Category: LGBT

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the problem with heroes

More and more, I’ve been challenged by those I once admired, the people I found talented and intelligent and provided me with entertainment. I don’t need everyone to agree with my personal opinions, but when their “opinions” prove to be problematic…when they are not so much about what they believe, but about human beings, about treating people like human beings, when their behavior shows me that they are not good people, it throws me into a whirlwind of emotions.

I always have trouble separating the hateful ways they speak and behave from their characters or their creations. For some actors I have completely written them off and I can’t watch anything of theirs. Kevin Spacey and Adam Baldwin are two that come to mind.

Recently we’ve learned things about others that have me in the same mind-frame. Gina Carano falls into this category for me. J.K. Rowling is another. And most recently, Joss Whedon. These last two were harder hitting for me, because they are not actors. They are not people who I can just say, they suck and I won’t watch their work anymore.

Why?

Because both have created worlds that stand without them now. Worlds that live inside me, if you know what I mean. While I was older than the target audience for Buffy, there was something about it that spoke to a deep need inside of me. It went beyond “girl power” or the teenage angst. It had to do with the personal relationships, the characters who were more than just caricatures of high school kids and the relationships built on shared experience.

There was something about watching the “kids” grow up, seeing friendships grow and change that felt real to me. To this day, I re-watch the entire show every few years.

To find out now about the way Joss treated women, despite his public stance about writing strong women, is heartbreaking. The same kind of heartbreak that came when Rowling started being anti-trans.

I could let that heartbreak tarnish the things they created, the things that comfort me and bring me joy. Or I can divorce them from those things. I can relegate them to the side of things where I no longer spend money on what they create, where I no longer interact with anything new they create, where I do my part to ensure that the people who might pay them for things know that their audience is reduced due to their behavior.

But what I won’t do? I won’t let them steal the things that Buffy or Harry Potter mean to me. They live on beyond the bad actions of those who created them. The characters, and the actors who embody them, live outside of that world now.

The problem with heroes is that all too often we forget that, like us, they are human beings. Fallible. Filled with contradictions. Capable of good and bad. And just because they do something that we like doesn’t mean that they are perfect or worthy of adulation.

It isn’t cancel culture to hold people accountable for the things that they do and the things that they say. In fact, I think that what it is, is a sign that society is maturing to a degree. We’ve learned. We’re changing for the better (I hope)…and that growth is not going to be easy, and we will have to keep fighting and keep the growth safe against the backlash of the dying society we want to leave behind and their death-flails.

We need to come to a place of true equality, and equity for all, without regard to their gender, their physical sex, their skin color, their religion or their sexuality. Part of getting there is necessarily letting those who won’t join the journey fall to the wayside.

Love what you love, Readers, and keep growing past those who hate and mistreat others.

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rights and consequences

Some musings on 1st amendment rights, hate speech, and consequences:

The 1st amendment guarantees us (US Citizens) the right of “free speech” but many in today’s USA do not seem to grasp what it means and how/when it applies. Freedom of speech is written into our constitution to protect citizens from action by the government simply for speaking in a way that disparages the government. The government can not arrest you for speaking out against any government official (unless you cross the line into calling for someone to be assassinated).

What the first amendment does not protect you from is the consequences of your speech from non-governmental sources.

So, if, for example, you stand in the town square, surrounded by people in clown costumes and say “Clowns are stupid and all you clowns deserve to die,”…well, you have the right to say it and no one is going to arrest you, but you very well might be set upon with seltzer water and balloon swords. That is not a violation of your free speech, but it is consequences of what you said.

Likewise, if you tell someone that Joe over there deserves to be stabbed in the face because he’s an asshole, and that someone stabs Joe in the face, your free speech is not being violated if you get arrested for incitement.

If you work for a company and your contract includes language that states that you, as a representative of that company, must behave a certain way, and you don’t, say you say things publicly that contradict the company image, while you still have a right to say those things, the company also has the right to fire you.

When you build your identity on what is ostensibly hate speech, be you a politician or an actor, don’t be surprised when those who find your hate unpalatable turn away from you. When that hate speech incites someone, or a crowd of someones, to take violent action, don’t be surprised when you find yourself on trial. That doesn’t violate your freedom of speech, it holds you accountable.

And as a side note, if you find yourself among that crowd of someones incited by a person’s hate speech and goading to commit a crime, you are culpable for your actions, regardless of who “told you to” do them.

