Mattilda Quotes

We all cultivated critique--we were dogmatic in our alliances, self-righteous in our beliefs. But the broader Mission dyke culture we called queer, so much of it was about loyalty at any cost. Loyalty could mean safety but it could also mean reenacting high school popularity contests and taking on the victors' roles. High school was only a few years in the past for most of us, even if we might have been scandalized if anyone had mentioned that. Accountability only occurred when people would get in dramatic fights, and it was more about whose team was stronger or more popular than about what actually happened. ~ Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

For folks who have that casual-dude energy coursing through their bloodstream, that's great. But gays should not grow up alienated just for us to alienate each other. It's too predictable, like any other cycle of abuse. Plus, the conformist, competitive notion that by "toning down" we are "growing up" ultimately blunts the radical edge of what it is to be queer; it truncates our colorful journey of identity.

Said another way, it's like living in West Hollywood and working a gay job by day and working it in the gay nightlife, wearing delicate shiny shirts picked from up the gay dry cleaners, yet coquettishly left unbuttoned to reveal the pec implants purchased from a gay surgeon and shown off by prancing around the gay-owned-and-operated theater hopped up on gay health clinic steroids and wheat grass purchased from the friendly gay boy who's new to the city, and impressed by the monstrous SUV purchased from a gay car dealership with its rainbow-striped bumper sticker that says "Celebrate Diversity." Then logging on to the local Gay.com listings and describing yourself as "straight-acting."

Let me make myself clear. This is not a campaign for everyone to be like me. That'd be a total yawn. Instead, this narrative is about praise for the prancy boys. Granted, there's undecided gender-fucks, dagger dykes, faux-mos, po-mos, FTMs, fisting-top daddies, and lezzie looners who also need props for broadening the sexual spectrum, but they're telling their own stor ~ Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

U.S. society, after all, continues to be starkly segregated along class and race lines, never allowing people to have the sort of interactions necessary to undo prejudices, stereotypes, and oppressions. ~ Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

cruise the ones in the flesh, not the ghosts on the internet ~ Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

Every time a trick hangs up on me, I gain a renewed faith in humanity - someone really cares! ~ Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore