If you grew up celebrating Christmas, the holiday that used to bring you unbridled joy may now bring a big ol' dollop of mixed emotions. When we were kids, Christmas was less complicated. After all, what can top the idea of a benevolent, costumed, bearded man leaving gifts while you sleep? (Hmm, come to think of it, that sounds like something a gay man dreamed up.) But if you're like me, somewhere along the way, Christmas stopped being so easy. Note: if you're totally stoked about the holidays this year, this entry doesn't apply to you: go have a cup of eggnog or something.
My own mixed feelings about Christmas have to do with divorce, with people I miss, and with various types of guilt. For others of you, it has to do with a falling out with your parents, or with the death of someone you love, or with the frustration of having to pretend to be someone you're not. These aren't exactly thoughts you can bring up at the office holiday party. Instead, they're the kind of things that hit you when you're in line at the drugstore at 9:30 pm with a box of Red Vines in one hand and a bottle of zin in the other (just hypothetically, of course), and "The Little Drummer Boy" starts blaring from the store speakers, and--BOOM--a wave of Holiday Depression. The first thing to know about Holiday Depression is that you're not alone. Lots of people deal with it; they just don't talk about it. The second thing to know about Holiday Depression is that it passes. Don't let yourself think that your unhappiness during the holidays is somehow symbolic of the shortcomings of your life more generally. Because this is not true. Holidays are the time of year when the highest number of people report feeling depressed. You will feel a hell of a lot better in January. I promise. A few quick fixes for dealing with a sudden wallop of Holiday Depression: - Lay on the couch. Put your headphones on and listen to the least holiday-ish music you can think of. Angry, not sad. I recommend Tool, Rage Against the Machine, or whatever the current equivalent of that stuff is. - Open up Pandora and create a "Suzanne Westenhoefer" station. Listen. - Start planning a trip for somewhere you're going to go in 2012. - Write to me. Ask me anything. Or tell me something you don't feel like telling anyone else. - Do a project that involves plants or animals. Personally, I love paperwhites, and they're only about $1 each for the bulbs. You can grow them in anything and it's mesmerizing. - Buy yourself a new watch, or some other stylish thing that you will look awesome in. My DGF (and others) call this "shopping therapy." - Clean your whole house. Rearrange stuff that's been bothering you. It will distract you, let your mind wander, and make you feel like you accomplished something. - Go for a walk or a run--anything that gets you outdoors. Don't come back until you're exhausted. Then take a nice hot shower. These are only temporary fixes, but sometimes a quick fix is all we need to get us over the hump. So let's hear from you: Do you ever get hit with Holiday Depression? And what do you do about it?
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I have a pet peeve: straight people who are married but nonetheless use the word "partner" rather than "husband," "wife," or "spouse." I'm not talking about the abstract sense, in which one says, "People should support their partners." I appreciate this looser, gender-inspecific term. Nor am I talking about people or couples with whom I am close friends and know that they use "partner" in all circumstances as a symbol of their commitment to marriage and/or gender equality. I'm talking about people I meet at a conference or know through work, and we are merely acquaintances and I'd have no idea if said person and his or her "partner" are legally married.
Reasons this bothers me:
I especially hate when people use "partner" in front of gay people, but "wife" or "husband" when they're with family or straight friends, it bugs me. If you want to adopt the term "partner" full-time, awesome. But you do not, I feel, get to have it both ways: happily traditional at Thanksgiving dinner with grandma but tolerant and sensitive around the lesbo at work. Yes, it's all a little irrational of me. But when I get to know a straight couple, and they use the term "partner" all the time, and then later I find out that they're actually married, it bugs me. It's as if they were hiding their traditional selves to spare my feelings or pretend to be politically correct. I feel an asshole for writing this post, because:
I guess "partner" bothers me because it can seem so inauthentic sometimes. Am I the only one who feels this way? What do you think, dear readers? Ah, gay men. Often we think of them as having a lot more money, much better porn, and nicer abs than we lesbians do. But how else do we think of them? As our buddies? Our rivals? Our best bet for a Christmas dinner date to Grandma's house? In this post, I introduce something I've been thinking about for a while: the relationship between lesbians and gay men. And I intersperse a couple of polls throughout the article to get your take on the boys. To start with: Many lesbians and gay men dated each other in high school, but too often we grow apart later in life. I've heard gay men say mean things about lesbians' supposed frumpiness, grumpiness, and penchant for plaids, and I've heard lesbians say mean things about gay men's supposed bitchiness and promiscuity. (For the record, I am against neither plaids nor [consensual] promiscuity, though frumpiness and bitchiness are both no-nos in my book.) There's something about the gay male ethos that's very appealing to many dykes. Just as some lesbians exude masculine energy from a female body, some gay men exude feminine energy from a male body. Maybe the mix of masculine and feminine energy is one of the reasons that gay men and lesbians sometimes develop crush out on each other. (They can be as mad about Maddow as we are, and goodness knows we were stoked to learn that Quinto's a queer.) I was reminded of my fondness for gay men after spending much of Thanksgiving chatting with my wonderful gay cuz, R., who is a photographer and a total cutie (and he's single, boys, so get in line!), and the evening before Thanksgiving with some great friends (including K&M, one of my all-time favorite gay couples). Maybe some of my affinity for certain gay men comes from their reputation (deserved or not) as tidy, dapper, and bookish. There's something about the "dandy" aesthetic that many butches embrace. In defining ourselves and our style, there's often a shortage of female icons to draw on. The gay male aesthetic offers an image of masculinity that doesn't draw on heterosexual machismo as much as many straight male icons do. And for those who see ourselves as oppositional (in one way or another) to heterosexual masculinity, gay male masculinity provides an interesting reference point. What stereotypes do you hold about gay men? What stereotypes do you think they hold about lesbians? What could a gay man and a lesbian learn from one another?
