As a feminist therapist, I found the last issue of The Women’s Building News on mental illness as a feminist issue to be well-written and timely. I thought Janet Chassman’s article was an excellent overview of many of the issues, and the coverage of both cultural diversity and legal issues to be important areas to examine. Despite the cover title, “The Last Closet”, may I dare to suggest that there are still many many closets left to open in our feminists communities, and though issues of psychiatric disabilities is one of them, it is certainly not the “last.”

Focusing on the treatment of women within the psychiatric system is an important issue, however, I must admit to being somewhat surprised by the lack of critique of the psychiatric system in general. The absence of any discussion regarding the use of language and labeling as a feminist mental health issue — including such terms as “mental illness” and “psychiatric disorder” — was glaring in its absence. The psychiatric profession is permeated by Eurocentric, patriarchal, racist, sexist, and homophobic thinking that has done enormous damage to the mental health of women, children and people of color.

The psychiatric profession has developed a manual to label mental illnesses. This document, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, called the DSM, is in its fourth revision, and is extremely controversial in a number of ways. In my role as a Social Work educator, I teach Master’s level students how to utilize the DSM; as a feminist and holistic practitioner I also teach them to be very wary of labeling. The DSM is the primary tool used by the managed care system to determine insurance reimbursement, and eligibility for disability determinations; it is often utilized in legal settings and educational institutions. To paraphrase Audre Lorde’s eloquent statement, “Can we tear down the master’s house using the master’s tools?”

Diagnosis is a political tool. It has been used to medicate angry and powerless women and to take away our children. It has been used to hospitalize political activists and other radicals. In the not very distant past women were routinely diagnosed with Hysteria, and treated with clitorectomies! In the latter part of the 1800’s African slaves were diagnosed with drapetomania, which was believed to be a blood disorder, and according to the diagnostic texts, was “cured by whipping”!!! Benjamin Rush, the “father of modern psychiatry” believed that the reasons Africans had dark skin was because they had a form of leprosy which he called Negritude, and to the embarrassment of his biographers, worked diligently his whole life towards a “cure.” Other medical textbooks list the size of men’s heads to prove that people of African descent had smaller brains, and that people with larger noses (Semitic people) had certain communicable diseases. Homosexuality was considered a psychopathology until approximately 20 years ago, which meant that ALL gays, lesbians, and bisexuals were diagnosed with this “psychiatric illness.”

If the above examples sound absurd, or irrelevant, remember that the removal of these diagnoses is only within the last 100-150 years, and as I will outline below, many current diagnoses are equally offensive. The popularity, utilization, and frequency of particular diagnoses changes with the seasons. Whether “illnesses” are viewed as biological, psychological, behavioral, or moral shifts back and forth throughout history. Behaviors that are considered “normal” in one country are considered “psychopathologies” in another. Diagnoses that are considered rare in one part of the country, are considered “rampant” in others.

For example, in the late 1880’s upper class white women in England and the U.S. were diagnosed with Conversion Disorder whereas they would suddenly lose the ability to see or walk, without any known physical reason. Women also displayed symptoms of Hysteria — manifested by fainting, yelling, and depressive “fits.” It is interesting to note these illnesses, and behavior manifestations, are today extremely rare, and was considered rare then among poor women, women of color and women from other countries. Today women are commonly diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and Multiple Personality Disorder (now Dissassociative Disorder).

It is clear to most therapists today, — due to the powerful lobbying of feminist therapists over the last two decades –, that most of the above disorders are the results of trauma, most commonly physical and sexual abuse. Can the same illness manifest in different ways at different times? Do women who are traumatized by abuse, exhibit different symptomologies across class and racial lines? Can it be that human beings manifest certain symptoms in ways that are politically and socially acceptable within certain historical times? Certainly it cannot be true that only wealthy white women in Victorian England were being traumatized, but the symptom and behaviors of other women were not perceived as important, or perhaps poor women and women of color were not “treated” for medical problems, but punished by the penal system.

The DSM does not identify mental illnesses by their etiology (i.e. their causes) but rather by their effects. This means that if three women are sexually abused one might be labeled with depression ,one might be labeled with anxiety, and one might be labeled with bulimia, — if those are the principal manifesting symptoms. The unhealthy ways a woman copes with the trauma becomes the avenue for diagnosis, instead of labeling the way she was victimized, or recognizing the healthy ways she has adapted in order to survive.

Changes in the DSM are not immune from political pressure. Some changes are beneficial, others more problematic. For instance some positive changes in the past 50 years include the shift from viewing Alcoholism as a moral problem to a medical one, the removal of Homosexuality from the DSM, and the utilization of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in treating victims and survivors of incest, domestic violence, and sexual assault.

Current trends that are more questionable include the labeling of children with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Gender Identity Disorder. The numbers of children labeled with ADD continues to rise yearly, — young males, and particularly young African-American males are most often labeled. Are more children having attention problems now than they were 20 years ago, or has something else changed about our society, our school system, or perhaps how we view the normal energy of young males? Is it possible that something about the energy of young Black boys is so frightening to our society that we need to medicate it?

In the last issue it was stated that “1 in 5 children/adolescents may have a diagnosable mental disorder.” Statistics like these frighten me, and I am left wondering who was the researcher who studied this social malady. Could it perhaps be the pharmaceutical companies, or perhaps, the administrators of psychiatric hospitals? As managed care has become more and more resistant to paying for services for adults, the concerns for young children have suddenly risen. Many managed care programs are willing to pay large sums of money to support the “care” of disturbed young people, and many psychiatric hospitals have suddenly re-focused their entire treatment programs on the care of young people. We cannot ignore the role that profit plays in the diagnosing and treatment of vulnerable populations.

One of the common “new” diagnoses that young people are given is Gender Identity Disorder. This diagnosis is for children whose behavior and manner deviate from the accepted socially sanctioned appropriate gender behavior of boys and girls. Since Homosexuality was removed from the DSM in 1973, this has become the new diagnosis for young gays and lesbians. It has been used to treat gender transgressive young people who are gay, transgendered and/or just plain rebellious with shock therapy, medications, and hospitalizations in some cases lasting for 5 and 6 years. Can you tell me that this is not feminist backlash? The psychiatric profession is an institutionalized arm of a sexist, heterosexist, and transphobic patriarchal system. Diagnosis, I repeat, is political.

In the last issue of Women’s Building News, the word Depression was frequently used as a psychiatric label. I am aware that this is technically correct (i.e. Depression is listed in the DSM) and I am also aware that severe or chronic Depressions can be debilitating and disabling. However, most people do experience some depressive episodes in their lifetimes, and I would argue that, like colds and intestinal flues, they are a part of the ebb and flow of health and illness within a “normal” human lifecycle. Depressions require familial and perhaps therapeutic support — and maybe even pharmacological support –, but calling it a psychiatric illness??? “Depressions” can also be times of transformational change in people’s lives — spiritually referred to as “dark nights of the soul”, — times of reflection and self-examination.

I want to be clear that I am not in any way denying the pain that human beings experience or the horrible realities of addictions, depressions, behavioral disorders in children, or dissociation in trauma survivors. I have dedicated my life to working with people who are struggling with these realities. I am saying that it is not entirely clear to me what words like “mental illness”, “mental health”, “psychiatric disorder” — or even words like “treatment” — mean. I am saying that diagnoses have been used historically to hurt and repress women and children, homosexuals and bisexuals, people of color, people who are genderly “different”, and that I am very very leery to use the language of that system without clearly asking what it means and to whom.

Feminism has taken the psychiatric profession to task in the last few decades questioning the overuse of psycho-pharmacological intervention, and questioning diagnoses like Co-dependency, Pre-Menstrual Syndrome, Battered Women’s Syndrome, and Borderline Personality Disorder. I was surprised that in a feminist publication there was so little questioning of the institutional sexism of the psychiatric system, and only a focus on how the system can better serve women who are already victimized by it.

I believe that as feminists who care about the mental health of women, children, and those we love, we must look at the patriarchal system of labeling illness with some skepticism. We must, of course, dismantle the stigma attached to “mentally ill” people, and work toward humane treatment and adequate resources. However, we must also examine the mental health system as a tool of the patriarchy, and cease labeling human differences as psychopathologies. We must stop hiding behind psychiatric diagnoses and examine the realities of trauma, oppression and abuse on the lives of women and children.

"Whenever you tell the story of one woman, inside is another."
(p. 17)

Elana Dykewomon was one of my early hero’s –shero’s I think we called them then.  Maybe some of you are too young to remember……well, actually many of you are probably too young to remember.  Perhaps some of you are more newly out, and our lesbian herstory is such a fragile tale.  So let me tell you how it was for me when I was first coming out in the late 1970’s.  Elana Dykewomon — well, doesn’t her name say it all? — was a strong, proud, out and outrageous lesbian in a world where lesbians where only beginning to exist in our fullness.  She was a writer and a poet and outspoken about the issues affecting women’s and lesbians’ lives.  She is the author of three previous books, with title’s like Riverfinger Women ( — I will now admit, it took me a while to realize the significance of that title — ), They Will Know Me By My Teeth, and Fragments from Lesbos.  The copies I have are dog-eared, and were self published and printed by early lesbian-feminist presses that have (sigh) gone the way of flannel shirts and "wimmin"-only collectives.  They are all stamped on the back "to be sold and shared with women only" and "for lesbians only" and to this day, Elana,  I have kept my promise.
Most of my early hero’s have disappeared, some have died.  I am always relieved to find one of my early role models, alive and healthy and still doing their art.  With no offense intended to all of those who have taken other paths in this post-modern age of diffuse identities, I always breathe a sigh of relief to find one who is, yes, still a lesbian, and whose work reflects that experience.  Elana, who is a past editor of Sinister Wisdom, has produced this book, like her others, through an alternative press.

Elana Dykewomon is the author of an extraordinary novel of lesbian life.  Beyond the Pale tells the story of four courageous Jewish lesbians who immigrated from Russia at the turn of the last century, at a time when, in Elana’s own words, "American was a balloon filling with the sighs of immigrant women." (p. 246),And where "….in New York there was no room to plant cucumbers, only myths. "(p. 255)
Before I tell you about this remarkable book, I want to share one personal  truth — generally, I hate lesbian fiction.  I mean, mostly I just think it is really bad stuff, and my time is very valuable to me.  But when the fourth friend said, "You’ve got to pick this one up, Ari, it is really good.", I buckled.  From the very opening page, I was hooked, laying up at night reading way past my bedtime, and counting the minutes till my son and partner would sleep, so I could snuggle into the rhythyms of Elana’s words.
Listen: "The first time I crossed her threshold, the mixture of scents went right up my nose and I sneezed for ten minutes……Every inch  of wall and rafter was hung with bunches of herbs and what I used to think of as weeds. Green, ochre, and lavender bits drifted in the shafts of light that penetrated the  twine-wrapped stems….I was afraid of the spirits in the herbs…..[so e]veryday that I went there…..I would stand in the doorway and shout: "It is I, Gutke, the apprentice to Milcah!" so they would know I was under her protection……I was right, of course — there were spirits in the herbs. The herbs became my companions and when I was alone I started to talk to them." (pp. 29-30)
Elana’s use of language and her finely-tuned story-telling create an absorbing tale.  There is a simplicity of plot here, — if I were to outline the entire story there are maybe 3 or 4 events that take place — but it is the skill of the story teller that lets the reader feel  the tickle of the herbs under one’s nose, and the oppressive heat of summer in the lower east side.  It is art that makes us flinch from the
smell of the steerage latrines.

