once escorted
May. 28th, 2009 07:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmThe first time I worked clinic defense was the month after I turned eighteen. Now, most people stood in a particular phalanx by the clinic door, especially during the worst of the protests. The phalanx was designed to make sure protesters couldn't crawl through our legs, that there would still be a barrier if they stuck us with pins, which, yes, they did. Then, there were the people stationed inside the clinic, if it had interior doors. Sometimes women would pose as patients and lock themselves to the interior doors, blocking them. Finally, there were the people who escorted the women in and out of the clinic.
I did all three of those jobs at various times, but mostly I either guarded the inside doors of the clinics or escorted patients.
Mostly, the women didn't talk. But sometimes they did, either about nothing in particular or dark humour. It was strange, responding to them, and always being so careful not to reveal any particular sentiment to them.
"I hate this," one woman said. I couldn't but nod, because "this" could have been anything.
She kept talking. "Always being escorted, like I can't go to the doctor by myself."
"I'm sorry, sometimes the protesters pose as patients; it's for everyone's safety."
"But I feel like a child."
*
A woman's life is like that. We are always escorted: by our friends to the ladies and by our fathers down the aisle. It is what is expected of us. My debutante friends had to choose escorts -- one civilian and one military -- for the coming out ball and my high school dates always had to pick me up and drop me off at home, even as I was often older and more equipped to handle the world without such boys.
When I was engaged at 24, every professional service I talked to about the wedding planning wanted to speak to my fiance or my parents. When I called my bank today to discuss an issue they asked -- merely as a matter of security, but I know how it felt -- if there was a cosigner on an account.
There's a reason it's women and children first. It's because in the eyes of history and habit, we've long been mostly the same.
At least married you get the force of your husband's authority, if not your own.
*
Gay rights are, among other things, a feminist issue. If we did not hate and infantilize women, would we so question the masculinity and competency of gay men on the grounds that they must somehow be feminized by their romantic and sexual preference for males? If we did not hate and infantilize women, would we so condemn women who are not available to men, because they'd rather be with each other?
*
In the mid-90s, I traveled to Ireland with that man I was engaged to. Because I made all the hotel reservations, I quickly became Mrs. Maltese and he was referred to as Mr. Maltese. We learned quickly not to question this.
A vote was going on in the country then about whether to legalize divorce. The posters that supported divorce availability showed a photo of a woman and asked, "doesn't she deserve a second chance?" The posters against divorce also showed a woman and asked, "doesn't a man have the right to a family?"
The point of this is not that I was outraged. The point of this is that I am outraged now because my dominant reaction at the time, beyond anger and incredulity, was simply the quiet recognition of what I had always known as a woman: to be property is to be loved; to be married is the closest you will ever be to becoming an adult.
*
I never got married.
*
I'm 37 now. I'm not supposed to tell people that. After all, as perpetual children, women are also supposed to look perpetually young. Maybe if I looked my age I'd be more careful about it. Maybe I just don't care anymore.
I've got a lot more sense than I used to. I'm less complicated now in some ways. And way more complicated in others.
And in the great gay marriage debate, I keep coming back to this feeling that in the end this whole clusterfuck national debate on my humanity is really a secret, subconscious referendum on whether women can ever be adults, can ever be unescorted, can ever look like something that wasn't designed for the male gaze, can ever possess their own desire. It is also, it seems for many people, a referendum on whether masculinity can exist without the perpetual female child present to confirm its existence.
*
I've been an adult since I left home, because I've had to be. That was twenty years ago. Sometimes I've succeeded. Often I've failed. But I've continued on, and I've tried to do better. I don't regret much, but there was certainly some stuff I could have done without; I just didn't know it at the time.
That the world has both changed and that I'm a little bit crazy is so clear to me the more I meet people who have never felt all this, who have never had to.
That's hope.
So is the way much of this is just a pretty far gone memory to me now, like the butcher shop we got our meat at when I was a child.
*
In the late '90s I had an abortion. There were no protesters. The doorman in the fancy building on the Upper West Side smiled at me, and the man involved in the matter came with me, as was appropriate.
Which means I was once escorted.
In this particular lexicon of being, I wish I didn't know what that means.
*
Prop 8 and its ilk are not referenda on me as a gay person or as a woman, although they are the first overtly and the second covertly.
