as a straight person? To be educated and to be aware of your privilege in every aspect. If you're a straight person, you need to know what that means. And what this space represents, and how you're going to play a role in that space. That it's going to be healthy and amazing for everyone involved. That's kind of how I view it. And that's a deep thing. We actually had a conversation about this recently. We're not anti-straight. That's not at all how we want to be viewed. No way. We're a queer community. We're not a separatist community and we don't want people to perceive Ida as that.
Zeph: I think it goes back to the question of straight people being welcome here, and I think that it's the kind of straight people that are probably interested in coming to Idapalooza and then let's extend it to the community of Ida or other queer communities that I'm part of -- when we're welcoming to people who behave heterosexually it's because they're also interested in queer liberation. And because they're also interested in it because it's their own liberation. They're not wanting to be confined in those little tiny boxes. Because the mainstream ideology around that is so confining to everybody. So, I think it just gives everybody a little more breathing room if there's not so many incredibly strict rules around gender, around how you behave -- depending on the gender that people tell you you are, and all of that stuff is... it doesn't just affect queer folks. It most directly affects queer folks because we're the ones who are targeted the most when we behave outside of gender norms, but straight folks are affected by it as well.
Becca: Ida is playing a big part, I think, in this revolution of sorts. And that this a very important space. And that I feel really fucking awesome to live here and help make this happen. And that our larger community has really helped make this happen. And that this space is important. This community is playing a big role in something way bigger, as far as what you were just saying about liberation and what it means in the whole scheme of things. That's what I have to say.
