To be, or not to be

I originally wrote this in 2019. Today I attended a pro-choice solidarity rally. Fortunately, our abortion laws in Aotearoa have been updated since I wrote this. However, the USA has regressed and the constitutional right to abortion healthcare has been revoked. This leaves individual states to make the choice, and some have immediately outlawed abortion under any circumstances. We marched to the US Consulate to send a message of solidarity to our American friends. And we were reminded to be on guard in this country as nothing is ever guaranteed and right wing politicians are already making unpleasant noises.

I also want to note that whilst I have referred to women in this post, I acknowledge that the right to access to abortion healthcare is relevant to people of all genders. 

At the moment, women in New Zealand are looking on as states in the USA enact the most restrictive laws against terminating a pregnancy we have ever seen.

What we fail to remember is that New Zealand's laws are not that liberal, either. We gasp in horror at the idea that young girls cannot have a pregnancy ended even in the case of it being the result of rape or incest, but we forget that those things by themselves are not ground for a termination in New Zealand.

The 'abortion debate' is one that throws up so many issues for me. I have come from a background of Christian belief that life starts from conception - although I don't know where that's backed up in the Scriptures. I have always had an uneasy relationship with the concept of terminating a pregnancy.

The recent resurgence in interest in the law around termination has come hot on the heels of a dear friend confirming her own pregnancy.

This is a very much wanted, and planned for, first baby. We are already starting to use the language of hope - at 6 weeks gestation we are referring to it as a 'baby' when it is nothing more than a clump of pulsating tissue.

This just emphasises to me that what we feel about something makes it what it is. Language matters, and right now, it matters more than anything.

Sitting alongside my friend's much wanted and already dearly loved first baby are the stories of women for whom this clump of cells was a danger. Danger is a strong word, but I will use it, even if it wasn't a life or death situation. Or maybe it was, just not in the ways we commonly describe it.

I know first hand the long term effect children have on your life. The 'motherhood penalty' isn't some theory that someone dreamed up. Its a real thing effecting the economic outcomes for women the world over. We cannot pretend that having a baby is just a physical manifestation and consequence of a physical act. We must acknowledge the far reaching economic and social impacts it currently has on the people who carry them - women.

I have four children whom I would not change for the world. They are delightful, clever, beautiful individuals. However, in a capitalist world, I cannot discount the economic cost I have borne for taking time out of the paid workforce to raise four children until the youngest was six years old.

As I moved away from my original religious ideology, and started to hear more of women's stories, I started to understand about the origins of life.

Life actually begins with the woman who is growing it. If she is not ready, if she hasn't met her potential yet, it is profoundly unfair to ask her for her life be usurped by someone else's.

I appreciated the meme that stated "what if that baby was going to cure cancer?" and the response that "what if the woman carrying that baby was going to cure cancer, but she didn't finish college because she got pregnant and and couldn't end the pregnancy?"

I feel profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of having a termination. Fortunately, I will not be in a position to have to make that choice, but I can appreciate what a difficult choice it is. 

I am also in a position where I believe that a woman's decision about whether or not she wishes to be pregnant trumps everything.

My dear friend is pregnant with a baby.

The baby is a wish. An idea. A dream. A future.

But they are not all like this.

Some are pregnancies that are wrong. Costly. Deadly.

They are pregnancies. Not babies.

Babies are our ideas, dreams, futures.

And pregnancies must not continue at the expense the lives of women who bear them.

We could be heroes.

Back in the late 90s we'd occasionally cruise around the streets of the Auckland's CBD with your mate John and his girlfriend. 

One night as we drove up Queen Street, you spotted a group of young women at the edge of Aotea Square. The scene unfolding in front of us appeared to be that they were being harassed by a group of young men nearby.

You and John decided that you would jump out of the car and follow the young women on foot to avert any danger. I drove around to the other side of the Town Hall ready to meet you once you were satisfied that the women were safe.

It's much harder to be the hero, though, when the necessity strikes closer to home.

When the outcome won't be grateful thanks and adulation but potential anger and heartbreak.

When the risk is higher but the costs are greater.

When there is nobody to see you.

It doesn't stop it being the right thing, though.

Does it?

And on it goes

When I last wrote, we'd been doing an unprecedented nationwide lockdown to stop the spread of COVID 19. We did slowly emerge from that state - I can't even remember when, now - and life slowly went back to normal. 

Personally, I had enjoyed being in lockdown. It meant quality time for my family. It meant no rushing. No two hours worth of commute. I had anxious moments (as per prior post) but mostly it was a positive experience. I found moving back into a workplace where most people had choices about being there or not when I didn't, somewhat challenging. I, and many others, experienced a kind of lockdown grief. My 13yo daughter said she cried because she had enjoyed the time she had spent (at her father's house) with her 18yo brother, and now he was headed back to work and his social and love life, she would miss him terribly. 

We ended up in what our government called COVID-19 Alert Level 1 - which mostly meant life as normal for most of us. We went back to our normal movements. Nyah and I even got in a roadie to Hawkes Bay. 

After 102 days of freedom, it all (sort of) came crashing down. Community cases were discovered, so Auckland went into another lockdown. I say 'lockdown lite' as, unlike the first time around, many businesses could still operate and people could still work in some industries. For us, though, it was working from home and kids home from school again. It was non-standard kids lunches, and again, the joy of sleeping an extra hour.

But it hasn't been so much fun this time around. The novelty has worn off. The rest of the country are cautiously business as usual (they are in "Level 2") and that feels a bit crappy to Aucklanders confined to home. Kids have had to cycle rapidly back into online learning, but will likely have to cycle rapidly out of it again. My 11yo son is in his first year at intermediate, and has spent nearly two months of it in various states of lockdown, doing online learning. Its tough for a kid in a new school trying to forge new friendships. He has found much solace in online gaming, where he can remain connected to the friends he cannot see while stuck at home. If I don't feel guilty about the online school work he isn't doing, then there's always feeling guilty about online gaming to fill the gap. Miss 13 has gotten taller than me, is cheerfully resilient, emotionally intelligent, and offers hugs readily. She is maybe doing the best of all of us.

Nyah's eczema and poor sleep betray her levels of stress, but she is calm and comforting in a crisis, and we can count on her to cook her way out of our malaise.

As for me - the bogeyman of anxiety is a constant companion.

This isn't 'feeling anxious.' It isn't 'feeling worried.' Its not the intense sensation of 'fight or flight' that marks an anxious moment, and then passes quickly.

Its an ongoing sensation of not just feeling anxious, but my whole body reacting to and pushing against it in a way that manifest physical symptoms. Its ongoing tiredness, the perception of breathlessness, the feeling of concrete in your shoes as you move through your day, the loss of interest in anything other than mindless scrolling through social media, the inability to hold onto snippets of information and the need to have everything written down, the difficulty focusing.

The worst part is the knowledge that the tight chest, the shortness of breath, the fuzzy head are not harbingers of any sinister health events, but they are nonetheless very real sensations. The worst part is knowing this, but that the reality is that it is still exhausting day to day work it to constantly affirm this to myself, leaving little energy to function normally in the middle of - in case we'd forgotten it was happening around us - a pandemic the likes of which we have not seen in over 100 years. The worst part is that there is still a sense of shame that while there is 'nothing wrong with me' there is still something very, very ...well...wrong with me.

Today we learned that we are in this 'lockdown lite' for another six days. Then we move back into the steps of 'business as usual.' The steps loss and gain. 

Today I went for a skin check at a GP who is also a skin cancer specialist. He was in full PPE, and the site was managed to minimise contact between clients.

"What a year its been." He said. "Pandemics usually take eighteen months to work through," he said matter of factly. 

"It looks like we're in for another year of this."

