December 1, 2007
Abreast in a Boat
Posted by brys under Community Orgs, Women::Queer::Cancer, agency, breast cancer, relationality
Fetishizing community only makes us blind to the ways we might intervene in the enactment of domination and exploitation. I see the practice of critique and in particular a critical relationship to community, as an ethical practice of community, as an important mode of participation. Miranda Joseph, Against the Romance of Community
Whereas I had thought, recently, that being a drag king was a remote possibility, it looks as if PINK is going to be my new Spring colour, and sporting drag queen accessories, like a pink wig, glasses and feather boa is distinctly more likely as a possible reincarnation.
Last night, I attended the Novices meeting of Abreast in a Boat (ABIAB), which is a Dragon Boat paddling organization of, and for, women living with breast cancer. Back in June, in those horrendous pre-mastectomy days (and very long nights) that were awash with tears and chock-ablock with doctors appointments, tests and more tests, I insisted that Janice and Sz take me to the Alcan Dragon Boat Festival. This popular annual Vancouver event attracts many thousands of spectators who crowd the shoreline of False Creek to watch dragon boat paddlers compete. One of the highlights of the event is the race between boats paddled by breast cancer survivors. These paddlers create a moving panorama of courage and compassion on the water as they bring their boats into a special formation after their race, holding carnations high into the air, each one representing a woman who lost her life to breast cancer, and finally, dropping the flowers into the water.
Last June, the very same day that I got the “Mary, you have breast cancer.” call on my cellphone while standing in the Westjet line at the Edmonton airport, I was invited to a potluck where I met M - a fellow breast cancer survivor. When she talked about the dragon boat paddling “for survivors” I experienced such an intense moment of identification with her that it reminded me of when I was really young, and met honest-to-goodness queer folks for the first time. My diagnosis just hours old, I noticed that I was mesmerized by M. I sat beside her throughout the party, and finally screwed up the nerve to ask her for an email address with some really weak and unlikely explanation. I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to ask M. I just needed to make a connection. I was awkward, unsure of what to say, or how to identify myself. What was the secret handshake? My need to create a network that was larger in size than the number 1 was palpable. I knew that I absolutely had to be present for the survivors’ dragon boat race a few weeks down the road, and in particular, for the moment of the carnations.
Watching the ABIAB paddlers race at the Alcan Festival, and then bring together their boats and raise their carnations in memory of the women who lost their lives to breast cancer that year was poignant. The affect was riveting. I made a decision that day, just two weeks prior to my mastectomy, that I would be present on the water the following year. And I was resolute about the fact that next year, unlike that day in June of 2007, I would not be sobbing, and I would not be a spectator.
Abreast in a Boat has an interesting history that represents, in its essential elements, the key features of many breast cancer stories. University of British Columbia Sports Medicine physician and researcher, Dr. Don McKenzie, in 1996, founded a research program designed to challenge then prevalent knowledge and perspectives concerning the impact of upper body exercise and women living with frequently occurring impacts of breast cancer surgery and treatment, like lymphedema (painful swelling of the arms). At that time, it was widely believed that following breast cancer treatment, women should seriously restrict physical activity. Au contraire. McKenzie’s pioneering research showed that a systematic approach to the introduction and maintenance of upper body activity has a positive impact on the health and lives of women living with breast cancer. Just over a decade later, thousands of breast cancer survivors the world over are enthusiastic paddlers dispersed over more than a hundred organizations like ABIAB.
The meeting yesterday was awash in identity narratives profferred as a mode of community building and performativity. ABIAB members told stories about survival, camaraderie, emotional support and the sustenance provided by the company of women. There was, of course, a logic of inclusion and intelligibility that structured these identity organizing narratives. And where there is a grammar of inclusion, there is, of necessity, one of disidentification and estrangement. The stories were also about “being women” or “ladies”, wearing pink with pride, and telling one another stories that “can’t be told to husbands”. I felt the familiar sting of enforced feminization deep inside, and likewise, the alienation from stories about husbands, and other “men in our lives we can’t talk to”. This is, of course, the stuff of community where the logic of “in the singular, plural, and alike”, fails abysmally. How does this group that is predicated on a logic of community practice hospitality to strangers?
I’ll keep you posted.
