No White Gloves on Mirha-Soleil Ross
An interview by Heze
published in TRADE: Queer Things, Autumn 2003 (www.tradequeerthings.com)
When asked to interview Mirha-Soleil Ross I have to admit I was a little
nervous. I’ve seen her perform and spotted her about town – she always seems
to be kicking some ass. When I read through her previous interviews
and articles I was intrigued by her intelligence and activism, though sometimes
put off by her views. It was a challenge of the pedestal sort. Here is a community
figure who has done a lot of important work in areas I care deeply about
and have benefitted from. Her work has made me laugh, think, and cringe. I
haven’t had a chance to meet her, and our interview was done by email. The
experience has been unique, being edited by the interviewee (my questions)
was a first. Also being unable to understand her views about some things while
finding others thought provoking and nodding my head in agreement. Check
it out.
HEZE: Your activisms interconnect. You blur the lines between activisms
and try to show the strength in their connections. For example the parallels
you draw between animal rights and prostitutes' rights in your performance
piece Yapping Out Loud: Contagious Thoughts from an Unrepentant Whore.
How did the parallels between these movements strike you? Did you find it
difficult to bring them together in performance?
MIRHA-SOLEIL: Generally I hate this maniac obsession so many anglophone
activists have with "making links". I really dislike the eco-feminist
slogan "everything is connected" because most of the time, people "make connections"
for their own personal and political benefits and in the process of "connecting
everything" end up erasing a lot of the specificity of each problem.
Nonetheless, one of the first prostitutes' rights organizations in the US
was called C.O.Y.O.T.E. (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) and we are told that
its acronym was chosen because the animal stood as a perfect metaphor for
the way prostitutes were viewed and treated in our culture: as threatening
intruders, carriers of diseases, as varmints to be eliminated. So when
I started working on the show, I felt on the one hand intrigued by this comparison
but on the other uncomfortable with once again having an entire nation of
animals used as a metaphor so gratuitously, that is without any proper representation
or compensation. So I wanted to give something back to the coyotes,
show people the brutal reality hundreds of thousands of them face annually
–being poisoned, shot, and trapped as part of various hunting campaigns and
control programs. And ultimately I wanted to ask the question: Can we
really compare what we as prostitutes face in terms of harassment and violence
to the mass slaughter of coyotes that has been going on this continent for
two centuries? And even if there are some poetic or discursive connections
to be drawn between our respective situations, what are the quantitative and
qualitative differences? And isn't it our moral responsibility to highlight
these disparities?
HEZE: I too have trouble understanding how people ignore/block out
the connections between the crazy injustices they face and then go on to perpetuate
hate against other people and or animals. I remember working as a cashier
and serving this woman who was wearing a floor length fur coat and on its
collar, probably the belly of a mink, she had pinned an "Abortion is Murder"
button. I wanted to spit in her grocery bag. Although maybe her hates are
parallel, no choice for women and no choice for animals. But if she believes
one thing is murder why not the other? Is this the kind of energy that fuels
your activism and performances?
MIRHA-SOLEIL: I expect some non-sense from right wing bigots and
anti-abortionists but what disturbs me even more is to see that kind of dangerously
incongruent attitudes and rhetoric amongst radical activists. Being
conscious of the mass-scale industrial exploitation and abuse of animals
for food, clothing, and research (just to name a few!) is something I already
find hard enough to live with. But even more revolting is to have so
many social justice activists laugh at this form of exploitation, abuse,
and misery and go even as far as ridiculing those of us who are determined
to do something about it. And then there's the extent to which they
will go to try to legitimize their behaviours, their privileged life-style
choices that support an imperialist, neo-colonial, environmentally destructive
and inhumane system, the same system they claim to be fighting. We
have someone like Starhawk, for example, who travels the world to fight globalization
but who then turns around and defends meat eating by saying that the Goddess
has never told her it was wrong to kill animals and that cows have made a
"bargain" with us humans, that they would allow us to kill and eat them in
exchange for being allowed by us to live short "happy" lives. Well
could someone please fax me a copy of that contract? I know other people
who try to make themselves feel better about eating meat by taking their
cheap packages of factory-farmed meat home, lighting up a stick of incense
on their dishwasher top and then saying some "prayers" for the animals who
have "offered" themselves for their spaghetti sauce. I know another
woman who is into S/M and who buys expensive leather gears from some fashionable
fetish shop and then "thanks" the cows for their "sacrifices". She
has actually convinced herself that cows are these super spiritually charitable
animals and that they really give a shit about her pathetic leather dyke
games and pageant contests. So yes these kinds of absurd behaviours
that I find even amongst people I have close political relationships with
do make me angry. But what has really fuelled my activism around animal
issues is not really anger. It is rather the incredible inspiration
and hope I get when meeting and learning about activists, artists, and writers
who, on every continent, selflessly dedicate their whole lives resisting
animal abuse and fighting for animal liberation in their own class, cultural,
religious, political, and national contexts.
