So, yesterday, I had Quite A Day. I had to take the standardized legal ethics exam for lawyers, the MPRE, which is COMICAL, of course, because 5 words: Jay Bybee and John Yoo. But anyway, it's a pain, and I really want to pass, so I don't have to take that stupid bullshit again. But. The day before the exam, my power goes off around 3 pm when Alexandria gets hit by a wild storm, and doesn't come back on. It then it still doesn't come back on. I cooked dinner by candlelight, which was kinda fun, but the greens came out a little underdone, because who can tell when the greens are done by fucking candlelight? But I was getting worried about the lack of power situation - my phone was running out of power, and I needed an alarm to wake me. Also, I needed to print out my admission ticket to this damn test. So I called my friend E., who printed it out from work (she is a lawyer, I knew she'd still be at work), and promised to bring it to me later in the evening. I camped out at Whole Foods, which is down the street and had power, to finish studying and power my phone. E. dropped off my ticket, I set my alarm, I went to bed fairly early, because this test is in the most inconvenient place ever, and I have to leave like 2 hours before I need to be there to get there on time.
And then my power goes on at like 12:15 am, and everything turns out and starts beeping and scares the fuck out of me and then it takes me forever to go back to sleep. Like, until 2 am. Then, I wake up in the morning, and I look at the clock, and I freak out, because it is REALLY LATE, and OH MY GOD, I must have slept through my alarm, I am going to miss the test, holy shit, I fly around the house in a tizzy trying to get out as quick as possible until just before I am about to run out the door when I realize that the clock was actually WRONG because of the power being out and I still have over an hour to kill before I have to leave and I have in fact slept like 4 hours and I am sort of a mess.
So. That was the start to my morning. I was a little, uh, brittle, is I think the right word there.
Anyway, I go, and there is a shuttle from the subway to the law school, because as I said, this test is in the most inconvenient place possible. Everyone kinda starts chatting up people next to them as we wait for the bus, and I start speaking to the woman next to me. She looks older, like me, and thus the least likely to want to talk about law school in that annoying insecure hyper-competitive law-students-really-are-assholes sort of way (true story - a friend of mine who went to law school before me warned me, "Law students are the worst people on earth." I never doubted her, but wow was she right). So, we start chatting, and she mentions she has never been out to American University. I tell her the last time I was there was for a gender and sexuality conference. And she says, "Well, that's appropriate, given that really interesting opinion that just came down the other day about gay marriage."
And the way she said it, I knew she didn't have a personal stake in that decision at all.
Now, ok, most straight folks are heterosexist - they assume whomever they are speaking to is straight like them. It happens all the time. I used to present much more butch - my gender expression has changed over time, and when I was in college, I had the short hair, the boy clothes, I was way more dykey (I went to Smith, SO). I didn't usually get mistaken for straight, and that was great. Because I didn't end up in these awkward positions with strangers who act like gay people are Others, not Us, some foreign entity that could not possibly be sitting next to them on the bus going to take a stupid standardized law exam. Yeah, looking dykey made me a target sometimes, but that was ok, because it was more straightforward, and I knew how to handle it. I yelled. I fought. Whatever. I am pretty feisty: I don't let shit go. But at least then I felt more in control of the situation.
So here I am, looking pretty fucking straight, passing, as it were, and that can put me in an awkward position if I don't want to out myself, or if the issue is so emotional because it actually matters to me and I don't want to even engage with someone about it because they clearly can't really get where I'm coming from. But also, and especially after the morning I just had, I was basically presented with two options, on this bus: I could casually out myself, and hope that would stave off any wayward homophobic remarks that I just could not handle at the moment, or I could continue to speak like I don't have a horse in this race, and yeah, I am totally discussing my civil rights as an academic thought experiment on a bus with some random straight lady. And I could just hope the person is maybe an ally. So I don't spend the rest of my morning shouting at her IN MY HEAD.
