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?

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.

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. 

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. 

Back to the Future

Today is the anniversary of my marriage. I haven't been able to officially end it yet, so by the time I do in January, I will have been legally married for twenty years.

It is also the the date that Marty McFly arrives from the future, according to the movie Back to the Future II, released in 1989.

In 1989 I was in my first year of high school. With the benefit of hindsight, I was crushing on a girl while at the same time discussing the boy she liked with her. I probably wrote in my diary about dreams I harboured of weddings and white picket fences. I loved trashy pre-teen romance novels.

I never would have imagined that by the year 2015 I would have committed adultery, left the marriage I aspired to as a teenager, and have outed myself as the queer I denied being without saying a word, but by making it clear the woman I live with is my partner.

My view of my future was myopic. Shaped by the narrow circumstances of my life and the lives of those around me.

If I could go back to 1989, what would I tell thirteen year old me? How would I have liked the past to look like for me so that my future wasn't a gigantic roundabout where I feel like I am in the same place at nearly forty as I was when I was eighteen?

I would tell thirteen year old me that marriage and babies aren't everything. That I am smart and resourceful enough to build a future for myself before sharing it with anyone else. That in a neo-liberal economy, looking after babies at home might be honourable, and probably in children's best interests, but it leaves you financially bereft - nobody cares because its not 'productive' work. That I need time to work out what my values are. That I need exposure to different people, cultures, beliefs and lifestyles in order to figure out what will work for me. That I need to go to university, not just for the learning from study, but the learning from people. That I need to read widely. That actually I'm in love with a girl, and its ok.

But then of course the world would have had to look very different, too. In a sea of white, Anglo-Christian, heteronormative nuclear families, where would I have gotten the idea that my life could have looked different?

Part of me struggles with the concept of being married. My belief systems shifted, and so the value I placed on marriage also changed. I still carry my married name around on official documents like a kind of shackle that I can't loosen until January. I doubt I will ever marry again.

But on the other hand, the journeys we go on make up our stories. My marriage was not unhappy. My children are a blessing. But like those knarled trees that grow through the fences that contain them, my growth outstripped my surroundings and I needed a new place to grow.

We look with amusement and derision now at what the citizens of 1989 thought 2015 would look like.

My daughter's parents live apart and her mother's partner is a woman. At school she does most of her work on a computer. She asked the other day what we meant when we made a reference to Moses. She doesn't know who 'God' is. She listens to music on You Tube. She and her friend still know about fairytale princesses and happy ever afters. They might even hope for them. But they know that they are pretend.

As I head towards the end of my marriage, I feel like I'm starting over. I gained a lot over the last twenty years, but I lost so very much as well.

In another twenty years, I hope that I am settled in the authentic me.

And that my daughter is enjoying ambling down the myriad of paths that will be available to her, finding her own way.

Her own future.

Assumptions

When I first started wondering if I was a lesbian, I grappled with issues around presentation. I had read books about lesbian history, and all about the coded dressing that went on when lesbians couldn’t be out and proud… labrys earrings and pinky rings with a wink and a nudge. Stereotypes lived on with the idea in my head that most lesbians dressed like male truck drivers in steel capped boots and flannel shirts. The books I had read about middle aged women discovering their attraction to women advised that they go and mix and mingle with the ‘lesbian community.’ But…. how do you do that? For a start, I didn’t know where I’d look. And if lesbians dress like men, then how on earth would I fit in?

I read Lisa Diamond’s book about sexual fluidity, and got quite stroppy about labelling. Why have a label? I don’t need one. Plenty are doing without. I continue to be confused by all the issues around labelling and presentation, and even queer media seems to have different views.

Even in the last week, I read an article about femme invisibility being a ‘dirty secret’ of the queer community. That is, the lesbian community largely presenting as butch, and excluding and erasing women who identified as lesbian, but presented in a feminine way. You know - ‘You’re too pretty to be a lesbian.”

Then on the other hand, this piece was posted by an online magazine called ‘PRIDE’ which claims to be be a platform for queer millenials. Queer millenials seem to be throwing off labels, which then seems contrary to this piece which reinforces stereotypes about lesbians wearing boots and flannel shirts.

This is so incredibly problematic, as it is not only a community being non-inclusive, but doing so to the point of reinforcing stereotypes.

