Who would choose a hard life?

I am the sixth person in my immediate family that identifies as gay or lesbian. The seventh is my sister Heather who is 6 years younger than me. This was the norm in my family and it shaped my acceptance of living an off-mainstream lifestyle, very early in my life, long before I realized I too am gay. My aunt was a Marine in the 60s in one, if not the only female platoon. My great uncle CR made drapes for Diana Ross. My uncle Jake played college basketball at OU in the early 50s and went on to run a successful limousine company alongside his partner of eventually 40 years. My cousin Sue is an oil executive. The reason I am telling you all of these things is to highlight that despite what societal depravations exist for the LGBTQIA+community, I grew up without the belief there was anything to stand in the way of being unapologetically oneself and accomplishing any goals in front of them. I do not come from financial privilege but the privilege I consider greater than wealth is freedom. I feel free to think how I think because I was raised to do so. I was surrounded by men and women who were authentic and brave, I learned from them. I wish all of society possessed such freedom of expression. I did not choose the egg and sperm that made me who I am, I am gay but not becauseI chose to be so – why would I choose a hard life?

The end is just the beginning...

We are halfway through 2021 and I feel as if it were 1976 and I were just born. This WGSS-2100 class has been mind bending and eye opening to me and I am offering myself acceptance for how out of touch I never realized I was. I had an elaborate Vlog planned for my final project and sadly, I have a version of strep throat that will just not allow that. So I am choosing my next best thing…a blog. The topics we covered in this class were deep and forward thinking. They were real and raw and intimidating at times. I felt vulnerable having to look within at things I had previously not realized. I thought these issues didn’t affect me but I was wrong. They indirectly impact my life via friends and family and that is enough for it to have mattered to me more. Now is the time for change and for me - this is accomplished by creating visual art. When I need to be reminded of something on an ongoing basis, the best way is to put it on the wall. I put up reminders in places I travel frequently and for this, I will print my art and place it on the wall above my desk.

This artwork contains not only the terminology used in this class but also some hidden visual reminders that I know are there, even if not visible to everyone. I integrated my writings from this class and a reminder that by definition, there IS hope. Even though they are just words, the topics in this class deserve validation and presence. They deserve to be not only heard but also seen, as do we all..no matter or race, religion, sex, creed, gender, sexual orientation, etc. We never start to grow and change until we accept that it is our right to do so. I am incredibly thankful for what this class brought to my life - today is the beginning of my mindsets end.

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“…reframes family as people and animals we choose to bring close us, build intimacies with, and become familiars,”

— Nair

Reading Rethinking the Family was the most powerful reality from this semester and it brought up a lot of emotions for me. It saddened me at moments, thinking about how patriarchy began its damage long before anyone realized what was happening. It made me feel joy when it talked about the shift in family dynamics over the past 6-7 decades and the fact that it highlighted LGBTQPAI+ issues warmed my heart. Not only do I come from a very small nuclear family; I am also one of 6 lesbian/gay persons in my immediate family – to patriarchy, I say - rethink the likelihood of that! The strongest thing I felt from this reading was reading “…Nair reframes family as people and animals we choose to bring close us, build intimacies with, and become “familiars,”. (Saraswati, 189) Familiars…what a beautiful word that for me holds inevitable truth.

The reading allowed me to really take a hard look at the friends and energy I allow into my space and make the wisest possible choices when chosen family is involved. I have had numerous conversations with friends and the little family I do have, about this reading. The truth is I have family that I do not choose, nor would I choose. It’s hard to swallow but it is okay because the power is mine.

Saraswati, L. Ayu, et al. Introduction to Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Oxford University Press Academic US, 2020.

Understanding is all we need...

This essay made me feel a conglomerate of emotions, some falling on the less than pleasant scale. Bell Hooks is clear that she wants society to revert to the version of the feminist movement where it is defined as “…feminism is a movement to end sexist oppression.”, but I would dare to ask her, why? I would dare to ask her if she realizes her very desire to change the way people define something, to me, may be perceived as oppressive, intragenderally at least. When I think about progressive feminism in modern culture, it is more about women having the power to be whatever they want to be, to think independently, and to be less afraid to rise up against their male counterparts…to not be forced into a universally defined way of thinking that is categorically, what someone else wants or thinks it should be. I am realizing more as I type, I cannot identify with Hooks thinking. I found it offensive when she used the words “choose lesbianism” as a way to seek equality and inferred that by choosing lesbianism, this meant little or no contact with men. I am realizing more as I type, I do not fit into any of these thinking patterns and I break stereotypes.

