By Loree
Cook-Daniels
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Let's have a talk about two women.
One we'll call Susie Suburb. Raised in a middle-class, segregated
neighborhood in a medium-sized Northern California town, her blond,
blue-eyed little-girl good looks and personality began paying off
early. She was exactly six years old when she became her elementary
school's Queen of the May.
She reigned from then on, serving as teacher's pet in each class,
becoming a favorite of her Brownie leader, then her Junior Girl Scouts
leader, then the church choir director, then the church youth group
leader. They created a special award for her in her Job's Daughters
chapter. She was such a beloved member of the local retirement home's
Junior Auxiliary that the head of the dining room snapped her up for
her first after-school job practically the minute she turned 16.
By 17, she was valedictorian of her high school class, by 22 the
top departmental honoree at her state university graduation. She won
a nationwide competition for a prestigious public policy fellowship
at age 24 and moved to D.C. There she got married, earned her Master's
Degree, bought a house in the suburbs, and became a mother -- in that
order. She's now active in her child's day care center's Parent Advisory
Board, works parttime
for a national professional association, and spends the rest of her
time on her family and her favorite pastimes of reading and writing.
Can you picture her? I thought so. That's Susie.
The woman we'll call Rosie Radical also showed her colors early.
An organizer from the get-go, by the age of 13 she was heading an
activist girls group that eventually managed to change the school's
dress code so girls could wear pants. By 17 she was the only out Lesbian
active in the town's Women's Center. She co-founded a Gay People's
Association at 18, and moved to San Francisco at 20 to enroll in the
country's most radical women's studies program. At 21, she was co-chair
of the San Francisco committee for the very first March on Washington
for Lesbian and Gay Rights.
In order to finally cut the ties to an ambivalent relationship she'd
been unable to end, Rosie eventually moved across country and became
one of the first open Lesbians ever to work for Congress. She and
her new lover, a Black butch, revelled in pushing the envelope, holding
a public commitment ceremony long before such events were commonplace,
becoming the first Lesbians they'd ever heard of who legally hypenated
their names, buying a house together (and then talking about the experience
in a
nationally-prominent straight newspaper), and finally becoming parents
together. Rosie now juggles three part-time jobs (none of which offers
health benefits), is seeing approximately her fifteenth therapist,
is active in an Interracial Lesbian Couples Group, and writes a monthly
column for the local Lesbian and Gay newspaper.
So much for Rosie.
Susie Suburb and Rosie Radical. Chances are you know one of them,
or at least a woman just like her. She is your next door neighbor,
maybe even your best friend. As for the other woman, well, if you've
never met her, at least you've seen one like her on T.V.
Even if you don't know either Susie or Rosie, you probably know which
one you'd invite to coffee, and which one you wouldn't give the time
of day. You already know, sight unseen, what each is likely to think,
how each is likely to behave. You already know, sight unseen, how
you'd react to each of them, right?
Or do you? How would you react if I told you that Susie and Rosie
are actually exactly the same woman? If I said that Susie became a
mother when her lesbian partner gave birth, that Rosie became a wife
after her lesbian lover became a man, what would you say? How would
you think about the heterosexual wife and mother who was the only
lesbian "father" in her spouse's childbirth class? How would
your mind wrap around the Lesbian
columnist who is on her husband's health insurance? What would you
say when the straight publication's Work & Family expert began
talking about her first- hand experiences with Lesbian bed death?
What would you think if you knew that the trainer leading the Gay
couples' communication workshop married her lesbian-lover-turned-husband
that very morning?
Do you know how to make sense of such a woman?
More importantly, does she?
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First published in GenderQueer, edited by Joan Nestle,
Clare Howell, and Riki Wilchins, and published by Alyson Books, August
2002.
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Copyright © 2002 Loree
Cook-Daniels.
