Walking a mile in another person's shoes...
I know this video is long, but it's worth watching anyway. I also know that I'm likely preaching to the choir on this one, but still...I thought it was so well done, I had to post it:
As I type this, my husband is on a business trip to Utah. His company's biggest client is in Salt Lake City and most of the people he's having to work with are staunch Mormons. A lot of them are the same people who helped fund the Prop.8 campaign here in California. Soren has to decide every time he goes there and deals with them how much he can safely reveal of himself without risking his job (and in this economy, you just don't want to be the tallest nail) or the jobs of those around him (making him the guy whose presence affects the team negatively.)
Soren had to go to a baseball game last night as a "teambuilding" exercise and all the straight team members and the straight Mormons were "bonding" and talking about their lives, their families. How much fun do you think he had there? Can you say "conversational mine field?"
I called him a few times yesterday and I can always tell the minute he's not alone anymore. Those are the phone calls that end with "Talk to you later, man" instead of "Love you!"
We're afraid every time Soren goes on this particular business trip, because if something happens to him while he's in Utah, we're not sure how that's going to be handled by the folks in charge. Would they let me see him in the hospital? Would I have to claim to be his brother? Would his business cohorts vouch for me? What -is- my legal standing in someplace like Utah?
It's scary.
It's not how people want to have to think about travel inside their own country, but it's how we have to think about it. Can I travel to Utah safely? What about Texas? Mississippi? Florida? If I get sick in the Bible Belt, will doctors treat me? Will they let my husband see me? Will they let me die while they stand around and laugh at me before they load me into the ambulance? Can I go have a drink in a bar without worrying that the police are going to come in and clonk me on the head just for being there? Think it doesn't happen? Ask a gay person. We know it does. I can tell you specific names and dates and places where it has happened.
This is what I've tried to explain to so many well intentioned but still largely clueless straight acquaintances of mine in the past. This is what I've tried to explain to my own Mom as she clumsily deals with my niece's recent coming out. She keeps saying to me "But does she have to be so in your face about it all the time? I mean, she's constantly announcing that she's gay to everybody...at church, at restaurants. It's embarassing!" Yeah, well....live in our world for a little bit and maybe you'll understand why she feels like shouting it at everyone after awhile. Especially if you're sixteen and full of fire and passion at having discovered this very big thing about yourself and your life.
You're constantly having to swim upstream to keep from being INNED all the time. Inning being the opposite of outing - i.e. the constant assumption that you're straight. You don't just come out once, you come out over and over and over again.
It happens in a million little ways. The woman who cut my hair last time asked me "Do you think your wife will like your hair this short?" The folks at my Weight Watchers meetings want to know what we did over the weekend and they ask "Did you go somewhere with your wife or girlfriend?" When I bought Soren roses, the florist said "Oh she's gonna LOVE you!" The nosy woman at Ree's school asks me "Are you a single Dad?"
And then I have to make a decision. If I tell people the truth, I'm "rubbing my lifestyle in their face" and "pushing an agenda." If I remain silent, I'm betraying myself and denying my soulmate and his place in the life we've built together. Either way, I get to feel like crap afterwards a goodly percentage of the time. You get to be really familiar with the "ew" face after awhile. Or the half step back, conversationally or physically, that says "what you are is not ok."
It hurts really badly when it comes from someone you thought was a friend, or was going to be one. I'm just sayin'.
So some of us are gonna be a little hostile or a little flinchy or a little "in your face" about it. Walk a mile in our shoes.
And while I'm on the whole "Walk a mile in someone else's shoes" kick, if you're gay and you're well aware of how difficult it all is, and how it feels to be the butt of every idiot on the street's joke and so on...don't pass that on ok? Do the world a favor and take a moment to think about what it's like to have all this going on and -also- be a woman, be a person of color, to be HIV positive, to be transgendered or a transsexual or bisexual or a crossdresser or polyamorous or any of the other less commonly heard from colors in the whole "Queer" spectrum. And then when someone starts to go off to you about how "embarrassing" the "trannies" are at Pride or how they wish "those angry dykes" would shut up and go away or how there's "no such thing" as bisexual....tell them you're not going to stand for that kind of nasty talk. Or vote with your feet and leave. Or at the very least, don't join in.
I wish I could help more people understand that we're only as free, as safe or as accepted as the least free, safe or accepted members of our community. And that's of -any- community, not just the GLBT community.
I tend to think that one of our jobs as sentient beings on the planet is about building up our reservoirs of compassion, empathy, tolerance, kindness. The whole "do unto others as you'd like for them to do unto you" gig that the J-man was so emphatic about.
Or as Bill and Ted said: "Be excellent to one another."
I'm very pro newer, kinder, gentler, more tolerant Universe y'know? It'd be much more fun than finding ourselves ass deep in an uglier, meaner, less tolerant one. More laughing, more fun, more drawing and singing and silliness. That's the kind of world I want to live in. You too? Let's build it! It'll be like a tree fort only much, much bigger...