ANZAC Day in the age of COVID

At the time of writing, our pandemic lockdown is in week 5. We are not allowed to leave home except to go shopping for essential supplies, or to go to the doctor or chemist. We are allowed to exercise outside of our homes, by walking and biking in our neighbourhoods. We have bent the rules a tiny bit by driving to the local cemetery three kilometers away, where we can wander freely while still observing the requisite physical distancing mandated by the government.

One of the pandemic initiatives to spring up worldwide was to encourage people to put teddy bears in windows as a nod to the book 'We're going on a bear hunt' by Michael Rosen. While small children cannot even play on their local playground, they could go for a 'bear hunt' around their local neighbourhood.

As Easter approached, the Prime Minister assured children that the Easter Bunny (and the Tooth Fairy) was an essential worker, so was allowed to work over Easter - but added a reminder that he might be a bit busy, so might not make it to their house (and parents who hadn't stocked up on Easter eggs pre lockdown breathed a sigh of relief)

Easter eggs started finding their way into windows or in chalk drawings on footpaths and fences. A favourite in our very Westie neighbourhood was 'Happy Easter Egg" Unintentional, I'm sure, but amusing nonetheless.

Saturday was ANZAC Day, and in a time where gatherings of any sort are not allowed, people went to the end of their street at 6am for their own personal 'dawn service.'  There were reports of a bugle being heard across the whole suburb playing Reveille. People decorated their fences and windows with poppies. The creativity was joy to behold, but do people really know what this all means?

I do not get up for dawn anything, and ANZAC Day is no different. The few years after my Dad died it became a necessary part of my grieving process, but the pain faded and the sense of duty was no longer there.

On ANZAC Day itself, Nyah and I went up to the local cemetery and visited the memorial there. It is always interesting to observe social practices, whether or not we choose to partake in them. I was drawn to an information board which talked about the construction of the memorial, and about some of the adjacent graves. The Browne family lost four of their five sons. It is a loss incomprehensible to us today.

Just over a week prior to lockdown coming into effect, we visted Te Rau Aroha - a museum dedicated to Māori contribution to the armed forces, and the heavy price they have paid. It was a solemn and contemplative place to visit. My eldest son is now eighteen years old - the age he could have been conscripted into the armed forces and sent into the unknown - and possibly to die - like so many young Māori men in the service of their colonisers. Like the Browne brothers were. Parents the world over have experienced this heartbreak. Here we are locked into our 'bubbles'* to fight a war on a pathogen, but we have each other and we have relative comfort and safety.

As ANZAC Day dawned, I felt the grief of humanity. Grief for the boys who never came home a hundred years ago. Grief for my own father's lost youth and what it took from my whole family. Grief for my own son who is safe but who I have not seen for over five weeks. I miss him.

We have no concept of the losses families have experienced through war - especially World War I. Maybe the nationalistic fervor, poppy imagery and silhouettes of soldiers with heads bowed are us trying to make sense of it all.

We cry, we sing, we get up at dawn, and in the middle of a pandemic, we put poppies on our fences instead of in our lapels.




*'Bubble' refers to the small unit of people we can be a part of during the pandemic lockdown - our own 'bubble' is myself, Nyah and my two youngest children who live with us half of the time. Due to their movement between homes, our bubble technically also includes my two eldest children, their father and his partner. Our bubble does not extend beyond this, and we are not able to see any other family or friends. 

Back for the pandemic

It's a strange place we find ourselves in.

We are in the middle of a global pandemic not seen since the Spanish flu of 1918. We are three weeks into a mandatory lockdown where we are not allowed to leave the house except to go for exercise, go to the supermarket or go to the doctor or chemist. We are working in our homes, and the kids are doing online learning. The supermarket has queues of people standing two metres apart as they restrict access in order for us to practice appropriate physical distancing once inside. People are wearing face masks. We are trying to protect ourselves from a respiratory illness that ravages the lungs and leaves its victims gasping for breath.

I felt a weight of responsibility to record the experience of being on the inside of such a historic event. Pandemics like this have changed the trajectory of life on earth in the past, and now we have so many ways of recording our experiences of it this time, it felt like something I ought to do.

But I procrastinated. Where would I write these things? I felt like recording what was happening on here would be a divergence from my lane of grappling with panic disorder and queer identity.

Then today came the collision. The physiological manifestation of anxiety came to town, and it was time to write a Pandemic Diary.

I've always had health anxiety. At the beginning of the worst manifestation of panic and anxiety, I went to an A&E doctor who gave me a script for lorazepam and told me to get a hobby.

In the early 2010s, H5N1 bird flu reared its head, and I freaked out. Alongside an emergency kit I assembled a bird flu kit for a potential lockdown. There were vegetable seeds in there - I envisaged turning the front yard into a vegetable plot.

Then on 25 March 2020 we DID go into lockdown. As part of an email exchange with my ex-husband, I said "That bird flu kit doesn't look so whackadoodle now, does it? LOL"

Just before this, the anxiety was on the rise.

On Saturday 14 March, Nyah and I went for a trip to Northland. We saw the last cruise ship in the harbour at Paihia. Entry to the country became more restricted. On Monday we got onto a boat with a bunch of tourists and sanitised our hands and tried not to touch our faces. At Otehei Bay on Urupukapuka Island, school-aged children from Europe (presumably) frolicked in the still water on a late summer day. I wondered if they would get home, and if they did, what would await them there? Europe was being ravaged by this new and dangerous virus. It was bittersweet to watch their joyous play.

I woke up that day slightly dizzy and a little bit nauseous from the anxiety. That night I drank too much at a backpacker bar to try to release tension that had built up in all my muscles.

The Sunday after this I started to worry about a deadly virus on the loose, and we had possible exposure vectors through a kid working in fast food, an adult working with kids, and adult working in retail and kids at school.

My 13-year-old daughter wanted to go ice skating with her friends that weekend, and I worried about it. She assured me the skating rink was only letting in restricted numbers. The virus had no community transmission in New Zealand yet. I waited to see what the other parents would do. In the end, my daughter said that nobody was going to go, and maybe they'd go another time. My son kicked a ball around the park with his friend next door, but I wouldn't let him go to their house. As the boys headed back to their respective house, I was hanging out washing. "Two metres!" I yelled to remind them about our new physical distancing rules.

And then we were locked down and I cried with the relief. It's hard having all of us trying to work and learn and just cope in a small space, but I felt safe. We are mostly happily contained within our bubble, as the authorities to refer to it as. About once a week, I go to the supermarket. The first time was a disaster. We are only to have one person per household go shopping. I went to the New World, which is normally one of Nyah's happy places. We stroll the aisles, me pushing the trolley, while she creates culinary masterpieces in her head as she finds ingredients as she walks. But now it was just me, queuing to get in, lots of items missing off the shelves, the stressor of finding what you need as well as keeping a two-metre distance from other shoppers, messaging Nyah to check I've got the right meat, the right chia, the right tea, and paying with EFTPOS after someone behind a perspex screen scans your groceries and packs them in the trolley. When your EFTPOS card declines and you have to get your partner to rescue you by coming down with her card, the anxiety ramps up. It's a surreal experience.

Then you have to get your groceries into your house. Messaging in the public arena has indicated this virus lives on surfaces for up to 72 hours. So now coming home from the supermarket means you wipe everything down with a bleach solution, and the shopper puts their clothes in the wash and has a shower right away.

A glass of wine usually sorts out the tensions of the weird grocery shopping trip. Its a blip in a peaceful existence.

We are financially secure (for now) with nothing to spend our money on except for 'essential' goods we can get online. That means wine, fake booze, sweatshirts, hot cross buns and bread. We have a lovely outlook across a public park and can walk around our neighbourhood. Our Prime Minister is an exceptional leader who has been decisive and has, so far, made us successful in our fight against this brutal disease. We are doing ok and there wasn't much to worry about in our little bubble.

