sexgenderbody - There is no "should" (in this message: 2 new items)
by G John wesley on Tuesday, August 31, 2010
sexgenderbody - There is no "should" (in this message: 2 new items) |  |
| Posted: 31 Aug 2010 10:37 AM PDT
I took my 8 y/o daughter recently to visit the grave of my grandmother and grandfather. They're buried in a little cemetery in Batavia, IL called Resurrection. My daughter said it was too bad that we didn't bring flowers and I agreed. I'm not much of a cemetery visitor myself, but there is something about flowers. We agreed to bring flowers next time. It took us about 20 minutes to find the headstones, which was comedic in itself. I was sort of embarrassed that I didn't know where the markers were. I mean, I really did spend a lot of time with "Gramma" when she was alive. I haven't visited her grave since the day she was buried, 9 years ago. As I lined up an 8 y/0 child with me into a search party for two rocks in the ground with names Donald andJane, I thought that it's probably a lucky break for me that I am an atheist. I figured that if I believed that I'd be facing the spirits of the dead in an afterlife, they would chew my ass out for never visiting their tombs or at least bringing flowers when I did finally swing by. Not to mention spending my remaining living years stewing over the guilt for my misdeeds. As it was, I just passed the time watching my daughter pick up shiny things as an offering for the graves of her ancestors. I wondered if I was a poor example of how to respect ones ancestors, but that was just my old Catholic guilt training flaring up like some scar from a childhood trauma. In reality, the way to respect my ancestors is to live a life of dignity and honesty; to live a life worth living. That's what they did and that's the only thing Gramma would want me to do, if she were here. It's all she ever wanted for me. We found the markers. My daughter found them, of course. I walked over and we gazed up the remembrances of those gone before us, father and daughter. In addition to his birth and death dates and name, Donald's stone listed his accomplishments:
Jane's stone said less:
Wife? Wife? That's it? What an insult. I was stunned. As we looked on, my daughter captured the essence of this label perfectly:
I looked around for comparison to see a demonstration of the travesty before me. Unfortunately, this seemed to be the norm as the theme for choosing an epitaph for a woman seemed to be "What is the least we can possibly say?" The result looks like a low bidding war of using the least syllables. Sort of like the last move in a Scrabble game, when you don't even have a full tray of letters. Or a funeral home game show called Name That Woman: "I can name that woman in one word." Wife. Mother. Sister. I wondered what stopped the trend from going even lower on the value scale. Maybe it has and there are women's graves out there with declarations of even lower value: Her. Cook. It. Maybe it was nothing more than an indictment of my mother's strained relationship with her own mother. Whatever. I was pissed. My daughter and I stayed a while longer and then I took her for a drive around Batavia. I showed her my grandmother's old house, her church, her charities. I told her of holidays and summer days that lasted forever. I showed my daughter a house that Mary Todd Lincoln had lived in near my grandmother's house.
Which is the exact same question I asked my grandmother when she showed me that house! Gramma didn't think it was nearly as funny a question as my guffaws indicated to my daughter's inquiry. I told her my grandmother's life story, as I know it.
Helen became very ill so she was returned to the orphanage and a new girl brought home. She too was renamed Helen. My grandmother confided to me that this event made her dreadfully afraid to become ill, for she was afraid that she would be returned to die alone. These three children remained close for the rest of their lives, with my grandmother and her brother living on for years after Helen. Her teen years and young adult years are not known to me. It has been suggested that my grandmother too had a child out of wedlock which she gave up for adoption. My grandmother married before WWII to a man named Emanuel and she bore two girls with him.
Grandmother knew how to work the system. She was vigorously active in the Democratic Party and civic organizations. She had a strong sense of community contribution and the duties of citizenship. In addition to earning the money to raise her daughters, named Jane and Rita (go figure), she contributed time and effort to her church; community organizations; Democratic Party operations, GOTV drives & registration. She joined The Loyal Order Of Moose, whose signature charitable operation is fundingMooseheart - The Child City, a home for orphans. (go figure...again).
