CIVILesbianIZATION

CARING FOR THE NEXT GENERATION

2008-11-25T13:57:00.000-05:00

As Barack Obama prepares to take up residency in the White House and become the 44th President of the United States, I’m thinking about generational transitions. President-Elect Obama is one example of a generational transition as the first President born in the 1960s. The election of Bill Clinton was another moment of generational transition, then of people who grew up during the 1960s. It makes me wonder, what is the significance of generations and to what do we owe younger generations?

My own thinking about generational transitions comes from my experiences as young lesbian (I came out in 1988) and what I felt at the time was a lack of leaders ahead of me who were role models and mentors. Part of that perceived lack was not only a limited number of people, but also a lack of visibility of the people who were from the generations preceding me. I’ve now learned about Sally Gearheart, Judy Grahn, Virginia Apuzzo, and a host of others who were out and speaking out on behalf of lesbians and gay men and our demands for equality. At the time, however, when I was eighteen, nineteen, and twenty, many lesbians from other generations were telling me to not be too open and to think about my professional future and my ability to find work and build a life without being labeled a lesbian too publicly. I never took that advice. Things worked out anyway.

I hope that things are different for young people coming out now. Certainly there are many more signs of open and vibrant lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities and leaders than there were twenty years ago. At the same time, I’m aware of how many young queers today are homeless and kicked out by their families and communities.

Sassafras Lowrey, a fantastic young activist, has just edited an anthology called Kicked Out about young people who have been kicked out of their homes as a result of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. These are heartbreaking stories that Sassafras has gathered, but they are also stories of hope and resilience. Unfortunately, the stories of young queers being kicked out are not new.

In my hometown of Detroit, MI, too many young queers are living on the streets or in marginal circumstances as a result of being queer. It’s not a new phenomenon; it’s been happening since I worked there in the 1990s. Today, however, the challenges of young queer people are being met on a daily basis by the Ruth Ellis Center.

Ruth Ellis was a long-time activist in Detroit and in many ways embodies the spirit of generational visibility and knowledge and affection transfer between and among generations. Ellis lived to be 101 and along the way provided support and assistance, both material and personal, to hundreds in the GLBT communities in Detroit. Today, the Ruth Ellis Center, headed by the incredible Grace McClelland, provides housing, street outreach, and a drop-in center for queer young people in Detroit. These are vital services that are the result of the dreams and hard work of many people in the Detroit area. McClelland and her team of staff and volunteers are making a real difference and ensuring that young queers are cared for in meaningful and life-giving ways. To me, they are models for how our queer community should be.

We all have an obligation to care for the next generation, not just as parents or role models, but also as activists and advocates. Young people need the support and good-heartedness of our community for them to find lives that are good and meaningful and fulfilling to them. As we watch a new generation take up residence in the White House and as we remember through the new film the generation of Harvey Milk, let’s commit ourselves personally and communally to helping GLBT young people in every way that we can. If our lives our to matter in the annals of history, we must ensure that their lives matter today and in the future.

Word count: 672

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and poet who lives in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This is column #26 dated 21 December 2008 in the series, CIVILesbianIZATION.

LOVE DEEPENS

2008-11-23T14:05:00.000-05:00

I can only write this because we are now far enough away from the hard times, and even then I write this with trepidation. I worry that by even suggesting my hypothesis, love deepens, I may be engaged in a practice that is too hubristic for my own good. I worry that in three weeks, three months, or three years, I might look back and regret these words. Still I will write them. Love deepens.

By that I mean, over the course of time together two people in love find that in addition to being challenged and tested, often painfully, love deepens. The reward for staying around during the fights, during the indecision, during moments of meanness and unkind words, is that the emotional, erotic, and spiritual connection that is shared becomes deeper and more meaningful. There is a reward, even a pay off, to staying with one person for more than a few months or a few years. There is a different type of love that emerges after a substantial time together.

I’ll be honest. This surprised me. Yes, I’ve heard people describe such a thing, but as a younger person, I thought that was all verbal blather designed to promote mythic heterosexual monogamy. It may be and now I may just be engaged in the myth-making myself. If so, I hope to be slapped soon into a more radical perspective. First, however, let me suggest that this notion that love deepens is not part of hegemonic heterosexism, but rather a part of our human condition that we can celebrate from a queer perspective.

I’ve been reading the letters of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. They had a friendship that extended over thirty years, and, despite some early uncomfortable suggestions that they should marry (an absurd notion—Bishop was, of course, a lesbian), they remained friends, close friends, in spite of the miles that separated them for much of their life. Reading the letters, I’m struck by the same insight that I see in my intimate relation (and I might add other relationships): love deepens. Bishop’s love for Lowell and his for her deepens as the time passes, as the pages of letters become filled with words and images and poems.

Time does something to us in relationships. It softens some edges and hardens others. The shared experiences accrue to greater meaning. Things that were once annoying become predictable in and in that predictability reassuring and even delightful.

I don’t want to argue for us queers to all gallop off into long-term, committed relationships. I chafe at the presentation that we’re making in order to sway our heterosexual counterparts in supporting our right to marriage. To me, being a lesbian is still at its core about challenging patriarchy and sexism and homophobia and demanding that we have more models, not fewer, for how we might live our lives with greater joy and opportunity and passion and service.

Yet, I’m aware at the power of relationships between people as they grow older. Those relationships need not be intimate partnerships; they may also be friendships as with Bishop and Lowell, they may be familial relations or companions or cohorts or confidantes. We don’t have enough language to describe the matrix of relationships that we can imagine for ourselves. We do know that time invested in people, in building relationships with people, delivers rewards.

My greatest hope is that this morphing of love with time continues. I want love to deepen as time marches on. When I look back on year three, when I never imagined year twelve, I couldn’t imagine the experience I have now. I want it to continue. Perhaps the transition from fifteen years to twenty, from twenty-five to thirty, from even thirty-five to forty if I dare to imagine that long, will be that love to deepen further. This seems to me one of the joys of growing older and sticking around through the hard times. I also want love to broaden. I want more space for it in my life and in my world. I want my queer love to be broad and deep and celebrated by me, and everyone.

Word count: 707

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and poet who lives in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This is column #24 dated November 23, 2008 in the series, CIVILesbianIZATION

TOUCH YOUR TITS AND TEST THEM, TOO

2008-05-06T15:36:00.000-04:00

Many years ago I worked at a gay and lesbian community center where part of our mission was health education. Then I advocated breast self-examinations and annual mammograms. Some data indicates that lesbians, particularly lesbians who have never given birth, might be at higher risk for breast cancer. In addition, this was in Detroit, and there are some environmental indications that breast cancer is more prevalent there.

I still advocate breast self-examinations. Personally, I love to touch my tits and do so regularly, but, at least one a month, I do so with the intentionality of determining if there is anything new, bumpy, or bulbous in my breasts. I’m not quite old enough to have annual mammograms, but I believe those screenings too and will be jumping to get my annual mammo when the time comes.

In addition to my early experience with health education, I’m a big believer in breast cancer screening and early detection because a dear friend of mine is a young survivor of breast cancer. She was diagnosed, in part, because of her insistence that something was wrong. She knew that her breasts needed attention even though initially doctors and screeners told her there was nothing wrong. She felt a pain in her tit and said, test again. Her cancer was caught early. She went through treatment and now is looking forward to seeing her eight-year-old daughter graduate from college.

Breast cancer screening and early detection is important. We all know that. Last fall, though, I learned about the complexities of screening and early detection. My beloved had her very first mammogram last September. I was excited for her. This was easy for me, I didn’t have to put my nips on a piece of glass and watch them be pressed flat. She did and she had some trepidations. So much so, that her first “baseline” mammogram was coming a few years past forty. Delayed because she was too busy and frankly, frightened.

Finally, though I insisted and so she tested. She went to the local screening facility and had her breasts smashed between two plates and pictures taken. I was thrilled for her to pass this life milestone. Then the telephone call came. There was something suspect on the film.

This resulted in a flurry of phone calls and consultations. What did it mean? Was this common? Something to be expected? What should we do? What were our options?

As a result of this being her first mammogram and consequently the baseline, it was impossible to determine anything about the suspect spot on the film. We were counseled, wait or consult a surgeon. We waited. Nervously. Anxiously.

She said she felt pain in her breast. The one with the spot on the film. We couldn’t wait a full six months for the next shots. She returned after four months. Back to the same screening facility. By her choice, she went alone. Disrobed. The machine again pressed her breasts flat. This time, no telephone call, just a letter. Everything was fine.

We were relieved. She’s committed to doing this annually. We learned that a part of the regular screening are these sorts of scares. Shadows on the film. Spots of indeterminate origin. Rescreening. Reviewing. Recalibrating.

It’s frightening, but in the end it’s worth it. Early detection of breast cancer dramatically boosts survival rates. So in that spirit, we’ll endure a few months of uncertainty and a few moments of discomfort. We’ll hope it makes a difference. I invite you to do the same. Touch your tits, and test them, too.