Have a great day, Readers, and as always, be kind.

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#vote

Tomorrow is the big day. Election day. We’ve seen record breaking turn outs to early voting and absentee/mail in voting, but that is no reason to get complacent. It is our duty, as American citizens, and in a time like ours not one of us can take that duty lightly.

This election cycle is more make or break than any I can remember. In the last four years our country has become more divided, more broken than I have ever seen. We are divided racially, ethnically, politically, religously and by hatred. In many cases it is a hatred that has been foisted upon us, or drug out of our inner psyche to be put on display.

Somehow, we’ve given permission to our baser selves to be brazenly angry about differences, about changes and about something as simple a concept as equality. We seem to find it easier to demonize those we see as enemies, call them names and deny them basic human dignity.

But we shouldn’t make ourselves feel better about ourselves at the expense of others. We don’t need to deny other people rights to keep those rights for ourselves. As someone once said, it isn’t pie.

I’ve seen more racism, ageism, ableism, sexism and hate of the LGBTQ+ community in the last four years than I can actually believe existed four years ago. Hate is contagious, and it is spreading faster than the coronavirus.

But tomorrow we have the ability to stand up and make it known that hate has no home here. It might be our last chance.

I won’t elaborate on all the various ways the person who is supposed to be leading us has instead worked to destroy us, there are plenty of other people doing that. Instead, my focus is on healing us, as a country. Our first step is to vote out those who foster and stoke the fires of hate, who pit us against each other so we won’t notice that they are robbing us blind.

Vote as if your life depended on it, because it might. Vote as if your BIPOC neighbors lives depend on it, because they do. Vote as if your gay brother’s marriage is on the line, because it is. Vote, not with the hate they want you to feel, but with the love you have for your family and your country.

If you haven’t already cast your vote, I hope you have a plan to get to the polls tomorrow. I hope you make it a priority in your day.

Above all, I wish you kindness and joy, Readers. Kindness and joy.

Cover Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

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to all the dads out there

A lot of people have complicated relationships with their fathers, and I think current political and health matters probably don’t really help in that arena.

I have LGBTQ+ friends whose fathers have thrown them away, disowned them, told them to never come back. I have friends who had abusive fathers, drug addict fathers, fathers who were too young and too afraid to stick around. I know people who never knew their fathers, and never had a male father figure step into their lives to fill the void.

But I also have friends who had amazing dads or stepdads or granddads who did what dads are supposed to do, who loved those kids and helped them grow up in a world designed to tear them down. Those who taught them how to ride a bike, bait a hook, stand up for themselves and for others. Those that knew the world outside of childhood could be could and cruel, and helped prepare them to thrive anyway.

I was fortunate, even if my relationship with my father has occasionally been rocky due to so many reasons that are rooted in who I was in my puberty years (think far-right, evangelical Christian) and who he was (as in, not that), that my dad was there for me. We don’t always agree, even now that I’ve gone the far right of him to the far left of him, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he loves me for who I am.

My Dad and Me

And I had a pretty cool stepfather too. Bob and I didn’t always see eye to eye either, but he was always there to lend a hand when I needed it and he loved us even if he never said those words.

I hope that all of you who fill those roles, whether you’re blood or not, take a little time today to give yourself a moment to know you are awesome. And if you are someone looking for how to help the next generation, whether you are cis-male, trans-male or nonbinary, consider finding that one on one relationship with a kid who needs it, and yeah, I don’t just mean the under 18 crowd. There are tons of folks in their 20s who could really use a father figure to help them find their way into what being an adult really means.

Even if you’re one of those guys who never really had an old man, maybe especially if you’re one of those guys, be the father-figure you wanted in your life.

So Happy Father’s Day to all the Dads and Dad-adjacent folks out there. Being that it is Sunday and my job #2 has no work for me to be doing today, I get to write for a while before I get on with the housework that needs doing. I’m off to do that…and drink more coffee.

Cover Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

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it’s the end of the world as we know it

Any normal June 1st would see me waist deep in preparation for San Francisco’s Pride Festival and Parade, which usually happens near the end of June. I’d be planning training sessions for my volunteer groups and their supervisors. I’d be fielding phone calls from first time volunteers over the phone, holding skype calls to help someone get up to speed. I’d be pouring over spreadsheets, making sure each entry gate had enough people manning the donation buckets.

