What Ever Happenned to Southern Manners?

Living in Los Angeles during the year and a half when same-sex marriage was legalized, un-legalized, and "officially" un-legalized, I thought I'd heard every possible marriage conversation. In addition to the pro-rights rhetoric and the opposing religious/homophobic/protectionist babble, there were the dozens of internal conversations within pro-marriage communities. From the greater LGBTQ community, it was should you or shouldn't you? From confused but well-meaning heteros (and the rogue queer or two), it was could you or couldn't you? Was it legal or not? From friends and family, and from more than a few complete strangers, it was will you or won't you? My partner and I had only been together 7 months when the Supreme Court first ruled the marriage ban unconstitutional, yet it was quite common for total strangers to insist we should run out and get married right away, because 'you never know how long it'll stay legal.'

But our recent move back to my partner's homestate of Texas has set off a whole new kind of conversation - and not the one you're expecting. It has always been my experience people in the South are exceeding polite, often (to my blunt New York sensibilities) to the point of absurdity. Anymore smiling and nodding and they would turn into a giant army of bobble-head dolls. And yet when it comes to conversations about our engagement and upcoming wedding, everything I thought I knew about good southern manners disappears.

'Oh my god! I've never been to a lesbian wedding!' Random strangers squeal like they've just won the lotto and a free trip to Disneyworld all in one day. 'I want to come! I'm so excited! When is it?'

Now, I grew up in a straight-forward, shit-talking, no-holds-barred community in a state famous for rude behavior, and even I learned somewhere along the way that it is not polite to invite yourself to someone's wedding. The first time this happened, I laughed it off to drunken camaraderie. The second time, I managed to vaguely imply it was far away and nothing was planned yet. The THIRD time, I wrinkled my brow and started to respond, at which point they cut me off and actually asked if they could bring friends!!! My jaw literally fell to the table. My partner smoothly jumped in and said something charmingly southern as I shot daggers and reared up for a vitriolic response. She pulled me aside before I could explode, fixed me with a you-are-in-Texas-not-New-York-and-I-expect-you-to-behave-accordingly look, and explained the proper thing to do was smile and say "Sure! How nice!" or "Bless your heart! We'd love that!" and then change the subject. This is apparently the standard southern translation for "Are you fucking kidding?' How rude can you be?"

I am not exaggerating when I tell you that EVERY SINGLE TIME we talked about our wedding in a public place, at least one person would invite themselves or request an invitation. And by the third or fourth request, it wasn't the rudeness that bothered me. It was the pervasive idea that our wedding was some kind circus show people could invite themselves to, or use to gain liberal cred: "Some of my best friends are black." "I worked with this gay guy once, and we were totally bff's. Gay people are so much fun!" "I slept with an asian chick/black guy/french girl/Cherokee dude." "I went to a lesbian wedding." Like that.

So You're EnGAYged has a great post listing 5 things not to say to a gay couple getting married. These are certainly among the most common and most exhausting/irritating/joy-quenching responses I received. Sure, it frustrates me when I giddily announce to a childhood friend that I just got engaged, and instead of jumping up and down and squealing high-pitched congratulations, they cock their head and ask whether or not its legal. And I have to spend 20 minutes explaining the intricacies of California's initiative process and the contradictory existence of DOMA and the Full Faith and Credit Clause, when what I'd like to be discussing are dresses, rings, and flower colors. But for the most part those questions come from supportive friends who are asking out of concern, making it a little easier to remain patient. It's the constant objectification by all the pushy, oblivious pseudo-well-wishers that wears me down the most.

It's not like the fetishization of lesbians and bisexuals is breaking news, and as someone who identifies as pansexual (and has regularly been lumped in with bisexuals, lesbians, and heteros depending on my relationship of the moment), I'm all too familiar with the ways ingrained homophobia and heteronormative expectations can manifest in more subtle forms. But when it intrudes on my wedding - my wedding - I've discovered that all my time-worn coping mechanisms malfunction. For anyone who still isn't getting why this is such a big deal, let me break it down: a wedding is an incredibly intimate, personal, and often spiritual experience. While there may be other reasons some couples marry (legal, financial, etc), for most couples this is their chance to profess a lifelong vow of their commitment to and love for one another, often in front of all the people they hold most dear. This is not because they are showing off - it's because they are honoring their relationship by making a public declaration of accountability and intent, in front of people who support and celebrate their decision. An invitation to a wedding means that you are welcome as a witness to this commitment and as a vital part of the affirmative energy surrounding their declaration.

THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO RACK UP COOL-BY-ASSOCIATION QUEER CRED. Not that there is ever a time, or that it is ever appropriate to objectify someone's ethnic, sexual, or racial orientation. But seriously, folks. You are not invited to my wedding. I've never been to a bi-racial Bollywood wedding on the back of a cargo ship, but that doesn't mean I expect to be invited the next time one's going on. If you want to show your appreciation for the lgbtq community, make a donation to HRC. Write your congressman. Lobby for better diversity education in your state's school system. The community thanks you. Who knows, you might even become friends with some queers who will invite you to their wedding, all of their own volition.

Hopefully by then you'll have forgotten why you thought it was so 'cool' in the first place.

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A Tale of Two Countries...

Yesterday The New American (click at your own risk) teamed up with Fox News and the American Family Association to bring you the delightfully, hilariously named Tax Day Tea Party Protest, where hundreds of thousands of Americans gathered to protest... umm, not having their taxes raised... by teabagging.

Yes, that's right. Teabagging.