Beyond The Pale is a Jewish novel.  Elana’s grasp of Yiddish rhythm is remarkable, and left me more than once yelling to my Jewish partner, "Listen to this, honey, listen." I heard my grandparents in her sentences, her use of questions that one asks to no one in particular.  "I always start with an onion," says Pesah. "What Jew doesn’t? (p. 17)." Gutke thinks, "If  Golde liked to touch the bodies of women, and I like to think of her touching them, what difference could it possibly make?" (p. 65) Wisdom is enveloped in simple sentences that become proverbial turths, "A midwife has to learn to bear trouble even when it comes close." (p. 55)
The book opens with the birth of one of the main characters, being midwifed by another one of the main characters. 
Listen to sounds of birthing: "Always you learn to hold your suffering.  How else?….. Suddenly Miriam’s eyes are very wide, her breathing hard as a blacksmith’s hammer …..[Miriam] gives a shriek. "My kishke’s — it’s scaping them out!"…..but in this moment Gutke hears nothing.  This is the best, this absolute silence before the baby cries. And the cry itself, a new voice, a tiny shofar announcing its own first year." [After the child is born Gutke says aloud,] "You have a  baby girl….so ugly that if you show her to the river, it will stay frozen and spring won’t come this year." That should keep the evil eye off this long, good-looking child, Gutke thinks." (pp. 5-7)

Beyond the Pale is also a lesbian novel.  How can it be that I, a long time student of both Jews and lesbians, have never thought, really thought, about the Jewish lesbians who lived in the Pale of Russia, — where my forebears lived –,the Jewish lesbians who made their way alone across the wide ocean.  How many times have I stared at pictures of Jewish immigrants, or stood in the huge concourse that is Ellis Island, and imagined my great-grandparents, searched for faces that look like mine? How can it be that I never once thought: lesbians?  Lesbian lovers secretly holding hands under long skirts, married lesbians unknown to even themselves. Lesbians building community under the scrutinizing eyes of Cossacks, and within the suffocating confines of small religious villages. Of course, it is the very nature of strict gender codes that allowed lesbians guaranteed time together in women’s only enclaves.  Elana has brought these women and their communities to life.
Listen: "Rose was short and round and dark.  When I curled around her at night I was curling around a lit coal….when I curled around Rose I was was the one warming my hands, a homeless girl at a trash can fire…" (p. 255)
Imagine the excitement of meeting with others like yourself for the first time. (Remember?) In times much more restrictive than ours, without language or context to guide them, Elana shows us how women came together and built support systems and homes in small Russian cities, and yes, in labor unions in this country.
One of the most exciting surprises of this book is the inclusion of a passing woman.  When she becomes a citizen of this country she is known only as Mr. Greenbaum!!! — What a hoot! Of course.  Elana, I’ve long known about passing women, and have known me one or two, but I forget they too came over from the Old Country, first class or on steerage, hiding behind mustaches, blatantly holding hands with their wives.  Today in my Queer Studies classes we will argue whether indeed, Mr. Greenbaum was a lesbian hiding for convenience, or a transgendered man (woman, lesbian?), but at the turn of the last century without language to guide them, or classrooms in which to argue gender politics, there was Mr. and Mrs. Greenbaum — my Jewish lesbian ancestors!

I identified, of course, with the orphans in this story, women who left their homeland, their families, their language, and all that was familiar.  I understand Gutke’s emotions as she walks through the streets of her village that was full of Cossacks, holding her skirt up. "I remembered, " she says, "how I thought less of my mother for looking straight ahead in life, never turning to the left or right.  I wondered if she could she me, swallowing my arrogance." (p. 61)  My story takes place on the streets of Brooklyn, with a different kind of "Cossack", but I too have swallowed my childhood arrogance, and wonder if my mother can see me.

There is one last thing I must mention — fat. Yes, fat.  Elana is a long time fat activist, and she has not written our bodies out of history.  She has given us beautiful large women characters, and sensuous descriptions of round Jewish women’s bodies, without once feeling like a lesson in political correctness.
Listen: "Pesah Kohn ….. was the most wonderful woman I ever saw.  She was twice, maybe three times as wide as my mother, and a least a head taller, her hips filling the whole doorway. She smelled of sweet bathwater and roasted chicken all the time….."
And in a sweet interaction as the lovers Rose and Chava lay restless on New Years’ eve, when Rose admonishes Chava to sleep, Chava thinks, "Sleep, she told me, as if she knows everything……" and when Chava’s stomach grumbles and Rose rubs her belly she says, "You never eat enough, Chava." Chava responds, "I eat all I can. Besides, I like feeding you better." Rose says, "You make me fat." And Chava says, " I love you fat,"….scooping Rose’s belly under her palm. (p. 255)

In case I’ve led you to believe this is a simple love story, let me forewarn you — there are frighteningly graphic descriptions of programs, poverty, and rape.  Elana writes in a raw open-eyed candor; some images will remain with me for the rest of this life.  I imagine her body encircling her computer, typing, her eyes damp with tears. This novel is not predictable; I was seduced and lulled into a romance, and like so many romances it left me furious and exhausted, and on my parched lips the endless Jewish question, "why?"
This novel is also filled with wonderful images of Jewish women organizing unions at the turn of the century.  It is a personal, and deeply internal view of sweatshops, and ethnic relationships, that represents the best of historical fiction. The knowledge and snapshots of a moment in history is brought to light in a compelling and moving motion picture, where you can hear the young girls laugher, feel their footsteps on the cement, and yet, you the reader, know more about where they come from and where they are headed then they can ever know.  Studying union organizing is not the same as spending the day gluing boxes with Chava.

One of my favorite paragraphs is Gutke’s self-reflection. "When we consider our youth, we see only ourselves and the way the world unfolds in front of us. We are full figures walking among the cut-outs of buildings and people, never knowing exactly what’s behind them — and we don’t care.  But gradually we grow smaller and smaller, until we are part of the landscape in which we move, and then we find others all around us, moving, becoming part of time." (p. 65)
Beyond the Pale has been nominated for two "lammies", the Lambda Book Awards, for Best Lesbian Fiction, and Best Small Press awards.  There is no doubt in this writer’s mind that this novel should win.  Jewish lesbians have never been so visible; I have found my ancestors and feel proud.
On the back cover of They Will Know Me By My Teeth, Elana Dykewomon’s collection of stories from 1976, is a quote from a character in one of the stories.  It says, "You never know what a dyke’s gonna turn out to be when she grows up, do you?" No, you never do, Elana, but some of us grow up real fine, big and round, and out to our edges.  We find our voices clear and steady, holding fast the knowledge of the Pale, we move across a vast ocean and beyond, with the wisdom of Solomon and Courage of Miriam, staking our claims to a world not yet ours.  How else should it be?

I must confess I enjoy Harriet Lerner’s "dance" books a lot.  As a therapist I find her books excellent explanations of complex therapeutic theories that are written clearly, with descriptive clinical narratives that people can identify with.  As far as "self-help" books go, she is the person I most often recommend.

As a relatively new mother, I opened up the mother dance with enthusiasm and without resistance.  I, however, found myself disappointed.  The most obvious criticism I have of this book is that it is too personal, too self-disclosing, more about her and her vulnerabilities as a parent than universal experiences of parenting.  I want to be clear that I am not critical of her for her self-disclosure; her honesty is refreshing in world where therapists often talk down from some high perch of expertise.  My disappointment is more in the balance between personal experience and more generally useful knowledge; I craved advice to not fall into the same pitfalls she admits to.  She admits that she wrote the book just as her own children were being "launched," and owns the therapeutic "coincidence" of revisiting her career as a parent, while her children were leaving home.

Lerner discusses her confusion and ambivalence about becoming a mother, opening her book with the statement, "Being a mother comes about as naturally to me as being an astronaut."  She discusses her fears and worries about her sons’ development, the difficulty of not falling into traditional sex roles for heterosexual couples, and the uselessness of guilt.  She opens up a discussion of many "unmentionables" including anger and hatred towards one’s children, concerns that children’s behavior reflects on the self-worth of the parent, and the challenges of raising gentle men by risking raising a "mama’s boy."  She talks honestly about her husband’s cancer and the effect that had on her son and she tackles complex issues like dealing with food and sex in parenting children.

I was particularly impressed with her coverage of these last two issues.  She talked about how parents pass down their "emotional reactivity" regarding food to their children, and — in a non woman- blaming way — acknowledges that women are usually responsible for feeding their children, as well as carrying around many socially induced issues around food.  She encourages parents to stay away from "good" versus "bad" food concepts and encourages parents to help their children learn to read their internal messages about hunger.  She does not shy away from difficult questions and mixed messages about sexuality within our culture.  She encourages open communication and honest information.  She says, "…your child’s sexuality and erotic energy are areas as unique as his or her fingerprints; it is too powerful and life-affirming a force for you to control, mold, or stamp out."  However, she does not flinch from setting appropriate boundaries that honors parents’ right to be in charge of the rules within their own home.

Her theories are firmly grounded in a family systems context specifically focused on the intergenerational modalities of Murray Bowen.  She infuses this knowledge base with a feminist sensibility, a wry sense of humor, and compassion for the difficulty of this task of parenthood.  She illustrates her book with clinical vignettes as well as personal narratives.

Exciting for me as adoptive lesbian mother, is that she normalizes both of these issues of family diversity, using inclusive language and including stories about different types of families.  My disappointment was that it often read as an "exception" despite her — I believe — honest attempts not to do this.  Although she mentions single mothers, and lesbian families, there is an assumption that fathers are a part of children’s lives.  Although she mentions adoptive families, she continues to refer to mothers as people who once had babies inside their body. 

Early on the book she mentions Dorothy Allison’s story about surviving the horrors of a dysfunctional abusive family, and then becoming a lesbian mother.  Her intent here is clearly to validate Allison’s ability to be a good mother despite her past, as well as to infer that lesbians can be good parents.  Lerner is willing to color outside of the lines to validate a controversial family form.

Yet, a few pages later she withdraws back into what is most comfortable, rendering another family form too far outside of the box.  She tells the story of a client who is heterosexually married and wants to have a child, but her husband does not.  Her husband is willing to let her have the child, and will economically support the child, but does not want to be an active parent.  Lerner is opposed to this, for what appears to be good reasons: the child is not agreeing to this contract, the child will need things from his or her dad, and what if something happens to the mother.  Lerner ignores the the reality that most children in America, if not the world, are raised by mothers almost exclusively, that children are adaptable to different family forms, and that all parents need to make "what if " arrangements for their children.  What I found unusual about this case was the husband’s honesty about his position.  I found the wife willing to accept her husband’s limitations, and unlike Lerner, thought this could be a valid family form.  Instead of encouraging the woman to "make a choice" between her husband and her child, I think she could’ve validated yet another unique family constellation.  Lerner is open to diverse family forms in theory but yet shies away from empowering this family.  She tells the woman that she should choose whether having a child is more important than her partnership creating a double-bind for this woman.

