(Via Truth Wins Out.)

While the holiday gets little attention in the U.S., people in other areas of the world whoop it up, as evidenced by the many events listed on this slightly more commercial International Women’s Day site. (There are 238 events IWD events listed for the U.K., but only 124 in the U.S..)

I’m all about celebrating women here at Mombian, though, so here’s a topic for discussion today:

How has either being a mother or being LGBT changed your awareness and/or involvement in women’s rights and issues?

Engaged volunteers needed!

I am looking for volunteers for a study of attitudes towards marriage and parenthood among engaged couples. The study consists of a 25-30 minute online survey. To qualify for the study, you must be 20-35 years old, live in the U.S., and plan to marry or have a commitment ceremony within the next 365 days. You and your romantic partner must not have children, and this must be the first marriage for both of you.

You can:

• Help a doctoral candidate;
• Increase the pool of scientific knowledge;
• Support research on marriage and families; and
• Spend some time thinking about your relationship!

I am working with Dr. Charlotte J. Patterson, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. This study has been approved by the University of Virginia Institutional Review Board #2009025800.

If you and/or your romantic partner are interested in participating or want further information, please email me at survey.couples@gmail.com. I will send you a link that you can use to access the study.

Thanks!

Cristina Reitz-Krueger
Doctoral Student
University of Virginia
(434) 243-8558
survey.couples@gmail.com

Two weeks ago, a Miami-Dade judge declared Florida’s anti-gay adoption law unconstitutional and allowed Vanessa Alenier to adopt the one-year-old she and her partner Melanie Leon have been fostering.

The ultra-conservative Orlando’s Florida Family Policy Council (FPC) sent out an alert to its members last week, describing the ruling. It included a photo of a lesbian couple sporting mullets the likes of which I haven’t seen for many years. Neither woman is smiling, and I doubt most people would consider it a flattering photo.

The couple in the picture, however, is not Alenier and Leon. Orlando Sentinel writer Scott Maxwell rightly calls the Family Policy Council to task for this, and offers up a strong endorsement for allowing loving same-sex couples to adopt.

He calls the mulleted couple “abnormal-looking,” though, and says: “The couple look so odd (you literally can’t tell whether they are male or female) that one might wonder how any judge could place a young child with such a disturbing-looking duo.”

Making lesbians look strange and scary seems to have been the FPC’s intent, and Maxwell is right to point that out—but by equating oddity with the fact that you can’t tell their gender, he himself risks offending a good part of the LGBT community.

I’ll cut him some slack because it’s not entirely clear if he’s just trying to show what the FPC’s perspective likely was. Still, I am reminded of conversations I have with a straight friend (and general ally) every year in June, when he wonders why the Pride Parades always seem to feature the “weirder” members of our community: drag queens, leatherfolk, scantily clad young men, and the like. “Don’t they know they’re not helping the cause?” is his usual type of remark. “How are people ever going to accept them if they dress like that?”

Fact is, for every lesbian couple that looks “like J.Crew models,” as Maxwell describes the real Alenier and Leon, there is another that doesn’t. Some of us are overweight, or tattooed, or of ambiguous gender, or the victims of unfortunate haircuts. Just like straight people (though I like to think our tattoos are cooler).

The FPC’s attempt to distort the truth in order to promote unflattering lesbian stereotypes is reprehensible. Let’s use the opportunity, however, not only to chastise them, but also to remember the diversity in our community. We’re not just seeking equality for the pretty people.

My son’s teachers, however (and, I venture to guess, most of the teachers in the school), insist on calling all of the mothers “Mrs. [Lastname].” All of his peers also seem to use “Mrs” for adult women.

Maybe it’s just my inherent feminism, not to mention too many years in the corporate world, where “Ms.” was de regueur. I twitch involuntarily when I hear someone address me as “Mrs. Rudolph.”

I’m trying not to make a big deal of it. I also really don’t want to come across as the uptight, oversensitive, PC type. I’m not, really.

I try to gently correct. “Ms. Rudolph,” I say —but it never seems to stick.

