Lesbians, Women and Equality

As the endless struggle for equal pay has illustrated, women we have a long journey ahead of us before we can see any semblance of equality. After much struggle, women are now citizens of the USA who can vote and try for almost any job as long as it is not too high profile like being president or hosting a late night talk show. But we are still limited by sexism which defines us by gender, appearance, social agility and acceptability to those males in power.  

Just yesterday I was searching the database NewPages for anthology and literary journal submission venues.The first “feminist” one I found had just run a special issue that contained the voices of male writers expounding on the subject of women. The second one was soliciting for an upcoming issue on women’s relationships to “the men in our lives.” Seriously?

Let me make this clear: women are not to blame for sexism. Having said that, it is also imperative that we stop being collaborators! As Judy Grahn said in her poem, A Woman is Talking to Death, “We do each other in, that’s a fact!” Lesbians can be guilty of this just like our bib-dyke sisters, but since we have so much less power in society it hardly matters.

And there is the crux of the problem. When it comes to the big picture, our existence, our struggles are most often not even footnotes. The female equivalent of the male gay civil rights spokesperson doesn’t really exist. Harvey Milk, Tennessee Williams, Bayard Rustin, James Baldwin, Tony Kushner, all these are names that come to mind historically when thinking about notable LGBTs. I know that Audre Lorde, Gertrude Stein and Adrienne Rich are notable lesbians, but as far as name recognition they are undoubtedly second tier.

The “problem” of the unapologetic lesbian is being dealt with inside the LGBT community where the word “queer” is now touted as a substitute for “lesbian” because it is more “inclusive.” I’m all for inclusion, but I also have to post the question, what exactly is being lost?

As that old movie “Tootsie” posited and the transgender MTF movement seems to express: men believe that they are better at absolutely everything and that includes being women! The truth is that yes, a less oppressed person has more distance from an issue and that makes both your self-image and everything you undertake, less fraught and therefore a bit easier.  

And, for many of us bio-broads, “being a woman” is not a set of feelings or behaviors. It is just a genetic fact, an anatomical category!

I respect transgender women. But they are raised with the privilege of growing up and being treated as males. Due to class issues, I am used to working alongside people of greater privilege. I don’t hate them. I just think that we all must acknowledge these differences and, as class warriors, fight the tendency to relinquish our power to those with greater access to theirs.

Women have come a great distance since acquiring the vote in 1920. Lesbians have made huge strides since Stonewall. But genuine equality is still a distant dream and ignoring this fact will not make it go away.

Is Resentment of Privilege Inevitable?

Where the Rubber
Hits the Road

Now that our society seems to have fully incorporated the one percent/ninety-nine percent concept into our socioeconomic discourse, right-wing conservatives are busy impugning that all this negative attention the one percent are receiving is simply the jealousy and resentment of the "deservedly" unsuccessful, or less successful, underclass.

With all their money behind them, they are getting some traction with this approach. As for myself, in my sixth decade, I am trying to make peace with my life decisions, opportunities and lack thereof. Lately I've been thinking a lot about whether or not my political positions are motivated by these types of unsavory and destructive emotions.

Just this past Friday, my partner and I went to see a couple of films at the San Francisco LGBT Film Festival that were on the subject of specific lesbians of our generation who achieved recognition in progressive politics. One film was about Charlotte Bunch who started out in the seventies as a lesbian feminist activist and wound up a career academic (without advanced degrees) who worked with international organizations advancing women's rights in mostly third world settings.

The second film was about Ellen Ratner, someone whose work I was not familiar with. She is a liberal radio broadcaster (she claims the only one) for the rabidly conservative Fox network. Ratner is my age and actually attended the same junior high and high school that I did although I never spoke with her. She inhabited a wealthy world that did not intersect with mine in any way (neighborhood, friendship circles, activities, interests).

