A Loss for the Queer Community
A quick word in memory of Urvashi Vaid
While I did not know Urvashi Vaid personally, I’ve had connections to her since I came out as queer in the mid-’90s when I was in high school. I haven’t seen much on social media about her death other than when the music group, Betty, posted about it the other day.
Betty was on a feminist sketch show called, “The World According To Us” with Urvashi’s long-time partner, stand-up comedian Kate Clinton (external link to Kate’s website). I’ve been a big fan of Kate’s comedy ever since seeing her on “The World According To Us,” which was a PBS show that aired on Sundays at 2 AM in 1992. No one watched it and I’m fairly sure I own the only copy of it in its existence because I loved it and called PBS about it. They said they’d send me their only copy, and I still have it. I also had cassette tapes with Kate’s comedy and went to see her do stand-up in P-Town Massachusetts in my early twenties. Back then P-Town was one of the only places where gay people were openly accepted. Kate often spoke of Urvashi when telling jokes about her personal life, and I kind of felt like I knew her. I met and talked with Kate when I saw her in P-Town and I follow her on social media where she has posted photos of them together on occasion over the years.
Urvashi’s importance is not just because of Kate though.
Far from it. Urvashi was a powerful human rights activist, feminist, and author of at least a couple of non-fiction books. They were some of the only books I could find on queer culture when I was studying it in the mid-90s. I was taking Psychology classes in college and I did a research paper called, “A Culture Shared Throughout the World” for Psych 101. Urvashi’s books were among maybe five books I could find in the library about it. I wish I could say more about what I learned from them, but it’s a miracle I remember anything from that time in my life. I remember enough to know how significant she was. The book I remember most was called, “Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming Of Gay and Lesbian Liberation” (external Amazon link).
I don’t know if the younger generation of queer people understand that Generation X didn’t have very many queer role models.
I knew of Elton John, Melissa Ethridge, KD Lang, Rock Hudson, and David Bowie. There were no movies about gay people unless we were the butt of the joke or murdered or something. We had “The Birdcage” and “To Wong Foo” for positive gay movies. The closest thing to a lesbian movie was probably “Fried Green Tomatoes,” which was even less gay than the book, which wasn’t that gay, to begin with. Eventually, we had “Bound” for lesbians too. For trans role models, we had “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and of course, that came with its own culture. There were maybe a few others for those of us who knew where to look, but almost no resources were guiding us. We had underground shit like handmade zines by local queer kids for that. I made several myself. We had the comic strip “Dykes To Watch Out For,” (external link to website) authors like Leslie Feinberg (external link to Wiki) and Urvashi Vaid (external link to Wiki), and comedians like Lea Delaria (external link to Wiki) and Kate Clinton. Other than that, most of the mainstream representation of queer people was making fun of us.
Ellen DeGeneres came out in 1997 and that move changed everything for queer voices on television and the media in general, but none of that would have happened without people like Kate and Urvashi leading the way. I feel like she deserves more recognition than I’ve seen so far, so I took out my charcoals, and did a quick sketch, which I realize doesn’t fully capture her, but please look her up to learn more about her. Her death is a major loss for our community.