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Hillary’s historic moment
Long-time feminists say gender is a factor in this year’s race
Hillary Clinton enjoys strong support among lesbian feminists. (Photo by Gino Santa Maria; courtesy Bigstock)
Benghazi! Hillary’s e-mails! Trump! At danger of getting lost in the overheated discourse of this year’s U.S. presidential election is the historic fact that Hillary Clinton is now the first woman to capture a major-party nomination for president.
There was Shirley Chisholm (who ran for the Democratic nomination in 1972), Geraldine Ferraro (Walter Mondale’s running mate in 1984), even Sarah Palin (John McCain’s running mate in 2008), but no woman has ever come as close to the presidency as Hillary Clinton.
In the wake of this achievement, what does it mean for the lesbian community, a group that has always been one of her strongest supporters? And why has the historic nature of her candidacy felt like little more than a footnote this year?
Hillary fatigue?
Out political comedian Kate Clinton thinks it’s because Hillary has been around so long — since 1978. Still, she says, it’s exciting to see Hillary win the nomination.
“I think it’s absolutely very, very exciting,” Kate Clinton says. “And add to the fact that she is the first woman nominee for a major party, is astounding.”
As the first out lesbian and African-American mayor in the United States, Denise Simmons of Cambridge, Mass., is used to her gender, race and sexual orientation making headlines.
Simmons expected Hillary’s nomination to get much more attention than it’s received. She agrees with Kate Clinton’s assessment.
“I do wonder if perhaps part of this is simply because she has been a national figure for such a long time,” Simmons says. “And therefore the sense of novelty just isn’t there.”
Elizabeth Birch, who served as executive director of the Human Rights Campaign from 1995-2004 and is also a friend of Clinton’s, says Clinton does not want the fact that she’s a woman to be the sole reason for anyone to vote for her.
“I think that’s why she’s been painstaking about amassing her credentials over the last two decades,” Birch says. “She absolutely wants [her election] to be on her merit, but nevertheless, none of us should forget what an extraordinary breakthrough this will be.”
Clinton’s gender, Birch says, is treated like a distraction from the “political theater” going on.
Blues singer and LGBT and black rights activist Gaye Adegbalola agrees with Birch. She thinks Clinton’s nomination isn’t headline news because Trump has “hijacked” the headlines.
“He’s the story,” Adegbalola says.
Kate Clinton says that any time some excitement is generated for Clinton, Trump will say something controversial, Benghazi and the email scandal are brought up and Americans become fixated on her purported failures.
“The Koch brothers, who, I like to call the cock brotherhood, have targeted money to just make her unfavorable, untrustworthy,” Kate Clinton says.
Kate Clinton says accusations that Hillary Clinton is untrustworthy are ‘absurd.’ (Blade file photo)
Trust issues
Kate Clinton says the fact that Hillary Clinton is painted as untrustworthy in the news media is absurd.
But, in many recent polls, conducted by the Huffington Post, pollingreport.com and CNN, many Americans say they do not trust Hillary Clinton.
Is the lack of trust in Hillary because of her politics, or could it be attributed to sexism?
Birch doesn’t think so.
“My diagnosis is that Hillary Clinton is extremely private for someone in the public sphere,” she says. “And she has, throughout her life, had unrealistic expectations for privacy.”
Birch says that in trying to protect her privacy and keep her life and decisions under wraps, Clinton has been misread.
“The level of transparency that’s required when you are in a position like the various positions she’s been in … all those steps she took to preserve privacy only lead to more problems,” she says. “You know, it’s never the actual crime, it’s always the cover-up.”
This, according to Birch, has always been Clinton’s downfall.
“The Clintons, as political figures, have certainly been guarded at many points throughout the past three decades, often with good reason,” Birch says. “And unfortunately this has opened Hillary Clinton to charges of having something to hide.”
Simmons disagrees with Birch. She says the lack of trust among voters has a lot to do with gender.
“Any time a female candidate is painted as untrustworthy, or shrill or calculating, one does wonder whether there is some sexism at play,” Simmons says.
Rev. Elder Darlene Garner, minister and LGBT activist and co-founder of the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays, makes a different assessment. She blames populism for Clinton’s perceived untrustworthiness.
