Politeness as a Marker for Class

Wow, that title sounds like an academic paper waiting to happen. Maybe it already has, hell if I know.

I am a polite person, or at least, I make an effort to be. By “polite” I mean I try hard to use the social graces words-please, thank you, pleased to meet you, excuse me, etc. I am especially fond of the phrase, “I beg your pardon.” I excuse my burps even when I am alone.

Being polite is a conscious effort I make, everyday. I didn’t really learn it from any sort of home training, as my parents weren’t particularly polite. My dad, in fact, was more accurately described as crude. Don’t get me wrong. I am also vulgar and foul-mouthed so as to be true to my roots. Those roots, though, are perhaps why I make such an effort to be polite. Being polite covered up my class standing to those who didn’t already know. Politeness, social graces, are actually taught, like in classes, to wealthy girls and boys. This isn’t to say that those of us in lower socio-economic strata cannot be polite, as many of us are. But I think that other folks don’t expect us to be. I am not sure this was a conscious reason of why I chose to work at being polite, but a recent conversation with my love got me to thinking about this.

We were discussing some of our ways, and where they come from. In particular, we started talking about whether or not we had class shame as kids. I said that I didn’t think I did, because I didn’t really know we were working class. My dad made a decent living working in a Ford plant, we had a house with a huge yard, both of my parents had their own cars, etc. And, comparatively speaking, we were doing okay financially, and I would even say that by the time my dad retired, he had probably experienced some upward class mobility, and even died debt free. But my parents still fretted about money, especially in years when there might’ve been a UAW strike or something similar. Class, though, isn’t just about money. It is also about circumstance, behavior, legacy and myriad other things.

My mom had grown up one of 13 kids, she often called her dad a “jack of all trades, master of none,” which I took as code for never really having a good or reliable job. Her mom was at times a washer woman and a waitress. Her dad died when she was 16, and she quit school to start working. I am certain this was a source of great shame for her, even though, as I could see it, she had plenty of opportunities to change it later in life.

My dad was born on a farm, and his family moved into a former brothel owned by Red Skelton’s family when he was just a toddler. Both of my paternal grandparents worked, which while it is similar to my maternal grandparents’ situation, was not common and was a clear class marker. If a man’s wife worked outside the home for pay, he wasn’t earning enough money to support his family, and that was only true of the working poor. I don’t know much else about my dad’s upbringing, though I do know that my grandma took a life insurance policy out on him when he was a baby because he was sickly. He got a check for a few hundred dollars in his 60s from it. I find this interesting, and somehow, it seems relevant to a discussion about class.

I haven’t spent a lot of time in my life analyzing my class background in anything other than a feelings-based retrospective kind of way. I also don’t claim to have a sophisticated understanding of how class works, other than what I said above. But I do think that I have used politeness throughout my life as a mask for being working class. I have/had some unconscious class shame, and used social graces as a means to distance myself from the crudeness of my parents. I believed, and perhaps still do, that politeness belied my crudeness, and showed that I was actually quite refined.

My older daughter is finishing up kindergarten right now, and at the beginning of the school year, her teacher Mrs. Joseph told us at conferences that Charlotte was extraordinarily polite. She really stressed that it was remarkable for a five year old to be that polite. Her mama made a point to tell Mrs. Joseph that it was all me, that I made politeness a priority. I didn’t know how to take that in, really. I recalled a disagreement we had when Charlotte was learning to talk about how important saying “please” and “thank you” were. Her mama didn’t think it mattered, and I said it very much did. We went round and round. I am not sure if I felt validated by Mrs. Joseph’s praise of Charlotte or if her mama was still calling me foolish for believing that it mattered.

I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I do have lapses in politeness, of course I do. I might let it slip with those closest to me waaaaaaaaay more than I should, and I am trying to get better at it. But I also know that my class background is less relevant to those people.

Now, none of this is to say that I am inauthentic about being polite. I do think that I have made it a part of the fabric of who I am, regardless of the motivation in the beginning. And hell, I don’t even know if I am on point with this analysis. I wish I could go back and read the mind of my child self to be sure. I just wanted to spend some time thinking through my own class issues, which is probably why this is just a tad on the disjointed and weird side. I do think that politeness is a class marker, and maybe I have always known that.

birth of the uncool

I listen to Spotify when I am at my desk at work, and this week, I’ve chosen to listen to the pre-set channel “80s”. It’s mostly been fun, some bullshit, and some stuff I had no idea about.  But one song played earlier this week that reminded me of how hard I’ve tried to be cool most of my life, and usually failed.