But then an old friend came to visit.

On Tuesday I went for a walk alone. I walked up a hill and pushed myself. I hyperventilated, and remembered that one of my issues was a form of agoraphobia...which isn't a 'fear of open spaces...'
- its a fear of something awful happening in the open spaces and nobody being around to help me. What if there really is something wrong with my lungs? What if I actually can't get enough breath? None of these are rational things to think. A few months ago I'd gone back to work too soon after a cold, and felt out of breath after a walk down the hill to get lunch. I had freaked out, so Nyah picked me up and took me to A&E, where I was diagnosed as having perfectly healthy and functioning heart and lungs, and my main issue was simply going back to work too soon after a viral illness.

Today I finally hit the wall. The full physiological effects of panic disorder all came out to play thanks to an earache. I periodically get an earache on the right side of my head. All my logic tells me this is an otorhinolaryngological issue. My anxiety tells that I am going to die of a brain aneurysm. It takes nearly all the energy I have to keep the latter in check.

So here's how it feels. Tight chest. A feeling that your breath is restricted. Pain in the side of the head. Fuzziness behind the eyes. Tight throat.

It is actually impossible to put into words just how this feels. Its fake impending doom that feels real because it's actually happening in your body. I've never fainted in my life but spent plenty of time worrying that I will. It's irrational and I know it, but it feels very real. It's exhausting and it takes focus to manage it.

And then there's a level of shame. I am a pretty healthy, if a little bit overweight, adult. I have nothing wrong with me. Nothing. Ok, maybe a slightly elevated heart rate that my doctor attributes to the "little bit overweight." But nothing else. So to be struggling to get my work done because I'm focusing on getting every breath into my lungs is ridiculous. Ridiculous.

I feel like past trauma has made me more resilient generally. I have been through some big upheavals in the last ten years, and I've gotten through and been ok.

But anxiety (and its black dog brother, depression) is a sneaky bastard and will catch you in the unguarded nooks and crannies.

Its the middle of a global pandemic, and I'm not afraid of getting a horrific respiratory disease. Oh no. I'm terrified that my mild earache is a harbinger of something that will strike me down at a moments notice. Today. And all the manifest symptoms to accompany that and support that diagnosis.

I got through to the end of the day, and I'm not dead. I pushed myself to go for a walk as I know I need cardiovascular exercise. In fact, I got further than the light stroll around the park I thought my tight chest would tolerate, and ended up walking over 2kms.

If nothing else, my age has given me the perspective to know that what my body is telling me isn't always the truth, because sometimes its shit my brain has made up.

Which kind of sucks, though, at an age where people are starting to know their bodies and understand them. Sometimes I find it hard to separate the manifestations of anxiety from actual physiological events.

Just something else to be anxious about, I guess. And the spiral goes on. Or is that sucks you down?

See you for the next episode. Tomorrow? Next week? Next decade? Who knows.

Here we are again....

I look longingly at the sweet morsels in the glass cabinet. I get to choose some today, but they aren't for me. My favourite is the pan au chocolat, but there aren't any there today anyway. The group at the office could enjoy raspberry, white chocolate, cinnamon brioche....

I collected my coffee and boxed up muffins, and headed back up the hill.

My knees groaned and I winced. I paused at the top of the hill to catch my breath.

Nyah has so lovingly packed a healthy lunch and a little container of nuts. I know that sugar is my downfall, and she is trying so hard to give me alternatives.

But I still struggle. My doctor says my blood sugar results are 'surprisingly good.' Surprisingly, because I am technically obese. My elevated heart rate is within the realms of normal, but would probably come down with better cardio vascular fitness and some weight loss.

But nothing seems urgent. The quarter of a cinnamon brioche and quarter of a raspberry and white chocolate muffin that found their way into my hands and into my mouth do not suggest a sense of urgency.

Back in 2012 and 2013 I weighed ten kilograms more, and struggled with self loathing because of it. I was tormented by a shape I didn't recognise and struggled with feminist ideals of body positivity vs not actually feeling like myself.

Now I feel more like myself than ever, yet my body is still trying to betray me.

I came to realise that the motivators around external validation and appearance held more weight (pun not intended) than very real health concerns. I don't have concerns about how I look, and am having fun with my appearance. But I took a panadol this afternoon to stop my back hurting, and I hobble when I get out of my chair to walk to the kitchen.

As I head towards being closer to my 'mid forties' than my 'early forties' my back, my knees, my heart are all telling me that I need to do something. I even have a loving partner to help me achieve it.

Why the resistance? Or not even resistance - a simple lack of will. Why do the motivators of appearance matter than the potential of reduced mobility and energy?

Maybe its time to look back to another part of 2012 where my therapist turned over rocks and found that lack of self care is linked to lack of self worth.

I might know myself better than ever before, but the question is, have I learned to love myself?

Who am I? And who are you?

At the moment there is a strong presence, both online and elsewhere, of women who are pushing very hard against a proposal for the New Zealand Government to allow people to change their birth certificates based on how they identify, and nothing else.

As someone with transgender friends and acquaintances, and with a number of friends and acquaintances with trans children, the aggressive actions and words of a small number of self-proclaimed 'feminists' is, at first, simply bewildering.

The issues around the self identification of trans women has come up before. Family First started making noise about a trans girl at a girls' only school. Some of the opposition to this on my social media came from surprising quarters. The biggest surprise to me was someone I'd known since we were politically aware teenagers, who expressed concern about 'men' in women's spaces.

And this ultimately is what has blown up recently. That trans women were actually men, deceiving us all in order to access women's spaces, and that trans men were butch lesbians who had been forced to transition to be men.

But once you scratch beneath the surface, it all become much more troubling (if that's possible - the original idea is troubling enough) and very, very personal.

The crux of anti trans activists campaign is around biology. "What is a woman?" they will collectively bark. The assertion is that women are oppressed on the basis of their biology, therefore trans women, not possessing the same biological construction, don't have a place in feminism.

Where we get into a really bizarre intersection, if you like, is that old school Lesbians (with-a-capital-L) seem to be joining forces with conservative Christians to push against the idea of gender being something determined in one's own mind rather than by genitalia.

I am struggling to keep up with the science speak which explains away the fallacies of biological essentialism, because before we even get to that, it doesn't even really even make sense on a logical level.

As for getting personal? Yeah...I feel that it starts to reach into the personal. Maybe I should be grateful its given me a chance to examine my own identity (again? really?) but I don't think my trans sisters (and brothers) are feeling it.

For what its worth, here are my theories. I want to start with my position, which is that trans women are women, and trans men are men. Just so we're clear about that.

I am very puzzled about conservatives and Lesbians (with-a-capital-L) being bedfellows in this, as I would have thought their position on biology would have been polar opposites.

By Lesbians with a capital L, I mean Lesbians for whom this label is a cultural identity. Trust me - I've done a lot of exploring around identity, and lesbian identity in particular. I have done a lot of reading, and I've done a bit of exploring around Lesbian identities in the New Zealand context. I went to a workshop at the Women's Centre; I've been to the Charlotte Museum. I've read. A lot. My bibliography is on this blog. I belong to online lesbian groups. I explore what it might mean to identify as a lesbian, and have spent a lot of time considering whether this is my identity or not. In fact, the current whirl of commentary around identity pulls it back to the front of my mind.

My exploration has led me to the conclusion that at this point, I'm happy to wear the label 'lesbian,' but it sits alongside a number of identities. Probably the main ones I like to have it sit beside are Mother, Partner, Writer, Photographer, Woman - not necessarily in that order. And not necessarily with capital letters, either. My 'lesbian identity' could mean that I am a woman who is in a romantic and sexual relationship with another woman. It could mean that I am attracted to other women. I could mean that I am a 'woman identified woman who doesn't fuck men.' All of them would be true, but the strength of any of them depends on what's going on around me on any given day, really.

