Jane Rule: Being Visible

Canadian author Jane Rule being interviewed  at the Words Without Borders press conference. She is asked why she feels it is important for artists to participate in Celebration ’90.

Rule: “It’s, for me, it’s extremely important. I practically never go into public, but I couldn’t stay away from this because it still seems to me that we live in a world where some of my straight friends in town were saying to me “You’re going to that?” You know, as if I’d have to wash my hands twice when I came back home to their house. And I know perfectly well that if they had the guts to say it what they’d say was “If you’d just shut up, if you’d just stop demonstrating, if you’d just stop being visible we wouldn’t have to worry that you’d get hurt,” you know, “ Aren’t you taking your life in your hands?” If I don’t take it in my hands, whose hands is it going to be in? But I still feel that it is absolutely necessary to our lives that we do this; that if we don’t do it, there is no space for us to live. And I feel enormously proud to be here and enormously proud that it’s this city that is doing it.”