Despite these limitations, I find Lerner extremely readable.  It is about time that somebody is discussing the "downside" of parenting, the failures, the ugliness and the hardship.  She is critical of the assumptions about maternal/infant bonding, and the universality these feelings.  She says, "All generalizations about maternal feelings are problematic when they tell what is normal, right, true, or "almost unanimous" for new mothers to feel" (p.47).  In a classically paradoxical way, I suspect that the more mothers talk about what is hard, and what is unnatural about mothering, the better mothers we will become.

W.W. Norton & Company, 1999 ISBN  0-393-70304-5

Published in In The Family Magazine, November 1999.

There are scant resources available addressing the therapeutic needs of transgendered and transsexual individuals, and sadly many of the books that exist are seeped in a medical model perspective that is more pathologizing than empowering.  Therefore, I picked up Randi Ettner’s new book with caution, and read it with a skeptical eye.  I was pleasantly surprised.  Surely, there are things to criticize but it important to first recognize the strengths of this book and there are many.

Ettner does an excellent job opening her book with recent advances in the biological and medical explorations of gender identity development.  I found myself reading her bibliography with enthusiasm; her review of this literature — and her translation into readable terminology — is a real contribution to the field.

The chapter called "Effective Psychotherapy" gives an excellent overview of the obstacles that impede clinicians from competent therapy with trans clients.  Ettner debunks many myths about these populations, including separating issues of gender dysphoria from sexual identity.  She also separates issues of sexual abuse trauma from gender concerns.  She strongly encourages therapists seek consultation and supervision regarding client care.

Most exciting of all, Ettner clearly recognizes the diversity of gender variance, avoiding the trap of the limited categories of "transvestite" and "transsexual" which can exclude many gender dysphoric clients.  She says, "An overzealous application of the medical model … may lead to rigid trajectories, generic treatment protocols, exaggeration or lying of the part of the patient …  Psychoeducational models that emphasize choice, uniqueness of individuals, and informed decision-making serve to depathologize gender variance while empowering individuals (pp. 71-72)."  This is exactly the kind of thinking that clinicians must develop in order to serve this population with skill and compassion.

However, Ettner herself falls into certain traps based on current medical model mythologies that are disappointing to have repeated. It is obvious that her experience working with male-to-female (MtF) transgendered people is more extensive than her experience working with female-to-male (FtM) identified individuals, as is common in this field.  She states that FtM’s present with fewer diagnostic uncertainties than MtF’s, and that by the time they seek therapeutic assistance they have a "well-consolidated male identity."  This minimizes that many transsexual men struggle with various elements of gender dysphoria, sexual identity confusions and body dysmorphia before they come to terms with an FtM identity. 

Ettner states that "… male items of clothing possess no erotic properties" which I found to be ludicrous.  The attempt to depathologize female cross-dressing by separating it from fetishism only serves to deny the eroticism of masculinity.  For some people, women and men, trans and otherwise "male" clothing is highly erotic.  Females who wear male attire pay a high price in this culture and Ettner does not seem to recognize that the totally cross-dressing, manly looking female is harshly stigmatized.  This might come from her lack of involvement with the lesbian community and with the experiences of butches, stonebutches, and other masculine females, as well as FtM’s and transmen.

Although I commended Ettner on the thoroughness of her section on current biological theories of gender dysphoria, I am personally not drawn to these theories as an explanation of gender variant behavior.  I am leery of identity being defined by genes, or endocrine systems; civil rights and clinical support should not depend on whether behavior is innate or chosen.  I believe that people simply have a right to their own gender expression, and sometimes the search for "biological causation" hampers the therapeutic process of self-acceptance.

Randi Ettner has done an excellent job clarifying the distinctions between sexual and gender identity, and for beginner therapists (or clients) struggling with separating these variables, this book is an excellent start.  However, although these distinctions are essential to an understanding of gender variance, the waters quickly become muddied when dealing with issues between couples when a partner is transitioning.  Within the lesbian community these issues are paramount right now, as some FtM’s are transitioning gender within the context of previously lesbian identified relationships. Lesbian identified women who are partnered with transmen, that are neither lesbian nor women identified are struggling with powerful identity issues.  Clearly, we are at the beginning of an understanding of how these identities overlap, superimpose, obscure and conflate with one another.

Issues of transgenderism are not well understood.  Not within the clinical community, not within the lesbian and gay movement, and not within society at large.  Randi Ettner’s book is an important contribution to a growing body of literature on gender variance.  My criticism is that it just doesn’t go far enough.

My Lesbian Husband

By Barrie Jean Borich

Graywolf Press St. Paul, MN.

What a wonderful title for a book! When I first saw it on the bookshelf, I just knew that I had to read it. The best way to describe this book, the word that keeps running through my mind as I read it, is “lyrical,” which my thesaurus defines as poetic, emotional, romantic, inspired and expressive. I hate using up all my adjectives in the first paragraph – but those words describe exactly the feelings I experienced as a read Borich’s book.

Barrie Jean Borich has written a powerful and intimate story that is both autobiographical and reflective. She is an intimate writer, poetic and romantic, yes, but also full of depth and thick with wisdom. Borich probes the meaning of love and marriage within a queer context, using her own life as a raw material for her research. She seeks an image to contain, her love with Linnea, “a reflection” or “an echo” that honors and sanctions their unique kind of marriage. She pours through pictures of lesbians at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, and peers a bit too intently at other couples at parties as she scans the world for mirrors of her and Linnea’s kind of love. It is nice to read a book about home and hearth that does not revolve around children; it is good for this lesbian mom to know that the glue of family sticks when all that hold the partners together is their love.

While the patriarchy argues about our right to marry and the queer communities struggle with whether marriage is really what we want, The Lesbian Husband gives an insiders’ view of lesbian marriage at its best. Not just any marriage though, but a particular kind of queer marriage, one designed in contrasts, self-created by women who are as different from one another as night and day. Borich says, “One might assume by the prefix homo [as in homosexual] — that we’re looking for sameness, not difference” (p. 39). This lesbian marriage is about the attraction of opposites as the author contemplates the meaning of commitment and the value of “forevers.”

Borich is not lost in a sea of romantic idealism. She recognizes that for all the talk about marriage as romantic union, it is also an economic one. She says, “if the state of marriage is determined by property, we may not have enough to qualify” (p 5). She struggles to find solid ground that defines what takes a queer coupling and makes it into a site of holy matrimony.

Borich asks all the right questions that any lesbian-feminist anti-patriarchal dyke would ask. She opens the book questioning the word marriage itself, and moves on to examining the words husband and of course, wife. She ruminates on the word “wife” … She says that Linnea, her lover/partner/wife/husband does not like the word wife; her “jaw muscles stiffen” even when she qualifies it by calling her a “handsome wife.” Borich admits the word wife doesn’t fit Linnea but confesses that when Linnea refers to HER as wife “it is a word filled with all the attention she gives me, plumb with kisses on the neck as my thighs part to her hand.” She continues, “We can only use this word if we steal it. Hidden in our laps it is better” (p. 5).

Linnea’s gender expression is integral to the intimacy of their marriage. Borich says, “I’m suddenly aware that for some time now she has been buying all of her clothes in the men’s department”(p. 121), and I am struck that this information has come upon her slowly. She debates whether clothes are just a “facile presentation of our surfaces” but comes to the conclusion that something “more than surfaces is at stake here” (p. 122). She explains that Linnea is “… a woman who wears men’s clothes, except that they aren’t men’s clothes to her, just her clothes, the clothes she likes” (p. 123). Borich understand the social stigma for women who wear men’s clothes, and understands that something more than just aesthetics urges us to clothe ourselves as we do. She refers to this as “…the choices we are compelled to make” (p. 129), which in it’s simplicity settles the post modern discussion on essentialism versus constructionism for me.

As our lesbian and queer communities mature we are naming and describing more labels that define our identities. The complexity of gender identity for masculine females is becoming more clearly articulated as transmen and FtM’s find their voice. Many of them are telling us that although they had lived as lesbians this was never a term that really defined them. They are saying that they have never really been women. Linnea, however, says clearly, “I don’t know the word … but I am not a man” (p. 5). Borich has done an excellent job describing some of the paradoxes and struggles of living with a partner who is a masculine female, yet not a man or a transman. Linnea is described as a butch WOMAN, ” … not a man, or someone who wants to be a man, or even someone who acts like a man” (p.6), but a masculine female, a lesbian, a butch. Images of masculinity in females is a topic too little discussed and it is important for us to have these conversations. Images of butch women, in addition to images of transmen, add to the diversity of gender expression for masculine females.

Although gender is an intricate web woven into the very fabric of their lives together, it is not the only thread that defines this marriage. Borich contemplates the meaning of long-term commitment and fidelity, especially for lesbians. As she witness the couplings of younger women she says, “I was incapable of imagining, when I was twenty-three, that years of one-on-one intimacy could be another kind of high-wire act (p.79). At twenty-three for me long-term relationships seemed some how easy; it was not getting trapped that seemed so difficult. Borich has learned, as have many of us, that maintaining intimacy over the long haul takes skill and precision and a flare for color. Understanding how very fragile our unions are — to borrow a phrase from Joan Nestle who has taught us so much about butch lovers, if not lesbian husbands — Borich reflects on the breakup of another long-term relationship. She describes her shock over it’s suddenness as a “forest fire where I didn’t even know there were trees” (p. 111).

Borich offers us few solutions to make a marriage work. Mostly she is simply in awe that hers mostly does. She is not judgmental about polyamory but says that “fidelity affords us an unobstructed view” and since “there is still more here than I’m likely to find if I look further … I don’t stray” (p. 80).

Borich engages the reader who witnesses her deep reverie with passion and poetry and humor. She says, “…when you promise to cherish in sickness and health you become each other’s plot of land” (p. 118). Her book is the story of how she and her lesbian husband each till and tend that land through fertile harvest as well as drought. It is a wonderful love story, close enough to my home, that it warms the heart. Unfortunately when reading about others love stories’, it can sometimes go on and on a bit too long. The details of their daily lives that makes this narrative so compelling, occasionally become tedious as the daily tasks often are, more list-like than lyrical.

Borich tells us what I have always suspected –that with, or without, legally sanctioned marriage the joy of being queer is that we live in a liminal place, an in-between place. We get to have the best, as they say, of both worlds — the freedom of just shacking up, with the security of marriage; we get to have (for those of us who want them and some of us lesbians definitely do) husbands who are not men. She says, “I am a woman who casts off the waltz of heterosexual womanhood yet still wears the markings of the female on her back and face. I am in love with another kind of woman who searches for a better word for her sort of womanhood. We love together in our world of distinct and opposite words for this and that, at once both deeply married and not married at all” (p. 145).

They say the sign of a really good movie is you can’t stop thinking about it. Brokeback Mountain therefore deserves all the accolades it is receiving. Ennis and Jack stay with you, the way cool mountain air clings to you for days after returning to the big city. Ennis and Jack have become a kind of symbol of the frustration of human love – in the great expanse of the American wilderness, these repressed, trapped cowboys live on the edges of a burdened and strained horror, knowing that all we hold dear in our lives is so shockingly fragile.

