Linchpin

In the seventies women's liberation movement, we let go of the vision for liberation and get mired in equivocation, a drive for equality that thirty years later we still haven't got.  We settle for equality which quite often means "the same as".  We can make the same money as a man for being a CEO and earn more money than any human has a right to or a need for.  This is a result for many liberation and civil rights struggles that emerge from the era.

In our political activism we're often met with adamancy, stridency, resistance.  Ultimately we get out-chessed in the game. The experience for some of us leads to a cutting cynicism from knowing that not all that much has been changed. When the outcome is broadened to the world, the effort still has a long, long way to go.   We haven't been able to bring down the patriarchal institutions; we haven't been able to eradicate the pervasive attitude regarding women's status.

When gay folks begin the chants for marriage, I'm sitting here saying to my self:  oh yeah here we go with "the same as".  We're still failing to get at the linchpin, to fundamentally challenge the institutions that keep the patriarchy looming over us.  Now we're gonna get the right to divorce and have nasty custody fights and spend too much money on a wedding.  Swell.  Still I can't stop reading or watching the persistent stories, listening to the rising swell of voices, observing the narrowing focus on this one issue.

As this goes on I notice something amongst the clamor and clash and flash of it all.  There's panic; the reaction to the call for gay marriage is inducing a panic.  This is different than the adamant negative reactions to Blacks calling for civil rights or women chanting for equal rights or even gays asking for the simple right to be out.  When gays start with the right to marry, though, one state after another scrambles to pass laws stating that marriage is between a man and a woman.

The news media and even those of us pushing for marriage seem to miss this panic.  The overriding description of the action is that this issue is one of equal rights.  The recurring legal argument is that separate but equal hasn't been right for other groups and it isn't for this group either.  Because we've used this rhetoric for so long to wheedle and cajole bits of rights, we fail to understand what we're really getting at.

When I see a picture of Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin marrying after 51 years of a committed relationship, I notice something.  They are the same height, the same build; and obviously they are both women.  Suddenly I get what the panic is about. We have finally, though perhaps unwittingly found the linchpin of the patriarchy and we are tugging furiously to pull it out.

Marriage is traditionally between a man and a woman.  Traditionally in that relationship the man is taller, broader.  Often the woman is his little lady.  Even when a woman hyphenates her name, the man is still the reference point.  Even if they use an "alternative" commitment ceremony, most usually it's the man's name she adopts.  These are vestiges of the premise that women are literally the property of their husbands.  In a lot of places in this country and around the world, the sun hasn't really set yet on that premise.

The panic about gay marriage isn't about the need for the species to reproduce more. If we were rabbits, humans would be finding ways to reduce our population.  The resistance isn't about the natural order of things.  Gay is in the wild as well as the history of the strongest civilizations.  It's not about the Bible.  There are several instances of gay that God doesn't seem to notice. 

When men marry men, they are refusing to own women; when women marry women, they are refusing to be owned by men.  The ownership of women is the linchpin of patriarchy and we are about to pull it out.  The panic is that when we manage to do this, the patriarchy may come down.

Dia de los Muertos

In the sixties the police have the right to harass, beat up and jail lesbians and drag queens.  These are not wanton acts of violence by rogue cops.  The laws of the time clearly state that "sodomy" is a crime.  Gay bars stay open by giving free drinks and payoff cash to cops.  Our protectors are the mafia.

In the seventies lesbians who are married and have been enlightened and are getting a divorce, face the probable loss of custody of their children on the basis that lesbians are unfit mothers just because they are lesbian.  Some lesbians of the time stay married just to be able to keep their children.

In the seventies Harvey Milk is shot to death by a cop turned council member.  He is arrested and goes to trial.  The infamous Twinkie Defense gets him off thereby igniting a large gay riot in San Francisco.  That defense is acceptable in large part because Harvey is gay and Moscone is a gay sympathizer.

In the eighties a man I work with at a women's bar in Oakland is murdered in Concord.  When there are large parties at Ollie's, he shows up in a black cocktail waitress skirt, complete with frilly white apron.  Our current governor would probably call him a girlie man.  This Black Cherokee gay man who survived the Indian reclaiming of Alcatraz is found hanging from a tree in Concord.  No one is ever arrested because his death is ruled a suicide.  I still cannot imagine how he hangs himself with a backpack strap or how while choking he manages to scream.

Around the turn of the millenium there is a case brought to trial regarding the murder of a young Oakland Bay Area transgendered man/woman.  The defense is that the young boys who are involved in doing the fatal beating should be forgiven by the rationale that they are duped and then embarrassed to find out they've been intimate with a man's body.  There is still socially acceptable justification for the  murderers of gays.  The jurors still struggle with the issues because the murder of someone gay is different than the murder of someone who is nongay.

