Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

"Event" because this wasn't a march, it was a bunch of people hanging out on the Common, with some performers, and tables with merchandise and information about some local organizations.

adrian_turtle and I got there near the end of a performance, so mostly we just enjoyed sitting around on a nice day, with hundreds of other queer people. I bought a "Boston Dyke March" t-shirt, and some buttons.

When she suggested we go, Adrian pointed out that the timing meant we wouldn't be dealing with strobes (as we had at the Dyke March in some pre-pandemic years), which was definitely an advantage for us.

In case anyone reading this doesn't know, I'm bisexual, meaning I'm attracted to people of more than one gender. It's relatively easy/safe for me to be out, both because of where I live and because I'm semi-retired, but it feels both more important and a bit riskier to be out now than it did two years ago.

I'm also polyamorous, and have both female and male partners: that makes it pretty clear to most friends and family that I'm bi, but I suspect some people who see me in passing assume I'm straight, and a few assume I'm a lesbian, depending on which partner they see me with.

"Queer" also fits, enough so that I have a "Queerville" shirt I bought from the Somerville High School Gay-Straight Alliance. (I say "bi" rather than "pansexual" because it's the term that people were using when I came out, not because one feels more accurate than the other.)

(Thanks to eftychia for her post, which reminded me of National Coming Out Day.)

This image of a clenched fist on a rainbow flag background speaks for itself, I think. You may be seeing a lot of it. Assume anything with this icon is political.

The image is a lapel pin/button I picked this up at Boston Pride a couple of weeks ago. It's the version of the rainbow flag with brown and black stripes, to be more inclusive of people of color.

ETA: Obviously, I have no claim on this image; if anyone else wants to use this icon, help yourselves.

A couple of friends' posts have reminded me that this is National Coming Out Day (where "national" means "United States").

For anyone who doesn't already know: I'm bisexual, and often self-identify as queer. I'm also polyamorous, and have both female and male partners.

adrian_turtle and I went to the Boston Dyke March last night. I had a good time: there was a fair-sized (but not overwhelming) crowd of queer women. The event consisted of some general milling around and socializing, then a bit of music and a speech, which started by name-checking Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, and then we walked out of the Common and along a bunch of streets, winding up back at the Common.

A big piece of what I liked is that the event was noncommercial: there were a few tables for LGBTQ groups, including La Red (which helps people who are dealing with domestic violence), a trans* activist group, and a Christian congregation, but no corporate anything, no floats, no amplified music. (The list of exhibitors at the more organized/mainstream Pride Festival today includes not only banks but at least one major pharmaceutical company.)

People walked and chanted and carried signs (I still don't have any), and it was a very nice evening to be walking down Comm Ave and Boylston Street in that sort of company, with people waving at us from the sidewalks. There were some motorcycle cops keeping the cars away from us, but not the barriers along the edges of the sidewalks that I got used to at New York Pride, with the much larger crowds.

The chanting was a mix of queer/dyke/trans* specific slogans (like "We're here, we're queer, we're fabulous, don't fuck with us," and "hey hey ho ho, homophobia's got to go" alternating with "hey hey ho ho, transphobia's got to go") and some of the same things I've been hearing and chanting at other protests, especially in the last year: "Black lives matter" and "Black trans lives matter," "This is what democracy looks like," and "No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA."

Adrian suggested that we do this, saying that her congregation "isn't having an Erev Pride service this year." I'm glad she did; she said afterward she wouldn't have gone by herself, and I probably wouldn't have either. We saw a few women she knew, and nobody I recognized, and any sort of march, from the very political to the mostly celebratory, is more fun in company. Yes, sometimes I go alone, when it feels important—for myself or for the cause—but it's more draining that way.

This march felt political enough that I've included it in the spreadsheet tracking my political activism that I started after the election; if I'd had the energy to go to Boston Pride today, I probably wouldn't have counted that. When I started marching in Pride, doing so was absolutely a political act; it's not apolitical now, but somewhere along the line we got a level of acceptance that meant banks and beer companies sponsor floats, and tourists bring their children to watch the parade, not just because they support us but because it's a parade, and kids like parades and floats and marching bands.