Word count: 614

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and poet who lives in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This is column #23 dated May 6, 2008 in the series, CIVILesbianIZATION

WHEN WE WERE STRANGERS

2008-04-22T15:37:00.000-04:00

I cannot imagine leaving my home and everything I own. I cannot imagine leaving my friends and my family with only a small bag and a mind full memories. I cannot imagine traveling for weeks, sometimes months to reach an unknown destination where people speak a different language and have foreign customs and traditions. I cannot imagine it, but each year at Passover I, with a gathering of friends and family, reenact it.

Passover is the holiday that recounts the Jews leaving Egypt where we were slaves and moving to freedom in a new land. We begin the eight days with a seder, a scripted dinner that retells the story, and observe the days by abstaining from chametz, leavened food. In my home, the Passover seder focuses on the story of liberation and relief and release from exile. We sing and laugh and cry and eat food in excess. The seder is filled with as much mystery as it is with memory. It has as many questions as answers. It is, for me, one of the most important and meaningful holidays in the Jewish calendar. This year our seder will gather a dozen or so around the table – Jews and Gentiles, straight and gay, black and white – and we will read from the Haggadah, sing, and eat together.

While there is much in the ritual and the holiday that I cannot imagine it in concrete terms in my own life, I connect profoundly with this narrative. Passover is in many ways the narrative of many immigrant communities in the “melting pot” or “salad bowl” of the United States. We all have family stories of how our ancestors traveled from the land that was our home to the new land that now is our home.

One part of our Passover ritual is to reflect on the things in our world today that bind us and oppress us and to wish for a release from that oppression over the next year. At our seder, with gay and lesbian family and friends, homophobia and heterosexism are two forms of oppression that we often consider. We also talk about sexism at our seder and racism. This year, I’ll also be thinking about xenophobia and how it is playing out in Presidential politics and U.S. immigration policy.

It confounds me that given our history as immigrants to the United States, we collectively in this country seek out policies that limit and even harm new immigrants. This spring leading up to Passover I have been very moved by the stories of immigrants, particularly men, women, and children who have come to the United States from central and south America. Policies that make life more difficult and challenging for current and future immigrants simply have no place in the United States.

In my ideal world, I’d like to see the United States have open borders making it easy for people to move into and out of the United States without negative consequences from the government. People wanting to come to the United States today would be able to do so with the same ease, and actually fewer challenges, as people coming from Britain, Ireland, Sweden, Russia, and other European nations.

When we say, “Next year in Israel,” at the close of the seder, Israel is the imagined place of justice and loving-kindness. Israel is the world that we are working to create where everyone can live freely and honestly and openly. Israel is for us as our seder the location of freedom from oppression – as gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, as people committed to equality between the sexes and among the races, and as immigrants. We are all world travelers looking for a place to live freely and openly and honestly, and, at the seder, we are all committed to creating that place where we are at this moment.

Word count: 651

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and poet who lives in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This is column #22 dated April 22, 2008 in the

HOW MUCH DID YOU SAVE? HOW MUCH DID YOU GIVE?

2008-04-15T15:13:00.000-04:00

A dear friend and I still marvel at our luck in snagging lawyers as life partners. Given our white, working class upbringings, being “married” to a lawyer is equivalent to making it in the world. Truth be told, my parents never dreamed of announcing my marriage in the New York Times, that was beyond our class, but the dream of marrying a lawyer? That was something to which we all could aspire.

This aspiration for my friend and I, and the resulting giddiness in our partnered success, reflects the pronounced interest in America for the answer to this question: How much do you make?

When the answer to the question, How much do you earn?, is revealed, it often shocks people. Regardless of what the number is, stating how much one earns transgresses a taboo. Our own earnings, or lack thereof, is a source of great anxiety in American culture.

How much do you make? isn’t a question that we ask directly, of course. It is a question of the speculative realm. We talk about it with family and friends. Consider when you start dating someone new. Who asked you, Does he have a good job? Does she make a lot of money? We aspire to building a life based on love, but we also have an eye, and a mind, to money.

I don’t think that there is anything wrong with that fundamentally, but I do think the focus on the question, How much do you make?, must be coupled with two other questions of equal, and perhaps greater, importance. Those two questions are: How much did you save? and How much did you give?

I think of these questions at this time of year in particular as the April 15th deadline for personal income taxes looms. In my household, our taxes are filed, and I’m over the rage of not being able to file jointly—it’s an annual source of rage.

Honestly, I tell myself each year that I am not going to let it bother me, but the reality is when I’m sitting in front of the computer with piles of paper everywhere trying to sort out and separate our completely entangled financial lives, I always feel angry about the lack of recognition of our conjoint life.

Then I rationalize that many married couples have to evaluate what has the greatest financial benefit to file jointly or to file married, filing singly. I understand that there are tax benefits to not being married, but I, like many queers at this time I suspect, want the choice—or at least the recognition that my life is not single.

After this rage and resignation process, however, I file my taxes. The total value of my remunerative work is revealed and for at least the next year, I know the answer to the question, How much do I earn?

What I don’t know is: How much did I save? According to the news, saving should be important to Americans. The headlines tell me that savings rates for Americans is at the lowest ever. Perhaps part of that is that because we don’t have a system to highlight how much we save in any given year. There is no line on the tax form for how much we saved.

The other question, How much did you give?, for me goes hand in hand with earning and saving. Giving money to benefit broader society is a profound American tradition. When we give, we invest in something that can only be accomplished collectively, something that is beyond our individual capacity to earn or save.

There’s a line on itemized tax forms for how much is given to some organizations, but our capacity is to give is greater than can be contained on any line from the IRS, as is our capacity to save.

While filing taxes, I’m thinking about earning, but more importantly about saving and giving. I believe they are much greater measures of our worth and our value.

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and poet who lives in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work, including her blog, at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This is column #26 dated April 15, 2008 in the series, CIVILesbianIZATION.

Word Count: 667

THE ROTTEN AND THE BLISS

2008-04-08T15:12:00.000-04:00

It took Jodie Foster long enough, but in December 2007, she finally did it. Jodie Foster came out at the Women in Entertainment Breakfast receiving the Sherry Lansing Award when she thanked her partner Cydney Bernard, who “sticks with me through the rotten and the bliss.”

“The rotten and the bliss” seems to me one of the great configurations for the long-term lesbian relationship. I can list a million of the things that are rotten about relationships. Monday mornings, which inevitably involve going to work after a blissful weekend together, stress about money and jobs, spats about how to clean houses, care for animals, organize household activities. Disagreements about money or new sofas. Indecision about holidays or how to spend a spare four hours. The list could go on.

Thank goodness, it is also just as easy to list the bliss. Coming home to a beloved after hard days at work. Seeing someone else smile at your achievements. Flowers for no reason at all. Celebratory dinners. Secrets. Inside jokes. Belly laughter about these inside jokes and secrets. Fond memories. Vacation snapshots. All of these things are the basis of a long term relationship. All of these things are the bliss—the things that provide fun and laughter in the lives of two people together.

Jodie Foster understands the rotten in long-term relationships and the bliss. Some of us have been waiting for many years for her to acknowledge that she is a lesbian and in a long-term relationship with another woman. I admit, I thought that the final disclosure would be more dramatic and important than it actually was.

Jodie Foster’s acknowledgement of her lesbianism and her intimate partnership was simply a brief statement—a brief acknowledgement in the acceptance of an award of her lifetime together with another woman. Still, it did seem to many of us that the heavens opened with cherubim singing. Perhaps I exaggerate for effect. Don’t get me wrong. I’ll take it. However, Jodie Foster comes out, I’ll celebrate. I want more celebrities to come out, and I’ve been watching celebrities come out long enough that I’ll take any celebration wherever I can get it.

I do think, however, that the moment of waiting for celebrities to come out has basically passed. George Clooney is playing with us with his coy conversations about “Gay, gay, gay.” (The third one, according to Clooney, is going just too far). In another tabloid, Clooney suggests that if Brad Pitt was a woman and he was a woman and each were lesbians. . . well, you know what they mean. Clooney plays with our expectations and our hopes for him as a gay man. The era of denials has ended. The era of coyness has begin.

The dramatic coming out adventures of Melissa Etheridge, “YES, I AM,” or Ellen Degeneres on the cover of Newsweek, “YUP, I’M GAY,” are over. What we have instead are the oblique confirmations from celebrities of what we knew all along.

As celebrities no longer feel the need to “come out” we can only hope that they also eschew the need to stay “in the closet.” Openness and honesty was always what our revolution was about. As we now begin to experience it more and more, we’ll have to readjust our expectations, for our celebrities heroes, and, perhaps more importantly, for ourselves.

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and activist living in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This is installment #20 in CIVILesbianIZATION dated 8 April 2008.

