My Not-Quite Outsider's Perspective on Prop. 8

I have found my feelings about the recent passage of Proposition 8 in California complex. Note carefully that I have not said "conflicted" because I am not. But they are complex. My relationship is one of the boogy men the right uses against marriage equality. Even more so though, the gay movement falls all over itself to make it clear that relationships like mine aren't any more welcome in the gay community (note the distinction between the movement and the community) than in the bible belt.

I was living in Massachusetts during the fight for same-sex marriage there and I remember being told by many of my gay friends and acquaintances that I owed it to my brethren to go back into the closet about my family because our existence sent the wrong message. The "right" message of course, and by "right" I mean the one on the press releases is that gay people are just like straight ones. They want to meet the right man or woman, settle down, raise a family. This is bullshit. Well the second part is.

I'll grant that gays are much like straights. However, I reject the notion that all straight people want the wife/kids/minivan scenario. The difference between queer folk and straight folk has been that in rejecting society's expectations that we be heterosexual we've also gained the freedom to reject other of society's expectations for who we should be, from the nature of our relationships to defying gender role expectations and a host of other individual choices (my grandfather wanted me to consider business school, I wonder if I'd have been so comfortable disappointing him if my queerness had paved Disappointment Road already).

This narrowing of what it means to be queer has been by no means limited to poly folk. Drag queens, flamers, butch dykes and other "stereotypical" queers have found the movement shrink out from under them under the banner of gaining wider societal acceptance.

I've seen the same thing happen in the Tourette Syndrome world. Just as the gay community wants the rest of the world to know that being gay doesn't mean that you swish your hips when you walk, there is a constant message from the TS world that having Tourette doesn't mean that you have coprolalia (swearing tics). Just as gays I knew told me that I shouldn't be open about Fire, Summer and my life, I recently spoke to the mother of a child with TS who stopped going to parent support group meetings because the other parents were so bothered by the fact that her child had coprolalia. She said to me (paraphrasing) "the Tourette Association spends so much time telling everyone, especially parents, that coprolalia is so rare, and that it's not the defining feature of the condition that I feel like there is no support for me or my son. I feel like they'd rather we just keep our mouths shut!"

When I was in high school a lot of the literature for gay youth emphasized that gay kids were "ordinary" kids. That most of them didn't swish or lisp or like musical theater. The problem was that if a kid did express themselves in that way (and I was literally swishing when I was five, although I later forced myself not to) they can be left feeling like they don't even belong with the gays. I don't know if that has changed much or not in the time since, although I will applaud Alex Sanchez's Rainbow Boys young adult series for featuring a variety of kinds of gay kids.

Don't even get me started on the way that the gay and lesbian movement and to a lesser extent the gay and lesbian community threw transgendered people under the bus during last year's fight for federal anti-discrimination protection. I'll get to that at some point in the future. When I can think about it without wanting to put my fist through my computer screen. Be prepared to wait.

All of this said however, Prop 8 hurt. Leaving aside for a moment all the individuals wounded personally by it's passing, Proposition 8 sends a terrible message. It says that the people of one of the most liberal states in the land don't believe in equal rights for queers. Worst of all, it steals away hope from people all over. When push comes to shove, California is still perceived as one of the better places is this country to be gay. If California can overrule same-sex marriage why should anyone fight for the right to live their lives in a way that %51 of people might not like.

Same-sex marriage rights can never be my victory. But the passage of Prop. 8 and the other anti-gay ballot measures on Nov. 4th certainly felt like my defeat.

The Irrelevant Pear

It is very interesting to me what makes (or doesn't make) people squeamish. For lack of anything better on television this evening I found myself watching “Machines of Malice- Going Medieval” on the Discovery Channel. I don't think it takes a great leap to figure out that the program dealt with the subject of torture devices. They were dealing with the common and mediapathic ones such as finger and skull crushers, the rack, and the pear of anguish. For each device an engineer tested a reproduction to demonstrate its effectiveness (or lack thereof), often with a neurobiologist to explain what physiologically results it would have (frankly I found her redundant in the case of the skull crusher).