After her daughters were raised and gone, she remarried to Don. She found in him true happiness. Their wedding was in Hawaii and they bought a house in Batavia to live out their days and cash in on the good life promised to those that made so many sacrifices during WWII. I remember every visit to their house as a time of laughter, smiles and joy. Christmas eve seated around a shiny silver christmas tree made of wire and plastic with a lamp on the floor shining red, blue, green and yellow light on the tree. Summer days in the backyard swimming pool. Ice cream sundaes in little plastic cups in the freezer. Friday night fish-fry at the VFW. She was a busy-body. She always had little lists of things to do and memo pads by the phone with a pencil. Her refrigerator had little lists posted on there and she was always working off of some list. When I was 8, Don went to the hospital for chest pains. They gave him some medicine and released him. He called his wife to come pick him up and while she was driving to him, a blood clot slipped into his heart and he died. That's when we put the first rock in the ground at Resurrection Cemetery. Grandma lived another 30 years after that. She was always busy. She never married again. She didn't want to lose her military health benefits. She did meet a man and they lived together for a few years. But, she couldn't bring herself to let go of the benefits she had. She was the queen of working the system. Not milking it - she contributed plenty. More than many others. But, if a promise was made to her, she was going to make sure that it is kept. The greatest generation was promised much for their sacrifice during WWII and Jane O'Flaherty was going to make sure that the promise was delivered. Until retirement, she worked in state institutions for troubled children and teens. She was there for those that no one was there for. She kept her Catholic faith, but like many - she made the personal decisions regarding her own life by the terms of what is best for her and not what is best for the Pope. She was an active member of her church,Holy Cross. However, she was not secretive about her opinions - especially when they differed from the Vatican or the Pastor. Her brother had joined the priesthood as an adult and for years, she assisted his parishes in addition to her own. They shared a close bond of friendship, sibling kinship and shared values. He was with her for all but the last 5 years of her life. I told all of this to my daughter, remembering all the love I received from that woman. My daughter said to me while I pointed out the Chevy dealer my grandmother kept afloat by purchasing a new dark blue Caprice every 3 years. The little voice in the back seat said:
Those words were a greater respect for the dead than any floral arrangement or carved monument. The knowledge this little girl has of the goodness from her ancestor and the ownership of that as a part of who she is - priceless. In reality, the memories of the dead can never do justice to their lives. No monument or story or reverence can replace or recreate the impact of anyone. It is simply not possible. What we can do, is to do what they did - live, and do so with every ounce of care and commitment that we can generate. The greater the legacy we might wish to honor, the greater the commitment we share with those that live with us now. Thinking about what words my grandmother's stone would have, if she were to choose them, I suspect it might look like one of her little lists:
- gadfly
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| Are Militant Homosexual Activists An Extinct Species? Posted: 30 Aug 2010 12:18 PM PDT
Back in the day, opponents of equality and human rights for us Pink folks used to call anyone who dared speak out against them or shoot down their ridiculous arguments "militant homosexual activists". Typically, they used to show their blatant ignorance by calling transgender activists the very same thing as well. But regardless of the details, today I have to wonder where all those "militant activists" have gone? The Radical Right is still here, attacking our humanity, our right to exist - and I have to ask, where are all those bold voices who used to speak out against them? Why aren't they still here, taking them on and calling them out on their prejudice, hypocrisy and bigotry? Time passes, sure - and 1993 was almost 20 years ago now, when those right-wing folks opposed dismantling the laws that made gay and trans people into criminals in South Africa, when all the nut-jobs went to Parliament to tell the fledgling democratically-elected "government of national unity" (remember those days?) why treating gay people like human beings would lead to the fall of civilization - and allowing transsexuals to be logged correctly in the population register would "endanger children". Of course, back then there were activists who stood up to them, and took them on - exposing their propaganda and misinformed bigotry - and explained that just because the rest of Africa wants to murder people based on their gender or sexuality, it doesn't mean that South Africa has to follow their example - or bless it with religious fervor. This was shortly followed by the publication of a nasty little book which sought to turn the Pink Community into the new most-hated and feared social group in the "new" South Africa. This attempt to scapegoat Pink folk brought plentiful support from right-wing fruit loops into the fray. The newly formed