Most days, when I am passing, when I am "properly" performing my gender so no one can recognize me as an outsider, I do a lot of damage control. I speak about my ex-girlfriends early when I meet someone I know I will see regularly, hoping to stave off any hate that could come my way. When I got new roommates this summer, I was sure to mention I had former girlfriends. When one of my roommates told me her boyfriend was "kinda a hick" (her words) and was pretty conservative, I made sure that the next time I engaged him in conversation I mentioned I was queer. I use it as a shield now, a defense. It's like the very lowest end of a spectrum of continuous abuse; sometimes, those who are abused will start provoking the abuse after a while, do things that will may very well cause them pain, so they feel like they have some control. I am not always abused per se, not like we normally think of it, and this is certainly NOT comparable in any close degree whatsoever to being physically or mentally abused and unsafe, but an awful lot of terrible shit is said about me in the news, on the computer screen, on the TV, and now when I meet people, I want to control it. Either by making sure the non-confrontational stay quiet, or getting it out there, here, now, letting any bigotry come when I am the one who has called it forth. It is always the wayward comments, the ones you aren't ready for, the ones that come out of the blue, that hit the hardest.
Being queer is also the first thing I will sacrifice about myself. I know the surest way to reverse homophobia has been for people to come out, for homophobes to know and love people who are also queer. So, I will not tolerate sexists. I will refuse to engage with racists. But homophobes . . . I think to myself well, maybe, I should tolerate their bigotry. Maybe they will change their minds. Maybe they will come to understand. Maybe they will love me, and that will overwhelm the hate.
But that friend who became abusive? He was a bigot. I gave him too much rope, and he tried to hang me with it. I think I need to stop excusing homophobia. I need to stop letting it roll off my back, when someone I love doesn't support the right for gay people to get married. And not because I love the institution of marriage, we have kind of established that, but because it is a sign they do not respect me, and will not respect me, and I am in danger. I am not safe with them.
But I am not really safe with anyone who doesn't believe I am a full and equal human being, and some days, you don't have the fight in you to defend yourself. Some days, you can't drop your queerness as a defense early, before something gets said, and then something gets said, and you are in this strange position, because all you really want to do is take your stupid fucking law ethics bullshit exam and go back home and sleep because you are exhuasted.
But I realized I was also too exhuasted to be cagey, or detached. And so I looked that woman right in the eye and said, "I didn't think it was interesting. I thought it was glorious. I got up and did a happy dance around my room when the decision came down."
It turned out she was an ally. I was lucky. And I am also not so "lucky," because I mean, I live in a liberal city on the east coast and I can usually calculate I will not get outright hostility in response. My calculations have been different in other places - in some places in this country, or when I am abroad, I will absolutely never take a chance, never open my mouth,. never test the waters to see if it is okay for me to wade in. There are some queer folks, in some places, who can never take that gamble. Whether it is in Uganda or Iran, because they will be killed for it (yes, that link is from this morning, and even a straight man will be sacrificed and executed at the altar of sheer hatred for queer people), or in the U.S. Armed Forces, where they will be discharged for it. I took a gamble the other day, and I won.
I am not a betting person. I don't like games of chance, when especially when for some queer folks, our lives or our jobs or out families are on the line. I "won" the other day, but there is no winning. The only way to win this is to never have to play. I hope someday, not one of us will have to.
I've been taking baby steps towards being more frank about it. I lost a friendly acquaintance the other day because I stopped her having a conversation about how "icky" transgendered people were... Especially if they had kids.
ReplyDeleteIt's not easy to call people on bigotry, and queers get a lot of it casually even in feminist spaces, but it's important. I'm glad that woman turned out to be an ally and I hope things will gradually improve for everyone. I'll be thinking of that poor boy.
I was drawn to your description of this post on Feministe because I only came out as queer last year (and I'm still only selectively out). One of my queer friends at school told me one time that I pass as straight. Her comment caught me off guard for two reasons. 1) I was playing a lot with gender at the time. I had cut off my hair and was wearing strictly "masculine" clothing and 2) I was so comfortable with my own queer identity on a college campus that was overwhelmingly accepting.
ReplyDeleteAfter she mentioned how well I "passed" as straight, even to someone I was out to, I started making a point of making my queerness known. It largely comes about when I'm back home in my small town that is full of bigotry of all disgusting kinds. It is a kind of defense, a way to put the power of how and when to hear bigoted remarks in your own hands, even when it seems like you have no power at all.