I have spent a bit of time playing with identities. The veritable rainbow of identities meant I didn't have to shoehorn myself into anything before I was ready. But what is really interesting is the defensiveness of Lesbians of their particular identity. "If everyone is calling sexuality fluid, then where does that leave us?"

Indeed.

So when the idea that butch lesbians - the classic lesbian stereotype - are being pushed into transitioning into being men starts circulating, then the heads are thrown back and the howling starts. And understandably so - the patriarchy literally picking off women to bring into its fold is a pretty gross concept. If it were true.

But what of the movements of feminists to stop women being shoehorned into ideas of femininity? Cis-gendered, heterosexual women are no longer beholden to high femme ideals of appearance, or pushed into old fashioned gender roles and compulsory heterosexual life. Maybe once upon a time Lesbians were radical in their refusal (and psychological inability) to shackle themselves to the heterosexual nuclear family ideal. But now cis-gendered, heterosexual women can make those choices, too. So what then determines the 'lesbian identity' beyond who you want to have a primary romantic and/or sexual relationship with? For me personally, hinging a major part of my identity on who I am in a relationship with got me in enough trouble the first time, so I am not inclined to go there again. In the circles I move in at least, the fact that my romantic partner is also a woman is of no consequence. At work, my young, Christian, heterosexual and betrothed colleague and I regularly talk about our partners without any sense of novelty or strangeness. With the advent of marriage equality and the treatment of women living in a same sex relationship as equal to a heterosexual couple, has the lesbian identity become so assimilated into every day life as to be invisible? Lesbians pushed - and still push - against sexuality being defined on men's terms, for men's gaze and men's pleasure. To be fair, hetero women do this too, but don't feel the same resistance in the push as their lesbian sisters. Straight life is still the easier road. Is then welcoming women-who-once-were-men and identify as lesbians a step too far? We all come at this from our own life experiences, and maybe its just that mine is of the latter - all women pushing against men defining our lives, our course, our futures, for us.

So then lets look at the conservative point of view? If trans women are not women on the basis of the equipment they possess - and I'll take that to be uteruses, vaginas and breasts - then I'm going to go straight to the conservative assumption of women being defined as mothers - or potential mothers. I'm figuring that the conservatives think trans women aren't really women because they can't breed. But where does that leave women with fertility issues? Women who opt for surgical sterilisation?

So an identity crisis and some biological essentialism collides and makes a strange combination. Lesbians with a capital L who aren't inclined to act on any kind of social mandate to reproduce via sexual activity with men - thrown in with people who think that women are biological vessels to do just that.

I pondered then, as a mother, as a cis gendered woman, as someone who has spent a significant amount of time in a heterosexual relationship, and only a quarter of that time in a homosexual relationship - where does that leave people like me?

I can tell you that biology does its job. My four children are a testament to that. My four children are also a testament to the fact that fulfilling some kind of biological imperative wasn't awful, either. Biology means the body does what it needs to do. And mine happened to do it with a reasonable amount of feel good factor. (Yup, that added a layer of confusion when many of the ideas presented to you around sexuality can be so...well...essentialist)

And there are some people for whom it is awful, but we'll put up with it because that's what women do, right? And there are some people for whom it is an absolute non-negotiable not-going-there. How about that? A mix of social and cultural conditioning, and some people with resolute certainty. Certainly no essentialism there.

What everyone is arguing about is the brain. Trans people want to identify as how they feel, not how they look.

To be blunt, my body is going to behave all the ways a 'biological female' should on a basic animal level. Right now I am nearing the end of my reproductive life, and my body is telling me all about it by trying to get in some last ditch attempts at luring me into baby making. Biologically, I could have had what? fifteen? children by now. Socially, that would have been ridiculous.

Humans are way more sophisticated than just being animals. You and me baby, we are more than just mammals. What I discovered in a relationship with a woman was more than just appropriate biological responses to stimuli in order to ..umm..smooth the way... make reproduction happen. I discovered desire. Intimacy. Longing. Love. Satisfaction. Contentment. Joy.

These are experiences peculiar to being human, and as humans we are complicated.

If the two schools of trans exclusionary activists get their way we may as well live inside the Handmaids Tale.

If we are into biological essentialism being the root of identity, then lesbians with a capital L should be behaving like biological females and mating with men and producing young, regardless of what their brains tell them. And likewise with the conservatives, who have determined that the possession of certain organs with the potential for reproduction is the hallmark of woman, regardless of a woman's potential to wear all sorts of other identities alongside Woman and/or Mother. Where do we sign up, Commander?

Never mind the human experience, in all its tumultuous, complicated glory - of the things that go on in our brains - our hearts. Of the joy of the human experience. And the human experience of determining who we are.

And that is what it is in the end.

To be human.

Who would deny someone that?

#keepsakecollecting

"The division of labour in the family was that I worked to support the family while you stayed at home collecting keepsakes and the like."

Last night I went to an orchestral performance where the conductor explained, and then the orchestra performed, pieces from Handel's Water Music.

As I listened, I was taken back to a time where music was a part of my everyday life.

From starting to learn the recorder in primary school, I moved on to the flute as a tween. As a teenager, I belonged to a youth orchestra, and played such illustrious venues as the Maidment Theatre (RIP) My mother drove me too far to attend lessons that were far too expensive. From the point of view of a parent now, it was absurd, but I am grateful for the experience.

When I left school and moved away from home, I was able to keep playing the flute in the church worship team in the city I'd moved to for art school.

When I was 18, I dropped out of art school, I stopped going to church, and I went to work full time.

At some point, my husband and I must have had some financial issues, and I sold my flute to pay a bill.

I have never played since.

In 2006, my husband was subject to an employment dispute. He was 'instantly dismissed' from his job.

I was heavily pregnant with our third baby. I was working part time doing home based daycare so that I would have my own income and not be dependent on his salary for my own personal expenditure - the odd cup of coffee, clothing and whatnot.

I had a collection of vintage toys that I had established over three years. It had become a bit of a hobby to acquire the ones from my childhood, or to find tatty ones on Trade Me, restore them, and sell them and see how much money I could make. I traded them, chatted with people online about them, gasped at the prices some of them went for on eBay.

The power bill came in and we panicked.

I sold all my vintage toys to make sure we could keep the power on.

When I left him seven years later, I was told that I had screwed his career.

“get preschooler dressed, walk to school,go to vet for cats flea treatment, go to shop for vege top up, go home and get preschooler lunch, walk to kindy, stay at kindy for 1/2 an hour to see new chickens, walk home from kindy, give toddler lunch, drive to kindy and school then directly to cricket skills clinic, do grocery shopping, drop off friend, son haircut, then to soccer training, back to get preschooler from daycare, Fruitworld for vege top up, back to collect son from soccer, pick up other son from friend's house, make dinner, rinse dishes and load dishwasher..” (actual lists sourced from my Facebook statuses) 

Staying home and collecting keepsakes and the like.

Five Weddings

1981

There was a young woman, and a prince. She was only just twenty years old. He was thirty three.

I was five.

The young woman was portrayed as shy, pensive. Beautiful. Pure. The prince wasn't handsome, but he had power. He would be the King one day. So by marrying the Prince, the young woman would become a real live princess!!

To mark such a Special Occasion, I was going to be allowed to watch The Wedding on television. Late at night. What a treat!

The young woman arrived at the beautiful old abbey in a froth of silk and lace. She cast her eyes down and batted her lashes. She was walked down the aisle to her Prince by her father.

After the formalities, they drove away from the church in an open horse drawn carriage to live happily ever after. They looked so happy and it was like a fairytale.

