Archive | June, 2007

Afterbath

Note to self: when we’re knee-deep in the worst of it — when she’s got the shampoo all in her hair, and she has moved from stubbornly refusing to let it get washed out, to desperately begging through tears that we not wash it out, and we know there’s little else we can do at this point but impose our will against hers, and being parents in this moment feels way too much like being cops (and sadistic ones at that) — in these moments, we need to remember that:

    a) less than ten minutes later, reading a book and drinking her milk, she will have forgiven us and forgotten, bless her,

    and

    b) we are damned lucky that this is the worst of it, if that’s the worst it is getting these days.

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Extree, extree: About.com calls LD a top! Blog!

about

This news flash, while of course tooting the LD horn, is intended to thank Kathy Belge for the nod, and to toot the horns of the other nine blogs she chose.

As part of a series she’s doing for Pride month — various and sundry thing to be proud of — Kathy looked at the lesbian blogosphere, and came up with her pick of the Top 10 Best Lesbian Blogs. I’m very glad to see that it’s filed under the “Lesbian and Gay Rights” category for her Lesbian Life column, since I regard all queer blogospheric presence, at this point in our histories, as critical community-building, and therefore a part of our ongoing civil and human rights struggle. That’s a huge reason why I do this thing here.

Here’s her list in its entirety:

    1. Pam’s House Blend Like there’s any debate! Pam, Pam, she’s our gal!

    2. Mombian See above peanut gallery remark: Dana, Dana, she’s our gal!

    3. Jasmyne Cannick Ditto: Jasmyne, Jasmyne, she’s our gal!

    4. Rosie Hey! How do you like that? The nation’s most recognizable lesbian mum has a blog! Rosie, Ro– okay, enough with the cheerleading.

    5. The Other Mother The mama of all lesbian mama blogs!

    6. Good as You: G.A.Y. Kind of a queer Daily Show, if you aren’t a regular reader. Pam + these folks will keep you abreast of all the news that’s fit to throw a fit over.

    7. Queer Cents I don’t have much — cents or sense — which is why I appreciate this site.

    8. Kate Clinton’s CommuniKate One of our most valuable resources, and among the highlights for me of the Lambda Literary Awards ceremony in NYC last week, alongside schmoozing with my editor Harlyn Aizley and co-contributor Hillary Goodridge, and and being complimented on my spiffy suit by none other than Alison Bechdel. Who cuts a mean figure in her own suit, people, so she should know. That moment almost made up for Confessions of the Other Mother not winning the Lammy. Almost.

    9. Best. Lesbian. Week. Ever. Required. Reading. For all pop culture junkies.

    10. Lesbian Dad Omygod! It’s an honor to be in this company, truly. I genuinely believe that the appeal and value of this lesbo bon mots depot has everything to do with the great numbers of us who care about fighting the good fight while loving the big love. Whether or not you’re a lesbian, or a parent, or a gentlemanly woman. Or tolerant of an endless stream of cute kid pictures. It helps, I’m sure, if you’re any of the above. Whoever you are, and whatever your own Top 10 list would have looked like, I hope I continue to make it worth your while to stop by.

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Whose shoes is whose? Or, find the lesbian!

footsummit

After the merriment of my first blogular jelly bean count thingy, in which I promised a t-shirt to the person who could most accurately guess the number of pictures I took of my infant son in a twenty-minute spree, I vowed to do it again sometime, when I was duly inspired.

Well I have been duly inspired, and here’s the challenge: the image above pictures two shoes, one worn by a non-lesbian dad (that would be Looky, Daddy!), the other worn by a lesbian dad (that would be me). Guess whose shoes is whose! Over the next week (like, ’til midnight this coming Sunday, June 10) I’ll be fielding your guesses.

Since I can’t actually afford to send T-shirts to every correct guess (or both correct guesses? by both you regular readers?), I’m going to make it a hair more complicated with this twist: Guess the locale of the photo! (Hint: somewheres on the isle of Manhattan; you can take a stab at blocks, or landmarks, or what have you, but be as specific as you can. I.e., nothing huge like “Lower East Side” or something.)

Friends & family who’ve been regaled with travel stories & already know where we went, sorry! No can play! Otherwise, everyone can play! But only one lucky player can win!

To the person who (a) accurately guesses whose shoes is whose, and (b) comes the closest to the locale where the image was taken, I will send their choice of either

    • this timeless favorite, the “One of My Moms is Blogging This” infant or toddler t-shirt, for your kiddle; or

    • your choice from among these fine “love my daddies” items; or

    • this here omni-applicable “Love Child” t-shirt which will make all LGBT parents smile in solidarity, regardless of how old-school or new-school (i.e. straight or queer) your family make-up is; or finally, for the literate crowd,

    • a copy of the highly acclaimed, Lambda Literary Award finalist volume, Confessions of the Other Mother.

I’m not certain whether a demand for lesbian dad schwag will ever emerge, but if ever it does, you can rest assured that I will churn it out and feature it in upcoming Nonsense fun fests like this. I already have a bumper sticker idea, from our Donor Chum: “My other mama’s a baba!”

