heteronormative is dominator culture, not normal

I attended a weekend training lead by a delightful man who happens to be gay. I had not met this man in person until I got to the workshop venue (right on the ocean . . I still hear the ocean as if it were coming from the Berkeley hills outside my window) and as soon as I saw him, I knew he was gay.

Now gays, or, as one of the other facilitators, a lesbian, prefers to be called, queers, are not unfamiliar to me. My best and my baby brother is gay. When I was 15 and he was five, I suddenly knew he was one of those males I had heard whispered about in my conservative, Catholic world. I had no language for what my brother was but this INFJ suddenly knew "My dolly David is one of those". I didn't exactly know what 'one of those' was but Dave was one. And he most definitely was and is queer.  And still my dolly Dave.

As I entered adult life, having left Catholicism well behind me, I searched for a church that didn't merely tolerate homosexuals but embraced them. Dave was a primary male in my daughter's life and I wished to raise her free of heteronormative conditioning. I didn't ever want her to think there was anything wrong with our dolly, delightful David. And I found a church that we attended until Rosie was in the fifth grade. After a few weeks into fifth grade, she came out of Sunday school and announced "I am done with church"  "Fair enough," I said, for I had stopped going some time prior but was dropping her off, going out for coffee and picking her up. I had had such an intensely religious childhood that I felt, a bit inchoately, that I had to give Rosie some sort of church but I was only exposing her.  I loved it that she felt free enough to say "I'm done" and I love it that I equaniously accepted her decision.  I had done my duty.

There were lots of gays at that church and lots of non-gays. All very liberal people and not all that much piety. The church I chose to expose Rosie to someting besides my own beliefs was nothing like the rigid, hierarchical Catholicism I had grown up in. Plus it had awesome music.  And then we were done, but by then, we were both immersed in Waldorf, which is not at all religious but Waldorf pedagogy is deeply connected to spirit and reverence for all of life and the cosnos -- even better than church, at least for us.  I wonder what she thinks of Wally World and Anthroposophy these days, eh?  Who knows?!

When she was five or six, I chose as my best friend a grossly,morbidly obese dyke as my best friend. This woman was about five feet five and weighed almost 500 pounds. I know her weight because I once took her for a doctor appointment. When the nurse weighed her, I glanced away so I would not see her weight, give her that privacy but I truly inadvertently saw the scale read 480.  She has since had bariatric surgery and is more normal. She had a loving, smoking hot life partner back then. And Rosie and my social life revolved around those two gay women and all their brilliant queer friends, mostly women.

During those years, most who knew me believed I was lesbian. I was celibate and ignored men so I let everyone believe I was gay. Truth be told, I wanted to be a lesbian. I loved that social circle of brilliant women who were all a bit older than me and most of those brilliant women had been out since they left home for college. Think about that a moment:  out lesbians at Harvard in the sixties. It took a lot of inner power to be out at such a young age before the gay rights movement really got going.

I wanted to be a lesbian. I surrounded my child with lesbians and gay men.  Raising her to not assume heteronormative was the norm was important to me. And she did me proud, having some love affairs with girls as soon as she left home for college at age sixteen (I believe, but do not know, she is with a male these days.). As Rosie said to me, back when she came out to me at age sixteen, "Mom, you are so old fashioned. You don't fall in love with a gender, you fall in love with people."  It was a tad unfair of her to even lightly chide me for being unhip about queerness because of all the diversity I had exposed her to.

And I have not yet told you about the deformed dwarf Cheryl who was her babysitter for a few years or the gay friend Craig who sometimes picked her up from day care when I couldn't.

From the moment Rosie told me "I'm here I'm queer, get over it", I stopped making gender assumptions about anyone. I was living in co-housing at the time and spoke of my newly 'out' daughter* at one of our community meals. Many of the parents thanked me and said they would not assume their children were heterosexual, thanks for my openness and, indirectly, Rosie's.

Heterosexuals don't go around announcing "I am a heterosexual" yet many hets expect queers to announce they are gay.

At the weekend training I just completed, one man in the group who I think is straight but he never said so, voiced disappointment that the workshop organizer had not told him he, the leader, was gay.  I asked that straight man "Do you announce your gender identity everytime you join a new group?"  He didn't exactly answer but of course he doesn't.

I never assume gender identity, not anymore.  I have known women who used to be men and underwent the chop (as one such woman put it to me).  I have known so many male-ish lesbians back when trans-man was not in this culture's vocabulary,  I've known very bullish bull dykes who proudly claimed to be bull dykes and I have been yelled at by other more feminine lesbians for calling any lesbians dykes. But some of them call themselves dykes and, at least my dyke friends, let me refer to them as dykes. I would never refer to a woman as a dyke unless she had cleared that framework as part of her identify.

I've known men who pass as female who didn't have sex change surgery. I know a man who started life as a girl and had his sex change surgery at age 19, with his parents support.

I welcome the gay rights movement because like all rights movements, it frees everyone, not just the fighting class.

Heteronormative is so old fashioned.  I can practically hear my sixteen year old daughter scorning at people who make heteronormative assumptions when they meet people, assuming all are gay.

For someone my age and from the era in which I grew up, I think I am very cool about gender. I think my kid was wrong to sneer at me and tell me I didn't get gender identity. I think she learned to think openly about her own gender identity largely because of me and my dollykins David.

A heteronormative dominator culture suppresses all women of any gender identity and all men of any gender identity. Many alpha males don't get this but that does not make it less true. And I guess lots of straight women don't get this and live contentedly in the dominator culture.  I don't live there. I don't want to. Do you?