Episode Three: A Reflexive Solidarity
Jasmine Sudarkasa, Executive Director of the Curve Foundation
“I see my job as holding a reflexive solidarity.”
Sophie: Hi friends. My name is Sophie Ziegler. And this is "what is solidarity history?"
Y'all know, curve magazine, right? The glossy lesbian magazine that at least as far as I was concerned, largely defined lesbian culture and aesthetic in the 1990s and aughts. And even further for those of us who kept track. It's relevant to today's episode. So a quick overview.
So curve magazine was first published in 1991. And for the first few years was known as Deneauve. After 30 years of publication, as well as the drama and the joy that comes along with such an ambitious projects. Curve founder of Franco Stevens and her wife, Jen Rainin, founded the curve foundation to hold the archive of the magazine and to promote new community engagement.
That overview is probably all we need for today's episode, but there will say to learn more about the story of curve magazine and the foundation. I highly recommend the documentary "Ahead of the Curve". I'm a big fan. So please definitely check it out if you can.
Today, we'll be hearing our conversation with Jasmine Sudarkasa, the executive director of the curve foundation.
Jasmine uses she her pronouns and is doing an amazing amount of work to shepherd in a new era for Curve. An era of expanded inclusion and representation, an era that challenges us all to consider the future of queer and trans storytelling. We'll start here with Jasmine talking about the documentary, the history of curve and how this drew her to the work.
Jasmine: A couple years ago, Jen decided to start making a documentary to document the story of Curve and how the magazine came to be founded as America's bestselling lesbian magazine and made this really beautiful labor of love.
That's what captivated me about the project is that it was a wife making a film about her wife, and in that was this story about lesbian visibility, media, queerness, women, the limits of the ideas of lesbian and womanhood as qualifiers for queerness. Like it just really made me stop and think about some things that I had been holding myself.
And the film was also an exploration of what to do with the legacy of the magazine. I mentioned that it was America's bestselling lesbian magazine for quite some time and changed owners and went through a few different iterations, and from what I gather, Franco and Jen had come to this inflection point of what do we do with this publication?
In the climate that is journalism in the climate that is queer organizing. What do we do? And what I appreciated is they asked the community what should we do? And resoundingly what came back is that the community needed resources. And the best way to continue the mission of the magazine would be to donate it into a foundation and turn it into a philanthropic mission.
And so that's where I come along, what I came on board to do was really turn this mission and idea into a functional philanthropic project. And I say project because we are not an incorporated organization yet.
We're still very much trying out a lot of ideas. But I was tasked taking the mission, this relic that is 30 years of what it was essentially the queer women's magazine and turn it into something that is not only resonant with the people who sought solace there, but that is expansive enough to face the community as we see it now.
Sophie: Thinking about the history of Curve. How the audiences for the magazine, at least it seemed to me an outsider for sure, was a particular type of person, a particular type of lesbian, maybe it's fair to say. And as a non-binary trans femme, all around fluidly identified type of person, I admit that I'd had a complicated relationship to Curve Magazine.
I've learned to not necessarily expect to be embraced in lesbian spaces. In short, I've been simultaneously a fan of the magazine and perhaps a little afraid of it for quite some time. I asked Jasmine about the audiences for the project. Who does she see as the primary audience, the secondary audience? Whether this is different for the current foundation and archive that it may have been for the magazine.
Jasmine: I really like the frame of primary and secondary audience that, you've offered and, that'll feed into the way I answered the question of how we try to knit these two together.
So our primary audience, I think is anybody who sees themself in this particular idea of queerness because I do think it's very targeted, right? It is expansive in context. It is expansive in its reach, but it is very cisgender.
On and off has been very white, like able-bodied. There are very particular ways that curve has defined glamor, at least visually. But once you dig into story, once again, this was my experience like you actually find that there's so much more there. There's book reviews, there's interviews, sports, also these deeply political reflections on different parts of queer history.
I talk about this often, but in the first issue there is an article debating whether or not elementary school students should learn about, at that time, lesbian and gay people. So next to a CD review, Ani DeFranco, whatever else you would expect in an early nineties lesbian magazine.
I just found that to be so interesting and I, when I picked it up and wanted to share it with folks, because often that is what archival work is, picking up an artifact and trying to make it relevant and say, Hey folks, like we've already learned some of these lessons.
Sophie: Thanks to the work that Jasmine and her team do. I was able to find that 1991 article that she mentioned. It's quite powerful to read if perhaps a little demoralizing as we realize how relevant it is to the struggles we continue to face today
In the class of 13, two students indicated that they knew of a gay relative and three others wrote about knowing someone with aids. The relevance of the literature to students' lives is reflected not only by the percentage who acknowledged their own connections with it, but also by the power of those connections to reshape their lives.
