From Angel To Working Girl

Even if you're not my age, you've heard the song at least 500 times on the radio.  You might have even heard it that many times if you don't listen to the radio anymore.  So, you might be sick of it.  I'm not:  I guess if I'm not by now, I never will be.

I'm talking about Angel of the Morning, a megahit (and just about the only hit) for Merrillee Rush and The Turnabouts.  I've always liked her voice, which was classically trained, and the classical instrumentation.  If Sheryl Crow had been born about fifteen years earlier than she was, she might have been Merrilee, though I'm glad things didn't turn out that way!

You've also probably heard (or read) that some people regard Angel a kind of proto-feminist anthem.  It certainly is a song about a woman who can stand on her own two feet. ("I won't beg you to stay," she says to the guy with whom she has an apparent one-nighter.)  In that sense, it was certainly different from just about any other pop song of that time, and arguably more enlightened than much of what is being sung today.

I'm mentioning all of this because, for the first time in a long time, I listened to the eponymous album on which the song is found.  Some of the other songs are forgettable pop "filler", no better or worse than other things you've heard from that time.  But a couple of other songs are good, or at least interesting.

One of them is called Working Girl.  If you listen to it, remember that the album was released in 1968.  To my knowledge, nobody was using the term "sexual harassment."  But that's exactly what the song's lyrics describe.  ("Mr. Jones--is that a ring on your hand?  A new job?  No, I like it here.  Yes, I read your intentions clear.")  As with Angel, there is nothing else like it from that time, and hardly anything like it since.  

From what I've mentioned so far, it probably isn't surprising that Merrilee would have recorded such a song.  But, the song actually turns into the polar opposite of Angel.  The protagonist of the song doesn't stand up for herself (Then again, how could she have done so in 1968?); instead she wishes that some man would "find this working girl, and give her heart a home".  

What makes those lines all the more jarring is that on the album, only one other track separates Angel of the Morning from Working Girl.  The song in between, That Kind of Woman, is about a woman in an affair with a married man.  It's not bad, but it isn't as beautiful as Angel or as tense and lugubrious as Working.

After Angel, Merrilee Rush and the Turnabouts released, if I'm not mistaken, two more albums, neither of which had the impact of Angel. (How could they, really?)  Now she and her husband, singer/songwriter Billy Mac, live in a farmhouse her grandfather built in the countryside near Seattle, her birthplace.  There, they do a thriving business in raising English sheepdogs.

PFLAG On LGBT Students

In the month of September, we hear and read much about education and young people.

Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG)-New York City has published some remarkable data on both.  In particular, I was struck by the following:  

• "LGBT students are twice as likely to say that they were not planning on completing high school or going to college."
• "Gay teens are 8.4 times more likely to report having attempted suicide and 5.9 times more likely to report high levels of depression compared with peers from families that reported no or low levels of family rejection."
• "Nearly a fifth of students are physically assaulted because of their sexual orientation and a tenth because of their gender identity."
• "About two thirds of LGBT students report having ever been sexually harassed (e.g., sexual remarks made, being touched inappropriately) in school in the past year."

It's hard not to see that the last two items are causes of the first two.  Why would someone willingly go to a school, or other any place, where he or she has been beaten up or sexually harassed, or faces the prospect of experiencing one or both?

I myself finished high school only because my parents wouldn't allow me not to.  That was one of the rules they had for me and my brothers:  We had to finish high school.  I graduated with a pretty high class ranking, but I can't help but to think about how much better I might have done had I felt safer, and therefore more motivated, in school.  

Now, I didn't announce my gender identity or sexuality in school, mainly because I didn't have the language for either--and, truthfully, almost nobody in that place and time had it, either.  Still, most of the boys in my school knew that somehow I wasn't quite one of them.  They projected their lurid fantasies (which, of course, were not in any way informed by reality) about what it meant to be gay or a "boy/girl" onto me. 

I did the best I could at "laying low" and got through most days without incident.  Even so, I could always feel the hormonal hostility in the air of the school hallways and the field where we had gym classes and soccer practice.  And, of course, the locker room was pure terror and torture.  I don't think I was ever again as afraid--or disgusted--as I was there.

Somehow I graduated.  Then I went onto college.  Living on campus wasn't any better, really.  There was just as much hormone-fueled bullying there.  The difference was that those conflagrations had another, equally potent fuel:  alcohol.   I very nearly flunked out after my freshman year.   

Back in those days, though, most of us didn't talk about such things, except with each other.  That is, if we decided to out ourselves.  More of us just "soldiered onward" or dropped out, saying that the schools we attended "weren't quite right" for us.

And I know of some who committed suicide, whether in the ways we normally think of, or in slow-motion (e.g., with drugs and alcohol).  

Today, there are organizations like PFLAG and people with whom LGBT students can talk.  And more of them talk openly to each other.  However, they still face the same threats we faced in my youth.  I hope that, one day, such will no longer be the case.

To Tell Or Not To Tell?

Last night, while in a coffee shop, I saw the 60 Minutes segment in which correspondent Lara Logan recounted being sexually attacked and nearly killed while she covered the uprising in Egypt.

Having survived molestation during my childhood, I could empathize with her, at least somewhat.  Actually, more than somewhat, and not only because of my experience with a family friend (who was, by the way, straight and married with children of his own).

Hot tears rolled streamed down my face when she talked about her decision to publicly tell her story.  On one hand, she said, she wanted others who have been sexually assaulted to know they "aren't alone" and to help educate the public about sexual violence.  On the other, she wrestled with that "voice" that told her not to talk about it because some people, upon hearing about it, would take it as proof that women are not fit to do the sort of work she's doing. 

I might've added that every time one of us speaks up, some people brand us as "complainers" or imply--or say outright--that we brought the violence on ourselves or, worse yet, "had it coming" to us.

I speak from experience. During my second year of living as Justine, I was sexually harassed by a campus security officer.  I was new to the job--the main job I have now--and had no idea of where to turn.  So I went to the administrative offices and talked to someone--I don't recall his name; he was gone only a few months later and  hasn't been heard from since--who told me not to report it.  "This campus can't help you," he said. "And the police won't," he said.

Later, I realized this college administrator was simply trying to prevent negative publicity for the college, which had seen a nearly complete  administrative turnover, and three different Presidents, during the previous five years.

The interesting thing was that I didn't get pressure from other trans, or even L, G or B, people to keep quiet about my experience, as sexually assaulted women get form other women.  If anything, all of the LGBT people I know wanted me to speak about it publicly, and even to write about it.  All of the pressure I experienced to keep quiet came from the college's administration and my supervisor.  

Any such pressure is bad for the morale of the person receiving it, as if he or she weren't having a tough enough time.  Lara Logan seems like a tough woman, but even she needs support when she's been violated.  And, too often, that's what we don't get.  

At least I didn't have Ms. Logan's many injuries or fear of disapproval from my own community.