I confess, although this movie has haunted me for days, I found it rather slow-moving. My partner, who would likely enjoy the life of cowboy rancher far more than I, was captivated by the dialectic of casual tranquility and mounting tension. I can’t get these men out of my mind (an unusual experience, trust me) – their passion, their silence, their fate. Until I suddenly realize that this is an old familiar story: a modern cowboy remake of Children’s Hour and Torch Song Trilogy: another gay story with a dead hero.

Sadly, this is often the final chapter our stories: especially in Wyoming, but also (still) in Greenwich Village; in the counterculture sixties, and well into this next century: tire irons and gangs of restless boys. This has been the fate of our people so how can we not watch the screen with wide-eyed horror, a reoccurring dream of frozen terror when you want to scream but your throat is constricted. Americans are waking up suddenly, in a sweat, witnessing our collective nightmare. What is it that heterosexual audiences, not just in the Unites States but around the world, are finding so compelling about this story?

Brokeback Mountain is a rare film that is as deep and riveting as the literary short story on which it is based. Ennis and Jack are kin, intimate reflections of all of our fears of coming out. We remember what it was like on that mountain, and which of us queers has not turned away from same-sex love at some point, sure that the path ahead was too painful, too dangerous, too uncharted? Many of us also remember what it was like when we finally arrived in the big city and found gay communities, and suddenly we moved into our bodies, into the fullness of our beings… who could not want that for Ennis and Jack?

A quick Google search will reveal that many have written more positive AU (alternative universe) renditions of the story. In my personal favorite, Ennis and Jack relocate to Vermont and take up farming. I will admit it: I want a happier ending for Ennis and Jack. Not “they lived happily ever after,” but something more satisfying then another dead queer, or perhaps even worse, another lonely gay man living his life in a wilderness with memories he can share with no one….including his children.

Ennis and Jack are, of course, parents. Fathers. Ennis and Jack, for better or worse, are another face of gay fatherhood in this country.

Ennis was, I thought, a “good” dad, given the time and place, and the nature of fatherhood among “real” men. Despite poverty and a taciturn nature, he picked up his babies with familiarity, and put up with their screaming with as much gentleness as any harried, exhausted parent. He prioritized his children, to Jack’s disappointment and confusion, in a way few fathers really do. He loved his girls, even if, he wasn’t always sure what to actually do with them. These children will likely live their whole lives, never knowing about their father’s greatest love, unless of course, Alma tells them one day, in a moment of mother-daughter intimacy. Let us not forget that Ennis, who undoubtedly made many decisions based in fear, also made decisions he thought were best for this children.

Somewhere in Texas there is a young man whose father died in a bizarre accident which no one really talks much about. For that matter, no one talks much about his father at all, and over time his memories have grown dim. But sometimes he looks at his picture, a handsome man with a sparkle in his eyes, who loved the rodeo. And inside something feels a bit empty. Perhaps he reads newspaper articles that condemn the fate of children raised by only their mothers to restlessness and lack of direction and thinks this is his legacy because of his father’s accident. Does he look at his father’s deep and sad eyes and ever wonder about his father’s life, or his death? Does he skip over newspaper articles on hate crimes and bias-related violence never thinking that he too has been a victim?

In this age of queer parenting, let us not forget that far too many gay parents live lives more like Ennis and Jack then Rosie and Kelly. And far too many children have inherited the legacy of silence and shame that homophobia produces, leaving adults with broken fathers they never really had a chance to know – rugged men with tender gay hearts and that cannot speak of the things that matter most.

I’ve been taking the titles of my columns from children’s movies for the past few months, and An Inconvenient Truth, as many of you know, is an adult movie about global warming. I raise the question with this column: is this an appropriate movie to watch with children?

Let’s start with some basics: Al Gore is a brilliant man, and global warming is a real issue.

I avoided watching An Inconvenient Truth. I already knew that we are headed to hell in a handbasket when I lit Chanukah candles this December with the windows open, wearing summer clothing. What more could I learn, and more importantly, could I bear knowing it?

I knew about the connections between Hurricane Katrina and climate change; I knew that the ice caps are melting, the ocean waters are rising, and that the Polar Bears may not survive my lifetime. I know these things as I recycle my paper, try to conserve water, and store a few boxes of provisions (water and canned food) just in case (yes, I really do, and you should too). I find these things depressing and overwhelming, and notice my emotions swinging from rage to exhaustion, when I allow myself to indulge in fear for our planet, and all of our futures.

Yet, I found the movie engaging. Al Gore is funny (“I used to be the next president of the United States”) and he is an excellent science teacher, making complex facts understandable, with the right balance all good educators have to be engaging while dazzling their students with facts. He mapped out a persuasive argument of why global warming needs to be the single most important issue facing not just our country, but the entire world community, and not just abstractly, but concretely and immediately. Disregarding partisan politics, he shows how good stewardship for the earth is nothing short of a moral issue. It is impossible to view his statistical graphs and not be completely convinced of the seriousness of the issue. The fact that we are entering a time of great Earth Changes is undeniable, including increased hurricanes, melting glaciers, rising ocean waters, heat waves, wildfires, and blizzards, sometimes arriving with little warning and great intensity in places not accustomed to those climatic conditions.

This is the world in which my children will mature. We have not yet — mid-February in upstate New York — had enough snow for them to toss a few snowballs.

So I sat them down to watch An Inconvenient Truth. They bellyached a bit, and I had to promise them a special dessert if they sat still without punching each other. But they sat for almost the whole movie (I fastforwarded it about 20 minutes), eyes glued to the screen. My 6 year old, who just studied bar graphs in first grade, was able to follow the basic outline of the graphs, and my 11 year old was able to explain where Greenland was, and exclaimed in shock, “Those are really very very VERY big glaciers, Mom! How could they just be melting??” Both children thoroughly enjoyed the cartoons embedded in the documentary, although at first my younger one thought that dumping enormous ice cubes into the ocean to cool off the water was an actual solution for global warming. They are smart kids but political parody may be a bit above their heads. However, the ending song by Melissa Etheridge “I Need to Wake Up,” made this dyke momma’s heart soar.

Neither child seemed harmed in anyway by watching it; no one woke up with nightmares of the planet getting closer and closer to the sun, and maybe just maybe, they complained a bit less when we asked them to PLEASE, shut off the lights when leaving a room. Yet, the debate continues: Should children watch An Inconvenient Truth?

Apparently, the British government is sending copies to every secondary school in England. Stateside, the National Science Teachers Association, declined to accept 50,000 free copies to be distributed to American schools to avoid alienating supporters, like Exxon-Mobil. A suburban Seattle father protested the documentary being shown to a seventh grade classroom. Global warning, he said, is a sign of Christ’s Second Coming. The school board, agreed to offer a more “balanced view” except they couldn’t find any scientific documentation to say that global warming is a myth.

Scholastic Books, the largest publisher and distributor of children’s books, however agrees that learning about global warming is necessary and is promoting a new book, The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming for children 8 and up. Our children need to know, what too many of our politicians can’t handle knowing, our planet is in danger. We have been neglectful stewards, and the one biblical prophecy that is too often true, is that the sins of the parents are visited upon the children, and for generations to come. We must teach our children, prepare our children, for what they can see with their own eyes.

Our planet is running a temperature, and we must work together to make her healthy again. Go To An Inconvenient Truth for more information: http://www.climatecrisis.net

Those of you with small children will recognize the title of this column from the movie Aladdin, which my older son watched 500 times in the first few years of his life. My young guy was more into Shrek, which speaks a bit to their personalities. I’m not sure, though, if was because those movies reflected their emerging identities, or because they helped to form them.

I was talking to someone the other day, someone who doesn’t have children, and while she was sharing her niece’s antics, and I was identifying, she said, four times, quite loudly, “And why do people have children?” There was a lot of laughter while we were talking and she kept repeated it, perhaps thinking I hadn’t heard her, but in truth I was just ignoring her.

The bottom line is there is no reason that people have children. Reason is simply not what is engaged when one is thinking about or planning to have children. I do know that for those of who want children it often borders on an obsessive insanity. One look at the money being pored into infertility treatments and surrogacy arrangements, in and outside of the LGBT community, clearly suggests a level of massive insanity – especially given the intense overpopulation of the planet and our diminishing resources.

Despite the billions of people inhabiting the planet, and the wilderness disappearing to make way for suburban housing tracts, the baby boom continues unabated. People want children, keep having children, rearing children, and Disney keeps making movies to keep said children occupied. Even in the LGBT community, it sometimes appears that the queer breeders are winning although I’m sure it’s been such long time since they’ve had time to read a paper they might not know a race was happening.

As I have talked about over the last few months (yes, Mary, you actually need to read each installment), rearing children is not as easy in real life as some might imagine. In all fairness, I have known a few people who seem to find parenting very easy. To be honest they make me very nervous. Certainly some children are easier than others, and I know that for a fact because I have one of each. I think almost anyone with two children has one of each. I suppose statistically parents of one child have a 50/50 chance of getting one of the easy ones; indeed, most parents who say “parenting is easy,” have precisely one child. The rest of them, well, let’s be honest, are rich.

I don’t know a lot of wealthy people but I do know one family that has four children, all under 4, and two are from the same litter. These are babies born from surrogacy arrangements (read $75,000 a pregnancy, I think the twin is a freebie but I’m not sure). Each child has their own nanny. And then there is a night nanny too. I don’t begrudge these men their babies, or their nannies. They are wonderful men, kind, generous, and supporting half of the important initiatives in the queer community. They are lovely dads. But when they say they find parenting easy, well, what can I say? They have nannies, and housekeepers, gardeners, and cooks. They wake up to a clean house, and someone else wakes up to their screaming babies in the middle of the night. And if they do want to be a night holding their babies, well, I guess they can just go into work late, since they own the damn company.

If I could afford to pay people to take care of some of my needs — a housekeeper and accountant would be nice — I’d have about ten free hours a week. Throw in somebody to drive the kids to school, do my shopping, and make sure the car has new tires, I’d be all set. Yeah, it’s true, there is my butch, but you know (and I know you know) that don’t come free!

My intention is not to discourage anyone from having children (as if you’d listen). I just want to tell the truth from the trenches: although they are very sweet when they are sleeping, they spend most of their time awake. They are very loud (written to the background sound on fingers pounding on an electronic keyboard) and are severely hygiene impaired. They grow up quickly and don’t look back much (except to complain in therapy when they are old enough to afford it — trust me on this). Yet, somehow when a friend calls to say they have a new baby, all I want to do is run to their house and smell the new warm fuzzy creature. In those tiny feet and eyes searching for care and comfort a whole new world is born. Welcome to baby Isaac, your mommies have waited a long long time for you to come home.

I remember thinking: I would love to spend hours playing with finger paints with my children. All you need is newspaper to cover the floor, some old clothes, and how messy could it be? But when my son stuck his head into the blue paint and shook it, like a wet dog, it made me rethink the fun of painting indoors. I put the paint away on a high shelf and was therefore surprised four years later when his younger brother climbed onto the shelf and opened each plastic paint bottle and attempted to neatly pour the paint into small circles just like they do in school. I luckily came into the room when the third bottle was running down the length of the living room. Do you know the clean up song? "Clean up, Clean up, Everybody Everywhere, Clean Up…" It’s supposed to engage the child in helping, but really it’s just a kind of a verbal time out, a mantra to calm down parents. 