SAPPHO – THE MOTHER OF US ALL

2008-04-03T15:12:00.001-04:00

I’ve been reading about Sappho. She’s been a cult figure in the lesbian community for over a century now. One of my associations with Sappho is the book, Sappho Was a Right On Woman. While Sappho has been an inspiration to lesbians for decades, I’m also learning that she has been inspiring to many poets and writers – not just lesbians. There is a rich literary history of poems, stories, and plays inspired by Sappho’s life and legacy.

All of this I knew and it’s been delightful to explore further; what I didn’t know and was surprised to learn is that Sappho is said to have committed suicide. This has caused me much reflection over the past weeks. What does it mean for us as a lesbian community to base our central iconology on a woman who committed suicide?

On one hand, it is not surprising. There are ample references over the past one hundred years of suicide among lesbians. I’m particularly thinking of The Well of Loneliness by Radcliffe Hall and my new favorite book, Olivia by Olivia. The tragic lesbian figure, unable to find love and driven to end her own life is a part of our cultural history and memory. It is a consequence of the pervasive sexism and homophobia with which lesbians have lived. It is an experience that we have to respect and understand.

I think that the image of the tragic lesbian has changed, however. In fact, I posit that Sappho Was a Right On Woman, published in 1972, is one of the first books in change and rewrite our lesbian history and identity. During the 1970s and 1980s, the image of the lesbian as lonely, isolated and perverse was whittled away by the growing community of lesbians and women-identified women. As a result of this community, the image of the suicidal lesbian was overcome. I even wonder if was put to rest for perpetuity. (Though, realistically, reading history regularly, I’m aware that it is highly repetitive and cyclical: the tragic lesbian seems certain to return again.)

Perpetuity or not, the lesbian has now been positioned in our society as not a woman who is lonely and suicidal but a woman who is surrounded by a strong and loyal community. As we look back through history, I think that this image of the lesbian reached its apex at some point during the 1980s. Perhaps when Cris Williamson and Meg Christian performed at Carnegie Hall; perhaps during the second March on Washington in 1987. Whenever it occurred, lesbians over the short course of a few decades remade themselves from the women molded after a suicidal Sappho to the women molded after an empowered, autonomous, independent, and happy Sappho.

This is the Sappho that we’ll embrace for now, but knowing the history of it is important to me. Since the apex of this particular incarnation of Sappho, we’ve been going through additional transformations of our selves and our collective self-images. Some of the forces at play include identity configurations of queer and transgender. I have come to think that our current identity formation of “empowered Sapphos” is part of what makes the lesbian community, and particularly lesbian feminist communities, important flashpoints for the working through of these new identities of queer and transgender. Challenges to lesbian separatism are a way for a variety of other identity formations to receive validation from a “community” and from the “empowered Sapphics.”

Sappho’s poems only exist today in fragments. No matter how we understand our lives and our identities, we are building them from fragments of an ancient poet and from a narrative that is by and large lost and simply pieced together from various historical and literary sources. The strength of this is we can continue to reinvent ourselves and our identities from this fragmented past. We can and we will—lesbian identity will continue to be challenged, reformulated, and reconfigured.

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and poet who lives in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This is column #19 dated April 3, 2008 in the series, CIVILesbianIZATION.

PREGNANT MEN—NOT THE REVOLUTION WE IMAGINED, BUT REVOLUTIONARY NONETHELESS

2008-03-29T15:11:00.001-04:00

Reproductive technologies are creating new opportunities and new challenges – not only for people who want to be parents, but for the broader communities in which we live as we strive to understand what parenthood means in the twenty-first century. A current flashpoint of these contemporary anxieties is captured in the story of Thomas Beatie and his first person account of being a pregnant man in a recent issue of The Advocate.

Beatie, who lives with his wife in the Pacific northwest, is pregnant with their child, a healthy baby girl, due to be delivered this summer. Beatie writes compellingly about his pregnancy and his desire to be a parent, calling this desire, not a male or female desire, but a human desire. I’m happy for Beatie and his wife and the upcoming addition to their family. What I’ve found interesting, and surprising, is the reactions of friends and the popular media around me.

I hadn’t really read the story in The Advocate, though I had seen some blog mentions of it, when I heard a full discussion of the story on the local hip hop radio station at the gym. I admit, that I braced myself as I sat in the weight room between abdominal repetitions. I was expecting some sort of homophobic and transphobic screed. What I heard instead was a fascinating conversation about the reactions of the two radio hosts. Let me be plain, they did not embrace Thomas’ pregnancy. They expressed confusion and astonishment, but they did so in a way that seemed to me concordant with the uniqueness of the situation. It isn’t everyday that a man is pregnant. They discussed the operational aspects of the pregnancy including the details of Thomas’ transition. They expressed concern about the baby’s health, but read the portion of the article in which Thomas said that the baby was healthy and seemed reassured by that. Overall, the discussion was honest, informative, and interested in the situation. By it’s conclusion, the two hosts, while affirming that their were things that they didn’t understand about the arrangement, wished Thomas and his wife the best with their child. This wasn’t what I expected from a mainstream radio station.

The other discussions that I have been involved with have been with lesbians and bisexual women. The reactions, particularly from lesbians, have been surprising more negative than the reactions from the radio hosts. How can a man be pregnant? Is this the right thing to do to the child? Why don’t they adopt? While I feel that there is legitimacy to all of those questions and that asking them is just fine, I’m surprised by the tone and intention behind the questions. Rather than a general curiosity about the conditions and circumstances of the “pregnant man,” I’ve felt that the impulse is more to ensure that men are excluded from child-bearing and that transgender men, in particular are excluded.

As I’ve read the news and thought about it, I continue to be excited for Thomas and his wife about their pregnancy. Questions about the child’s health and well-being are uniformly met with responses from people in the medical profession that the child should be perfectly normal regardless of the fact that her birth parent took testosterone. Any effects of the testosterone will be in the normal range of human sexual organs. (A normal range, which for me includes a variety of sexual orientations and gender identities). Adoptions for this couple—and other transgender couples as well as in many locations gay, bisexual, and lesbian couples and polyamorous couples or others who organize their erotic and sexual lives outside of the binary heterosexual partnership—as a result of the homophobia and transphobia in the adoption system would not be an option. Pregnancy was their option for having children, and I support reproductive rights—that is the possibilities of controlling one’s own reproductive organs and the decision-making concomitant with them—for everyone, regardless of other aspects of their lives and identities.

Increasingly over this century I think that reproductive questions and questions of queer rights and equality will continue to intersect. I hope that we think about them in ways that are careful and respectful and congruent with our larger quest for equality.

Thomas Beatie’s article in The Advocate
http://www.advocate.com/exclusive_detail.asp?id=52947&page=1

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and poet who lives in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This is column #18 dated March 29, 2008 in the series, CIVILesbianIZATION.

ONE OF MY SISTERS DOESN’T LOOK LIKE ME

2007-12-11T15:11:00.000-05:00

For me, one of the things that defines family is comfort. Certainly love is a part of the definition of family, but, for me, comfort is more foundational. Comfort comes from spending time with people over extended periods. Not necessarily large amounts of time, but repeated, focused amounts of time over a number of years. From comfort comes caring and compassion and the ability to freely express oneself without pretense. It is then that the ties that I call familial begin to emerge.

My wife has a sister who is now seventeen. For the past handful of years, we’ve spent a week with her at spring break and we regularly talk on the phone and on IM. After our years together, I consider her my sister, not just my wife’s sister.

This past year, in anticipation of her visit, I told people that my sister would be here. For those that asked, I gave them the more detailed explanation of her being my wife’s half-sister (they share only a father), but for most people, just the statement, my sister is coming, was enough. Besides, they could see the joy in my eyes as I anticipated her visit.

When they met her, however, it was clear that something was different. This sister, you see, is of African-American heritage. I don’t think much of it, but I’m aware that people look at us oddly for a moment when I introduce her as my sister.

When people had that reaction, I didn’t much care. I gave them a little bit of time to assimilate the information and unless they asked, I didn’t offer much more. Sisterhood seems like it should stand without explanation.

Nowadays, I think we’re far too invested in families looking alike. It may have been significant in the past when people moved less, had more children, and marriages lasted longer. Today, however, most people I know have family cobbled together not entirely by biology.

Half-sisters, step-siblings, in-laws, and out-laws all characterize modern families. Combine those relations with increasing adoptions across races, cultures, and nationalities and throw in more interracial relationships and interracial families through a variety of means, and suddenly how we look does not determine if we are a family.

In my envisioned future, family isn’t about who looks like whom, but rather where is your comfort. Still, I’m not the norm. I cannot tell you how many times I hear or read about women who want a child who looks like them or their partners. I’ve heard lesbians looking for sperm from a man who shares physical characteristics with the woman who is to carry the child or the woman who is to be the “non-bio” parent. Sometimes the degree of focus on physical and genetic characteristics seems to me to eclipse the nature of our humanity. Moreover, hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent on reproductive medicine to produce children who share physical characteristics with parents. Is how our children look worth all of that money?

