Dear John, I Love Jane: Women Write About Leaving Men for Women is a collection of love stories. Most beautiful, some sad, they are in many ways like any love stories – except before the authors found love with women, they had lived with (and often loved) men.
In the inspired introduction, editors Candace Walsh and Laura Andre talk about what makes the women in this collection different from those in the few previous works by women who found female partners later in life. Unlike the women in From Wedded Wife to Lesbian Life: Stories of Transformation, and many of my clients at the time I read that book, women who love women are now less likely to lose their children in custody battles, lose their jobs and lose the support of their communities. But sadly some of this loss still occurs and it is in this book. Amanda V. Mead in her essay "This Love is Messy" did lose her public school teaching job in one of the many states that offers no protection from sexual orientation discrimination. A few others lost friends and family. But, more often than not, as Erin Mantz wrote in "Undoing Everything":
And then it happened: nothing. At least, not to my face. Not yet.
Falling in love with a woman at thirty-nine may have turned my life upside down, but the friends and family all around me are still standing.
There is another difference between Dear John, I Love Jane and other "coming out" stories: many of the women were truly happy in their relationships with men. While there is certainly a good bit of reflection about early attraction to women that the authors suppressed or ignored, few of the authors lived actively closeted lives. They may have taken some time to find what they wanted in their lives, but by and large, when they found it, they pursued it. And some, like Veronica Masen in "Watershed," stay with their male mates – not as sexual partners but as parenting partners making a happy family though mom is a lesbian.
This is not a collection only to be read by women who are questioning their sexuality or who have been in relationships with both men and women. These stories are about the journeys of women you know. They are about finding out who you really are in the face of culture and family telling you who you are supposed to be. They are about searching for happiness. They are about being honest with yourself and the people you love. These stories are universal. And they are well-written, filled with experiences that are familiar and positive.
"The Right Fit" by Kami Day is haunting. Raised in a strict and insular Mormon family, Day believed what she was taught about the spiritual necessity of marrying the man who was her destiny. When sex was painful and unpleasant, she and her husband ultimately went to a psychiatrist who taught them about sexuality. While this helped Day find sexual pleasure, her relationship with her husband did not improve. Year after year, child after child, Day endured years of obligatory unpleasant sex in a loveless marriage. One would think this was a very sad story, and to me it is. But in Day's extraordinary essay one sees that in her own assessment of her life, finding your great love when you are forty-four is as wonderful as life can be. She had left a long marriage and the church in which she and her family had lived for generations. But her essay resonates with joy and contentment.
In "Running From the Paper Eye,"Susan White lyrically presents scenes from her life: her mother's rift with her own lesbian sister blamed on the death of an Easter chick; White's toddler self-perception she was a boy as her mother jammed her little body into dresses; the perceptive aunt who questions her decision to marry. In introducing the demise of her marriage, she is lovely and stark:
Wes blamed our divorce on the poison oak. Sure, let the plant take the fall. A natural disaster.
Dear John, I Love Jane is fascinating, enlightening and, finally, hopeful. Not every love affair lasts but, in the end, these women are happy with their lives.
My 16 year old son just sent me this YouTube video (it's long so I am placing it at the end of the post). It is a serious plea from Lady Gaga to call your Senator and ask him or her to ask for repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) policy. Specifically:
Working with the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, Lady Gaga has been bringing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and the hardship it causes, to the attention of young people a lot lately. She appeared at the Video Music Awards with a guard of servicemembers who have been discharged or resigned from the military because of DADT. One of them was a young woman who recently resigned from West Point and is interviewed here by Rachel Maddow.
I have never had to explain the injustice of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" or any other anti-gay policy to my son. I have had to explain that such bigotry exists because he couldn't understand it. Gay and lesbian people have always been a part of his life. He knows his mother is bisexual, though that didn't come up until he asked me for help when a friend of his was coming out to his parents. That conversation started with: "Mom, X is coming out to his parents this weekend and I told him he could stay here if his parents throw him out." My son makes me very very proud.