“I Want a New Drug” by Huey Lewis and The News.  That song, friends, is awful.  The band, is pretty much the original Nickelback, one could argue.  The birth of my uncool has more to do with the band than the song.  Sometime in seventh grade, I heard on the radio that there was a Huey Lewis and the News concert happening somewhere in Metro Detroit.  So, I casually mentioned to my friend that I was going to try to get us tickets to the concert, if she wanted to go.  I was trying, with every fiber of my being, to be cool.  I thought that if this band had a concert announcement, they must be super cool and of course my friend would want to go.

Let me interject that I had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting those tickets, let alone getting us to the concert.  My parents would never have given me the money or permission to go, nor would they have driven us.  But my friend didn’t know that.

Let me also interject that I didn’t particularly like Huey Lewis and the News.  My sister might have a little bit, but their music just didn’t appeal to me at all.  I could sing along when it came on the radio, but I never remember seeking them out or getting remotely excited about them or their music.

But I thought they must be cool, and my friend would think I was cool if I was going to get us tickets to their concert.

She looked at me as if I had spaghetti instead of hair, and scoffed.  Literally, she scoffed, as in, she made a noise that sounded like “scoff.”  And then said something about not really liking them, so no thanks.  At first, I was relieved that I didn’t have to figure out how to follow through on my lie.  But then I realized that I had actually done harm to my own coolness with the concert suggestion.  I had no cool points to lose, so I ran a deficit.

If I sat and thought about it, there are probably a million more moments like that where I thought I was being cool and I certainly was not.   In fact, one of the barriers I had to quitting smoking was that smokers were inherently cool, to do something so many people reviled (what?).  Badasses, like rock stars and whatnot, smoked.  So I didn’t want to give up the one connection I had to those badasses, because otherwise I was not cool.  I did quit smoking, eventually, but it was well after I thought it was cool anymore.

I’ve learned, though, that being cool is relative.  It’s relative to time, age, space, the company you keep.  I don’t really worry (as much) about being cool as I did in 1987, or 1997 or 2007.  Actually trying to be cool has never worked for me.  I try to dress the part, but I invariably spill salad dressing or bbq sauce on my shirt.   I try to get a cool haircut, and the hair stylist wants to make sure it’s still long enough for me to get a curling iron in the front.  I like cool bands, but I usually do it about 3 years after the cool people do.  I have the hobbies of an elderly woman.  I end up dressing like some nerdy dad most days of the week (like today, for example).  I am clumsy, and drop stuff.  Cool people never seem to drop stuff or trip over flat carpet.  And they can usually sing or play a musical instrument.

Mostly, I strive to be a very self-aware person.  That’s more important to me than being cool.  However, I do find myself thinking, “Oh, I am not cool because that person knew about such and such band years before me,” or, “I don’t have enough tattoos, or the right kinds of tattoos, so I am clearly not cool.”  And I know that it’s a fucking rabbit hole of inadequacy and imagined rejection.

I bet even the person whom I perceive to be coolest in my circle of friends also goes down that rabbit hole from time to time.  No one is ever cool enough. Hell, do any of us even know what it means to be cool?

I never thought I’d still worry about being cool 25 years after the Huey Lewis and the News incident.  I thought I’d have it solved, and I would just ooze cool all over town.  I am certain that I do not.  But I am learning to embrace the fact that I do not, and that I am not likely to anytime soon.  I don’t even have as much cool as I had in 1987.  I have three carseats in my sensible vehicle that gets good gas mileage.  I listen to mystery books on CD on my commute.  I wear sneakers with jeans regularly. I know what foods cause me stomach upset. I supervise people at work.

I am just not cool.  And, well, it’s cool.

