Lesbian Bloggers vs Male Impostors

Will Submit DNA
Upon Request

In the bizarre irony that can only be real life non-fiction, a rash of heterosexual, male bloggers who are passing as lesbians, has materialized in cyberspace of late, casting doubt on genuine lesbian bloggers like, er, yours truly.

The blog, "Gay Girl in Damascus," supposed written by a Syrian lesbian, was exposed to be a fake when its creator, Tom McMaster a 40 year old white, male heterosexual, went too far and had his avatar undergo a political kidnapping so he could take a vacation in Istanbul free from the need to post.

To add insult to injury, LezGetReal an informative news blog turns out to be the creation of Bill Graber a 58 year old white, heterosexual male from Dayton Ohio, who under the fake identity of Paula Brooks, edited the site that claims to be, "A Gay Girl's View of the World." It's funny, I just assumed that the patronizing nature of that slogan represented a generational divide, not an impostor situation. You know how those young dykes don't seem to mind the use of words like: girl, lady and Mam, the way us old-school feminists do. God, Rachel Maddow uses them regularly!

A couple of other guys have been unmasked as well but the big question that remains, particularly for us actual lesbian bloggers is why?

We all know that the guys are kind of titillated by the whole lesbian thing but that doesn't explain it. And due to male, white, heterosexual privilege, most of them believe that they can do anything better than those of us who suffer under the weight of some kind of oppression. Oddly enough, that encompasses the belief that they can be better women than biological females. See the abominable movie "Tootsie," again if you don't believe that's true.

But posing as an online lesbian? I can only deduce that these boys have come to think that perhaps women do have something they covet, especially if they don't have to deal with the discrimination part of the equation. And lesbians occupy a market niche that still has more room than other niches, due, in part, to REAL oppression. Yes, we dykes, especially of my generation, are not as skilled at promoting ourselves and doing concrete, constructive things in the real world because we were raised to be women and to despise ourselves on many levels. It is a lot to overcome, so in the gap period when some of us struggle toward competence and self-acceptance, opportunist males see another opening in which to thrust their aspirations.

One other thing that, I bet, plays a role, is that lesbians don't have relationships with men. So, while they're posing as that queer gal, other women might begin corresponding with them. McMaster did have a romantic email relationship with a woman sympathetic to his character's plight. And being lesbian women eliminates the whole specter of male sexual activities of which they want no part. 

Alas, We're Not in Athens...

Recent Protest in Athens

According to witnesses, more than 40,000 people mobilized in Athens to protest austerity measures that raise taxes, cut salaries, slashed pensions and put health benefits out of reach. Their current unemployment rate is over 16%. Police hid behind steel barricades and used tear gas to try and disperse the angry citizenry.

Here, judges were at work on both sides of the struggle. Justice James Ware struck down the ridiculous and fallacious notion that he should have recused himself from the proposition 8 decision due solely  to the fact he is a gay man in a long-term relationship. Ware is an African-American who immediately recognized the civil rights implications of this type of "reasoning."

However, in Wisconsin the state Supreme Court ruled that Judge Maryann Sumi overstepped her authority by throwing out the late night, Republicans only vote for governor Scott Walker's bill stripping workers of collective bargaining rights. As it now stands public workers, except for police and firefighters, will undergo pay cuts that average about 8% of their salaries. The unions are putting together a lawsuit based on the fact that the bill illegally discriminates between classes of employees for the soul purpose of political payback.

This war against workers is not only destructive to working people but to the entire American economy. Robert Reich's article "Why the Republican War on Workers Undermines the American Economy," lays it all out there. Keep up the good work R.R.!

She Came in Through the Bathroom Window...

Yes, it was a she and she really did what the song says. My house was burglarized last week by two teenaged girls. The local police have them in custody now and they are singing up a storm. While I was at work, in broad daylight, one of them kept watch on my front porch while the other one removed a screen, opened a window and propelled herself inside through an opening 18" by 19." Nothing that an average-sized man could accomplish.

Once inside she rummaged through my bedroom drawers looking for jewelry. Perhaps this was after she was in the living room and saw my old-fashioned box television that requires a signal decoder to operate and my 2002 Dell computer tower. At that point she probably wished she'd spent her time hauling her ass elsewhere, but to make the best of a bad situation she rummaged through the bedrooms.

I could tell she knew her jewelry because she left most of my low-budget silver rings and earrings (except for a few she must have fancied) and went straight for the gold. Unfortunately for me, the only gold jewelry I have was my mother's. I kept it separately in what I thought was a good hiding place but, obviously I was mistaken.

My mother had a different philosophy on purchasing things than I do. She believed it was more meaningful to have a few very nice items than a whole pile of inexpensive, colorful ones. Our jewelry reflects very different theories of acquisition.