My experience as a powerful woman is very different from the oppression I read about. In my early twenties, I climbed the corporate ladder in a female dominated, racially diverse, corporate environment and my equality struggle, though with a female counterpart, was also real…it was then I came to realize so many people create their own struggles, simply with their thinking. I am not anti-feminist; I am pro-confidence. I hope to see women find belief in themselves and leave excuses at the door…what if women simply rose above the perceived notions of what society thinks they ‘should be’ and just be ‘exactly who they are’ without fighting a war with each other.  The Beattles once said, “love is all you need”, I say “understanding is all we need”. 

I am the sum of all my parts….my body parts.

When I was in fourth grade, while at church one day with my best friend Mindy, my life changed forever. In approximately three seconds, she said something to me that I have never forgotten and today, I am 45. We were changing to go from service to field day and when I took my shirt off, she said “why isn’t your stomach flat like mine”. I didn’t have an answer. For the rest of my childhood, I was terrified to change in front of anyone. I failed PE in high school because I wouldn’t dress out around my classmates…Intimacy was more comfortable as I got older and began experimenting with my sexuality. I was thin, and tall for my age…why did she ask me this? I know her intention was innocent because it was a simple visible difference but at that time, I didn’t realize how different all of our bodies are. My mother and grandmother both carried their weight the same way – skinny with a lower pouch belly…They are both beautiful women and I know that I too am just as beautiful. I love my body now.

Fast forward to about 6 years ago and I was recently divorced and dating someone new for the first time in over 10 years….nakedness came easy and in the daylight…intimacy wasn’t scary though she was 6’ tall, fit, and thin…I was still my average self with a lower pouch belly. I was dealing with divorce and losing a lot in my life and we were newly in love – eating out a lot and drinking a lot of wine and I started gaining weight as time was flying by – 25 lbs in 1.5 years. We were laying together one night and she asked me “how do you feel”? She directly addressed that I had gained weight and though I played sports and was very active, she was concerned about my health. I am sure you know where I am going with this….It took all of a minute for all of the memories of fourth grade to surface and the tears began to flow. The truth this time was that she was right. I didn’t feel great. I needed to take care of myself and eat healthier. I wasn't loving my body.

These were these isolated incidents decades apart but what I have deduced over the years is that my health is of utmost important and appearance should not dictate peoples’ perception of you; though it’s apparent society doesn’t function that way. It infuriates me that Corporate America markets to people who are overweight just as much as they market thinness being beauty. Diets, exercise equipment and the fastest gimmick to be skinny…these are all a joke. Being healthy is a lifestyle that is long term and to me, is not related to beauty. I am lucky to have privilege that allowed me to get healthy on the Weight Watchers lifestyle because I can afford to do so. I have access to healthy food and activities and I have free will and integrity…and drive. I lost 40lbs and I have kept it off since 2017. I feel very fortunate to have grown up in a family where there was never any ridicule, for any reason. I love my body now, more than I did then – not because of my weight but because I truly care about my health and not what anyone thinks about me. 

We are all built with differences and unique characteristics - what some would call flaws and I loathe that word related to the body. WHO is to say it is a flaw? Flawed is the thinking that comes along with perception of how things should or shouldn’t be, what society creates and taught behavior promotes. Dove and Target brands both come to mind when I think about their work to improve the acceptance of anything other than anorexic bodies and that reminds me of Katz’s movie, Tough Guise 2, where he is showing how action heroes have changed decade over decade to be more muscular – why are we so obsessed with image? Let’s become obsessed with loving ourselves eating right and being active, physically and mentally. I will continue on this journey, loving the hell out of my body along the way.

Enc: 4th grad me, and my before and after of my 2015-2017 get healthy mission.

Most all of my family is chosen…

I remember the first time I found the idea of communal living incredibly intriguing – I was in my mid 30s, living in Philadelphia and I was lucky enough to have a circle of friends I chose to call my family. We were inseparable. We would often sit around and talk about buying a few acres, building some tiny homes, and a mega-sized common space. We’d have a massive kitchen with everything you’d need to make gourmet meals…a game room…a theatre – most importantly – a massive garden and a few animals. I was their chosen family and they were mine. We were rethinking family in the late 2010s.

