Not-So-Great Expectations

It's a Catch-22, in my opinion. A vast number of unreflected bigots out there believe that gays and lesbians are immoral simply because they are gay or lesbian. Where does this hugely wrong idea come from? I would argue that it's an inextricable aspect of patriarchy, which we still live in, somewhat diluted though it is.

Patriarchy in its undiluted form, which remains the basis of our social order, insists on rigidly separate gender roles which are meant to underscore its fundamental(ist) concept, male superiority. Everything is set up in neat (and oversimplified) dualisms. Every characteristic a person possesses is labeled "masculine" or "feminine," and these characteristics are traditionally presented as overdetermined "opposites." "Rational" versus "irrational," "strong" versus "gentle," "aggressive" versus "submissive," and so on and so forth ad nauseam. And for every one of this infinite series of dyads, the one labeled "female" or "feminine" is seen as inherently inferior to the one labeled "male" or "masculine," even if the consequences of either "masculine" or "feminine" concepts running amok, unleavened, are quite obviously destructive to the entire society. And even though it's quite obvious to any person with common sense that everybody has traits of both kinds, as well as others that don't fit neatly under either rubric.

Rigid policing of gender roles starts at birth, as many a classic experiment has shown. Boy babies are identified with the color blue (true blue), girl babies with the color pink (soft, gentle, unthreatening). Instead of being dressed in practical, unisex baby clothes, colors for boys and girls remain, on the whole, quite gendered. You'll hardly ever see a boy baby in any item of clothing featuring a floral print, and very few girl babies will be decked out in overalls embroidered with trucks and earth movers. You'll see more of the latter than the former, because for a girl to be a tomboy means she's aspiring to the higher order, while gods forbid a boy embrace anything "girly," be a "sissy"! People play more actively and roughly with boy babies while girls are coddled and cuddled and carefully kept away from harm (and a lot of learning experiences). Boys are stifled emotionally very early on, while girls' emotions are sometimes overdeveloped by constant indulgence. Names, colors, how we're treated -- we're pushed to embody one or the other gender role or gender type from Day One.

I feel for gay and lesbian kids. Even if they're lucky enough to have parents who don't think homosexuality is intrinsically wrong, they're surrounded by a society pervaded by homophobia. Long before we're old enough to be able to critically analyze the ideas with which we're bombarded, we're overwhelmed by a tide of prejudice and stereotypes. Elementary school kids -- sometimes even kindergarten or playschool kids -- already know that if you're called "fag," it isn't a compliment. They know it's a swear-word long before they have any idea what it means.

Children are shaped by what is expected of them. This is basic psychology. And our society, on the whole, tells gay and lesbian kids that they are abnormal, wrong, sick, perverted, pretty much doomed. At its most "positive," it makes them feel that they have to fit into a set of gay and lesbian stereotypes: gay men are all supposed to be sissy, lesbians are all supposed to be butch. In other words, if you're a gay man, you're supposed to tend toward the "female" stereotype, while lesbians are supposed to resemble the "male" one. No room for full development of one's true individual characteristics, whether you happen to be gay or straight. But for homosexual youth, the added, huge burden of being assumed to be morally inferior. And this not-so-great expectation is reinforced by ongoing, massive legal discrimination.

It's so incredibly obvious to me that separate can never be equal. "Allowing" gay or lesbian couples "civil unions" isn't a generous gesture, it's a means for the condescending majority to reinforce the idea that their partnerships are at best less than marriages. What presumption! We in the United States are raised with the notion that our country is the best, in every way. Right. The truth of the matter is that a goodly number of industrialized Western nations, including our neighbor to the north, Canada, are light-years ahead of us in terms of eliminating legalized bigotry against gays and lesbians. In much of Canada, gays and lesbians have been able to marry for years. They can also marry in Spain, home of the Spanish Inquisition! And even Britain, from which we inherited much of our knee-jerk homophobia, has dropped any form of "gay ban" in its armed forces. I had to laugh when I read that an American reporter covering a story about "gay integration" in the Dutch army -- Holland is another nation that's way ahead of us on this score -- asked some Dutch soldiers if they weren't concerned about having to share a tent with their openly gay captain. "Sure," they answered. "He snores!"

