a post, a post, my kingdom for a post!

Oh yes once again it’s been too long.  Let’s see, since Pride, what have I been up to?

– Learning to jump rope.  Yup, you heard me.  I wasn’t a very good girl back in the day.  I think there was a jump rope somewhere in my house but along with roller skates, cartwheels, and hula hoops, I just didn’t excel at the little girly physical activities that everyone else got to do.  I could write a whole sad post about how my family was into shaming us about our bodies, and how I learned to keep as still as possible so I could forget I had a body at all, but there’s been enough rain recently.  But I’m quite proud of myself — I picked up the basics of jumping rope in a few minutes, which gives me hope.  Who wants to teach me to hoop??

– Today in Copley Square, as I was walking to the farmer’s market in search of native strawberries (OMG the best I’ve ever had by the way) I saw a gorgeous butch/femme couple having their wedding photos taken (by a cute dykey photographer no less) and I yelled out “congratulations!”.  They were both just beaming, looking beautiful and so happy.  I was so thrilled I got goosebumps.  This is what it’s all about, you know?  How can I be anti-marriage when it’s out there making people that happy?  But I digress, this isn’t supposed to be an angsty post.

– I’ve been reading and re-reading an essay by Karen Bullock-Jordan, in the anthology This is what lesbian looks like from 1999, which I first read a few months ago (witness the $5 library fine I had to pay today in order to renew it…).  In a footnote, she explains her use of the phrase ’sexual preference’ instead of ’sexual orientation’, saying that sexual orientation’s “coinage and usage was part of the strategy that moved us into a civil rights framework, the idea being that if we fuck others of the same sex because we are oriented that way, then we are more deserving of civil rights.  Choice has been completely discounted.  In my opinion, the orientation argument seems to be little more than Don’t be mean to us poor homosexuals.  We can’t help it.  It is important to also argue for the right of an individual to choose homosexuality if that makes sense to them.” (p. 38)

Her argument opened my eyes to the many times I’ve used the orientation argument myself, but I’ve stopped since reading that.  She is calling for sexual liberation, rightly eliding homophobia with erotophobia.  She points out at the end of the essay, “There are no laws against emotional love between those of the same sex, only against fucking them.” (p. 45)  Her words have helped me clarify my own position on these issues — sex is something that is always used against the LGBTQ movement.  Talking about our relationships has been called obscene by conservatives (especially religious ones) because ‘it’s automatically about sex’.  Which is ridiculous, really.  The word liberation has a lot of meaning for me — I feel like I am slowly liberating myself from the stifling cloak of self-doubt and embarrassment about my body and my desires, and the more liberated I get the more I wish that everyone could be that way too.

– I’m working up a post about the firestorm of controversy around the Top Hot Butches list, and will have it up this weekend.  There’s a lot to be said on both sides of the argument, and as usual I feel torn between conflicting viewpoints.  However, I was appalled by how much butch-hating was going on, and it only strengthened my feeling that this work has hardly begun.  If you want a taste of my opinion, look here.

– Oh yeah and one more thing, I’m SO SAD that we can’t go down to NY for pride!  Last year we got thoroughly soaked at the dyke march but loved it anyway.  Too bad we’re moving and M. has to work.  We’ll be there in spirit.

those gone before

Just before the Pride parade takes off to wend its way through the city, participants are instructed to observe a moment of silence to honor those gone before and those not able to attend.  Today at noon the whistles blew but the street didn’t really fall silent.  People were milling around, engines were starting as vehicles moved into place.  Passersby didn’t know to be quiet anyway.  Even my group, carefully instructed to be quiet, wasn’t really.  It may be too hard to coordinate a moment of silence for hundreds of people stretched over several city blocks.  Nonetheless, from 11:59 to 12:01 today, I was quiet, and I really was thinking about those gone before. 

This morning, Woody Woodward passed away.  I’m not at all qualified to write a memorial to her.  I never met her.  But I feel sort of devastated about it anyway.  She was one of the founders of Moving Violations (a Boston-area women’s motorcycle club) and was always the leader of the Boston Pride parade.  I saw her more than once serving in that capacity, awe-inspiring on her motorcycle, wearing her signature rainbow mohawk.  

But before I ever attended a pride celebration — I believe my first Pride was the summer before my senior year in college — I was a kid growing up outside of Boston, driving with my parents on the highways around Eastern Massachusetts.  My parents often would pack us into the car and take us into the city for some educational something.  Museums and such.

As we pulled closer and closer to the big metropolis, chances were we would see a woman riding a motorcycle.  And when you saw a woman on a motorcycle in MA in the early 90s, more than likely there would be a sticker on the back of it saying ‘moving violations’, sometimes bordered by yellow & black caution-tape stripes.  These stickers also showed up on cars, usually beat-up old japanese cars like subarus and hondas.  And somewhere on the bumper near the moving violations sticker would be a rainbow sticker.

It didn’t take my baby dyke self very long to figure out what this all meant.  These women on motorcycles were the first ambassadors of the queer world to me, the first indication I had that something very different from everything I knew was not only out there, but not very far away from me.

I got an intense joy from seeing those women on the road, and always felt sad if we passed them or they overtook us.  I wanted to reach out and grab them, hold them close, ask for a ride.  Talk to them.  

At that first pride, M. and I were shy and timid onlookers.  We stood on a street corner, quietly waiting for the parade to start.  Which it does, of course, with the dykes on bikes contingent.  When they finally got going, the street reverberated with the sound of their engines.  A sea of women in leather, some with girlfriends riding behind them decked in tulle and heels and lipstick, all on these sexy motorcycles went by.  The parade turned a corner and stopped for a moment before they all went by us, and during this pause a tough-looking older butch looked over at me.  She smiled, and then very deliberately licked her lips.  While staring right at me.  I hardly knew what to do with myself — I was thrilled and mortified and turned on and shocked all at once.