Ramblin’ on about being aggressively ignored

My oldest daughter takes gymnastics lessons at a small gym in Ann Arbor, and someone I went to high school with also has a daughter in a class there. Our daughters are not in the same class, but there is some timing overlap in the classes so this person, we’ll call her Jenny, and I are both in the parent waiting area at the same time for about 40 minutes. Jenny and I had some extracurricular activities together back in the day, and we were friendly. I would think that a re-introduction, even if it was just “Hello,” would not be outside the realm of possibilities. I have made some efforts to meet her gaze a few times, however, Jenny aggressively avoids making eye contact with me. I have some theories as to why she does this.

1. She recognizes me, but has no desire to talk to me, based on:

a. Some long held grudge from our school days

b. She is socially awkward or introverted to a large degree

c. She just doesn’t like me

d. She also recognizes that I am a big homo and doesn’t care to affiliate with my element

2. She doesn’t recognize me, and therefore chooses to ignore me for reasons that one chooses to ignore strangers.

3. She is a homophobic snob.

I can throw theory 1b out the window immediately, as she talks incessantly to other people in the waiting area and I have gathered that she is public school teacher. 1a is possible, but I’d be hard-pressed to figure out what it was. If this is the case, though, wow! She needs to let some shit go. I graduated from high school over 20 years ago. That’s a damn long time to hold a grudge, and has to have hurt her more than me. Theory 1c, that’s cool. I learned long ago that trying to get everyone to like me is an impossible task, and will only make me miserable. But, she could still say “hello.” Theory 2, well, she doesn’t seem to ignore other strangers in the parent waiting area.

But theories 1d and 3 bring me to the impetus for this blog post. There are a few things about who I am that render me invisible, and being lesbian is one of them. Some of the others are being fat, being gender transgressive, and my rapidly graying hair indicating that I am approaching a certain age. Certainly, all of us in marginalized populations have some experience with feeling invisible, and even with being aggressively ignored. Those on the powerful side of the equation need to act as though we don’t exist in order to justify treating us poorly.

Being a parent does reduce the invisibility, but then only if my kids are with me. Even still, I’ve been asked if The Hooligans and The Bean are mine when out and about with them for their entire lives. As if invisible people aren’t supposed to have kids. Or something.

Jenny’s active disregard for my humanity really irks me, obviously. But strangers do it too. Just this morning, I walked into the women’s restroom in the office building where I work and a woman I see around the building was washing her hands. She looked up as I walked in, and I smiled and nodded. She dropped her head without acknowledging my casual greeting. I could buy that she is socially awkward and uncomfortable with strangers, which is what I try to do when this happens. But it happens an awful lot, and I just can’t believe there are that many people uncomfortable with strangers to the point of not even being able to nod their head in greeting. People who are getting paid to provide services, and therefore interact in a positive way with people, also aggressively ignore me and those like me.

Disregard for a person’s humanity is cruel, and as much as I know this shit is about the other person and not me, it is still painful. It’s part of the micro-aggression I experience from many directions, and it builds up. Stress is cumulative, and sometimes it’s hard not to be cynical about all of this.

It seems as though I’ve gotten a little rambly, but my point is this. Ignoring me doesn’t make me go away. Disregarding my humanity doesn’t make me less human. Refusing to say “hello” doesn’t make me disappear. I am still here, and I don’t plan on going anywhere.

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a letter to my kids

Dear Charlotte, Ruby and Milo,

I love you, more than I have ever told you.  More than I ever could tell you.  You are all bright shining stars in the sky of my life, twinkling with giggles and sighs.  I love to call you silly nicknames and to roll around on the floor with you, and there’s not much better than snuggling with each of you. I assure you that my love for you is unconditional and complete.  I hope that I do a decent job of making sure you feel that love all the time and that I never give you cause to doubt it.

You’ve probably figured out by now, since you can read and all, that our family doesn’t look like a lot of other families.  Certainly no one on TV looks like us, and while we hang out with other families that look like ours, we don’t get a lot of external validation about who we are.  I’m sorry for this. 

I am sorry there are people in this world who see fit to judge our family, to tell us that we are somehow wrong or even evil.  This is not the world I want to give you, and I hope that I am somehow able to make it at least a little better before I go.

We live our lives triumphantly in the face of disenfranchisement, marginalization and outright hatred from people who don’t even know us (if you need to learn what those words mean, take a break and go ask Melanie/Momma.  This letter will still be here when you get back.).  The “triumphant” part may seem like hyperbole, but it is not.  In this world we live in, we are triumphant because we choose love, not hate.  We choose happiness, not misery. 