But this still happens, and I am utterly puzzled as to why. I tried joining a few lesbian Facebook groups, and the ‘exclusivity’ was annoying. I heard about a local lesbian event, and asked the administrator of one of the groups if she’d post it for member. “Oh, I’ll see what the organiser says. But its probably not necessary - its a well known event in the community.”

I see.

What if I don’t belong to ‘the community’ yet? How will I find out? Remember back at Stage One, where the books said ‘find the lesbian community?’ Well, how is that going to happen when the ‘community’ cloaks itself in some kind of exclusiveness?

I can understand discretion if you are doing something that is generally not approved of in society, but has ‘the community’ not realised that we have equality on pretty much all fronts? Any discrimination that lesbians face won’t be because they're gay - it will be because they’re women.

Other online magazines have been exploring the idea of doing away with labels, and celebrities like Miley Cyrus talk about ‘fluidity’ rather than taking on sexual identities related to attraction to any particular gender.

While I have been pondering what label to wear, I have enthusiastically posted articles about not labelling.

Then a lesbian friend said “But I don’t want people assuming I’m straight.”

She raised an excellent point, but I have explored that a bit further in my own personal context. I still don’t have a set identity. Other people label me as a lesbian, and that’s fine. I suppose I resist labelling because I think that there are more important defining things about me as a person than the gender of the person I’m in a romantic relationship with. In any case, labelling sexual identities is a relatively new phenomenon. We can thank the Victorians and their urge to catalogue and classify everything for that. 

And then I hit on it.

I don’t want people assuming I’m with a man.

I don’t want people assuming I’m married.

I don’t want people assuming I’m coupled at all.

I don’t want those things for anyone, actually.

Perhaps it was not so much that I don't want assumptions made about who I'm attracted to or romantically involved with or deeply in love with or having sex with. Because that's kind of personal, right? But more that I don't want about assumptions made about which societal box I fit into. As the writer of the article in DIVA said, In fact, by self-labelling as gay, my real intended meaning is that I don't fit the heteronormative category.

I remember when I was a newlywed nineteen year old I took a bit of pleasure in subverting people’s ideas about what I should be. So I suppose that’s an example in and of itself. 

Don’t assume that a nineteen year old isn't married, and don’t assume a nearly forty year old is.

And don’t assume all lesbians wear flannel.

Finding my tribes

Photo credit:www.gaynz.com

As the New Zealand election campaign ramps up, I have, for the first time, begun attending election forums where candidates from each party put forward their policies about specific issues.  So far I had been to a forum on women's issues, education, and this week I went to the only forum in Auckland covering LGBTI issues.
This popped up on my 'events' on Facebook, and at first I dismissed it as irrelevant.  I have been resistant to the idea of being a part of the LGBTI community, because I didn't feel any need to for my own personal reasons, and maybe partly because I wasn't sure I fitted anywhere within the LGBTI alphabet soup.  Books I'd read said to go out and find the lesbians and hang out with them, but as a woman under 40 I wasn't sure if 'Lesbian Games Night' at the local Women's Centre (the only lesbian social activity I could find) was really going to be my thing.

I wondered what 'issues' might be relevant to the LGBTI community, because it seemed to me that many of the battles of the past had been won.

When I was a young Mum, I sought out the support of other people like me.  I found I was always a bit of a misfit amongst my mother peers, who were sometimes older, and mostly more wealthy than me.  However, we found common ground in our parenting styles, and for a long time I was a member of a mother-to-mother support group where I could be with mothers who mothered like me.  We perhaps had very little else in common other than that we had particular beliefs about how babies should be parented.  Often we talked about the solidarity and encouragement we felt from being with members of our 'tribe.'   I have recently left that organisation, simply because I have moved into new stages and my 'babies' are now aged five and over. When it comes to parenting, my concerns are more about education and behaviour than about sleep and feeding.

As I was driving home one evening (I do lots of thinking while I drive) it occurred to me that my tribe alliances were shifting.  I was becoming more interested and concerned about issues that effect different parts of me - issues that are important to me as a student, issues that are important to me as a mother of school children, issues that are important to me as a member of the LGBTI community.  Then it struck me - I had identified myself as being part of a community that I had initially dismissed as not needing.  I don't think it was appropriate to go looking for that community a year ago, but I suppose over time I have grown into it.