Now, anyone who has had sex in the last decade, or who knows someone who has had sex in the last decade, or has watched a show where someone talked about having sex in the last decade, knows what teabagging is. And if not, a quick google search will bring up the Urban Dictionary as its first three hits, with definitions for teabagging that do not include Boston, Redcoats, Rick Perry or Rush Limbaugh (thank god). Apparently, however, hundreds of thousands of Americans and the entire crew of Fox News remain utterly (and did I mention hilariously?) clueless to the previous meaning of their co-opted hobby. Rachel Maddow had this to say about the pre-teabagging frenzy that had so many in its thrall:



The actual events, of course, were much less humorous. And lest you think I am only presenting a snidely slanted liberal view, here are some teabaggers explaining the protests in their very own inchoate sentences. And some footage from a Cleveland Teabagging Party. Don't worry, there's no sex (as explained above), though the bigotry might make it inappropriate for children. Courtesy of bloggerinterrupted.com:





And what was the rest of the world doing while America teabagged for (already-lowered) taxes? In Afghanistan, where the American-backed government recently passed a law legalizing marital rape and curtailing numerous other rights for women in the Shiite minority, 300 women gathered in protest in front of the School of the Last Prophet, a madrasa run by the country’s most powerful Shiite cleric. Women police officers formed a human shield around them as nearly 1000 men and women hurled rocks and death threats:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Soraya Pakzad, head of the organization Voices of Afghan Women and winner of the 2008 Women of Courage award, gave a recent interview at GlobalPost.com about connections between economics and women's rights in Afghanistan:

“People are very poor,” she explained. “I have had fathers cry and say ‘I love my daughter, I do not want to give her up. But give me an option.’”

Pakzad has recently returned from Washington, D.C., where she met with prominent figures as part of a delegation of Afghan women.

She tried to explain her world — the falling numbers of girls in school, the increasing violence, forced marriages, self-immolation. Pakzad herself is the mother of six children, married at 14 with little say in her own future.

“I met Michelle (Obama) and Hillary (Clinton),” she said. “Michelle cried when I spoke about the way our women live. But they told me that more schools have been built, more roads have been paved. Why are they so concerned about the buildings? I think because a building is something they can measure, they can count. But who is going to be able to go to these schools?”

And somehow all the teabagging nonsense no longer seems so entertaining. But the rest of that opening sentence has been floating around my head all day...

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way..."

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Staples of American Identity

You hear it in country songs, see it in political campaigns, read it on bumper stickers: Proud To Be An American. But I've often wondered, what exactly does that mean? In a country as vast and multifaceted as the US, where traveling between states can feel more disorienting than travel between many European countries, what are the values and characteristics that 'make' someone 'American' and inspire such pride? And if the whole nation is in such clear agreement about this, how did I get left in the dark?

Curious, and eager for an excuse to procrastinate, I turned to Google and typed "american identity". I expected to find phrases like "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" and "home, home on the range", maybe even a friendly Wikipedia article with a bullet-point list. (If you said yes to 10 or more of the above qualities, you are an American!) Instead I got 10 links to lengthly historical studies (and a few Amazon matches), but everything dealt with formative, aka 18th century, American identity.

And then, scrolling to related searches, I found it. "American Identity Staples". Jackpot. I clicked, and within seconds was redirected to...

Staples buys American Identity - Daily Business Update May 22, 2007 ... Office products retailer Staples Inc. said today it acquired American Identity, a distributor of corporate-branded merchandise, ...

That's right. Staples buys American Identity. With 9 identical hits.

You could argue that this is just a random coincidence, an unfortunate sharing of names, but the fact that my search for "staples of american identity" blithly informed me that american identity has been taken over by a corporate giant was inordinately depressing. And somehow very apt. Although I am no closer to finding the answer to my original question, I AM suddenly inspired to rewatch Idiocracy.

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Why this Blog?

I used to be considered a 'millennial'. We were the generation after X, unimaginatively dubbed Y for a few years, but generally known by what was considered the defining experience of our 'formative years': the turn of the millennium. Not a bad generation to be born into. We heralded change, progress, possibly destruction and digital collapse, but more likely the expansion of the global community and the development of new technological frontiers. We were the future.

20+ months later, the world changed. The millennium was forgotten. And I was suddenly redefined as Generation 9/11.

I was in high school in New York in September of 2001, 90 minutes east of Manhattan. I was sitting in the cafeteria on an average Tuesday morning, probably cutting class, when my best friend stumbled to the table, tongue numb and face streaming with tears. The second plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center. In less than four hours, a thick black smoke would blanket the horizon; by evening, it covered the sky. Schools were released early; cell phone bans and campus lock-downs were immediately lifted. All around me desperate students tried to reach parents and family in the city, but the phone lines were down and all bridges off Long Island were closed. For 7.5 million stranded islanders, our worried faces turned west, there was no sunset that night.

And for an untold number of Afghanis and Iraqis, a nightmare was just beginning.

My interest in community- and self-identification did not begin that September, but it has certainly been shaped by the subsequent shift in American ideology. I came of age in a society of ‘evil-doers’, of ominous lurking pronouns and isolating vagaries: ‘us’, ‘them’, ‘those people’, ‘over there’. The rhetoric of the Bush era was an endless case study in the language of dehumanization.

In this cultural landscape of absolutes and extremes, my innate response is to dig into the fabric of shared identity and follow the connecting threads. I am interested in what connects people to themselves. How do the words we use to define ourselves affect our relationships? Our interactions? How do we create and shape the communities that we share? What does it mean to be a [fill in the label here]?

Welcome to Jupiter - the place where I sift and sort and try to figure some of it out. In honor of Jupiter/Jove/Zeus, that most infamous identity-changer, let the explorations begin.

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