I was in awe.

1995

I walked down the aisle of my childhood church, resplendent in polyester and guipure lace and pearl beading. I had found my prince and I was going to live happily ever after too.

I was nineteen.

2005

The young prince and princess did not have a happily ever after. They were happy for a while, but it was all wrong. Just wrong. The prince was in love with someone else. But all the rules and the eyes of everyone. The fresh young woman was the best choice for everyone else.

The prince and princess parted ways, and a year later she was dead in a terrible accident.

The prince was now a middle aged man. He returned to the woman he should have married.

They had a civil ceremony. No abbey this time. No fairytale. Pain and heartache - so much hurt, but they came back to love - without rules. With their rules.

I was twenty nine.

2011

There was a young prince and a young woman. He was third in line to the throne, and she worked for her family business in marketing and design. She was educated and self reliant.

I was thirty five.

I assembled with other women to celebrate. We dressed up in hats and we ate English food. The Men assembled at another home to watch the rugby. Because this wedding business is women's stuff. Pfftt.

The young woman arrived at the beautiful abbey with her simple gown with a touch of lace. She walked down the aisle to her prince. He was dressed like his father was in 1981 - resplendent in red.

My daughter was four.

2018

There was a young prince and a young woman. She had been married before. She was a biracial American actor. She had already made ripples about gender stereotypes before she was a teenager by writing an objection to the idea that only women engage in household tasks.

The young prince had talked openly about the pain of losing his mother. About how important it is to feel. To talk. To be open.

I was forty two.

I hadn't watched the television drama that the young woman was the star of. I knew the prince because I had seen his whole life since before he was even in existence.

I largely ignored the build up to the wedding. In the last few years I had become cynical about marriage. It was an oppressive patriarchal tradition based in the concept of women as chattels. I understood the desire to make a public statement about the person you wanted to commit your life to, but I wasn't sure how feminist 'a wedding' was.

But the people watching was fun. The television ended up being on, and there were so many interesting people to watch, snuggled up on the couch with my partner. A renowned human rights lawyer and her actor husband. A world beating sportswoman. A popular and powerful media personality. A famous entertainer and his husband. And the prince's family.

The young woman arrived at the beautiful chapel in a plain white dress. With her mother, who had raised her on her own. The Mother had cornrows and a glittery nose piercing. 

The young woman walked up the aisle -  accompanied by the young prince's father part of the way, but she started on her own, and she finished on her own.

The young couple had the traditions of their cultures interwoven in the ceremony. Anglican formality and black American gospel energy.

They left the church and drove away in a horse drawn carriage. It looked like a fairytale.

My daughter was eleven.

She had gone to bed and slept through the whole thing.

Being wrong helped me be better

I have always been a rule follower and a people pleaser. When I was about five years old I nicked a lolly from LD Nathan at the local shopping centre. I hid under my bed to eat it and was consumed by the guilt about what I had done.

It was a perfectly natural part of growing up. Push against the rules society has in place, and your conscience will guide you as to what is right. I knew I had done the wrong thing, and I felt so icky about it, I didn't do it again.

In my life to date, I generally have followed the rules - there was the odd wayward moment as a teenager, but given the standards I had set for myself, I didn't do too badly. I was an earnest Christian, so at the time being felt up by a boyfriend felt like a mortal sin, so never mind doing the stuff many teenagers were up to (experimenting with alcohol, drugs, sex...)

But a couple of problems started presenting themselves. The rules around me started changing, so the world in which I had signed up to a particular life wasn't the same world I was living in now.

That was partly me - as I met new people, my world expanded. I met people of different faiths, of no faith, who were sole parents, gay parents. All super, super smart. All very kind. And good.

Wait a minute...

In the past I'd tsk tsked at the gays, the single parents, the people who had sex with people they weren't married to (or going to marry) people who weren't married..... you get the picture.

And so I started questioning everything I had signed up to to date. Marriage. Babies. Being a stay at home parent for so long. When my mother took a controversial route out of this world, it started me on a long journey of wondering where I had been, where I was heading, and what rules applied any more.

Then I fell for her.... and I was in a right mess.

I had made a promise to someone else when I was 18 but at 37 I didn't want to keep the promise any more. What kind of person did that make me?

But was anyone a particular 'kind of person?' Or were we all just in a changing world in which we needed to adapt?

If I'd seen more lesbians as a teenager, would things have been different? If every single family I had contact with hadn't been a heteronormative, nuclear family, would things have been different? If I'd seen  same sex couples, single parents, working Mums in the world around me, would things have been different? If my mother hadn't spat "You aren't queer, are you?" at me in an accusatory fashion, would things have been different?

I can take responsibility for my choices, but the broader issue is that choices are determined by social norms, social standing, circumstances. 2013 was a very different world to 1994, but I was still expected to keep a promise I made when I was little more than a child.

Everything could have been handled more sensitively. I am not sure turning the rules upside down immediately makes me a liar or a cheat. It makes me a human who found herself in a difficult situation where hurt was inevitable.

I think the answer to not making a promise you can't keep is to be realistic and careful about what you promise in the first place. Should we be placing ourselves in a position of absolutes, or is life more about ongoing negotiation and re-evaluation?

What are all the rules about? Who benefits from them? Are they kind? Are they fair? Do they really matter?

I had been in a cultural vacuum for so much of my life. That cultural vacuum was very definite about rights and wrongs. And you know what - definitive rights and wrongs have a high comfort factor. Everyone knows where they stand. If you don't fit in, you're in trouble. But you know what's what.

I have been wrong, but I am only human. Being wrong makes me more sympathetic to the people I used to judge.

Living outside the black and white box requires more energy. More negotiation. More weighing up. But I also think it has more capacity for kindness. Black and white rights and wrong often produce confused individuals who cannot see past not fitting in the box. Black and white rights and wrong produce punitive consequences that don't make anyone's life better. Black and white rights and wrongs stop dialogue and honest conversation and stifle growth. Black and white rights and wrongs reduce the capacity to see things beyond your own scope and beyond your own concept of righteousness. It stops you seeing the people behind the monochrome.

The world devoid of absolute black and white is far more scary, but it is anything but grey. It is bright in vivid colours, with love, with laughter, with tears, with challenge, with kindness.

It is a world full of life.

No world for old men

I need to explain to you why I asked you to leave my house last week.

I am continually challenged, upset and even puzzled about your attitude and behaviour.

I sent you back to Dad's after you exhibited a host of behaviours that are not ok in my household.

The continued poking at your sister, the critique of the food she had prepared,the continual talking over people and refusal to have a conversation but rather just talk louder so your voice is the only one being heard, and a refusal to wash dishes after your sister and I had prepped the meal runs the gamut from frustrating to totally unacceptable.

I think you are very confused about what love means. Love means a lot of boring shit a lot of the time. It's not sunshine and rainbows and holidays and expensive concerts.

Love has relational reciprocity. This does not mean it has conditions attached, but it does mean that I am more inclined to gift a concert ticket to someone who plans a birthday dinner or clears dishes without being asked than someone who tries to wear me down in negotiations over a basic instruction.

It's calling you out when you are being loud, so that your future partner isn't continually talked over.

It's rostering you to wash dishes, so that you will be a good guest when you visit friends and relatives.

It's trying to find the right combination of recreational screen time that doesn't invade time and space with family, so that you can practice your interpersonal and self management skills.

It's racing to parent teacher interviews even though you aren't there.

It's talking to social workers, counsellors, school leaders and lawyers about how I can nurture you through difficult emotions even when you refuse to come to my home.

Women my age are sick of men thinking we owe them something. We are sick of men talking over us. We are sick of men thinking they can discuss our appearance or ability as if we are not present.