Other students found themselves willing to re-examine their personal responses to the image of gay lifestyles offered by the literature. One student a girl wrote " I was never taught that being gay or lesbian was wrong. Only that being straight was right. "
In this age of Jesse Helms and obscenity trials, providing a safe place for students to speak up about a topic banned from conversation is the professional responsibility of classroom teachers. As the doors of academic freedom are being closed by censorship and reactionaries who want to return to some golden age of elitism, it is essential that educators explore the outer limits and extend the border of inclusion.
Sophie: I think this is a perfect example of the importance and power of archives in general, and the curve archive in particular.
It really allows us to connect with all of us who have been in this fight before. And even while the archive ties us to our own history it also opens a possibility for contemporary action even as we all find new ways to place ourselves within this history
Jasmine: I don't identify as lesbian. I'm holding down the bi banner . And I I have struggled to place myself within this community that means so much to me, because no particular identity has felt strong enough to like draw lines around anything really about myself.
And so to see someone who I clocked as like "the lesbian" not only creates space and conversation for does the word lesbian work anymore? Does that matter? Like it, it felt like she was speaking directly to me. And as I've begun to peel the layers back of this work that we're doing, I find that it's actually the common denominator is that none of us feel like we belong.
And that has been really what I think has motivated me in the work so far is trying to create an organization that we can all belong to that really stands in the true legacy of lesbian political activism, history, visibility and not like radical turf, legacies of exclusion. I wanted to create something that was expansive and so I think we're doing that. We're only in year, three, so we'll see.
That's the philanthropic work. That's the repair work. That's the healing work. That's the communal work. And what has been wonderful is, I think we've been affirmed. An axis that I didn't immediately understand was also the intergenerational piece of it. Coming into this, I thought I'm connecting this magazine with the people who used to read it, and I wanted to be able to continue to accompany them into whatever the next phase of their life is.
And while that has definitely been the case, I also have found a lot of younger folks just like me, who are trying to see themself in something that feels historical, that is a more recent telling of queer history than Stonewall or the AIDS epidemic. We're at a place now where I think Curve feels just as distant sometimes as other moments in queer history for young people.
And so figuring out a way to make that accessible but also honor this legacy as something worth remembering alongside Stonewall and some of the other things that we've done as a community.
To try to bring this magazine to a new generation of folks, or at least in a new function immediately two communities came to mind, which is folks of color and trans people like we feel, and God help you if you sit at the intersection of those two things, I take for granted that there are so many options and intersections to choose from, and part of digging into Curve has been this exploration and experience of okay, yeah, sometimes we did fall short in the way we were trying to connect or represent folks alongside us.
But also talking to black women folks that are along the gender spectrum and they're like, I love curve. I'm like, okay. So it's not for me to judge, right? It's not for me to articulate where these barriers should be, that's against the whole principle of what we're doing here. And I find that to be deeply refreshing.
Sophie: This type of repair work, this type of healing work, overlaps a lot with the explanations of solidarity we've heard from our guests so far on the show. I asked Jasmine to speak explicitly about solidarity in her work. And she had these beautiful thoughts to share.
Jasmine: I see my job as holding a reflexive solidarity.
To steward this mission and honor the intention of this foundation, I must hold a deep solidarity with lesbian activism, culture, politics I believe that it's absolutely imperative because I do feel that those three things, lesbian culture, politics, activism, are fundamental to who I am as a person.
I have been held and raised and carried and sought and mentored by lesbians for my entire life, honestly. And like part of this is trying to stand in solidarity with that reflection of a community that I deeply love and at the same time, holding a true solidarity for the future of what our community will look like, and understanding that it must be more inclusive and there must be changes made and accountabilities held for blind spots from the past, right?
Like we cannot be naive about why these identities have evolved in the ways that they have. People are trying to get more specific about who they are, and oftentimes we only encounter that when we experience exclusion, oppression, right? So I try to stand in this middle ground where I can hold and respect and honor the intention of the history of one community while figuring out a way to connect it with communities of the future.
Solidarity to me is about community at the end of the day trying to stand in the gap and create opportunities for understanding real conflict. Not animosity, but "okay, let's have it out. Let's have a discussion, sit down and talk about these things."
But the queer community has been home for me for so long and at different points I felt inside, outside. Right now, if you saw me walking down the street with my partner, you probably wouldn't clock me. There are ways of being that require being attentive to community. that have really mattered in my life that I think have to take precedence in my work.
Sophie: I hear a role for accountability in Jasmine's definition of solidarity. I hear an expectation to grow, to include voices and experiences, even when it causes discomfort.
Jasmine: How do you grow if you can't be accountable, how do you grow?
Lesbians are more than, that, whatever that is, and we will never get there if we don't address the harm that has been done. Like we will never get to them more than if we can't sit in the challenges that we are facing. In our work, I'm I'm proud because I think we are getting somewhere past that.
But we are one of many, and I don't speak for anyone , so all I can do is create the space for us to think about these things. But what buoys me is the fact that I'm doing so with this prolific lesbian publisher who made this kick- ass magazine 30 years ago. And she happens to think what I'm talking about is, okay. And I lean on that to create space.