I once heard a dad tell a story about how he used to go to visit friends with children and he’d see them jumping on the furniture, kicking their parents, throwing food on the floor and he’d think, "Why do they allow that?" Then he had children and said now he understood that they didn’t "allow" it, they just hadn’t figure out how to stop it. My therapist voice wants to say "yet," but it is a more hopeful voice than my experienced parent voice. Like dogs that hump, and cats that refuse to come when called, children do not simply do as they are told. Some actually do the opposite of what they are told, and some don’t even care much if they get caught. When my younger son was discovered eating a few pounds of Belgium chocolate (actually procured in Belgium) wrappers included, he didn’t even stop eating it while I ran up the stairs, yelling, smoke coming out of my ears. He just sat there and chewed. When I screamed, "What were you thinking?" he explained, "Well," he said slowly, "I knew you would never let me eat it, so I thought what is the worst thing you were gonna do to me if I did?" What a great question? What was the worst thing I could do, legally that is? 

I know the feeling of watching parents yell at children, yank children by the arm, threaten them inanely, "I will leave you in the store forever," and thinking how ineffective, inappropriate, and sometimes bordering on abusive these parenting strategies are….yet I’d be a liar if I didn’t say I’ve watched myself doing them. I say "watched myself," because it is a bit of an out of body experience, usually when I’m overtired (did I ever mention that parenting is exhausting?), or God Forbid, ill.  Illness is simply not allowed when you are a parent. If you are running a fever, have a headache, or are throwing up, children kind of cock their heads and quietly look at you strangely, turn their music up higher, jump on the bed, leap onto your body and say, "Sorry, you don’t feel well….So, when’s dinner?" 

I used to have many opinions about all the things my mother did wrong while parenting me. Now I suspect she actually deserves an award for all the things she could have done much worse, for all the ways she modeled restraint. Unlike Mary Poppins, I am not Practically Perfect in most ways, and I have discovered more ways to be imperfect than I ever even imagine existed. 

Anyone see the new movie "Meet the Robinson’s"? There is some fun and redeeming qualities of this movie, not the least is the 3-D glasses. However, as I sat in the movie, with my 11-year old son on my right and my 7-year old son on my left, I found myself growing increasing nervous as the story unfolded. Briefly, it is story about a boy with a penchant for scientific experiments who winds up in a back-to-the-future-type escapade complete with odd characters reminiscent of the Addams Family.

However, there are images and themes in Meet the Robinson’s that are enormously challenging for families formed by adoption. First of all, the main character, a boy who resides in an orphanage, is rejected by over 100 potentially adoptive families; not surprisingly, he fantasizes about meeting his birthmom. Of course, orphanages simply do not exist anymore in the U.S., sending a confusing message to children who are domestically adopted. These scenes evoke an awkward tension; my younger son grips my hand whispering, "Why doesn’t anyone want him?"

Children’s stories are rife with questionable images about adoption, orphans and homeless waifs starting with the Grimm Brothers, and continuing on in through Disney. From Snow White and Cinderella to Tarzan and Aladdin; from Peter Pan to Harry Potter, the main characters in children’s stories are often unwanted, or lost, rejected by stepparents, or rejecting of a society that has no place for them.

In Stuart Little, the new adoptive parents relinquish their son to a couple masquerading as his birthparents with nary a legal investigation or a social work intervention. ("Can that really happen, Momma?" "Yes, dear, but only in a world where people actually adopt a mouse who can talk and raise him as their child.)

In The Country Bears, the only non-human in the family who is struggling with feeling different asks if he is adopted. The answer he is given: "No, honey, of course not." That should explain why he is a bear in a family with humans!! The movie, Blades of Glory (violent, homophobic, and totally inappropriate for children of any age) features an adoptive father who abandons his son on the side of the highway when he ceases being a gold medal winning ice skater. ("Can someone really do that, Momma?" "No, dear, though parents sometimes want to.")

There is no doubt that the messages in children’s movies about adoption are beyond bizarre, reinforcing the societal belief that adoptive families are simply not "real" or permanent. It’s all I can do to not jump out of seat, freeze frame the movie, and rant loudly about the evil media moguls. I have to decide which will require more intensive therapy for the children later in life – weird adoption messages in the media, or the lunatic mother screaming in the aisles.

I err on the side of caution, though I’m please to see that some parents have chosen to tell Disney how hurtful these images can be. I think it is always good to critically examine the messages our children receive from media and speak truth to power. I confess, however, that I am surprised when parents and adoption experts say they expect more from Disney – I personally expect Disney to be sexist, racist, and homophobic, and I’m always pleased when they miss an opportunity to offend.

Nonetheless, I do not want to censor movies like Meet the Robinson’s. In part because this therapist-mom really does understand that these lost boys and girls of fairy tale fame are metaphors for universal feelings with which all children struggle. I also appreciate that parental death, homelessness, and rejection are perilous dangers that very real children experience. In reality, there are children who are still waiting to be adopted, for myriad reasons. There are children who are homeless and rejected and mistreated. There are children who struggle with questions about their origins, and wonder about their birthmothers, and if they will have a "forever home."

These emotionally-laden messages about adoption and families are part and parcel of our culture. Even though it can be painful to see my children’s foreheads wrinkle up with worry lines, I also notice that a minute later they are laughing at some nonsensical joke, learning like we all do, to hang on and ride this bucking bronco of life, while we are trying to figure out what it all means.

[Spoiler]: The movie ends with the protagonist choosing to pass up the opportunity to meet his birthmother, bringing the move to an interesting resolution, one that encourages conversation and discussion. Meet the Robinson’s evoked many questions for my children, about adoption, about families, and about the value of time-travel and I try to answer them as honestly as I can. ("Can people really travel through time, Momma?" "Of course, dear, once you invent the time machine.") 

I do not want to shelter my children so they only see happy adoption tales that mirror what I hope is how they see their own personal adoption stories. I want my children to engage with the world on its own terms, as harsh as those terms can sometimes be. I want my children to be able to emotionally participate in conversations about complex issues like adoption and to appreciate the universal quest to understand where we come from and the meaning of our lives. The movies only introduce the topic; it’s my job as a parent to facilitate the discussion.

This is a wonderful film, by the exceptional documentary artist, Joan E. Biren, who has captured the passion, power, and incredible frolic that is the hallmark of queer political marches. This video would be awesome teaching tool for college classrooms. It carefully maps out the issues facing the LGBT community and our fierce unwavering commitment to ensuring political justice. 
 
Gay Sex in the 70s
By Joseph Lovett 
"Gay Sex in the 70s"

is remarkable film that documents the history of gay male sexuality at the dawn of the gay liberation movement. Frank, revealing, and poignant personal interviews are interwoven with sexually explicit vintage footage of the cruising areas and bathhouses that symbolize the freedom of gay male sexuality in a pre-AIDS world. Between the homophobic, sanitized world of the 1950s, and the grieving post-epidemic world of the 1990s, there lived a generation of men, that explored their sexual freedom uninhibitedly, excessively, and joyfully.  

As an Social Work educator, this film is an excellent teaching tool, both as an historical snapshot of the power of the early gay liberation movement, but more importantly, as a foundation for honest discussions of sexuality and values. "Gay Sex in the 70s" is a film that demands thoughtful reflection. By revealing so vividly this unexamined aspect of gay life, it will initiate student discussion on a wide-range of topics and can used in courses in sociology, history, psychology, social work, public policy, and health sciences. 

Lovett’s film is a celebration of that time and a tribute to the men who lived through it, as well as those who could not have known the cost they would pay their sexual emancipation. Shocking in parts, the film demands thoughtful reflection, by revealing so vividly this unexamined aspect of gay life. One can only wonder what gay life would be today, if not for that damn virus – what would gay life be America today if the shame of the 50s was not replaced with the caution necessary in the 90s? Oh, if all those gay men could only have continued celebrating their queer bodies and desires, with reckless abandon, proudly, visibly, raucously – if only the band could’ve played on and on and on…. 
 
 
 

This month’s column is a response to Ellen Goodman column, Figure in the Father Factor. In her column she is critical of the national spotlight on Mary Cheney and Heather Poe’s pregnancy and raises questions about the role of sperm donors in the family-building process. Goodman notes that about 30,000 babies a year are born from sperm donors, children that are born to heterosexual couples, lesbian couples, and single women of all orientations. Goodman is concerned that children have a right to know their biological parents; she says, “One person’s DNA is another person’s “dad.” She raises provocative questions about anonymity and a child’s right to find their sperm donors being similar to issues of adopted children finding their biological parents. However, she seems to identify an important issue about sperm donors’ motivation and role in the baby-making business, while at the same time confused it with another equally important issue: the naming of biological parents as Mommies and Daddies. Here is my response.

Dear Ellen:

I appreciate your bringing attention to the issue of donor insemination and raising questions about what influences men to donate sperm – anything that reFocuses the Family’s attention away from same-sex parenting is a good thing in my opinion. However, you seem to have missed an important issue in this discussion of the changing face of the American family, which is that biological parents are not Mommies and Daddies – Mommies and Daddies are people who actively parent their children.

I am an adoptive mother, and I have worked hard to maintain open communication with my children’s birth parents and I actively support open adoption records as I would support more open donor records. This is not because I believe children have a right to know their “Daddies,” but rather because human beings have a right to information about their biological inheritance, particularly as it relates to their medical history.

As you mentioned, many people will never know their biological history, for complex reasons including one-night stands and the fact that some heterosexual women sleep with men other than their husbands named on the child’s birth certificate, and that is a simple fact of life. It is also a fact of life that many (though not necessarily most) children (biological and adopted) have two parents who rear them, one of each sex; and some children (biological and adopted) have two parents of the same sex who rear them, and some children (biological and adopted) even have parents who change their sex. Children are being reared by single parents — by choice or happenstance, and by multiple parents –- as a result of repeated divorces and remarriages. But no matter how many parents children have and their particular sex and gender configuration, a parent is somebody who rears a child, not someone who biologically creates a child. A Mommy or a Daddy is someone who nurtures a child, someone who financially supports a child, someone who emotionally cares for a child, not someone who births a child they are unable to rear, or deposits sperm in a sperm bank for financial gain or social altruism. The words Mommy and Daddy identify a social role, a relational role, not a genetic marker of biological inheritance.

Your title, Figure in the Father Factor, plays into right-wing propaganda that every child needs a father. I know that you know better than this, Ellen. Every child needs a loving home, and enough food, a good education and access to health care, not parents in the right number and gender categories. If your goal is to challenge men who are sperm donors to have “second thoughts,” then the question is not for the Cheney-Poe child to be asked “Who’s your daddy?,” but rather for sperm donors to be asked “where” are their offspring. I think that is a perilous road, impacting many families, including many two-parent, opposite-sex homes, where infertile couples used donor sperm to make their family. It is one thing to have open records so that children can find out more about their donors when they become of age; it is another thing entirely to encourage donors to be more “committed” to their donations. The difference between being a donor and a father is that donors don’t have to have second or third thoughts; they get to walk away and let the parents raise their biological offspring.

