Joyce Schon: My First Long-term Partner

Joyce Schon (1952-2016)

I seem to be standing at a crossroads where past, present and future intersect. Being on the receiving end of a nasty ending of a twenty year relationship has left me feeling sad and nostalgic so I looked up an old ex partner online. Our relationship was one that lasted fifteen years from 1980 to 1995. I’d heard more recently she’d moved to her home city, Detroit and became a civil rights and immigration attorney. Last I heard she was still a member of Revolutionary Workers League, the Marxist-Leninist group to which she had always belonged.

I was dismayed to discover that Joyce Schon died of metastatic breast cancer in 2016 at 64 years of age. We had totally lost touch by that time, but I did wonder why she changed her email suddenly and was no longer active. She was still a Facebook friend so I knew I could message her there. We are all immortal online. I located only a perfunctory obituary that was geared toward straight, conventional family only. 

The fact she was a lesbian was missing from the obit. All her years of union activism and leftist organizing had been erased. It was appalling to see Joyce reduced to a traditional woman without spouses, children or interests.

What can I say about our time together? I remember the early days when I was 29 and she was 28. It was a wild, passionate time. We went to political meetings constantly. We also had sex everywhere. In parks, on beaches in every room of our apartments. She lived in Berkeley and I in San Francisco and we were each too poor to own cars but fortunately, there was BART.

Politically we were quite different. Joyce was a member of RWL, a group I referred to as Really Weird Leftists. They were a vanguard Trotskyist party. I, on the other hand, was involved in groups like Lesbians Against Police Violence and Revolting Lesbians. That made us a mixed marriage of sorts.

Joyce worked as a Ward Clerk at SF General in those days and was one of the first to work on the newly created Aids Ward. She was also a shop steward and union activist extraordinaire. Thirty for forty was her slogan for workers there: thirty hours of work a week for forty hours pay. She spoke Spanish with such an authentic accent that whenever she used it her conversation partner would deluge her in the language so rapidly that she couldn’t understand a word. 

She was committed to getting the message of socialism out into the world. I remember when the SF Chronicle was on strike. At the time, I was a research librarian there, a member of the Newspaper Guild. Joyce spoke at a strikers meeting in the Warehouse district of San Francisco. There were about 7,000 people in attendance, members of the Newspaper Guild, the Printers Union and the Teamsters. She addressed the huge crowd without wavering. She spoke with passion and determination. 

Joyce had a beautiful voice and played guitar. She sang both union songs and “women’s music.” “The Woman in Your Life,” was a particular favorite of mine.

In 1991 when I was diagnosed with melanoma and scheduled to have an intensive skin graft on my leg, she took my tumor, floating in its vial, to the head of the melanoma clinic at Mt. Zion for a second opinion. That experienced doctor said that the major disfiguring surgery I was scheduled for in two days, was unnecessary for a forty-year old. He recommended a much less destructive re-excision procedure instead. I have the full use of my leg now because of that decision.

Joyce always wanted to return to her home city of Detroit. In 1995, by mutual decision, we broke off our relationship. Our paths had diverged. My cancer experience had changed me. I became a Buddhist and a more spiritual person. She was still devoutly political and wanted more freedom. We parted ways like two adults who cared for each other. It was an ethical, mutually agreed upon decision that didn’t involve one party sleeping with someone else. Joyce was always an ethical person with a high degree of integrity. I look back on that breakup fondly now, aware of how bitter and ugly things can get.  

After we split I'd given her a check for a thousand dollars as a promise to make good on buying out her share of our home. A couple weeks later, without speaking to me first, she went to the title company and legally took her name off the title, literally giving me the house. She did this because of her Marxist convictions. She knew that my family members were all dead or remarried and that I would probably never be able to buy a house again. She, on the other hand, was from an upper middle class family and her parents were still alive. The magnitude of this gift still makes me cry. Because of Joyce I believe in genuine kindness and compassion that transcends romantic love. 

I am old enough to feel death gaining ground. My life is beginning its final chapter. I must seek out the person I used to be. She is still alive inside me and has grown older, wiser, stronger, less afraid. I speak through her voice now. When I open my mouth the only words I'm able to utter are the unadulterated, unmitigated, unapologetic truth. Joyce Schon you taught me well. I miss you. 

"Weary of Life," Dignitas Helped Her Die

Spring Friedlander

We were not friends. She was an acquaintance of mine. We were in a group together OLOC ( Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). I also remember Spring Friedlander when she was a plumber and active in Tradeswomen. A couple months ago at an OLOC gathering,  Spring announced that her plans were set and she would exit this world soon. I took the news with a grain of salt. Spring was 75 and moved, looked and acted as though she was in good physical health. Mental health was another issue. She was clearly not okay and had been suffering quite a while. She often dominated meetings with rambling diatribes about her life as well as her plan to die.

