All in the Family

Autostraddle recently posted an interview with Sally Kohn, a queer news commentator who will be appearing on Fox News.  The following is an excerpt from that article:

 

“But what do you do when the people who are close to you don’t share your beliefs? Sally thinks that talking with your family about politics can be a way to learn how to have these important discussions in other settings.

‘If you’re doing it in the context of family, then you’re doing it in a loving way, hopefully… One of the things that really upsets me is when people on either side get in each other’s faces and are just mean and nasty and dismissive. …I understand that people have really strong opinions and deeply-held passions, and this stuff matters, right? Lives are at stake, and the future of our country. But I just feel… like we should be able to find our common humanity and aspire toward a higher level of engagement with each other, as opposed to always just rolling down in the mud.'”

I’ve tried to write this post so many times, with very little luck.  This might be incoherent, it will be colloquial, it will be unorganized.  But it’s my best shot.

 

My mom blames it on Facebook.  The ease of communicating through a screen instead of in person, of sharing your beliefs and perspective with the click of a button.  You can blame the fact that we now know more about our family members and friends in certain ways on Facebook, but you can’t blame it for the arguments, for the rifts.  I told my mom I’d rather know.  I’d rather know where people stand, I’d rather they know where I stand.  I don’t want a relationship based on passive assumptions.

I think Sally Kohn’s point is ridiculous.  It’s harder to have those conversations with family members, because there is a personal emotional stake that doesn’t exist when you’re chanting “We’re here, we’re queer” in front of a store whose owners discriminate against queer people, or arguing with an acquaintance of a friend at a holiday party.  We are taught that family should always be there for each other, that familial relationships are to be valued above most others.

In the context of the 2012 presidential election, of the shooting at Sandy Hook, more of my family members joining Facebook, and my own political evolution, I’ve started to have these arguments more often.  There’s an element I love, analyzing others’ points for their weaknesses, doing research to support my arguments.  At the same time, it brutally stresses me out; other people’s indifference and/or unwillingness to engage on certain levels infuriate me.  I’ve always had a wicked temper, hidden under my need to please people.  Like my friend Lauren, when I’m asked why I do anti-racism work I now truthfully respond that it’s to save my humanity from my rage.

In October I went to my first Undoing Racism workshop of this academic year.  Dr. Kim said something that has stuck with me.  She told us that so many white people use anti-racism work to run away from their family.  That shouldn’t be the goal.  The goal should be to bring that work to your family.  The goal should be to educate, to encourage, to awaken.  That’s rested in the back of my mind through all of this.

At the same time, I wonder, how long do I have to educate?  I came out as queer to myself at 16.  I spent the next five to six years keeping it a secret from all of my family, nuclear and extended.  For the first time in my life, this Thanksgiving, my mother and I tacitly acknowledged that she knows – not because I ever found the courage to state it to her, but because she joined Facebook, where I regularly post about being queer.  I also spent those years teasing out family members’ beliefs and positions.  I had “debates” about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, about marriage equality.  I played at academic interest in others’ opinions, without acknowledging how fast my heart was beating.  And I listened to family members say they didn’t believe gay people should be allowed to serve openly in the military, that marriage is a heterosexual Christian sacrament, that people who are gay are confused or sinful.  I didn’t say a word about myself, ignoring Harvey Milk’s call.

Later on I expanded those debates, to immigration, to racism, to sexism, to cissexism, to classism.  Other than sexism, most of these “-isms” don’t personally affect me, but they do affect people I love – my friends who are undocumented, my friends who are people of color, my friends who are trans*.  I like to think I am good at remaining outwardly calm during these discussions, regardless if they happen through a screen or in person.  But I’m always raging, about how people can be so willfully indifferent, so willfully cruel, so willfully oppressive.  My cousin recently told me this: “You don’t have to “go there”, especially when the people you’re “going there” with are good people who hold many of the same beliefs that you do,” but I think that’s missing the point.  My sister also encourages me not to “go there” but she doesn’t have the same idea that the people I “go there” with are good people who hold many of the same beliefs that I do.  And that’s because they don’t.  I’m not qualified to judge whether or not a person is intrinsically “good” obviously – that’s an inherently subjective process.  I can, however, know whether or not they hold the same “beliefs” or “perspective” that I do – and they don’t.