It still matters that people are out there, but I don't feel like I'm letting anyone down by passing the baton to someone who handles the late-June heat and sunlight better than I do these days. (That's in the same way that anti-Trump/anti-fascist activism is a relay race, or a marathon, not a sprint.) I was rummaging for buttons the other day, and found one from New York Pride '92. The long march through institutions.

(I need at least one better queer or bisexual icon, though the feminist one also feels appropriate.)

I spent most of yesterday on a bus from Boston to Montreal, where I made the happy discovery that I can comfortably read from my kindle on a moving intercity bus. (Paper books, not so good.)

The trip from Boston to Montreal is about two novels (plus random looking at the landscape) long. So (apologies to Mris, who got most of this in an email):

The Pilgrim of Hate, by Ellis Peters: this is I think #10 in her medieval mystery novels about the Benedictine monk Brother Cadfael and his friend Hugh Beringar, the local sheriff. For some reason, I was able years ago to find approximately 1-7 and then from 14 or so on, and am trying to fill in gaps from the library. Since it is an ongoing story (though each book's mystery stands alone), there were not only references back, but things I knew about from having read about them in books set later.

The Cadfael books are set during the English civil war between King Stephen and Empress Maud (which is not either of the English Civil Wars that most Americans are at least vaguely aware of); this one involves two murders, and the complications of trying to find a missing person based only on his name and the vaguest of descriptions, at a fair (so a place full of strangers) in a time and place where it's taken for granted that he will of course have changed his name when he left home. I enjoyed this, both for the mystery plot (which I didn't figure out early on) and the general story-telling (though I gather that Peters took serious liberties with both history and herbal medicine.

Marionette, by T. S. Markinson: if I had to describe this, it's a sort-of mainstream lesbian novel, about relationships and coming of age (the narrator is 17 and a freshman in college). I read this after a couple of her other books, all found via an email list that sends out announcements of free or discounted ebooks (sorted loosely by genre). Based on this, I have concluded that Markinson is a good writer, and that I hope she has a good therapist—what I have read so far are this, and two books about an unrelated character, and both protagonists have similarreally problematic family backgrounds, not just "they can't deal with me being a lesbian" but "my well-off parents hate me, and don't seem to like each other, and all my father cares about is money and business, and nobody in my family ever had a real conversation while I was growing up" level. I liked this, but it's not exactly light and cheerful: large chunks of the book are set in and around the protagonist's therapy sessions, which she started going to after she attempted suicide and her girlfriend found her in time. (Also, the past, even the recent past, can be a foreign country: this is set in Colorado at the time of the anti-gay Proposition 2, and it's not just that the main character is closeted—given her parents, that makes sense—but the people she's at school with include several who don't think they know any gay people, one of whom apologizes for homophobic remarks when told "my brother is gay."

This morning, rysmiel and I were at a halal market, which they say has good meat, including good cold cuts, to get fruit and something to put on sandwiches. As rysmiel was looking at the ingredients on some smoked chicken, I looked at a package and went "Matjes!" in pleased surprise. Since I was enthusiastic, and we couldn't find smoked meat (only pastrami, which is a bit different), we got a package of matjes herring, as I wondered idly what language that word is from*. The rest of the large print on the package was in Polish, which neither of us knows. (The legally required small print was in French and English, of course, but the ingredients list just said "herring.")

There is absolutely nothing to stop herring from being halal (or kosher; I regularly buy kosher pickled herring in sour cream). I'm not sure how much of my surprise was seeing matjes in neat packages, and how much was the Polish package in a Montreal supermarket that has lots of hummus and date paste and other Middle Eastern foods (and fairly standard brands of tea and kinds of apple and such).

So, city life.

For dinner we went to an Italian restaurant in the Gay Village and ate pasta. On our walk back to the metro I saw banners on the street with amusing and/or inspirational quotes about various aspects of gay life and liberation. (I couldn't read all of them; my French isn't what it might be, though I can read more French than I can speak.) I spent some time chewing over "Being gay is not a choice; it is a necessity," going quickly from "not for me" to "yes, it is" to wondering what "being" means here. (I may be misremembering the phrasing, and what I'm working with is my on-the-fly translation, not what was printed on the cloth.) I trust the writer's description of his own experience, but once the text is printed on a banner above the sidewalk, people are going to apply it more broadly. For me, it's more complicated; the "not for me" tangles in with the different choices that come with being bi, as well as other people's tendencies to assume I'm straight if they see me with a male partner. But how much effort I make to be visible is separate from not making an effort to hide.