Sophie: I'm so thankful to Jasmine for highlighting this link between solidarity and accountability. I think it adds a lot to everything we've been thinking so far. Next I asked Jasmine about the role of history and her work.
Jasmine: A major component of our work is preservation the digital preservation of the Curve collection. So we have every page of every issue of every volume of Curve digitized currently. Because as we've said, there are stories in there that need to be read and told. And part of the invisibility of so many of our communities is that we don't have access to the ability to archive and preserve our materials in the same way that other folks can.
And so we really have spent a lot of our time so far just trying to make sure that people know that we're here and that the materials are there.
The last piece I would say on this is that: As I look forward, I'm just realizing how much more important these kind of online articles and materials are going to be. As our materials continue to be censored and removed from certain environments, I feel more motivated to make sure that our online resources are available and easily findable because I think folks are gonna need them.
Sophie: As I record this efforts to restrict access to books in libraries and classrooms is spreading quickly across the country. And in effort to sound reasonable proponents of censorship pretend their aim is to make children safe. Using language recycled from Jim Crow and anti-gay propaganda from the 1990s, right-wing fanatics aim to erase queerness.
I don't think it's an understatement when I say of myself more examples of queerness, when I was young would have made a world of difference. And I honestly believe more of us who were scared and confused would have survived until adulthood.
When Jasmine says that online sources of queer history are becoming more important than ever I completely agree.
The past is just one thing to protect. We also hold the dearly to our work for a better future. One reason I so enjoyed my conversation with Jasmine is hearing her explicate her role in the present and in the future through programming to uplift voices. Curve invests in journalists who tell today's stories as well as programming that gives us space to imagine new futures.
Jasmine: So we do a program that provides cash awards as well as mentoring support to emerging journalists we say in "the curve tradition", so folks who are telling the stories of our community we really look for things that are around or embedded with queer Joy. Curve was a fun place to be, i r l and on the page and just from my sort of travels around the funding landscape, there's not a lot of people who are just trying to fund joy for our community.
And so we looked for storytellers and different kinds of folks who are working in the journalism space, who are not only incredible writers or broadcast journalists, but are also looking for positive and new ways to represent our stories.
And it is open to lesbians, queer women, trans people, non-binary people. It is one of our ways of really expanding the ways that we can show up for community.
It is so exciting to work with people who are committed to telling stories that are just bigger than them. I don't know if I could describe it a different way. It's, this commitment to making sure that the full spectrum of who is to be seen is seen
We invest in the past by our, through our archival work and some of our work to document story, intergenerational connection.
Our present facing work is really with today's storytellers really looking at the current state of the queer landscape. And then our future work happens through things like Beyond the Rainbow, where we're trying to create a space for the community to explore, "what next," like after we go through the seventh Pride presentation on coming out to your family, what is it that we wanna talk about in close space and, in safe space and not safe space, as in "no one gets their feelings hurt" or "no one is offended," but a place that it is safe enough to get your feelings hurt and to get offended and know that repair will come like that, I think is a critical difference in the way we try to do this.
It's an opportunity to expand the ways that we tell our stories.
Sophie: Be on the look out for these programs. You can find more through the Curve Foundation website. Talking to Jasmine makes me feel better about our future. And unfamiliar feeling that I would love to get used to.
We ended our conversation with a final thought about solidarity history. What it could look like, what we would like it to look like. Jasmine had this to say.
Jasmine: I think that a lot of the way we tell our stories are concerned with who won or who lost, or the way that power moves through community and I'm much more interested in how we relate to each other and who was there and what do we do on the weekends?
There's just so much more to know about our past than our ability to conquer one another. I think of solidarity history as an invitation to lean into that. And if there is no solidarity there, then wow, what a conversation to be had.
Sophie: I love this. It's like what a nice list of Kings and battles you've got there, but I'd much rather hear about what folks were doing to build community and have a nice time. And I could not agree more. This reminds me of Ray Garinger's observation from last time about following interviewers, wherever they go.
Talking about horses rather than queerness, because horses are awesome and being gay is something we've already talked about.
I'm also reminded of Nathalie Nia Faulk's observations from episode one about documenting lesbian bars and trying to understand how people got together and had fun. I really liked the idea that solidarity history includes a fullness of experience, a resistance to flattening experience to power relations or pre-existing identities. Solidarity history as a creation of new possible worlds by holding our past and present accountable.
In the episodes to come we'll hear more about documenting the fullness of life and shaping our present toward our future. I hope you'll join us.
Thank you for listening everyone. Please take care and let the ones you love know that you loved them.
Our show's original music is by Andrew Kuo. Today's show was arranged and hosted by me, Sophie Ziegler, so there's really no one else to blame. If you want to help out, you can support the solidarity history initiative on Patrion.
You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Mastodon (mostly Mastodon).
And a big thanks to Caroline Ziegler for reading the quote from issue one of curve magazine
We'll be back next time to talk about more solidarity history by y'all.