by the light of the moon...

The Republican Mayor of San Diego has had a change of heart and decided, after years of saying that he supported civil unions but not civil marriage, that "separate but equal" is not acceptable. In a deeply moving speech, he speaks of his decision and mentions his circle of gay and lesbian friends and family, including his daughter.

For as long as Youtube will host it, here's the video. It's truly lovely.

If you want to send him a note of thanks, please do so! His website, with contact info, is here.

This video is even more timely to me because over the last few days I have been tinkering with my thoughts on what would be the most effective and exciting research that I would like to pursue in a PhD program. I've toyed with research that would directly address access to higher education in California (locally practical application of my passions) or developing techniques to increase empathy in loaded situations like the middle east (the dreamer's route).

Over the past few days the latter has been mutating a little, and I've begun to think that perhaps I'd really enjoy researching the tipping points for groups in power.

The question is, when do people with power and privilege finally realize that they are holding untenable positions?
What is it that convinced the mayor?
What is it that finally made it clear to white people, or at least to some of us, that the n-word is never funny, that "Separate but Equal" is not?
When did enough men in America realize that women were entitled to vote?
And how does the "tipping" of a small percentage of people spread to the majority of a society? When can it become policy change?
What is the moment, the "face", of comprehension?

Turning the questions to practical future applications: What would be the tipping point to convince the majority of Israelis that they are holding an untenable and immoral position in terms of the Palestinians? How could I influence straight Americans to accept transgendered children as normal and beautiful?

Is there some collection or conjunction of factors that could be described - and then perhaps created - that can be expected to open the eyes of a majority in power that is committing a crime against humanity to see that their position is immoral?

I wonder what's already been done in this arena...

Posted by Lythande at 01:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today the Bush Supreme Court struck down the rights of school systems to use race in order to determine school attendance rolls. With our nation's schools already segregated, this ruling puts more nails in the coffin.

The New York Times has a good editorial here.

I also have sitting on my desk (but haven't read it yet) this book: Can We Talk About Race?: And Other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation, by Beverly Daniel Tatum. I hope that it has some inspiring ideas for me to help change things.

Her previous book, "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": And Other Conversations about Race , is one of my all-time favorites. Buy it at your local bookstore!

In other disturbing news...

I found out today in an e-mail from Equality California (EqCA) that Four anti-LGBT initiatives were recently filed in Sacramento. From their email:

"All four measures would ask California voters to amend the state constitution to ban marriage for same-sex couples. Two of the initiatives go even further and would void all of California's current domestic partnership rights, which lawmakers, EQCA, community activists and our allies fought so hard to earn."

California's offical website on initiative measures is here.

According to EqCA, they still need to collect signatures before they can be voted on. I pray to anyone who's listening that such signatures will not be collectible; but after prop 22, I don't have my hopes too high for the voters of this great state.

Posted by Lythande at 08:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I love this town, I love this parade, I love being queer. Hallelujah and pass the leather boots!

Posted by Lythande at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am struggling to find the words to describe this.

It's beautifully spelled out here at Americablog.com, so I recommend that you head over there and read the whole post.
Short version: Snickers (and parent company Mars, inc.) created a many-layered series of candy bar ads for the Superbowl and for the upcoming Daytona 500 that were startlingly homophobic.

How startlingly, you ask?

Well, here is a screenshot of a man drinking motor oil - a suicidal activity - as a remedy for accidentally touching lips with another man.

Or, alternatively, one could undo accidental gay touching with brutal violence, such as slamming a man under a car hood:

or beating him in the stomach with a wrench:

Apparently thinking they were being funny, Mars created an ad where two "butch" men, desperate to eat a snickers, end up eating the same bar and then being deeply disturbed when their lips accidentally touch. In the version aired during the actual Superbowl, they recoil in disgust and (apparently) start ripping out their chest hair. Homophobic, yes, but not graphically violent.

No, that content was apparently saved for the Snickers website. It's down now (thank you, HRC!) but apparently there was lots of additional content, including:

- alternate endings where, in the sequences that include the images above, the men drank motor oil or antifreeze to "undo" their moment of intimacy, beat each other with wrenches, or slammed each other under hoods of cars. Sure - it's definitely better to be dead than gay!

- and perhaps worst of all, what is apparently real footage of Bears and Colts football players reacting to the "gay" content of the ad. Here's a sample screenshot:

And people wonder why LGBTQ teens have a suicide rate four times that of kids who don't identify as queer.