Click to viewAs I type this, my husband is on a business trip to Utah. His company's biggest client is in Salt Lake City and most of the people he's having to work with are staunch Mormons. A lot of them are the same people who helped fund the Prop.8 campaign here in California. Soren has to decide every time he goes there and deals with them how much he can safely reveal of himself without risking his job (and in this economy, you just don't want to be the tallest nail) or the jobs of those around him (making him the guy whose presence affects the team negatively.)
Soren had to go to a baseball game last night as a "teambuilding" exercise and all the straight team members and the straight Mormons were "bonding" and talking about their lives, their families. How much fun do you think he had there? Can you say "conversational mine field?"
I called him a few times yesterday and I can always tell the minute he's not alone anymore. Those are the phone calls that end with "Talk to you later, man" instead of "Love you!"
We're afraid every time Soren goes on this particular business trip, because if something happens to him while he's in Utah, we're not sure how that's going to be handled by the folks in charge. Would they let me see him in the hospital? Would I have to claim to be his brother? Would his business cohorts vouch for me? What -is- my legal standing in someplace like Utah?
It's scary.
It's not how people want to have to think about travel inside their own country, but it's how we have to think about it. Can I travel to Utah safely? What about Texas? Mississippi? Florida? If I get sick in the Bible Belt, will doctors treat me? Will they let my husband see me? Will they let me die while they stand around and laugh at me before they load me into the ambulance? Can I go have a drink in a bar without worrying that the police are going to come in and clonk me on the head just for being there? Think it doesn't happen? Ask a gay person. We know it does. I can tell you specific names and dates and places where it has happened.
This is what I've tried to explain to so many well intentioned but still largely clueless straight acquaintances of mine in the past. This is what I've tried to explain to my own Mom as she clumsily deals with my niece's recent coming out. She keeps saying to me "But does she have to be so in your face about it all the time? I mean, she's constantly announcing that she's gay to everybody...at church, at restaurants. It's embarassing!" Yeah, well....live in our world for a little bit and maybe you'll understand why she feels like shouting it at everyone after awhile. Especially if you're sixteen and full of fire and passion at having discovered this very big thing about yourself and your life.
You're constantly having to swim upstream to keep from being INNED all the time. Inning being the opposite of outing - i.e. the constant assumption that you're straight. You don't just come out once, you come out over and over and over again.
It happens in a million little ways. The woman who cut my hair last time asked me "Do you think your wife will like your hair this short?" The folks at my Weight Watchers meetings want to know what we did over the weekend and they ask "Did you go somewhere with your wife or girlfriend?" When I bought Soren roses, the florist said "Oh she's gonna LOVE you!" The nosy woman at Ree's school asks me "Are you a single Dad?"
And then I have to make a decision. If I tell people the truth, I'm "rubbing my lifestyle in their face" and "pushing an agenda." If I remain silent, I'm betraying myself and denying my soulmate and his place in the life we've built together. Either way, I get to feel like crap afterwards a goodly percentage of the time. You get to be really familiar with the "ew" face after awhile. Or the half step back, conversationally or physically, that says "what you are is not ok."
It hurts really badly when it comes from someone you thought was a friend, or was going to be one. I'm just sayin'.
So some of us are gonna be a little hostile or a little flinchy or a little "in your face" about it. Walk a mile in our shoes.
And while I'm on the whole "Walk a mile in someone else's shoes" kick, if you're gay and you're well aware of how difficult it all is, and how it feels to be the butt of every idiot on the street's joke and so on...don't pass that on ok? Do the world a favor and take a moment to think about what it's like to have all this going on and -also- be a woman, be a person of color, to be HIV positive, to be transgendered or a transsexual or bisexual or a crossdresser or polyamorous or any of the other less commonly heard from colors in the whole "Queer" spectrum. And then when someone starts to go off to you about how "embarrassing" the "trannies" are at Pride or how they wish "those angry dykes" would shut up and go away or how there's "no such thing" as bisexual....tell them you're not going to stand for that kind of nasty talk. Or vote with your feet and leave. Or at the very least, don't join in.
I wish I could help more people understand that we're only as free, as safe or as accepted as the least free, safe or accepted members of our community. And that's of -any- community, not just the GLBT community.
I tend to think that one of our jobs as sentient beings on the planet is about building up our reservoirs of compassion, empathy, tolerance, kindness. The whole "do unto others as you'd like for them to do unto you" gig that the J-man was so emphatic about.
Or as Bill and Ted said: "Be excellent to one another."
I'm very pro newer, kinder, gentler, more tolerant Universe y'know? It'd be much more fun than finding ourselves ass deep in an uglier, meaner, less tolerant one. More laughing, more fun, more drawing and singing and silliness. That's the kind of world I want to live in. You too? Let's build it! It'll be like a tree fort only much, much bigger...