How warm was the sun?
But winter wasn’t over, so
Tulips will shiver.
Sports + Outness
There have been some interesting articles turning up some interesting facts in light of Jason Collins coming out.
For starters, he wasn’t the first. Glenn Burke was:
Burke made no secret of his sexual orientation to the Dodgers front office, his teammates, or friends in either league. He also talked freely with sportswriters, though all of them ended up shaking their heads and telling him they couldn’t write that in their papers. Burke was so open about his sexuality that the Dodgers tried to talk him into participating in a sham marriage. (He wrote in his autobiography that the team offered him $75,000 to go along with the ruse.) He refused. In a bit of irony that would seem farcical if it wasn’t so tragic, one of the Dodgers who tried to talk Burke into getting “married,” was his manager, Tommy Lasorda, whose son Tom Jr. died from AIDS complications in 1991. To this day, Lasorda Sr. refuses to acknowledge his son’s homosexuality.
And then this one, about Vince Lombardi:
“My father was way ahead of his time,” Susan Lombardi said. “He was discriminated against as a dark-skinned Italian American when he was younger, when he felt he was passed up for coaching jobs that he deserved. He felt the pain of discrimination, and so he raised his family to accept everybody, no matter what color they were or whatever their sexual orientation was.
Now *there’s* an argument for why I should be a Packers fan – if there is one. (Which there isn’t. But still, this one’s better than any. No one told me the famous Packers coach was born in Brooklyn, either. He was only about 15 years older than my dad, and got his start in the NFL working for the Giants.)
I love the way one person comes out and the whole thing pretty much implodes. It’s really, really great to see this happening in professional sports.
Of course the ladies – Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova – both came out in 1981.
(Sadly, in the meanwhile, LGBTQ allies Kluwe and Ayanbadejo have been sacked. So much for the NFL.)
CA College Sports
California has just made it possible for trans college students to play as the gender they are instead of as the gender they were declared at birth.
It’s a good move, although it’s bound to come with complications.
Seattle + Portland
Have I mentioned that I’m going away for about a 10 days to visit Seattle and Portland?! I am, and SOON.
I’m going to Seattle in order to give the keynote at Esprit this year – which is in Port Angeles, WA, & I’m told it’s beautiful. I’ve been told many times it’s a fun conference, too. I’ll be doing two workshops while I’m there as well. I’ll be there from 5/17 – 5/19.
I will probably also be doing some kind of author gig in Seattle while I”m there, possibly on the 20th or 21st.
And I will get to see a very, very old friend in Portland who I haven’t seen in — at least a few years now — which is really too great.
Two Tune Tuesday: New Janelle Monae (w Erykah Badu)
Just DAMN. She is too righteous for her own good. & No, the booty don’t lie. That last rap is too fantastic:
My crown too heavy like the Queen Nefertiti
Gimme back my pyramid, I’m trying to free Kansas City
Mixing masterminds like your name Bernie Grundman
Well I’m gonna keep leading like a young Harriet Tubman
You can take my wings but I’m still goin’ fly
And even when you edit me the booty don’t lie
Yeah, keep singing and I’mma keep writing songs
I’m tired of Marvin asking me, “What’s Going On?
March to the streets ‘cuz I’m willing and I’m able
Categorize me, I defy every label
And while you’re selling dope, we’re gonna keep selling hope
We rising up now, you gotta deal you gotta cope
Will you be electric sheep?
Electric ladies, will you sleep?
Or will you preach?
So here’s the other thing I love about her: she’s wearing heels, which she never does, but somehow, she wears them like they’re combat boots.
Mariette Pathy Allen
Slate’s just done a nice piece about Mariette Pathy Allen, who has been photographing members of the trans community for a long while. Her books were some of the first I saw and read, in fact.
This is one of my favorites of hers, and it’s of Felicity, who died a few years ago at the age of 102. She is sitting in front of a photo of her child self at the turn of the last century.
It was almost a rite of passage when she photographed us when we were at Fantasia Fair in Provincetown nearly a decade ago.
You can see more of her photography on her own website.
Queer Wisconsin
Okay, maybe not queer Wisconsin, but definitely LGBTQ Wisconsin, at least. There are two interesting articles out about the state of gay rights and marriage equality and non-discrimination in this state.
One is mostly about Fair Wisconsin: its history, current goals, and what kinds of policy and legislation they’ve been addressing.
The details of how Action Wisconsin, the predecessor to Fair Wisconsin, got started are sketchy, though there seems to be consensus it coincided with the election of Tammy Baldwin to the state Assembly in 1992.
The story is that the newly elected Baldwin, then the first out lesbian elected to the Assembly, was in great demand as a speaker around the state. Belanger says Baldwin would go to these speaking engagements and collect names and contact information in a spiral notebook.
“The legend is that those lists started Action Wisconsin,” says Belanger. John Kraus, spokesman for Baldwin, now a U.S. senator, confirms the story.