This section of reading: Rethinking the Family brought up a lot of emotions for me. It saddened me at moments, thinking about how patriarchy began it’s damage long before anyone realized what was happening. It made me feel joy when it talked about the shift in family dynamics over the past 6-7 decades and the fact that it highlighted LGBTQPAI+ issues warmed my heart. Not only do I come from a very small nuclear family; I am also one of 6 lesbian/gay persons in my immediate family – to patriarchy, I say - rethink the likelihood of that! The strongest thing I felt from this reading was reading “…Nair reframes family as people and animals we choose to bring close us, build intimacies with, and become “familiars,”. (Saraswati, 189) Familiars…what a beautiful word that for me holds inevitable truth.

Saraswati, L. Ayu, et al. Introduction to Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Oxford University Press Academic US, 2020.

An onion with layers of reality to conquer…

As much as it pains my hear to acknowledge the truth of the matter, the Combahee River Collective faced not only having their needs met as Black women, but also as Black lesbians. What a tragedy within the feminist movement taking place right before their very eyes. The aforementioned being their thesis in A Black Feminist Statement, The Combahee River Collective faced a multitude of challenges ranging from economic to political and personal to intracollectively. Something very specific struck me while I was reading this essay and it is rooted in my experience with activism in the early 2000s…hindsight telling me that I should not have been surprised when POC (People of Color), a sub section of gay rights activists, refused to participate in a marriage rights protest I was organizing in Philadelphia, they too had felt excluded just as the Black lesbians of the 70s did.

As a White lesbian, new to activism, I did not understand why POC didn’t want to participate – why they couldn’t put their hurts aside and join us, just as the Black lesbians of the Combahee River Collective experienced when approached by another feminist group in the late 70s. “We were contacted at that time by socialist feminists, with whom we had worked on abortion rights activities, who wanted to encourage us to attend the National Socialist Feminist Conference in Yellow Springs. One of our members did attend and despite the narrowness of the ideology that was promoted at that particular conference, we became more aware of the need for us to understand our own economic situation and to make our own economic analysis.” (Combahee River Collective, 1977) This makes me wonder how many other groups experience this sort of excluded inclusion.

This essay really made me think long and hard about being actively oblivious to intrasectional matters of feminism. It forced me to question myself and my intention in my day to day life when faced with marginalized groups within marginalized groups. One of the questions I asked myself how the under education Black women in my community, potentially living below the poverty line feel about the middle class Black women here…and about the wealthy Black women…overall, this essay made me feel proud of the Combahee River Collective because despite the layers of oppression they faced, they lacked fear and they possessed will. If only will alone could solve a giant societal shortcoming. I would love to know where these women are now and plan to research more on the subject.

Yes, you can choose and I can too, it's a privilege...

I read and re-read, and re-read again, the first one of McIntosh’s 26 privileges: “I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.” The more I thought about how to actually interpret such a passage, the more I accepted my disagreement with it being an unacknowledged white privilege. The truth is, this is a non-specific facet of human choice, not one of defined racial separation. I am of the mindset that like-minded people end up in like-minded places, regardless of race, so of course it is possible to arrange to be in the company of people just like you, a monoculture, if you will. I chose the first item on McIntosh’s list because it was the one I found to be the least in line with my perception and ownership of the white privilege that I hold. I was more surprised that It was so hard for me to comprehend than I was of its existence. 

I live in a community that has, by a slight margin demographically, more black residents than white and I live on the ‘South Side’ of town…this makes me a residential minority and if I want to find myself in the company of folks of the same race, I have to make a choice to leave my side of Main Street or await league night at the billiards hall which is a simple 86 step walk from my front door. Through those doors one will easily find a slightly boring, homogenous culture of white men and women, not gathered because of their race, but because of their chosen hobby.

And, on the golf course, it’s similar…a predominantly white sport - so again, I am not arranging to be amongst people of my same race – it is just coincidence. I ponder.  Is the racial make-up of a sport truly pre-determined by accessibility and money? Do Black teenagers choose basketball because of its predominance to their race?

All of this leads me to more questions:  

Don’t we all have the ability to choose the people we gather with?

