Sanguinity

Ah, this is what I had been hoping for. Not the passive words, "It gets better," but making it better. Because no one should be having to endure now, not even if the future is likely to be better.

Make it Better.

Suggestions for adults: parents, school personnel, and allies.

Suggestions for youth: queer and allies.

Oh, fucking A. That one time someone tried to wield straight privilege on your behalf but didn't succeed? It doesn't make you gay. It makes you straight. It makes you someone with straight privilege. Straight privilege that other people try to wield on your behalf. Do you really believe they're all unsuccessful when they try to wield your straight privilege for you? Or are you so used to your magical straight privilege that this one time it didn't work is like a brilliant, attention-dominating beacon in your world?

And the author of this response is arguing in comments that books with LGBT content face determined resistance, regardless of the author's identity. Sure, that's true. But I'd like to direct his attention to the story in the original article about the head librarian "going to bat" for Wittlinger. Given that the head librarian believed that the author being straight would make the books more palatable to the higher ups, and given a random hypothetical scenario where the librarian has a choice between LGBT-content books by a straight author, and LGBT-content books by a queer author, do you really believe the decision is going to come down to the quality of the books alone? Or do you think that maybe, just maybe, the "palatability", i.e. straightness, of the author might come into play, too?

Yes, there's a cost to being an ally. "Straight" doesn't mean "magically protected from the costs of being an ally." How fucking privileged are you, that you think the costs of being an ally make you gay?

A question via Geek Feminism Blog, about picking your battles:

Are there boundaries that you don’t have the energy to push on, or feel that you can only make so many challenges to the kyriarchy and the status quo at one time without all the challenges together meaning each individual one won’t be taken seriously?

Oh, lord, yes.

Especially in my last job, when I was one of a small handful of female engineers, the only female in my department in decades, the only woman on the Emergency Response Team [1], the only woman to have been on that team in decades, and the leader of said Emergency Response Team. So already pushing quite hard on the being-female-in-male-professions thing. I can't tell you how often I stood at my locker in the morning and fantasized about being able to take off my breasts and hips and hang them in my locker, too. Because it could be fucking exhausting doing my job while having breasts and hips.

...and the workplace was homophobic, to boot. As in, whenever my wife dropped me off and I would kiss her goodbye at the curb, people would sidle up to me for the rest of the fucking day to tell me how "brave" I was, and didn't I worry about my job? As in, the CEO gave standing-ovation anti-gay speeches in the lunchroom. As in, I was told by a friend in HR that the reason they were two years overdue with their LGBT diversity training is because they were still looking for one that wouldn't offend employees who hated gay people. (...yeah.) So not only was I pushing the envelope in being female, but I was pushing the envelope in being out and lesbian. I was the only -- and I do mean only! -- out queer person anywhere in management.

In that environment, there was no fucking way was I going to come out as bi and poly, too.

As it was, I was already having enough trouble getting people there to take my relationship with grrlpup seriously. ("No, she's not my 'friend', she's my partner. Why yes, I do consider her my family, and I consider 'family' benefits that exclude her to not be family benefits. Why yes, I will talk about the cute thing that my wife did last night, in direct response to you telling a story about the cute thing your wife did last night. Because if it's acceptable to tell stories about your families, you're damn well going to have to listen to stories about my family.") I wouldn't have a prayer of getting them to take that relationship seriously if they knew I was "sleeping around on" her. (Which is not what poly means, but good fucking luck getting that across.) They were eager for evidence to affirm their suspicions that my relationship with her "didn't really count"; like hell I was going to give it to them.

Similarly, I was also already having enough problems with being routinely and inappropriately sexualized in situations where my gender and sexuality should have been irrelevant. Coming out as a bisexual lesbian, one with multiple relationships, some of which are with men, would have intensified that immensely: forget however you choose to identify yourself, in the eyes of many, coming out as bi means that you become an instant "hot bi babe". Or, if not "hot bi babe," definitely "available bi babe," which is no better. Either way, you are instantly and intensely sexualized.

And let's be clear here, sexualization and gender interact in a wicked way: being sexualized while female tends to erode one's apparent authority and competency. Being sexualized does not necessarily work that same way for men [2], which is one of the reasons that our boyfriend was out as poly at his workplace, while I was not out as poly at mine. As a straight man sleeping with a pair of lesbians, he got a status upgrade that at least somewhat offset whatever disapproval he got for being in a non-traditional relationship. He got admired. For me, as a lesbian who sometimes sleeps with men, coming out as poly works out to be a universal status downgrade, yet one more reason to be viewed as a sexual receptacle instead of someone to be taken seriously.

And did I mention that I was already working really hard at being taken seriously, on several fronts? Yeah.