I think it’s time to discard all of these associations of physical appearance with familial relationships. It’s as dated as Wally and the Beaver. Continuing to believe that shared physical attributes mark family is like continuing to believe that Rock Hudson was off screen the heterosexual lothario that he was on.

One of my sisters doesn’t look like me. I love her no less, and I’m waiting for the day when I introduce her in public – to cashiers or friends or casually on the street – and no one raises an eyebrow. There is no pregnant pause because everyone realizes that family is not defined by biology or genes, but by the strength of our affection for, our commitment to and our comfort with one another.

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and poet who lives in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This is column #17 dated December 11, 2007 in the series, CIVILesbianIZATION.

MARKING OUR BODIES Remaking Our Lives

2007-11-27T15:10:00.000-05:00

When I was coming out, a tattoo and a doubly-pierced right ear was a sign of being a lesbian. This seems silly now, I admit, but at twenty and twenty-one these were important identity expressions to my peer group and me along with Birkenstocks, thick wool socks (I came out in Michigan), and large army fatigues held up with wide leather belts. To this day, when I wear that uniform, I feel like a real lesbian.

Each generation defines itself with physical and external markers of identity. All have profound meaning to the people who are marked and to the people who create the marks. I welcome new generational markers – even if I don’t always understand them. (I admit, tongue piercing and navel piercing were initially uncomfortable and foreign to me; though I remember the way some recoiled from my large, comfortable shoes.) I only become concerned when the markers of identity result in permanent and unchangeable actions to our bodies.

I’ve taken those actions. One tattoo and three holes between my two earlobes. Do I regret either? No. Would I do it again? Perhaps not.

Part of my discomfort comes from feminism. As a feminist, I want to embrace my body as it is – and I want other people to do that. As a feminist, I’m uncomfortable with breast augmentation. I don’t think that permanent body alterations are something to support or celebrate. I hold this philosophy to a pretty strict standard in my life. Sure, I’ve shaven my legs on occasion (and the wifey wishes I would do it more, truth be told), but I’ve not done much that permanently alters my body.

This brings me to my concern: increasing people – and particularly young people, which to me still means under thirty-five or forty – are chosing to transition from one sex to another. On one hand, I support people’s ability to have control over their bodies and to express gender in whatever way that they wish. On the other hand, I’m concerned about permanent body alterations.

I worry about the increasing medicalization of our bodies and of gender. Women and queers have never been served by the medical establishment and yet increasing it seems we turn to doctors to give us bodies to help navigate a world in which gender roles are narrow prescribed and offer little fluidity and flexibility for a moment or a lifetime.

Our experience of gender and gender roles is related not only to how we understand the world personally but also to how other around us understand and interpret the world. Lots of the butch women I came out with twenty years ago embraced their butchness because of a feminist analysis which said that gender roles weren’t working – for women or for men, but that it was fine to be gender non-conforming. Today these same women might be told by prevailing analyses that their identity is transgender. That’s fine—if it is an identity that works, I support people’s ability to self-identify. Today, however, more is at stake than self-identity. People are changing their bodies and their sex through medical intervention.

That concerns me. I’m worried about a construction of gender that requires permanent body alteration. My body isn’t perfect as it is and I do things to change it – I change my clothes, I work out, I use lotions and lots of little potions from small pots, but all of that can be undone in a short amount of time – none of it is permanent. Are we sure that surgery and hormone therapy to permanently alter the body is an essential expression of gender identity?

Many won’t be happy that I’ve asked the question, but I think it must be asked. We need dialogue about the costs and benefits of medical interventions and the constructions of sex and gender in our queer community.

Meanwhile, I’ve dispensed with the second earring in my ear. I loved it for the years that I wore it. Today it doesn’t serve me. I’m glad that I could just stop wearing it when I wanted. I want for all of the other young queers to have the same choices as their lives change and evolve.

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and poet. She lives in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work, including her blog, at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This is column #16 dated November 27, 2007 in the series, CIVILesbianIZATION.

Word Count: 698

WILL CONGRESS EVER PASS PRO-LGBT LEGISLATION? Reflections on ENDA

2007-11-13T15:10:00.000-05:00

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) passed out of the House of Representatives on November 7, 2007 with a vote of 235-184. In order to become law, it must of course also pass the Senate and be signed by the President. Most anticipate that those two things will not happen this legislative cycle. The version of ENDA that was voted out of the House is one that many advocates object to because it excluded gender identity language, which would have provided workplace protections to transgender people.

There has been an entire brouhaha surrounding ENDA that’s been mostly documented in the blogosphere though The New York Times article provided a good summary of it as well. I’ve watched these events unfold with astonishment. First, I am incredibly proud of the GLBT movement for standing on principle. The actions of United ENDA and the nearly four hundred organizations that worked to preserve gender identity in the bill are awe inspiring to me. I have never in my twenty years of being a participant / observer seen the queer community speak with such a united and clear voice. I am inspired by the number of organizations who have taken a stand in support of a transgender inclusive ENDA and called on their members to do the same. This is the movement about which I dreamed; I am proud to be a part of it.

I was amazed and slightly baffled by Representative Barney Frank’s actions. It seems that he had the opportunity to demonstrate the perfect “object lesson” about the value of Democrats to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community, but that it has now been botched. Generally, yes, queers vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Lately, however, people like me—and others—question that loyalty in light of the waffling of Democrats on marriage. The script that could have played out is this: ENDA passes in the Senate and the House and then is vetoed by the President. The House and Senate are run by Democrats; the President is a Republican. Who will you vote for in 2008? The answer would have been obvious.

Instead, we were embroiled in wrangling with politicians about pragmatism and principle. It seems to me that politics should be about both, and politicians should find ways to hold onto both pragmatism and principle at all times. Ironically, one of the politicians who first introduced the law to protect gays and lesbians from workplace discrimination, in 1974 on the fifth anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, was Representative Bella Abzug, the gentlewoman from New York. She was a politician with vision able to be both pragmatic and rooted in principle.

Instead of a transcendent political moment, or even an instructive political moment, the passage of ENDA was a divisive political moment. Certainly, the opposition to excluding gender identity from the bill was inspiring, to me and others, but the outcome was disheartening.

An important “object lesson” could still emerge from ENDA in 2007. That lesson may be more enlightening and may, in the long run, catapult queer liberation forward. I don’t think that it is going to be one that strengthens or stabilizes queer support for a Democratic candidate for President. Rather the lesson may be about unity, loyalty, and commitment. I hope that we are able to see it and learn it.

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and poet. She lives in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work, including her blog, at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This is column #15 dated November 13, 2007 in the series, CIVILesbianIZATION.

Word Count: 552

ANTICIPATING THE BIG 4-0

2007-10-30T15:09:00.000-04:00

I rarely say no to myself. I don’t deny my whims and desires. In fact, in the realm of things that I want to do, there is very little that I haven’t done. I don’t believe in living a life deferred – or a dream deferred as the original poem states. Despite this, as I approach the milestone age of forty, I’m thinking about what I haven’t done and would like to before I transition, by some measures, into my middle age.

It will happen in January of 2010 and, truth be told, I’m quite excited about it. I’ve never feared growing older and I don’t want to adopt that fear as the years progress. In fact, I want to be one of those people who embrace age and its corollary, experience. To achieve the experience part of the equation, I’m thinking about what I haven’t done that I want to do. I’m making a list of things to do before forty.

A dear friend suggested adrenaline activities, which are, I fear, woefully absent from my bank of life experiences. Sky diving, bungee jumping, tight-rope walking. I’ve done none of these. Nor do I particularly want to, but the point is taken about adrenaline. So I’m mulling those and definitely will put one on my list. At this point, I’m leaning to parasailing, but who can tell what might strike my fancy in the next months leading up to the big day.

I also want to dye my hair. Not brown to cover the gray that is now coming in by the handfuls, but pink or purple. A color that will shock and disarm. Perhaps green? I want to have an arresting presence for a few weeks before I cut it all off. I’ve never dyed my hair before, and it seems like a life experience that I am missing, so that’s on my list.

I’d like to do a thorough hair removal. Generally I’m a hairy gal. I don’t shave much but for one day, except for the hair on my head (dyed bright red?), I’d like to be hairless. Everyone tells me that the one hairless day will be paid for with a few weeks of intense discomfort afterward as it all grows back. That’s doesn’t seem to dissuade me, however.

I’m careening into more hedonism as I approach forty, and I embrace that. More partying and revelry all around. I didn’t do as much of this as I could have in my twenties so I’m reversing that part of the life cycle and staying out late getting drunk and sleeping in the next morning.

I’m trying to figure out how to honor all of the people in my life who have died before reaching forty. A group of gay men with whom I came out who have passed away – primarily from AIDS but other medical conditions as well. My sister, who should have been right behind me in approaching forty, but isn’t here to share in it. I want all of them to be present as I celebrate this milestone. So I regularly invoke them, calling on them to celebrate with me.