I mean it.  I am happiest when I am surrounded by the three of you, and Melanie/Momma.  I hope you are happy then too. 

There will be times in your life when people make fun of you because all of your parents are women.  There will be times in your life when people have a hard time because Melanie/Momma and I are masculine.  There will be times in your life when people feel so awful about their own lives, they’ll want you to be miserable too.

I would say that I am sorry for that, but it isn’t my fault.  I am sorry for any pain it causes you, though.  What I need to tell you is that when people do those things, it’s not about you.  Or me, or anyone else in your family.  It’s about that person, the one who is teasing you or trying to hurt you.  They have the problem, not you.

There is nothing wrong with you.  Or me.  Or Melanie/Momma.  We are a family, just like other families.  But we are also different from a lot of other families.  We love being different, because we love each other, and loving each other is one of the things that makes us different. 

There are people in this world who think that two women shouldn’t share a home, and a family.  Those people are wrong.  They spend a lot of time and money trying to get other people to think like them, but they are still wrong.  They may quote the bible (if you don’t know what that is, it’s ok.  I’ll wait while you go ask Melanie/Momma), trying to prove that they are right, but they are still wrong.  They are as wrong as anyone has ever been.

One of my jobs as your parent is to teach you right from wrong.  I take this job very seriously, so I made a chart.  Charts usually mean something is very serious.

Right	Wrong
Love	Telling people that their family is not natural
Respect	Using a book of allegories and mythology from thousands of years ago to tell people who they can/cannot love
Love	Denying 10-15% of the population of the US access to the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing equal protection under the law
Respect	Trying to make a kid feel like crap because their family is different than the ones on TV, or even in the house next door
Love	Passing judgment on the truth in someone else’s heart
Being kind (As you know, this is one of the two rules of our house.  The other being that you can only say “poop” when you have to do it, or you have a mouth full of it.).	Hurting others because they disagree with you, or they don’t look like you, they don’t act the way you want them to, they don’t have a gender expression that makes sense to you, or any other reason.  It’s wrong to hurt people.
Equality (I may be two dimes and a nickel, and you may be a quarter, but we have the same value).	Treating people like anything less than your equal.

So in your life, when you encounter people doing the things on the right side of the chart, I hope it’s clear that they are wrong and feel free to tell them so (if it’s safe).  Even if they tell you they are right.  I am your Poppy, and I know better than they do.  I don’t often pull rank like this, but I am smarter than they are.  Trust me, not them.

I love you, big as life. 

Poppy

Forward and the Shoulds

My sister called at a little after six this morning, I chose not to answer.  I never do when she calls.  She left a message telling me that my dad was in ICU at SuchAndSuch Hospital in severe respiratory distress and they made sure to clarify what is advanced directive said.  She didn’t say this, but it seems like my dad’s life is coming to its close.

I haven’t spoken to my dad or anyone else in my family of origin for over two years.  This was a conscious decision that I made for my emotional well being, and to keep them out of my children’s lives.  My dad tried to hit my daughter when she was just two years old because she wouldn’t take a drink from his water bottle.  That moment, that brief span of time, was when it became clear to me that this man was just as toxic in his old and decrepit state as he had been throughout my childhood. 

My dad, in short, is an asshole.  A grade A, no bones about it, unmitigated asshole.  In the last two years, I have realized that I owe him nothing, no piece of my life or joy from knowing me and my created family.  And in these last two years, he has reaped what he sowed.  You can’t live life as an asshole and then expect your golden years to be full of joy and happiness, with daily visits from all the people you’ve ever known.  He’s been spending good chunks of his day nodding off in the hallway of a Medicare nursing home, with a black man (I mention this because I am sure that my dad, having been actively hateful of people of color his whole life, is really taxed by this particular bit of karmic retribution) as his roommate in a room smaller than any of the bedrooms in my house, occasionally sitting on his old man ball sac (true story) and getting in trouble for being sexually inappropriate/assaultive with the women on staff. 

These are his just desserts from 60+ years of being an abusive and irresponsible parent, husband, itinerant drunk, and full on douchebag of the highest order. 