...so that was then. I don't work there anymore, but I'm not out as bi and poly in my new workplace, either. See, nowadays I work as a teacher. Some of my students are high-schoolers. We're talking absolutely zero tolerance for sexual-renegadeness. Sure, I keep my personal life out of the classroom, but I do not kid myself that people around the office do not use my out-of-classroom, around-the-office behavior as a yardstick for guessing at my in-classroom behavior. Being out as a lesbian, in a very low-key "meet my partner" sort of way is one thing -- and even with that one little thing, it took my boss a year to tamp down his startle reflex, and I still run into balky parents from time-to-time. Being public about one's multiple-relationships-and-genders renegade sexual life is a whole new can of worms. And yes, I know there are local anti-discrimination laws for this sort of thing, but I'm also offered work only twenty to a hundred hours at a time, which means that no one would have to do something so obvious as fire me. They would just, you know, never get around to offering me another class. Or not offer me as many as they used to.

Anyway, I'm still not out in my workplace as bi or as poly. Because really, every time I think about taking this on, too, I cannot find the strength of will for it.

So, there's the answer to that question above: yes, there are battles that I do not take on, there are aspects of myself that I cover in some social situations, such as my workplace. And yes, I do that partly for strategic reasons and partly because I have hit the limit of my projected ability to deal.


...and you know what? I feel like shit about it. I always have. Even putting aside the way that being closeted changes you -- and it does change you, and the ways it changes you are not good -- I still hate having made these choices because I feel like I am letting down people I care about. There are women out there who are taking this on: women who are out and proud as bi, who are out and proud as poly, who are standing up to slut-shaming and hypersexualization and the bisexuals-are-backstabbing-fencesitters-who-don't-exist, and who are pushing back against it.

And I love those women. I have a helpless, exhausted, I am so fucking glad you are there, I don't know what I'd do without you, thank you for wedging your body into that space and making them deal with you, thank you for taking that on, for being willing to take those hits, thank you for making just a little more space for all the rest of us kind of love for them, I couldn't tell you. Every so often, when I'm having trouble dealing, I think of you all -- all you women who are out and proud as bi and/or poly -- and it gives me a little more breath, a little more will to keep on pushing on.

I would like to be standing with you. You totally deserve that.

But I'm not standing with you. I'm standing over here, ducking some of that particular flack. I hope that the flack that I am taking is in some way ultimately helpful to you, just as what you're doing is ultimately helpful to me. But at the end of the day, I'm not taking that flack. I'm letting you take it.

(Am I lying to myself? Am I assessing things honestly? Accurately? Am I being a coward? Should I be over there with you? I do not know. But today, this is what it is.)

I can only make this promise to you, and I make it without reservation: I will not knife you in the back. I will never slut-shame you in an attempt to make myself look more acceptable to the kyriarchy. And if people try to slut-shame you to me -- no, when people try to slut-shame you to me, because they do -- I will not co-sign what they have to say about you, not even by keeping my mouth shut and pretending I didn't hear.

And if I have to out myself to make it clear that I do not co-sign, then that is the way it is. I've done it before, and I'll keep right on doing it. Even while I'm not willing to go for broke on being out as bi or poly, I am willing make selected bigots look me in the eye and admit they were talking about me, too.

If I can't be in the front lines with you, then I'll do my damnedest to be a rear guard that you can trust. That much, I can do for you.

 

 

...and comments are screened, because when I've talked about hypersexualization and the "hot bi babe" thing in the past in my journal, there has been a chronic pattern of that exact same hypersexualization happening in the comment section. The fact that said comments are allegedly good-natured or from friends does not cancel out the fact that my attempts to discuss being hypersexualized are too often met with a sexualized response.

So I am gonna say this explicitly: do not do this. Do not speculate on what I am like in bed; do not feed others' speculations (not even if you think you're doing it in my defense); do not debate what kind of bi babe you think I am, and whether you think I deserve the apellation "hot" or not. Do not think that you have a license to leer in the very post where I am referencing the effect of men who feel they have a license to leer. You do not have that license. Capiche?

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[1] In-house fire brigade and chemical emergency response. Yes, pretty damn masculinized.


[2] Some men do have problems with hypersexualization, and with not being taken seriously because of it. From what I hear, at least gay men and black men, and perhaps some others.

(x-posted to 50books_poc)

15. Jin Haritaworn, with Tamsila Tauqir and Esra Erdem, "Gay Imperialism: Gender and Sexuality Discourse in the ‘War on Terror’". (link is dead; see ETA below)

( Racism is the vehicle that transports white gays and feminists into the political mainstream. )

ETA: The Google Cache no longer works.

• Google's cache page of the article, archived elsewhere (html translation of the original pdf)
  
• Scan of the article (pdf, not machine-readable)
  
• Article, responses to the article, and links documenting the dispute (archived by spiralsheep at Dreamwidth)

Ken and Dale got marrrrrried yesterday!

