Sociology

When one looks at the City of San Francisco one of the first things one notices is the cities vibrant and powerful Gay and Lesbian Community and sub-culture. The names of Harvey Milk and Michelle Tea are well known throughout the community. Milk was well known for his activism and political position, as well as his assassination.  Tea is most known for her touching poems about her life, relationships and life in her beloved San Francisco.

Harvey Milk was born and raised in the Northeast and spent his youth working in the theatre industry in New York City.  On moving to San Francisco he quickly becomes involved in the community and in politics. Milk faced overwhelming odds for several reasons. First, because he was an openly gay main running for political office at the very beginning of the Gay Rights Movement. Second, because he was an outsider not only in the city of San Francisco, but, in the American West. Eventually Milks love for the city and love for his community resulted in his being elected.

His election to office gave a boost to the Gay and Lesbian communities sense of pride in themselves, and their assertion that they had a right to hold the same place in society as the heterosexual members of the population.  His charming and charismatic personality also gained him many supporters amongst the cities general population. It did not matter if you were a member of the gay community, or an elderly woman, he was well loved by many in the Castro District.

Unfortunately, not everyone loved Harvey Milk. Dan White, one of his fellow City Supervisors, was prejudice against the Gay Community,  and had resigned from his position, and felt that they refused to give him his job back because of Milk. On November 27, 1978, White assassinated Milk and shot the San Francisco mayor. Milks death sent the community into mourning. He was claimed a martyr by the Gay and Lesbian Community and he earned his place in history.

One thing that strikes the viewer when watching the film on Milks life was his love for the City of San Francisco. He didnt care if you were gay or straight, old or young, or what race you were. If you lived in his district he worked to protect you and our best interests. Although he was viewed as fighting specifically for the Gay and Lesbian community, he cared about everyone in his district. Milk made himself the voice of the hidden minorities. He spoke for all those that felt that they were discriminated against and ignored because of race, gender, age, or sexuality.

Milk had what could be termed a typically New York attitude in terms of his political viewpoint. He took care of his neighborhood and they took care of him. He also brought many innovations to San Francisco that had already been implemented in New York. Milk fought to put in place a Gay Rights Bill that would prevent discrimination against the Gay and Lesbian population in San Francisco.  This caused a backlash in the city, Milks office received bags of hate mail and numerous hateful phone calls.

What strikes the viewer is that Milk was not defeated by this. He still continued to fight for his city, and to fight for the people in his district. He fought against peoples pre-conceptions that Gay and Lesbian teachers would influence students to become gay, or that Gays and Lesbians were more likely to be child molesters. He didnt give up on the people in his community and he fought to do what he had been elected to do, despite the opposition.

Milk appeared to have a very positive attitude about the possibility of change, and about his own role in creating those changes. He felt that even though the mood at the time was very prejudiced against the Gay and Lesbian community that things could change. Milks stance on Gay Rights did not change. He educated, he informed, and for every negative image his detractors presented of the Gay Community, he presented a positive one, simply through the example of his own life. Milk saw that there was a light at the end of the tunnel and that change would come, even if it came slowly.

Milks attitude and his hard work changed San Francisco. While the wild image of the citys Gay Community still existed, Milks work began to make people realize that while this image was true, the image of Gays and Lesbians as doctors, lawyers, and school teachers and parents. People who held traditional middle class values, and who had suburban homes, two cars, and 2.5 children. Milks death also changed the community and the City. He was well loved by many people and fought for the rights of all minorities, not just his own. Many citizens of San Francisco came out as gay or lesbian after his death. His death also inspired the Gay Community and the city of San Francisco to present a united front just as HIVAIDS was beginning to make its presence known in the Gay Community.

In contrast, Michelle Tea lives in a very different world than Harvey Milk. Her San Francisco is a city in which Gays and Lesbians enjoyed many of the rights that Harvey Milk fought and died for. She relatively young, and lives a much wider life than Milk. She is into BDSM and leads a Goth lifestyle. Tea works as a poet and lives in San Francisco, but she does not have the same love for the city that Milk did. She states I hated San Francisco all the sex-radical girls with their slaves and their leather. I thought I would run away.
(Tea 11)

Tea describes San Francisco as a sad and dirty city, and members of her community as being sad, and leading pointless lives. Teas city is a sad city where the members of the Lesbian community lead lives of addiction, and loneliness. She describes the Mission District of San Francisco as lonely place where no matter what you choose it is wrong.

Unlike Milk who was very involved in the Gay and Lesbian Community Nin San Francisco, Tea does not appear to be involved at all. There are few causes that interest her, and she demonstrates a sense of entitlement to the rights that Milk fought for. While Milk is a likeable character who seems to be trying to set a good example for his community, Tea seems hell-bent on destroying herself, and the reputation that older Lesbians worked hard to change.

Unlike The Life and Times of Harvey Milk which essentially tells the reader of Milks entire adult life, Valencia focuses only on one single, hectic year in Teas life. A year in which she goes from relationship to relationship, and town to town, appearing to be essentially rootless.  This rootlessness and lack of a sense of community make Tea very different from Milk. She has a more negative outlook on life and thinks that there is little that she can do to change or improve her life.

Tea faces several issues in this book. First, is that her negative outlook on life causes problems for her both in terms of romantic relationships, living situations, and work. Second, her lack of connection to the Lesbian community as a whole, and more specifically the Lesbian community of San Francisco make it difficult for her to build a life for herself, or to find friends and love. Tea allows her life to be overwhelmed by her problems rather than facing them head on and overcoming them as Milk did.  This is a disability for her as she works to succeed in her career as a poet.

Tea is also angry, much angrier than Milk appeared to be in The Life and Times of Harvey Milk  . She allows this anger to get in the way of achievement instead of using it to fuel achievement. Anger drives her poetry, but, it also cripples her ability to deal with the real world in a positive manner that allows her to get ahead in life. Tea strikes the reader as lonely, unhappy,  and depressed.

In terms of whether or not the stories of Milk and Tea have changed how I view San Francisco. They have, and they have not. I think that both versions of San Francisco are true. San Francisco has been  a city of hope and change, and possibility as was seen in The Life and Times of Harvey Milk  , and a dirty city in which the dreams of those that live there are destroyed as is seen in Valencia. Milk and Tea are each unique individuals, of different ages, and from different generations. Hence,  it can be argued that each truly does live in a different San Francisco. The city appeared the way it did to Milk because he was a child of the 50s and 60s. The generation in which the post World War II attitudes of hope, and optimism still held sway. As part of the Baby Boom generation, Milk believed that what he did made a difference.

In contrast, Tea is a child of her times as well, and those times are a time in which HIVAIDs nearly destroyed the Gay and Lesbian community, and a time when religious fundamentalism is on the rise. Tea feels entitled to the rights that Milk fought for, and despite all of the opportunities that are open to her because of what Milk did for the city of San Francisco, she still limits herself, within the confines of a small sub-culture within the Gay and Lesbian community.

San Francisco as a city is not defined solely by the Gay and Lesbian community. They are just one part of the whole, and are but one minority culture in a city full of minority cultures and sub-cultures. Each group has contributed their own perspectives, values, and cultural traditions to the city, and each has shaped how people view the city of San Francisco. It isnt Milks perception of the city, or Teas that shapes how I view San Francisco, it is a combination of both views because, life in the city is what you make of it.

It can be concluded that both Milk and Tea have shaped the perception of the Gay and Lesbian community of San Francisco in unique ways. Each leads a unique life, and holds their own place in the community and in history. No one can truly claim then, that either person has the one true vision of what the city should be.