About the same time Arcata high school administration bars Spare Change from doing presentations in part because of the frankness of their presentations about sexuality.  There are some including a school board member who loathe the idea that the group also includes intentional information about the "disgusting lifestyle" meaning those disgusting queers.  Underscore: this is said in Arcata not just in Myers Flat.

In 2005 locally there is a politician whose sons make sport of harassing two neighboring lesbians.  He says of his sons that they are just "boys being boys."  There are young queers being disowned by their families or afraid to come out because they still justifiably fear being cast out by their families. 

In 2006 there will be scores of teenage lives ended by their own hands because the pressure of being queer in high school is too great. They will be harassed either because they are gay or their parents are.  It may even be because of the more benign seeming but pervasive trend among teens to tag anything or anyone odd as being "so gay".

I would like to believe that all this happens in a red state.  Truth is the acts of deadly violence and spirit killing happen everywhere, even in the annoyingly self proclaimed "progressive" city of Arcata.  The savage cruelties of the persistent loathing of gays is still pervasive.

We have come a long way from the sixties.  It is now nearly forty years since the spark that ignited the fire of gay liberation, of our passion for the pursuit of life, liberty, happiness and freedom.  We are one nation and queer folk are vital living people of this nation.

In our rush for rights it is important to know that these rights are useful only to the living and those who are murdered will not enjoy the fruits of our labors.  It is important to remember those we know and those we will know who are killed because they are gay.  May their memory be for a blessing.

Nothing

I’m stuck terribly stuck this month because there’s much to write about that I don’t want to write about because these are things that I’ve been writing about,  about which much has been written and about which I really wish to say nothing more ever again.

When I say that I’m a bit tired of being called “princess” by a guy who’s flirting with me, a guy responds: oh he always calls everyone princess.   Well no actually he doesn’t call the guys princess; he doesn’t even call them prince.  When a guy passes by me and puts his hands on my shoulders and even though he isn’t being salacious, he is in part doing this because I’m a woman.  He doesn’t do this with men.

When  I wander aimlessly in a store, staff seem to have been instructed to sort out the genders of customers even though it’s not necessary to genderize to assist me to find an item.   There is an insistent persistence to genderize.  Yet, even though humanity has done this for some time, the length of practice hasn’t improved discernment.    At least half the time, I am called “sir”. I’d like to shout:  don’t call me “sir”! It’s a bit aggravating because I rather like being a woman.

Oh there seems to be the good old days when women wear skirts and men wear pants even though we all know there are many exceptions to these presumptions based on costuming even in the old days.  Even though one notes the exceptions and exemptions such as drag queens, geishas, Joan of Arc, Amazons – there have been whole eras when there is some confidence  in genderizing even though the necessity for doing so has never been clear. Apparently lesbian is not a category of gender.

It’s amazing how people inquire about being a lesbian while deftly avoiding having to say the word.  It’s almost as if people expect to be turned to stone if they use the word.  On the other hand there are those who use the word without comprehension, perhaps attempting to be kool without having response-ability to reality.  There’s the recurring use of “he/she/it is so gay” and the  emerging use of the phrase “honorary lesbian”.

The other day I’m asked:  when did I know.   (Note that lesbian is missing from the question.)  I am fifty-nine, out for three and a half decades; and it’s been a very long time since I’ve been asked that question.  As many times as I’ve been asked that question, I still don’t understand its relevance.  It’s really only relevant that I am and I know that I am a lesbian.

The more salient consideration for me is that I know and am so.  With so many signs, sign posts, instructions, propaganda, pictures, words, costumes, accessories constructed to establish gender and the roles thereby defined, I still manage to be my own woman and manage to discover that I’m lesbian.  When I come out there aren’t even many books on the subject;  Ellen de Generes isn’t born yet.

The other part of the conversation being deftly avoided is that the people who ask never once question the why of not being a lesbian.   They don’t ask; they don’t tell.  Sometimes I want to say, even though it may be deliciously impolite,  that it’s a lack of strong character on their parts and in their weakness they cave to the prevalent peer pressure.

I don’t.  I keep writing repetitiously snippits and tidbits here and there, suffer being called “sir”.  I still don’t cave to peer pressure.  I’m raised in the same kind of family found commonly in the country.  I go to the same schools, grow up eating hot dogs in white buns.  My beaded hospital baby bracelet is pink like other girl’s in the forties, I still grow up to be a lesbian who says that as many times as I have to even though it’s a word that gets stuck in the throat and often seems awkwardly said like it has way more syllables than it does.  The gender of the word lesbian is feminine.  No matter the gender roles, genderization isn’t working to keep some women stuck in place.