This was the second ceremony. They had a for-legals ceremony in B.C. a couple of weeks ago; yesterday was the blessing-not-a-wedding^* ceremony in church.

Ken had asked Dave and I to read poems during the ceremony, and there had been a bit of eleventh-hour shuffling of texts at the not-a-rehearsal dinner the night before. It had previously looked as if I was gonna get stuck with the religious poem (Gerard Manley Hopkins, "God's Grandeur"), while Dave would be doing the secular poem (James Merrill, "A Vision of the Garden"). But Dave, it turned out, had been stressing about the readability of "Garden," while I had been stressing about having to fake sincerity on the Hopkins poem, and so we agreed to swap.

Apparently this was a disappointment to Ken. Ken had been looking forward to seeing if I would self-immolate in church while reading the religious poem. He would have found that, he told me later, "hilarious."

Yes, this is the sort of relationship we have.

I am happy to report that Dave did not spontaneously combust while reading the religious poem (but then, he is merely agnostic, and presumably not so attractively hilarious of a lightning rod as I am), and my own delivery went pretty much as I had planned it. (yay!) There was a moment of panic when I came back from my last-minute rehearsal in the alley behind the church and found that the church doors were closed and the ushers gone -- the ceremony had started! -- but fortunately, the church doors were not locked, and we had chosen seats such that I could easily get to the front of the church during the ceremony, which also worked nicely for sneaking back into the pew during the processional. But I did miss getting to see Ken walking down the aisle. :-( I got lots of compliments on my reading during the reception -- that insistent twice-repeated compliment people do to convey that they're not complimenting me because it's the done thing, but because I really did do a really good job. One woman said, in wonderment, "You didn't pause on the line breaks! I didn't know you could do that!" I felt very sorry for how awful her high-school English classes must have been for her, because if you're chained to the line breaks, a whole lot of the modern stuff -- and some of the older stuff, too -- isn't going to convey much sense. But also, I had to laugh at the image of the poetry enforcers breaking into the reception in their riot gear to haul me away for blatant disregard of line and stanza breaks.

The ceremony was nice (although: what IS it with white protestant churches and their ability to kill any piece of music, even "Amazing Grace"?), and the priest made Ken do-over one of the religious bits that he either had missed his cue on or had tried to respectfully sit out (his comments during the reception suggest the latter). I even cried a little bit, as one does. As Dale put it later -- and he has officiated at many weddings and funerals -- if the gathering does not cry at least a little, you're not running the ceremony you're supposed to be running.

The reception was brief, but fun. It's always nice to be at a wedding where we are not the only gay couple, but it amazes and irritates me that even at a same-sex wedding -- something that ought to be home turf, where we are normal and straight people are weird -- the straight people still casually exoticize you. grrlpup and I and another lesbian couple were sitting around with a (straight) woman who had attended the not-a-rehearsal dinner the night before, and I used the phrase "softball dykes" while talking about Ken's softball team. The woman with us went into peals of hysterical laughter, complimenting us on how clever and evocative the phrase was, laughter laughter laughter at the wit wit wit, and the four of us sat there cutting "you've got to be kidding me" looks at each other. We are not being witty and exotic, we are having a conversation, using common and everyday terms, and if you're going to act like that you can go find some straight people to hang out with. SRSLY.

Also, I'm getting tired of straight people pop-quizzing me on same-sex marriage at weddings. Things we got asked yesterday by a member of the wedding party^**: how many states now have legal full marriage, and to please list them for her. Look, I can kinda see how being at same-sex wedding for several hours can highlight for you that you are seriously deficient on facts, but that doesn't mean that you should use the reception as your opportunity to grab the nearest ring-wearing gay couple to give you your crash course. BTW, this happens to us at straight weddings, too. ("Oh, no! It's a gay couple! What shall we make conversation with them about? I know, let's quiz them on same-sex marriage facts! It'll make them feel like we care!")

Those last two items, btw, may have something to do with why grrlpup and I always fight on our way to weddings. It's become something of a joke between us now (in the car on the way to the church yesterday: "hey! we're going to a wedding! and we're fighting!" which made us both stop fighting long enough to crack up), but even though we don't find weddings anywhere near as stressful as we used to -- I hardly ever anger-cry during a wedding anymore, for example -- there are still all these stressful bits where we're trying to negotiate the yes-we're-really-married/no-we're-not-really-married space during the reception. It makes us both snappish, and since we're both busily trying to present a picture of perfect unassailable couplehood to all the other guests, some of whom may or may not be doubting that we're a real couple, that snappishness tends to manifest itself privately, at each other, beforehand. Ah, weddings. :-/