“I think it is blatant populism that masks sexism, that masks homophobia and transphobia, that masks racism and nationalism,” Garner says.
Adegbalola says that anyone who’s been in Washington as long as the Clintons will undoubtedly amass some “dirt,” but she says this is just how politics works.
“There has to be some bargaining and there has to be some, ‘I’ll kiss your ass, you kiss mine,’ kind of stuff that goes on,” she says.
When Hillary Clinton ran against Barack Obama in 2008, Adegbalola donated $25 to her campaign.
“I was all, you know, ‘Yay, a woman can do this,’ and then Barack started running and I was so in favor of him,” Adegbalola says. “Not necessarily because he was a black man, but because he hadn’t been in D.C. [for long].”
She also liked that he had worked for social justice in Chicago and that he had not been in the U.S. Senate for long.
“My excitement with him was that he was an outsider,” she says. “So now, here you got Trump, who comes along and he’s really an outsider and an asshole, but I think a lot of people take to him for that very reason, that he’s an outsider.”
Adegbalola thinks it’s hypocritical, however, for people to distrust Clinton but not Trump.
“Anybody who makes all that money,” Adegbalola says, “they’ve got to be doing some shady stuff, too.”
She’s astonished by how successful Trump has been.
Garner is surprised too and thinks that Trump’s success reveals the continued work for justice and equality that needs to be done.
“As a movement we have focused on legislative gains and have not given much attention to the quality of our relationships with one another,” Garner says.
Kate Clinton, on the other hand, does not think it’s surprising that Trump has been so successful. She is tired of people, especially Republicans, acting as if he is not representative of certain American beliefs.
She views Trump as a joke who desperately wants to be taken seriously.
“That’s where the danger is,” she says.
Kate Clinton believes that Trump’s desire to be taken seriously boiled over at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2011. Obama referred to Trump’s threat to run for president at that dinner as a “joke.” Kate Clinton theorizes that Obama’s barrage of jokes at Trump’s expense is what propelled him to run.
“I really think that was the moment he decided, ‘I am not going to have a black man making fun of me,’” Clinton says.
Birch describes Trump as “dangerous.”
“I think the way that human society stays in equilibrium is to have extremely predictable institutions and leaders,” Birch says. “[If leaders] innovate somewhat in the structure of the institutions, I think humans don’t want jarring abrupt moves and they don’t want emotions stirred, played on and exploited.”
Trouble ahead?
Birch says unpredictable leaders bring problems.
“I think that waves move through every community and I think that his rhetoric has given license to some of this more acute tension in our country right now,” she says.
Simmons agrees.
“I find it incredibly disappointing that one of our major parties would see fit to nominate him to potentially lead the country,” she says. “He could do tremendous damage to our nation on a number of fronts.”
Adegbalola says a Trump presidency could be cataclysmic.
“I think it’s going to be even more divisive for America,” she says. “I think it’s going to widen the gaps between people of color and whites and marginalized people and the white establishment. I’m sure he has a lot of confederate flags in that audience, I’m sure.”
Kate Clinton cites Trump’s nomination of Mike Pence for vice president as representative of his disregard for the rights of marginalized people.
“Pence is hideous toward women,” she says.
Pence came to national attention in 2006 when he said that LGBT couples represented a “societal collapse” in the United States. He has often referred to being gay as a choice and same-sex partnerships as a violation of “God’s idea.”
He made national news again in 2011 when, as a member of Congress, he pushed for a bill to defund Planned Parenthood. In May, Pence rejected the Obama administration’s directive for school districts to allow students to use the bathroom for the gender they identify with saying the Obama administration had no business getting involved in “issues of this nature.”
Adegbalola also points out what could happen to the Supreme Court if Trump is elected.
Despite all this, there are still many people who look at Hillary Clinton’s past and are disturbed by her voting patterns.
In 1996, she supported the Defense of Marriage Act that defined marriage for federal purposes as the union between one man and one woman, and allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed under the laws of other states. Her support for the bill haunted her for two decades.
Kate Clinton says that the LGBT community needs to remember that she was not president when the act was passed.
“That was her husband,” Clinton says. “I think she was pretty representative of very political people weighing everything, trying to figure out and trying to say the right thing at the right time and that killed her career.”
