As a Black woman growing up in Northern California (Berkeley, San Fransisco,ie) I found it to be a culture of being free and being who you were as a person. Although most of my life until I reached of age, I was not aware of the difference of homosexuality and heterosexuality. All I was taught was that you could never be a lesbian because I was a Christian and thats all that had matter I needed to not know anything else.
When reading the essay " The woman - Indentifed woman" it brought me back to that place in which I spent my first day in Berkeley High School and was taught by a lesbian teacher who I adore to this day that it was ok as women to be who you are if you like the same sex, YES!! ITS OK !!! I was then confused dating the same sex was ok? since when? was what I was thinking. As I began to connect with this essay and really understand what message it was trying to deliver it change my mind more then just what my freshman high school teacher did.
Radicallesbians explain that as women we often times have been realted to and through men. As a society I realize that it is that we only caterogorize behavior of sex roles that as people we find to be abnormal. It was interesting to read that within the sexist society in order for a woman to be independent she was consider to be a "dyke". Why is that as women we are always placed into this masculine category in which men think as women we must live through? A "lesbian " according to men is not really a woman, so because a lesbian chooses to like another sexual orientation she is not a woman? How is it then that men can call women not real women for liking another sexual orientation but yet still find that gay men are still "men"? I'm confused. We can not straddle the fence, in the words of my grandmother ,as a sexist society we must decide if a lesbian is not a real woman then neither is a gay man a real man. Who are we to say what is real and not real?
I believe that in order for a sexist society to understand and not judge, we as people must be willing to be on one accord and understand " It is the primacy of women realting to women, of women creating a new consciousness of and with each other, which is at the heart of women's liberation, and the basis for the cultural revolution" (p.242) It is only with time that change will come, it took me a while to understand and fully realize that lesbians, gays, transgender, etc are all still people and whether or not I personally agree with there sexual orientation is not up to me, however I will not treat them any different then my own mother and father for it is that everyone must be shown respect and love.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I suppose it is only right that I comment to this blog, not because the author is my cousin, but because she mentioned MY CITY!..
I like the author was also raised in the Bay Area, Berkeley to be exact. I am very thankful that I was brought up in such a diverse enviornment. When people say diverse it is assumed that whoever said it is talking about racial diversity. Berkeley was very diverse in that since, but also diverse in culture, and sexual orientation. So at an early age I have been exposed to lesbians, gays, transgendered persons and all. On a more personal note there was a girl in my German class named Deeda and one day she anounced to the class that she would no longer like to go by that, she prefered the name Jack and that she was in the process of transitioning. Believe it or not THAT WAS NO ISSUE for us. It was hard to break out of the habit of calling her Deeda, but eventually that became easy. My parents and my surroundings encouraged me to be open, understanding, and hell if you have questions, ASK, don't judge or catergorize.
As Devin said...who are we to decided who is "real" or not. These catergories that we find ourselves being shoved into were created by those (white patriarchal men) that were frightened by what they didn't know and didn't understand. So because lesbians and gays were forein to them, that automatically mades it wrong. Catergories are almost impossible to create successfully because not everyone feels like they fit into one particular box, and so what? Why do we have to fit into a box at all. Personally I prefer to just roam free (ha). But referring back to the article, and to what Devin said, this society will continue to fight in "border wars" until we can come to the understanding that labels and social constructs are truly irrelevent.
Sometimes in our efforts to deal with controversial topics we might say "It doesn't matter" but I'd like to press on that a bit. I'd say that is when it matters most. We might deploy statements like "what people do in the privacy of their own bedroom is their business" but it misses the way this allows the dominant norm to remain unchallenged. I'm sure many of us have interacted with white people around issues of race where the refrain might be "I don't see color, I see people." This allows white folks not to challenge their racism and assumptions about certain groups and allows for the differences to go unacknowledged. It seems more than denying difference, queer theorists are advocating for folks to embrace difference.
Post a Comment