This documentary, "Ellen Ratner: "A Force of Nature," was produced by Barbara Kopple filmmaker of "Harlan County, USA," the award-winning chronicle of a coal miners' strike in a rural Appalachian town. Clearly, this film was a challenge for Koppel. Unlike the Kentucky coal miners, Ratner is an heiress from a real estate dynasty. (this information is from other research, it is not in the film). I understand that in these times particularly, depicting an eccentric, essentially kind-hearted, but massively privileged, liberal who made good is not easy. None of her homes or living arrangements were shown. The segment of Ratner, a boss in her workplace, trying to get a black woman underling to say she liked Ellen as a person, made me cringe. But more safely, Koppel filmed Ratner almost exclusively on a philanthropic mission in Africa. The only outright allusion to the wealth of her family was the fact that she bought her wife, a former Air Force pilot, her own airplane as a gift. It was a sweet gesture but certainly not one that many other folks could duplicate.

So am I resentful of people, even those who are speaking up for lesbian rights, who have benefitted from so much more opportunity and privilege? And, if I am, is that wrong? I am aware that when I am feeling good about myself and my life, my negative feelings toward others disappear. As a nominal Buddhist, I know not only that those feelings are counterproductive, but also that having access to money and things doesn't necessarily make a person happy. On the other hand,  not having any access, i.e.: living on the street and starving, can truly make a person miserable. To some degree, I also believe, even though this sounds really corny, that experiencing struggle tends to build character and resourcefulness.

I do often wonder who I would have been and what I could have done if I'd come from a background where financial stress did not play such a starring role. But truly, that's as hard to imagine as who I'd be if I'd been born African-American, straight or even gentile. I'm not sure of what that person would have been like, only that she (or he) would have been someone else.

So, do I covet Ellen Ratner's cushy life and experience? Absolutely not! Do I resent people who have had access to more power, privilege and opportunity? Well, not in theory, but my honest final answer would have to be that it depends on which moment you ask me.

The People of Broken Glass

When I got into a graduate degree program at UC Berkeley in 1988, I found the proposition of attending a prestigious school quite frightening. I had actually written two of the three required recommendation letters myself. My Alma Mater, Ohio State University, was a totally adequate school but certainly didn't have the status and mystique of Cal Berkeley.

Mostly, I was afraid that the range of my experience growing up and being an adult (I was 37 when I got in to grad school) would not mix well with the pedigreed and polished lives of my classmates. UC Berkeley is a very difficult school to attend for folks who need to work for a living, due to the fact that all the major classes are during the day. Luckily, I was living with a supportive partner and able to take out a small loan, so with the financial aspects taken care of all that remained were the psychological ones.

Of course, once I was established at the school, I connected with others who came from backgrounds more similar to mine. We found each other immediately, with that unspoken radar that seems almost instictive.

And I also socialized with folks from very different backgrounds and perspectives. I remember eating lunch with a woman who had gone to an Ivy League school and was working on her second master's degree, preparing to go on for a doctorate. I thought about how I would love to spend my whole life in school and what it would actually cost to do that.

She was a very sweet person. In my experience, people who come from loving families where there needs are met on many levels usually are. They are like the folks in my workplace who tell me I complain too much. She was effusive, warm, fluffy and soft, a bit like sitting across from a gently purring, contented kitten.

My best friend at school, Shari, who I wound up calling "scary Shari" for reasons I won't go into, had a good luck, fend for yourself background more similar to my own. Sitting across the table from her was a bit like dining with a pile of shards of broken glass.

When I tell friends this analogy, they assume I am being negative and tremendously self-deprecating. To which I can respond, "I'm Jewish and working class and we tend to be like that." But I truly believe that most of the earth-moving, gut-wrenching, creative contributions to society are made from the outside, not from sleepy kittens, but from honest, damaged people of broken glass, the ones with the power to reflect back a brutally accurate image of society at every level. You only have to hold us up to the light for all things to become visible!

Happy, Merry and Peaceful whatever you celebrate, even if it's just a day off work!