December 2, 2007 at 5:19 pm
Hi - Well, so you’ll add another voice to it, an identity narrative and logic of inclusion that doesn’t involve husbands, and that, in my book, will be a Very Good Thing. ….For me here in Portland, I’m one of a very few young survivors that I’ve met who doesn’t have a child, and who is not married. That story comes up in overwhelming amounts, and I have to remind myself over and over that there are women like me, it’s just that somehow in this one situation in this room at this exact moment in time (many months in a row though) I seem to be the only one, but logically I know that I’m not the only one, and that by the very fact of my being present women like me will eventually come by and feel more comfortable because I’m there. Or maybe they’re just bold in the world and will feel comfortable without me there!
In any case, that’s not a queer identity, just a single, childless one which I realize is not at all the same, but my point is: all of these survivor groups, IMHO, will benefit and grow with diverse identities. Because of course breast cancer doesn’t just happen to people with husbands and/or kids. My apologies if I’m not up on queer PC language, but I do love reading your blog and your take on the world. It makes that YS room a little bit bigger and more interesting and I dare say, more fun, because seeing you as a dragon boat drag king/queen/etc. sounds like a blast.
Pls post pictures when you actually race, pretty pls.
December 2, 2007 at 5:22 pm
can i edit my post? I think I wasn’t clear in the beginning, I meant to say that the identity story of husbands and children comes up over and over again (and it’s not a bad thing) just overhwelming sometimes for me personally.
December 2, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Mary, I’m sure I’m not the first to point out to you the karmic-ness of this story: you seem destined to be THE ONE who fights the prevailing norms/assumptions, etc. and forge new ground across any number of venues and issues. First (in my memory, anyway) there was the fight for same-sex partner benefits at UBC. Then there was the intellectual property fight at the same institution. Now, it seems that your fate is to educate the ABIAB folks about inclusivity and the politics of breast cancer “beyond the pink.” It must get exhausting being the designated hitter over and over again, but please know that those of us who are the beneficiaries of your karma do not take this lightly and are humbly grateful. Once again: you go, girl!
December 3, 2007 at 2:29 am
Hiya Amya — Nice to see you here! Welcome. Glad you like reading the blog. I think that to the extent ‘queer’ means, twisted away from what is standardised and centrist, then probably being single and childless is, in many scenarios, queer. The whole issue of who breast cancer happens to and so, what stories are told about it - what images made visible — yes, that is a topic and a cause very dear to my heart.
Here’s what I wrote about queer in another post
“It’s my current obsession - to queer cancer. Eve Sedgwick, in Tendencies, notes that, “The word ‘queer’ itself means across—it comes from the Indo-European root twerkw, which also yields the German queer (traverse) [and] Latin torquere (to twist)” (xii). Queer typically yields a distinctively modificatory meaning, when inserted in front of a noun or verb, as in, Queer Cancer, that means, to distort, ruin, spoil or otherwise F*CK with cancer.”
And so yes, Pat, karmic-ally, the pointing out and inhabitation of gaps and spaces where a different kind of story needs to be crafted, well, uh huh, that does indeed seem to be my designated job. Thanks for the support.
December 3, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Yet again, what you say rings such a bell with me. That experience of belonging on some level to a variety of ‘communities’, and yet not perfectly within some (or in my case, any) of them - this was something I resented for many years. But in a Buddhist sense, this appears to be my task, my karma, this time around - on some level, to always be the grain of sand in the oyster, never settling frictionless into any community. But it’s almost always in the space of friction, that negotiation of space between differing substance, that the most stunning beauty is created. And it sounds like that is what you do. And will continue to do, whether in an ABIAB space or not.
December 4, 2007 at 5:03 am
Hi Shereen - I am so glad that you wrote such a stunningly beautiful comment. Wow. I am so blessed by the company we keep, here. Thanks for your precious contribution, here, and where you are.
And for Amya, YES, I forgot to respond to your request for pix of my paddling racing ABIAB pinked-out self. I promise to post pix.
December 6, 2007 at 7:19 am
i’m not a cancer survivor - but i recently discovered your blog. my dad has cancer and so it helps me to read others stories about it.
anyhow, i was drawn to leave a comment here among other women like me - the sand in the oyster. i was that in my peace and justice community in eugene, and am that here in my new life as phd student. there are times when it is difficult, but i know that i can’t compromise myself either within those groups that i join. anyhow - thanks for the interesting words, i appreciate them a lot.