Allyship & Implicit Bias: Queerness Is Family Friendly
By: Adeem Maria, They Them
Tags: Allyship, Americana Music, Censorship, Queer, Nonbinary

Photo by Holly Rainey

I want to write this to expel the details from my inner dialogue. Two and a half weeks ago something incredibly upsetting happened and in a flash of pain and frustration and heartache, it was all just swept aside as if nothing happened. Everyone landed on a side or opted out of interfacing with it entirely and I was left in the aftermath scrambling to process the grief of it.

When I made my post on Sunday, August 22nd, I had full expectation that the festival I had performed at would issue an apology. I anticipated working together with my friends to talk about how homophobia could be used to silence Queer voices. Instead, I spent a string of days being shocked and hurt by my friends.

Our performance was short by about 15–20 minutes, I guess. We had 4 or 5 songs left on our setlist when we were told to wrap it up with one more song. I could tell that some folks were uncomfortable but the children were dancing in front of me and having a great time and I was landing some pretty solid jokes. All in all, I felt like I was winning many people over. As a Queer Country artist, this is kind of the work at every show… Our set was marked by laughter and jubilance and I haven’t once felt anything but pride in our performance.

I have been involved with plenty of events like this over the last 15 years and so when we were told to wrap it up early, I simply thought that during the rush of soundchecks and other obstacles, we had gotten off schedule. When I left the stage, we were showered with kindness. The promoter hugged me and affirmed her love and support for me. She even brought over a handful of people to tell me how wonderful my performance was.

Me and Cecilia Wright drinking Topo’s at the festival.

As the last band wrapped up, I gathered up my merchandise and packed the car. By the time I arrived home, I was beginning to receive screenshots from the Next Door app. It seemed that I had left quite the mark on the Farragut listeners. I’ve played this festival a handful of times prior so I felt little pangs of frustration over the response. Suddenly I was not appropriate for children because I sang about “kissing guys” and mentioned “pansexuality” during my set (literally just speaking the name of my album…)

My efforts at laughing about cultural differences in my song “Asheville Blues” were distilled to “speaking poorly about a town I didn’t like” and introducing myself as a “non-binary country musician who uses they/them pronouns” was “ranting about politics.” (Full disclosure: Cecilia reminded me that I did also mention that Boone is “more conservative” than Asheville…) I made a comment on social media about how sad it is that my existence can make some people so angry and I went to bed.

In the morning around 6:00 AM, my toddler woke me up and I began the morning rituals. As I prepared the waffles, I just kept remembering this line from the band after me. I playfully lamented the chaos of the event- laughing about how I’d never sound checked during a performance from a marching band. Their bass player responded, “It is odd- we started almost a whole hour early.”

At the event, it didn’t register for me but in the morning embers, it became clear to me that my set had been cut short to appease the homophobic people who were now disparaging me on Next Door. I reached out to my friend who was the promoter and I asked her plainly, “Did you cut my set short because of the types of complaints I’m seeing on Next Door?”

At 2:00 in the afternoon, she finally responded, “Sorry, I just woke up. Some parents were getting upset about dialogue. Along the lines of, “I’m not ready to have this conversation with my 5 year old.” Personally, I don’t really think their five-year-old was paying attention. I knew what you were up against and expected some complaints… I just thought it would be some old white ladies.

When somebody brought up kids, I thought, I don’t mind making old white ladies uncomfortable but I didn’t want to put you or me in any situation where our relationship to children would be in question. My personal feeling is that I’m less worried about the child who may be offended & more grateful for the one who may have been inspired. I probably would have made a different call if I had a minute to actually consider what to do.

[redacted] and I were up until 2 o’clock in the morning discussing this. I feel very disappointed in myself for not sticking to my guns. I got scared and I compromised. I owe you an apology.”

Jojo

I can’t even tell you how deeply hurtful this was to read coming from a friend of mine. My set was not inappropriate and didn’t feature anything difficult to talk to children about unless you were just planning on your child never knowing that Queer people exist? Which is (by the way) just bigotry.

She texted again once she saw my post on social media where I lamented that my set was cut short and that I was waiting to find out why. Again, I had full anticipation that my friends would own this mistake. They were too busy to be paying attention to my set & they took the word of bigots. A simple apology, acknowledgement of mistake, would have meant we could have a conversation about how ally’s can still be manipulated to carry out homophobia.