On the other hand, I am out to my son’s teachers, so the fact that they call me “Mrs.” is in some way a positive acknowledgment of my relationship status. That’s progress of a sort, even if feminism still has a ways to go.

Anyone else ever encounter this? How do you handle it?

October is, among other things, LGBT History Month, which makes it the perfect time to write about Gay America: Struggle for Equality (Amulet: 2008), by Linas Alsenas. The book is a history of gay men and lesbians in the U.S. from the mid-nineteenth century through 2005. It fills a much needed gap, not because of the subject (there are a small but a growing number of LGBT-specific histories), but because of its audience: teens.

LGBT histories for that age group have been sorely lacking, consisting mostly of Becoming Visible: A Reader in Gay and Lesbian History for High School and College Students (Alyson: 1994), by Kevin Jennings. (Yes, the same Jennings who is now heading up the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools). Jennings’ volume is useful, but is more a source book than a narrative like Gay America. Both are needed.

Gay America is, like all general histories, more wide than deep. That is not a criticism, but rather a setting of expectations. Those wanting a thorough, academic tome complete with historiographic analysis and footnotes will be disappointed. Alsenas is a children’s book author and illustrator, not a professor, although he did study art history at Harvard. As a synthetic history, however, Gay America manages to pack a lot into its 160 pages, covering politics, culture, relations between the LGBT movement and other civil rights movements, entertainment, the evolution of gay and lesbian identities, and more.

I also like Alsenas’ technique of starting each chapter with a fictionalized scenario that represents the era in question. It reflects his background as a storyteller. For the target audience, it is a good hook, and segues nicely into the more factual matter that follows.

Many will criticize the book for its focus solely on gay men and lesbians. There are only passing references to bisexuality and the transgender community. The lack of the full spectrum is a disappointment, but at least Alsenas is up front about his scope, saying, “Since space is limited, I have focused on the histories of gays and lesbians, leaving out many of the histories of the increasingly diverse groups within the queer community whose stories are tightly woven into the same historical fabric.” One hopes another writer will step in to fill this gap. When threads are tightly woven, it distorts the pattern when some are absent.

Two further omissions stand out. Given the teen audience, I think Alsenas should have included more about the foundation of gay-straight alliances. He mentions the GSA that was banned in 1995 in Salt Lake City, Utah, but says nothing about the roots of this movement in the late 1980’s at Concord Academy and Phillips Andover Academy in Massachusetts.

There is also nothing in the book about gay and lesbian people raising children. Given the teen audience, one might argue that they are not yet interested in childrearing; on the other hand, the children of gay and lesbian parents, who are among the direct inheritors of this LGBT history, may read the book and wonder why they don’t see themselves at all. One could also argue that lesbian and gay parents have played an important part in the assimilation of gay men and lesbians into mainstream culture. That is an important trend and one that warrants a nod in any queer history. (Whether such mainstreaming is good or bad is a separate debate.)

I will not be picky about some of the small things Alsenas left out. As an erstwhile historian, I think it is important to recognize both the need for surveys and their limitations. Many readers are bound to feel he omitted their favorite historical personage or event. The question becomes which ones are essential to the narrative. It is usually fruitless to be too fussy about which persons or examples were chosen to illustrate a particular trend, if the goal is mainly to engage readers in the subject and whet their appetites for more. Alsenas does both well.

Parents and teachers may wish to recommend this primarily for the older teen set. There are some tame, non-descriptive references to the sexual revolution, sodomy laws, and how HIV/AIDS spreads through sexual contact. Middle schoolers, too, may find the historical content of interest, but their parents should be prepared to answer questions about the few vague—but to a young teen, tantalizing—references to sexual matters. They are hardly the heart of the book, though. The oldest teens may find their appetites for LGBT history whetted enough that they will move on to some of the “grown-up” histories recommended in the back, such as Lillian Faderman’s Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers or Neil Miller’s Out of the Past.

Even for grown-ups, however, Gay America is a well written, if high-level, picture of gay and lesbian history that may teach those of us with little prior knowledge a thing or two about our cultural forebears. With a beautiful rainbow cover and filled with photographs, it would also make a lovely coffee table book, but it should make it off the table every once in a while to be read. At less than $20, it would also make a wonderful gift, or a donation to a local school or library.