In a campaign that many say is structured around humiliation and elitism, Garner says that voting for Hillary Clinton is important.
“I believe that she is a champion for human dignity and justice and I would expect that as president she would continue to do the same,” she says.
She cites Clinton’s attitudes toward children as proof that her presidency would benefit LGBT families.
“Her support of health care and even continued health care reform, will benefit all of us, including women,” Garner says. “And her economic policies will also benefit women, who are still underpaid in the American work force, and her presidency will be a direct benefit to lesbians as well as to all women.”
Adegbalola cites her own experiences as a self-employed musician and cancer survivor as one of the main reasons she plans to vote for Clinton. She says that in 2008 she was paying more than $700 a month for cancer treatment.
The Affordable Care Act, she says, is of paramount importance to her and she knows that under Clinton, Obama’s work will continue.
Birch says that growing up in Canada and seeing Queen Elizabeth’s picture hanging on the wall in all of her elementary school classrooms and having a female principal, made her think that women were in charge.
“I just thought, ‘Oh yeah my name is Elizabeth, the queen is Elizabeth, I guess I can go far,’” she says. “The psychological impact it will have on inspiring and lighting fires in young women … we can never underestimate it.”
Adegbalola, however, says at this point she is over Clinton’s gender.
“I’m simply looking at who would I vote for between the two,” she says. “[It’s] Hillary, there’s no question. And she’s smart and she’s been there, she’s paid her dues.”
Adegbalola doesn’t feel that anyone in the Republican Party, including Trump, would do anything to look out for marginalized people.
“I’m black, I’m poor, I’m a woman, I’m a lesbian, I’m a single parent, I’m old,” she says. “[That’s] like six kinds of oppression, so they might lock me up in a concentration camp.”
a&e features
Summer in D.C. brings sports, Restaurant Week, festivals, and more
Summer in D.C. just hits different. Congress is out, school is out, the sun is out, thighs are out. With the skies clearing from Canadian smoke, here are a few ways to stay entertained.
Dining
Summer restaurant week: The Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington (RAMW) is once again hosting Summer Restaurant Week, Aug. 18-24. This weeklong dining experience showcases the dynamic dining scene of the DMV, including 2026 RAMMY Award-winning favorites (the annual D.C. food awards show that took place June 29). Participating restaurants will offer three-course brunch and lunch selections for $25 or $35 per person, and three-course dinners for $40, $55 and $65 per person.
New Restaurants: A handful of new spots have opened, so the summer is a great time to check them out:
- Oribu: A new Mediterranean-Japanese restaurant in the Grand Hyatt hotel, which just underwent a remodeling effort. The sleek restaurant brings upscale charm, with dishes like Wagyu beef tartare with potato pavé and caviar.
- The Oak Room: A snazzy old-school American grill has just opened in Georgetown, alongside its sister upstairs supper club (Bernadette’s) restaurant, in the old El Centro space.
- Uchi: This showy Japanese sushi-forward chain has landed in Dupont with a chef’s tasting menu of favorites like fatty tuna.
- Kathmandu: Recalling the capital of Nepal, this warm, buzzy subterranean restaurant right in the heart of U Street brings spice, flair, and rare ingredients to its dishes (see: buffalo burgers) and drinks.
Sports
- Washington Spirit Pride Night OUT: On Sunday, Aug. 23, head to Audi Field for a massive, high-energy game following the exciting month of World Cup. The designated Pride Night OUT game promises boisterous crowds plus pre- and post-game community engagements.
- Washington Tennis Open – Now called the Mubadala DC Open, this annual tournament is only combined mens’ and womens’ 500-level tennis tournament in the world. The open is one of D.C.’s longest-standing sports traditions, and will take place at the Rock Creek Park Tennis Center July 25-Aug. 2. Naomi Osaka, Venus Williams, Ben Shelton, Frances Tiafoe, and others are expected to play.
Festivals
- Afro Plus Fest: This huge, three-day Afro-Caribbean Hip-Hop Festival brings together headliners Davido, Alkaline, and Wizkid, plus Tems and Ayra Starr. The event moves from RFK to the Northwest Stadium Complex for three days, Sept. 4-6.