“Hey I just read your Facebook post. I’m so sorry. I want lawn chair to feel like home to you. You’ve been part of it since the beginning. I mean, I plan on you being there next year (if you will). You are family. You’re the best fucking songwriter around. And a person I want to call to pray with me when I find out my grandma just died.

It sucks that the audience isn’t ready for it, but we know they are not and they never will be if we don’t keep showing up & showing love. I have a heavy heart today because I got overwhelmed and I cut your set short. I hope that you’ll forgive me, and I hope that you give us another chance.”

I responded, “My short response is that it’s tough to even communicate how hurtful this is. That someone I know and love would agree that children need to be protected from my stories and my humanity is really hard for me to understand or interact with right now. There are two issues happening here. From a professional standpoint, I do think that you should offer an apology as LCCS (lawn chair concert series).

It is alright to make an error and, again, an especially hurtful one. I have no idea what damage control looks like for you in this situation and I don’t even have space to entertain it. I’m genuinely just hurt on a personal level. You don’t have to do that.

You can do whatever you want, obviously. But the least that I would expect from you in order to ever even consider playing this event again would be for you to admit that you conceded to an incredibly bigoted perspective & made a mistake in the moment.

I also understand if you don’t want me to play again anyway. That’s fine and maybe the best for both of us. Regardless, that would be the right thing to do.”

At this point she called me a handful of times and I did not answer. I was hurt. I did not want to talk on the phone. I did not want to hear why this was excusable. It wasn’t. I wanted to see the apology in writing from their page so that I could move past the professional injury to trying to navigate the personal one.

After some back and forth about answering my phone, she texted, “And also, just to let you know, I don’t think I need to protect children from you, that’s ridiculous. I did feel like I needed to protect you and me from the accusations and bullshit that I was hearing. Obviously, I made the wrong choice.”

I responded, “I had a story to tell with my music. I crafted a set. That set was interrupted. I was incredibly gracious about it, assuming that we were simply off schedule somehow. And then I find out that I was just removed from stage because I am not allowed to introduce Queer perspective?

On a professional level, this is possibly the most disrespected I have ever been in my 15+ years as a performing artist. If you were not a personal friend of mine, I would be eviscerating this festivals brand right now for brazenly silencing a queer artist at the behest of vocal homophobic critics rather than simply trying to defend myself against the nefarious and ridiculous narrative being assigned by people.

Those people are saying that I was inappropriate and that my set was offensive and hyper political. That’s nonsense. It’s absolute nonsense and completely false. You validated those claims. You invalidated my art. You did not defend me. You did not defend the dignity of what I do.

You conceded to people who want to act as though me singing a song about kissing a guy amounts to child abuse- people who never cared when the object of my affection in lyrics was a woman. I don’t even know how to communicate to you how profoundly disappointing this is for me on so many levels.”

I do want to stress to you that from a marketing perspective I had a bunch of screenshots of people being cruel and homophobic. I did not need to be silenced in order to capitalize on a moment for social media clicks. I have since been accused by people I trusted of manufacturing this in an effort to get famous.

Photo by Paul Hedges of me on tour living my best life.

Look, this was a week before my album release that had been praised by Rolling Stone & American Songwriter. This was less than 2 weeks before I left for tour with American Aquarium. I did not need any superficial props to support me with my career. I had to endure a real act of bigotry in real time and there are people- one of whom was IN my wedding- who are parading this event as if I’m the aggressor who will betray my friends to succeed. It’s… absurd.

“Cast Iron Pansexual lives up to its title with explorations of sexuality and gender expression that are equally clever and poignant.” — Rolling Stone

Sunday evening, she wrote again. Still no public statement had been made. “Yesterday you walked your beautiful self up on that stage in a yellow jumpsuit, those fantastic boots, and sang your ass off. Your set was wonderful. It was the first 30 minutes of some of these people’s exposure to Pansexuality. You were blowing their minds. I never told one person you were cut short. Not one audience member knew. We are on your side Adeem. That’s why I asked you to come. But, I don’t want to fight with people who are closed minded, I want to change their minds & shine a little light. Yesterday was a big deal, they were taken out of their comfort zone.

