I Spy spooky night part 2, and I’ll say that this last picture changed my life. Like every chilly early morning of my life since seeing that image has been referred back to the I spy spooky night window picture because it captured the sleepy nostalgia of a cold early morning better than anything else I’ve ever seen
judy grahn, from another mother tongue: gay words, gay worlds, 1984
["MAINTAINING SECRECY
The secrecy some Gay couples maintain about their relationship to each other can reach great extremes. I have known women lovers together for fifteen years who pretend to live separately, going one night to the house of one and the next night to the house of the other, each time carrying the gear, suitcases, changes of clothing they will need for the next day, for the sake of fooling a few family members and straight friends. Other Lesbian couples go to even greater lengths to ensure secrecy. One couple has lived together for nine years and also works together in the same office, where they are so fearful of being discovered as lovers and lifetime mates that they pretend not to know each other at all.
When I was working in a laboratory as a medical technician, I had a clear lesson in the secrecy of the closet. Six of us were standing around getting ready to take off our white coats and go home for a day, when one woman told an ugly anti-Gay joke. She was a young aide in training to do minor tests, nowhere near as skilled as the rest of us, and she had recently been married; no one expected her to stay long at her job. The point of her joke was See-how-stupid-and-wrong-faggots-are. It made me sick inside to hear it, but following the rule of appearing heterosexual or else, from years of habit and the desire to stay employed and reasonably accepted among my co-workers, I obediently pretended to laugh.
As I did so my eyes met the sparkling blue eyes of our boss, a man who had worked his way up to become the chief laboratory technician of the hospital. In his fifties, he had never married and was continually teased as "most eligible bachelor." His eyes flashed into mine now as, mouths guffawing, we acknowledged with a special look that straight people simply had to be indulged, that that was a part of The Life. My eyes flicked from him to his lover Robert, a technician like myself and a friend of mine. Large, broad-shouldered, and with his short hair plastered to his skull, Robert looked as if the word straight was invented just to describe him. He and I were teased in the laboratory for going out together, which we occasionally did as a front. But I knew Robert and our boss had been lovers for several years and owned a business together outside the laboratory, operating it on weekends; I had been there to have dinner with them.
From Robert's distorted, pretending-to-laugh face, my gaze passed to another technician, Rita. She was beautiful, graceful, smart and gutsy. She had recently led all of us in a strike for better wages. The highly skilled Rita was head of the bacteriology department and a specialist in her work. I had a terrific crush on her at the time, and now to my disgust here she was pretending to howl at the rude joke, and so was her lover Alberta who stood next to her with her coat on, ready to go home. The two Lesbians worked together in the laboratory, owned a house and a couple of horses, having lived together for at least ten years. I closed my mouth and stopped laughing. I was too astonished at what my eyes had registered: Of six people standing in the laboratory laughing at a vicious anti-Gay joke, five were Gay— everyone except the woman who had told the joke. The walls of the closet are guarded by the dogs of terror, and inside of the closet is a house of mirrors."]
Have you ever seen such audacity?
Friendly reminder that the “personal carbon footprint” was invented by oil companies to shift the blame of climate change to you, an average citizen, and away from the ones actually responsible. Remember that the ocean was literally on fire.
Seeing and knowing
okay but like. This exact concept is what finally got me to be open about being queer in my day to day.
I was at work. I can't go into detail about the situation, but someone was outed without their consent. And nobody was saying anything, and it was quiet, so I outed myself, too. So at least neither of us would be alone.
I was worried about the consequences. I'd never considered my identity a secret, but I wasn't open about it, either. It felt like it wasn't relevant to my job. If someone asked, I'd tell them, but otherwise, what did it matter?
After the incident, I met privately with a higher up. Told them what had happened and why it wasn't good, and made some suggestions on what to do in the future to keep everyone safe to be in the closet or out of it on their own terms.
To my absolute amazement, they told me that others had come forwards anonymously to say the same things. Then word spread. Meetings were had. Policy and procedures were put in place. A training course on gender and sexuality was implemented for the very first time.
And of course there were protests- people who dug in their heels and kicked up a fuss and didn't want to learn about "all that bullshit", and when those people showed their colors, their superiors realized that they weren't actually good representatives of the sort of environment they wanted to provide our clients, and a small number were actually let go.
I went to a meeting again the other week. And do you know what happened?
The meeting lead introduced themselves by name and pronouns, and asked everyone to please state their name, and, if they wished, theirs as well.
I was near the front. I introduced myself with He/Him. I thought I'd stand out like a sore thumb and feel like an idiot for hoping for better.
Two people down, someone introduced themselves as They/Them. Someone I'd never spoken much to before.
Then, She/they. At least two "anything fine"s. A he/her.
It was incredible. And it wasn't even a whole year ago.
There are so many of us, now. Even more, as we teach and learn about ourselves, and it's not so scary because there are others like us.
I'm not as loud and proud as I hope to be some day, because I'm still scared, a little, but I am here.
And I've learned that being openly queer isn't about just expressing myself for the sake of it, bringing personal details into places it doesn't matter-
-it's about telling someone, it's not just you. I'm in your corner. There are more of us than they think. There is power in numbers, and you are not alone.
And I kind of love that
i think everyone needs to get into wildlife identification it's like a minigame for real life
grubloved