I wrote about a lack of hostility that I feel as a queer middle aged woman, so I took for granted that this lack of hostility exists everywhere.  However, it occurred to me that there are still battles to fight.  Adoption law needs overhauling, and transsexual people are facing uphill battles around how they are treated in the health and prison systems and within human rights legislation.  I am not being forcibly separated from my children and haven't lost my job because I'm in a lesbian relationship.  I realised that I take this for granted, but it wasn't always this way.  It is a great credit to activists before me that I can take these liberties for granted - I'm sure they hoped for a world where this might be possible.

So I think its only reasonable to 'pay it forward' so to speak.  I don't have to fight for the freedom to live how I choose, and if dealing with people's assumptions is the worst I have to deal with, then life is good.  At this particular time in my life it might only be weighing up issues in order to choose who to tick on a ballot paper, but I suppose turning up at a public forum to hear what the issues are to begin with is a start.

I learned more than I thought I would.  The visibly awkward right wing participants felt the world was rosy, but the gay/trans/ally candidates from other parties had a different story to tell.  I learned about gender discrimination and heterosexism in sexual health matters, that trans people have to fight to be recognised as human under our human rights legislation, and that things were not as rosy as we think for queer high school students, who still face unacceptable levels of bullying, and schools that are failing to keep them safe.

Afterwards, Nyah and I had a discussion about how these things would affect our children and her grandchildren.  These weren't just LGBTI issues, but issues that had the potential to touch all of both our families.

Children are not islands and it take a village to raise them.  This forum raised issues that could be a concern to me as a member of the LGBTI community, but moreso are a concern to mine and my partner's children and grandchildren.  Is my son going to be taunted at high school for having a lesbian mother?  Why should Nyah's granddaughter be the assumed conduit to keep boys safe from the HPV virus?  What if one of our children or granddchildren is gay?  Will they be safe at their school?  If one of them is actually a gender not aligned with their sex?  How will the world and the law see them?

They are issues for us as members of the LGBTI community.  But they are also issues for everyone.

Rundown of the AUSA Pride Week LGBTI election forum are here.http://www.liveblogpro.com/event/53fec1060e4a85d4718b458d

What we might be...and what we become.

Apparently as people who are questioning come to an acceptance of lesbian/gay or bisexual orientation, they go through a phase of feeling angry about the heterosexism that exists in the world. I felt this acutely after a prominent sportsman came out and everyone applauded how brave he is. People keep saying I'm brave as I reveal that I have left a heterosexual marriage and embarked on a relationship with a woman. And although I acknowledge the comments about bravery are also about making big life changes overall, I felt angry that anyone needs to feel 'brave' about doing this. That the world may be such a hostile place to us that to reveal that you have any orientation towards the same sex is 'brave.' You also come to realise how strong heteronormative and heterosexist influence is. Indeed, it shaped my last twenty years and more.

Looking back, I realise that I experienced same sex attraction in my past. Not as an obvious sexual orientation at first, but more as an emotional connection. When my mother found out about a one off physical experience, she confronted me about being 'queer.' I have no memory of this confrontation, but did write about it in my diary in extremely defensive bullet points. Through my teenage years, I diarised about a desire to connect emotionally and physically with a particular person of the same sex, but much of my diary was also filled with idealism about marriage and babies and houses with white picket fences. Its what I aspired to and what I assumed my life would look like going forward.

The concept of being a housewife was not actually a prevailing social norm. Girls were encouraged to seek careers across the spectrum. There were not old fashioned attitudes about doing only nursing or teaching until you got married. But somehow in my mind I had made marriage and babies my career goal.  I was a smart girl, but I had steered towards arts subjects that I was good at but that didn't seem to have much value in the job marketplace. My self esteem was not great, and I didn't feel competent at sciences, which is where it seemed the careers were to be had.  Somehow, despite all the encouragement that meant that this was not the only option, I wanted to emulate my mother and live a life like her's.

I remember the speculation about whether one of our teachers was a lesbian. This was steeped in stereotypes - an older woman with short grey hair, a deep voice who never wore skirts. This was the only exposure I'd had with the LGBT world (and even then that was only assumed) but it wasn't very reliable because it was not based in fact. It didn't tell me anything about the experiences that exist for women who love women, so being with a woman was still not something that was considered an 'option.'

