Amy Ray Discusses the Queer Community and Trans Influence on her Life

Indigo Girl Amy Ray on Queer Politics

You sing about the “trans nation” on your new album. How has the trans movement influenced you?

God, in so many ways. I think it gave me a comfort level with myself that is very freeing. Because I’m older the language of the trans movement is not something I grew up with. I grew up in a southern suburban environment where just being a feminist was a stretch, you know? My language around my own masculinity and my own gender was stilted and I didn’t totally understand it and I didn’t feel comfortable with…I mean I felt comfortable with myself, but I didn’t know how to express to someone else in a language what that meant. One thing the trans movement did was give me a language, an articulation of my own gender struggle in myself. But it also gives the queer movement a certain propulsion that it needs to look beyond mainstream issues and to look into a gender spectrum and to look into the idea of gender and sexuality being separate from each other. And push that envelope. And to look at the queer community as larger than gay and lesbian. For me it was a broadness that was missing from the gay movement. And just on a spiritual level I felt like after I toured with the Butchies in 2000 and really started being exposed more to the trans movement I just felt better. I don’t even know how to put it.

It’s a certain comfort that I hadn’t felt in my queer community. I was from a community that was kind of conservative in a lot of ways. Not by their own choice, just an exposure issue. We were working on the most basic idea around being homosexual. To move beyond that from separating what your sexuality is from your gender is, that’s a whole other thing. The Trans area is just one portal. There are so many other ones.

Yes, it’s definitely a diverse community.

Yeah, and it’s all worthy. I also don’t like when people are so deprecating about the old school lesbians and they talk about it as if it’s a bad thing.

I think in some ways it’s just part of growing up, You have to reject what came before you.

You’re right. I think there are important reasons to reject some of it. But I think it gets mingled with a very deep homophobia and a very deep sexism. It’s so internalized in ourselves. It’s less comfortable to say “lesbian” because it has all these female connotations that just eat at the most sexist part of our core. I think the trans movement has to look at that too.

We touched on some of the queer political issues. Your song writing, solo and with the Indigo Girls has always been political. Looking at some of the issues you bring up on this album and one of them was the Virginia Tech killings. How did you come to write a song about that?

I was watching TV when it happened. I was just really disturbed by it. At the same time the Iraq war was happening. I read deeper into our own military and the way we supply arms and munitions to other countries that have leadership who use children to fight wars. I look at that as one big mess of like, “No wonder this happens.” Not excusing it, but just saying, how can you look at this situation and take something from it that’s not just about the hate and the anger and craziness, but something that is about our own complicity in society.

Where do you find the time to be involved in activism?

On the Indigo Girls website and the Daemon Records website we have a whole resource section these are the groups that we think are doing really good work. A lot of them are groups that we work with directly or people that we’ve done stuff with. We work constantly with a group called Honor the Earth that we helped start in the early 90s. We raise money and help provide political support for Native run environmental organizations. That’s an on-going thing. We work on energy issues a lot now. We’re trying to fund solar and wind projects on Indian reservations and try and shift that paradigm from coal mining, and uranium mining and hydro electric dams to something that is more sustainable. We do benefits every year and go to board meetings.

On this tour that we’re on, we’re doing a lot around voter registration. We’re supporting an organization called Project Vote which works with disenfranchised voters.

We spent some time in New Orleans and raised money for this old blues musician that needed a home. We try to do things that are connected in some way, because everything is. It’s part of how we move. It just fits in.

When you run your record label, has it been hard to honor your political commitments and also run a business?

No because my label is an indie label. I just try to run it with a consciousness.

What about being part of the Indigo Girls?

Not the Indigo Girls operation itself, because we pay a political consultant to help us with our activism. She tours with us to make sure the green touring is happening. It has been harder in the past, because we were on a major label. But we got dropped, so we’re independent now, so it’s easier to be true to that vision.

The Indigo Girls aren’t on a label anymore?

No we just got dropped about two months ago. We just finished a new record and we’re going to put it out in the winter. Not on my label, but through some distribution channels.

How do you feel about that?

We’re totally excited. It was not a moment for me of any kind of regret. I was happy, happy, happy. I was just a little worried because we had already planned on making a record, we had a producer lined up and I was concerned about that working out, but it did. The producer called us and said, “I’m still in.” So we went ahead and did it. In a quick time and low budget.

When is that coming out?

January or February 09. It’s done. Ready to go. We’re playing songs from it live.