Moving in packs

I went out to dinner with a dozen women the other night.  Good friends, all dykes.  For a range of reasons we ended up in a pretty suburban restaurant.  It’s well known by locals and the food is pretty good.  We were seated at a big table up the back and had pretty loud conversations for a couple of hours.  The table next to us knows up better than they wanted to.  It was a good night, for the company and the fact that no one kicked me out of the women’s toilets.  Ok, so no one else was there when I was, but I take any evening without being accosted as a win.

The fun came at the end of the evening.  It’s an average sized restaurant and we had to walk the length of it to get out. Twelve women leaving at once is perhaps a little odd, as most tables were of mixed gender.  But it was the five of us that were clearly not so straight that I think drew the attention.  The rest of the group were guilty by association. And they didn’t look so straight to begin with. Needless to say, the place was pretty silent as we left. 

But it felt ok.  It wasn’t an isolating experience, where I had to second guess myself and wonder if I was imagining it, or checking if I was safe.  I was part of a pack.  And it felt pretty awesome.

Public places

A new school year here, and a chance for me to get back into other people’s classrooms and see a bunch of new teachers and new kids.  I work in high schools because that’s where I was trained, but it’s what I prefer.

Primary kids scare me.  They’re little and the world is so black and white and gender is a perfect example.  Short hair you’re a boy, long hair you’re a girl.  And while I don’t work in primary schools, I managed to run into enough kids to make me (and their parents) feel uncomfortable.  Mainly in shopping centres. And then mainly in shopping centre toilets.

Seriously, what are your options when a kid screams ‘ what he doing in the women’s toilets mummy?!?!’  

Answer - not many. I have found the last thing a mother wants is the man/butch lesbian/strange person in the toilets to talk to their kid.  They’re either embarrassed or they’re scared.  Neither ends well.  The mother generally mumbles something to their child and I beat a hasty exit.  But you carry you things with you, more than they do. 

I know it’s about me, so I have a place in it.  But I feel the damage is done when people feel under threat, and the least confrontational thing to do is back away.  Slowly.

Visibility. Again

The question of visibility raises the chestnut of assimilation or separation.  I prefer to be separate.  I like feeling like I’m part of a renegade group who push the boundaries.  I don’t really do it anywhere else but in how I look and who I live with. Apart from that, I work, pay taxes, drive on the right side of the road (which is actually the left side). But in that most obvious sense, I’m a bit on the outer of the mainstream.

My friends, however, are a different story.  Many of my dyke comrades have had kids (five couples so far, with another two in the works) and several have moved to the suburbs.  They send Christmas cards, our email updates about their families.  They appear happy, but it’s not a life I want.  They are straighter than the straight couple next door.  ‘Married’ (four of the five had commitment ceremonies), monogamous, with child/ren and conforming to all of societies expectations.  Except for the bit where they married a man.

I don’t want to disrespect them.  Like I said, they seem happy. But it’s no longer the radicalism that has been the hallmark of the queer community for over fifty years.  Perhaps it’s easy to say now that we have legal rights and don’t get routinely bashed/arrested/shunned for being LGBT. Maybe I am being arrogant and self entitled.  But I look at my married friends and have less and less in common with them.  I have begun to hang out with straight couples without kids and other less traditional queer folk.

The second part of this argument seems to point to the importance currently placed on gay marriage.  Which, really, is a topic for another time.