I am so, so sickened. Please let Snickers/Mars know how you feel.

Posted by Lythande at 03:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Excellent article in the New York Times this week about the current state of medicine and activism concerning intersex children.

Short version: doctors and parents have been terrified for decades (I suppose longer) that intersexed children -- children born with genitalia that do not conform neatly to one or the other of our two acknowledged genders -- would be permanently scarred if left to grow up whole, as they were born. I do not use the word "terrified" lightly.

These children were and are subject to multiple surgeries without their consent, lied to about their bodies and their memories, and assigned genders which sometimes do not fit their gender identities. It was and is a person-made and completely unnecessary tragedy. I pray it will be ended in my lifetime.

A couple of quotes that stand out:

1.
When I met Melvin Grumbach, one of the doctors who cared for Chase as an infant and who went on to become one of the most respected pediatric endocrinologists in the country, he’d clearly heard Chase’s line of reasoning many times. He participated in forming the consensus, and he also signed it. He knew what he was supposed to say. “We say, ‘Don’t do surgery unless it’s necessary, unless it’s important,’ ” he told me in early summer in his office at the University of California in San Francisco, where he’s now an emeritus professor. “But I think if the external genitals are really masculinized, you work it out with the family. I mean, good grief. What about the parents? The parents are raising the child. Don’t they have some say?”

I love the The Intersex Society of North America's (ISNA) simple and stark take on this: "Parents’ distress must not be treated by surgery on the child."

Especially in the light of:

2.
(Eric) Vilain has a clinic devoted to treating disorders of sex development, where he sees 40 to 50 new intersex patients a year. When he first left the lab and started seeing patients, he said he couldn’t believe that surgeons were performing genital reconstructions with so little data. “To me it was shocking, because where I come from, molecular genetics, we’re under extreme scrutiny,” Vilain told me on the phone in July. “If you want to show that a molecule causes something, you have to show it with a bunch of excruciatingly painful controls. And here I was looking at a lot of surgeons who were saying, ‘We think it’s good to do genital surgery early on because the children are doing better.’ So each time I would ask, ‘What’s the evidence that they’re doing better?’ And in fact the answer is there’s no real evidence. Then I’d ask: ‘What does it mean doing better? How do you measure it? Are you talking quality of life, or quality of sex life?’ And there was never any convincing answer.”

And for me, this is what it comes down to:

3.
Building on work on the Colombia case, in 2004, Chase and the Intersex Society were involved in persuading the San Francisco Human Rights Commission to hold a hearing and address the question of medical procedures on intersex infants in the United States. Over the course of three hours, dozens of intersex people and parents of intersex people testified. When it came time to ratify the report, Chase addressed the commission. “What the Human Rights Commission has done. . .is to recognize me as a human being,” she said. “You’ve stated. . .that just because I was born looking in a way that bothered other people doesn’t mean that I should be excluded from human rights protections that are afforded to other people.”

In the end, intersexuality is like being gay: the problem is that it bothers other people.

Those imagined scenes of children being taunted in a locker room that drove doctors and parents to unnecessary surgery...when will it become our first thought to educate the other children, instead of mutilating the one that stands out?

---------------------------

More resources:

The Intersex Society of North America (ISNA)

Their main points:

* Intersexuality is primarily a problem of stigma and trauma, not gender.
* Parents’ distress must not be treated by surgery on the child.
* Professional mental health care is essential.
* Honest, complete disclosure is good medicine.
* All children should be assigned as boy or girl, without early surgery.

And here is a great list of books. I have read One of Us by Alice Dreger and really enjoyed it. I also plan to read As Nature Made Him by John Colapinto.

--------------

On a slighly different and unexpected hand...I found myself stunned by the first line of this same article, not because of the reaction described therein to an intersexed child, but because of the treatment of her mother:

When Brian Sullivan — the baby who would before age 2 become Bonnie Sullivan and 36 years later become Cheryl Chase — was born in New Jersey on Aug. 14, 1956, doctors kept his mother, a Catholic housewife, sedated for three days until they could decide what to tell her. Sullivan was born with ambiguous genitals...

(bolding mine.)

The arrogance of that system floors me. The doctors' extreme reaction to a baby not conforming to gender roles - this, at least, I am used to. This is why Cheryl Chase and people like her are so important: we are making a difference so that gender lines can be blurrier and no one has to be mutilated or die for their gender identity or physical appearance.