So my robber girls went off with the good stuff. The cops in my home city have been fabulous throughout this entire ordeal. They dusted for prints, kept me informed of everything and one of them even went out to the bushes near a park at 1 AM to retrieve some of my belongings.

As a young person I hated cops. They represented the enemy. In high school, I was a druggie and a shoplifter, ( I never would have broken into a house), so I avoided encounters with them. In college I was a political activist so I fought them, and later, as an out lesbian, who was perceived as an outlaw by the powers that be, the animosity continued.

But, of late, since the series of pension attacks on public sector workers, I have found myself regarding them more like brothers and sisters who hold very difficult, life threatening jobs. In the Wisconsin uprisings cops and firefighters were on the front lines, even though Scott Walker tried to separate them and their issues off; a blatant divide and conquer strategy.

One officer told me that the girl who was in my house lives with her grandmother a few streets away. This extra information serves to make me less afraid when I am at home alone. Perhaps, it also makes me a bit more understanding. Is it karma, are my chickens finally coming home to roost? If so, I hope my debt is now cleared and they can lay the rest of their eggs elsewhere. 

The Photogenic Phallus?

Towering Tufas in Turkey

The penis is a very high-maintenance organ. I don't have empirical data on this, as a lesbian-type female person, this is only what I can deduce from the ongoing series of male politicians whose members seem to require extraordinary measures of care.

Yes, sagas of the philandering phallus are legend, Weiner's weiner being only the most recent chapter in a never-ending story that embraces Arnold Schwarzenegger and his love children, John Edwards with one more of the same who kept the affair closeted for as long as possible due to donations from a salty, old matron who is an heiress to the Carnegie-Mellon fortune.

I could recite an nearly endless laundry list of pay to play prostitution scandal boys and the cadre of closeted gay right -wing pundits who preach hatred by day of the hanky-panky they seek in bathroom stall and online.

The most egregious schlong-wrong of late, is the attempted rape of a hotel maid by former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn. When the consent factor is eliminated and someone assumes that women are a perk that comes with a $3,000 a night hotel suite, this particular obscenity rises to the category of a felony.

Perhaps male equipment should come with a limited warranty and an instruction manual. But no matter how much use and abuse these overused appendages undergo, they still grab center stage. Comedians like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are forever making references to their schmeckels and scrota as if this conglomeration of turkey jerky makes the world go round. And the real problem is that, way too often, it does making the high profile world of politics and entertainment look more like one huge frat house.

So what does it all mean? They say if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Maybe us gals should take the hint, name our breasts and start photographing that velvet kitty! I don't think this will happen on a large scale for quite a while, if ever. The relationship of men to their genitals must be a totally different animal. The whole thing makes makes me glad I'm a dyke and really don't really have to worry about my body parts setting off on their own and making decisions without me.

Euthanasia: When Enough is Enough

Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the man who brought the issue of assisted suicide to the forefront of the American cultural dialogue, is dead at 83. Although there may be some questions around certain specific patients, the right to die, when there are no viable medical options left, should be cherished and preserved by all people who place value on ending unnecessary suffering. Euthanasia is legal today only in the states of Oregon and Washington.

This is an issue that has shaped my life. My parents had an agreement, dating back to the early days of their marriage, that if one of them became terminally ill, the other would help them leave this life. In 1973, when my mother was 48 years old, she was diagnosed with metastatic ovarian cancer. Her doctor said it was the worse case he had ever witnessed with diseased cells all over her internal organs. Since they couldn't remove the massive malignancy, they sewed her back up and started her on a massive dose regimen of chemotherapy on the off-chance that it might work. Chemotherapy was quite primitive in those days and she became very ill. Now, she was in constant pain, vomiting all the time and her face was so gaunt that is was readily apparent that she was wasting away. A month had passed since her futile surgery and the painkillers were no longer working. We all knew that it was time.

Fortunately, my mother had been a chronic insomniac so she had lots of pills and prescriptions in her name. Nembutal and Seconal are opiates and the strongest of her arsenal. I counted out pills for her. My father and a close family friend I'll call Danny were at her bedside helping by putting pinpricks in each pill so it would work faster. She was still well enough to swallow, and swallow she did until every pill was gone. After she fell unconscious my father and Danny left the hospital.

That night, something terrible happened. Somehow, probably by intuitive logic, the nurses and doctors figured out what was happening. They took my mother and pumped her stomach. The next morning she telephoned us from her bed in a barely audible, anguished voice that sounded like it was coming straight from the grave. All she could say over and over again was, "I'm still here!"

At this point, the hospital administration was threatening to charge my father with murder. What saved him from this further ordeal was the fact that the prescriptions were in my mother's name and she was still alert enough to take them. Also, the fact that she spent that night alone was key.