Like any quasi-political group, especially one of old women, we were not equipped to address her needs. There was not a lot more to do than tell her when she used too much time that her turn was over. We failed her but we were not alone. Alienation and suicide are at record numbers in this country right now. Getting old is not fun, especially when you are alone.

I believe in assisted suicide. In 1973, at twenty-two, my father, myself and a dentist friend helped my mother die. She had terminal ovarian cancer. She was in pain and was being used to try out experimental drugs and procedures. She had no hope of survival. Euthanasia is mercy. It is now legal in many states including California. But what about legal suicide for depression? There are drugs. There is therapy. There is always tomorrow.

That's why I was so upset to find out that Spring had gone to Switzerland and, with the help of an organization called Dignitas, had made her final exit of this world. Her reason was short and simple: She was "weary of life."

Her memorial page is extensive. She expounds on her life, her motivation for ending it, her accomplishments etc. Spring was obviously a prolific writer. She could have at least had the goal of publishing this work as a memoir.

I don't know how I feel about this kind of suicide. It seems a shame, feels like a waste. Anyone at anytime may feel weary of life. But then it passes. There is always one more pizza. One more movie. One more beautiful spring day. I cannot provide any pat answers. I pass on this information simply as food for thought. Life is long, hard and convoluted. Death is an experience we are all assured of having. Morals and ethics are for pontificators and philosophers not for me. Rest in peace Spring Friedlander. I'm so sorry we failed you.

Commemorating International Women's Day Collage

After Twenty Years...

I can’t say I didn’t see it coming. Things between us had been bad for a while, a long while. But sometimes I can be like the deer in the headlights, stunned into paralysis, mesmerized by the oncoming car, yet unable to get out of its way. Perhaps my expectations of this life have always been too low. Being from a family of alcoholics who had no real use for the dynamics of child-rearing, my sister and I learned, by trial and error, to parent ourselves. We did okay. Financially, each of us has made her own way through this world, held on to civil service jobs, bought our own houses without help, basically held her own. The things we were unable to incorporate have to do with self-esteem and relationships, things we were never shown. Like how to have faith in our own worth, how to give and receive love.

Time matters. Especially at sixty-seven years old. I sense denouement in the wings as my entire generation nears the end of our earthly sojourn. It makes sense to be kinder to each other in this chapter, but often, it doesn’t work that way. My parents had an open relationship and I stretched my limits to be flexible with a partner, who described her onset of sexual changes as just one component of a late-in-life crisis. She had my blessing to do tantric workshops, orgasmic meditation, anything within a structured sexual environment was not threatening to me. She said that she’s trying to get in touch with her “inner gay man,” but gay men have a host of opportunities for casual sex that are not open to lesbians. A quick b-j in a parking lot or bathroom stall and a visit to a sex club with private rooms and “glory holes” are not options in the lesbian community.

My parents’ first rule of non-monogamy was that each of them could do whatever they wanted provided they didn’t talk about it. The polyamorous community is the opposite. The bylaws are fundamental honesty combined with mutual consent. My partner started by attempting to follow those rules, but the problem was when I felt I couldn’t handle her having a sexual/romantic relationship with no guidelines whatsoever, there was nowhere to go from there.We all have limits to what we can withstand. 

I can’t help feeling betrayed. Although the responsibility for this split is my partner’s, it is upsetting that her new paramour knows me and was peripherally part of our friendship circle. I don’t understand why anyone would make this decision. Aren’t there enough lesbian strangers out there? Now I must worry about running into a person harboring negative, or worse indifferent, feelings regarding my well-being in this tumultuous world.   

Today, in this toxic soup of ash and particulate waste around me, I feel discarded, alone. When your world is burning, you are without choice, you must save yourself. Letting go of this relationship is not the path I would have chosen, but, like so many things beyond my control, it has chosen me. It remains to be seen where it will lead.

The More Things Change...(Collage)

Your vote is more important now than ever!

Me Too

I’ve been obsessively mesmerized by this whole ramming through charade known as the Kavanaugh "confirmation" hearings. I even got up early this morning to watch the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Of course, I believe Ford as well as Kavanaugh's other accusers, Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick. This whole morass has been compelling for me. It obviously strikes a deeper chord, resonating with something I haven’t wanted to think about or speak to for over fifty years.

Dr. Herbie Duber was our family doctor. In the fifties my family lived in tract housing on the East side of Cleveland. He was a neighbor who live with his wife and children just two doors away. I believe he purchased life insurance from my father but he was also a well-known physician in the Jewish Community. Looking through old photographs of parties, photos of him and his wife appear, almost always with drinks in their hands. Lots of booze, what was called then, "wife swapping" and plenty of general bawdiness were all part and parcel of my parents social life. Although Herbie was not a pediatrician, he became the default general practitioner for both me and my sister.