Women my age do not want our sons to turn out like their fathers and their grandfathers.

And furthermore, we do not want our daughters being their victims.

You can bet your life that women my age are prepping their daughters for the battle of their lives. It was a battle we couldn't win, but we know the MO now, and our girls will be prepared.

So, if you would prefer to be on the right side of social change, I suggest you man up. And that doesn't mean man up to be the tough guy. It means man up and kick toxic masculinity to the curb.

Don't expect women to serve you.

Don't expect women to be ok with your loudness and constant commentary.
Don't expect women to exist to entertain you.

You are expected to participate in all parts of society, not wait for a woman to do the shit parts for you.

It's actually not much to ask.

As a woman of this age, I will always - always - love you. You might not believe it, but the love I have is the boring, timeless type. You don't have to do anything to deserve it, but nor do I have to do spectacular things to prove it. I just do boring shit and think about you every day.

You will always be loved and always be welcomed in my household. Even by women you have disrespected in the past. We all do better when we know better.

If you have no respect for me and that is going to spill over into your behaviour, know that that behaviour will not be welcome.

If you think that you get a hard time visiting a woman led household, then boy, you are in for a shock when you end up in a woman led world.

Just stop and listen and learn. You will find more peace that way.

Holding on and letting go

School finished the week before work did, which resulted in kids coming to the office with me for four out of my remaining five work days before Christmas. It’s a one hour trip each way in peak hour traffic. Most people roll their eyes and groan about the time such a commute takes, but I take full advantage of it, knowing that car rides can be a perfect chance for plenty of quality conversation.

As we rounded the corner of a street half way home, Miss 11 asked "Why are there pictures of snowmen everywhere at Christmas?" 

It’s a good question. 

from 'A Kiwi Night Before Christmas'
By Yvonne Morrison
Scholastic, 2013

As a child, I accepted without question the Northern Hemisphere imagery and stories that were a part of our summer Christmas. Before bed we'd read Clement Clarke Moore's classic poem 'The Night before Christmas' which was full of references to snow and keeping warm indoors. We put up stockings for Santa and decorated a fake pine tree. Even now my fake tree has a glass snowflake ornament adorning it. 

But increasingly, New Zealand has started to adopt more and more antipodean language and symbols into our Christmas. We have the pohutukawa  and Santa in jandals driving a tractor with sheep instead of reindeer as part of our modern Kiwi Christmas imagery. 

As our collective traditions change, so do our whanau ones.  

My childhood Christmas was a heteronormative, nuclear family affair. Mum, Dad and two kids (one boy and one girl – seriously) My grandparents (happily married for a gazillion years, of course) would come along. In the morning my brother and I would unpack the stocking of goodies Santa had brought. Later my grandparents would arrive. My Dad would give Grandpa a tour of his vege garden and Mum would cook a traditional Christmas meal – turkey, ham, trifle, salad, new potatoes. We'd pull crackers, wear silly hats, and the meal would be a sit down event with the best dinnerset and the weekend cutlery. The fancy china teaset would have its annual outing later in the day, with Christmas cake served in the lounge. We would then have a relatively sedate present opening session, with each person taking a turn at opening something under the tree. 

I have fond memories of these rituals, so when I had my own children, I was keen to replicate them. I was perhaps too assertive about it. The Christmas after Mum and Dad died, my then husband and I hosted what we called an 'Orphan's Christmas.' My sister-in-law had also lost her husband that year, so holding on to traditions and family time seemed more important than ever. 

But after Mum died, I also started questioning everything. Holding to tradition worked for a season, but thereafter I started to ask 'why?' Of so many things. 

The first year after I left my marriage, I had limited funds, but I wanted to maintain normalcy. We bought $2 Shop crap and confectionery. They went into manky old socks hung on a TV cabinet next to a tiny 4ft tree. In fact I think that first year, Nyah bankrolled Christmas, because my income was just so low I couldn't. We sat down to a fancy breakfast and still have photographic evidence that we wore the silly hats from the crackers. 

As time went by, I shook things up. Nyah's large family, with many children who also spend time in two homes, meant Christmas wasn't a sit down meal, but a wonderful cacophony of children and food and comings and goings. Presents were no longer sedately handed out and opened, but neither did each individual get one. A growing awareness of overconsumption and its deleterious effects on the planet and our wellbeing means that Christmas has become increasingly less materially oriented. My first Christmas with Nyah meant an experience of exchanging family Secret Santa gifts that were secondhand or handmade. This year we were in receipt of a fruit bowl sourced in an op shop, and we couldn't be happier. 

As time has gone on, we have to make a constant assessment about what traditions we hold on to, and what ones we need to let go. What is the value in the tradition? Maybe the bigger question amongst all of this is whether or not the tradition enhances relationships? Buying things just because it’s a particular time of year is distasteful. We did buy gifts this year. In fact we bought all our families the same gift. Not because we are lazy, but because it was something that would work across the age range (3 to 53) it would make us think, it was something to start conversations, it was something that contained a little bit of all our stories.  

My Christmas yesterday was so far removed from my childhood experience I would not have believed it. A large family sitting under a shelter in the yard while children ran and played with water balloons. Lunch was served on mismatched, op shop sourced china. There was quinoa and coriander and pomegranate and the hostess was not responsible for it all. The eldest woman in the group was not in service to everyone else. Children came and went as they moved between homes. 

And I still reassess. Children with two homes often split the day between families. Does this really work? Do we need to have children with us on Christmas day just because its considered 'the done thing,' or would it be better to spread Christmas over a few days?  

The day after Christmas we had breakfast with my brother and his family, and it was just as festive and delightful on the 26th as it would have been on the 25th. Why subject children to the stress of the moving between homes on one day when it would clearly be easier on everyone for them to stay where they are? So many conversations I have heard or seen have contained the phrase "I will have <child> for X time until Y time" - using language as if they were an inanimate object. (And that is not a criticism, as I am as likely as anyone to use this language) 

If only we were all brave enough to make that call. Social rules are strong. 

For my family, it seems important that the best traditions are ones that enhance connection, communication and relationships. Not everything was perfect over our Christmas. There was the odd harsh word, and the frustration of teenagers who refuse to engage. But nothing ever is perfect, and things that are alive rarely are.  

But we are alive. That is key. We can move. We can change.  

We can hold onto snow and holly, or we can change them to sand and pohutukawa. We can hold on for dear life to something that needs to go. And we can let go and live for today. When we keep people at the centre, then we will know what to do. 

A mother's love

My eight year old son sleeps in the top bunk in a bedroom that he shares with his brothers. They only share it for a couple of nights a month, but its big enough to hold three beds and one or other or all of them is occupied for sixteen nights a month. 

I climb up on the first step of my smallest son's bunk ladder and give him a big hug and kiss before I turn the light out and wish him a good nights sleep, along with a 'Love you' and a kiss blown from the door.

The other night I said - for no particular reason, and in a contemplative fashion - "You know...my Mum never ever told me she loved me. But I always knew she did." "Really?" he said, incredulously. "Really," I said. "People say they love you in lots of ways. With things like cooking you dinner or making sure your clothes get washed." He smiled.

When I left my marriage I was totally burned out by parenting. All the social messages I received about mothering were about constant attentiveness, always being actively engaged, always listening. But contrary to this, I found myself withdrawing more and feeling resentful and restless.

Over the last few years, I have found my parenting style challenged by other people. Sometimes directly, sometimes just by observing their actions and seeing what the outcome was. 