I admit it: I don't always look forward to weddings--especially straight ones. For one, it makes me think about my own wedding to my DXH--which, while it was a joyous and terrifically fun occasion, now makes me a little sad to think about. For another, straight weddings often include a hefty dose of gender inequality. My brother's wedding included something in the vows about how the man was the head of the household and the woman should obey him. (When they recited this at the rehearsal, I chortled audibly and then started giggling... the pastor was not amused.) Straight weddings also make me think, of course, about how the right to enter holy matrimony was one of the manifold civil rights plucked away from me as soon as I came out.
So when I went to the (straight) wedding of two friends yesterday, I was happy and excited for them, but not 100 percent looking forward to the event itself. Boy, was I surprised. For one, their vows weren't just about their commitment to each other, but to their community. They talked about their commitment to sustainability, and to marriage equality--yes, in their vows. I was touched. At the brunch the next day, I went up to the bride (a pretty close friend of mine) and thanked her for including that. She said that they decided they couldn't take part in the state-sanctioned version of marriage without making a conscious commitment to changing the institution itself. How cool is that?! Other factors made the wedding great, too: a casual, garden-y atmosphere, excellent wine, tasty (local, organic, sustainable) food, good music, at least eight or ten other gay folks, and the chance to dance with my DGF (we were both in ties, a dapper duo). The whole thing was very mindful and very fun. I was talking to another thirtysomething (straight) couple there, and they got married right out of college and had a very traditional wedding. As far as they had known, that's how weddings were, and they didn't venture too far outside the box because it didn't occur to them. It made me think about how much of weddings--and other parts of life--we take for granted, when with a little mindfulness and creativity, we could completely transform them. I just had an interaction with a work acquaintance and learned that she has a new boyfriend. She talked about him a little, and it occurred to me that he and my DGF have quite a bit in common. I suggested we go on a double date sometime, and my acquaintance said that that might not be a good idea. I couldn't figure out why, so I looked at her quizzically, and then she stared at the floor and started saying something about how her boyfriend "is coming around," but doesn't think that gay people should be able to adopt kids, and that he would probably be "pretty awkward" about going out with us. (We don't have kids; this was her way of saying, "There's no way he wants to hang out with gay people.") Personally, I think she should drag the boyfriend--kicking and screaming, if necessary--into 2011 and go out with us anyway. But maybe it would have been unpleasant. In a way, my acquaintance's honesty was refreshing. I think most people would have said, "Oh, sure..." and then kept being conveniently unavailable. I was fairly silent in response, and the quieter I was, the more my acquaintance talked: first about how no one is perfect, about how she's getting older and had to widen the dating pool, and then analogizing between her boyfriend and her mom, who is apparently also "pretty liberal" but "really awkward" about gay stuff. What was I supposed to say? She can date whomever she wants. But I'm not going to give her a bye and say it's no problem. It is. My friend B and I have often talked about the fact that most of the friends I've made since coming out are gay. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) I've noticed that most of my lesbian friends hang out mostly with other lesbian couples, too, and I've made a concerted effort to hang out with more straight people because I don't want my sexuality to be the only sculptor of my social world. But my experience this afternoon certainly encapsulates one mechanism behind homophily, doesn't it? By hanging out with people who accept and/or relate to our "lifestyle" (don't you hate the word "lifestyle" used in reference to queer sexuality?), we avoid all sorts of potential--sometimes microscopic--hurts, slights, and awkwardness. Anyhow: in this case, it's their loss. <--- Apropos of nothing, k.d. lang looks on with dashing skepticism. (from http://www.autostraddle.com/top-10-lesbian-fashion-style-icons/) |
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