And all this just makes me think of how lucky I am, in a strange way, to be able to pass. I have not often dealt with outright hatred based on my queerness, and I know that is not a luxury that can be afforded by every queer person in the world.
Well said.
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth, I as a straight white cis-male also often make these calculations, about a lot of things. Some of them are personal: I'm a deep nerd, from the flyover belt, middle-aged, fat and balding, a business owner, and the holder of a variety of controversial opinions. But others are, although strongly felt because they're about people I care deeply about, not truly personal. Those are helpful to me in learning to manage the personal ones, because it's a little easier for me to see both sides.
My goal now when I have one of these moments is to look for an opportunity to bridge a gap. If I can say something like, "Y'know, I used to think that, but then I realized that..." then I can briefly be on their side as a human, without being on the side of their ignorant jerkiness.
What I'm trying to do is make them realize that they are being an asshole while being entirely sympathetic about the pain of that realization. Because I've been there, been the asshole. If that works, often I can avoid them digging in and defending their jerky behaviors. There's no need, because I'm not attacking them or fighting them; I'm just staying present with them. I'm rooting for them.
And when I don't feel up for that, I try just to let it slide. There are plenty of topics where I have spent years or decades being a complete idiot. I'm sure I'm being an idiot today on something that will make me cringe down the road. The changes I feel most deeply aren't the ones where people have fought me the most. They're the ones where I have received the most forbearance. I figure I've got a big debt to pay back there.
300baud, a couple of things:
ReplyDelete1. There are no two sides of the gay marriage debate. Either you support equal civil rights, or you are a bigot. These are not equal and merely opposite.
2. It's really different when you know there could be violence coming your way, or you could become personally unsafe, in lots of ways, in outing yourself or engaging in a conversation. My PERSON is the offense. So sometimes it's not about picking my battles - it's do I want to expose myself to gunfire, and how much can I take.
3. I haven't been that asshole. I've been the queer chick. No sympathy from me. Have I been the asshole on OTHER issues? Sure. But I don't want anyone to have sympathy for me on those, either. My ignorance is my problem, and it is not acceptable.
4. Sometimes, in dealing with other people's ignorance, you are just going to snap, because you are tired of being the educator, or you have a fucking headache, or this is the THIRD PERSON TODAY who decided to play "devil's advocate" (note: I HATE YOU PEOPLE WHO DO THIS). People in oppressed groups should not have the burden of educating other people about their oppression. So while I am SUPER glad that you have tried to do it sometimes, you and I do not always have to make these same calculations all the time. Especially about queer issues.
5. All this said, I am happy to have an ally.
Ooooh, were you taking the MPRE at BC? Liberal city... east coast.... shuttle to get to the law school... it just... fits.
ReplyDeleteAlso, on passing... well, I'm bi, but I've never dated a woman and I'm marrying a man. As such... I "pass" as straight pretty damn well. And... I don't really do anything to correct people. I know I should, but it's just so much easier to let them assume, even in Boston. People know I'm hugely invested in gay-rights issues, but they assume it's just because it is a Good Thing... which, mostly, it is. Gay rights are unlikely to affect me personally, since I'm marrying a man, so I sometimes feel as if my bi-ness is negated, and as if I shouldn't claim my identity, because I haven't had to deal with the struggles of other queer individuals-- I have total straight privilege, even if I have made out with a couple of chicks in the past. :-/
Hey guys, this is from 300baud, to whom blogger is being obnoxious:
ReplyDeleteThanks for the speedy reply, Gayle!
Regarding 1, I agree and disagree. You can intellectually support civil rights for all and also have bigoted feelings and thoughts. It's the same way one can strongly believe in racial equality while accepting that one sometimes has racist thoughts or feelings. I think a lot of people with opinions I'd consider bigoted and retrograde aren't ardent and considered bigots; they just haven't thought things through. So while I despise their opinions, I try not to despise them, or to act in ways that give them that impression merely for having opinions. (Current actions are a different thing: active jerkiness should be fought with vigor.)
As to point 2, yes, I agree it's different when one is the potential target. I was just saying that I try to let my approach to situations where I'm not the target guide my approach to all of them, because it's easier for me to see the big picture.