As a child, my mother came with me during these physical exams which happened only once a year at the most. When I grew older, my mom would sometimes not come into the room but stay outside chatting with the receptionist. I think I was about thirteen when I went for an exam now that I was a "woman." Because I started menstruating at nine years old, by thirteen I was a child in a woman's body. Nonetheless, I wasn't sure of the parameters of what a "physical" for a woman would be. So when he began pushing at my tiny breasts, I thought well breast cancer is a problem. By the time he was sticking his fingers inside me, breathing hard and asking if I had any boyfriends, I was fairly sure that most physicals didn't proceed this way. After hastily dressing and meeting up with my mom, I left his office feeling humiliated and confused.

I never told anyone until very recently. Not my mother, not my friends. I did say that I didn't like Herbie Duber and wanted a different doctor which, by then, was not a problem since he had come up in the world and was no longer lived in our neighborhood. It took a while for me to realize how far out of bounds this examination was. When the charges came out against Larry Nasser, doctor on the Olympic Committe who sexually assaulted patients, I began pondering my experience. And now, with the "Me Too" movement I have been considering the role of this incident in my young life. Dr. Duber has been dead for many years. But don't relax or get the idea that anyone is safe. Worldwide, there are millions of men like him being born every minute.

Beyond the Gender Binary

In the fifties era of butch-femme relationships, those who played the role of butch or femme, switching at will, were known as “ki-ki”. In later Second Wave Feminism of the sixties and seventies, butch-femme role playing fell out of favor in middle-class circles. The word for lesbians with gender-neutral identity was “androgynous.” The androgynous lesbian was a preferable alternative to the dehumanizing sex-role stereotyping that had been the norm in the fifties and earlier. 

In today’s world this option is known as “non-binary.” Ideally, this would mean that everyone would be free to select ideas and behaviors from a smorgasbord of choices. People of many genders and orientations can fit under this umbrella because we are all so much more than the bodies that we happened to have been born into. 

The thing about both transgender identity that confuses me the most is the way that sex role stereotypes are idealized, romanticized, even fetishized. When I hear about a little boy who loves pink and playing dress up, or the little girl who wants to play sports or be a cowboy I don't automatically think that these are children occupying the wrong bodies. I first wonder if they're just having a hard time coming out as lesbian or gay. 

Yes, some people are genuinely transgender. But other people are truly in pain and confused about their identity. Some are looking for a simple solution to a complex problem. In Iran the government will pay for transgender surgery when it means that the person will no longer have same-sex attraction. If a man who loves men becomes a woman, he will present as straight. Surgery can be used as a means to insure heterosexual normativity at any cost. 

After my uterus was removed for medically necessary reasons, the doctor told me about groups organized around grieving this loss. As a sixty year old lesbian who has remained childless by choice, I found this ridiculous. The body parts I have emotional attachment towards are ones that either can be seen, make my body systems function well, or propel me physically through the world. I never developed an attachment to my uterus and have always viewed the prospect of childbearing as far too similar to “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

When I was working as a reference librarian  in San Francisco a regular patron, male the day before, came in and announced s/he was now female. I knew this person’s gender-neutral name and don’t have the greatest memory, so it was inevitable that a few days later I referred to that patron as “he. Very upset, this apprentice transitioner said, “I’m a woman, just like you.”

Okay then, if you’re a woman just like me, you don’t give a damn if people mistake you for another gender, unless you’re planning to sleep with them, in which case, hopefully, they would already know. A “woman like me” has zero attachment to behaving “like a woman” or presenting as such. You would want only to be accepted for what you do and how your mind works, not how you look because you would not see yourself as decorative, but as functional. A woman just like me would believes that the concept of acquiring “femininity” is both ridiculous and a huge waste of time. 

I don’t comprehend the need, in this culture and many others, to place gender markers on everyone and everything. Everywhere I go now people call me “Mam.” I hate it. Not just because of the age reference but because of the explicit gender. I wouldn't like "Sir" either. Why is it necessary to continually point out each persons gender? Can’t you just ask a question without tagging it as female or male directed. What’s wrong with, “Can I help you?” period. Or if you have to add something why not “friend” or another gender neutral word. Even worse are words like poetess or aviatrix, the height of condescension for people with female bodies.

We are all unique individuals. I find sex-role assignment dehumanizing. I aspire to neither of those limited definitions. We all deserve the freedom to do what we want with our bodies and that includes modifying them for any reason. At some point in the future, we might have a society where every person is accepted and accepts their body no matter what shape, size, color, age, orientation or ability it presents. Unfortunately, that Utopian vision is far removed from the reality of the world we do our best to stumble through today.