But the wanton drugging of a healthy woman, to shield her from the truth of her baby's healthy body...

I understand that it was the 1950s. Perhaps this woman was so programmed by a repressive society that her reaction upon hearing about her child's intersexuality would have been so extreme as to justify her involuntary 3-day coma.

But I gravely doubt that. It was surely the doctors who had been programmed to believe that a woman had no right to a say in her own access to consciousness.

We have not reached a sane or just society. But an image like this unexpectedly hits me in the chest with a reminder that we have come some distance.

Posted by Lythande at 03:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I love it when someone designs exactly what I want.

Get it at Dyketees!

Posted by Lythande at 05:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As a Bi parent, must I raise straight kids to prove that we are not contagious?

Of course not! Other people's fears and prejudice are no reason for me to perpetuate their oppression in my house. We need to change the outside world's reactions, and prepare our kids to be safe, not continue the cycle.

The question is clearly ridiculous...but it does resonate. The author of this article (posted to the Advocate's website on July 11) covers the topic well. I was actually surprised to read how deeply some queer parents are troubled by fears like these; yet I know that under pressure, when we're scared, it's easy to lose sight of how to stand up for our principles.

As a queer woman, I know better than many how important it is to allow kids to be who they are, and love whom they love, without judgment. But if my children do end up identifying as LGBTQI or otherwise outside of the gender and sexuality mainstream, will I be blamed, as an out Bidyke mama, for "making them gay"...giving fuel to the movement to crush queer families?

Perhaps. But there are steps we can take that don't involve crushing our kids’ souls. America is not (yet) Nazi Germany - I don't need to convert my kids to homophobia to keep them safe. If (when) the world blames gay parents for making kids queer, we'll need to continue doing what we are doing now - promoting the studies that show our kids are just as healthy as anyone else's, working to educate other kids as well as their parents, coming out loud and proud wherever we can, etc.

So we fight politically. But what about the personal? Should we prevent our sons from wearing nail polish to school? Teach our daughters how to pretend to like boys if they don't? No. There is too much at stake. I cannot collude with the world that tried to crush my different views on gender and sexuality. I must align with my children to help them investigate their genders and their sexuality in healthy and safe places. Period. And together, as a family, my partner, my children and I can talk about what's right, and how to be safe.

No, the world still probably won't be safe out there for my kids to question gender and sexuality roles, even if it is already so much safer than it was a generation ago. Yes, we will need to teach them how to cover when necessary and how to protect themselves. AND we must constantly reinforce their right to be and love whomever they wish.

My plan?

I pledge...I know that if it is in my power: My kids will have dress-up clothes from all genders in their costume trunks and in their closets. They will have pink and blue and yellow and green and ribbons and fire trucks and fairy wings and dinosaurs, and I will encourage them to play with anything that they choose. I pledge never to collude with society in preventing my sons from painting their nails, or telling my daughters to sit with their legs crossed; instead I will talk with my kids about the gender messages they receive from inside themselves and from outside themselves; about how to be safe and where to cover, if necessary; and about what to do and say when other kids and parent and teachers tell them that they are doing something wrong.

More: I will not criticize my sons or love them less if they choose to play exclusively with trucks and trains; nor will I celebrate them any less should they grow up to be women. I will not criticize my daughters if they climb trees without shirts or dress as princesses for five Halloweens in a row. We'll talk to them about the gender roles they choose, and why; we'll let them choose their own paths. We have to.

And if my children do turn out to be queer-identified, for a few days or for their lifetime - frankly, it sounds to me like an additional joy. After all, I am currently the only queer-identified person in my immediate family.

I will love my kids no matter whom they love. It's not a question. I will also love them no matter how they vote, dress, or what they major in. :) I'll love them even if they wish their Mom would conform more (perish the thought). But/and if they happen to share Mama's discomfort with the mainstream binary gender paradigm...well, that's just so much the better!

image is a tee from Little Lefties, a company that follows strict environmental and social justice standards AND makes fabulous baby wear! As my brother said, there's nothing so cute as a two-month-old in an anarchist hat. Check them out!

Posted by Lythande at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hooray for new data that makes our case that much more powerful!

In the July issue of Pediatrics magazine you will find this study that found that children from all kinds of families benefit when that family is legally recognized.