These votes and discussions and debates and decisions are referenda on what we deem an adult human to be or not be.
It really is that simple.
*
Sometimes people ask me what it's like to be bisexual or gay or whatever word we're using today. They'll ask how I knew. Or what's going on with my genderqueer stuff. Or for advice on speaking to others about these same issues. And I'm mostly happy to answer, because, let's face it, I'll run my mouth about anything if I have the time.
But I have things I want to know too: what's it like not always having to connect the dots about what people really think of you before you even walk into the bloody room?
Sometimes, people ask why I'm so public on my journal or why I want so badly to be famous and successful. There are flip answers to that, that you've surely heard me give. Oh, you know, like everyone in this business, my mother never loved me enough or No secrets, no blackmail are two of my favorites.
But there's a third answer. A truer answer. With a female body and a queer heart, my life was always going to be public anyway.
I did all three of those jobs at various times, but mostly I either guarded the inside doors of the clinics or escorted patients.
Mostly, the women didn't talk. But sometimes they did, either about nothing in particular or dark humour. It was strange, responding to them, and always being so careful not to reveal any particular sentiment to them.
"I hate this," one woman said. I couldn't but nod, because "this" could have been anything.
She kept talking. "Always being escorted, like I can't go to the doctor by myself."
"I'm sorry, sometimes the protesters pose as patients; it's for everyone's safety."
"But I feel like a child."
*
A woman's life is like that. We are always escorted: by our friends to the ladies and by our fathers down the aisle. It is what is expected of us. My debutante friends had to choose escorts -- one civilian and one military -- for the coming out ball and my high school dates always had to pick me up and drop me off at home, even as I was often older and more equipped to handle the world without such boys.
When I was engaged at 24, every professional service I talked to about the wedding planning wanted to speak to my fiance or my parents. When I called my bank today to discuss an issue they asked -- merely as a matter of security, but I know how it felt -- if there was a cosigner on an account.
There's a reason it's women and children first. It's because in the eyes of history and habit, we've long been mostly the same.
At least married you get the force of your husband's authority, if not your own.
*
Gay rights are, among other things, a feminist issue. If we did not hate and infantilize women, would we so question the masculinity and competency of gay men on the grounds that they must somehow be feminized by their romantic and sexual preference for males? If we did not hate and infantilize women, would we so condemn women who are not available to men, because they'd rather be with each other?
*
In the mid-90s, I traveled to Ireland with that man I was engaged to. Because I made all the hotel reservations, I quickly became Mrs. Maltese and he was referred to as Mr. Maltese. We learned quickly not to question this.
A vote was going on in the country then about whether to legalize divorce. The posters that supported divorce availability showed a photo of a woman and asked, "doesn't she deserve a second chance?" The posters against divorce also showed a woman and asked, "doesn't a man have the right to a family?"
The point of this is not that I was outraged. The point of this is that I am outraged now because my dominant reaction at the time, beyond anger and incredulity, was simply the quiet recognition of what I had always known as a woman: to be property is to be loved; to be married is the closest you will ever be to becoming an adult.
*
I never got married.
*
I'm 37 now. I'm not supposed to tell people that. After all, as perpetual children, women are also supposed to look perpetually young. Maybe if I looked my age I'd be more careful about it. Maybe I just don't care anymore.
I've got a lot more sense than I used to. I'm less complicated now in some ways. And way more complicated in others.
And in the great gay marriage debate, I keep coming back to this feeling that in the end this whole clusterfuck national debate on my humanity is really a secret, subconscious referendum on whether women can ever be adults, can ever be unescorted, can ever look like something that wasn't designed for the male gaze, can ever possess their own desire. It is also, it seems for many people, a referendum on whether masculinity can exist without the perpetual female child present to confirm its existence.
*
I've been an adult since I left home, because I've had to be. That was twenty years ago. Sometimes I've succeeded. Often I've failed. But I've continued on, and I've tried to do better. I don't regret much, but there was certainly some stuff I could have done without; I just didn't know it at the time.
That the world has both changed and that I'm a little bit crazy is so clear to me the more I meet people who have never felt all this, who have never had to.
That's hope.
So is the way much of this is just a pretty far gone memory to me now, like the butcher shop we got our meat at when I was a child.
