So although I am going through this nasty divorce (of sorts) process, my life still goes on. I mean it has to. In doing this I have been having some family drama since late last night and all day today. I won't get much into it except to say that in the end there were several e-mails exchanged between my uncle and me. Now, for anyone who knows anything about my family, I find them to be awesome and most accepting of me and the fact that I am a queer lesbian. While I am sure they take it in stride sometimes, I know that my mother and my brother love me very very much and are very cool about my life and the way I choose to go about living it. This is not to say being queer/lesbian is a choice, but I believe in a comprehensive view on the formation of sexuality (physiology, language, environment, performance) etc. This is not to air out my dirty family laundry, but I do think it is an important thing to write about, because it is about families, it is about communication, and the communication in itself could definitely be a place for further study in my life.
So the last e-mail I received from attempted to harangue me, saying that what I do in school isn't "real" because it isn't math or science. He also made sure to tell me that he doesn't hate me because I am a lesbian but because I am a mean person (which he also attributes to genetics-weird because we are related?) And then in the last paragraph proceeded to tell me that at least he has a son and that the dildos I use have no semen coming out of them, so I couldn't be a mother anyway. WTF?!? REALLY?!? GROSS! And last time I checked queers were still allowed in various ways to have children. Wow-low blows for sure.
This is why I hate STUPID white men. Now to clarify, not all white men are stupid, far from it. In fact my best friend and my roommate are both straight white men and I love them both very much. What I dislike are white men who try to define my life for me and tell me what I am and what I am not. I am also not a big fan of white men who refuse to acknowledge their power and privilege in this world (of course I am annoyed by anyone who cannot do this!) I am also super annoyed that my school, my job, my life were dismissed so incredibly hard. I mean really, really, math and science are the only real things? I would like to suggest that without communication we couldn't teach those things-in fact we could teach nothing-so really I am pretty sure communication research and study is important.
I proceeded to e-mail this letter which I will include here and then blocked all of his incoming e-mails. I apologize for the profanity and warn now that if it offends you-DO NOT READ IT!
My name is Kathryn-not Kathy-but you wouldn't know that about me,
because you know absolutely nothing about me.
You are a despicable, ignorant asshole. I don't hate all white men,
what I hate are STUPID white men who use things like sexual orientation
as fodder to hit a person below the belt (YOU!) I am in fact a very
nice person, except when assholes like you decide to engage in this
behavior simply out of sport and ignorance. In which case no I am not
the subservient little woman you appreciate. I speak my mind loudly,
and don't abide by the female codes of civility expected by you or
society. If that makes me mean, then I'm glad. I am not angry, nor
spiteful, unless it comes to people like you who refuse to acknowledge
their power and privilege in this world because they are simply too
ignorant to recognize it.
As for what I am getting a degree in, you have no idea what I am doing
or what I value-again in your ignorance you assume you can speak for
and at me, which is exactly why I do the work I do. To keep ignorant
douchebags like yourself from gaining any more power than you already
do. I'm also pretty sure you maybe have a B.A. and did nothing with
it or with your life-you are a loser-plain and simple. So when it
comes to doing REAL things, I am pretty sure you don't do them either,
in fact you do nothing but drugs and being in pain and wanting to die.
Yeah, that's a very decent life and role model you are setting for
your son.
You may actually be the worst parent I have ever seen. Kicking your
child while on family vacation-wow it's a wonder why they let people
like yourself procreate-this is where forced sterilization might
actually come in handy. It's honestly a shame, because your son is
suffering at your own hands and you fail to recognize that. But
again, being anything other than a loser is not your strong point-you
always have been and as far as I am concerned you always will be.
My sexuality is not up for debate or your insults you fucking asshole.
Fuck you.
the end.
To not end in this extremely negative way, I feel like at least I am strong enough to write something like this. I am a passionate person and I love what I do and I am good at it. And I don't abide by the codes of white female civility that says I need to be quite, and subservient to a man, I don't think that makes me mean. It makes me a strong, independent, fierce, and fabulous feminist, of which, I am very proud. So take that douchey white men of the world and for all you white men out there who are doing good work around your identity, power and privilege, I salute you. You are allies not foe and I have so much respect for that!
the end.
Love Kathyn
9 comments:
White guy chiming in.
In your post you say "...I find them to be awesome and most accepting of me and the fact that I am a queer lesbian."
Which is fine grammatically and certainly comprehensible however I do question the redundancy of the words queer and lesbian used back to back.