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A day in the life of LGBT families


Chums beaming at SF Pride, June 2005.

I know you have the little image over there in the sidebar to tell you, but I thought I’d plug something in here, too, to remind readers that Friday was Mombian’s Blogging for LGBT Families Day. At final count, over 140 posts were submitted, by people from all kinds of LGBT families as well as their friends, from the U.S. and abroad. It’ll take me a while to read through them all, and I will. Fortunately Dana will also be culling through the bunch to group them and pair them and such, for easier reading. Browse through the listing here, and marvel at how much love and perseverance abounds.

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Weekend bonus shot, 06.02.07


Dads’ night out (with Looky Daddy), New York City.

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Same/difference


At the Museum of Modern Art, NYC: A passerby, passing by Larry Sultan’s “Film Stills from the Sultan Family Home Movies 1943-72.”

Happy Blogging for LGBT Families Day, Dana Rudolph’s inspired jamboree of blogular LGBT family love and visibility! For those of us who are L or G or B or T, and whose writing online is occasioned by and peopled with our families, every day is Blogging for LGBT Families Day. It’s Blogging for LGBT Families Day when we write about the tempest-toss’d route from wannabe to actual parenthood (an epic journey, pretty much, for all of us). It is when we write about our queer families’ experiences of exclusion — or inclusion — at the childbirth education class at the hospital, or at the adoption agency, or at the preschool orientation, or in our kids’ schools’ educational materials. It’s Blogging for LGBT Families Day when we share our children’s brave and heartwarming statements of pride in their families, like Vikki has on her blog Up Popped a Fox.

But it’s also Blogging for LGBT Families Day when we write about the kinds of day-to-day conception or adoption or surrogacy woes that couples in straight families face. Because many of them face those woes too, and we can provide them compassion, and probably some fresh insight. After all, it’s not a matter of shame or embarassment or bodily challenge that we need help in forming our families: it’s how we do it, and we know a lot about how. It’s Blogging for LGBT Families Day when those of us who are LGBT single parents write about the challenges and rewards of that solo journey. For that matter, it’s Blogging for LGBT Families Day when any of us write of the joys and trials of parenthood that everyone shares. In these moments—and we all know, they constitute most moments of the day—we are being parents, the same as any other parents. Only different.

There’s an odd paradox about every civil rights struggle. The aggrieved group, in agitating to receive the civil rights to which others are entitled (e.g., access to the institution of marriage and its legal protections), is ultimately demanding not special treatment, but ordinary treatment. The absence of discrimination equals the presence of ordinariness.

So when we work to make LGBT families visible—such as through group participation in online events such as this one—we are ultimately working to make these families so evident that we eventually become ordinary. We’re working to make the unfamiliar familiar, so that it may eventually become part of the fabric of American family life, the way, over the past generation or so, “blended” families post-divorce and remarriage have, or interracial ones, or families headed by single mothers or fathers. We’re on our way to becoming nothing more nor less special than a new weave in that rich, multi-colored fabric. Of course until we are more fully integrated into dominant visions of family—until, in other words, the pernicious impact of homophobia/heterosexism diminishes, and our kids’ schools and doctors and peers and peers’ parents and books and cultural products include, as a matter of course, our families’ images and stories—we will be special. We will be exceptional.

But while being exceptional can feel like a pain or even a trial, it can also empower. It’s a well-documented social phenomenon that attacks from outside a group — attacks meant to isolate — catalyze a stronger sense of cohesion and identity from within it. Amazing bonds are formed as a direct result of the very duresses our families endure, familiar to anyone who has engaged in any civil rights battle. (LGBT historians would tell us, by the way, that gay people weren’t really a gay “people” until they began to be persecuted more and more fiercely.)

This chapter of the LGBT civil rights battle is different from previous ones, however. I’d even go so far as to say that it’s exceptional. Because we are now defending not just ourselves, but our children. And that, I would argue, explodes the numbers of us willing to speak out and act, and the passion with which we do so. Ask any parent of any stripe how powerful that feeling of protectiveness is. Is it any wonder that the classic illustration of people’s capacities for super-human strength (whether folk truth or real) is the scenario in which someone manages to hoist a car from on top of a kid trapped underneath it?

Queer families share that fierce sense of protectiveness with all other families, generally. Given how hard we worked to have our kids in the first place, you can’t imagine we don’t want them to grow up well, and we’ll do all the things other parents do to see to that. Good nutrition, good education, ample opportunities. The same old stuff. But with an added difference. Together with other queer families and our allies, we’re working to lift a heavy weight—the social impact of homophobia/heterosexism—off the bodies of our children. That bonds us, and the bond is palpable across all these posts on Blogging for LGBT Families Day.

Vikki’s son Miguel wrote and sang a song with the repeated refrain, “My family is different.” And he’s right. His family is different. It’s the same as any other assemblage of loving adults raising children. Only different.

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