A quote from a press release I received:

Ellen C. Perrin, MD, Director of Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics and The Center for Children with Special Needs at The Floating Hospital for Children Tufts-New England Medical Center and one of the authors of the report, stated, "The scientific data overwhelmingly demonstrate that there is no relationship between parents' sexual orientation and any measure of children's emotional, psychosocial, and behavioral adjustment. We conclude that civil marriage is beneficial to children, regardless of the gender of the parents, because it strengthens families and helps foster financial and legal security, psychosocial stability, and an augmented sense of societal acceptance and support."

Hell yeah.

Posted by Lythande at 02:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I first discovered Mr. Yoshino, a professor at Yale Law School, when I read about his book: "Covering: The New Assault on our Civil Rights."

The concept of "covering" - hiding the attributes of oneself that put the self at risk of personal harm based on rasicm, homophobia, etc. - has been a very useful tool to me as I negotiate this world as an queer activist. When do I feel safe to act "female", or to speak of my bisexuality? Where must I pretend to be a member of a dominant group in order to keep myself safe? What can I do in situations when I have power - as a white person, as a member of the US middle class, as someone for whom English is their first language, etc. - to create spaces where covering is not necessary?

Throughout this process, I have realized that for me, the spaces where I don't have to cover my activism are the most precious of all.

(I realized as I drafted this blog entry that I haven't actually read Mr. Yoshino's book, so I'm picking it up today. I assume I'll be recommending it to y'all highly in the next couple of weeks.)

--------------

I was reminded of Mr. Yoshino because of his new Op-Ed today in the New York Times. In an analysis of the current rulings against gay marriage, he describes a dangerous legal technique with which I was not familiar: "restrict(ing) rights with a flourish of fond regards."

In other words, the LGBT community doesn't get marriage rights because we are too good to need such guidance.

Lovely. Thanks for the compliments, but gee, I think I'd rather have my rights. Funny that.

It's a good article, and it's also enlightening to learn of the convoluted arguments people use to prop up tired oppressions. He points out that similar arguments were used to deny women's rights, and also that the law that was upheld is based on provisions from 1909. Not exactly an era known for celebrating the moral superiority of the queer community.

As Mr. Yoshino concludes: "The “reckless procreation” argument sounds nicer — and may even be nicer — than the plainly derogatory “role model” argument...but equality would be nicer still."

Posted by Lythande at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Found a great essay by this essay by Ben Barres, a male-to-female (MTF) transgendered scientist who has experienced profound changes in treatment after becoming male.

His stories include being denied credit for solving a math problem as a women when an MIT professor accused her of having her boyfriend solve it, and a colleague who rated Barres' research much more highly once Barres had transitioned to male gender.

The piece that really speaks to me (from a sidebar):

By far, the main difference that I have noticed is that people who don't know I am transgendered treat me with much more respect: I can even complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man.

There's also a great bibliography, including a book called Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women which looks very interesting.

photo is from http://pages.prodigy.net/fljustice/faith_pics/hypatia.jpg. It is of Hypatia of Alexandria, an early woman scientist.

And thanks to feministing.com for the heads-up!

Posted by Lythande at 02:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I saw this question the other day, and started thinking about what it meant for me, especially in terms of fighting for spocial justice.

If I didn't care what people thought, I would:

• shower less frequently, to save resources
  
• worry less about my weight
  
• buy fewer new clothes
  
• use fewer (or no) beauty products
  
• dance in public
  
• roll down grassy hills in public
  
• wear only comfy shoes
  
• push gender appearance norms more
  
• have the tattoo that I've wanted for 15 years
  
• wear a more noticeable nosering, and fairy wings
  
• giggle more
  
• speak my mind more often, and more loudly
  
• more consistently confront people who say racist, sexist, classist, etc. things
  
• more consistently confront people who don't think their personal choices (driving, buying sweatshop-made products, choosing to live in neighborhoods that have no poor people and don't have sidewalks) have a global impact
  

You may be noticing a trend: This blogger, were I to become ...unfiltered by caring what people think...would spend a lot of time outside of social mores. And specifically, around issues of changing the world, well...would have few friends and might even generally be an unpleasant & judgmental person to be around.

In fact, the more I thought about it the more I realized that the person that I would be without paying attention to other people's opinions is very similar to the rude, pushy, fiery, ungroomed, principled, judgemental, out and proud, passionate, focused, free, secure, confident, obnoxious, powerful person that I was in college.

Now that made me think...what has changed since then? Why do I pay attention to my looks now? Why do I moderate my opinions, cover them when necessary, not call out every injustice that I see? Why do I worry what people think now, when I didn't before?