A quick google of "what is the difference between queer and lesbian?" yields topics from about.com which do not really answer my question to which that presents itself relevant in your sentence.
So I will ask it here. What is the difference between queer and lesbian?
Yay! I salute you white guy chiming in!! The answer to this question is sort of complicated, but I will do my best.
To me queer is an adjective to describe the way I practice my sexual orientation as a lesbian. Meaning I do not practice my leabianism in a normative way-I do not desire to be gay married or have gaybies. My family who I am close to knows these things about me. I usually practice my sexuality in terms of desire and not labels and try to the best of my ability to account for my race, class, gender presentation (white, middle-class, femme) in my identification of myself.
This is complicated I get that. But basically, I am always trying to expand the possibilities/potentialities of labels. Many lesbians do this without identifying as queer, however, queer resonates with me, so I identify that way. To me it describes the way I do/perform sexuality that is not based solely in biology but the comprehensiveness i describe later in the post.
However, queer is usually associated with the queer activist movements like Act Up in the 80's that deal with things like HIV/AIDS activism. It was a radical movement that said you can be straight and still abide by queer or non-normatve politics-by participating in such movements. There are a variety of ways to do this, I will not explain them all now.
Now queer is used both academically and in non-academic circles to identify non-normativity. I.E. Those who do not believe in gay marriage, babies, play with gender, and drag, trans people, straight people of color (who are often seen as deviant and not the norm) , and BDSM folk, as well as those who practice polyamory. These are just a few examples of practicing queer politics.
It's complex-there is not one description because queer means so much to different
people. I will say, my best friend, who is a straight white dude, identifies as queer, although he has no interest in practicing same-sex sexuality. He identifies that way because he is a 30 something man with no significant other, who hangs out with more glbt folk than straight people, who focuses more on his academic scholarship than objectifying and sleeping with women he doesn't care about. While some people don't agree with this classification, I personally find it really compelling.
In a sort of nutshell this is my answer. I hope it makes some sense. I study this stuff and read about it all the time, so for me it is second-nature, but trying to explain it to others can make it convoluted. Thank you for asking.
Great response, I did not anticipate that much context. Nevertheless I think it captured an accurate answer to the question to which I asked!
However it did open up several new inquiries to which I have.
"I usually practice my sexuality in terms of desire and not labels and try to the best of my ability to account for my race..."
When you talk about desire is it gender specific?
Now queer is used both academically and in non-academic circles to identify non-normativity.
Is non-normativity subject to how you were brought up? For instance I assume the norm would be a good christian family (only using relegion as a basis of that's how Americans grew up from 1700's onward) who had 1 mother, 1 father and little Timmy who grew up to play stickball. Timmy grew up and Married Sally.They lived happily ever after. Is this how one would say this is how most people view the "norm"?
...who hangs out with more glbt folk than straight people...
What does glbt stand for? If I had to guess gay, lesbian, bisexual...Triceratops?
"When you talk about desire is it gender specific?"
I don't think I understand this in its entirety? What I can say is that I think desire is most often located between bodies, which are gendered. But I think we often put words to our desires, thus, limiting them to specific bodies. I don't think there is anything wrong with doing this, only to say that I do not think desire is linked in an essentialist way to gender, but our language limits our understanding of desire so that it is generally linked to gendered bodies. Wow-that sounds super confusing. For me, I have a tendency to link my desire to women who perform a boi-ish form of gender. This is not always the case now and probably will not always be, but at this specific moment, that is where I locate my desire.
I very much agree with your designation of "the norm" but would say that it is also normed not just in terms of sexuality, but what you are describing are white and middle class norms also. This is important because sexual norms are often dictated in terms of race and class also.
G(ay), L(esbian), B(isexual), T(ransgendered) people. Transgendered is another complicated term that refers to people who do not fit into the standard categories of male/female or masculine/feminine, often not gay/straight either. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender
ಠ_ಠ
I am very interested in learning what other "norms" are present in society. Might you have any reading material in to which you can recommend?
I am a big proponent of the work done by feminists and queer theorists often of color.
Patricia Hill Collins
Gloria Anzaldua
Jose Esteban Munoz
E. Patrick Johnson
Bryant Alexander
Judith Halberstam
Bernadette Marie Calafell
They talk about the various ways that race, class, gender, and sexual norms (as well as religious, linguistic, time/space, and classroom norms) work together to marginalize certain people while making room for those with significant amounts of power and privilege-in I think fairly accessible ways.
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