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 However, the USA has regressed and the constitutional right to abortion healthcare has been revoked.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.

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?

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. 

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.

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.