And am I happy with the results?

Well...Y'all who know me already know that I toned down my rhetoric because it wasn't working. Surprise: people don't seem to like communications without social niceties - or to put it another way, paying attention to what people think of my communications style is the tool that I have learned to hopefully have my message actually heard. And to not get fired from jobs.

In fact, this is the PhD thesis that I want to write: when people feel attacked, they will defend themselves and not be open to new ideas.

Humility is a huge part of this. What makes me think I have the right to tell other people what to do at all? It's a slippery slope. My convictions tell me to stay on that slope, and continually push the people I love to reconsider their driving, shopping, eating, etc. habits, but...to push gently, and with open ears, and accept it when people tell me they can't be pushed any farther right now. As much as I want to make the world a more progressive and secure and unpolluted place, I can't tell anyone else what to do. We all find our own paths.

I've learned how to pay attention to what people think, in order to gauge how best to reach them, and share my values, in hopes of perpetuating those values. I think that's a good thing, even if it does come at a price.

But some of these changes I feel more mixed about.

I've adopted many of the grooming rituals of "normal" people because the way I look affects how powerful I am in this society. (There's a fabulous and nasty cognitive dissonance when the grooming rituals I use to get power feel demeaning to me, such as shaving my legs!) This power is, of course, limited: I only have access to the powers that are granted to conventionally dressed white women in our society. It's not really the kind of power I want. But it's the kind I am currently choosing, at least sometimes. I'm showing by my grooming habits that I prefer to have the meager power I can get as a conventionally groomed female then the even more tenuous power I would have as a female who dresses outside gender and class boundaries.

I personally would rather not be dressing only in women's clothes, for example, or using so many gallons of water every day, but the alternative is to feel that other people will judge me for being grungy or "ugly" or having bed hair, instead of listening to what I have to say.

Some days I feel resilient enough to put my water use, my nosering size, my gender identity, my fairy wing attire before my social comfort. Other days I don't.

I wish I could completely stop caring what people think. It's a tremendous amount of work for me to conform to social norms I don't value or which hurt me, and to keep my mouth shut when I want to speak out. It's scary when I realize how much I've internalized that I don't want.

Is some degree of conforming the best path for me to keep my job, keep my friends, and effect social change? It's an interesting question.

I do think that paying attention to how people want to receive messages of reform is crucial to actually communicating those messages effectively. It takes lots of patience and skill (which I don't necessarily claim to have!) but perhaps this is the most effective way for me to influence this world. Not many people like to be yelled at.

But have I gone too far in the direction of conforming? Is it time for me to give up some of my perceived social power and recreate the inner power of trusting in myself and caring a little less what other people think?

hmmm...

In the end - when I no longer need to keep social power - I hope to be as hairy and smelly and in-your-face as I ever was. And maybe that will be a good thing.

But this not rolling down a grassy hill thing? This I plan to change, effective immediately.

Posted by Lythande at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I have so many ideas I want to blog about, and no time to do it. Rather than let the site languish without any changes, here are snippets of things that have caught my heart over the past week:

Went to see The Da Vinci Code movie:

* Was reminded of how much I appreciate the alternate media, where women have choices besides whore or wife (which apparently Mary Magdalene does not). It was so sad to see Audrey Tautou (from Amelie) spending a movie getting passively yanked around by Tom Hanks.

* It was also sad to see that Ian McKellen's character conveniently does not mention persecution of the LGBT community when he is describing the ways in which the church oppresses. I am guessing that that omission is a concession to ticket sales. I wonder if that was a painful omission for McKellen, out and proud as he is. It was painful for me.

* In this movie, I noticed that the fat person is evil; the albino is evil; the disabled person is evil; and I was only tracking race consciously for part of the movie, so I may have missed something, but it seems that only one person in all of France is a person of color. In Ron Howard's world, only the pretty white people have lines, and are good. It's the Amelie's Paris phenomenon.

Yet another English-only amendment:
As part of the new immigration reform bill, the US Senate passed an English-only amendment on Thursday, May 18th. If you think this is inappropriate legislation, call your senators.

Not crossing picket lines:
Al Gore, Howard Dean, State Assemblymember Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) and State Senator Liz Figueroa (D-Fremont) have all refused to honor speaking engagements at Cal this month because doing so would require them to cross picket lines.