Biological heritage is important — for some children it appears to be very important – but a donor is not a Daddy. Having a Daddy can be a lovely thing; having two Daddies can be twice as great. The Cheney-Poe baby will not have any Daddies, but rather two loving Mommies, and a biological sperm donor. That is one of the ways that families are made these days, apparently even Republican families.

Sincerely,

Arlene Istar Lev. Albany New York

It has been a very busy month in queer ‘toon land. Apparently these television shows that I usually careful monitor for violence and inappropriate language, are actually a hot-bed of homosexual activity. Who knew?

I knew about Tinky-Winky of course, the handbag toting Teletubby,that speaks a language only those under 2 understand. And I’ve long suspected that Bugs Bunny and Snagglepuss were both, well, a bit on the feminine side. Not to mention Peppermint Patty, the budding butch from the Peanuts cartoon strip. And what was going on anyway with Batman and that sidekick Robin, not to mention Yogi Bear and Boo Boo (what straight bear do you know who would call himself Boo Boo?)?

Of course, I was not aware (and someone with my influence should’ve gotten a memo, don’tcha think?) that this was actually a plot by gay activists, a planned takeover of America, to indoctrinate children into homosexual behavior. It’s a good plan, part of the larger Gay Agenda (I’ve been trying to get my hands on that document for awhile now). I’m proud of my people, working underground to convert young children in gender-bending, same sex love through cartoon watching. Ingenious!

But sadly, we’ve now been caught. First James Dobson, from Focus on the Family (a code name for Focus on All Non-Traditional Families, especially Homosexual Ones, and Destroy Them, maybe you’ve heard of him?), realized that SpongeBob SquarePants was actually a gay sponge! (It really is shocking if you think about it.) Apparently, SpongeBob SquarePants, who is a sponge who wears square pants (hence the name, incase you were confused) who lives in a pineapple under the sea, has a best friend who is a pink starfish named Patrick, and they are not so innocent after all. For that matter they often sit together watching, “The Adventures of Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy.” According to Dobson, SpongeBob has become quite a gay icon, and therefore the focus of his watchdog organization.

And under their careful focused scrutiny this is what they discovered: The We Are Family Foundation (partnered with folks like the Anti-Defamation League, the Disney Channel, Sesame Workshop, and other pro-homosexual groups like FedEx) have produced a video based on the 1970s hit song “We are Family.” This video will be distributed to 61,000 schools free of charge (courtesy of FedEx) and shows a collage of various cartoon characters including Barney, Winnie-the-Pooh, Clifford, Lilo and Stitch, and Bob-the-Builder (sexuality unknown). But it is the presence of SpongeBob and Patrick, perhaps holding hands as they often do, that has caught James Dobson’s attention. This video, intended to promote diversity and community-building, has apparently had a decidedly different impact. The successfully outing of the hidden gay characters that can damage the American family has prompted Lorri L. Jean, the Los Angles Gay and Lesbian Community Center’s Chief Executive Officer to respond, “If SpongeBob is gay, we want him to know he’s not alone.” Perhaps in a city as large as LA they can start a gay-straight cartoon support group?

Less than a week later, Dobson had a second opportunity to comment on the spread of homosexuality in the under ten crowd, but this time he had friends in frighteningly high places. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, less than a week in her new office, was awake at her desk when she recognized the most glaring challenge in contemporary education — homosexuality in children’s television. Although part of the Education Department’s mandate is to promote diversity, apparently the new PBS show, Postcards from Buster, has gone too far.

For those that haven’t seen Postcards from Buster, let me give you a small overview of the show. Buster is a rabbit who is traveling with his father, a pilot, around the world meeting different people. He sends his video postcards back to his friends, including Arthur, the aardvark with his own (gay-themed?) television show. In each show Buster meets different people – all real people, only Buster and his friends are cartoons — including Mormons in Utah, American Indians in Wyoming, Orthodox Jews in NYC, and Chinese-Americans in San Francisco . In each show, something about the culture of the families they visit is highlighted, like clogdancing in Kentucky, skateboarding in LA., or leather bars in San Francisco, you get the idea.

But this latest show, Sugartime!, apparently stepped over the edge. Why? Because the family in rural Vermont depicted in this episode is producing maple sugar by tapping maple trees. I mean, what kind of message is that to send children? I myself, am very cautious about the amount of sugar my children eat, so I can understand why maple sugar is dangerous and I appreciate their concern about protecting my children from overuse and abuse of sugar products.

Oh, wait, it’s not the maple sugar that upsets them, it is actually the family itself. Apparently, these children live with –we can say it because this is an adult newspaper — TWO mommies. Yep, two mommies. As near as I can discern there is no mention of homosexuality, no mention of civil unions, or gay marriage. The words gay, lesbian, dyke, and sex are not mentioned, nor is their any nudity. It’s a family, a family who lives in Vermont and taps maple trees. I mean, did they think that “maple sugar” is a secret lesbian code word for oral sex?

So PBS — under pressure from the government agency who provides the literacy grant that produces the show — pulled the episode from network distribution to its 349 affiliates. The Department of Education also asked PBS to “strongly consider” refunding the federal money used for the episode and canceled an invitation to the executive producer of the show to speak at a children’s television conference in Baltimore. Our new Educational Secretary clearly has an agenda, and I feel safe saying it is not a very gay one.

The good news is that, unlike many affiliates across the country, my local (Albany NY) PBS channel WMHT will air “Sugartime!” on Wednesday, March 23, at 7:30 p.m., This is not the usual time slot for this series (which is 3:30 p.m.), a concession I suppose that WMHT President and General Manager Deborah Onslow thought necessary. She was clear, however, that, “There are many children in our viewing area who have families that look very much like the one featured in the program.”

I have heard that this Vermont family is not only lesbian-headed, but also mixed-race, and shown celebrating Shabbat dinner, a family that does indeed look a lot like my Jewish, transracial, lesbian-headed family. I confess I don’t know many local families who look like us, but it will surely be nice to see ourselves reflected on television for a change.

John Wilson, PBS’s senior vice president for programming was asked how Buster reacted to meeting the two moms, and he replied: “Buster is a very tolerant and accepting rabbit, and he sort of took it at face value.” More tolerant I guess that the Educational Secretary of this country. I’m left with one question for her and James Dobson while they focus on the family: Can you tell me how to explain to my children why families who look so much like ours cannot be seen maple sugaring on public television in America?
Send a message to Secretary Spellings to voice your disapproval by e-mailing her at margaret.spellings@ed.gov/

Call the Department of Education toll free to make a comment at 1-800-872-5327. Press 5 for an operator to make a general comment.

Show your support for PBS. Contact PBS and urge them to air the episode or thank them for doing so. You can send PBS an email from the PBS website http://pbskids.org/buster/parentsteachers/contact.html

For those of you that had the pleasure to watch Rosie’s interview with Diane Sawyer, you know that she’s in top form. Embodying the best of her New York cultural roots, Rosie is direct, honest, clear, and coherent. My friend Simone thinks she should run for office. Her passion for forgotten children of the foster care system is surpassed only by her insistence that this country embrace the challenge of finding permanent safe homes for these children. Her reasons are simple: She was once a child in pain herself. Although self-disclosure has become a cheap trick on daytime television, Rosie is not exposing herself for any personal gain, or proselytizing to boost her ratings. She is stating her truth: She knows what it’s like to be young and alone, and she’s willing to use her power and influence to make the lives of foster children easier.

Like the proverbial telethons, I could just hear the telephones ringing. My partner is looking at me out of the corner of her eye — well, maybe we can take in one or two, don’t you think? Since we live in a state that would actually let us adopt children from foster care as an out lesbian family, we really could. And I suspect at some point we will. Rosie, who loves musicals, I’m sure will remember the closing scene in Peter Pan, when Wendy, John, and Michael return from Neverland, bringing home all the lost boys. She says, "There are a few more of us, Father. Can we adopt them?" The boys then break into song, assuring the Father that they will always behave and "even shine our shoes." "Oh to think of all those shoes" the father mumbles, but of course, says, "yes," and the children have a forever home.

I have an image of gay and lesbian people all over the country turning off their televisions, turning to their lovers, and saying, "Oh all right, Mary, let’s just go fight City Hall." I also have a mirror image that homophobic families all over the country, turning off their televisions, turning to one another and saying, "Let’s go take in some of those kids so those damn queers don’t get ‘em." And I must tell you, as long as these are safe homes, free of violence, I can even live with that. I mean why should I deprive them of the joys of parenting, just because they may have "lifestyles" I disagree with? Maybe we can just empty out the foster care system in the next few years? I’m a social worker, and I not only believe in social change but I also believe — as Margaret Mead has said — that concerned citizens really can change the world. Social Workers Jane Adams and Lillian Wald reformed the social service system in this country a century ago and, by the way, they were lesbians also.

Speaking of lesbians, was there really anyone who didn’t know Rosie O’Donnell was a lesbian? The first time I saw Rosie was on the TV show Star Search, where entertainment hopefuls tried out for their first "break." I was living up in the mountains, with a black and white television and no cable. My lover and I were cuddled in bed, on a cold upstate New York night; the TV got one station, thick with static. There was Rosie O’Donnell. We looked at each other, squinting at the screen, and back at one another "a dyke?" we asked each other, nodding "yes, yes."

When I told my mother-in-law that Rosie was a lesbian a few years ago she said, "You think everyone is a lesbian," which is honestly not true. I don’t think my mother-in-law is a lesbian. But I knew Rosie was, and I thought everyone else did too. It’s nice, however, to hear it right from Rosie’s mouth. It’s nice to watch her beautiful round face mouth the words "This IS the face of a gay parent." I know that some people think she waited too long, that some people think she held out on us queer activists for not telling sooner. k.d., Melissa, Ellen — each in her own time and place. For everything there is a season; it’s a good season to finally have a public face for lesbian motherhood.

Melissa, of course, told the world that we could do it, and we could do it our own way. Rosie is taking it one step further; she is saying there are kids that need US. That the foster care system in our country has betrayed its children, and that queer people, who know a damn lot about fighting for our rights, need to fight for the children. For the longest time, lesbians and gay men have been saying that we deserve the same right as other citizens; Rosie is saying we need to also do our duty as citizens. I am old enough to remember the Anita Bryant campaign (before her son came out as a gay man). Anita wanted America to "Save Our Children." It’s taken almost a quarter century, but gay American has heard the call and responded. We can be part of a movement to Save Our Children.

For the record, I don’t agree with everything Rosie said. I personally would never tell my adopted kids that God saw they were in the wrong Mommy’s belly and made things right. I don’t really see adoption, or for that matter God, quite like that. And frankly it annoyed me that she said that it is hard to be gay, and that she hopes her kids are straight because it would be "easier" for them. This is just my opinion, but I don’t think it’s all that hard to be gay; I really like being a lesbian, and I think it would be just fine if my kids were gay. I wish that she, or one of the academic experts, had not just repeated over and again the "good news" that our kids do not "wind up" gay, but challenged that idea that there is something wrong if kids raised by gay parents are gay themselves.

