Well, it's more than two weeks since my last post, and I have good news. Two days ago, voters in my city (I, alas, live outside the city limits so I couldn't vote) rejected a nasty anti-GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender) city charter amendment, 58% to 42%. Too close a margin by my lights, but at least injustice did not prevail.
I did a little door to door persuasive canvassing against this measure, but not as much as I would have liked to do. My hip has been bothering me off and on since last summer, and it went out again a few weeks ago, rendering long walking impossible. So I did what was still within my purview: I wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper against "Charter Amendment One," and my spouse and I gave money to the PAC opposing the ugly attempt at depriving up to 10% of the city's population of their civil rights protections.
But let me tell you what bothers me the most about this whole incident. The folks who cooked up the hateful measure tried to use fear tactics to stampede middle-of-the-road voters into joining with right-wing "religious" (I don't consider bigotry compatible with real religion) forces to enshrine discrimination against the GLBT community. Their argument: that when the City Commission added the word "transgender" to the language guaranteeing civil rights protections to gays, lesbians and bisexuals, they were somehow making it legal for men in general to go into women's restrooms. They claimed this put women and girls -- there was a lot of talk about the safety of children -- at risk.
First of all, it's already illegal for predators to peep at, stalk or attack women and girls, in restrooms or anywhere else. Second, a transgendered person who is transitioning or has had surgery to become a woman is very unlikely to be a sexual predator targeting other women. And what do women in restrooms have to fear from bisexuals, gay men or lesbians? And how does depriving this whole diverse population of their civil rights make women's restrooms safer? The whole "argument" is not only ludicrous, it's insulting.
But the real root of it is the grotesque but unfortunately widespread notion that somehow, anyone whose sexual preference isn't "normal," i.e. heterosexual/"straight", is intrinsically immoral. This has never made any sense to me. In my by now considerable experience, whether someone is a good person or not has nothing to do with their sexual preference. It has everything to do with their notions of honesty, honor, responsibility, self-discipline and self-respect. And my gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgendered friends have at least as much character as I do.
More on this subject in my next post.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
Back At Last: Some Thoughts on the Hiatus
I'm back. It's been a long hiatus, ever since January 19th. What got me all tied up? Life. Taxes (mine, my spouse's, and my mother's: all done now, happily). Dealing with the fall-out from the dramatic break-down of the economy. Trying to gear up for another challenging year despite very low energy. Which remains sub-prime, to make a bad pun.
But I've been doing a lot of thinking. Funny how deadlines on things you don't care for (like taxes) get the mental juices flowing on just about every other topic. You'd rather be (fill in the blank) and you manage long mental "escape routes" even as you slog your way through column after column of (mostly depressing) figures.
Two things caught my eye these past few days. One: the tabloid headlines about singer Rihanna going back to her abusive boyfriend even after he hit her so hard that apparently her injuries require surgical repair. Two: an almost generic article in the local paper about the ongoing problem of deadbeat dads (it's obfuscatory to say deadbeat "parents," fathers (if you can call them that) hugely outnumber mothers in the category of people who refuse to pay anything to support their children).
Well, that got me to thinking. Why do these patterns persist? Why are we still submerged in a wave of wife- and girlfriend-beating, and another of men who refuse to live up to their responsibilities after they collaborate in putting children into the world?
There's a one-word answer to both: patriarchy. Now, it needs to be elaborated a little. We live in what is still an overwhelmingly patriarchal society, where the majority of men, whether they realize it or not, are accustomed to being the primary focus of attention within their intimate circle. Women are, so goes the party line, supposed to be independent entities, to have a career and so forth, but the bottom line remains that if a woman is in a relationship, her environment is still pervaded with subtle and not-so-subtle pressures and expectations to put the relationship first, while men are expected to put their jobs first (with the woman, if there's one in the picture, tagging along behind).
In most relationships involving a man and a woman, the man, consciously or unconsciously, expects the woman to revolve around him. If he's particularly insecure, anxious or controlling, or all of the above, then any sign, real or perceived, that he's not the center of her world, that she's not willing to sacrifice or subordinate her job, best interests, hobbies, friends, family, even her kids so that she's at his constant beck and call, can result in mental or physical abuse meant to re-establish what he considers the "right order" of things. Even the best of men in this society have imbibed the notion that they and their needs should always be primary. Even a woman in an otherwise largely egalitarian relationship finds herself apologizing for behavior the man does not feel driven to apologize for, and praises her partner lavishly for doing things he takes for granted when she does them.
I don't care how ideal your partnership situation is, if there are a man and a woman involved, the woman is almost certainly accommodating the man a lot more than he accommodates her. I married when I was nearly 30, not a pliable young girl, and my spouse is not a patriarch, but nonetheless I'm the one who moves hundreds or thousands of miles when his job changes, not vice versa. I'm the one who had to create a new social circle every time this happened, while he could dedicate himself to his work. Because I was trained to create and manage a home and followed my default mode instead of standing up on my hind legs and hollering, I -- a woman who hates housework and home-tending -- have ended up responsible for a big house, a yard, a pool, and pretty much all the accompanying paraphernalia.
Before my eyes is the object lesson as to what I don't want for my future. My mother, widowed for more than a decade, is in her mid-seventies. She always found home-making rewarding and loves her garden, but now she finds herself stuck using the vast majority of her dwindling energy to maintain a complex much like the one I live in, only bigger! She's unable to face the mammoth job of dissolving this complex and the emotional upheaval of relocation -- I don't blame her a bit, it's a monster -- which means she'll likely stay there until she dies, and leave me to deal with it all. That, I admit, is not something to which I look forward.
