Where Lesbians Get Off But Gay Men Are Cut Off

Could lesbians actually benefit from misogyny?

That question, on its face, might be the most preposterous you've ever heard.  But one has to wonder whether why, in 25 nations, male homosexuality is illegal (sometimes punishable by death) but lesbianism isn't.

I should qualify my previous statement:  To my knowledge, none of those countries has a law that specifically legalizes sex between women.  Rather, there simply is no law against such relations.

The simple question is, of course:  Why?

Given that most of those countries are either in the Caribbean or Africa, and some are ruled (or at least dominated) by religious fundamentalists, my guess it that women are so invisible that the men in charge simply don't think about women doing it with women.  Or, as others might suggest, it's their secret vice:  They might find men having sex with men repugnant but have their stashes of lesbian porn.

(When I was living in Park Slope, a newsdealer I frequented also sold porn.  He told me all of his lesbian porn was purchased by men and women rarely, if ever, bought porn. I always figured that the reason is that most lesbian porn depicts men's notions of what women do.)

In more religious societies were men are seen as vehicles of God's or Allah's or whatever-supreme-being's will, and women are seen as incubators of men (ideally), it's probably considered more important to protect the moral purity of males.  In such places, women are seen as evil and thus beyond protection, let alone redemption.

And there are a good many men--including some in this country--who simply believe that it isn't possible for a woman to have sex with another woman.  That, of course, means that their notions about sexual relations are completely phallocentric.

I would love to know whether any woman has ever been punished in any of those countries for having sex with another woman.  Or, upon discovering that his wife or girlfriend is doing it with her best friend, does a man charged with upholding the law simply watch and enjoy?
  

When The Paperwork Is Done

Variations of this cartoon hung in many an office during the 1970's.  However, they all had the same message: No job is finished until the paperwork is done.

Who knew how pertinent that pearl of wisdom would be for transgender people today?  And, at this moment, how many people can better understand its verisimilitude than Calliope Wong can?

She has just been rejected by Smith College.  That happens to lots of applicants, as Smith is one of the most selective all-female colleges in the United States.  

But it wasn't Ms. Wong's grades or SAT scores, or a lack of extracurricular activities or letters of recommendation that doomed her application.  Rather, it had to do with her Financial Aid forms.

Now, it's been rumored that some schools will take an applicant that doesn't request financial aid over one who does but has similar credentials.  However, I am willing to believe Smith officials when they say that it isn't her family's lack of wealth that's keeping her out of their school.

Instead, it has to do with some information her parents provided on that form.  You see, they checked off the "M" box because it's the one marked on her birth certificate and Social Security records.  Although Calliope has been living as female for two years and has identified herself as one for as long as she can remember, her official records do not yet indicate that.  

So, Smith returned her application materials without an official admissions review.  College officials said she is free to re-apply.

To its credit, Smith was one of the first colleges to openly support lesbian students, and it allows students to remain in the college if they transition from female to male.  However, with such policies, "Smith seems to be saying that they welcome trans men, but not trans women", according to Mara Keisling.  "At first blush, it appears to be counter to Smith's anti-discrimination policy," added Ms. Keisling, who is the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality.  

While I support Smith's willingness to allow female-to-male transitions, I agree with Keisling that it's strange that the same school wouldn't allow transitions in the other direction.  Perhaps Smith could use letters from doctors and therapists certifying that the applicant has made some significant step, such as taking hormones or living full-time as female, toward her gender transition.  Or, if the college wants candidates who are "officially" female, it should specify which documents have to indicate that gender in order for an applicant to be considered.

Ms. Wong says she plans to commence her studies elsewhere.  I get the feeling that Smith will be poorer for it.

National Coming Out Day

Today is the 25th National Coming Out Day.

When the first such day was held, "coming out", even for white lesbians and gay men and lesbians who were secure in their jobs and lives, was a risky proposition.  The so-called "Gay Liberation" of the 1970's boomeranged into a conservative backlash during the 1980s.  (I apologize for the mixed metaphors.)  

One reason was the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.  Of course, the election didn't happen in a vacuum:  There was a counter-revolution to the Gay Rights movement, just as there was for the Women's and Civil Rights movements.  That counter-revolution was not always visible or audible:  Most of the time, it was more like a series of tremors that one only felt when one happened to be in its path.  Those tremors culminated in the earthquake of Reagan's election.

Perhaps even more important, though, was the outbreak of HIV/AIDs.  In the early years of the epidemic, all of its known (or, at any rate, recorded) victims were believed to be gay men, intravenous drug users, Haitians or West Africans.  The last three groups I've mentioned were near the bottom of the American socio-economic ladder; the early path of the epidemic caused many Americans to lump gay men with them.  Naturally, that only helped to inflame existing prejudices against gay men.

Another reason, I believe, why "coming out" was difficult during the 1980's was that many people associated lesbians with the most shrill and hateful kinds of feminists (or pseudo-scholars who called themselves feminists, anyway).  The conservatives and religious hatemongers who were spouting anti-gay rhetoric tended to look none too kindly on feminists anyway; the association those conservatives made between feminists and lesbians surely made things worse for both.

If it was difficult for gays and lesbians to come out in 1988, you can only imagine how much worse things were for trans people.  Of the trans people I've met (which include everything from those who haven't yet begun-- or who have chosen not to-- to transition, to post-ops), it seems that there are, chronologically, two groups: the ones who transitioned during or before the early 1980's, and the ones who transitioned during or after the early 1990's.  

If my observations in any way reflect what has happened throughout the trans community, there is a "lost generation" of trans people--the ones who didn't transition during the decade or so between the two groups I've mentioned.  That period almost perfectly coincides with the conservative backlash I've mentioned against gays and lesbians, and that "lost generation" includes many who took their own lives or who died slower deaths from drug and alcohol abuse, as well as those who simply didn't transition and those--including yours truly--who transitioned later in their lives than they might have otherwise.

So, even though we have a long way to go, things are certainly better for us, in many ways, than they were in 1988.  National Coming Out Day is one reason for that.