*
In the late '90s I had an abortion. There were no protesters. The doorman in the fancy building on the Upper West Side smiled at me, and the man involved in the matter came with me, as was appropriate.
Which means I was once escorted.
In this particular lexicon of being, I wish I didn't know what that means.
*
Prop 8 and its ilk are not referenda on me as a gay person or as a woman, although they are the first overtly and the second covertly.
These votes and discussions and debates and decisions are referenda on what we deem an adult human to be or not be.
It really is that simple.
*
Sometimes people ask me what it's like to be bisexual or gay or whatever word we're using today. They'll ask how I knew. Or what's going on with my genderqueer stuff. Or for advice on speaking to others about these same issues. And I'm mostly happy to answer, because, let's face it, I'll run my mouth about anything if I have the time.
But I have things I want to know too: what's it like not always having to connect the dots about what people really think of you before you even walk into the bloody room?
Sometimes, people ask why I'm so public on my journal or why I want so badly to be famous and successful. There are flip answers to that, that you've surely heard me give. Oh, you know, like everyone in this business, my mother never loved me enough or No secrets, no blackmail are two of my favorites.
But there's a third answer. A truer answer. With a female body and a queer heart, my life was always going to be public anyway.
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-29 09:40 pm (UTC)I found this entry to be very thought-provoking, and I have to say that growing up in the country, throwing hay, fixing vehicles, handling hot horses, driving 3-ton dump trucks, huge trailers and massive Case loaders, I am looked at as an aberration to a lot of people.
To my then-coworkers, I was not a woman but "one of the guys", though there were still subtle differences. To my now office co-workers, the little snippets of my life that come out in casual conversation often earn me looks of curious disbelief, as though in their life experience they can't imagine a woman doing - or even wanting to do - the things I have done in my life. Despite having a brother, I was jokingly referred to as "the son my dad never had".
Even my female friends don't consider me a bona-fide woman. Whenever a blanket statement is made about women and I object to the stereotype my friends often respond with "yeah, but you're different." That's what I am to everyone - an exception to the rule.
My husband used to try to protect me, escort me places that I shouldn't go alone, express jealousy and concern when I was *gasp* alone with another man. He's since gotten over that, though I still notice little behavioural quirks developed from a lifetime of cultural indoctrination. My mother would voice a half-hearted concern about me walking home alone so late at night, as though it were her obligation to be concerned when she really wasn't worried (or maybe just knew it was falling on deaf ears).
Even in a society that's creeping toward equality it takes people completely off-guard when a woman doesn't act like they expect a woman to act, but in what could only be described as "male" behaviour. For some it's even more disconcerting when it's from a clearly heterosexual female, because there's no "deviant sexuality" to blame my behaviour on. It's like it blows their minds - I don't look like a man or ever get mistaken for one, so how can a woman exude such 'male' behaviour and still be straight?
Then there's my sister. As girly-girl as a person can possibly be, despite the same upbringing. She'll get her hands dirty and work, no doubt, but she is afraid to be alone in all the typical scenarios, can't bear to move away from the town our parents live near, can't make a decision without putting it by her boyfriend, or me, or our parents. She is essentially is the poster-child for the "women-as-children" argument.
I really can't describe how I felt reading that entry. I find it fascinating from a socio-anthropological point of view. It's given me an awful lot to think about. I've never thought of things from this perspective before, and I'll certainly be paying close attention to see if I can observe this sort of behaviour in a social context.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-29 10:26 pm (UTC)Though I'm sometimes offended by the female = feminine, male = masculine rule, to the point where I cross out 'gender' on surveys and forms and put 'sex'. Gender indicates behaviour, not physcial attributes, and it irritates me to no end when the terms are interchanged, or used on forms because people are afraid to offend with the word SEX.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-30 01:46 am (UTC)THIS.
This is how I feel, too.
I'm very clearly feminine, visually. But I'm sort of bossy and tall and I work with men and am used to their communication style and don't take it lying down if I'm patronized.
I was raised by a stay-at-home dad and a working mother, who were both older, and my mom was the more cautions "behave THIS way" sort of person, which is... well, sociologically interesting, coming from the breadwinner. But I wear lipstick and was in the military and like dresses and love pouring automatic weapons fire into a hill of dirt. So... whatever, when it comes to assumptions.
Great essay, rm.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-06 04:40 am (UTC)