I have also done a lot of reading. I have uncovered that my cohort of parents (and by that I'll clarify that this is Pakeha, 'middle class' parents) seem to be under an enormous amount of pressure to be all things to all people. Amazing career (or, given the current market, even just working in a job with sufficient remuneration to ensure a roof over your head) attendance at all school events, an Instagram worthy house, swimming/soccer/gymnastics/cheerleading/piano lessons/dancing/athletics/art lessons for the children. What there doesn't appear to be time or permission for is time for ourselves. To be denying time to ourselves is the ultimate sacrifice. Because, after all, that's what we are supposed to do. But what my reading is also revealing is that my cohort of parents are producing a generation of children who have an inflated sense of entitlement and self absorption.

I contrast this way of life with some of the wonderful women I have worked with. On minimum wage, they are sole parents. They live and work in their community, and are loved by all. They have lovely children who are smart and kind. They make sure their kids have food on the table, that they have their school uniforms, and that they can get to school. Beyond that, the kids take responsibility for themselves. Want to play netball? Catch the bus there. Want to go to the movies? Get a job and pay for it yourself. Smart, kind, respectful kids. They are the kind of kids we want in our lives.

A while ago I negotiated some different contact time for my two older boys. I was trying to gain some precious one-on-one time with teenagers I saw infrequently through no choice of my own, and said that this was a good opportunity for relationship building. I was told that if I wanted to 'build relationships' I should go to all their football games, because that's what they want.

Is that what love is? Just doing what someone wants? Watching someone perform?

My experience in the last few years has been that love is often holding space. Its listening. Its sharing a meal. Its a discussion about politics. Its participating together in events in our community. It also can be standing your ground. Solving problems. Saying no. Creating boundaries. Sticking to your values.

When I was 16 years old, I entered a beauty pageant. My mother refused to come, standing by her principals that beauty pageants are objectifying to women. She dropped me off and came back later to pick me up.

I had no need for her to see me perform. I still never doubted her love for me. And many years later I've given more thought to the values she stood for and I'm glad she didn't put them aside for my vanity.

When I was older, I used to visit my Mum and sit on a barstool at the breakfast bar, drinking tea and talking about what was going on in the world. We've had some vigorous discussions about things we've disagreed on and she was always available to ask questions of and listen to me.

I don't need anyone else to define what my relationships should look like. I have the skills and the knowledge to define relationships for myself. 

I am learning not to let servitude replace love. I have learned to tell the difference. Sometimes service is an act of love, but the danger is when it replaces it.

I don't want my children to be entitled performers who think everything revolves around them. I want them to think about other people, think about why the world is how it is, think about solutions to problems. I want the relationships they see to be about mutual respect. I want the relationship I have with them to be about communication - listening, thinking and responding. I want them to learn how to be adults and do things for themselves and others, not have everything done for them.

Love might be shown by cooking a meal or doing the washing...or going to watch the odd football game. But its all the more powerful when the ones you love learn to make their own meal, do their own washing, or play football just because they love it, not because someone is watching. 

That is the gift of life.

Sacrifice

April and a close friend's wedding. Champagne flows. Just one sip.....? No...its not allowed.

Nothing is mine any more.

On my feet. Twelve hour days. An old man looks at me and says I should be at home. But there's work to do. I stride about in my purple top that coordinates with the staff uniforms. Its tiring...carrying around another three kilograms. 

Time goes so slow. I am so tired. Then he is here. He slithers out of my body and I am stunned that he fitted IN THERE. Being stunned doesn't last long. Oh my lord, the pain. My mother looks worried, and exclaims to the midwife... please..give her something... 

Soon.Soon.

So tired. And there is no turning back. Every few hours he's awake and hungry. I love him more than anything, but I am so so tired. And I feel so very intensely that I've gotten myself onto a ride that I cannot ever get off.

Days fill with worry. Care. Research. Questions. I need to get this right. There are no second chances. 

He throws up the blood from the cracked nipple he's lacerated, but he's alright. He needs me and he tells me. Crying and crying. Up and down the hall. Pace pace pace. Sing along to the song on the TV at midnight. The Queen of my Heart. 

My heart will never be the same.

What should he eat?

What should he drink?

What should he wear?

What should he play with?

What should I read to him?

As he grows he needs more. Days are spent finding out where we should go next. 

Days of good food. Singing. Walks to kindy. Hearty dinner. A snuggle with warm milk to say goodnight. So so tired.

Five is looming. What to choose? Do we need to move? Where is best?

Reading. Looking. Talking. Reading. Writing. Growth.

There are two. And soon there are three. Bills to pay. No job means no money. No power. No food. And that won't do, so My Keepsakes and Such are sold to make sure it is warm this winter.

The job I love is too hard on everyone. So it is my job that has to go. The job I love more than any other and grieve for now, years later. But there's a new one that works better for Everyone. There is no money though. Because that is spent looking after Number Four.

Emails, interviews. Will they be the right one? What can I trust other than my heart?

Organise. Pay. Work. Collect. Soothe. Listen. Cook. Feed. Snuggle. Wash. Listen. Think.

Nights alone with everyone. Because dreams are coming true. Everything is perfect. For some of us, anyway. Its the price to pay.

Organise. Pay. Work. Collect, Soothe. Listen. Cook. Feed. Snuggle. Wash. Listen. Think.

Alone.

Years have passed and I have nothing on the outside world. The world has moved on.

My darlings are everything and I am nothing. My heart. My time. My mind. Twelve years means everything to my darlings. Nothing to the outside world.

But sorry about having to go out of your way to

Collect

him.

The sacrifices we make for our children.

Oranges, apples and vibrators.

Did that get your attention? Yeah...probably. Because a woman making remarks about something to do with her sexual pleasure is kind of...shocking.

And that is more what this is about than anything I personally am doing.

Many years ago a couple of friends and I would laugh about going to a sex shop on K-Road. One day the two of them actually did. One of my friends was almost obsessed with carrying out what almost amounted to a dare.

Bear in mind that we were 'good Christian girls.' Sex and sexuality beyond its reproductive potential was rarely discussed, other than the widely accepted idea that it was fun, and that was ok, but it was only fun to have with your husband. The idea of sex toys in sex shops was taboo, and the idea of actually walking into one of these shops bordered on scandalous.

In recent times, I have learned more and more about patriarchal policing of women's sexuality. On a very basic level, of course, we have the slut vs stud mentality. Men are supposed to sow their wild oats, but women are supposed to be careful and discreet.

Lesbians are a threat to men's sexual superiority because...well...it means women don't need men to have a good time.

Sexuality was draped in shrouds of secrecy, and shame unless it was conducted within a certain set of rules (and I use the word 'conducted' rather than 'expressed' on purpose.)

As for self pleasuring? Well...that was the on-ramp for the highway to hell.

I don't really know if I was explicitly taught these things, or if they were somehow ideas that I absorbed from people around me, but they were there nevertheless.

For the most part, I have moved on from those days, where my sexuality was something I did, not something I felt. I started acknowledging myself as a sexual being, and as a woman.

I have moved away the idea that women independently exploring their sexuality without commitment is a source of shame.

Then I came across the opportunity to put independent, sexually liberated woman to the test. In Countdown.

Yup. In a chain supermarket.

Where I found this little beauty. The Durex Delight Vibrating Bullet.

I don't know if you've checked out the price of vibrators lately, but a quick glance puts them in the hundreds-of-dollars price range. I'm sure they are long lasting and great quality, but its not a price point that appeals to the first time consumer, to people on low incomes, or to people who still have those old hangovers about the sex shop on K-Road.

This post has two points. One was that I decided to make a stand for women's sexual pleasure, and carry that goddamn vibrator up to the (self) checkout at my local supermarket.

The second is that we have moved along as a society to the point that it was there in the first place. You can now buy a reasonably priced sex toy at your local supermarket. You can throw it in your trolley as you stroll down the aisle with the paracetamol and nappies.

I am willing to bet that there are lots of women out there who still carry the baggage of shame around their own pleasure, and are too self-conscious to engage with an 'adult shop' to buy a sex toy.