Suddenly, I’m interested in people who are eighty. What were they doing at forty? How did they spend the last forty years? What lessons do their lives have for me? I’m trying to soak that knowledge up in the way that I studied the forty year olds when I was twenty.

I want to speak another language fluently. I want to read more books that matter and change my life. I’d like to be an expert in something. I want to travel to every continent—at least once, some many times. I want to create my own list of the wonders of the world. I won’t achieve all of those goals by the time I’m forty. It seems prudent to have a few ideas of what I will do with the gift of time I am granted beyond this milestone birthday.

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and poet who lives in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work, including her blog, at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This is column #14 dated October 30, 2007 in the series, CIVILesbianIZATION.

Word Count: 703

OUTSIDE OF THE NATION

2007-10-16T15:09:00.000-04:00

Nowhere in the world are we – gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people – a majority. There is no gay homeland from which we came and to which we turn in times of danger, for support and validation. Wherever we live, we are a minority. Even in Provincetown, the East or West Village, the Castro, Halstead, or West Hollywood, we are a minority, unless we draw the lines very narrowly and resist coloring outside them. The fact is we queer people will always be in the minority, living across cultures and communicating with others like us and yet not.

Living as a minority sometimes has advantages. Alienation from the dominant culture can be a creative; it can be an inspiring experience that energizes us to build our own culture – outside of the dominant, majority culture. Living outside also gives us greater freedom to think critically and critique our culture. We have the freedom and flexibility to create our own communities and families based not on biological or geographical conditions, but on our own intellectual, social, political, and affectional affinities.

Living as a minority also has disadvantages. Sometimes, we don’t have the support and compassion of our family of origin. Our families of origin may want us to be heterosexual or they want for us their vision of a normal life. Even when the do support us, sometimes they feel sad by their own sense of loss of their vision of us as heterosexual. Sometimes, our parents don’t teach us how to live as queer people and sometimes isolated from other queers, we struggle to find acceptance and validation. Sometimes living as a minority is isolating and alienating. Sometimes the chafe of living between the majority culture and our queer – and minority – subculture is difficult and painful.

Rather than living automatically with people who understand our lives and our cultures, we must seek out others like us. Instead of following the norms of our society, we must build our own lives, sometimes in the absence of effective role models. Then, when we do build families and communities that flourish, we cannot simply rest. We have a responsibility to translate and educate others – the dominant majority – about our lives and our culture, and we have a responsibility to help other queers like us. This can be tiresome and burdensome as well as annoying and vexing. Yet, we do it because we must. We live as a minority within our nation.

Sometimes given the nation’s exclusion of queers, I want to reject my nationality. It is not only queerness. Recently, I’ve felt ashamed of my nations treatment of poor people, of children without health care, and of people in New Orleans during and after the hurricane. I want to rejected my nationality given the reality of the oppressive racism and sexism that dominates our history and our present. I’ve wondered, if my identity as a lesbian is not recognized, why should I adopt the identity that the nation wants for me? Why should I be nationalistic or patriotic?

I am outside of the nation and, yet, I am of the nation. I cannot disentangled the two. We queer people life outside this nation; we are not fully recognized by the nation with all of the rights and responsibility of citizens of the United States. The pain is felt most obviously when our governments – federal, state, and local – refuse to acknowledge our lives and treat us equally.

We are also inside the nation. Many of us were born here. We live here. We must engage with the country – to transform it to include our realities. Ultimately, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people effect everyone in our nation. We are a minority that is mutable – people join us and leave us over time. We can live without a nation; we cannot live outside of nationality. So we must struggle with both—our country and our identities. Through that struggle, we hope to transform us all with more justice and more integrity.

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and poet who lives in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work, including her blog, at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This is column #13 dated October 16, 2007 in the series, CIVILesbianIZATION.

Word Count: 664

EQUAL RIGHTS FOR GAY AND LESBIAN COUPLES IN MARYLAND – DELAYED OR DENIED?

2007-10-02T15:08:00.000-04:00

On Tuesday, September 18, I woke up early, showered, and packed my bag for a day of travel. My partnered dropped me off at the New Carrollton train station, and I headed to New York for meetings for work. She drove back to Riverdale for her dentist appointment and then was off to work in Baltimore. It was a typical day.

I responded to all of my email on the train, took the subway to the office in New York, sat in meetings, ate the bagged lunch I had carried with me. Mid-morning an email arrived from Equality Maryland announcing the news that the Maryland Court of Appeals issued their decision in the Conaway v. Deane case—and it wasn’t in our favor.

The court ruled that gay and lesbian couples were not unfairly excluded from the marriage in Maryland or in their words, “the State’s legitimate interests in fostering procreation and encouraging the traditional family structure in which children are born” means that the State can excluded gay and lesbian couples from marriage. I didn’t have time that day to think about it.

My partner and I (and I confess, I often call her my wife and she reciprocates even though there is no legal basis for such an assertion) have been together for eleven years, yet with the exception of the mortgage that binds us both to payment and a stack of documents that are somewhere in our office (I’d be hard pressed to put my hands on them in under five minutes), we are strangers in the eyes of our government. We were hoping, perhaps foolishly that that would change. On Tuesday, we learned that it didn’t. At least for now.

At 7 p.m. Tuesday night, I was tuckered out from my day and still had to meet a friend on the Upper West Side. We had agreed to purchase her used car as she prepares to move to London (where gay and lesbian relationships are recognized), and I was driving it home. It was exciting to get the new-to-us car, but as I exited the Lincoln Tunnel, I knew I had to go south, but I fantasized about going north.

New Jersey recently ruled that gay and lesbian couples would be recognized through civil unions. I wondered, driving along the turnpike if perhaps we should move there. I knew if we headed farther north, a metaphoric and literal migration in the United States as people seek rights and equal treatment under the law, we would be recognized. The entirety of New England is now a safe haven for gay and lesbian couples. Marriage in Massachusetts; civil unions in Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Only one mid-Atlantic government would recognize our relationship: the District of Columbia, and four western states: Hawaii, California, Oregon and Washington. The south and the Midwest, from where we originally hale, are like Maryland all blind to our relationship.

I kept driving south and even felt sad leaving New Jersey, knowing that I was leaving one of the safe zones for gay and lesbian couples. Still, I was glad to get home just after midnight.

We love our life in Maryland. Our home, our community, our jobs. The reality is though, as we grow older when concerns about relationship recognition in light of health care, disability, and death become uppermost on our mind, we may have to move. If we had children, we would definitely want to be in a state that recognized our relationship. And as more and more states recognize gay and lesbian relationships in a variety of ways, my wife and I will want to live in a state – and a country – where we are accorded equal rights under the law.

If Maryland isn’t a state that will do that, we’ll take the future calls about employment elsewhere seriously. The drive north on I-95 is pleasant and will be even more so if it leads to a state of equality for us as a lesbian couple.

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and poet who lives in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work, including her blog, at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This is column #12 dated October 2, 2007 in the series, CIVILesbianIZATION.

Word Count: 667

CELEBRATE, DON'T STIGMATIZE, PUBLIC SEX

2007-09-18T15:08:00.000-04:00

Public sex has a long and proud tradition and I, for one, am pleased to see that one of our Senators is engaging in it. Instead of decrying Senator Craig’s actions or speculating about his sexuality or “alleged homosexuality,” I think the more rational response is to affirm and celebrate public sex. The truth is people – all kinds of people including senators – engage public sex as a part of their sexual expression and fulfillment at different times in their lives. There’s nothing wrong with public sex; in fact, it can be a positive and healthy component of adult sexuality.

Public sex, which I’d like to define as sex between two people in a public space that offers a modicum of privacy while simultaneously carrying with it the danger of discovery, is a sexual practice of all human beings. In and of itself, public sex is neither harmful nor an anathema to civil society. When heterosexual people have or think about or fetishize public sex, we giggle and culturally reify it. Think about sex on airplanes. Erica Jong made her career writing about Fear of Flying. Most recently sex in an airline restroom was featured in the film Snakes on a Plane. More than one film about heterosexual people includes a conversation about the “kinkiest” or “most daring” place that the characters have had sex. Often the responses are descriptions of public sex. Watching these films, heterosexual people may be titillated or exchange knowing glances. Public sex is a part of human sexuality and people – straight and queer – are having it.

Yet, when public sex is heterosexual we do not call for surveillance and criminalization. Snakes on a Plane did not result in federal regulations for cameras in airline restrooms. Heterosexual teenagers caught in public parks in flagrante delicto are sent home with stern warnings or, at worst, curfew violations. The wiff of two men having sex in a public restroom, however, causes public outrage and calls for monitoring, police stings and arrests. It’s both homophobia and sexphobia.