This year, in a time of a pandemic, we had already canceled the parade and festival before the current escalation of the end of the world, but I can only imagine that if we hadn’t, we’d be seriously considering it now.

Why? Well, because drunk, stupid people are hard enough to contain when they don’t have an instigator driving them to bad behavior. Because we’ve seen so many clashes of community and police (though I have never personally seen police acting inappropriately at the festival itself, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen) and because right now emotions are very high and the world seems to be standing at the tipping edge of something huge.

SF Pride sometimes has 1 million people over the course of the weekend. Those people come in every ethnicity, every nationality, every color, every orientation and every gender. Outside the gates there are protesters trying to tell us our “lifestyle” is wrong, or sometimes other messages that often get lost in the clamor of that many people. There are criminals looking to score drugs or to bloody someone for fun. There have been shootings and stabbings. There have been gay bashings.

Lay that on top of the racial tensions and the fear and the anger, and you’d have a recipe for one giant powder keg, just waiting for a spark to set it alight.

So here I sit at the beginning of Pride month, a little numb and staring into the heart of a country that no longer feels like home, and I hide in my house, watching the chaos around me unfold. My agoraphobia makes it nearly impossible to join a peaceful protest. We will see a spike in virus numbers. This might devolve into a civil war, or at least that’s the way it feels.

Maybe it is the end of the world as we know it. I’m not convinced that is a bad thing. It’s up to us, every individual to decide how we rise from the ashes.

Please stay safe out there, Readers. Support your brothers and sisters as they cry out in rage for change, for equality, for an end to the violence of poverty, discrimination and straight out hate.

None of us are equal until we are all equal.

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boys and girls, women and men

I’ve been thinking a lot about my language around gender, and how much of those ingrained throw away phrases are dependent on a very binary, very uneven understanding of what gender is.

We could start with the idea that seems to permeate at least American culture that you can use the words “girl” and “woman” almost synonymously, but try that with “boy” and “man” and at the very least you’ll get shouted at (unless it’s a playful “one of the boys” type thing), because the somehow that’s insulting.  Of course, more and more women are correcting people when they say “girl” and aren’t speaking about someone under eighteen.  Of course, it works the other way too, especially when we’re implying that the person is complicit in some illegal or unsavory situation, like when reporting on sexual assaults, a girl of sixteen will be called a woman because that way the crime is less heinous (insert Law & Order SVU opening monologue here).

Even in my own self speak I find myself calling myself “girl” especially when I’m talking negatively about myself.  I’m fifty-one years old, I left girldom behind a fair few years ago.  I don’t let anyone else call me girl, but I do it to myself all the time.

Being a part of the LGBTQ+ community, and having a niece who is transgender, I find myself becoming more and more aware of this language we have as a set default, this binary man & woman thing that is so much a part of how we talk, how we think that it’s in our idioms, in our daily language with each other.  We throw the words around without thinking about what we are saying.

Just yesterday on Facebook, I posted some…let’s call them reminders about who I am and what I believe, and one of the points was in reference to pregnancy and abortion.  A friend called me out on my gendered language, because, as they pointed out, transmen and non-binary folks can get pregnant as well as cis women.  But in the moment of writing most passionately about abortion being a health decision made by the pregnant person and their doctor, I let that old programming flow.

I know a lot of people have trouble with pronouns and gender now that those among us who are transgender or non-binary no longer feel the need to hide themselves inside the cis paradigm, and even someone like me, who fully supports an expansive idea of what gender is, can get it wrong like I did yesterday.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying though, and keep working at the de-internalization of those ideas, keep correcting yourself when you slip up, and take the correction from others when it comes.

Respect is Kindness, and Kindness Matters.

That ended up being a bit deeper than I first expected, but it is an important conversation to have.  Happy Saturday, Readers!  I am off to write and drink more coffee!

 

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

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finding space to be me

I’ve been thinking a lot about community and what that looks like for someone like me who seldom feels at home in groups of people.  For a time in my life, I found community in various fandoms, but as time progressed, they became contentious and clicky and I backed away.

For a time, I found community in the Pagan community, which here in the SF Bay area is vibrant and diverse and can be amazing.  However, here too there is division and in-fighting, and I’ve backed off in recent years.

My current attempt at giving to community is within the LGBTQA+ space, but I find myself limiting my interaction to what I do for the Pride organization, and I don’t go out seeking friends within the community, and I don’t really engage in any events or discussions.  I guess, in a way, I give community, but don’t receive it in return.