It would be nice to have a similar collection of banners in English, and maybe some in other languages, in my own Village.

*cattitude was sitting at his computer when I told him this story, so he asked the net. With that spelling of "matjes," apparently either German or Swedish (Dutch would have another "a"). But I suspect that matjes is the English, and maybe French, for that kind of herring, just as "biscotti" is the French and English for a particular kind of Italian-style cookie.

A couple of days ago, in the course of conversation, cattitude showed me one of the "Old Spice Guy" ads that came out a little while ago. (It was relevant, and I hadn't previously bothered to look at any.)

So, the thing starts "look at me. Now look at your guy. Now look at me." So I did, and I smiled at Cattitude, and then looked back at the screen. In the course of 30 seconds of boasting, the Old Spice spokesman insults "your guy" (who I like better than that random muscled stranger) and then argues that "smells like a lady" is a disadvantage. For me, if "smells like a woman" means anything, it's pleasant thoughts of adrian_turtle, so positive rather than negative. And those smell-memories aren't from scented deodorant.

I can see how this ad might work on a lot of people, but my reactions were "don't dis my beloved," "what's wrong with that?" (the "smells like a lady" part), and "I am clearly not the target market here."

This isn't a "why would anyone do that?" moment, it's a case of pop culture/marketing passing me by because I'm not what they're looking at: in purely numerical terms, an ad that works on straight women and/or men who are or want to be involved with straight women, but puzzles or alienates some bi women and our partners is worthwhile. (This is "alienates" on the level of "I am not going to suggest someone use this," not "avoid people who have anything to do with this" or even "if you enjoyed these, you're weird."

(I am not a potential customer for the product itself because, as an anti-perspirant, it contains aluminum compounds that make me break out. This does simplify choosing a deodorant.)

We just lost in Maine, and that hurts.

But Governor Patterson says he's putting a same-sex marriage bill on the agenda for tomorrow's special session of the New York state legislature.

If you live in New York, contact your state senator. If you know they're on our side, thank them and remind them that this is urgent. If not, explain to them why they should vote for equal marriage.

(Last week, state senator Ruben Diaz was quoted as saying that if this passed, he would take this as a slap in the face. Because civil rights are less important than his ego, or something. I don't know if any of you live in his district, but if so, you might remind him that if he blocks it, that's a slap in your face and you'll remember it come 2010. A long shot, but he needs to remember that this is not about him.)

I am making no predictions here: the governor can make them show up, but after that, it's up to the state senate. (It's up to the state senate because it has passed the assembly and Gov. Patterson has promised he will sign a marriage bill if he gets one.)

This weekend is the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.

A lot has changed since then. Not everything, not enough, but a lot: people who would once have been wondering "is it safe to be seen in public with my partner" are fighting to have their marriages recognized.

I'm not, physically, up to being downtown at the NY Gay Pride March celebrating today, but it's important that it's there. It matters that it's part of the fabric of the city and the year: the cycle of parades, the MTA noting which buses will be rerouted (most parades go right down Fifth, and this one turns west to go down Christopher Street), the local newspaper Web page with photos of previous years and lists of events as the front page for New York City yesterday. That, and the sponsorships and banners hanging from the lamp posts on Fifth Avenue, are a different message from how it felt when I first marched in the 1980s, and we had to deal with counter-protestors shouting insults near St. Patrick's Cathedral. I can miss the extent to which it felt political, but I don't miss having people trying to get in our face to tell us we were evil.

I'm not much connected to specifically LGBT social groups, because I haven't felt much need, and haven't always been sure I would fit there. A piece of that is that cattitude is male, and was my only partner for a long time. But another piece is that I've got a social group, defined on other axes and interests, that is basically queer-friendly, people who don't react differently to "this is my partner" when I'm introducing adrian_turtle than when I'm introducing Cattitude. And that's not my cleverness, that's time and change in large parts of US and other western society.

When I mentioned a girlfriend to my parents at 17, they sent me to a psychologist. So I didn't introduce them to more girlfriends for a long time. But when I told my mother about Adrian, she said "I want to meet her," and did, and they like each other. That's not just that my mother is a cool person; it's a quarter century of progress and people pushing and being visible in a lot of ways and places.