Parents will counter that they don’t want their children in the course of using public restrooms to encounter people having sex, particularly two men having sex. I can understand that, I don’t want to unintentionally encounter two men or two women or a man and a woman having sex when I just want to urinate, but I have and it wasn’t traumatic. The fact of the matter is, while people want the possibility of getting caught while having sex, they don’t want to get caught. So when I walk into the rest room or a child does, most people have the capacity to pause for the few minutes it takes me to relieve myself, wash my hands, and move on with my life. Besides if we were to extend the argument about fear of children encountering two people having sex, wouldn’t we mandate that parents must not have sex if their children are in the house? After all, children are more likely to have their first glimpse of adult human sexuality running into their parents bedroom to tell them that visitors are here or they need breakfast or had a bad dream than running into a public bathroom to take a pee.

We need to speak out as a community about the homophobia and sexphobia that surrounds these public sex scandals. If it is truly OK to be gay, then it must be by extension OK for two people of the same-sex to have erotic encounters in semi-public spaces that carry the possibility of being caught—and being caught must not be more likely than it is for heterosexual people and the consequences of being caught must be the same for same-sex public sex partners as for opposite-sex public sex partners.

While we’re speaking out, we could also say that there is nothing particularly wrong with public sex, in fact, for some it’s a perfectly acceptable expression of sexuality. Who knows maybe in the process of speaking honestly about human sexuality we will liberate ourselves and even our heterosexual counterparts.

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and poet who lives in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work, including her blog, at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This is column #11 dated September 18, 2007 in the series, CIVILesbianIZATION.

Word Count: 677

CHANGING THE CIVIL RIGHTS PARADIGM

2007-09-04T15:06:00.000-04:00

Sometimes there are moments of great tragedy when gay and lesbian inequality is made visible. These moments are painful and profoundly disturbing. I think of the murder of Matthew Shepherd and the murder of Sargeant Allen Schindler. Two brutal murders motivated by hatred for gay and lesbian people. There is wide-spread agreement in the United States that murdering people because they are gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender is wrong. It is a public tragedy that diminishes all of us.

By and large, however, gay and lesbian people live peaceable lives. The vast majority of us live without being targeted for discrimination, harassment, or murder. Yet, regularly, we obscure this reality. We perform a victimized status for the American public and for our legislators in an attempt to pass laws. This performance and these laws emanate from a civil rights paradigm that is a close, but not quite fit for the queer community. It’s time for a change.

We in the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community—the queer community— are not going to achieve equal rights through the demonstration of hardship, or victimization, to the American people. Not because that hardship isn’t there; it is. It can be found and performed as we have just seen in the performance for the passage of the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007. We can find and tell individual stories of brutality and harassment for the benefit of Congress and the public. We can even put it together to create a pattern. The reality is, however, that the pattern of violence and abuse of gay and lesbian people in contemporary culture does not rise to the level of the reality that was experience by the African-American community during the 1940s, 50s, and 60s which lead to the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

On one hand we could argue that nothing should ever rise to that level again. We could argue that we should learn from our past and take action earlier to smite injustice and strive for equality. In fact, I think that is the respectful framework that our queer civil rights organizations have adopted, but the time for that has now passed. It is time to reframe the debate.

For us queers to present our experiences in this country within the civil rights paradigm now and in the future is a strategic error. First, our experiences do not rise to the level of intensity or repulsion for most Americans as the experiences of African-Americans did during the 1960s. People recognize this fact; they know it. We must acknowledge it through a change in strategy. Second, a focus on violence and brutal repression has a different impact on the American people today in 2007 than it did in 1967. If we were still sensitive to violence and death, would we be in Iraq?

Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people are not going to achieve rights by asserting victimization. Our story, while compelling to us is an adequate parallel. What we should do instead of seeking to honor the civil rights movement by mimicking it, is to craft new messages. They may emerge from the history of the civil rights movement, but we must transform them to make them our own.

Our messages are not about violence, victimization, and harassment. Our messages are about the ordinary and the everyday. We will achieve equality by demonstrating the ordinariness of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender life. The banality of our lives, the everyday similarities of our lives to our heterosexual counterparts, is the message that people will understand and believe. It is the message or ordinariness and dailiness that will help us secure equality.

We need to turn up the volume and energy on these messages. Certainly, we stand on the shoulders of all who have worked for justice and equality in the past. We must honor their work, but when standing on the shoulders of greatness, we are most able to keep our balance by looking forward or looking upward than by looking downward or backward. To have a vibrant contemporary queer movement, we need to reach to the future, not the past.

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and poet who lives in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work, including her blog, at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This is column #10 dated September 4, 2007 in the series, CIVILesbianIZATION.

Word Count: 694

LET'S SINK THE CENSOR SHIP: Catherine Crouch’s The Gendercator

2007-08-21T15:06:00.000-04:00

Are ideas threatening? Are we, the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community, threatened by thoughts, images, and stories? Is censorship our response when we encounter art that challenges our contemporary ways of living?

The answers to these questions are yes, judging by the actions of Frameline in San Francisco in regard to the film, The Gendercator, by Catherine Crouch. Originally selected for the 2007 Frameline Film Festival, the screening of The Gendercator was cancelled by Frameline with the following explanation, “Given the nature of the film, the director’s comments, and the strong community reaction to both, it is clear that this film cannot be used to create a positive and meaningful dialogue within our festival.”

Hmm. I guess I don’t believe that art always needs to create a positive and meaningful dialogue. Sometimes art provokes people. Ruffles feathers. Raises questions. Postulates radical visions. Makes people anger. Clearly, that is what The Gendercator did.

The Gendercator is a fifteen-minute film with a satirical take on female body modification and gender. In a future dystopia, a young lesbian wakes up, like Rip Van Winkle, in the year 2048 after partying in 1973 to celebrate Billie Jean King’s victory over Bobbie Riggs. In The Gendecator’s vision of the future, sex roles and gender expression are rigidly binary and enforced by law and social custom. All people must choose to be either a man or a woman—no more sissy boys or butch dykes. No more androgynes. The protagonist of the film, Sally, rejects this binary based on her experiences as a 1970s feminist. Sally wants to live in the world straddling an androgynous middle between the male and female genders. This choice is not acceptable in the world in which she has awoken.

The dramatic conclusion of The Gendercator offers two possibilities in a dream-like sequence. Either Sally escapes from the rigidly gendered society of the future into a lesbian utopia replete with a rescue team of lesbians driving a VW bus or she is forced to undergo gender conversion from being female to being male. While each outcome is considered, ultimately, Sally wakes up to the party of 1973—it was all a dream.

The Gendercator is thought-provoking film. It is made with classic lesbian-feminist filmic tropes. The Gendercator raises difficult questions about the social construction of gender roles and begins to ask questions that are common in feminist communities about the costs to butch women and feminists of embracing sex reassignment surgery as opposed to working to change gender roles and eliminate patriarchy. While these questions may be challenging, they should be asked and explored, especially since there are many shared objectives of gender liberation for feminists and transgender activists.

Yes, the questions raised by The Gendercator may be uncomfortable; yes, transgender activists may be angry that they are asked and want to refute them with great alacrity. Asking the questions, however, is not wrong. Censoring the questions raises great concern. I believe our cultural institutions should embrace the opportunity to view The Gendercator. As a community, we should watch it and talk and argue about it. Censoring The Gendercator and limiting availability to the queer community does little to address the questions that it.

Hopefully, in my hometown of Washington, DC, One In Ten, DC’s International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival will show the courage that Frameline wasn’t able to demonstrate. The Gendercator should be screened in Washington, DC. Ideas should be expressed freely. We all should have an opportunity to see and evaluate The Gendercator for ourselves. We may disagree. We may find the film to be transphobic, but unless we see it for ourselves, we will never know.

As SONiA and CiNDY sing in the disappear fear song, “Let’s Sink the Censor Ship,”
Narrow minds are generally two-faced
We must sink the censorship to find
What truth is
In Washington, DC, let’s find what truth is.

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and poet who lives in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work, including her blog, at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This is column #9 dated August 21, 2007 in the series, CIVILesbianIZATION.

Word Count: 648

MY GAY FATHER

2007-08-07T15:05:00.000-04:00

If you want to know where you want to be, look at your feet. This is one of the hundreds of maxims that my gay father has given me. My gay father, like my lesbian mother, is a gay man who helped me to understand the gay and lesbian community and my role in it in profound ways.

I remember the advice, If you want to know where you want to be, look at your feet, most clearly because my gay father told it to me during one of our first long conversations involving the nature of life, love, and the city of Detroit. I left the conversation with my gay dad and bought a house in the city of Detroit. My gay dad was my realtor. I sold the house two years later, but it was absolutely the right decision at the time. I looked down at my feet, and there is where I wanted to be.

To this day, I always remember the advice of my gay father, and I look down. If I don’t like where I am, I know that I have to walk away—otherwise this is where I want to be.

My gay father is J. Michael Hickey. Like most, I just call him, Mike. Mike is a tall and hairy man. He’s a bear in every gay sense of the word. I met Mike when he was volunteering as a telephone operator for the Gay and Lesbian Helpline operated by the gay and lesbian community center where I worked. Mike came in every Monday night from 8:30 p.m. until 11 p.m. As I was leaving work during his shift, I’d stop by to say a brief hello and goodbye. These brief stops often resulted in me and Mike walking out of the community center together late at night after he had imparted some of his wisdom.