Sometimes I get very frustrated with my beloved country. There's so much blinkered religious dogma, unconsidered, self-righteous bigotry, an apparent total unwillingness to stop wasting energy on labeling, segregating and hurting people because of how and whom they love. Just think what we could do if we had all the energy at our disposal that's now being squandered on policing gender boundaries, trying to enact legislation that actually worsens legalized discrimination. Why do people think they should be able to force anyone "different" to live a lie, either depriving them of rights or making what limited rights they do have (or their ability to keep their job, live in their home, etc.) contingent on how well they pretend to be someone they're not? It's exactly as Harry Truman (not a past U.S. president I entirely love, but a man with a lot of good sense) said about racial discrimination: "For every black man you want to keep in the gutter, there'll have to be a white man in the gutter to keep him there." We need to wake up and realize that as long as our society continues to prescribe second-class status for gays and lesbians, and preach hate at them, the whole of the society will remain much less than it could be. Time to stop judging by sexual preference or orientation, and start setting our sights on the goal of making ourselves better individuals and making our country the truly great place it might become.

What Difference Does It Make?

Well, posts will be few and far between, it seems. But the topic of the last one remains very pertinent, since yesterday saw the courts of the state of Iowa OK same-sex marriage. I always thought Iowa had more than its share of common sense, and it's nice to have that confirmed. One of my favorite people in the world grew up in Iowa, though I fear her very fervent Catholicism may put her on the other side of this issue (she may well surprise me though, she has before!).

Anyway, I'm still with Keith Olbermann in his famous Special Comment on the horrific Proposition 8 in California last year (see "What Is It To You?" post, November 2008). What difference does it make to anyone if someone else chooses to be happy in a different way? If two people are responsible and respectful and faithful to each other, who cares if they are of different genders or not? How does the same-sex marriage of two people damage the heterosexual marriage of two others who don't even know them? Why do we need to gin up tons of energy and create tons of bad feeling on this issue?

I've read the whole bible and Jesus said nothing at all about gays (let alone lesbians). The few repudiations or condemnations of homosexual behavior in the Old Testament seem to focus on temple prostitution, which was part of the religions of some of the Jews' pagan neighbors. The men of Sodom who threaten to gang-rape Lot's guests in one incident are out to show their disrespect for and power over the "strangers," and are condemned for violating the laws of hospitality in general. (When Lot offers to send out his virgin daughters to be raped instead, no one seems to think that is out of line, either!) And the quote that all the bigots harp on, about men not being allowed to "lie with" other men as they do with women, is in my opinion the contribution of a writer freaked out about (a) the idea that a man, in patriarchy, is being "used" like women are "supposed to be" used and (b) the very notion of non-procreative sex, i.e. sex that can't result in a baby.

Well, we are, I hope, in a declining patriarchy where sex is no longer exclusively a sphere in which we re-enact patriarchal power relations (i.e., men on top). We are also on a planet which is over-populated to a critical extent, and should be grateful when people of whatever sexual persuasion express their sexuality without abetting the population explosion!

I remain true to my previously stated opinion that sexual preference does not determine character. There is nothing intrinsically immoral or dirty or shameful about feeling attracted to someone of your own gender. It's immoral to cheat someone, anyone, whom you supposedly love, it's immoral to lie to them or put them at risk, it's immoral to treat them irresponsibly, disrespectfully and cruelly. But what's most immoral, plain downright wrong, is discriminating against people on the basis of whom they love, preventing them from enjoying full civil rights and all the legal and financial protections and safeguards of marriage. I will stand by that until I die.

A Victory for Common Sense

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.

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.

Sage-ing the White House

Finally another sign of life from the overloaded Pagan Pundit. Between the looming advent of tax time, house guests, and assorted challenges I won't detail here, I haven't been able to think of anything but my book manuscript, continuing house repairs, and being a supportive spouse. But, just in the nick of time, I want to pass on something I heard on the Rachel Maddow Show (9 p.m., MSNBC, Monday through Friday) a few days ago.

One of her guests, comedian Kate Clinton, spread the word that she, a rabbi and a shaman, and whoever else wants to join them, will be gathering at 6 p.m. tonight at Dupont Circle in Washington D.C., which is as close as security precautions will allow them to get to the White House, to burn sage and other cleansing herbs and do a cleaning and banishing on all the bad intentions, bad vibes, bad actions and bad ju-ju dumped upon our nation these past eight years.

There's no way I can get to D.C., but I intend to be out in my yard at 6 p.m. Eastern time burning whatever my intuition tells me to burn and doing a banishing and cleansing ritual of my own. Probably walking counter-clockwise around the house, at least! For the few, the enduring, the proud who follow my blog, may I suggest you do the same, either at 6 p.m. Eastern time or at whatever time suits your schedules before the inauguration of President Obama (doesn't that sound great?) at 11:56 a.m. tomorrow, January 20th.