I am so impressed and thankful! How fabulous to see examples of people in the spotlight valuing workers and social ethics. Thanks you, thank you, Howard, Al, Fabian, and Liz. Thank you so much.

Allowing transgendered children to identify how they need to, and allowing their parents to support them
A five-year old with male genitals identifies as a girl and her parents are supporting her. O goddess, do my eyes deceive me and are my prayers answered? Can this be a trend? Can an increasing number of parents really be supporting their children who don't conform to societal gender expectations? I heartily cheer, cry, and holler for these wonderful people, and pray that their local (or national, for that matter) government does not interfere.

It is not usually so. Said government took Aurora Lipscomb away from her parents in 2000, and I have not been able to find out yet if she was ever able to return home, let alone attend school as the girl she wished to be. I have a call into GPAC; we'll see if they have any news of her.

image is the cover of one of my favorite books on transgender issues, She's Not There by Jennifer Finney Boylan.

Posted by Lythande at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

...from NPR to 94.1 KPFA, an independent radio station here in Berkeley.

I've been an NPR junkie for years. Raised on Karl Cassell. And I don't think I'll swear off entirely.

But over the past few years I was spending more and more time annoyed or frustrated with the coverage I was hearing. Most of the voices I was hearing seemed to be American, white, and male. The business stories seemed to lean towards supporting the companies described...who were also sponsors. There was so little coverage of protests and liberal activities...and never, in my experience, an interview with a true left-winger, like Noam Chomsky or Dolores Huerta. And I'm always wondering what stories are not being told due to Republican pressure or corporate funding...

Even Car Talk, my beloved Car Talk...I'm just tired of hearing them quote tired stereotypes of women.

(BTW, FAIR.org has catalogued these phenomena, and more, in their studies of several center-to-right biases on NPR.)

So I'm taking a break and giving my ears, and my pledge money this year, to KPFA. I can get my center-to-right news from so many places, and I get enough of it, by golly! Let's hear what else is going on!

And if you're interested...KPFA's mission statement.

Posted by Lythande at 03:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

...and also, (surprise!) it's kinda helpful not to use the idea of a hierarchy to keep oneself from examining a system where one has privilege.

There is a lively debate going on at blac(k)ademic about a comment she's encountered (and I've heard it, many times) saying that "Gender trumps race." Another way to say this is that "women as a whole are oppressed across color lines, and so the fight to end sexism is more important than the fight to end racism."

Woh. I can see how people would get there, but I have deep problems with that sentiment. Especially when voiced by white women. We are essentially saying that the system that gives us power (racism) isn't as important to us to fight as the system that oppresses us (sexism).

Convenient, eh? Not surprisingly, this idea was the source of a decades-old schism in the American feminist movement.

It is my firm belief that I get nowhere fighting oppression unless I am able to acknowlege the privilege that I have, sitting side by side with my oppressions. I need to own and examine all of my identities, target and agent.

Here is the comment I made in response to Nubian's critiqe of that idea. Warning: expletives.

Excellent post, Nubian. My thoughts….In my work, I used to describe a hierarchy of oppression, but in the opposite direction: it’s been clear to me that as a white, bisexual, disabled, Jewish, American Citizen, upper class woman, my race and class have powerfully protected me from much of the oppression that I face through other aspects of my identity. So I felt for a long time that racism actually was the most powerful oppression that existed in my world, and that I would do well to prioritize fighting racism over fighting other oppressions.

These days I see things as more complicated. It’s kind of a both/and situation. BOTH I need to acknowledge that my race and class privilege are very, very powerful, & I need to make sure that I keep fighting to tear down those systems of privilege and that I do not become complacent, AND I see that all of the systems of power and oppression in this society can kill and are grievously hurting people. All of us.

The shit I face as a woman, and as a queer woman, sucks, and I’m only just starting to really see it. (A very painful process.) But the shit that white women give communities of color when we claim “race work needs to wait until gender work is finished” (which is what I read in “gender trumps race”, let me know if I’m misinterpreting) only serves to derail our activism. It perpetuates the system that is killing us all.

Everybody’s work needs to happen. No one is free when others are oppressed. Hey…haven’t I heard that one before?

Yeah.

Posted by Lythande at 09:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So what will I blog about? Hmmmm...heteronormativity...well, how about kids?

if 10% of kids are queer/questioning/will be queer someday, let's help them feel safe and normal, and help other kids learn that this is normal. Parents, uncles, aunts, babysitters, make at least 10% of books on your kid's shelves about queer kids or queer families. And especially, let's have a few out there like M or F? which (although I haven't read it yet, as I just found it on amazon) purports to actually be a happy story about queer youth, which is a narrative we desperately need.

