David's blog: Writing

Saturday, September 2nd, 2006

I start to remember in shards, pieces of glass that rip my skin and leave marks. I find tight little cuts all over: one on my left breast, grazing the nipple, and one that starts just below my left eyebrow and turns across my nose to the light brown line of my upper lip. Another is on my back, burning from the base of my spine over the soft roundness of the right cheek of my behind. Yet another one, trying to scab, unable to heal, is buried on my scalp. These are the memories like a broken bottle, memories I can't speak because the glass gets caught in my throat, ripping it, too. I circle these glinty flashes from above for days, weeks, before I can find a way to sit down with them alone in my room, in front of the computer. From my lofty perch they appear minor, mere scratches; it is only when I look closely that I seem them for what they are: self-mutilations and battle scars.

My last blog entry was in part about some bad writing I'd come across, so perhaps it's appropriate that this one be about some writing I am really liking. I'm reading Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self, by Rebecca Walker. I'd never heard of Rebecca Walker until I took an English class where I read stuff by her mother and learned about feminist criticism and third wave feminism (which is where Rebecca Walker's name came up) and gender studies and other stuff. Doing research on Alice Walker for a project, I found that she'd been married to a white Jewish civil rights lawyer in the 1960s and that their daughter, Rebecca, had written an autobiography. I didn't have time to read it then, but I do now.

I've only just begun to read it, and though I'm not black, white and Jewish, nor a woman, nor have I lived in the South or New York City, I, like Walker, was born in the 60s and grew up in the 70s, and I remember Big Wheels and Baby Alive and Bubblicious and reading Forever by Judy Blume. And I remember having the right answers to teachers' questions in class and learning slowly that that didn't endear me to the other kids, and I remember having to deal with kids who wanted to beat me up, and I remember having crushes on boys who weren't interested in people like me. And I remember my parents divorcing and my mother needing comforting and being among my father's relatives who didn't know my mother or understand her. And I remember spending lots of time quietly observing people around me, trying to figure out the right way that I was supposed to act and respond.

My childhood wasn't horrible, and not all my memories are shards of glass, but I definitely get what Walker is saying, for I do have bits of broken bottle from the past inside me. She's done a lot of work extracting some of hers. I've done some, but a strategy I've used, for good or for bad, is that of leaving some of the glass alone. Certain pieces have worked their way down inside me, and I can walk around now without even being aware that they're there. Once in a while, though, at unexpected times, say when I shift in a chair while reading a book, a piece of glass inside me moves, and I remember.

Friday, May 19th, 2006

Observing the ballroom packed with the attendees, I noted that racial and ethnic minorities were in the minority, possibly reflecting the multiple layers of discrimination in the GLBT ethnic minority population, who are bombarded by so many possible points of entry into the democratic process in order to improve the enjoyment of civil rights and basic human rights.

What's this cumbersome sentence from? A 3385-word, 21-paragraph report written by a member of Diversity Dayton (and a faculty member of an institution of higher learning here in Dayton) who participated in Equality Ohio's first LGBTA Lobby Day last Wednesday in Columbus. And it makes me tired, on more than one level.

The superficial level is that this sentence offends the inner English major in me. "Racial and ethnic minorities were in the minority?" That's hardly surprising. Except for women, who though a protected class technically aren't a minority of the population, yes, minority groups do tend to be in the minority (although that is changing). Yes, I get that the author of this sentence meant something like, "Racial and ethnic minorities were underrepresented," but couldn't she have said that? What she meant by the rest of that long sentence, I don't even care to try to figure out.

Another level on which the sentence tires me is that it's yet another indication of how things don't change, also on multiple levels. The "LGBT community," at least in Ohio, is a predominantly white affair. There's lots of talk about why that is and little success in changing that. Certainly it's not something easily changed given the intense homophobia among African Americans (though, to be fair, there have been exceptions) especially in black churches.

Something else that's not changing in Ohio anytime soon is the political outlook for queers. Equality Ohio made a big deal about the introduction of a bill (HB 28/SB 331) that would ban discrimination in Ohio based on sexual orientation and encouraged people, including people at home, to campaign for it on Lobby Day. Well no Republicans (count them, zero) have signed up to co-sponsor this legislation, and it has a snowball's chance in hell of passing this session. Californians got their state legislature to pass a law (later vetoed by the Terminator) giving gay Californians the right to marry. In Ohio we're struggling to get our legislature to agree that maybe queers in school do deserve some protections against bullies.

Now I don't want to sound completely like a curmudgeon. It's (usually) better to do something than to do nothing. For a first attempt, Equality Ohio had some measure of success. Over 500 people lobbied their state representatives and senators for equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered Ohioans, and these people were fairly well received. Speaker of the House Jon Husted (in whose district I currently live and who I had the chance to meet earlier this year on another lobby day) attended Equality Ohio's reception the evening before. I heard from a friend about his visit with a Republican who represents the rural district in which he lives, and apparently he (and two of her aides who are Miami of Ohio alums) gave her quite an education on the environment gay students still face in schools. Other friends told me that they feel the anti-bullying bill (HB 276) stands a better chance of having the list of often-bullied groups put back into it.

So I guess when it comes to working for gay rights in Ohio, I'm ambivalent. I'm too tired to be an active participant of a group like Diversity Dayton (I've already done my share of sitting through long meetings), but I'm also glad that there's a new set of young, newly-out queers in their 20s excited about making a difference. I'm just not optimistic about what they'll accomplish.

Monday, April 5th, 2004

According to this Quizilla quiz, I'm a grammar god, which I guess is good since I'm planning on becoming an English teacher!

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