So I'm mustering up my energies and laying the groundwork for downsizing and disposing of lots of loved and unloved junk in an orderly and ruthless fashion before I turn 60, which gives me less than ten years. And I'm going to do it. Because I want to be able to lock the door on a condo and hit the road when I so desire. Because I never was much of a gardener and don't want to stay home all winter to make sure the tender plants are covered every time there's a freeze. Because it's a pain to make the arrangements (and pay the bills) for the maintenance of a tiny private pool that hardly anyone ever uses. And so on.
But mostly because, between having to deal with all the responsibilities and distractions loaded on the average hausfrau, plus a lot of the kind of jobs my father did in my parents' marriage (like the taxes and overseeing the investments (not a fun task at present)), and also managing pretty much the entire social context for myself and my spouse (plan events, make sure relatives and friends get birthday presents and cards, and so forth) plus keeping a weather eye on my mother and his parents, "my work" (like this blog! and my book project) shows precious little progress. Which is very frustrating, and not something I intend to tolerate for much longer. Or I'll end up a resentful, boiling, nasty rhymes-with-snitch.
Life is short. In patriarchy, it's hard even for women with the privilege of higher education and some means to make sure it's what they want, as well as what those around them want.
The struggle continues.
But I've been doing a lot of thinking. Funny how deadlines on things you don't care for (like taxes) get the mental juices flowing on just about every other topic. You'd rather be (fill in the blank) and you manage long mental "escape routes" even as you slog your way through column after column of (mostly depressing) figures.
Two things caught my eye these past few days. One: the tabloid headlines about singer Rihanna going back to her abusive boyfriend even after he hit her so hard that apparently her injuries require surgical repair. Two: an almost generic article in the local paper about the ongoing problem of deadbeat dads (it's obfuscatory to say deadbeat "parents," fathers (if you can call them that) hugely outnumber mothers in the category of people who refuse to pay anything to support their children).
Well, that got me to thinking. Why do these patterns persist? Why are we still submerged in a wave of wife- and girlfriend-beating, and another of men who refuse to live up to their responsibilities after they collaborate in putting children into the world?
There's a one-word answer to both: patriarchy. Now, it needs to be elaborated a little. We live in what is still an overwhelmingly patriarchal society, where the majority of men, whether they realize it or not, are accustomed to being the primary focus of attention within their intimate circle. Women are, so goes the party line, supposed to be independent entities, to have a career and so forth, but the bottom line remains that if a woman is in a relationship, her environment is still pervaded with subtle and not-so-subtle pressures and expectations to put the relationship first, while men are expected to put their jobs first (with the woman, if there's one in the picture, tagging along behind).
In most relationships involving a man and a woman, the man, consciously or unconsciously, expects the woman to revolve around him. If he's particularly insecure, anxious or controlling, or all of the above, then any sign, real or perceived, that he's not the center of her world, that she's not willing to sacrifice or subordinate her job, best interests, hobbies, friends, family, even her kids so that she's at his constant beck and call, can result in mental or physical abuse meant to re-establish what he considers the "right order" of things. Even the best of men in this society have imbibed the notion that they and their needs should always be primary. Even a woman in an otherwise largely egalitarian relationship finds herself apologizing for behavior the man does not feel driven to apologize for, and praises her partner lavishly for doing things he takes for granted when she does them.
I don't care how ideal your partnership situation is, if there are a man and a woman involved, the woman is almost certainly accommodating the man a lot more than he accommodates her. I married when I was nearly 30, not a pliable young girl, and my spouse is not a patriarch, but nonetheless I'm the one who moves hundreds or thousands of miles when his job changes, not vice versa. I'm the one who had to create a new social circle every time this happened, while he could dedicate himself to his work. Because I was trained to create and manage a home and followed my default mode instead of standing up on my hind legs and hollering, I -- a woman who hates housework and home-tending -- have ended up responsible for a big house, a yard, a pool, and pretty much all the accompanying paraphernalia.
Before my eyes is the object lesson as to what I don't want for my future. My mother, widowed for more than a decade, is in her mid-seventies. She always found home-making rewarding and loves her garden, but now she finds herself stuck using the vast majority of her dwindling energy to maintain a complex much like the one I live in, only bigger! She's unable to face the mammoth job of dissolving this complex and the emotional upheaval of relocation -- I don't blame her a bit, it's a monster -- which means she'll likely stay there until she dies, and leave me to deal with it all. That, I admit, is not something to which I look forward.
So I'm mustering up my energies and laying the groundwork for downsizing and disposing of lots of loved and unloved junk in an orderly and ruthless fashion before I turn 60, which gives me less than ten years. And I'm going to do it. Because I want to be able to lock the door on a condo and hit the road when I so desire. Because I never was much of a gardener and don't want to stay home all winter to make sure the tender plants are covered every time there's a freeze. Because it's a pain to make the arrangements (and pay the bills) for the maintenance of a tiny private pool that hardly anyone ever uses. And so on.
But mostly because, between having to deal with all the responsibilities and distractions loaded on the average hausfrau, plus a lot of the kind of jobs my father did in my parents' marriage (like the taxes and overseeing the investments (not a fun task at present)), and also managing pretty much the entire social context for myself and my spouse (plan events, make sure relatives and friends get birthday presents and cards, and so forth) plus keeping a weather eye on my mother and his parents, "my work" (like this blog! and my book project) shows precious little progress. Which is very frustrating, and not something I intend to tolerate for much longer. Or I'll end up a resentful, boiling, nasty rhymes-with-snitch.
Life is short. In patriarchy, it's hard even for women with the privilege of higher education and some means to make sure it's what they want, as well as what those around them want.
The struggle continues.
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