But if you can chuck your $35 vibrator into your basket with your bread and milk, then maybe you might just give it a go.

Don't read the comments

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few years, you'll know about the movie Frozen. You'll definitely know the song Let it Go, and if you have small people in your life, you'll know about the heroines of the story, Elsa and Ana, and how the twist in the plot was that true love with a handsome prince was not the happily ever after we thought we'd get.

Frozen is headed for an (inevitable) sequel, and the Twitterverse has gone nuts asking for Elsa (who seems to be the most popular of the two leads) to have a happy ever after with another woman with the hashtag #giveelsaagirlfriend.





And then it started.... The Comments.

"Oh God. Do we really need to shove that down the throats of kids?? That's far beyond the mind of a 7 year old. They're just watching the movie. That's a teen/tween concept. Let kids be kids and innocent.
I'll note that I'm not against gay or lesbian couples and have several friends who are."

"As much as the awareness is great. But I don't want my four years old seeing this kind of stuff just yet. He's to young. He thinks kissing on movies is gross so I'm guessing seeing two girls kissing even grosser."

"I have nothing against being gay but do we really need to throw it in our kids faces the world is already confusing enough for them with out making one of the biggest Disney characters of their time gay just to confuse them more."

This idea that we must protect children from normal human relationships is more indicative of 'confusion' amongst adults than children. I'm sure children are puzzled about a great many things in life. And usually they cease to be puzzled once they have some facts. So, Elsa has a girlfriend? Some women have another woman as a partner, not a man. Oh...ok.

But let's just dig a little deeper. What is everyone afraid of, really? Comments about kids keeping their 'innocence' in the face of a bit of benign Disney romance suggests people have fears about something else.

If I think back to when I was 'tsk tsk'ing about the gays in my church youth group days, what was it I was really tsk tsking about?

The sex.

Yup. 

We even had a stupid little hand signal that symbolised that two penises or two vaginas didn't belong together.

I don't remember a discussion about the evils of deep intimacy.
I don't remember a discussion about how filthy it was to wrap yourself in the arms of the person who knew you better than anyone.
I don't remember a discussion about how gross it was to share every day with your best friend.

Because everyone has fetishised the sex. 

We have to keep the innocents safe from the sex.
We can't have kids thinking that anyone has sex...let alone gay people!

I don't think kids are confused. Kids just accept things that adults accept. Two girls are the lead couple in a Disney film. Whatever. They probably will only care what colour the dress is.

When it comes to confusion, I think that comes down to the adults. Adults are confused about what constitutes a relationship. Adults are confused about how being gay isn't just about who you are having sex with. Its about relationships. Its about love. Its about boring shit like picking curtains and taking out the rubbish. Its about sharing things that nobody else knows. Its about trusting that person with that.

The more kids know that you can do that with a man or a woman, the happier everyone will be. 

War...what is it good for?

Absolutely nothing.



You know...I've been angry. So angry. But anger stops me focusing on what's really important.

My ever-sensible and sensitive partner pointed out that while anger is a perfectly legitimate emotion to feel, that when it leads to destructive action, its probably time to take a step back. A grown up time-out. Think about whether the action that anger led me to was wise. Will it result in enhanced relationships? Will it help us all move forward?

So, as much as one can on the internet, I take it back.

Raging and pushing against the waves just wears you out.

Sometimes its best to just float along with the current. Maybe it will take you to the shore.

Perfection.

In the soft light the clock ticks rapidly.

Ticktickticktick.

Reality television burbles about the super yachts of the super rich in Monaco.

She is tucked into the corner of the couch, a mending shoulder propped with pillows. I slouch with my book and she drapes her legs over my lap.  The weight of connection is comforting.

"I wonder if any of these writers are still alive?" I remark , running my eye over the last page of a book of short stories. I purchased it for four dollars at the second-hand bookstore and coffee shop that we visited on two days ago. It was published in 1977.

"Bub Bridger. I know that name."

She sends me a link to one of Bub Bridger's poems via Facebook Messenger. I tap it open on my phone. Its short. Sharp. Clever. Deep.

I hand over the musty paperback open at the page with Bub Bridger's story The Girl in the River on it.

"Its good. You'll like it."

She holds the book up to catch the light from the old standard lamp and speedily consumes the story.

She nods and raises her eyebrows in agreement.

We both pick up our phones and scroll through Facebook.

Happily Ever After

I have pondered before how it can be that I didn't realise I am a lesbian; how I ended up married to a man for seventeen years, and discussed the the social norms about how I ended up there.

Every so often I read things that seem to describe my experience with such clarity that I wonder why it was so hard to describe before.

This piece on the website Brainpickings so perfectly describes the strength of social norming, and even how I managed to end up somehow book ended into a very old fashioned concept of love.

Women’s social inferiority could thus be traded for men’s absolute devotion in love, which in turn served as the very site of display and exercise of their masculinity, prowess, and honor. More: women’s dispossession of economic and political rights was accompanied (and presumably compensated) by the reassurance that in love they were not only protected by men but also superior to them. It is therefore unsurprising that love has been historically so powerfully seductive to women; it promised them the moral status and dignity they were otherwise denied in society and it glorified their social fate: taking care of and loving others, as mothers, wives, and lovers. Thus, historically, love was highly seductive precisely because it concealed as it beautified the deep inequalities at the heart of gender relationship

Articles like this have my yelling at my computer 'This! This! This!' When you look at the historical and social history of love and marriage, it makes perfect sense how strongly socialised we are into the institution. I loved the idea of 'being protected and looked after' and constantly had externally reinforced the virtue in my role as a wife and mother. Interestingly enough, not by my husband himself, who now in his role of angry ex has reverted to completely denying the work I did in that role.

But this wasn't all I read today. There was also an article from Huffington Post about 'late life lesbians,' which tells a similar story about gender roles. 

“Sometimes people don’t understand how I could have been married for ‘so long’ without realizing that I was a lesbian. They often underestimate the power of cultural ‘norming.’ Cultural expectations can’t make someone straight (or gay or anything else) but they have enormous power in directing how people live their lives. I grew up in a fairly traditional (though politically liberal) family with clearly defined gender roles. What I learned from my family and from the larger culture (this was in the ‘60s and ‘70s) was that I was expected to marry a man when I grew up.”

What can be troubling is the idea that your prior life was a lie. This seems to come from people who don't understand that people change, identity evolves, and knowing more about the world broadens your idea about how you might live your life. Fortunately, I have not experienced that by most people who know me, but it does hurt me that my ex husband thinks that everything prior to my departure was an exercise in deception. He has forgotten that while I might not have been able to be truly vulnerable with him, I was always upfront about my actions. I am generally not prone to deception. When I revealed that I had kissed one of my female friends, his only reaction was that he was sorry he'd missed it.

“My past was not a sham. I truly lived my former life as a straight dedicated wife, mother, and friend. All I knew was that at age 40, something was missing. Many of us struggle for years and years and many maintain the relationship with their husband yet still seek a relationship with a woman. I’m sorry for the pain I caused my husband. I thought I could maintain a dual life but it simply wasn’t possible.”

And on sexuality? Its a vexed question. I still struggle with it. I tend to eschew labelling, because there are too many influences on how I lived my life and how I live it now for me to truly know. When I left, the question 'So are you bisexual now?' was spat at me. Which is the only obvious answer, seeing as how I'd had a bob each way, right?

 “Being with someone (sexually) of the opposite sex does not make that person heterosexual. It is all about desire and attraction, not simply the act itself.

Seeing as how I've had a go playing for both teams, you'd think I'd be able to make up my mind. Well, no, not really. Do I have to make up my mind? Its kind of irrelevant isn't it?

I was there then. I'm here now. That's all that matters.