Heather Gold

Why Didn’t People Vote?

November 14, 2016

Why did people not vote?

Comey FBI “surprise” delighted on from the Bannon / Trump campaign. Last minute suprise plot twist! Stay tuned!

But you can’t pull the pieces apart.
Patriarchy, sometimes “she’s not one of the good ones, like me. Sometimes ”uppity cunt.“”

White supremacy.

Media, global economic change, failure of straight up talk from elected officials, GOP stonewalling for a generation, liberals failing to vote in midterms, hammered narrative about Hillary not Ms Rodham Clintons wickedness evil ambitious Lady MacBeth cackling. Email email. So much media time about email.

Very little coverage in media and TV of Trump’s fascist working and rallies. I’ve never been anywhere that men don’t get to say and do what they want to women. Isn’t that what life just is? Economic depression, felony convictions, systemic imprisonment of people of colour, lies to white folks from the GOP, the Roseanne show ending.

SCOTUS gutting the Voting Rights Act, States doing the same. Voter ID requirements. Fear of the government for deportation. Fear. Not knowing you can get a lift to the polls. Not having many polls. A long line at the polls. Not getting time off work. Believing fake news you saw on Facebook or TV. Trump and Bannons and Ailes and Stone getting in the vote. It’s rigged. I’m not sure I’ll accept it.

Bernie Sanders and so many others telling you “they’re both the same.” Not learning in school how the basics of democracy work. Not understanind that Trump is fascist and corrupt. The word tremendous. Not knowing where to go to vote. Having a doctors appointment. Not wanting to miss your show on TV. Did I mention she sent emails?

I don’t get exactly what I want. Being afraid people will have guns at the polls. Failing to know that people died for your freedom to vote. Not having someone growing up who always voted. Not having someone who believes in you and says you matter. Helplessness, not believing your vote will matter.

Where’s Daddy?

Bitterness for Sanders. Bernie or Bust. Humans have nothing to do with it, what happens is up to Jehovah and so she will never vote, said two young Black women to me. “I’m not going to vote,” said Trent pushing me in a wheelchair through the Las Vegas airport. “We’re going to have a war no matter who I’d rather save lives than take them.” He is going to play D+D still. He still is going to recycle his soda can.

So many reasons. So many versions of helplessness, so many versions of “Daddy beat me for my own good.”

It came down to not so many of them in a few neighborhoods in the midwest.

There is a third party in the US. This is it.

My Systemic Podcast Interview

I was interviewed, just before the election, by Brett Terpstra on Systematic Podcast. I was really happy to get to talk with Brett who has built, among other things, the brilliant nvalt a note taking text editor for the Mac. It’s a double episode and we talked–among other things– about comedy, the Net’s influence on me, and Iggy Pop. You can hear it in your podcast apps or here on this page where you can also see the notes and my recommendations of great stuff.

Hillary Clinton Lost Because She Is a Woman

Hillary Clinton from the National Archive

I have issues with Ms Henein for her approach to defending Ghomeshi and the way she attacked the women who brought charges. So I recognize some irony in this extremely well-written op- ed of hers because I believe she professionally took plenty of advantage of the dismissal of women voices in public, adding to it. (Yes I get that it is a common tactic in her job. Yes I went to law school, I get how it works). BUT she is willing to say about Hillary Clinton what few mainstream media spaces are saying in the US today (yet another reflection of sexism), “She lost because she is a woman.”

Yes.

Hillary Rodham Clinton wasn’t just opposed by the GOP and the industry of conservative and far right media. She was attacked by the FBI. Wikileaks went after her, Russia. This reminded me of my mentor law prof’s tenure review. Her feminism and femaleness and scholarship so flipped out so many men that Law and Econ profs across the country decided to wage a national campaign to Northwestern University to stop her tenure even when the law school recommended her and her work was unquestionable.

There is room enough for us all to speak and completely be ourselves in public. But we won’t live that reality until we women take, not request, our full rightful place in public and the men that are terrified by that deal with their feelings on their own. It is possible. It will happen. But it won’t until we stop the emotional labour and the stooping and smoothing over and just take our place over and over again. We will have to deal with the discomfort of male discomfort over and over and our fear of their fear. We have to let them be afraid and angry and stay focused for support on our own guiding star and our own groundedness, each other, and those who are able to hear and see us.

I know from coming out, eventually, the reality of the full you, when it does not move and go away, becomes more difficult to pretend and wish away.

The waning hours of patriarchy.