But the great thing about Rosie O’Donnell is that I don’t get the sense that she cares much about whether I agree with her on every damn issue or not. Rosie does not pander to what gay American thinks, or what the Florida legislature thinks, or even what suburban housewives (her bread and butter if you will) think. First all, as she said herself, she gives them more credit then to think they would reject her for coming out gay. But more importantly, she is willing to stand up and say what she thinks and she doesn’t flinch from her truths. And in 2002, any major American entertainer that will look the television camera right in the eye, when questioned about the President’s belief that adoptive families should be a "man and a woman" and say, "Well, George Bush is wrong" — period, pause — is speaking into the heart of a system gone maddeningly wrong. And she is speaking from one of the biggest and most courageous hearts in America — which just so happens to be a big ole lesbian heart. Lucky for us.

Only a few years ago I would have been surprised to see the face of my family in American advertising. Images of two women touching — that might portray friendship but looks an awful lot like lesbians–are being used to sell cars and life insurance. Subaru markets directly to lesbian families saying, "It’s not a choice. It’s the way we are built." A Fleet Bank ad shows two women — one visibly pregnant the others’ hand on her shoulder in a supportive yet comforting manner, while they contemplate their financial needs.

Now I suppose what is blatantly obviously queer to me might pass the uninitiated heterosexual by with hardly a glance. The ads are clearly intended to be double messages, to make me want to support these companies the next time I need a loan or a car, and yet not raise too many eyebrows with the rest of their paying customers. I am, however, quite well-aware that major corporations are investing in my community for only one reason–they want my money. In the last decade what was once the "gay" liberation movement, morphed into the lesbian and gay (and of course, bisexual and transgender) market.

So it is with mixed emotions that I watched the new John Hancock ad, debuting in July and intended to air during the Olympic games that celebrates two white women at the airport with their newly adopted Chinese baby. One tells the other "we are a family," and then they say to each other "you will make a great mom". John Hancock is now denying that it intended the image to be lesbian, or for that matter representing the adoption of a Chinese baby. Trust me that every lesbian in America who watches this ad will see two lesbians, and that every transracially adoptive lesbian will recognize herself in this ad, a mirror of immense significance.

Except for one small hitch. The Chinese government will also see this as a lesbian family, and they don’t allow lesbians to adopt "their" babies. It is a written explicit policy since 1998 and they have warned agencies to not place with lesbian and gay families. The Chinese government is scrutinizing dossiers, particularly those by people with non-related same-sex roommates. Some adoption agencies fear that if the Chinese government thought that babies are being placed in lesbian homes, they will completely restrict adoptions by "single" people (which many others countries already do) and perhaps even stop working with U.S. agencies completely.

The truth is that Chinese babies are being place in lesbian homes. There I said it. Immediately I feel paranoid, and am assured by friends in the adoption community that I should. They tell me that the Chinese government monitors adoption email lists, and yes will read this article. Acknowledging that lesbians have adopted Chinese baby girls will likely create a backlash from the Chinese government who is, I am warned, "very sensitive" about this issue and will feel humiliated and stop these adoption in order to "save face."

Some adoption agencies have requested that the ad be pulled, or that the ethnicity of the family members be "changed." In turn they have been accused of homophobia, and that John Hancock should be praised. Yet, others fear that this debate will interfere with adoptions underway, that children will languish in orphanages, and lesbian (and single) prospective families will continue to wait. This is not merely a theoretical exercise: One woman emailed me that she knew a lesbian who was outed while in China to meet her daughter; the adoption process was immediately terminated.

Everyone is in agreement about one thing: the Chinese government is homophobic. Agencies are saying be discrete, don’t bring attention to yourselves and we will quietly help you; if you don’t tell, we won’t ask. Although some activists see this as homophobia, others see it as a modern day Underground Railroad.

The days are gone when gay civil rights issues were easy choices between good and evil. Visibility has always been a complex issue, but never before has public approval been such a double-edged sword. Although John Hancock might have intended to show support for gay families, they might have placed more obstacles in our path. They have edited the ad now, making it clear that the child is not Chinese, and cutting the last sentence where the second woman acknowledges that her partner too will make a good mother. They have saved both face and money, for most gays and lesbians, ignorant to issues of international adoption, will remember only that during the Olympics of 2000, our families were visible. Hopefully John Hancock will have learned that issues of queer interracial visibility are complex and to market to a community you have to be savvy to the daily lives of its members.

It generally takes a lot to get my dander up, but Kate Walter has succeeded. In her article on LesbiaNation last week, she asks the pointed question, "Who need kids?" As a lesbian who spent ten years struggling with fertility and is now the exhausted but satisfied parent of two spunky boys, I can very easily raise my hand and say, "Me! I need kids."

In all fairness, I think Walter raises some important questions about how parenting is impacting our community, how being a parent and a political activist are often mutually exclusive, and why we aren’t talking more about the impact of parenting on our intimate partnerships. However, the tone of her article succeeds in shutting down this vital dialogue, not opening it up for discussion. She clearly says that if you are a new gay or lesbian parent, "Good for you… Now shut up already." I do not intend to shut up; I have hardly even begun to find my voice.

It is hard to find my voice, in part, because of the negativity toward parenting often expressed by my queer community. Walter writes, "When it comes to breeding, and thinking the world should be excited about the blessed event, gays and lesbians may have become even more self-absorbed than heterosexuals." Parenting is very self-absorbing, especially new parenting. Kind of like coming out. My best friend for over 25 years, a straight woman, says I was incredibly tedious during my early coming out process. She remembers feeling, "is EVERYTHING related to being gay and your damn oppression?" Indeed, it sure felt like it was, just like my son’s reading problems or my baby’s skin rash is very time consuming.

I do think that people in my life should be excited and welcoming towards my children. I think that my community should welcome my babies; I think that my friends should buy presents, send food, and offer to baby-sit. I think those drawn towards spiritual expression should pray for and honor this "blessed event." Babies and children – for many of us DO adopt older children — are simply blessings, and that many of us are willing to open our hearts, our homes, and our bank accounts to house, cuddle, and guide these miniature miracles is a wonderful thing. That some physicians, adoption agencies, and social workers are able to see through their homophobia and support us, is also a wonderful thing.

Walter also writes, "…this topic is getting tired." Interesting perspective… I thought it was just me who was tired. Bone tired. Parenting is simply the most exhausting thing I have ever done. Ever try to be a functioning therapist and a college-level teacher on three hours a sleep in a 48-hour period? Oh, yeah and be a doting and sexy lover to my handsome butch, the one who is late for her sexual assault task force meeting because she is desperately trying to fix the diaper genie, an appliance up there in importance with the magic wand. One of the reasons it is hard to find my voice, hard to do political work, hard to respond to the anti-parenting attitude in the queer community, is simple because I would prefer to sleep. I am not sure that makes me conservative, just tired.

This queer revolution is not about everyone deciding to have babies; it is about all of us having the choice to do so, as well as hets learning that they don’t have to. I appreciate that Walter admitted to having considered having children herself. That’s the point, we queer folks have a right to raise children and can consider doing it if it fits our dreams and our lifestyles. She suggests that many of us become parents at a lull in our careers, but I have had my children at the busiest time of my career. I write this article surrounded by the squeals of children; my desk is covered with drawings of our family — butch and femmes moms, and kids of all colors.

Personally, I do not subscribe to Family Circle Magazine or bake cookies, and there is nothing remotely 50s-ish about this queer household. I am likely to wear my ACT-UP T-shirt to the PTA meeting, and when childcare is available, I am just as likely to attend political meetings. I do not live in San Francisco but in a small city upstate New York, with a rainbow flag on my front porch. My kids attend day care and schools that embrace and honor our families. It is not perfect, but I know lots of parents and kids who have dealt with homophobia in gay ghettos. I need to say that if my Jewish ancestors only had kids when we were sure the kids would be treated well, my people would’ve died out a long time ago.

Walter is correct that a child would "ruin" her life. My children have completely ruined mine; the life that I knew is over. I have missed important political events because I was home tending the Chicken Pox. Parenting is not the path for anyone w

By Arlene (Ari) Istar Lev

From a talk: Sex & Gender in the City: From Lesbian Feminists in the 70’s to LGBTQs Today: A Cross-generational Dialogue on Gender, Identity and Activism Saturday, March 20, 2010 Wheelock College Brookline MA

When I told two friends in Boston that I would be coming here today to speak, one a trans-guy said, “Wow that looks interesting, I’ve been thinking about those issues a lot lately.” The other friend, a lesbian for whom much of my talk will likely be familiar, said, “This makes me nervous.” And it is into that tension, between “this is interesting,” and “this makes me nervous,” that I enter the dialogue.

Much of this talk was written a few years ago for Off Our Backs, a feminist publication that was celebrating its 35^th anniversary, just a few years before I was turning 50. They were asking for reflections and I wrote this piece called “Aging into Feminism”; it was not accepted for publication which I think speaks to my tenuous relationship with mainstream feminist voices, as well as the fact that my personal reflection was perhaps not the kind of voice they wanted to hear.

Thirty-five years ago, I was just 12 years old. I spent my time listening to Michael Jackson sing “A, B, C, it’s easy as 1, 2, 3…” on an A.M. radio that I carried with me at all times. My best friend Linda and I chain smoked cigarettes hanging out at the local schoolyard wearing army jackets with male names emblazoned on the pocket. In the humid Brooklyn summer evenings, Linda would take me upstairs to her attic bedroom, and climb on top of me and rub herself against me, pretending to be my boyfriend. The next day she flashed the “L” sign to me and winked.

I couldn’t imagine marrying a boy and since there was no other alternative I decided in my early teens that marriage was a trap that I would never willingly step into. I was liberated not because I had sex with boys, or even because I had sex with girls, but because I insisted on my right to have sex with whomever I pleased. When I voiced opinions in school, on interracial relationships, the Viet Nam War, and gay liberation (meaning gay men) I was sent to the principals’ office. When I smacked a boy upside the head who tried to grab my breasts, the home economics teacher told me that, “I would never get married if I couldn’t stop acting like that,” I made a pact with myself to continue acting just like that for as long as I could. I didn’t play dumb, so they called me a women’s libber, a bitch and a witch. Years later I circled naked under the stars with radical dykes and claimed those identities with pride.

My single mother spoon fed me women’s liberation and taught me to work hard, get a good job, and never expect anyone else to take care of me. Yet she was once very disappointed in me because I got a speeding ticket, saying, “You are a beautiful woman, and you let some man give you a ticket. He’d give you anything you wanted if you played your cards right.” I struggled with the hand I was dealt and paid my ticket, because I couldn’t give a man a smile he didn’t deserve.

I discovered feminism with an insatiable hunger. I read every book, saw every film, bought every woman’s music album and read Off Our Backs religiously. I joined consciousness raising groups, support groups, coming out groups. I attended concerts, panel discussion, conferences and festivals. I marched in Washington DC for the ERA, and in local small town gay pride rallies, holding my boyfriends hand, in upstate New York. I worked at rape crisis centers, provided birth control to teens, and cleaned abortion machines. I spent hours trying to reach consensus.

In 1970, an organization called RadicalLesbians wrote an essay, trying to define this growing revolutionary movement. Listen to these words, perhaps you can insert the words “queer” or “trans” for the word lesbian, or perhaps you can just close your eyes and imagine a world where there was no real life for a woman, “a girl,” “a lady,” outside of heterosexual marriage. You couldn’t get a credit card in your own name, and physicians were always men.