- Capital Fringe Festival: Running from July 11-21, this massive celebration features dozens of live theater, comedy, dance, and boundary-pushing nighttime performances across multiple DC neighborhoods.
- The National Book Festival returns, with headliners like Cynthia Erivo, and Martin Scorsese. The one-day festival, Saturday, Aug. 22, brings together bookworms and word nerds under the theme “America 250: It’s Your Story.” There are talks, workshops, musical sessions and more.
- All Things Go: A three-day festival Sept. 25-27 at Merriweather Post Pavilion featuring Mitski, Hayley Williams, Brandi Carlile, MUNA, Zara Larsson, Ethel Cain, and many, many more artists. There are single-day and three-day tickets. Featuring and highlighting female artists, the festival has turned into a must-see for many LGBTQ audience members.
- Fuchsia Fest: The inaugural Fuchsia Fest is a new multi-day celebration created to celebrate LGBTQ community and expression, bringing together a mix of community gatherings, entertainment, and nightlife. The event takes place Sept. 18-20 and is hosted by Capital Pride.
Art and Music
- United We Dance: A high-energy rave with house, techno, bass, and festival music, on Aug. 1 at the 9:30 Club.
- The Fray. On Aug. 14, this American rock band famous for How To Save A Life is at Merriweather Post Pavilion.
- Kesha: Kesha’s high-energy The Freedom Tour comes to the D.C. area on Aug. 14 at Jiffy Lube Live.
- ALOK: On Sept. 3 at Lincoln Theater, ALOK (they/them) performs. The poet, comedian, and actor is putting on a new comedy show.
- 2charm, the emerging Australian electronic club-pop duo popular with the queer community, which blends hyperpop and dance music, comes to the Atlantis.
- Sapphic Dance Party: a vibrant, inclusive nightlife and social event designed specifically for queer women, lesbians, bisexuals, trans individuals, and nonbinary folks, at Atlantis on Aug. 21.
- Jazz in the Garden: The most quintessential of D.C. activities returns Friday evenings through Aug. 14. This season’s theme, “American Sounds,” is a nod to the nation’s 250th anniversary. Tunes themes range from Appalachian and Americana to Creole jazz, Hill Country blues, contemporary jazz, and more. Tickets are available through a lottery system a week before each event.
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Tickets on sale for chef Patrick O’Connell’s book launch event
Sept. 18 kickoff to feature José Andrés, Tom Sietsema
Acclaimed chef Patrick O’Connell is preparing to publish his new memoir, “Main, Middle & Gay” in September and he’s launching the book with an event on Sept. 18 at 6 p.m. at Lisner Auditorium featuring Chef José Andrés and former Washington Post food critic Tom Sietsema.
Tickets for the event go on sale Tuesday, July 21 at Ticketmaster; prices start at $55.
O’Connell, who’s gay, is the pioneering Michelin-starred chef and longtime proprietor of the Inn at Little Washington. He spoke with the Blade about the September event and the launch of his first memoir.
“I’ve known [Andrés and Sietsema] for more than 25 years and I have great respect for them,” O’Connell said. “I felt that it would allow us to add a different dimension rather than just have an interviewer. The chemistry will be fun and lively and unpredictable and exciting. I think we’re all different personalities and we’ll compliment each other.”
O’Connell has published cookbooks but this is his first memoir. The event will feature a short film that will highlight his work and the Inn.
“What I hope to do with the event is bring the book to life visually,” he said. “So we’re producing a short film that will be part of it. Most of the audience will not have read the book so it’ll give them a visual flavor of the book. It parallels the evolution of American cuisine over 50 years. It’s a rare perspective to be in the trenches for that long.”
The book’s title refers to the location of the garage on the corner of Main, Middle, and Gay streets in Washington, Va., where he launched his restaurant that became an international culinary destination.
The Blade will publish the rest of its wide-ranging interview with O’Connell in September in conjunction with the book’s release.
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The queer Asian comics building collective joy in D.C.
Spotlighting chaotic ways family, romance, identity take shape in their lives
Kevin Chen’s family tombstone has room for four: him, his parents and his boyfriend. The arrangement might prove to be a little awkward.
“My boyfriend is 100% white, and my parents are 100% disappointed,” Chen confessed.
