queerness, family, and change.

i didn’t mean this blog to turn into a never-ending diatribe about queer politics. oops.

tonight i went to the coffee shop, as is my usual routine, and i buried myself in a copy of howard cruse’s grahpic novel stuck rubber baby that i picked up at the library today. it’s fucking great, and if you haven’t read it, read it. it’s not at all what i was expecting; it is way better. and in a roundabout way, this entry is inspired by my absorption into the first half of it.

when i came out at 14, i escaped into a literary world that was very queer…it was stone butch blues, dykes to watch out for, hothead paisan. it was about fuck men, fuck straight people, and dyke power. i wore dog collars, spiked my hair, and railed against the mainstream “we’re just like you” lgb (the t was not there in those days) movement.

and then after several years of that, and after moving slowly from dyke to butch to genderqueer to transman, and being one of the first to do that in my particular circle,i felt like maybe i was tired of being so conspicuous. i decided that i wanted to go about my business and quietly transition into being the gentle, quiet, feminist, queer-friendly lefty boy that felt like who i really was… and i wanted to be all of those things in the context of being a man, not a genderqueer or The Tranny.

lately i have been feeling like i’m awakening from this hibernation, or returning from exile or something. i feel myself turning back slightly…or maybe just taking the curve back around, having been someplace new.

i am remembering that there are things that matter to me beyond the reaches of my own body and social circle, and i am looking around for them again and realizing that not much has changed since i left this place. the “we are just like you” mentality is still firmly in place.

when i speak nostalgically about the queer community i took a hiatus from, it was never about that. my queer community was zinesters, punks, leather kids, fags and dykes and queens and butches. not the hrc black tie folks, but the misfits. and i’m still not sure where i fit into all of that, or even if i still can and want to, but i know that when i long for it, it is that that i want. diversity. action. passion. and maybe this is just me romanticizing things, but maybe it’s still there.

i think the current gay marriage movement is a perfect example of what irks me about the state of lgb(token!) politics. don’t get me wrong. if straight couples have it, then certainly queer ones should too. and maybe it’s just that i am too bitter and single to see things very clearly, but i see marriage as a box. currently, a box that only has room for heterosexual couples and their kids. so they want to make this box bigger, big enough to include queer couples and their kids too. but making the box bigger doesn’t change the fact that it’s a box, and the whole point of a box is to keep some things in and the rest out.

we, as a queer “community,” should by now understand that families come in all different varieties. some consist of two parents and some kids. but sometimes they are more than that. sometimes they are a group of older adults with no romantic attachments, looking after each other through the aging process. sometimes they’re a close-knit group of roommates. sometimes they’re siblings, or a single person with a handful of grandchildren, or whatever else they can be. sometimes they have blood to tie them together, and sometimes they are chosen out of necessity and out of love. “non-traditional families” are more than just having two moms or two dads.

to me, this whole marriage campaign seems like the perfect opportunity to step up and say, “hey, maybe people shouldn’t get special privileges just for being in a couple! maybe we need to enact legislation that protects all kinds of families, and not just ones that look like the traditional model, regardless of the gender of the participants!” but instead of tearing down the walls of a box that keeps so many people out, they’re just trying to find ways to squeeze more kinds of people into it. again, i say this not to downplay the need for gay and lesbian couples to have these kinds of protections for their families; if straight people have it, then of course they should too. but why should these privileges be limited only to people who are in committed relationships with a romantic partner? why are we still, in 2008, after everything this “community” has been through, still saying which kinds of families and people are okay, and which kinds aren’t? and for fuck’s sake, why are we trying to pass legislation that does that for us?

and maybe the whole, “but is america ready for it?” question comes into play too, but that fucking question has let people off the hook so many times. i have already seen the lgb movement throw trans people under the bus because america is not ready to let transsexuals have jobs, and i am fucking sick of that pathetic excuse. “america” (whatever that is supposed to refer to) is never going to be ready; hell, it’s still not “ready” for progress that happened decades ago.

but hey, what do i know?