HEZE: From the performances I've seen you in or read by you something
that jumps out at me is that you don't mince words. Your words are very direct,
visual, and could be interpreted as harsh. Do you ever find yourself challenged
by audiences on the passionate presentation of the way you see the world?
MIRHA-SOLEIL: Perhaps what is perceived as "harsh" sometimes in my
tone comes from being raised in a context where people don't put on a pair
of white gloves to say what they have to say. I remember my mom when
she'd get upset at another woman in our neighborhood, she'd scream "Ma câlice
de tabarnak, m'a t'crisser un bâton d'dynamite dans plotte pis m'as
t'faire sauter! – You fucking bitch, I'm gonna shove a dynamite stick up your
cunt and blow you up!" So the people in that specific class, ethnic,
cultural, linguistic context were not a learned elite who could display wryness
through elaborate lectures on important world issues. But the vivid
way with which they expressed themselves and cut so vigorously through the
shit is something I hope hasn't been completely erased from my personality
and presentational style. Do I ever get challenged? Rarely. I
think a lot of people are uncomfortable with public debates and that's because
our egos are trained to worry more about sounding and looking intelligent,
articulate, and non-offensive rather than with struggling together to find
out what's right or wrong about a specific problem or issue.
HEZE: I remember seeing you perform when you launched your Pregnancy
Project at Pope Joan and I know you just received funding to finish this project.
What inspired you to do this piece?
MIRHA-SOLEIL: At the same time as I turned 30, all my genetic women
friends - straight or lesbian - started to get knocked up! While I am
not someone who psychologically suffers from not being able to bear my own
biological children, I know that pregnancy and motherhood and everything that's
attached to that is a major topic for some transsexual women. So I
decided to launch a 9 month performance project during which I appeared pregnant
every time I was in public. We took some video footage of that performance
and from this documentation, I developed a series of short experimental videos.
And I have just received funding to produce the final installment. Basically
I'll travel to different parts of Canada and the US to interview some of
today's most controversial and thought-provoking transsexual activists, artists,
and theorists about the issues raised by this project
HEZE: You're currently working on a collection of interviews with
trans artists due out next spring. Can you tell us a little about that project?
MIRHA-SOLEIL: It's an anthology based on the work presented
by trans artists at the Counting Past 2 festival from 1997-1999. So
it includes texts and images from the work presented as well as in-depth interviews
with all the featured artists - about 30 in all. My motivation
for this book comes from my frustration with the absence of critical response
to the work of trans film-video makers and artists. Since we don't
get adequately reviewed anywhere at this point in time, I feel it is crucial
to leave some documentation of the art and programming work we have done
as trans people since the early 90's. That way, in 20-50 years from
now, when people compile books about "alternative" art practices at the turn
of the century, they will have one less excuse to ignore or exclude us.
Just look at most books that have come out about Canadian film, video, and
performance art in the 90's and outside of one book published by Grunt Gallery,
you won't find any references to what we've produced during those years.
Pick up the recently updated edition of the The Bent Lens: The Definitive
International Guide to Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Films and despite a multitude
of non-trans Canadian film makers being reviewed, you will not find my name
nor that of James Diamond, Boyd Kodak, Alec Butler, Xanthra Mackay, Christine
Burnham, or Aiyyana Maracle there even though we all exceeded the editors'
criteria for inclusion.
HEZE: You have mentioned that other than these projects you are planning
on increasing your Spanish skills and doing Tarot readings for people. Both
should increase the amount you can communicate! How did you get interested
in the Tarot?
MIRHA-SOLEIL: I have very few opportunities to speak French living
here in Canada. While this is supposed to be a bilingual country, one
I am expected to call my "home," we all know this is total bullshit. Most
anglophones know as much about Québécois culture – and therefore
about us as people - as they know about extraterrestrial life in the Andromeda
galaxy. So Spanish is for my mental health! I can breathe and think
and laugh in that language in a way that is closer to my first language -
Joual. Tarot is due to my interest in the occult. Most of my life
has been spent negotiating various levels of reality with ghosts, spirits,
divinities, and demons. But it's all knowledge and skills I gained from
first-hand experiences, some of which were pure bliss, others terrifying.
Through the Tarot, I am learning to use a formal language to hook up with
the unseen, a complex language elaborated from very powerful symbolic systems
and for me, being so un-mathematical, this is quite a challenge and therefore
extremely exciting!
Mirha-Soleil Ross’ show Yapping Out Loud:
Contagious Thoughts from an Unrepentant Whore will be presented in September
at the first National Transgender Theater Festival in New York (
www.stages2003.org
). She has two solo video/performance exhibition coming up in 2004, one at
AKA Gallery in Saskatoon, the other at Grunt Gallery in Vancouver.
Heze is a cartoonist and writer who will become a certified
fruitcake if she gets one more piece of fruit tattooed on her body.