My mother died three days later. Although the pills didn't finished her off, they weakened her system significantly, hastening her demise. We were all extremely relieved that she was free of pain and that we would no longer have to witness her suffering.

Years later, Dr. Jack Kevorkian came upon the scene providing the service that we had so desperately needed. It's not an ideal solution but, given that our lives are finite, it's an insurance policy of sorts, the best we can hope for under the most dire of circumstances. 

The Fickle Finger of Fate

A Healthy
Finger

Growing up my younger sister was a bit like my child. I was only five when she was born and a five-year old mom is at a real parenting disadvantage. We were often left to our own devices. Sometimes that involved sitting outside of some bar in the car entertaining each other while Mom and Dad were inside getting sloshed. Other times it just involved fending for ourselves in the world. Even in their absence, there was always food in the refrigerator, soda pop in the cupboard and tons of alcohol in the cabinets.

The summer when Lori was five she was trying to split a popsicle in two with a very sharp knife. When she cut through skin instead of ice, the blood was everywhere. I could see the bones of her finger which, fortunately, were still joined. I knew to put pressure on the wound and tie it with a dish towel until the bleeding was under control. Lori had finally stopped crying by the time I bandaged it with gauze and tape from the medicine cabinet. The skin grew together and her finger healed. Our parents never noticed a thing.

One day on our weekends with our grandparents, our grandma noticed the slightly bloated, immobile appendage and inquired about it. We told her of the accident and how we fixed it. She asked my sister to move her finger (which was an index finger) and she could not. It just hung there on her hand. She had accepted her new reality of a motionless finger without question, as children do.

My grandma told our mother about the finger and soon after a doctor examined it. He scheduled and performed a surgical procedure to tie the tendons back together. While it was healing there was a wire in her finger with a button at the end of it, holding it straight and in place.

Well, my sister's finger healed, the tendons grew back together and after the wire and button were removed it worked again, she could bend it and stretch it out, the way she used to. Which illustrates the nearly boundless capacity for healing and profound resilience of the human body.

The human psyche has this capacity as well. I seem to be spending much of my sixtieth year coming to terms with my experiences and my life. It's not a question of dwelling on the negative. To me it means acceptance, catharsis, making peace with my story and then moving on to the later chapters of my life.

The Things We Do For Work

We're seeing some victories but mostly we're being creamed. Yes, a judge in Wisconsin declared Scott Walkers' attack and railroading through of an anti-worker, anti-union proposal unconstitutional. And folks are pushing back against the Ryan plan to eliminate Medicare. This is helping some Democrats in Republican districts, Kathy Hochul, NY in particular, get elected.

The creamed part has led us to sweeping anti-worker legislation ushered in under the misnomer of "pension reform," forcing public sector employees to pay for the financial meltdown with meager paychecks as financial inequality increases the rich make more money and pay less taxes than ever.

Which brings me to the topic, The Things We Do For Work, which tend to be as desperate and drastic as The Things We Do For Love, but with a more limited result...like paddling against the current in a river just to stay in the same place and not be swept backwards, downstream.

My sister is in a situation where she is vulnerable to being swept downstream in a civil service job related to Social Services in a large Bay Area County that shall remain nameless. She was accepted for promotion to a higher level job and wound up with an anal, newly hired manager, twenty years her junior who is trying to ramp up her hard-ass boss lady title at my sister's expense. She wrote up a three month review for my sister that, although only about one quarter "needs improvement" said at the end is no uncertain terms that she may not pass her probationary period and keep her job.

Now my sister has worked, as a union-protected employee, for over five years in this county. In other words she is "vested." But there is a catch in a new probationary period. You don't necessarily get bounced back to your old job and can conceivably wind up on the street. All for the sin of taking a risk and accepting a promotion. What does this mean if it exposes you to job vulnerability that you didn't have before? It's all very scary and let's just say she is swimming as fast as she can, submitting rebuttals and getting everything in writing.

A friend of hers has another horror story of work probation in another Social Services job at the county level. Hers ends at five months before her probationary period ended. She was just simply informed that she didn't get the job and should just leave, no explanation, nada. She believes it was over a difference of opinion but will never know for sure. She wound up going back to another job that had accepted her previously but she'd turned down. They took her on at $10,000 less salary per year than was offered during her first interview. She took the job at the reduced rate even though it's a couple of hours away and requires her to rent a room during her work week and drive back for weekends. Both huge additional expenses not to mention inconveniences.

So, these are the kind of things we do for work in this so-called economic recovery as the public sector is decimated and all these new jobs that are being created seem to be at McDonald's and Starbucks for eight to ten dollars an hour. Welcome to the New Economy!