African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), neck-deep in the promotion of the book, was there too. And yes, there were some dedicated voices speaking out against them, bringing undeniable facts into the argument in opposition to regurgitated junk-science borrowed from the works of foreign fantasy writers like Paul Cameron and James Dobson. Just a few years ago the fight for marriage equality brought more nuts out of the woodwork, claiming that gay marriage would threaten or "devalue" straight marriage - and miraculously "increase the divorce rate". Not only have neither of these idiotic "threats" come to fruition, but the statistics seem to have brought to light same-gender relationships that have lasted decades, giving them much needed positive exposure - and blowing clean out of the water the Religious Right fantasy that gay people can't commit to long term, loving, wholesome relationships. Despite the claims of people like "Dr" Peter Hammond of the "Christian Action Network" and his side-kick Taryn Hodgson - that human rights activists at the time were "militant", I have to point out the painfully obvious to anyone who visits the exercise in paranoia 101 that is the CAN website, reads their articles or press interviews - that at least the Pink Community is not known for advocating the use of firearms to make their point, stock-piling weapons, ammunition or emergency supplies, undergoing para-military training - and of course, home-schooling. But of course, we who speak out against them are the "militant" ones. Go figure. Time seems to have caught up with the CAN, it has fallen all but silent of late - and not much has been seen or heard of Hammond, at least since that messy business that earned him the nick-name of "the Paintball Pastor" in the press, when a trick-or-treating child was shot in the face at close range with a paintball gun in mysterious circumstances on Halloween a few years ago. His younger ally Erroll Naidoo, who used to speak for the CAN, in particular at homophobic events, now leads the fight against human rights through his own foreign-backed group, the "Family Policy Institute", located close to Parliament. He spends a lot of time these days in meetings with government officials, such as the Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, plotting new ways to extend Religious Right control over what goes on in government, the media and society. What I find disconcerting is that he isn't just bragging when he speaks of the Religious Right's success in influencing what appears to be a conservative and sympathetic government - we can see it in the new laws being tabled in Parliament. We see it when Ministers of Art & Culture storm out of tasteful public arts exhibitions, calling them "immoral" and "contrary to nation-building". We see it when the government starts deciding what people should see and what they shouldn't - and what they should think or feel, or believe - and what not. These days I see Pink Community events in many places, hear about Pride in various centers, read about parties and jols everywhere. There is an impression that everything is just fine, but is it? Black gays and lesbians and trans people are still raped and murdered almost with impunity simply for existing. I still see people afraid to be themselves in public places, despite their freedom and equality being guaranteed in the laws of this country. I still hear of people too afraid to come out to their parents and co-workers, I still read about people being raped, murdered or assaulted for being honest and open and making use of the Constitution that promises protection and equality - the same Constitution which various elements - some of them influencing and infiltrating government - wish to replace with their holy book of choice. Why do I still smell the scent of fear in our community, but hear no strong voices speaking out to set things right? What happened to those "militant homosexual activists" of the past? Why have so many of them disappeared and fallen silent? More importantly, why has no-one stepped up to take their places? Do you think if there were more vocal intersex gender activists on the scene, the athletics authorities in this country would have dared to dally so long with Caster Semenya's test results, or given her such a rough ride? Do you think they would have got away with it so cleanly? Why is there a deafening silence, a near-absence of voices from within the community to speak out in opposition when things that make Pastor Naidoo smile come to fruition? Where are all the "militant homosexual activists"? Where are they? Perhaps, as a colleague of mine in human rights advocacy has sarcastically remarked, they are "too busy washing penguins" to notice they are needed. We need more people who care about staying alive and standing up to people who would like nothing better for us to disappear off the face of the Earth, and resisting people who would like a shot at making it happen. We need more "militant" gay and trans activists.
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Born, in 1916 in NYC as Rita Mae Krueger. Her birth certificate was issued from an adoption hospital, where women would deliver a child that they would give up for adoption. Rita was adopted by a family in Elgin, IL who already had a son of their own, Sylvester. The changed Rita's name to Jane. They also adopted another little girl and named her, Helen.
He went to war
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