I'm bisexual, which you probably already know.
Tags:
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![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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.
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.
Tags:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
desayunoencama just posted that he'd noticed, and been unhappy with, a lack of an organized queer presence at Wiscon, something he had felt and appreciated in previous years. In response, I wrote a bit about one of my panels, and am expanding that a bit here to talk more about the panel itself.Sunday afternoon, I was on a panel about Alison Bechdel's book Fun Home, which by design and in practice discussed the possible reasons for and effects of the book's unexpected acceptance in mainstream contexts as well as the book as book, in terms of structure, content, stylistic choices, and how we (panelists and audience members) had reacted to it. The discussion went into details like the book as artifact, and what that says about support by the publisher; Bechdel's choice to use limited color; the inclusion of quotes from the Western literary canon; the nonlinear, or maybe spiraling narration; and the ways that Bechdel grounds her personal story in what was going on in the world, and how that connects to what she's done over many years in Dykes to Watch Out For.
It was a very good panel. At the end, the moderator asked each of us what we would like to have happen as a consequence (either causal or sequential) of Fun Home success. I came up with something about more cross-fertilization, I don't remember what the next three people said, and then the last panelist, who came at things from a comics background, actually said that she expected to read more by and about lesbians, which she hadn't previously done because she isn't one. I interrupted and said "We read about straight people."
I shouldn't have to be having that interaction at Wiscon, at a panel about a book by Alison Bechdel.
[footnotes: I'm not naming the person who said that because there were two panelists I didn't know, and I'm not sure which it was. Janet Lafler might, but she's not reachable right now. And yes, I'm bisexual rather than exclusively lesbian.]
desayunoencama just posted that he'd noticed, and been unhappy with, a lack of an organized queer presence at Wiscon, something he had felt and appreciated in previous years. In response, I wrote a bit about one of my panels, and am expanding that a bit here to talk more about the panel itself.Sunday afternoon, I was on a panel about Alison Bechdel's book Fun Home, which by design and in practice discussed the possible reasons for and effects of the book's unexpected acceptance in mainstream contexts as well as the book as book, in terms of structure, content, stylistic choices, and how we (panelists and audience members) had reacted to it. The discussion went into details like the book as artifact, and what that says about support by the publisher; Bechdel's choice to use limited color; the inclusion of quotes from the Western literary canon; the nonlinear, or maybe spiraling narration; and the ways that Bechdel grounds her personal story in what was going on in the world, and how that connects to what she's done over many years in Dykes to Watch Out For.
It was a very good panel. At the end, the moderator asked each of us what we would like to have happen as a consequence (either causal or sequential) of Fun Home success. I came up with something about more cross-fertilization, I don't remember what the next three people said, and then the last panelist, who came at things from a comics background, actually said that she expected to read more by and about lesbians, which she hadn't previously done because she isn't one. I interrupted and said "We read about straight people."
I shouldn't have to be having that interaction at Wiscon, at a panel about a book by Alison Bechdel.
[footnotes: I'm not naming the person who said that because there were two panelists I didn't know, and I'm not sure which it was. Janet Lafler might, but she's not reachable right now. And yes, I'm bisexual rather than exclusively lesbian.]
.