Philosopher George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Helping the next generation learn a little more about LGBT history may be one of the best ways we have to ensure a more equal future for us all.

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program, and get a small referral fee from all purchases made at Amazon.com via links on this site. You are under no obligation to purchase through them.

Here are some resources to help spread understanding:

• Trans Youth Family Allies is a terrific organization helping parents of transgender and gender variant children, as is Gender Spectrum Family.
• The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals, by Stephanie Brill and Rachel Pepper, is a great resource for parents and educators. The Kids of Trans Resource Guide, by Monica Canfield-Lenfest of the COLAGE Kids of Trans program, looks from the flip side. Here’s my review of both.
• This American Life On Transgender Children: The NPR show did a great piece in February profiling two eight-year-old transgender children. The segment starts about 29 minutes into the show.
• 10,000 Dresses, by Marcus Ewert, is a delightful picture book with a transgender protagonist. My review and author interview is here.
• Another great read is Transparent, Cris Beam’s gripping book on homeless transgender teens. Here’s my post about it.

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program, and get a small referral fee from all purchases made at Amazon.com via links on this site. You are under no obligation to purchase through them.

Take the COLAGE Donor Insemination Survey

COLAGE, a youth-driven national network of people with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer parents, is thrilled to announce the debut of the ART Project, a program to highlight the experiences of COLAGErs born through assisted reproductive technologies. Over the past 30 years the number of people born through these technologies to LGBTQ parents has steadily grown, yet let little, if any, work has been done to bring this community together or address the experiences of these youth and adults.

The first major effort of the ART Project is to conduct a national assessment of COLAGErs born through donor insemination.    As part of this project, COLAGE is calling all youth born through donor insemination and their parents to take an online survey. In the upcoming months, COLAGE will be using all the great information we collect through these surveys to develop and debut new programs and resources giving COLAGErs born through DI tools to talk about their family, spark open dialogues within families and communities about donor insemination and equip both COLAGErs and parents to navigate schools and other institutions.

There are two surveys, one for COLAGErs born through donor insemination and one for their parents.  Both the surveys will be available online between now and November 30^th.  Each survey will take between 15 and 20 minutes to complete.  The links for both surveys can be found below.  If you have any questions about surveys or the ART Project in general, please contact Jeff DeGroot, COLAGE Fellow at jeff@colage.org.

Thanks so much!

Survey for LGBTQ identified parents with a donor conceived child:

http://tinyurl.com/parentdisurvey

Survey for people born through donor insemination with a LGBTQ identified parent:

http://tinyurl.com/colagerdisurvey

Yes, this is exactly what marriage equality proponents want to teach children. The horror.

I was two when Sesame Street first launched. As one of the first generation of children to grow up with the show, I’ve always had a soft spot for it (although I raise a skeptical eyebrow at Elmo and Abby Cadabby). It remains not only one of the best children’s shows in terms of pedagogy, but also in terms of inclusivity. That inclusivity has not yet extended to LGBT families, but as I’ve said before, they have a new chance now, under a federal administration that is not likely to yank funding if they do so, and an increasing number of LGBT-friendly corporations who wouldn’t be afraid to sponsor them.

They’ve been a pioneer in diversity before, unafraid to incorporate characters of various ethnicities, languages, and physical abilities. They had a multi-episode storyline with an adoptive single mother in 2006. Really, throwing in an LGBT-headed family wouldn’t be that much of a stretch, and would help them prove that even 40 years on, they remain a leader in teaching children not only the ABC’s, but also the diversity of the society around them.

Monroe writes:

Historically, as African Americans, we have always focused on spiritual content of family and not physical composition of it. . . .

These multiple family structures, which we have had to devise as models of resistance and liberation, have always, by example, shown the rest of society what really constitutes family. A family where a grandmother raises her grandchild or a lesbian couple raises their children. Just like in the Simmons-Hayes household. A household that is now legal by the state and blessed by the church.”