Around the time of my eighteenth birthday I wrote in my diary with the same level of uncertainty about my future that I expressed on this blog. I said "I don't really know who I am" and that I don't really know what I'll do with my life..." "What I am now scares me, but I can't help but believe its for a reason." Twenty years on I could have written the same diary entry.

I 'ran away from home' by way of going to Dunedin to attend art school. It was in my part time job that I met the man that was to become my husband. I was impressed by his family values. He fell in love at first sight, and I fell in love with the idea of fulfilling my destiny as someone's wife. He courted me properly with flowers and dinner and the promise of a home filled with love. It was romantic and at the time it was right.

He now questions whether I ever really loved him. I can say without a doubt that I did. I loved him with all the capacity for love that I had. But I know that part of what I was in love with was a concept, and a values system. Once I started to question the values and concepts under which I was conducting my life, the house of cards started to tumble. I will always carry a sadness that by escaping that life I broke his heart.  The paradox is that I do not regret the life I led with him, but at the same time feel like that if my world had been different as a teenager, things might not have turned out the way they have.

As I look back on the last twenty years, memories emerge of things that have happened where this latent attraction to my own sex bubbled to the surface every now and then. At the time I never explored it further, probably because the peace and comfort of my life as I knew it outweighed any need to know any more about the hidden parts of me. Some of the reading I have done in the last few months has shown that very often women make changes after traumatic events like the death of a parent, or at the time of major transition, like the youngest child starting school. Both of these have happened to me in the last few years. These life shifts can be the catalyst for a massive re-evaluation and time of discovery.

I was happy in my marriage for a long time because I didn't know what I didn't have. This wasn't anybody's fault. My former husband need not feel inadequate, because this was to do with me and to do with the culture we exist in. There was a huge amount of happiness and security to be found in fulfilling socially endorsed roles and coasting along on a socially acceptable course in life. Stepping outside the norms makes me reliant on my own tools of self examination, self awareness and communication because there is no institution to fall back on. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and I can now see what was missing. I am so very conscious that the situation that we were in simultaneously suffocated me, but provided him with security.  I wonder if he felt for me what I feel for my new partner.  If that is the case, I will always hold a regret that I had to hurt him so badly to free myself. I can't do anything now other than apply the lessons learned to my future. I have no desire to turn back. Now I am experiencing a completeness and wholeness that I have not felt before, even though I am still on my own journey.

Being with my female partner feels like the most natural thing in the world. I have been very lucky not to have experienced any hostility. However, every now and then I experience a jolt that makes me realise how I am now part of a minority. The IRD officer who helped me apply for Working for Families assumes my partner is male. A guy at the service station asks if my partner is my friend or my sister. The landlord asks if we are sisters or just flatmates (and at the time we did say 'flatmates.')  The woman at the service desk at The Warehouse types "Mrs" into her computer when recording my name for a refund. While the world is not hostile to people in same sex relationships, the first assumption is that you are with a man - and certainly, by a certain age the assumption still seems to be made that you are married to a man.

My children have had their world shaken, and are having to reframe their ideas about family that they have come to believe, too. This has been traumatic for them, but they are managing very well. But in the long run I think this bodes well for the world they will live in, and in some ways I am grateful that they are discovering this now. In a world where homophobia and sexism is frowned upon, but gender role stereotypes and heteronormitivity is rife, my children can see that when they are grown, it will be ok to fall in love with a man OR a woman. That they could live with that man or woman, they could marry that man or woman, they could live alone, they can be what they want for a career, they can choose to have a family or not, and that all of those choices are valid. That they don't just know that academically, but actually see that in practice, and see that it can work.

My hope is that the heteronormative script in their head is rewritten. That they can actually see all the possibilities that exist for them, and not be blinkered by set ideas the way I was. If I could go back to eighteen year old me, I would tell her slow down and allow herself time to explore. To start to do that late in life is painful and hard and likely to hurt people they care about.

It was too late for me. Its not too late for them.

What has also occurred to me since writing is not just the impact this has on my children, but on other families we know.  I had not taken into account that my friends are placed in the position of explaining to their children - my children's friends - about my living situation.  To their credit, they do all treat it as 'situation normal' and I trust them to answer questions thoughtfully and factually.  Yes, it is difficult explaining the choice not to stay with my children's father, but the flip side is that they will see as an everyday thing a female couple who are not doing anything other than living normal and ordinary lives.  The heteronormative script will be rewritten in their heads, too.