The RadicalLesbians said, “What is a lesbian? A lesbian is the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion. She is the woman who, often beginning at an extremely early age, acts in accordance with her inner compulsion to be a more complete and freer human being than her society … cares to allow her. [This] brings her into painful conflict with people, situations, the accepted ways of thinking, feeling and behaving, until she is in a state of continual war with everything around her, and usually with herself. She may not be fully conscious of the political implications of what for her began as personal necessity, but on some level she has not been able to accept the limitations and oppression laid on her by the most basic role of her society–the female role … She is forced to evolve her own life pattern, often living much of her life alone … for she is caught somewhere between accepting society’s view of her – in which case she cannot accept herself – and coming to understand what this sexist society has done to her … the perspective gained from that journey, the liberation of self, the inner peace, the real love of self and of all women, is something to be shared with all women – because we are all women.”

It was another decade, however, before I read the Radical/Lesbians in my college Women’s Studies program, one of the first in the nation. In 1970, I took Del Martin’s book (may she rest in peace) Lesbian/Woman out of the Brooklyn Public Library and hid it under my bed, and read it late into the night. I stared at the pictures of those 1950s lesbians, and I knew that whatever I was, was not quite like that, something a kin, but different. I proudly called myself bisexual, and when the lesbian-separatist in the Women’s Center said, “You can always tell a real lesbian because they never shave their underarms,” I proudly pulled up my shirt and showed her. I have never shaved my underarms.

Eventually the bubble burst. I realized that feminism was not perfect, that we had made some glaring mistakes. Feminism tried to be all things to all women, without really hearing the voices of women of color, or working class women, of women working in the sex industry. We put down stay at home mothers and stay up late at night butch/femme bar dykes. For all that feminism had taught me about gender it also denigrated my desire for butch women. I got tired of hiding sexy lingerie in the back of my sock drawer and the expression the personal is political began to take on a new meaning.

I stopped drinking herbal tea about 20 years ago, a decade after I stopped drinking alcohol. After living in lesbian-feminist communities for most of my life, I just lost the taste. Potlucks became tedious, and political correctness became exhausting. Feminist discussions circled ‘round and ‘round like our covens under the stars, and political actions were so mired down with rhetoric that I could determine the conversation and tone, as well as the players, before I entered the room. I grew tired of marching, and began to suspect we were had lost direction.

I began to question feminist authority, and wonder whether feminist answers were the only answers. I was battered by another woman and realized that violence was not a just a male prerogative. I began to read On Our Backs, and queer theory. I’ve learned that some of what sucks about human relationships has little to do with gender or politics, and some of what is great about living has lots to do with gender. I began to change, and like so many lovers before and since, feminism – she who loved my body like no other – did not necessarily change with me.

The lesbian-feminist community that reared me does not exist anymore. The small coffee houses, the sense of commonality, the button we wore to recognize each other on crowded enemy streets, are relics of another day. Partially the movement has been absorbed into the larger LGBTQQI-alphabet soup movement for queer civil rights. Partially it became transformed into academic women’s studies programs. Partially it has been co-opted, sold out to the dazzle of consumer capitalism and the lure of romantic security, represented by gay business and gay marriage. Partially, it continues onward, limping, like all of us aging crones still following behind.

I read the obituaries in feminist papers today before I read the festival news. Every paper reports the deaths of the women who changed my life, women who died of cancer, and women who died from their own hands. Feminist leaders, thinkers, activists who died of disabilities that were supposed to kill them 30 years ago, and crones who dared to die as old old women. It is the passing of an era, a generation. Those of us still alive go back to school, raise children, fight for disability payments and search the eyes of women to find those who remember.

When Mary Daly died earlier this year, I found out on FaceBook. Her death was mourned by old lesbian-feminists, remembering what it felt like to hear a woman speak about tearing down the patriarchy – as Kate Clinton said, “We used to talk like that, use words like that ‘partriarchy’” – Mary Daly was a woman who dared to close her classes to men, so that women could learn and study together. Her death was celebrated, however, by my trans-activist friends. She was anti-trans, they said, and I learned she was indeed the dissertation chair for Janice Raymond’s hate-mongering book, The Transsexual Empire. I’m here to tell you something about Janice Raymond and her damn book. I was, and remain, a very well-read dyke. I NEVER heard of that book, until I started studying trans issues. I don’t know any lesbian-feminist who read that book. I bought my copy in a dollar bin at a feminist bookstore, two decades after it was printed. That book was never the voice of lesbian-feminism on trans issues. It was a book written by one woman, not the voice of a movement. Mary Daly, may have had many faults, including perhaps supporting Janice Raymond’s dissertation, and for all the ways he views appear limited, even quaint from today, she, in her day, an extremely radical thinker about gender. She born in a different generation and was the first person to say out loud, “Perhaps God is a woman,” an idea hardly radical to those of us who grew up rolling our eyes at Goddess-worshipping rituals. It is hard to understand the world that women lived in only 35 years ago, let alone 50-60 years ago, when Mary Daly was a rare woman who actually went to college. No wonder my aging lesbian-feminist friends are “nervous.” I fear that as we race into our cyber future, we may be losing track of history, of a valuable HERSTORY. Do not judge those who came before by the knowledge that has been gained since. Recognize that the knowledge we have today would not have been possible without their hard work. Do not forget that we stand on the shoulders of giants, women of enormous grandeur.

Today, in the online social work course I teach, the female students insist they are not feminists. Of course they believe in equal rights and equal pay for equal work. Of course they think that “girls” should go to college and become doctors. Of course, they think they can have it all — work and children, love and a professional paycheck. They cannot believe that homosexuality once one in the psychiatric diagnostic manuals. They challenge me “Who could ever think homosexuality was a mental illness?” they ask incredulous.

They look up to me as their role model, but still believe that feminism is a bad word and that feminists hate men. I try to explain that it was actually men who hated women, and we rebelled, us feminists. I tell them that all they have in their lives today is the fruits of a movement that women planted with our own hands, the soil was our very bodies. The men in the class tell me that they too have been battered, by the hands of a woman, raped by their mothers. I tell them that all pain matters; women do not have a monopoly on victimization. But I also tell them the story of women’s liberation, of how battered women were called masochists who invited their husbands to beat them, and how fathers ruled their homes and rape in marriage was legal – and in some states still is. I tell them that I was 11 years old, in sixth grade, before I was allowed to wear pants to school, and they tell me they had no idea I was that old.

And somehow I have grown a bit old, not quite a crone, but no longer anywhere in the vicinity of young. I can see reflected in my students’ eyes that they see me as a graying fat maternal rendition of their mother, a bit hipper perhaps, but from another generation, someone with a view from a far. My feminism is quaint to them, not the radical edge of human transformation, but nostalgia from a bygone generation. I have become, in their eyes, a woman who still thinks that gender matters.

I am 52 years old, more than a ½ century on this blessed planet. I still devour feminist books, but I no longer allow feminism to devour me. I am critical of some of what has been done in the name of feminism, but I will not let other women define feminism for me, or dictate which acts of mine are feminist and which are colonized. I stand firm when I am accused of being a feminist by those who are attempting to insult me, just as I stood firm when men taunted “lezzie” out of car windows at me, when I dared, dared, to hold my girlfriend’s hand in the light of day. I claim and reclaim myself as a feminist still, a feminist teacher, a feminist therapist, a feminist academic. I keep insisting that feminism is not a dirty word, not another “ism,” but a movement that has made possible all that has come since.

I share with you, again, the words of the RadicalLesbians, the closing words of their essay: “It is the primacy of women relating to women, of women creating a new consciousness of and with each other, which is at the heart of women’s liberation, and the basis for the cultural revolution. Together we must find, reinforce, and validate our authentic selves. … With that real self, with that consciousness, we begin a revolution to end the imposition of all coercive identifications, and to achieve maximum autonomy in human expression.”

Women Valuing Other Women – I am here today to tell you, that I was born into a world where the idea of women valuing other women was a very radical idea. Before gay marriage was a possibility, I committed myself to women, and I do not want us to ever forget what a radical act that can be. And if you think this is a history lesson, ask the women today living in Afghanistan, living under the Taliban, what they would give to live, in a country, a community, where women are valued.

Today, I work for transgender rights and argue queer theory, and I insist that it is feminism which was the mother of these freedoms. I give credit to women’s liberation for not only changing my world, but for changing the whole world, for starting a dialogue about rethinking gender that continues on today. Like all important tasks, dismembering patriarchy is the work of many lifetimes.

Today I live with two young boys and a dyke who can pass for one. My breasts miss the sun at the Michigan Women’s Music festival every summer Womyn spelled with a “y” which takes the word “man” out of the word women, you’ll find we made into the dictionary, our radical ideas became embedded within the larger culture.

It was at Michigan where I learned the many ways a woman’s body can look, and where I learned, not intellectually, but in the core of my being, that the body that housed my soul, was a fine body, and so was everyone else’s – the gay women with the mastectomy, the dyke with the tattoo’s, the pregnant lesbian, the sister with the full beard. Every time I hear a woman disparage her body — and as a therapist I hear this a lot – I want to scream, go be with 6,000 naked women for a week; it will change you forever. Of course, I cannot send women to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival anymore, because the way they define “woman” (however they spell it) is abhorrent to me. But, when I work with trans people who are seeking to actualize themselves, it is the lessons of feminism, the lessons I learned at places like the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival that guides me in guiding them to their authentic embodiment. Lesbian-feminism taught me to love myself, my short, round, sharp, now aging self, to become myself, to grow out fully to my own edges; and that is the lesson that guides our queer/trans politics of today, and guides me as therapist and an activist in assisting people in their own actualization.

I embrace the queer youth of today, and I know they can do what they are doing precisely because we did the work of feminism. However, I still rear my sons to be feminists, just in case we don’t eradicate gender completely in the next few decades; because you know transmen still get paid more than transwomen, and that’s why the work of feminism is not over. I plan to get old, older, and tattooed, grow my chin hairs out and wear bright red lipstick. Feminism has given me the freedom to be fully myself.

Once again, In the Family has taken on challenging issues — s/m –with depth and grace! A number of years ago, I presented a workshop on s/m issues at the National Gay and Lesbian Health Conference, and the interest was so great they had to move it into the “grand ballroom;” despite this interest there is still mostly professional silence on this issue. There were two points I want to make in responding to this issue. The first concern was the use of the word feminism to represent the Carol Brockman’s, “strong, feminist-informed disquiet about s/m,” as if the “other side” does not have an equally feminist -informed analysis. Many practioners of s/m identify as feminists, and have equally compelling analyses that s/m play has led to a profound empowerment, and a reclaiming and healing of their sexual body. My point here is not to argue which side is correct, but rather to not allow one side to own feminist theory;  although feminism has certainly developed an anti- s/m theory it is simply not the only feminist analysis of s/m.  My other point is that on both sides of this polarized issue, the concerns for clients safety were similar. Whether one identified as clearly a supporter (and practioner) of s/m, or as a concerned opponent of patriarchically erotized power — both sides expressed the potential dangers of s/m play and the need accurate assessment of the issues involved, and both sides advocated for passion as integral to healthy intimacy. It is my hope that this discussion moves us closer to an open dialogue of healthy human sexuality.