The second is about the change of attitude about marriage equality and gay rights in the state:
Yet Wisconsinites are now out of sync with the rest of the country.
The latest poll from Marquette University shows that 42% of Wisconsinites support full marriage equality, while 26% support civil unions and 28% oppose any legal recognition of these partnerships.
That’s a positive change from 2006, when 59.4% of voters approved a constitutional ban on marriage equality and civil unions.
Although it’s the law of the land, the constitutional ban is at odds with Wisconsin’s long tradition of tolerance, said Katie Belanger, executive director of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights group Fair Wisconsin. She noted that in 1982 Wisconsin was the first state to make sexual-orientation discrimination illegal and voters clearly supported the election of Democrat Tammy Baldwin, a lesbian, to the U.S. Senate in 2012.
“We may disagree on all of the issues of importance to the full LGBT community, but a Wisconsin value is that we treat people fairly and with respect,” Belanger said.
And people wonder why we moved here! There’s so much to do! You can donate to Fair Wisconsin to help us keep moving things forward.
At Least in Death: Help Give Cemia Acoff a Respectful Funeral
Cemia Acoff was murdered in a barbarous way, and now, multiple activists and organizations are working with her family, the funeral home and, yes, the morgue, to bring her home.
They need your help.
They have set up The Cemia Acoff Fund which will, literally, bring Ce Ce home and ensure that she receives a proper send off, full of love and support from the community – and that includes the love and support of her family.
You can donate to The Cemia Acoff Fund here.
The groups involved include:
TransOhio
Shane Morgan, Founder & Chair
Cleveland Trans Community Outreach
Jacob Nash, Chair
Equality Ohio
Elyzabeth Holford, Executive Director
LGBT Center of Cleveland
Phyllis Harris, Executive Director
AIDS Taskforce of Greater Cleveland / Beyond Identities Community Center (BICC)
Tracy Jones, Chief Executive Officer
Miquel Brazil, BICC
May 3: Would Have Been
It would have been my parents’ 61th wedding anniversary today. And just in time, I discovered this word:
Ya’aburnee(Arabic): “You bury me.” It’s a declaration of one’s hope that they’ll die before another person, because of how difficult it would be to live without them.
(There are nine others that we don’t have in English, here. I’ll be blogging later just about the term saudade.)
My mother just told me that she regretted she never got to take care of my dad, that she never got to be of service to him once he was unable to take care of himself. & You know, folks, it just doesn’t get more heartbreaking than that. So despite my joy that she is still here, I feel a little guilty that she lives with a hole in her heart, without him.
She also said. “I had nearly 60 years with him, but I’m greedy, and wanted more than that.”
Happy anniversary, mom & dad. & Thanks for setting that bar high. Dad, we miss you more than you ever would have imagined.
Guest Post: Jennifer
A friend of mine, Jennifer Levenhagen, heard the news about Jason Collins and found herself happy – with reservations. Read on, in her own words:
A note from Queerlandia: Change is happening, but it’s not perfect, and it’s still frustrating.
In response to Jason Collins, and having dinner with my parents:
1) The Good News is that with all this talk about “gay this” and “gay that” in the media, from our President, other elected officials, etc….The word “Gay” is becoming more and more a positive or neutral word in our collective lexicon. (Hoorah!) As people increasingly include “Gay” in conversation — have conversations that INCLUDE “Gay” as a reality — it does, increasingly, become part of our collectively accepted social mores and culture.
For instance, tonight, over dinner, I heard both my parents say the word “gay” in neutral terms, regarding two different people: Jason Collins, and Daniel Hernandez, Jr.
2) Now here’s the frustrating part:
First, I am excited for the slow revolution that “Gay” is becoming more of a household word…but I am incredibly bored with our insistence on binary and our tendency to look at things mainly at surface-level. There are more people in this world than “Gay” and “Straight”. It doesn’t much matter who/what/where/when/why, but it DOES matter that we exist.Second, is that I’ve never heard my parents say “GLBTQ”. Ever. And I identify as the Q part, which they’ve known for 13 years. My mom watches Ellen and my dad came to PFLAG, but the most they say is Silence, and headlines from the news. Perhaps it has to do with that binary I just mentioned. My parents knew from the get-go, that “I’m not straight”, and they have since heard me identify as “Queer”, as I’ve made multiple attempts at starting discussion – filling them in on my life, and offering resources for them.
Maybe it still seems too confusing. Maybe my terms have rocked their boat too permanently. “Not straight” may be too vague, and “Queer” may be too volatile.In the end, though I was happily shocked to hear both my parents utter the word “Gay”, in a country where FINALLY there is more and more talk and consideration about “non-straight” lives…
I was still invisible at their table.
The discussion has skipped me.
I am their daughter, and I KNOW they Love me, but they discuss other people, instead of me – instead of us. I am not straight, but I am also not gay.
This is the literal table, but the same is true for the figurative.
We all have a place.
We should all be invited. We could have such an interesting conversation if we would genuinely see, listen, and be interested in each other; if we would practice this every day with every person.