Jokes about family traditions and the untraditional ways they’re practiced earned a burst of laughs at the bar where Chen was opening for the Pride Comedy Special. The D.C. stand-up event, produced by Comedy Bonfyre last month, spotlighted queer Asian comics who shared the chaotic ways family, romance and identity take shape in their lives.
From candid oral sex takes to top surgery hypotheticals like “Where do the boobs go?”, the night highlighted the loud camaraderie of the queer Asian experience — one that sounds like a cacophony of snorts, cackles and belly laughs. While the comics say they are not quite a community, there’s more than enough shared material to bring them together.
“It was such a magical experience. I loved performing in a queer API lineup. It feels so validating,” Chen said after the show. “I’m wondering, ‘Is this how white men feel all the time?’”
Each performance evoked queer Asian joy through a medium that could use more of its presence.
According to Chen, who is based in D.C., it’s hard to say whether there is a true queer Asian comedy presence in his city. There are only a scattered “handful” of Asian comics, and people of color are underrepresented in queer comic circles, he said.
When Tarunika Anand, a nonbinary lesbian comic, first entered the mainstream D.C. comedy scene, they mostly encountered straight white men, describing the experience as “a culture shock.”
“I feel like sometimes a lot of queer spaces are really white, and then a lot of Asian spaces are really straight,” Anand said. “I don’t feel like I fit into either.”
But feeling marginalized didn’t stop these comics from honing their craft and creating spaces for others like them. Alex Kim, who headlined the special and is based in Brooklyn, runs the queer Asian comedy group Boba Gays, which began on WhatsApp and has since made its way to Lincoln Center.
Every Wednesday, Anand co-produces a free comedy show called Funny Side Up. The queer-led group focuses on inclusivity and showcasing new talent.
“It’s really beautiful to speak about your experience and your existence in a way that’s uplifting,” Anand said.
Family is a major throughline of their comedic repertoires.
Chen, for instance, shared that he identifies with jokes about having Asian immigrant parents and the expectations they pass down.
“You see me, you know this part about me, you know this experience intimately, and I can see the truth that you’re trying to wrap a joke around,” he said. “That hits even harder because that’s my truth too. I think that’s what makes good comedy.”
Anand had the audience at the special howling when they explained that their parents’ be-more-like-them comparisons didn’t end when they came out. Instead, the expectations took on a new form.
“Now, my parents want me to be the best gay,” Anand said. “They’re like, ‘Do you know Ellen DeGeneres?’”
Kim said he’s been trying to unlearn things from his Christian Korean mom. Yet he described a moment when he was getting ready for the club and realized he looked just like his mother getting ready for church.
“I’ve been finding it hard to escape her,” Kim said.
Mutual recognition also radiates through the different ways queer love can take shape. From singlehood to death-do-us-part commitments, the comics cover just about every corner.
Anand is holding out hope for settling down with “a nice, pretty, Indian girl.” They recently went through a breakup and said they felt they dodged a bullet.
“As a person of color, I just don’t think I should be with a Swiftie,” they said.
Chen, touching on what it’s like to be in a queer interracial relationship, said that meeting his white boyfriend’s baby nephew for the first time felt like he was forced to participate in a diversity, equity and inclusion training.
“The dad was like, ‘Please welcome Kevin. Be curious about his culture, his history, his foods,’” Chen joked.
Laughter is not the only reward for the comics.
To Anand, comedy is a space where they can say whatever they want. “It gives me a voice,” they said.
Nik Narain, a North Carolina-based trans and nonbinary South Asian comic who performed at the special, said meeting older trans comedians and taking the stage helped him feel reassured in his identity during his transition.
“Stand-up was a really cool way to process that onstage,” he said. “[It] became a way for me to repackage my thoughts.”
Queer Asians are still figuring out their place in the greater D.C. comedy scene. The group is small in numbers and many are still working toward a full-time comedy career. But Narain feels he’s already made it.
Narain is reluctant to pin it all on one moment. He feels that success is already peeking through in milestones — opening for celebrities, traveling to performances and self-producing shows.
“As long as I can keep doing this, I’m super happy,” he said.
This story was produced as part of the AAJA VOICES fellowship program, a student journalism project of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA).
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