The house that I bought in Detroit was in his neighborhood, so we became stopover friends. And brunch friends. And I-need-a-special-hammer friends. And I-love-your-partner-of-now-eighteen-years-Jon friends. And I-need-you-to-approve-of-the-women-that-I-date-and-love friends.

My gay dad is knowledgeable about the ways of the world—gay and non-gay. He knows what to tell you to avoid particular trauma and what not to tell you because “everyone goes through that.” He’s an expert on depression glass and china patterns and he can repair anything in an old home.

Mike always has good advice for facing life’s challenges. Often it is a variant of if you don’t like things the way they are, get up and make a change. Often it is more direct and even blunt at times that I need a kick in the butt. Often Mike raises issues that I’m not yet ready to think about and months later I’ll remember his question. I usually call him then though I rarely tell him the reason for the call. Mike doesn’t seem to mind. I think he understands the nature of human beings and human interactions more than I ever will.

Eventually, I moved away from Detroit. Honestly, my only regret from leaving Detroit is not living a few blocks away from Mike. I only see him a few times a year now. We trade emails and I write letters occasionally. Although our physical time together has lessened my affection hasn’t.

I think we all need gay fathers and lesbian mothers—people with wisdom and experience who befriend us on our life’s journey to help us along the way. I honor my gay father Mike. He’s given me good advice throughout my life and more importantly he is one of the best friends I’ve ever had.

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and poet who lives in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work, including her blog, at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This is column #8 dated August 7, 2007 in the series, CIVILesbianIZATION.

Word Count: 603

MY LESBIAN MOTHER

2007-07-24T15:05:00.000-04:00

Often when I think about lesbian mothers I think about foremothers. Foremothers are generally women that I haven’t met and women that I admire profoundly. Women after whom I want to emulate my life. Foremothers are important to me as a lesbian, but this isn’t about foremothers. This is about my lesbian mother. That term feels a little too familiar, since I haven’t talked to my lesbian mother in years now – long enough to elicit enormous guilt in anyone let alone someone like me who me prone to guilt. Nonetheless, I still want to pay homage to my lesbian mother.

What is a lesbian mother? A lesbian mother is a lesbian who meets and befriends you early in the coming out process, often before you can even say casually and aloud, I am a lesbian. A lesbian mother is the woman who helps you understand what it means to be a lesbian beyond the pages of a book or the confines of a barroom. A lesbian mother is first and always a friend and not a love interest. A lesbian mother is the woman with the confidence of being a lesbian herself who inspires you to want to be a confident lesbian yourself. A lesbian mother is the person with whom you can practice your lesbian look. A lesbian mother will gently correct you on all matters of lesbian etiquette from hair and clothes to dating and socializing. A lesbian mother will comfort you during your first rejection and celebrate with you after your first kiss.

My lesbian mother was a woman named Lynn D’Orio. I met her in the late 1980s. She was a member of the feminist collective at the Women’s Crisis Center. I joined immediately and she schooled me in the nature of consensus decision-making, understanding empathy in a group process, and having humor in the face of the impact of patriarchy on women’s lives.

Lynn was nearly twenty years older than me. I don’t remember her exact age because it wasn’t important. What was important is that she was older and wiser and most significantly she was able to share her wisdom without judgment. Lynn lived in a large and lovely house in Ann Arbor; I know because like all good lesbian mothers she invited me to her home and treated me as a friend and family member while I was there. She had matching furniture and a well-stocked kitchen. These are things that I aspired to have in my lesbian future.

More than physical things, however, Lynn had a confidence in herself and the conviction that she would do what she wanted to do in this lifetime and live the way that she wanted to live. This may be what I admired most about her when we were friends. It is definitely what I took with me from her as my lesbian mom.

Lynn’s confidence and conviction were tested when she was my lesbian mom. She and her partner of many years broke up. That brought her great sadness, but she handled it with strength and grace. During my own break-ups, I’ve chided myself for not emulating her more. Lynn went back to college to become a lawyer and in doing so left behind her life as a saleswoman. Now, years later and about her age when she befriended me, I find myself getting a master’s degree surrounded by young men and women in their early twenties. I now realize even more the challenges she must have faced returning to law school. I admire Lynn and even though we haven spoken recently, I remember her as a source of strength in my own journey.

I don’t think that I ever adequately honored Lynn as my lesbian mother. So writing this is in many ways my honoring of her friendship in my life. Lynn was a great lesbian mom to me, and I’m sure, as it’s her way, to many others.

Thinking about my lesbian mom makes me wonder: Who was your lesbian mom? How have you honored her? To whom are you a lesbian mom? How can you honor our community by being a lesbian mom to someone who needs one?

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and poet who lives in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work, including her blog, at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This is column #7 dated July 24, 2007 in the series, CIVILesbianIZATION.

Word Count: 696

TELL YOUR CHILDREN ABOUT GAY AND LESBIAN PEOPLE

2007-07-10T15:04:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine has a four-year-old son. I have to admit, although it exposes my own internalized homophobia, that the first time we had my friend and her family for dinner, I worried. What would they tell Noah about me and my partner?

I’m used to heterosexual parents, who say they are fine with gay and lesbian people, fumbling with what to say to their children. Many times I’ve heard, “This is so-and-so and her friend,” followed by a quick subject change, or worse shushing of a child’s continued questions. I sold my friend short, however. She knew what to say.

She told Noah very clearly that this is the home of Miss Julie and Miss Kim and we were celebrating a very special event with their family, Passover. Noah, at four, didn’t need much more information. He knows that we live together, and we are a family like he and his mother and his father. He’ll get more information as he grows up.

Noah is one of the many reasons I always look forward to our Passover seder. Each year, Noah participates more in the seder; already he is asking about when he can find the afikomen. It’s these traditions, these shared, family traditions, that are going to make a difference for gay and lesbian people and our acceptance.

While our Passover table has never been as uncomfortable as the dinner table in Little Miss Sunshine, the movie demonstrates the same principle. It is fine to tell children about gay and lesbian people.

In Little Miss Sunshine, at the dinner table, over the protests of her father, Olive’s uncle explains to her his suicide attempt and that he was in love with a man. She dismisses his love for another man, but Olive’s life has been changed. She now knows gay people exist. As she grows up, she’ll learn and understand more, but for now the existence of gay people, the possibility of love between two men, exists for her. That changes her world, and it changes our world.

Sometimes heterosexual people ask me how they can support gay and lesbian rights. I’ve fumbled in the past, but now I know what to say. Tell your children, or your grandchildren, about gay and lesbian people. Make it simple and straight-forward. Do it with words they can understand. But tell them. Make the families and relationships of your gay and lesbian friends and colleagues visible to your children.

The time of believing that sexuality and sexual orientation are something in the adult world from which children must be shielded is over. Gay and lesbian people are a regular part of our everyday lives.

Whether we are partnered or not, whether we are raising children or not, whether we are your next-door neighbors, your teachers, your coaches, or your friends, we gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people are in your communities. Some of us still feel the need to render ourselves invisible; some of us still remain in the closet. More and more, however, we live openly as gay and lesbian. To continue to be open, to continue to live our lives visibly, we need the support and affirmation of our heterosexual counterparts.

You know us, and your children know us. Talk to them about gay and lesbian people. Keep it simple. Make it natural and in ways that they understand. Talking about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people to your children, no matter what their age, makes a difference.

It makes a difference for them as they grow up. Your children may be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, and knowing people who are from a young age will have a profound and positive effect on their ability to understand and accept themselves. Your children will meet other peers who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender; they can be a voice of support and compassion to other young people who may be confused or upset and who may not have parents as open as you. Your children will work with gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people; they will live with them, and they will share with them throughout their lives. Talking with your children about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people now will make their lives easier in the future.

Help children to know gay and lesbian people early in their lives; help them to understand different families and different ways that people organize their personal and intimate lives. Don’t hide gay and lesbian people and their lives from your children. It makes a difference for them, and it makes a difference for us.

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and poet who lives in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work, including her blog, at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This is column #6 dated July 10, 2007 in the series, CIVILesbianIZATION.

Word Count: 776

HONEY, DON’T FORGET TO EDUCATE THE STRAIGHT PEOPLE! Why We’ll Win Being Ordinary and Everyday

2007-06-26T15:04:00.000-04:00

Let’s be honest, we’re not going to be guaranteed equal rights under the law, until we convince heterosexual people to stand beside us. While elected officials may be the key to getting our rights, more and more it becomes clear that politicians will not act without the majority of people behind them.

Some polls demonstrate that the majority of people support some forms of equal rights for gay and lesbian people, but this support crumbles under pressure. We need to stop that. We need straight people to support gay rights, unequivocally and without reserve.

In order for that to happen, the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community needs to educate, cajole, and, eventually, demand that heterosexual people support our quest for equality.