When my son was 12, a much larger kid in the neighborhood was making remarks my son found offensive. When my son called the kid homophobic, the kid threatened to hit him. There were a few lessons that came out of that incident – lessons I learned myself as a kid. First, you can get beaten up for having a larger vocabulary than bigger kids. The homophobic kid didn't know what "homophobic" meant and thought he was being called "homosexual." Second, pick your battles because sometimes you can get your ass kicked for standing up for what you believe in. My son told me it was something he was willing to get his ass kicked over – fighting homophobia is that important to him.
But should your kids be learning political activism from Lady Gaga? Well, my hope is that my kids learn lessons about political activism from a wide variety of sources, though it starts with me. If Lady Gaga were taking a political position with which my son disagreed, I would be hearing about that – though critically. My son sent me this video because he supports Lady Gaga's efforts. And so do I.
Do you talk to your kids about LGBT issues? What do you think they are learning from their friends? How do you feel about pop figures teaching your kids about politics?
Until McDonald's gets a gluten-free menu I can't eat there, but this kind of corporate conduct makes me more likely to consume a company's products. And perhaps some day extreme right-wing groups will learn that their boycotts are a reason I will see a film.
Now McDonald's is showing an advertisement in France that I love. Watch it and then I will explain why.
This ad is the subject of much controversy from both the right wing and queer press. Queerty.com has mocked the effort and comments there and elsewhere note the contrast between the cheerful boy and his being closeted with his dad. Would a teenage boy hiding his sexuality from his father be that happy about it? I doubt it. It is not a realistic scene.
But gay teens need to see themselves in commercials. The ad does strike me as sweet and does seem likely to make gay teens feel less alienated. The tag line "Come As You Are" sends a good message about welcoming diversity. Yeah, there is a sexual double entendre but perhaps it isn't there in French. The French corporate statement about the intent of the ad is implausible.
Seriously? Gay marriage isn't legal in France. But still, I like the ad. I know at least one gay teen who would see himself and feel good. Nice try McDonald's.
Now watch the ad again. It will make you feel good about what the world might be like in that place between where we are now and where we will be when teenagers can talk openly with their parents about being gay.
I was very sad but not all that surprised when the New York State Senate voted down a marriage equality bill on December 2nd. As I have written here before, I am not a romantic about marriage and view this issue as a straightforward equal protection question. Take a look at this clip of New York State Senator Diane Savino arguing in favor of the failed bill by speaking truthfully about what marriage really means today. I applaud it and her.
If you have never been to New York, belt yourself in before watching this video – you are about to see the mannerisms and hear the accent and passion I grew up with. It makes me wistful but also deeply ashamed that the core value I was taught – that everyone is entitled to equal treatment under the law – was betrayed in that senate vote. How can gay marriage still have no protection in the land of Stonewall?
ADDENDUM: I did a bit of research on Savino, never having heard of her before this debate. Finding she represents Staten Island, I shook my head. I have always considered Staten Island a mystery borough never having known anyone who actually lived there. It has a zoo. The ferry goes there and then comes back. With some further research I found what I suspected: Savino is, like me, from Queens. As my mate tells anyone who will listen, be very afraid of women from Queens.
With thanks to @thecurvature, I bring you an extraordinary video by an organization called Marriage Equality, an Irish organization working to support civil marriage for gay and lesbian people.
Today is the 2009 National Day of Silence, a day to protest bullying and harassment of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in schools. Begun in 1996 as a student protest at the University of Virginia, it has grown to participation by over 8,000 middle and high school, colleges and universities, throughout the U.S. While the central act is a period of silence, today's activities draw attention both to the prevalence of anti-LGBT attacks in schools but also to entrenched homophobia among students and the silence on the part of society concerning it.
At 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time this afternoon I logged on to a Tweetchat of Day of Silence supporters. The feed was flooded with young people talking about how events had gone in their schools, how their teachers responded to their refusal to speak, whether they had been harassed for being LGBT or just being perceived as being LGBT. They talked about coming out to their parents and they talked about being afraid to. And this was on Twitter so this pain and anger and support and kinship all came in bursts of 140 characters. There were also allies like me in the chat – people who support the students and many who shared their own memories of being too afraid in school to be who they are.
Carl Walker-Hoover would have turned twelve years old today. However, after a school year of being bullied for "acting gay," Carl committed suicide last week. Reading about Carl's final note, leaving his Pokemon cards to his little brother, I could not help but think of my own boys his age. One of my sons loves the color pink and has taken a good bit of teasing for wearing the color whenever he can. My boys have also told me about how the word "gay" has, in the years between my childhood and theirs, become synonymous with "bad," "ugly," and "uncool."