Some of his greatest hits:

He skipped out on his first wife to marry my mother, refusing to enter the state of Massachusetts for almost 50 years because he had never paid the proper child support for his four oldest kids. 

He stole money from my mother’s purse to gamble and drink, but would also make her beg for grocery money from his paycheck. 

He beat my siblings with his fists, and walked into a church, shitfaced, to pull my brother out of Sunday school. 

He told my friends in high school about his days spent “whoring” while he was in the Navy like it was a badge of honor. 

He routinely referred to women, as a group, as cunts, broads or bitches.  After my mom died, he “dated” both my mom’s sister and his ex-wife, interchanging them like puppets. 

Every time I tried to take a risk, tried to do something differently than he would or wanted me to, he would shoot me down or find a way to hold me back.  The car I drove in college was always his car, and even though I was responsible for it, I had to ask permission to drive it anywhere but school.  When I tried to buy my own car, he wouldn’t get the family discount authorization for me so I could afford it.  When I tried to get an apartment on my own, he bullied me into not going through with it.  He wanted to buy me a class ring for college, a useless piece of crap, in my opinion.  I told him I would rather have a computer.  He said he would get one for me if I could tell him what this ridiculous thing was sitting on the table.  Turned out to be a plastic bag holder, but I had no idea.  So, no computer.  It was so fucking arbitrary.

 When I became a parent, I learned what a hard choice it was, how much of a sacrifice it required of a person to have children.  I am not sure my dad ever made a sacrifice for his children, in fact, I remember several times he said he wouldn’t do that.  He made a choice to have kids.  He didn’t have to. 

And I don’t feel obligated, just because he provided some of my genetic material, to care for him, or about him, or let him in my life. 

My five siblings (three have died, there were 8 ) seem oblivious to our shared history of being negligibly parented by this asshole.  They never mention it, and they have looked at me like I have antennae when I have tried to talk about it.  I can get all therapist about it, and say that I know this is their coping skill-to deny it or ignore it.  They have decided to venerate this man because it makes what happened in their childhoods seem not so bad.  They aren’t willing to do the work to heal, or don’t even think there’s work to do.  And they buy into the cultural norm of being obligated to our parents because they raised us.   Not to mention that they’ve all given me shit about not visiting my dad that stems from their own guilt from living so far away.   Because of all of this, I don’t have any contact with my siblings either.  I can’t participate in their charade and stay emotionally healthy, and while I do have some fondness for them, I also struggle with connecting to them as an adult.  These are, generally speaking, not folks I would choose to be friends with.  I am an adult, I get to choose who is in my life.

All my dad taught me was how not to operate in the world, and I don’t think he deserves any respect for that. 

All of that being said, he’s dying.  At first, I had a narrow reaction to my sister’s message.  I do not love this man; I seldom spare him a thought.  I don’t hate him either, I am indifferent.  This isn’t a surprise, he’s been slowly dying for about 3 years now. 

But.

But, I have all of these thoughts about what I should do, feel or say.  I should go to the hospital and say goodbye (tell him to suck it, whatever).  I should call my sister back and find out the details.  I should see if my family needs a place to stay if and when they come for services.  I should, I should, I should. 

Truth is, though.  I don’t want to.  None of that matters in my life.  I have moved  forward in gorgeous and amazing ways since I made the decision to not have these people in my life.  Letting go of my dad is something I already did, already a part of my journey toward choosing love over fear. 

Of course, I have no idea how this is going to impact me emotionally in the days to come. I also don’t know what kind of bullshit my siblings are going to throw my way.  I imagine I will have some sadness, but I doubt it will be profound.  Still, I don’t know.  I really don’t.  That’s ok though, I don’t have to.

on healing and triggers (trigger warning for sexual assault)

My 20th high school reunion will be next year, November, I think. And, up until recently I was nothing but excited about it. Of course, excited mixed with dread at seeing people I haven’t seen in 20 years-people who have a memory of a certain me that involved lip gloss, and people who I have a certain memory of that is probably not part of the current them either. To some extent, Facebook has eliminated some of those mysteries for folks, but there are exceptions, people who’ve managed to resist the Facebook borg or for whatever reason aren’t my friend there (I can’t imagine why).