Interestingly, the pear of anguish is featured in almost every History/Discovery Channel documentary on torture devices even though there is skepticism as to whether it had every actually been used (this particular show concluded that it probably couldn't have been). Despite this, it is the pear of anguish and the Discovery Channel's handling of its segment that sparked this post.

The pear of anguish, aside from having a nifty name, is a torture device that you may have seen under a more mundane nomenclature. In many ways it is remarkable similar to a modern speculum, although in some ways it is more like an anal rather than vaginal one. The device consists of several arms that fit together to form a narrow elongated form. When a screw at the back is turned the arms spread apart to form a conical shape. Depending on the victim's supposed crime the device could be placed in a variety of orifices.

Having already demonstrated how the finger crusher would work on an uncooked chicken bone (“you can seen how the blood and marrow are forced out as the bone breaks, if this was a finger it would be rendered completely useless”) this point is where the Discovery Channel shows its frankly bizarre squeamish point.

They first explain that the pear of anguish would be used on blasphemers by inserting it into the mouth and expanding it until the jaw dislocated or broke. They have a CGI animated graphic to explain this for people who truly lack any imagination at all. As with the other devices both before and after on the show the narrator is a bit more enthusiastic than is strictly necessary.

Then homosexuality, which one of the people on the show (perhaps an anthropologist, I don't remember) awkwardly explains “was looked on really badly back then.” You probably don't need me to tell you that there is no CGI animation for how the pear was used on suspected queers. Here though is the phrase that inspired this whole post: they go on to explain that “for the crime of homosexuality, the pear of anguish was inserted into the relevant orifice and then expanded.” That's it, homosexuality portion over.

Lastly we have adulterers who they explain in almost too graphic detail (still no CGI) would have the pear inserted vaginally (and yes they use the word “vagina”) and expanded “until the delicate mucosa tissue passes its breaking point and tears apart.”

This is the part that is really bizarre to me. The Discovery Channel feels comfortable saying “vagina” on this program and describing in somewhat horrific detail how the pear of anguish would destroy one, but can't use the term “anus” or “rectum?”

This could be a regulator issue. Perhaps “anus” and “rectum” score higher on the questionable content scale that determines a show's rating than “vagina” does. I can't see why this would be, but I don't find it all that implausible.

That said, I found the phrase “the relevant orifice” to be very dismissive. As in fact was the entire mention of torturing gays for being gay. This may not be reflective of a bias against gays. In fact if I had to guess I'd imagine that there is more than one person on the production crew whose “relevant orifice” would have been endangered back when the pear of anguish was supposedly used.

Perhaps what is more interesting than the use of the term “relevant orifice” is that there was little attempt to dismiss the use of the pear on adulterers or blasphemers. It's as if by being dismissive the producers of the show are trying to reassure us that they don't endorse the historic view of homosexuality as a crime. Blasphemy and adultery however, are still fair game.

Couldn't Hurt (2)

Summer thought I should post this over here too. It's a few days old now. (from my Livejournal)


Summer and I watched the debates last night. Since we don't really have sex anymore (although with him coming off of his meds that mights be subject to change, who knows) watching all the debates has been about the most intimate thing we've done; if you don't count the occasional awkward attempt at a hand job. The problem I found is that regardless of the questions, the answers in last night's debate were all things we'd heard before. If what many of the pundits say is true (and I fear that it is) and the American people care more about who a candidate is that what their experiences or policies are (and how else to you explain all the people who like Sarah Palin) then I think that the debates questions might as well reflect this.

As I awoke from my Benadryl/Vicodin/Ambien influenced sleep this leaped into my mind:

What we need is to have a circus clown make each canidate the balloon animal that they feel best reflects them and then have them justify their decision to the American people while holding said ballon animal.

Yes it would lower the level of political discourse, but then, having watched last night's debate I don't think lowering the level of discourse is something we need to be worrying about.

(BTW in my dream Obama choose Dorie, the forgetful fish from Finding Nemo, and McCain choose a squid. Before they could explain thier choices, or for that matter why they both choose sea animals, I woke up)