Of course, the key is not only to smudge and cleanse for all we're worth, but to rally our best energies to do our part, each where and when we can, to turn this country around and move it toward its greatest potential, not its worst. I think it's possible.

The Baltic Bee God -- and Goddess

Some unexpected free time for a quick post. I did a lightning Internet search and discovered that the Baltic region, and specifically Lithuania, have a tradition of tall, hollowed-out tree stumps carved into the likeness of a grotesque, bearded man and lidded with a thatch roof, with an opening in the mouth through which bees can access a hive within (and a door in the back for the beekeepers to extract the honey). The grotesques honor the bee god Babilas, a Pan-like figure associated with fertility.

There is also a Baltic bee Goddess, Austeja or Austheia. Information on her can be found in the most recent issue of The Beltane Papers (Late Summer 2008 edition, in an article by Goddess historian Patricia Monaghan), at thebeegoddess.com, and in Miriam Dexter Robbins' book The Living Goddesses. The name Austeja appears to blend the word for "weaving" and the word for "flying." (Just an aside: the Sanskrit word "Babila" means "swift." An obscure link between the two bee deities?)

A fascinating beekeeper's museum some 60 kilometers north of Vilnius in Lithuania features a number of Babilas beehives. Open from May to October in Aukstatija National Park, near the town of Ignalina, this museum celebrates an annual Honey Festival in August (which is also the month of Austeja's old feast day). The bee is a symbol of friendship in Lithuanian culture and the term "biciulis," derived from their word for bee, is an affectionate form of address for another person. When bee colonies became over-large and part of a parent hive's population "hived off" to another location, moving from one farm to the next, it established a ritual kinship between the two farm families, "biciulyste" or bee-kinship.

The museum's website is www.muziejai.lt/ignalina/biciu_mus.en.htm

More if I can find it!

Baltic Candles

Back in the U.S. since December 28th, but despite warm weather, snowed under in work of various kinds. We hosted a dozen people for New Year's Eve, then had the painter/carpenter in for more touch-up work on the house, and now I have house guests for a week. But I did want to convey some moments from the Frankfurt Sacred Night Market (Weihnachtsmarkt).

The weather was none too clement, mizzling rain and accompanying cold, but the three of us: my spouse, his brother and I: sallied forth in good humor nonetheless. The brightly lit booths illuminated the night, and the curtains of chilly precipitation. Two carousels were in full operation, with cheerful tunes and happy ranks of riders. And our mood was soon lifted further by hot mugs of Gluehwein (mulled wine)!

What really lifted my spirits most were the many craft booths. Almost no mass-produced Chinese or equivalent throw-away stuff. Gloves, wooden ornaments and toys, artwork, sculpture, blown glass -- even a booth heavy with witch dolls, dressed in cloaks of many colors, full of glitter, with knowing eyes.

We hadn't managed to get there until almost 7 p.m. and everything closed down at 9, so we hurried along, stopping again for what we thought would be egg nog but what turned out to be a hot egg drink (fortunately just as potently laced with alcohol), and then again for sausages grilled on the spot, and then again for Belgian fries with curry sauce. Yum!

Just as things were starting to shut down, I spotted a small booth selling honey and hand-made candles. Sometimes my gut instinct tells me exactly where to go. I left the men and started talking to the couple, who were from East Prussia.

East Prussia and the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) are one region where their long-time adherence to the Old Religion i.e. Paganism is concerned. In parts of this geographical area, Paganism persisted well into the 19th century, and in some families it never really vanished. I studied the candles and found several I was immediately drawn to, particularly one honoring the queen bee. But then I spotted a particular image:

A head, as archaic as those on Easter Island, which had obviously been carved out of a monumental tree stump, a wood and perhaps thatch "hat" on its head. The man of the forest, the Green Man. With bees crawling from the base toward his mouth.

The couple explained that these carvings are still made in rural East Prussia. The carved tree stump contains the bee hive, and is believed to protect the farmstead.

We managed to discover a second one in the booth. I bought them both, wrapped them carefully, and brought them safely back here, where they sit on my altar.

One of those magical incidents that make a trip instantly memorable, Goddess-blessed. I'll do a little more research on this figure and share anything I find with you!