But back to the main point of the post: Ken and Dale got marrrrrried! And were very cute. And adorable. And happy. And made me go all sappy-soppy lovey-dovey. I do hope that they continue to make each other very happy indeed, and do so for a very long time to come. Because that would be swell. :-)


---

* Dale is an ordained priest, and thus had to get permission to marry from his bishop. Apparently the answer was yes-but: they can have the ceremony, but they don't get to call it a wedding or a marriage. Additionally, even though the Bishop is usually the one who officiates at weddings of ordained clergy, the Bishop did not even attend, let alone officiate the ceremony. The priest who did officiate called the Bishop on the carpet for that during his sermon. Which made me very happy. The politics are there in wedding ceremonies, straight and same-sex weddings alike, and it's always a great stress-reliever when the officiant says, "Yes, some of you may have noticed that there's an elephant in the room. I've noticed it, too. We trust that someday that there won't be an elephant hanging around, but since this is today, and since our lives are continuing apace despite the inconvenient and unpleasant presence of that elephant, let's go ahead and have a celebration anyway."

** SRSLY? You have a gay friend who loves and treasures you enough to ask you to be part of his wedding party, but you couldn't be bothered to notice ahead of time that you don't know any of the factual details about same-sex marriage, let alone take a few minutes with the internet to research your own damn facts?

( cutting the whole fucking #amazonfail post, because I don't want to look at it any more. )

Here, have what is becoming the link round-up post.

For about a year now, I've been meaning to post about how the LGBTQ civil rights movement is different from the Black civil rights movement, and when LGBTQ activists and allies claim equivalency between the two (or even just try to build analogies), they are often blithely walking into quicksand.

I'm not going to write that post. Many other people have done it (two recent ones linked below) and they have done it better. However, in the context of the more recent posts, I do want to expand on the supposed equivalency between interracial marriage and gay marriage.

( Loving v. Virginia )

A month ago I ran across this quote on Gay Persons of Color^[1]:

Is this Islamophobia? Probably. Does Islamophobia help the fight against homophobia? Probably.

This is the sort of argument that I see white Western progressives bring up from time to time (although the author of this particular quote is not white), the allegation that communities of color are "more homophobic" than white communities.^[2] Often the allegation is made in the context of an anti-immigration argument, i.e., that GLBT-identified people would be better off if there weren't so many immigrants of color around.

Let me make this simple: No. We wouldn't be better off.

First of all, any way you dice this question, queers of color are harmed by the scapegoating of their communities: after all, they're part of those communities. And if the scapegoating happens in certain sexualized ways -- as, for example, you see in Islamophobia -- the queers in that community not only experience more racism because of your scapegoating, but more homophobia, too. (So much for using Islamophobia to fight homophobia.)

And white queers aren't going to be better off, either -- I can definitively say that communities of color are not driving the homophobia I experience. If all such allegedly homophobic immigrant communities and communities of color were to suddenly disappear from my society, my personal experience of homophobia wouldn't be eased one jot. Not. One. Jot.


So as an exercise for the reader, I ask you, who is helped by justifying racism with alleged homophobia? It's not queers, neither white nor of color. And it's certainly not people of color.

So who?



ETA: The more I think about this, the more I regret leaving this post open-ended like that, and not doing the analysis of who benefits. (Although, frankly, I'd like to see a lot more people getting into the habit of asking for themselves "Where's the power? Who benefits?" when nasty crap about race goes down.)

But, happily, I can offer you this post by lea-hazel:

The meme is that "black people are homophobic" and it has nothing to do with confronting homophobia. It has nothing to do with helping LGBTQIA people of color. It has nothing to do with ensuring that queer communities are equally open and accepting to POC as to white people, to the cultural other as to members of the dominant culture. It is meant to validate the reverse: that white people aren't homophobic. My people are good, my people are fine; it's your people who are carrying over all the ills of society. Where I live, it's a post-racial, gender-blind utopia.

Also see yeloson's post about Oppressor Olympics.

The Powers That Be have had good success dividing queers from each other by getting white queers to declare allegiance to white society through false fears about the alleged homophobia of communities of color. This is a manufactured wedge issue, people. Once again, Hip-hop didn’t draft the Defense of Marriage Act, or create “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” or murder young folks like Sakia Gunn, Matthew Shepard, Gwen Araujo, Brandon Teena, and Rashawn Brazell.

---

[1] A blog which, this post notwithstanding, I recommend.

[2] BTW, to the white queers who are tempted to repeat stuff like this: don't. Don't put queers of color in the position of having to choose between you and their home communities. That's a shmucky, jerky, assholish thing to do. And unless you know absolutely-for-objective-reals-for-sure that a given community really is "more homophobic," it's racist, too.

But even if you DO know for-objective-reals-for-sure? You're still being a shmuck.