To achieve that objective, we need to refocus our social change work to speak to and persuade not only our own GLBT community but also heterosexual people. We need heterosexual people, not all of them, but a large minority, to embrace queer rights. How will we do this?

One way to begin is by telling our stories and engaging heterosexual people in our lives. Engagement is more than simply telling people that we are gay. As a community we need to move the focus away from the hyper-energized “coming out” moment.

For many of us now and for most of us in the future, being gay or lesbian is not something that we are going to hide—a fact which in itself diminishes the significance of coming out. As a result for our heterosexual counterparts, instead of reacting to this hyper-energized coming out moment, they will need to respond to openly gay and lesbian people in a wide variety of circumstances—at home, at work, and in the communities. These interactions in which gay and lesbian people do not hide their sexual orientation and in which there is no heightened moment of disclosure, heterosexual people and gay and lesbian people will be much more human and authentic than in previously constituted “coming out” moments.

Coming out is no longer enough. We must move beyond coming out to helping heterosexual people to know not only that we are gay, but what it means to be gay as well as lesbian, bisexual, and transgender. We need heterosexual people understand what our lives our like. We need them to understand that we must have the support of the institutions of our society in order to have full equality.

Fortunately, this isn’t difficult. We live and interact with heterosexual people every day.

Our greatest ally for this in the past has been popular entertainment. Intentionally or unwittingly, the presence of gay and lesbian people and our stories on television and in the movies has created a more intimate understanding of gay and lesbian people by our heterosexual counterparts.  
In spite of this success in the entertainment media, we need more visibility of gay and lesbian people in ordinary and mundane situations. People need the lived experience of knowing gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in addition to the celluloid experience of watching GLBT people on the large and small screens.

Collectively, we can create a circumstance where heterosexual people cannot “change the channel” or boycott or ignore the everyday realities of gay and lesbian people in their, or rather our, communities and neighborhoods. We do that by being open, by not focusing on particular “coming out moments,” and by living our lives honestly, openly, and authentically.

When we do that, heterosexual people will know us and, eventually, will support us. When we share more of our lives and our issues on a daily basis in comfortable, ordinary, and everyday ways, we will win meaningful and long-term support from heterosexual people.

In addition to our individual actions, we need our organizations to speak to everyone – not just the GLBT communities. The combined action of organized campaigns and individual action is how we will change the people’s hearts and minds. Ultimately, this works well to embolden lawmakers to take the actions we require.

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and activist living in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This is column #5 dated June 26, 2007 in the series, CIVILesbianIZATION.

Word Count: 669

LESBIAN SEX CULTURES: Part Two – The Right to a Pleasurable and Fulfilling Sexuality

2007-06-12T15:03:00.000-04:00

The second value of lesbian sex culture is that everyone has a right to experience a pleasurable and fulfilling sexuality. Everyone. No exceptions.

This value has operated on two important axes in American culture in the past thirty-five to forty years. First, the right to a pleasurable and fulfilling sexuality has led lesbians to work tireless to end rape and domestic violence because of how they fundamentally violate that principle. Ask anyone who has worked in the movement to end violence against women if they knew lesbians. They did, and they can tell you about their work. Lesbians’ work, like the work of their heterosexual counterparts, was both to empower women to live a life without violence, but also to live a life that is satisfying and fulfilling. Ultimately, it is not just the absence of violence that movement to end violence against women is seeking – it is the presence of a full and fulfilling life, and that includes the healthy expression of human sexuality. The movement to end violence against women is another contribution of lesbian sex culture.

The other area where lesbians’ work has been central, and where that work is based on the belief in the right to a pleasurable and fulfilling sexuality, is AIDS prevention and education. From the beginning of the AIDS pandemic, lesbians have worked to educate about HIV transmission and ways to prevent it. This work has been done, by and large, from an impulse that was and continues to be sex positive and life affirming. The work both to end violence against women and to address AIDS is another public manifestation of lesbian sex culture. It is work that we do because of our own experiences with our sexualities and because of our desire to express those experiences in public ways. We make our sexuality visible and in doing so contribute to the lives of others—lives that include a pleasurable and fulfilling sexuality.

I don’t want to suggest that lesbians, monolithically, have a sex culture that is only positive. That isn’t true. Even in the examples I have given there are times when individual lesbians and lesbians as a community have been at odds with one another in ways that are not positive and affirmative. There are times when lesbians have been at odds with one another in ways that are painful but productive.

There are many examples of times when individual lesbians and factions of the community as a whole have been prudish and sex negative. Struggle—inside and outside of the lesbian community—is something with which we are very familiar. It may be this struggle that cause some to believe that lesbians’ sex cultures are less developed than gay men’s sex cultures or than heterosexual sex cultures. Such a perception, however, is false. Even in the times when lesbians desire to repress or suppress sexuality, there has been a public sex culture in the lesbian community that is highly developed and that seeks to strengthen and affirm a broader sense of sexuality than that expressed between and among lesbians in the community alone. Lesbian sex culture always seeks to make broad cultural, social, and political connections and contributions in the world.

Lesbian sex culture is both analytical and experiential. Lesbian sex culture is verbal and physical; it is emotional and spiritual; it is pragmatic and fanciful. Lesbian sex culture is a sex culture that engages the mind and the body, the heart and the soul. Lesbian sex culture is here for good times and bad; it is a sex culture that is expressed within the community and that reaches out beyond the community. Lesbian sex culture expresses the hope and the vision that sexuality is something that we can all experience to bring more joy and meaning to our lives.

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and poet who lives in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This is column #4 dated June 12, 2007 in the series, CIVILesbianIZATION.

Word Count: 632

LESBIAN SEX CULTURES: Part One – Self-Determination

2007-05-29T15:02:00.000-04:00

THE REAL AMERICAN IDOLS

2007-05-15T15:01:00.000-04:00

MARKING OUR TIME TOGETHER: Reflections on Lesbian Anniversaries

2007-05-01T14:59:00.000-04:00

The perennial question in response to lesbian couples celebrating anniversaries is, What are you celebrating? This question refers not to the number of years that the couple is celebrating together, though certainly that is of interest, but rather it asks, what milestone is being celebrated?

We have a variety of milestones that we celebrate in our relationships. First meeting. First date. First sex. And now in the new world of increasing relationship recognition by governmental units, additional questions are appended: domestic partnership? civil union? or in Massachusetts and select countries around the world, marriage?

I think it is good and right that we celebrate our anniversaries in whatever ways we want to construct them. In the absence of formal government, religious, or community recognition, we put together a patchwork of anniversary milestones that recognize our relationships and define them on our own terms.

My partner and I celebrate the first day that we consummated our relationship – though, to be honest, the entire week surrounding the anniversary is a series of remembrances. This is the day you told me that you were in love with me. This is the night of the fundraising party. This is the first night that you slept at my house. The milestones, burned into our memory are numerous. We celebrate each in small ways as we recall and retell the story of falling in love with one another.

In spite of my fondness for our celebrations together, I’m always struck that anniversaries, no matter what their basis, are an arbitrary construction to recognize our relationships. We create them to recognize and mark our relationships, but ultimately the significance of our relationships is not found in these anniversary dates, whatever the stories behind them. The significance of our relationships is not in our annual milestones; the significance of our relationships is in the daily milestones of our lives together.

Relationships endure not from the stories of their creation, though we may revel in these. The stories of first glances, first dates, and falling in love are the stories of love and romance. Love and romance captures the popular imagination in the dominant heterosexual culture, and, indeed, they are the stories that we love in our own lesbian cultures. We tell them again and again to friends, new and old.

The stories of love and romance, the initial stories of a relationship, however, are moments driven by lust and those delicious chemicals called pheromones. Certainly, individually and as a community we parse out moments that define our creation as a couple. While these moments define our relationships publicly as they draw us together individually, they are not the moments that write the future anniversaries which we celebrate.

The moments that write anniversaries are everyday moments. They are moments that may be remembered fondly minutes later, but not years. Everyday moments are the ones that sustain a relationship – shared responsibilities, shared interests. Everyday moments are small in their scope in a relationship and in a life. They are the moments when wet towels are hung carefully on a towel rack. They are the moments of bringing popping corn to the beloved during a scary movie. They are the moments of bringing home flowers for no reason or dinner after a long week at work. Everyday moments are the moments that provide the sustenance to keep a relationship together.

In the retrospective of a life, people rarely recall every play or concert that they have seen together, but they know that they like to do such things together. Thinking back over a relationship, people rarely remember the smallest of kindnesses and the most meaningful of thoughts, but they know that they have shared a life with another person on a daily basis that was characterized by kindness and thoughtfulness.

Celebrating anniversaries is something that we’ll all continue to do. I hope that in the face of increasing governmental recognition we don’t lose our own community definitions of anniversaries. I also hope that we’ll acknowledge – and celebrate – the everyday moments in our lives together.

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and poet who lives in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This is column #1 dated May 1, 2007 in the series, CIVILesbianIZATION.

Word Count: 677