We’re asking them to be accepting of something they don’t understand and sadly, that takes time. I wish I could say it surprised me that some of them got freaked out but it did not. The whole reason we do this show is to bring people together and you have always been a big part of that. I don’t wanna lose you. I love you. And I fully understand that I’ve hurt you. I hope that we can keep moving forward whether it be in 30 minute increments or maybe we can even get to 45. And honestly, the pissed off part of me wants to host a full on drag show on the 18th. But, I have read the art of war & I know the only way to win this one is with love.

My regret is that I have put you in doubt of that love. I’m sorry for that. But I am standing up for your ass, you better believe that. Our intent is to standby you and your performance. I expected to wake up to both of us getting torn to pieces on Facebook by people in the town of Farragut. I expected to have to defend one of my favorite artists along with my concert. I totally expected that.”

I will share my response to that but first I want to make note of a couple of things. The first is that I did not go there to deliver a shock performance. I went there to have fun and play songs. I wasn’t trying to change anyone’s minds. I was just being my honest self and having fun. Nobody mentioned any of these concerns to me when I was booked or in the weeks leading up to the event.

This is my vibe. I am a silly person. Here I am eating a rose. Photo by Holly Rainey.

“I am using love by loving myself enough to set an expectation for how I will be treated. I am not interested in pandering to bigots in order to educate them. The time for me to educate people was the time slot I was allotted for and, again, that was taken from me. People told you it was inappropriate and then my set was ended. Whether you said it decisively or not, you did communicate with your actions.”

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” — Audre Lorde

“Everyone else clearly had a much longer set. I have worked too hard to be discredited as a professional due to my sexualtiy or gender identity. People can choose not to book me as a Queer artist and that’s on them but it is completely unfair for it to be said that I am incapable of performing a family friendly event due to my Queerness.

And if an event is not friendly to queer people, then it is not friendly to queer families and thus it is not family friendly. It is straight family friendly. Again, you can make a public statement or not and I will give you some space to do that and if you’re willing to own this, I will be happy to address this as a learning event for everyone.

But if you choose not to address this, I will have to. It would be silly of me not to defend myself against slander and especially against your decision to put that slander over the value of my art. You could have booked me for a shorter set. You could have had a better response planned for people telling you I was inappropriate for kids because I am Queer. A lot of things that are not my fault at all are responsible for this and it’s very frustrating.”

I don’t know if I could’ve communicated better that my hope was to use this experience to elucidate, again, how even ally’s are capable of making mistakes that perpetuate bigotry. These were personal friends of mine who I’d always thought of as very supportive, affirming, and kind. However, what I was witnessing was something my friend Lizzie No called the “insidiousness of niceness.” When it came time to reject bigotry and defend me in a tangible way, they were uncomfortable with taking a stance that might conflict with their other relationships.

Still now, I am beside myself that I was promised in secret an apology that never came. I am saddened that I went on their Facebook page where people commented in my defense and watched my friends indicate that I was to blame for a situation that they took ownership of privately. It was painful to be the only one responding to hateful critics while the promoter texted me privately about how she intended to defend me.

This has just been absolutely awful. The last text she sent to me indicated that I was to blame for my set being cut short- even after she had already admitted fault, still she tried to gaslight me into accepting responsibility for an assault on my character and my artistic expression.

“Hey, I love you. I’m happy to address this. I’m currently trying to write my grannys eulogy. I hope to have that done soon & can work this in. Adeem, you weren’t cut short for being queer. You looked awesome & sounded awesome. It was a beautiful night. We love you! When my dad comes to play, he always tries to remember to say big ole happy family rather than big ass happy family.”

I have heard people swear at this event from the microphone. People have sung murder ballads and they have sung about drugs and addiction and alcoholism. I was not sandwiched between The Wiggles & Captain Kangaroo. One of the headliners has a song called, “Butt Ugly Sluts.”

I have been told by the promoter that they love & support me while they privately responded to criticism by saying that I talked about sex too many times in front of children.

Please keep in mind that the only time I used the word “Sex” at all was to encourage people to buy a copy of my new album “Cast Iron Pansexual” (which has performed wonderfully with no need for superfluous, manufactured headlines to prop it up.)

