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.

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

A bibliography of self discovery

I'm quite good at researching stuff.  When it comes to children's issues, mothers' issues, social issues....just stuff I'm interested in, I will read.  I read sociology books for fun.  I'm that nerdy girly swot.  So, when it finally became time to start looking at myself, I started to try to track down every website, web article and book I could get my hands on.  I'm still reading, and I'm still learning things.  And everything is shaking down just as it needs to.  Here is a list of books that I have found incredibly useful in my search for myself...

Outspoken: Coming out in the Anglican Church of Aotearoa New Zealand - Liz Lightfoot
University of Otago Press 2011
My review on Goodreads is here.  I actually put this book in this post last, but realised that it needed to go at the top of the list, as it was so important.  It was the book that finally kicked any vestiges of my internalised homophobia to the curb.  I initially read it because I know the author.  It may have changed my life.



Living two lives: Married to a man and in love with a woman (2nd edition) - Joanne Fleisher
2011 Lavender Visions Books 
I really recommend this book as it written in a very gentle and optimistic way.  This blog entry on the Huffington Post page sums up her own situation.




Late Bloomers: Awakening to Lesbianism After Forty - Robin McCoy
Writers Club Press 2000
I'm not forty yet, but I found the stories entertaining and interesting.  Many of the stories resonated, and offered reassurance that my experience was not a lone one.  It was one of those books where I saw my life in the pages before me.



Dear John, I love Jane - Candace Walsh and Laura Andre (editors)
Seal Press 2010







Married women who love women (2nd edition) - Carren Strock, Routledge 2008


And then I met this woman: Previously married women's journeys into lesbian relationships - Barbee J. Cassingham and Sally M. O'Neill

Mother Courage Press 1993
This book contained the stories of women living in 1970s and 80s America, where the culture would be very different to New Zealand in the 21st century, so I was less likely to meet the same challenges.  But some of the stories resonated strongly.

Look both ways: Bisexual politics - Jennifer Baumgardner
Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2007

Remember Us: Women who love women, from Sappho to Liberation - Miriam Saphira (editor) with Heather McPherson and Dr Fran Marno
The Charlotte Museum Trust 2008
This was a great, easy read book about the history of lesbian culture in New Zealand

How To Come Out - Guide for Women Questioning Their Sexual Orientation - Essie Reis
Essie Reis 2012



Coming out and disclosures: LGBT persons across the lifespan - Ski Hunter
Harworth Press 2007
I found this book by chance at my local Salvation Army store.  I have not read it in its entirety, but did read the part about coming out later in life.  There were sections that made me gasp as I recognised my own life in the words before me.



Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Love and Desire - Lisa M. Diamond
Harvard University Press 2008
At the time of writing, I'd not actually finished this book yet, but it offered up some great potential answers to questions I had about why I'd not 'known' about being attracted to women earlier in my life.





Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender and the End of Normal - J. Jack HalberstamBeacon Press 2012
This book was revelatory to me while I was in the middle of the process of questioning everything about my life.  This book presented the possibility of a different kind of normal.


The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: a passionate guide for all of us - Felice Newman
Cleis Press 2004
Once upon a time I wouldn't have confessed to reading a sex guide.  Actually, I never would have read a sex guide.  But you know, if you are figuring stuff out about yourself you may as well cover all your bases.  In all seriousness, though, the byline for this book is 'a passionate guide for all of us.'  If nothing else, it answers questions about what lesbians actually do in the bedroom with ideas that aren't from the perspective of male fantasy porn.


All the reading I have done helped me understand that the patterns of my life are common to those of many women.  I have only listed the books I've read, but there is a lot online too.  I have posted them because this is a list I could have used, and maybe it will be useful for someone else.

No matter what you're questioning in life, I think it always helps to read.  It helps to explore your own feelings and your own past, and also to find what experts say, but I think most importantly, to find out what other people just like you have to say too.

I sourced my books from Amazon (on Kindle), Auckland City Libraries and Auckland Women's Centre.