I went through a tolerance and diversity phase when I was coming out, because that was the only idiom I had to ask for acceptance for myself as a queer person.  I’m a little older now, and I know that diversity and tolerance are empty words, that they don’t address inequity, that they don’t get to the root of the problem, that they rest on the veneer.  Some of my family members still call me back to those tropes though, encouraging me to be “peaceful” or “tolerant” or “accepting.”  They don’t know I lost that the moment people began disparaging and threatening my friend Jose, or telling me my best friend’s gender identity is a mental illness, or telling me that if I walked through an African-American neighborhood, I would get shot and left to die because black people hate white people.  I don’t find it necessary to be “peaceful” or “tolerant” of people espousing hate, even when those people are genetically related to me.

I’m an anthropologist.  First and foremost, if you asked how I identify as a human being, I would say an anthropologist.  Because wrapped up in all that is my activism, my approach to social justice, my approach to the world, my relationship to humanity.  That means I don’t value the lives of USA Americans over the lives of people from other places.  It also means, sometimes, that I don’t value my relationships to my genetic family members the way I do to the people I’ve chosen to have in my life – my “fictive kin.”

My friends don’t ask me to confront my family.  They don’t demand that I stick up for them in every situation.  I do that because it makes me sick to hear, observe, or read racist, sexist, heterosexist, cissexist, classist, ableist speech, actions, or writing.  I do it because I love my friends, and I respect other people’s human dignity.  I do it because I am a queer person, and I believe in my own human dignity.  I do it because if I am silent, I am complicit in furthering that oppression.

The final question my cousin posed had to do with how I feel, which would be more painful – to “tolerate” my family’s discriminatory behavior or to extricate myself from them as much as possible?  For my sister and my mother, their familial relationships are paramount.  I don’t know why.  Maybe because they’re not queer, or trans*, or people of color.  Maybe because it’s not personal for them.

Spending time with my extended family makes me feel tense, anxious, angry, infuriated, sad, stressed, and overwhelmed.  Many times just being “Friends” with them on Facebook makes me feel the same way.  I want people to like me, I want them to be happy with me.  I want to be as happy to be a part of my family as I was when I was little, and felt so special as a double Wheeler.

I just don’t want it as much as I want to not interact with people who are racist.  Who are sexist.  Who are heterosexist.  Who are cissexist.  Who are classist.  Who are ableist.

I am incredibly privileged to have a family.  I’m privileged that my family has spent a great deal of time together as I grew up.  I’m privileged to have had my paternal grandparents for 22 years, and my maternal grandparents for 26 and counting.

I don’t want to completely give up on educating.  But I educate all the time.  In the classroom, I am respected.  It’s acknowledged that I know what I’m talking about.  With my family, I’m a child who doesn’t have real-life experience, hasn’t grown up yet, doesn’t know how the “real world” works.  Or, even worse, I’m a “super-human” – so much smarter than everyone!  It’s how they excuse themselves; if there’s something special about me, other people aren’t expected to think critically, to take action to make things better.  I can work with my siblings.  I will keep the peace with my grandparents.  I will work on my parents.

But do I have to take on the job of spending another 20, 30, 40 years addressing every discriminatory remark an aunt, uncle, cousin, second cousin makes?  Do I have to grit my teeth every time I hear someone make a derogatory remark about queer people?  Do I have to silently watch people post lies and disinformation?  Do I have to try to keep educating when people tell me they don’t want to talk about politics with family, or tell me that my desire to be “politically correct” interferes with them expressing themselves?

They expect me to.  Because they are “normal.”  They are white, middle-class, heterosexual, cis USA Americans.  I am the strange one, I am the one causing the problems.  It’s not their racism, homophobia, transphobia that are the problem – it’s my inability to keep my mouth shut.  It’s my refusal to keep the peace.  It’s my disdain for pretending I like, respect, or love people who hold such hateful views.  It’s my fault for talking about “politics” – as if we aren’t political beings, as if the political isn’t personal.  It’s my refusal to value relationships with people I am genetically tied to over relationships with people I admire, trust, respect.  It’s my refusal to smile and gloss over the fact that many of them think I am not worth as much respect or acknowledgment as a human being because I am queer.

The question is where to go from here.