nowandthen
05-28-2012, 10:51 PM
Going away this summer for a month to start my memoir, here a first attempt, had to put it out , so the cherry is popped! thoughts and encouragement are welcome :praying:
Generosity
What does it mean to be asked to be more generous from those in power? What is it to be straddling the fault line of racial privilege and gender oppression? When asked recently to be more generous with folks unlearning hetronormative privilege, it stuck me odd. I am a white gender queer who is read as white, straight and privilege in most of my daily encounters. My pigmentation does benefit me in ways I can not even see most days, even when I am looking, but what I find more elusive is the duality of the socialized, feminist, queer female marked masculine body and the assumption and projection onto my body of straight heterosexual cisgendered masculinity. The internal landscape of my identity ripples through a complicated history in both the queer and non-queer worlds, shaped by therapeutic intervention as a child.
I had an epiphany last week in my current therapeutic dance, I do not know my life without the gaze of others judgment about who I need to be for them. Intervention on my sweet young self fragmented any sense of self I might have developed, and the road to healing has been long and far from over. So, when I was asked to be more generous from a straight white male in a position of power who had just accused me of sending an inappropriate email that he described as a love letter, in which my whole body had a physical reaction, I exclaimed, What! I knew I had not sent a “love” letter to a professor, but had sent my respect and admiration and gratitude for the intellectual knowledge brought by said professor. It was not romantic and in fact insulting considering I was in a committed monogamous relationship. After a day or so and a conversation with a close friend, I realized why I had such a response to his accusation why my friend stated it was homophobic, right, he stated because straight men often think with there dicks and straight folks think all that non-straight folks think about is sex. I had become so used to homophobia that I did not recognize it as that because it was the subtle silencing kind. , When I told every other queer friend about the accusation all said very loudly What! How homophobic.
I was thinking about this accusation and the question to me to be more generous with folks unlearning trans and homophobia. When I try I must first push through a life long engagement with folks wanting my rage, anger, love, and heart to be on there time schedule and in a tone and condition that makes them comfortable and again I become invisible in the moment, breathing in and holding my breath, so that your breath fills the room, and your comfort is forged in my generosity. This brings me to the place of being awake, learning from my unlearning my racial privilege. I have listen to friends, read, be called out, cussed out, talked about, forgiven, and loved in my own unlearning by folks of colour throughout my entire life I have learned many things about generosity in relations to race, gender and queerness. I am also reminded of the young scared child I was in the doctor’s office, brought there by my parents on the suggestion of our family pediatrician. I was afraid and clueless, but I would soon come to understand what was being asked of me. It would not be my last “meeting” in a room with folks in power.
Generosity
What does it mean to be asked to be more generous from those in power? What is it to be straddling the fault line of racial privilege and gender oppression? When asked recently to be more generous with folks unlearning hetronormative privilege, it stuck me odd. I am a white gender queer who is read as white, straight and privilege in most of my daily encounters. My pigmentation does benefit me in ways I can not even see most days, even when I am looking, but what I find more elusive is the duality of the socialized, feminist, queer female marked masculine body and the assumption and projection onto my body of straight heterosexual cisgendered masculinity. The internal landscape of my identity ripples through a complicated history in both the queer and non-queer worlds, shaped by therapeutic intervention as a child.
I had an epiphany last week in my current therapeutic dance, I do not know my life without the gaze of others judgment about who I need to be for them. Intervention on my sweet young self fragmented any sense of self I might have developed, and the road to healing has been long and far from over. So, when I was asked to be more generous from a straight white male in a position of power who had just accused me of sending an inappropriate email that he described as a love letter, in which my whole body had a physical reaction, I exclaimed, What! I knew I had not sent a “love” letter to a professor, but had sent my respect and admiration and gratitude for the intellectual knowledge brought by said professor. It was not romantic and in fact insulting considering I was in a committed monogamous relationship. After a day or so and a conversation with a close friend, I realized why I had such a response to his accusation why my friend stated it was homophobic, right, he stated because straight men often think with there dicks and straight folks think all that non-straight folks think about is sex. I had become so used to homophobia that I did not recognize it as that because it was the subtle silencing kind. , When I told every other queer friend about the accusation all said very loudly What! How homophobic.
I was thinking about this accusation and the question to me to be more generous with folks unlearning trans and homophobia. When I try I must first push through a life long engagement with folks wanting my rage, anger, love, and heart to be on there time schedule and in a tone and condition that makes them comfortable and again I become invisible in the moment, breathing in and holding my breath, so that your breath fills the room, and your comfort is forged in my generosity. This brings me to the place of being awake, learning from my unlearning my racial privilege. I have listen to friends, read, be called out, cussed out, talked about, forgiven, and loved in my own unlearning by folks of colour throughout my entire life I have learned many things about generosity in relations to race, gender and queerness. I am also reminded of the young scared child I was in the doctor’s office, brought there by my parents on the suggestion of our family pediatrician. I was afraid and clueless, but I would soon come to understand what was being asked of me. It would not be my last “meeting” in a room with folks in power.