The core thrust of misogyny is the dismissal of women’s voices and experience. It’s the sometimes explicitly but often implied statements: “you don’t matter(,)” “you have no credibility” and above all “I can’t hear or see you.” Speaking up means opening yourself up for versions of all of this, sometimes from people you previously really trusted and cared about.

I’m proud to be part of Helena Price’s newest project of women who support Hillary Rodham Clinton for President. It’s already been covered by Glamour, Time and CNN.

My Google Talk. How to Tummel: Design for Conversation

I show and explain how to engage the room in a performance or talk. I teach this approach in UnPresenting workshops and in-house training.
Email to arrange one.

I sign with Stars Agency and Interview Tig Notaro at BlogHer

It’s a week with some good news! I’m pleased to say that I’ve just signed with Stars Agency, NoCal’s top acting agency for on camera work. In case you’re curious here’s my reel.

I’ll also be hosting a panel at the 16th BlogHer conference this week in LA. A lot has changed since I performed at the very first BlogHer. Women like Kim Kardashian and Mayim Bialik will be keynoting and thousands of bloggers will be there. I’ll be hosting a timely conversation called Keeping Friends During a Heated Political Season with Tracy Viselli, Sugar Jones and Xenia Galaviz. It’s August 5th at 10:15am. If you’ll be there come say hi.

Saturday, I’ll also be hosting an Amazon Studios screening of Tig Notaro’s new series One Mississippi and interviewing Tig afterwards. The series is also produced by Diablo Cody (United States of Tara) and Louis CK (Louis).

I recently guested on She Knows, the podcast of the group that puts on BlogHer in an episode titled How Humor Can Hack Social Change along with humorists Jenny Yang and Luvvie Ajayi. Elisa Camahort Page did an excellent job ofhosting.

I’ve not been at a blogging conference in some time. I’m hoping it

‘s still full of meeting people whom you only know by odd Internet handles (the first Net person I really noticed back in 1996 was an Enhanced CD developer named steakface),  having great conversations in halls, and constantly charging our devices.

What Trump Means

There’s been plenty of racism and homophobia and sexism as a basis for the Republican party for some time.

Most of the GOP candidates this year met with and supported a pastor who believed gays should be killed. Reagan’s history on HIV/AIDS was deplorable and the party then happily talked about tatttooing queer folks and putting them in concentration camps. There have been all  manner of dog whistle and direct racist campaigns: “welfare queens driving Cadillacs;” Ws phone campaign against McCain in South Carolina about his Black child, Will Horton ads run against Dukakis,Pat Buchanan’s racist/anti-immigrant platform, Ron Pauls writing in white supremacist publications, Ws entire get out the vote strategy based on a morality tale and anti-gay propositions across the country (including one that amended the California Constitution so I and others couldn’t be married or equal).

This is not a few people poking their nose out. It’s an ongoing strategy because these are ongoing “permitted” ways that people defuse and redirect their rage at those with less power. It’s the oldest divide and conquer plan in the book only in the United States its internal. It builds on histories of oppression so it’s been safe and easy. The GOP and a media system it’s built makes money from stoking rage and has run against the illusory “establishment” and the concept of government for a long time, while being the actual government now for decades. When all the magic they promised by being the “not government” wasn’t delivered to their constituents while stoking bias and oppression as a convenient political glue and walking closer and closer to the fire.

When you follow the path of  national GOP candidates (Reagan->Quayle->George W Bush->Palin): Trump was inevitable. Without a massive consciousness shift more will follow. The establishment lost control. News as an entertainment was built on stoking this. Undermining civility was a disruptive financial and power opportunity. The market force and shift of Internet media increased the reactivity .

Only a real change in culture and consciousness/ emotional maturity that makes a difference over time and it takes huge amounts of work. #BlackLivesMatter is doing it. It’s how we got marriage equality which is still facing backlash opposition laws in 34 states. Trump is way ahead in every Super Tuesday poll. Nate Silver is calling it for him.

The narcissism machine will keep reproducing itself only interrupted by generosity and kindness which you can’t arbitrage or game. The tragedy is when we repeat it by repeating the narcissism. Blaming the “permitted other” is learned to avoid the pain of what goes on in the family. The sad and tragic thing is what enables everything with the media and the politics of bias.

It’s why people are looking for Daddy in these campaigns and often have. It has always sold. It’s a promise that isn’t delivered and it’s weirdly anti-Democratic. As long as people’s emotional goal is someone to take care of them it’s going to be this co-dependent political thing.