For 3, like it or not, you will get my sympathy for those situations where you feel awful because you realize you were an asshole. That's partly just the golden rule. But it's also tactical. Ignorance is certainly a terrible source of evil, but it is also inevitable and our universal human starting point, so I think declaring it unacceptable is unhelpful. People should be applauded for accepting and overcoming their ignorance, because then they'll spend less time being ignorant, and less effort defending it.
For 4, it's true, we're all human. I'm just saying what I currently try to do, not what I achieve consistently. I don't fault anybody for snapping at the seven thousandth time somebody has carelessly and ignorantly slandered them, their loved ones, their very being. I also agree that people, ideally, shouldn't have to educate their oppressors. I certainly try to do my share of that; it's just so much easier to advocate for somebody else.
But practically, people in situation X are almost always going to know more about that than people who aren't. Their stories are more powerful, more compelling, more authentic when they come from their own lips. For example, check out this defense of gay parenting in a discussion of gay marriage. It is beautiful and passionate and inspiring. It is, both in the colloquial sense and the formal one, totally righteous. And something that powerful could never in a million years have been written by somebody who hadn't lived it. I know; I've tried.
So although I agree in theory that nobody should have to explain themselves to ignorant fools, I think it's more effective to accept that our collective ignorance is our collective problem. And by "our", I mean all of humanity. We are all literally family, all literally in this together.
So, in response to 300baud, who actually left the last comment:
ReplyDeleteI actually think you and I may be quibbling at the margins on the other points and I have no interest in doing this with you, but I actually take umbrage to the last paragraph. Yeah, we are all in this together, and we need to make bridges and come together where we can; but that doesn't mean that we aren't all the monsters on each others' backs, too. I mean, you are a straight dude. You're the monster I have to get off my back. We may be in this together, but you're still on my back. It's not all the same for both of us. Just as we are on the backs of people of color - we're not really all in this together. We don't all have the same weight to carry, the same things at stake. We may be on the same team, but only one of us can get hurt playing.
See June Jordan's Report from the Bahamas: http://asp.uibk.ac.at/asp/2010/LVUL/Jordan.Report%20from%20the%20Bahamas.pdf Possibly my favorite essay ever written.
I had a look at the article 300baud linked and while the writer was trying to say something against bigotry... The comments are a mire. I'm not sure anyone here should read it, I found it triggered a lot of anger in me.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how people here view ignorance as related to age. I would say I was the bigoted homophobe up till about 19 to 20...because up until college I lived in a very restricted environment. I don't think any straight child could come out of that environment without being a bigot for at least some of the time after, not when there was quite literally NO information given about homosexuality except as perverts. Once I got to school I actually met some gay people and had a chance to find uncensored information for myself.
ReplyDeleteSo basically, now I'm a lot more sympathetic with a young person expressing bigoted views than I am with an older person, if only in hopes that they are merely uneducated.
@Amanda, I was thinking about your comment.
ReplyDeleteThere's this idea of "authentic" identities. Like, you can't claim to be bi or queer unless you REALLY are. And what does that mean? How many women would you have to fuck to count as bi? One? Three? It's arbitrary and stupid. You get to choose your own identity - there are no tests to pass to get your official Queer Club card. Like, I remember feeling uncomfortable calling myself queer after sleeping with one girl in high school, but then like 20 girls by the end of college, if I was dating a boy. And that? Is stupid. I dig girls. I am queer. The end.
But anyway, feel free to be whatever it is you feel free to be. I'm just letting you know, there are no official standards for queerness.
Oh my goodness, yes. As a bi female who passes as straight, I consciously choose to be visible for several reasons; deflecting and challenging assumptions of straightness, putting a face on queerness, refusing to give in to my internalized homophobia. I never really thought about it as trying to establish control, but that definitely factors in.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, it's not everywhere. Two years in Peace Corps, I came out to one person in my village, and it was the night before I left. Most of my mom's side of the family doesn't know because of her fear, my fear, and my reluctance to deal with the shitstorm that might result. I am fortunate enough to live in a liberal college town in a red state, where I can reasonably count on passersby and cops and officials to have my back. Some of my coworkers may be homophobic, but I know my boss has my back. I perceive those factors as both a luxury and a responsibility, to be visible for those who can't or won't be.
Anyway. Thanks for a story that illustrates the risks and choices queer people face every day.