Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Someone has declared today "Blog Against Heteronormativity Day." For me, there's an element of "why is this night different?"--being out about who I am isn't a once-a-year thing. But, like many another day for a cause, it's not a bad thing to focus on either a problem or a celebration.

I was talking to my girlfriend last night, and she mentioned that she'd been looking at her high school's alumni/reunion page. It's set up with pictures of graduates, both yearbook and (if they so choose) current, and any comments the person adds. She'd looked at 200 or so people's comments, all from her graduating class, and none of them mention a same-sex partner.

It seems more likely that the other queers in her graduating class aren't interested in the alumni stuff, or that they don't feel this is a safe place to be out, than that she's the only one. (She hasn't put in any comments.) And after a while, that's self-reinforcing: if you see 200 people you used to know, none of whom is out about a same-sex partner on the high school alumni website, you're less likely to decide to be the first than if you happen to be the third person to be writing any comments, whether or not either of the other two mentioned a partner of any gender. And less likely to mention your same-sex partner than if, skimming 200 other entries, you see a few that are clearly by queer classmates, and possibly some that are ambiguous (I use "partner" for my loves of both genders, and did so even when I had only one partner, not of my own gender; or someone might write something like "I'm living happily in Chicago with my beloved" and mentions a non-gender-specific name).

[Thanks to supergee for the pointer]

More comments to other people: ( relationship expectations, white privilege, the word and concept 'disability', abortion choices, research libraries )

Someone yesterday quoted, in a comment thread elsewhere on LJ, a study
that they claimed showed that day-old human girls pay more attention to
faces, and day-old human boys pay more attention to mobiles.

I haven't checked to see whether there is such a study, much less looked
at the methodology or the robustness of the results. For the purposes of
this exercise, it doesn't matter.

The exercise is to think about how such a study would be interpreted in
a culture that was, and long had been, female-dominant, in which the
long-standing default assumption was female superiority. A culture in
which many moderns believed the sexes were equal, but old habits had
women in charge of most things and the not-so-occasional reactionary
defending that imbalance as the natural order of things.

My immediate thought is that, in such a society, the conservatives would
be saying "Well, of course. We know that women hold most political power
because they pay more attention to other people and what they want,
which makes them better at negotiating and persuasion. It's not
discrimination keeping men out of top management, it's that they're so
easily distracted."

After a slow, lazy morning here, cattitude went out to pet-sit and see a movie, and eve99 (a.k.a. Mom) spent the afternoon here, talking about family history, finances, plans, and such. Apparently at age not-quite-four I was cheerfully announcing "I have a brand new baby brother. I'm three. When I'm four, he'll be one. When I'm five, he'll be two." Which I had no recollection of, but which led Mom to consult the kindergarten teacher next door about whether she should do anything; the advice was "don't push her."

Mom remembers me complaining that she and my father expected me to do well in school/academics. She says that if they did, they didn't mean to pressure me, but I always did well, so they assumed I always would; what I think I was referring to (this was quite a while ago, again), was that it was so much expected that I'd do well that I felt as though I wasn't getting credit for it.

Back here in the present, Mom liked the cinnamon-orange-chocolate chip cakelings, and we saw five new-hatched ducklings in Inwood Hill Park.

I just wish I hadn't needed half an hour to fall back asleep around 5:50 this morning. And that I hadn't gotten a papercut on the webbing of my left hand while opening an envelope this morning. (This is part of why I'm having takeout sushi instead of a home-cooked dinner; it's also making typing awkward.)

I got a party invitation a couple of days ago.

Nothing unusual in that--people have parties, sometimes they invite me.

What's unusual is that this one includes the statement "I really don't feel like a party right now, but after 22 years, people would show up anyway and if we called everyone to cancel, there would still be a crowd, but made up mostly of people we don't know, so we're having the party anyway. But don't expect Ken to be in a party mood."

I haven't decided whether to go--they don't ask for RSVPs. It'll depend in part on the weather: if it's too hot, I can't do this, a small apartment and lots of people, with the roof as the only relief. But, beyond that, I only know Ken and Mercy casually, and I'm not sure whether it would be kinder to show up and commiserate with the reasons Ken doesn't feel in a party mood, and let them see another familiar face, or to not show up and thus not make Ken deal with one more person when he's not in a party mood.

I hope never to wind up in the position they're in: feeling forced to entertain because there's no way to get the word out that they don't want to.