The organizers (brave souls, them) of the reunion have posted several lists of people they have yet to get in contact with, and at some point, the name of the man who raped me showed up on a list. And someone said they could call him and get his info for the reunion folks.

I cannot stop thinking about this. It’s gotten in the way of my productivity at work, for sure, and has likely caused me to be a negligent listener or life participant in other ways too. Of course, I think about rape all the time-it’s my job. And because it’s my job, I’ve dealt with my past. I have juggled those demons into an orderly pile and put them to good use as a sexual assault and domestic violence prevention educator. That experience, when that man raped me, is one of the handful of lynchpin moments in my life that gave birth to my own personal brand of feminism. I am not ashamed of it, nor am I proud. It is an experience I share with millions of women and girls the world over, but it is a sisterhood I don’t wish on anyone. But it did propel me forward into this life I lead, this work I do.

Even still, I don’t think about him. That man who did that most vile thing to me. I do think about rape, I might even think about the fact that I was raped, often. But I don’t spare him a thought. On a regular, day-to-day basis, not sparing him a thought has created in me the very indifference that I needed to move on and heal. In the 20 years since he raped me, I have worked hard to not give him any further power in my life. He had all the power in the world over me for one night in 1990, but it has been the ebbs and flows of my own power that has consumed me in the 20 years since.

But then I saw his name. On a list of people invited to the same big party I was invited to. And I’ve had to think about him. I’ve been thinking about that I might see him there, and that I might be put in the position of having to talk to him. I doubt he knows he did anything wrong, as that’s the MO of men who believe and act as if they are entitled to women’s bodies. So, he may want to shoot the shit with me, this girl he “had sex” with back in the day, and tell me my kids are cute and make uncomfortable small talk. It would likely be a five minute interaction.

It would be five minutes that recreates that feeling of powerlessness I felt 20 years ago, that recreates desperation to do anything to make it stop. I get it, you know? I understand that rape is an interpersonal act that has global repercussions in the lives of women and girls, that rape is the largest, most violent and effective weapon men have to keep women in a place of subservience and subjugation.

And yet. And yet, I am letting this asshat consume my thoughts in a way that he should not. He doesn’t get to do this to me anymore, but he is. This is how rape works, and keeps on working.

I was debating whether to even go to the reunion after that moment when his name scrolled by on my Facebook. I even considered asking one of the organizers to “accidentally” not get in touch with him. But this is part of the dealing with it. I was wrong to think I had dealt with it, as in done.

There are always going to be little triggers, or even big ones, that I have to face because he raped me. Seeing his name was a little one, and potentially seeing him is a big one. I don’t want to see him. I don’t want him to say my kids are cute, or tell me about his job or some such nonsense. I would like to tell him a few things, in a perfect world-I am not going to lie and say I don’t have revenge fantasies.

What I do want, though in this world I live in, is to not hurt about it. This, too, is a fantasy in some sense. There’s no way to stop hurting about it, because of those triggers that are out there that I have no control or even predictability about. But I can have the hurt, and I can hold it with my strength, and I can move through it and let it go with each breath until it passes from me, and try to be grateful for the feelings I do have, because those feelings mean I am alive.

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drops in the bucket

I spent my morning with five young men of middle school age.  These young men were, as the saying goes, urban youth.  The kids most people assume are criminals upon first sight.  In my job, they are the kids I want to talk to most of all, even if I am always a little nervous about taking my butch ass into their school and teaching them about respect and consent.   

Our subject this morning was gender respect.  This came on the Friday of the week when a crisis of suicide became more apparent in the LGBTQ community.  Six young men killed themselves this month because they couldn’t face one more day of torment from their classmates who called them names, told them to kill themselves, broadcast their intimate lives on the internet and generally shamed them about being gay.

I didn’t know I was going to talk about those young men with these young men when I started our discussion.  Turns out, I really needed to.  

We defined gender, we defined respect, and we defined disrespect.  We talked about stereotypes about gender.  Then I asked them to tell me what a man is supposed to be. 

Aggressive.  Physical.  Strong.  Athletic.  A player.  Interested in women.  Silent.

I asked them what men aren’t supposed to be.

Soft.  Nurturing.  Dancers.  Passive.  Interested in men.  Emotional.

I asked them what boys and men who are those things get called.

Faggot. Gay.  Homo.  Pussy.