Even among fellow authors and editors, I tend to feel unseen, unnoticed, and markedly of different opinions than many, so I feel as though here too is a community that I belong in, but do not belong to.

Mostly, I’m okay with that.  I’m better on my own in most things.  I have a number of very good friends that I can spend time with and not feel as though I’ve burned my candle down to nothing, not feel as though I give and give and get nothing in return.

Having just spent two weeks with one such friend, my socialization/support needs are well met and community feels more like work than it is worth.  I have a cautious toe dipping back into fandom having found a Star Wars fandom group for geeky women and I see the enthusiasm and love others have, and I miss sharing that.  I’ve kept my geeky joy for just my friends who share it for a long time.

Not sure yet how deep I’ll wade into it again, for now it’s mostly toe dipping, but my recent trip to Disney and Galaxy’s Edge has reignited my love of all things Star Wars, so we’ll see.

In the meantime, I have a day job to get busy on, and so much to do!  I wish you good coffee and random acts of kindness today, Readers!

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a return to “normal”

Here we are on the other side of Pride month.  My work on the anthology is complete and turned in, I have only a small amount of Pride paperwork to finish, the new job is starting to settle in.

That must mean it’s time to get my “normal” life back, right? For some value of normal anyway.  My current schedule is still a bit all over the place, in part due to the holiday this week and trying to sort out the best way to work my twenty hours at the job while also getting other stuff done.

I’m hoping this will also encourage my muse to return.  She’s been AWOL pretty much since I got laid off.  But, I got a glimmer of plot resolution the other day while I was crocheting and if I finish up my work early enough today, that should mean I could dust off that story file and make some words happen.

Exciting, I know!

For now though, I have a few hours to finish for the week and a project that needs doing, with a stiff deadline, so, I’m off to deal with that.

Hope y’all had a great week, Readers, and that this coming week is fabulous!

 

Photo by Dustin Lee on Unsplash

 

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and so it is…

Pride week. Second week on the new job.  Deadlines for writing and editing.

Yeah, it’s been a week.  And it’s only Wednesday!

I turned over my writing and editing stuff to all the various people who I needed to get it to early this morning, seeing as I was awake at 5 am, even though I’m pretty sure I meant to sleep a few more hours.  Might as well make use of the time, am I right?

I have to work the day job for a few hours this morning (it’s amazing how quickly you can burn through an allotted 20 hours!!), before turning my attention to the rest of my Pride prep, which at this point of the week includes doing laundry, sorting out my meds for the weekend, making sure the laptop is set up for sign ins over the weekend and making some hard boiled eggs.  Because Protein.

There is probably going to be some house cleaning and sorting through the piles of clothing I’ve pulled out of places to decide whether it stays or goes…and if it goes, where is it going to?  Having lost 122 pounds since my heaviest weight is great, but it does make clothing occasionally problematic.  I picked up two pairs of size 18W capri pants the other day…they’re already a bit baggy, and yesterday I put on a pair of size 16W that were too tight for comfort, but I could zip them up and everything.  Won’t be too long before I’m in those.  But that means the piles of 20Ws need to find new homes.

I should probably get on with the day job work.  More deadlines, you know?  And that cup of coffee I set down somewhere and is probably getting cold…I should go find that too.  Happy Wednesday, Readers!  And Happy Pride!

 

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

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disappearing act, work and pride

Oops!  I seem to have missed a couple of posts there last week!  Sorry about that.  Truth is, job hunting and Pride have eaten up all of my time lately.  The good news is that I’ve landed a job that is paying me well, and not taking up all my time, and once I’ve gotten my feet good and wet will let me work from home as much as I need to.

And how are we almost to SF Pride?  We’re under two weeks away!  I’m giving my first Supervisor’s training this Thursday!  It’s crazy!  I still have a little bit of work to do to be ready for that, so I anticipate this afternoon after work I will be deep into that.  It’s not like I haven’t given at least part of this training for more than 10 years!  I could probably do it in my sleep, but I still get anxious about getting ready.

As writing goes, I’m still kind of in limbo land, in part due to stress related writer’s block and in part due to editing commitments. Doesn’t keep my head from filling with ideas though…and I’m contemplating an anthology of short stories to get the juices flowing again…after Pride and the editing of the anthology for Sirens.

For now, I should get back to my coffee and my getting ready for work.  Happy Tuesday, Readers!