The sight of all those gorgeous dykes, of all persuasions, has never left me.  It was beyond anything I could have imagined as a 16 year old riding in the back of my parents’ car.  I was in love with all of them, ecstatic about their very existence.

So these were my two brushes with Woody’s work and activism.  She was clearly an amazing, powerful person.  I am amazed by how deeply her life touched mine, and how much strength her work gave to me before I had any clue what it meant to be gay, or queer, or even grown up.

Her life, and the way it touched mine, is a true reminder of why it’s so important to get out there and do this.  Be visible.  Start groups.  Make stickers and wear them.  Hell, just show up wearing the outfit you really wanted to wear.  Sometimes just existing and being yourself can be a lifeline for someone else.

I would have loved to meet her.  I wish I could have thanked her.  I’m so, so sorry she’s gone, most certainly too soon.

“all about love”

I talked a lot about stress in my last post, and being unable to write about it.  After that difficult inlaw visit, I picked up bell hooks’ “all about love” for the first time, which I think is just amazing and I highly recommend it.  I’ve been thinking about her words a lot, both in regards to my own struggle to express love for others, and in regards to the consequences we suffer at the hands of people who say they love us but act like they really don’t. 

She writes about her reactions to M. Scott Peck’s definition of love, which follows:

“[Love is] the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” 

Peck goes on to say, “Love is an act of will – namely, both an intention and an action.  Will also implies choice.  We do not have to love.  We choose to love.”

I find this definition to be incredibly challenging but also inspiring.  I really like the idea that loving someone is about choosing to extend one’s self to nurture spiritual growth, for one’s self or another.

At a writing workshop I attended some weeks ago, I found myself writing about love, about how I see myself in the world as someone who loves other people; not just people that the world agrees are lovable, but the people the world doesn’t love.  People who are hard to love.  I suppose it’s like a personal challenge to myself – if I truly believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every living being, [yes this is a remnant of my childhood religious upbringing – who recognizes it?] then if I can’t love everyone at least a little bit, I’m doing something wrong.

hooks makes another excellent, resonant point:

“An overwhelming majority of us come from dysfunctional families in which we were taught we were not okay, where we were shamed, verbally and/or physically abused, and emotionally neglected even as were also taught to believe that we were loved.  For most folks it is just too threatening to embrace a definition of love that would no longer enable us to see love as present in our families.  Too may of us need to cling to a notion of love that either makes abuse acceptable or at least makes it seem that whatever happened was not that bad.” (p. 6)  [emphasis added]

I was put in a position to raise my little sister who is four years younger than myself at the age of 12, when my older sister moved out to go to college.  I imitated the destructive patterns that were already set in my family, even as I also provided love and care for her.  Sometimes I did nurture her spiritual growth.  Sometimes I treated her very badly.  I have gotten to the point (finally!) where I can ease some of the guilt that goes along with that statement – at 12, who is ready to raise an eight-year-old?  I know I did the best I could, and have always, always tried to be there for her whenever she needed me.  No matter what.  We are very close now, and I have apologized to her for the things I did wrong.  But she has never wanted to talk about it, and I haven’t wanted to push her.

bell hooks says that we must heal from the wounds left by being unloved as children before we can truly give love to another, and that we must realize that what we were told was love really wasn’t, if it included these patterns of abuse and pain at the hands of those who said they loved us.   But I think that being the one with the power can also leave wounds that need to be healed.  There is at least the responsibility to acknowledge the pain that was caused to another, and express remorse and regret.  A promise to never do it again.  I don’t see this being talked about very much. 

The common discourse around abuse seems to conclude that it is terrible, and the person who is being abused must leave the situation immediately.  This presupposes a few things though:  that the abuser is completely consciously choosing to abuse the other; that the abuser is all bad; that the victim is better off without the abuser.  If that is really true, then we have a society of people who should never be in any kind of relationship.  I believe we all have done things that could count as abuse.  I think it would be more productive to talk about how to create healthy relationships that don’t include treating each other badly.  We hear all about how survivors heal from the abuse in their past, but how do abusers heal?  What does that process look like?  And how do the perpetrator and the victim go forward, if both of them want to try again?

I guess these are pretty heavy questions, but I’d love to hear what you all think.  First and foremost, what do you think of this definition of love?  How would you define love?  Would you say that someone who has abused another in the past can redeem themself?

paralysis

I woke up this morning at 4:30 with a splitting headache and feeling completely nauseated.  I felt a bit off last night, but thought it was nothing but exhaustion and irresponsible eating patterns.  It got worse and worse until I was on my knees in the bathroom, sick and crying.

I’ve been a bit stressed the past few weeks.  It’s some of this and some of that, all piled on top of a very difficult visit to the inlaws.  I’ve been unable to write anything, personal journal, blogging, what have you — even my professional writing hasn’t come easily (and it mostly consists of friendly informative emails, so that’s saying something!).  I guess I thought the summer would be a time to recharge and rest, and it hasn’t turned out that way.

Melting down physically is not a new response to stress in my life.  When I was a child, I would routinely get stomach aches so bad my mom would take me to the emergency room in case it was appendicitis.  Eventually my doctor gave her a couple of indicators she could check at home as a preliminary screening, to prevent unnecessary trips to the hospital.  I also got intense migraines, so bad that eventually my mom took me to get my eyes checked to see if there was a problem with them.

So this kind of physical response isn’t in itself a big surprise, but being so stressed that I have this kind of response is surprising right now.  I don’t really have anything to say about it.  I was going to post some cheery pictures of the roses in my neighborhood, but I’ve misplaced my camera cord.  Soon I hope to be able to start writing again and doing the fun stuff I have planned for the next couple of months.