“Cast Iron Pansexual tunnels through what it means to be LGBTQ+ in rural America─and presents every raw nerve of the inner and outer anguish.” — American Songwriter

This weekend as I sat and watched the announcement that they are looking forward to the next event they’re hosting with still not so much as a glimpse of an apology, I felt all of that same betrayal all over again. I feel angry for the ways people lied to me while telling me they loved & supported me. I feel angry by the complacency that ravages people who would put niceness over doing the right thing. & I feel angry that I allowed myself to trust the people who have betrayed our friendship in such heartbreaking ways.

I want to be clear: my set is not always kid friendly. I sing about intense, existential things. I carry a lot of weight and whimsy and sacrilege in my music. I am unashamedly profane. It is partly from being a white trash kid and partly from my overwhelming reverence for everything which can easily translate to a particularly vicious irreverence for everything.

me with my toddler

However, I know how to talk to kids. I am a parent. I have performed at plenty of family festivals and it is outrageous to me that anything I said or did was deemed offensive or even controversial by the folks out there. It is naked bigotry and nothing else and it wouldn’t be nearly as staggering if I didn’t watch people who I thought were of strong values join those ranks.

At the end of the day, people are going to be offended. I have watched the footage of cisgendered, white Gay people loudly booing Sylvia Rivera. False and harmful gender assignments are so deeply embedded into the fabric of our culture and into the religious identity of so many.

As a gender non-conforming and proudly pansexual person, I understand that I am disavowing a lot of privileges that came with being perceived as a cisgendered white man in a heteronormative relationship. (I’m also aware of the ones I retain and am still learning how to manage them well.) For me, embracing the fullness of my gender and allowing myself to step into my own skin was worth the exchange of power and I harbor no regrets about this.

I understand that my sexuality and my gender identity can and will be weaponized by people to portray me as harmful or as the aggressor. The absurd notion that I was somehow trying to wield this event in a desperate grasp at fame is a well-worn tool for diffusing oppressed voices. It takes the shape of “he only kneels to get attention” and “she’s only accusing him of sexual assault to get some of his money,”

Ultimately, though, it’s the folks who identify themselves as Ally’s who failed me and continue to fail me in all of this. So, my question is this: are you an ally? What does it mean to be an ally? Are you willing to consider with me this “insidiousness” of niceness which prioritizes the comfort of a majority over the human dignity of a few? And how are you willing to hold yourself accountable when the temptation to avoid discomfort demands that you subvert human dignity?

A day after the festival, I posted a video to Tik Tok of my song “Asheville Blues” which went viral and was viewed over 200,000 times by the following morning. People responded to me and said that my use of the term “G*psy Folk” was inappropriate and a racial slur. I spent six minutes reading about the term before deciding they were correct.

In a follow-up video, I responded to this by saying that I agreed and that I didn’t realize I was using a racial slur. I said I would revise the lyrics for the recorded version of the song and I apologized for doing something harmful. We only know what we know. We all make mistakes. We are socialized with implicit racial biases. We are socialized with a harmful view of gender identity.

I consider myself to be a feminist. But it is through my recovery of the misogyny I was socialized to inhabit that I am able to truly assume the role of feminist. It is by deconstructing my own implicit biases and racism that I am able to be anti-racist. The hard work of allyship is parsing through our biases and being privy to them so that we can be sensitive to the ways we are socialized to fail one another. I am still capable of racism, misogyny, and even homophobia.

“[They rather] a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice-” — Martin Luther King Jr. on how the Black Liberation movement was inhibited by White Moderates

When you are told that you have said or done something racist, misogynistic, homophobic, etc, you are not being disparaged as an unredeemable degenerate. You are being made aware of a behavior you’ve been socialized to easily access but is unacceptable and hurtful. True allyship is learning from these types of criticism, hearing when you’ve done something harmful, and doing what you can to offer restitution.

So, again, how are you going to hold yourself accountable when the temptation to avoid discomfort demands that you subvert human dignity? Because it will probably happen. The choice is yours how you respond to it and that response says more than anything else about your commitment to addressing your own implicit biases and whether or not you are actually committed to creating equitable spaces.