What? You say there aren't enough books about queer families/kids? Moon blogger (and Amazon) to the rescue!

Here are some options that I found. I have not read them all so I cannot vouch for the quality, but I'm assuming that most of them should be pretty great:

For little kids:

Heather Has Two Mommies
Daddy's Roommate
ABC A Family Alphabet Book
The Family Book
It's Okay To Be Different
Emma and Meesha My Boy: A Two Mom Story
One Dad, Two Dads, Brown Dad, Blue Dads
Who's in a Family?

For older kids:
Geography Club
GLBTQ: The Survival Guide for Queer and Questioning Teens
Totally Joe
How It Feels to Have a Gay or Lesbian Parent: A Book by Kids for Kids of All Ages
The Heart Has Its Reasons : Young Adult Literature with Gay/Lesbian/Queer Content, 1969-2004
M or F?

Lullabies to Sing at Night:
Everything's Possible by Fred Small, on his album No Limit

Happy shopping! Go wild!

Two other quick notes:
- All these books should also be available on more small-family busness friendly bookstore websites like Powell's, so don't feel obligated to use my Amazon links. I'm just being lazy, and I will stop soon. :)
- This list does not have enough teen fic with strong female queer characters, but I'm assuming these would be easy enough to find at a good feminist bookstore or website.

... I'm going to bed now!

Posted by Lythande at 04:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Found out about a new organization today that I think I'm gonna love. GPAC - the Gender Public Advocacy Commission.

Here's their vision: "To ensure every American can participate in the workplace, the classroom, and the community regardless of whether they meet ideals for masculinity or femininity."

Ahhhhhh...a breath of real air!

-----

Why did I hear about them today? Because I got an e-mail about their reaction to this awful ruling that "upheld an employer's right to compel female employees to wear make-up."

Unbelievable.

Posted by Lythande at 03:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The cockles of my heart are distinctly warmer after reading all the coverage of the gay families who showed up at the White House for the Easter Egg Roll, and were not burned at the stake. It's so odd to me that the President thinks he needs to speak about limiting our civil rights in the State of The Union Address for *** sake, but when we actually show up at his front door, he has better things to do.

Anyway, when queer families show up in public and nobody dies, it is a good thing and I hope that soon this sort of event is normal and not newsworthy anymore!

___

This is also definitely a BOTH/AND moment. BOTH I am glad this happened, AND I am frustrated with the media coverage.

Why? Because the photos available on the web of this event portrayed overwhelmingly white-appearing gay families - and 100% white-appearing gay parents.

I say "white-appearing" because I obviously can't assume people's racial background or identity from outside appearances, but/and at the same time, when the media only publish photos of white-appearing people, they reinforce the stereotype that all members (or, just as troublesome, all newsworthy or photogenic members) of that community look white.

I searched on google (easter white house gay & easter egg hunt white house gay, because I am not very efficient. I didn't try "roll" as I didn't know at the time it was part of the title of the event) and opened every article I could find after the event. Here is the rundown:

The Advocate showed two all-white-appearing families
CNN shows one of the same all-white-appearing families as the Advocate
The Age showed two white-appearing dads with a child who appears to be of color
The SF Chronicle showed two children, one of whom could be of color (and not even any of their parents!)
The LA Times showed an all-white-appearing family.

Sigh. So many intersecting oppressions. Our community is not all white by a long shot, and I bet neither were the families at this event.

Posted by Lythande at 08:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I loved this post in response to an opinion piece in The Advocate.

Nubian blows me away. :)

Posted by Lythande at 09:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Read it here.

Especially disturbing:

"Portland, considered to be a top women’s basketball coach, has faced allegations of anti-lesbian bias in the past, even admitting she did not want lesbians on her team..."

It's always sadly surprising to me when people even IMAGINE that this would be an appropriate attitude to hold!

Posted by Lythande at 04:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So...this is it. I've caved in to the 21st century...and have deluded myself into thinking my thoughts and activism might be useful to compile and publish...

...but when such an insightful blogger as nubian is promoting something called Blog Against Heteronormativity day, how can I possibly resist?

Join us. You have nothing to lose but your outdated binary gender paradigm.

Posted by Lythande at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)