We talked about the Man Box, and how when young men dare to step outside of the Man Box, they are punished with name calling, harassment and even physical violence.

Every single one of the boys I was talking to had been called names or bullied because they weren’t always inside the Man Box.  I told them about Tyler, Seth, Asher, Billy, Raymond, and Justin.  I told them I wasn’t trying to scare them, or shame them.  What I wanted to do was talk about the very real consequences of not having respect for the people around us, even when they are different or we don’t agree with them.

“If I have two dimes and a nickel in my left hand, how much money do I have?”  I asked them.

“Twenty-five cents,” they answered almost in unison.

“If I have a quarter in my right hand, how much money do I have?” I asked.

“Twenty-five cents,” again, almost in unison.

“So, those coins are different, right? But they have the same value. That’s what’s true for people too. We might look different, we might like different things, we may not agree with each other, we may be gay or straight, or a boy or a girl.  But we all have the same value as human beings.”

I am one of the gays who lived.   And this was my day today.

mmmm…cake!

I brought a cake into work today. Not, as you might guess, out of the kindness of my heart. I have newborn twins, a preschooler and a zoo at my house. I have much generosity in my spirit, but the time to execute is just not there. However, today, a cake!
Several months ago, the two people I supervise and my boss threw a babies shower for me and my partner in preparation for the impending arrival of Shake and Bake, our twins. At the time, one of the women I supervised, who was engaged, actually asked me if there was going to be a bridal shower for her. I stuttered an answer that if something was done, it wouldn’t be until fall. I was so blown away by her audacity; I actually talked it over with my supervisor-asking if I was obligated to give her a shower. Of course I wasn’t, there was no procedure or policy that said I had to.
I was relieved. I prefer not to participate in the trappings of weddings and holy matrimony, and find any sort of compulsory participation in those trappings distasteful, uncomfortable and just plain wrong.
You see, I don’t get to get married. At least not where I live. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a huge fan of marriage or an HRC stumper for marriage equality. So-called traditional marriage was/is about the transfer of property (the bride) of one man (her father) to another (her husband). Historically, marriage enslaved millions of women to the men in their lives, and still does in some situations. In the present day, I don’t see why the state needs to sanction our personal lives through marriage. The right we have is to define our families for ourselves; that if I want to share real property and parenting responsibilities with my partner, our genders should be irrelevant. I think a contract is a great idea, but the “one man, one woman” and “holy matrimony” aspects are crap. A contract carries with it commitment and responsibility, but it doesn’t necessarily confer any specific legal rights on anyone. Married or partnered people don’t need special status.
But back to the cake. So, when this (now married) woman returned to work, another member of my program asked me if we were going to do a shower for her. I said that she was welcome to do whatever she wanted, but that I didn’t feel comfortable participating in wedding related things. I would come, and probably sign the card, but that was it. I didn’t go into detail, this woman is deeply religious and I didn’t want to get into an argument about the sanctity of marriage or whatever.
I choose not to participate in ritual that is patently discriminatory, unjust and allows straight people to flaunt their privilege in a garish and selfish way.
That’s clear, right?
It is offensive to me to be invited to weddings, to be expected to plan bridal showers, to be expected to want to look at pictures of weddings, talk about wedding plans, or to hear about how amazing a wedding was. See above about privilege.
Is that clear? I don’t know. Because a lot of the fucking straight people in my life seem to think that it’s no big deal for them to show off their privilege without any compunction that it might be even the slightest bit hurtful to me, or my family or any other queers that happen to be around. And if we speak up about the pain, we are being rude!
Because not so secretly, I want a fucking wedding too. Rationally, and morally, I really believe what I wrote above about marriage. It’s a whack and redundant institution. But I want the big public celebration, with fancy clothes and awesome food, which celebrates the deep and abiding love that validly exists between my partner and me.
But my staff doesn’t get it. Neither do most straight people, in my experience. Of course I am happy that you have found love and want to celebrate it. But have some consideration for those of us that get denied that celebration.*
So, I brought a cake in today for this damn shower. Because I was asked to, repeatedly. And saying no felt like it would cost too much.

*of course I know I could still have a commitment ceremony. Having had one, in the distant past, it was awesome, but it wasn’t quite the same thing.