GenderBendy

Bigotry as Motivation

Last Sunday I went shopping dressed as a woman.  In the parking lot of the Goodwill store in Biddeford there was an awkward driving moment:  a grey-haired, bearded man in denim overalls was standing looking over is shoulder, waiting for a companion to join him, and he glanced once at me and then away, so I thought he was waiting for me to drive by and sped up a little, and then he stepped forward so that I had to veer slightly to go around him.  As I passed he peered into the car, did a double-take, and then shouted after me, "faggot!"

This calls to mind another incident recently when, once again, I was driving in femme mode and entered a tricky intersection I had never been in before and accidentally passed a couple of other drivers who were waiting to merge...they looked parked...and one of them, a dark-bearded guy in a jacked-up pickup, accelerated up next to me and gave me a baleful glare and the finger.  At the time I put it down to random rage, but now it seems that the extra level of hostility might have been based on another quick read.

I haven't been called "faggot" since junior high and high school, when (for reasons unknown to me at the time), I wore my hair very long and was often mistaken for a girl.  Perhaps the difference between adolescent boys and grown men in the US today is that grown men stay polite in person, but still feel free to express their bigotry when there's the buffer of glass and motion between.

Anyway, I was dismayed for a while (partly about being read so fast), but I administered chocolate and wine and felt better.

The next day, in the evening, I went to the No On 1 office in Ogunquit to help with a volunteer-recruiting phone bank.  (For any out-of-state readers, we're attempting to defeat a people's veto which will be on the ballot in November of our new law allowing same-sex marriages in Maine.)  At the beginning of every volunteer gathering we go around the room and say our name, where we're from, how we self-identify, and what motivates us to volunteer.  It was a big group, so we were held to one word each on the motivation question, and I just used one of the standard ones...but sitting there waiting my turn I realized I had a whole new reason.  If I could have had a paragraph instead of one word I would have said: 

I'm here tonight to radicalize bigotry.  I want there to be so many gay and lesbian couples just out being themselves in all the everyday places of our country, and for that matter, so many crossdressed and otherwise gender-variant people just out being themselves in all the everyday places of our country, that the great majority of Americans will come to accept us as completely normal.  Then the few genuine haters left, the committed bigots, will start to seem more and more reactionary...and I guess they can go huddle in their basements and regurgitate and re-swallow their bile if they want, there's no stopping that, it should still be a free country...but I want to work for a time when shouting "faggot" in a parking lot will be as acceptable in our society as going into a restaurant and taking a crap on some stranger's dinner plate.  I want the great majority to see using such a word as as ugly as it feels to be on the receiving end of such a word.  That's what brings me here tonight.

I made sixty calls, signed up three volunteers, and got six supporters to pledge to donate.  I guess maybe they could hear my zeal...  :-)

Engaging Senator Nass

I was out this morning (in male mode) as a volunteer for the No On 1 campaign, asking folks at the Cornish Apple Festival to sign cards pledging to help preserve Maine's new law allowing same sex couples to marry by voting against the people's veto of that law which will be on the November ballot.  I approached a distinguished-looking gentleman of late middle age who was standing watching the crowd.  He had a conservative haircut, intelligent eyes, and a superior expression.  He agreed to give me a minute, so I went into my spiel.

"Hi, I'm Dave, I live in Wells, and I'm a volunteer with the No On 1 campaign..."  I got no farther.  He interrupted and told me that he was Richard Nass, my state Senator, that he had voted against the law, and that he would be voting for the "repeal," as he put it.

We're trained to move on if someone says they're a "yes" vote, but this guy was my elected official, so I stayed and engaged him.  I asked him what his objection was.  He had the practiced politician's slipperiness.  He lectured me on the theory of people's vetos, as though the existence of a provision in our state's constitution allowing them meant that all such measures should pass.  He told me he had taken an active role in extending civil rights to non-married couples, as though the playing field has been completely leveled (far from it.)  And he talked about the burden to the state of taking care of "all these children." 

The unspoken prejudice behind this last point seemed clear:  that gay and lesbian couples can't be good parents.  As a trans-parent I found that personally offensive and called him on it, or tried to.  I tried a couple of times.  He wouldn't answer, dodging neatly into tangents about policy.

I found myself really wanting to reach this guy.  I asked him if, as his constituent, I could tell him where I was coming from on the issue.  He said I could, so I told him that I had been married for 16 years as a man to a woman.  That post divorce I'm living in Wells and that my children live with me half time.  That I'm trans and may someday become a woman.  That I'm still attracted to women and may someday want to marry a woman again.  And I asked him, if that happened, if he thought I would no longer be a fit parent, to my own children, to her children, to children we might have together.

He did not answer the question.  Once again he evaded.  By this point I wanted to get away, so I shook Mr. Nass's hand, thanked him for his time, and walked off shaking.  He was standing with another man and I heard one of them say to the other as I passed out of earshot, "Yeah, there's a lot of them here today," and the word them had that unmistakable tinge of smug dismissal it can so easily be given.

I was feeling upset so I called Levi, the campaign coordinator who was leading our little group of canvassers, on his cell phone and asked him to come talk me down.  He came and sat with me on a porch.  He listened to me vent.  He was supportive and helpful...but he also couldn't help smiling a little, watching me struggle to come to terms for the first time at a personal level with the complacent bigotry of the privileged straight white male elite.  What was hardest for me to stomach was how impervious the man was:  ensconced in his comfortable world view, secure in his power, and behind his courteous front clearly contemptuous of me, having in an instant decided who I was. 

I continue to learn what it is to be "other."  It is not pleasant learning, but definitely valuable. 

Besides being given a useful lesson about people and politics, I gathered 21 signatures, identified a new volunteer, changed (apparently) at least one person from a "yes" to a "no", and munched my way through a huge Rome apple so fresh off the tree the dusty bloom was still on it.  All in all, a fruitful morning...ba-ba-boom.  :-)