My kids know lots of adults who are gay and we have had the discussion many times about how wrong it is use "gay" as an insult. But it is hard for them to share their feelings about this with their friends. Today I found a few videos at ThinkB4YouSpeak which provide some clear tips called "Don't Be Afraid to Tell Someone it's Not OK to Say That's So Gay." I highly recommend them.
So with my kids we talk and, while I don't think they are old enough to hear about Carl Walker-Hoover's suicide, we have watched the ThinkB4YouSpeak videos. We role play dealing with things friends say and do that is not okay.
What do you do at your house? How do you discuss homophobia and bullying at your house? Let's share our thoughts and ideas in the hope we will raise a generation of people who can proudly be whoever they are. Let's make sure there are no more children who feel the pain Carl Walker-Hoover did.
While I am finishing up a blog post on the recent run on rants by middle class white women from New York about why breastfeeding is an anti-feminist plot to keep women down, I am taking a break for some more humor about the fear of gay marriage. An organization called the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is running television advertisements full of actors playing plain old folks who list the dire risks to their normal lives if gay people are allowed to marry. I saw a bit about it on The Rachel Maddow Show and then, in a very poor choice of ad buy, the NOM ad ran in a paid spot.
For some giggles, here is a satire of the NOM ads. Yes, it contains obscenity. And, yes, it is going to offend some people.
If you want to see the National Organization for Marriage ad I saw, it is here. I enjoyed the LEGO version much more.
I am not a huge fan of marriage. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I am not romantic about it. It could be my family history – a long line of divorces stretching back to my great-grandparents. It could be my understanding as a lawyer and an educated feminist that the legal history of marriage has been fraught with sexism – marriage has been a legal mechanism to deny women rights to property, to their children, and even to their bodies. I was already a lawyer when state criminal laws were changed to allow rape charges to be brought against husbands – it is that recently that a woman was deemed to have consented to sexual intercourse simply by virtue of being married to the man who forced her to have sex.
But then in the late '80′s I began working with The AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania. The sudden death of so many gay men left many long time mates with no rights to the homes they lived in, to the bank accounts they had helped fill, to make critical medical decisions for the people they loved and with whom they had lived their lives. I saw families that had long disowned their gay children step in and strip grieving survivors of property. People were barred from the funerals of men who were their husbands in every way but under the law.
Marriage means different things to different people. It has religious significance to many. It is a public statement of love, commitment, and an intention to be together forever. Legally, it creates entitlement to property and the right to be "next of kin" with all the power that brings. Why any two people get married is none of my business. I get to decide whether I will marry and consider the implication of that decision on me, my property, and my children. I can't fathom why anyone would think he or she has the right to make that decision for anyone else.
But, on March 5, 2009, the California Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on who gets to make this decision in California. In case you've been napping, at issue is the legality of same-sex marriage in that state and of Proposition 8, an attempt to amend the state constitution to define marriage as only possible between a man and a woman. More precisely the legal questions are:
(1) Is Proposition 8 invalid because it constitutes a revision of, rather than an amendment to, the California Constitution?
(2) Does Proposition 8 violate the separation-of-powers doctrine under the California Constitution?
(3) If Proposition 8 is not unconstitutional, what is its effect, if any, on the marriages of same-sex couples performed before the adoption of Proposition 8?
In the worst case outcome, the effect of the California Supreme Court's decision could be to "divorce" the 18,000 same-sex couples who married prior to the passage of Proposition 8 and prevent other same-sex couples from marrying. The legal briefs and some official summaries of the cases can be found here.
Keeping in mind that I am not romantic about marriage, that I think who people love and have kids with and how people dispose of their property is just plain none of my business, take a look at this video made by the Courage Campaign. It moved me to want to fight even harder to ensure that everyone has the right to marry, and stay married, to the people they love.
In the inspired introduction, editors Candace Walsh and Laura Andre talk about what makes the women in this collection different from those in the few previous works by women who found female partners later in life. Unlike the women in From Wedded Wife to Lesbian Life: Stories of Transformation
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