"Family Values"--the New American Mantra

Childless folks, especially those of the queer persuasion have been cast in the role of pariah, the new American enemy. I'm not fond of the institution of marriage, the very same one that brought us domestic violence, incest, child abuse, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I am all for same-sex marriage, mind you, I believe that we queers are entitled to full civil rights and to be just as unhappy as straight people.  I understand that the right-wing and tea-party wingnuts roll out the family values wagon at every opportunity. What I object to is when the left takes up the cry as well, sometimes with queer breeders in their ranks.

Of late, my union, SEIU, has begun making all its references to "working families" instead of that old Marxist favorite, "workers." This nouveau McCarthyism that casts us all as family units is working my last nerve. I am not only proud to have a friendship group instead of a biological family, I am lucky as well. I actually get to select the folks I spend time with instead of being stuck with them. The friendship group (FG?) that I have does include my biological sister and my not-so-domestic partner, who I have been with for 12 years and no, we don't live together, but I'll get into that in another post.

I have often wanted a bumper sticker that says, "Nuke the Nuclear Family," but I'm opposed to nuclear weapons so it might be counter productive.

The Childfree Connection

The thing I have noticed about the type of straight folks that I count as friends is that they tend to be childless by choice whether singles or couples. I do think that if there is ever a time when homophobia disappears, the main connection between people will be whether or not you choose to raise up young'uns. Those who decide against it often are more interested in literature, art, science, politics...just about anything in the universe that has nothing to do with wiping tushies or runny noses.

So genetically the buck stops here. My genotype has arrived at a brick wall. Neither my sister, myself, my partner nor her brother have chosen the path of reproduction. Although I now have a friend who is a single mom, I definitely gravitate to those who have declined this line of work. It's a dirty job and I know someone has to do it, I would just rather let them. It could have something to do with the fact that my mother continually complained that having children wrecked her life. Or even that my sister and I were on our own throughout our childhoods, sometimes coming to school only half-dressed because, even though we had both a mother and a father, no-one was dressing us. My hair is the kinky, jewish kind and my mother couldn't get a comb through it so she only combed and washed it about once a month. Okay, you don't have to bring out the violins, I realize that things are tough all over. I'm just giving some background here.

If you are not a family-type person, living in a cosmopolitan, urban area seems to be necessary. Where else do writers, artists and general weirdos congregate? And what do folks without families pursue along with their varied and ecclectic interests to give their lives meaning and direction?

Friendships! Even older people, after they have found a romantic partner, or sometimes instead of one, along with the possible dog, cat, bird or rabbit, they still want to have real friends. I for one, am not willing to leave those college days of speculating on the nature of the universe and expressing genuine dreams and fears to the solo perview of the young. My mother, at 47 years of age, told me that she was too old to make "real friends." To her that whole area of life was off limits. She died of cancer at 48 and perhaps that was part of the reason. I'll never know that but I do know there is a better way to live...

The Hypersexualized Queer Mystique

Full disclosure, I am not a young person. And I have been openly queer for a very long time. I'm one of those genetic dykes, the doctor pulled me out, kicking and screaming (I must have had a sixth sense about this whole setup) and then said, Congratulations, it's a lesbian! The queer part of life did get better after I completed adolescence, which is a hell of an internship, and got past movies like The Killing of Sister George and The Children's Hour I was annealed in the flames of identity, so to speak.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the workplace and being gay there. Mine is in San Francisco so you'd think that all these issues would be a thing of the past and, on the surface, that's true. But work is a place where we are required to deal with people who might not interract with us at all in the real world. In that environment, all kinds of negative assumptions are alive and well. The one that has come up for me, of late, has to do with the hypersexualization of lesbians in the eyes of the straight world, in my case, straight women. I know that in the seventies it seemed as though every straight woman thought that every dyke (and every striaight man as well) wanted to jump her bones. In my real life, I have many straight friends both male and female. They are unabashed progressive types who have opened up their lives to include all genders and orientations. And many have come a long way in queer conciousness since I first met them.

I have always found the entire process of making friends at work daunting to say the least. When you are economically dependent on your job, it can be a path laden with danger. Although I get along well with everyone, the people that I actually talk about my life with tend to be queers. Not that I get along swimmingly with all the other queers but at least there is no "fear factor." This hypersexualization phenomenon is truly amazing. About five years ago I tried to be friends with a straight woman from the Phillippines, married with kids and grandkids who was a world traveler with an interesting history of working in the Peace Corps. We schmoozed a lot in our cubicles so one day I asked her if she wanted to go to lunch. After hemming and hawing a bit she said, I don't think so. You know I'm quite happy with my husband. Wow! I guess that she envisioned one hell of a lunch. Silly me, I was just thinking about a salad.

After that disheartening experience I gave up on befriending straight women at work until recently when I  connected politically with a union activist. Last year our workplace was a very stressful one, filled with pay cuts and layoffs. I liked her politcal perspective and her sense of humor. Here, I must add that I've been with my present partner for 12 years and am not looking for another sexual involvement. Both my girlfriend and I are monogamous sexually but neither of us are monogamous emotionally, meaning we both actively befriend other people. Also, I have to admit I'm not good at small talk and being of jewish descent, Im a bit of a terminal neurotic.So maybe I was inappropriate and too forward with self-revelation because I was having a meltdown due to my incredible, shrinking paycheck. But I felt that it was mutual and I certainly never proposed anything untoward or made any kind of advances at all. In fact I remember a conversation where I admitted that my libido was disappearing as I got older. But I was beginning to notice avoidance behaviors from her, which are really destructive in a workplace. Then I heard from a gay male friend that she though I'd been coming on to her!

Now, I avoid her completely which is sad but much safer for my career. I thought she was a lefty, but I guess the political isn't always personal on some level. 

I find this whole episode tremendously depressing. It reminds me of the way the critics of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy worried about gay males distracting straight comrades with aggresive sexuality while dodging bombs and bullets. Has all salaciousness been relegated to us queer folks? Do other people who've had these experiences have any suggestions? Maybe only time will shift this kind of prejudice.