What percentage of people choose to spend time/gather with people of different races?

And…most important:

What am I missing in McIntosh’s number one item on the privilege list?

Sure, I buy into the idea that racism is a systemic, societal flaw in our culture; however, I don’t buy into not having a choice to do something about it at an individual level. I know people tend to fear what they do not know or understand, and I get that…it is what keeps people racially divided, at least physically, in my opinion. I wonder is what would happen if we were all sight blind and we couldn’t see color, would we be in the presence of people who don’t share our race?  Would we feel less afraid? Would we see things differently? I know, for me, I do not want to be in a place where it’s one boring monoculture after another but I do want to know why race even came into play in that number one question. In my search to better understand, I found a great article on DiscoverMagazine.com:

            “Race is a highly flexible way in which societies lump people into groups based on appearance that is assumed to be indicative of deeper biological or cultural connections. As a cultural category, the definitions and descriptions of races vary. “Color” lines based on skin tone can shift, which makes sense, but the categories are problematic for making any sort of scientific pronouncements.” (Goodman, Discover Magazine)

The above article confirms to me, gender as a societal construct and something we can choose to address differently, just as we can choose to be in the presence of people of the same race or not. I have a lot to learn and this just scratched the surface of my curiosity…and predetermined racial naivety.

Angry, party of 1…

I truly do not recall the last time I felt so appalled, disgusted, and attacked but, overwhelmingly thankful, simultaneously. Watching Katz’s film Tough Guise 2 was incredibly painful. I chose to write about this movie because forced me to acknowledge a form of privilege I have experienced in my life – one that I have often taken for granted. I was raised by my grandparents in a stereotypically affluent town in South Florida, in a home without gender roles. I was taught autonomy and freedom and I learned respect and admiration for women – from my grandfather. The other men in my immediate family, my maternal uncles were also not outwardly patriarchal in their actions or in the way I saw them navigate their lives. I never knew how lucky I was. My grandmother worked long after my grandfather retired from IBM and he made sure when she came home dinner was ready. He did the laundry and took care of house chores in equal proportion, from what I remember. Well – my grandma did do all the ironing and Pop cleaned the pool pump.

My point here comes with a small dose of shame – I never fully realized what was happening around me, and continues to happen in society, because I was not directly affected by male masculinity in perverse and catastrophic ways. As Katz showed time and time again, it is EVERYWHERE. Also, throughout my life, I have avoided violent movies with too much blood and gore  Iand didn’t get into hemegonic and anger based video games…now I know why – it’s gross and makes me uncomfortable, just as Katz’s movie did. There were alarming and eye opening facts I learned of which I do have frequent conversations about in my adult life – 61 of 62 mass shooters are men…mental illness is not the only problem when it comes to why shooters act…guns are not the problem.

We have come a long way as a society but the truth of the matter is we have a long way to go. Though the movie was really tough for me to watch, I am glad I did and I feel it should be a requirement for young boys and men around the country. If only there were a way to make education the true priority it should be in our society.

All about me...

Good morning from the tiny map dot of Blakely, GA, a rural farm town in the SW corner of the state. I am 44, white, and identify as a lesbian. Also, clearly a non-traditional student looking to learn new things out of curiosity, not necessity. I am back in school after a 25 year 'busy living life' hiatus and am working on my BIS Online at GaSou. I am fully aware using the phrases 'white lesbian' and 'rural farm town' in the same breath can prompt thoughts of oxymoronic nature but I actually love the fact I can include those as part of my identity. I have positively affected many people's understanding of the term LGBTQ(IA) in this town...I have to give partial credit to presenting a feminine appearance to the prior statement, and partial credit to my caring, warm, and very extroverted personality. Though I have such a positive experience being a lesbian in the rural south, there are also challenges when it comes to getting men to understand that I am not a lesbian because I haven't "met the right man" yet...and also to get hetero men to understand that lesbians are not man-haters by nature, ha. I actually am quite fond of people of all gender identifications. What I am most looking forward to in this class is learning more about pronoun use related to gender identification. I have lived all over the US within the past 25 years and feel privileged to have been a part of many diverse communities - learning as much as possible along the way. I was heavily involved in the gay marriage rights movement (’08-’10) while living in Philadelphia and learned a lot about activism during that time. We have come a long way but still have so far to go.