How Groups Keep Talking

1. Everyone is the expert on their own experience.
2. If you want ongoing connection that has to be what you focus on as much as what you want to say.
3. Maximizing entry points hastens connection.
4. Diversity of every kind creates entry points (among other things). 4. Shifting between voices as disparate as possible builds connection.
5. If someone can’t tell you you’re wrong, you’re not having a conversation. 6. What you say to one person you say to everyone.
7. How you talk to one person is how you’re talking to everyone.
8. The quietest people “speak” the loudest. 9. Everyone wants to feel heard and acknowledged.
10. If you’re interested, people are interesting.

More notes, video and workshop information.

Look Out Kathy Griffin and Margaret Cho: I bring twenty college students out of the closet in a single show

Equal parts raunchy, serious, awkward, and inspirational, her routine opened doors for the LGBTQQ community here on campus and opened the eyes of everyone less aware…it was an introduction to the life of Heather Gold, an extraordinary person.

[for the] people who stayed… to talk to Heather Gold—not even listen to or laugh at, but engage in authentic conversation with—her direct approach, her humor, and her interest in every individual was a welcome reprieve from an otherwise generally repressive atmosphere….Heather Gold is someone who deserves the chance to speak to more than just an audience of people seeking acceptance: she needs to speak to those who deny it, because if anyone can raise awareness and support for the LGBTQQ (which stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Questioning, in case you didn’t know) among us, she can.

– See more at: http://subvert.com/2011/02/14/look-out-kathy-griffin-and-margaret-cho-i-bring-twenty-college-students-out-of-the-closet-in-a-single-show-2/#sthash.QzqlVjXC.dpuf

Audra Foster – The Gettysburg Forum

I perform and speak at college campus’ regularly, usually about LGBT and diversity issues. For me this comes from the same heart as all my speaking in the Net and business world as well: creating spaces in which pretense can subside and people can be connected as their more authentic selves. Jokes help.

I’m also becoming as well known for talking about and teaching how I do this tummeling.

But I am feeling really proud, and not just because I’m now entitled to a whole lot of toasters. I got serious about this goal of connecting the “audience” in my shows over a decade ago because of my San Francisco peers, mostly early web creators who all often asked “how can I add value.” Many performers give people a public example of something, or publicly advocate for rights as comics Kathy Griffin and Margaret Cho do for LGBT rights. I do that too, but since I began doing solo shows (for me these are monologues with lots of audience dialogue in them), I began asking “what if the show were not about something over there but were focussed on making something really happen right here, right now.”

What kind of difference can you really make in an hour or so? You can change how someone feels about themselves in public.You can change an environment.

To be fair this Gettysburg show did go over the hour I’d prepared to do because I was obsessed with bringing the room together and tipping the public balance in the room there so that people could come out. The students were individually telling me about their frustrations. And who were all these people showing up to have abstract discussions about civil rights, yet had real concrete social and personal difficulties? They didn’t feel safe. They felt isolated even in a room together. And sadly, many of these students were in their young twenties and had already made it through adolesence without getting to openly feel ok about the feelings and actions straight kids take when they are 8 or 9 “I have a crush on him. Which boy do you like best?” and so on. They were in a small isolated college. Were they going to have to go through 4 more years not honestly connected to themselves or dating or sexuality?

I deal in the unspoken. Now the only student I physically brought onstage is definitely straight. But she has a version of the same stuff to deal with as everyone. Could she say no to me? Could she tell her truth? Not being able to talk about what you’re really feeling or what’s really going on isn’t an issue limited to queer kids coming out. It’s at the heart of the breeding ground for everything from unsafe sex to bad corporate meetings to dictatorships. It’s one of the main obstacles to our being able to be #WITH each other, which I believe is our main collective need right now.

So I stayed on stage until it became easier to be out than in. Till these students had someone else they could talk to in the open, or maybe even ask out. I did my best to use what was about me in the show was used to make things helpful for everyone there.

The awkwardness, the seriousness, the conversations, the discomfort, the comic relief was all done consiously in order to achieve something socially. As I teach in workshops and my keynotes, there’s an informational flow (or a narrative or theatrical flow and there’s a social flow. I wanted both.

It was a funny show. In comedy terms I killed.

But in life terms, I did something much more important. I connnected.

We all want to meet more people and feel more ourselves and more connected. This experience inspired me to want to accomplish more every time I perform. I’m a performing aiming for, as Umair Haque would say, thick value. Artists: ask yourself, how can I help? Directly.

To bring me to your campus or event, contact my lovely agents at Speak Out.

“I still can’t thank you enough for what you have done for this college. It was a much-needed wake-up call. Thank you! I have also forwarded this article to my club as a whole. Hopefully, we can have you back in the future!”
–Josh Griffiths

What’s underneath achieving social equality. And product returns.