Ambassadors

I sent a veteran buddy of mine a piece on an official military honor guard joining a Gay Pride march in Washington DC. His reaction:

Fantastic, unbelievable there is a feeling of respect in the gay community

which I originally relayed about gay veterans. I will always say the stereo-type does not

always fit reality. Like I said before it's not always about pink poodles

No, it's not. Pink poodles are certainly part of the gay image, but no, they became a focus because people outside of, and in many cases, people who were hostile to, the LGBT community, made that the gay image.

That exchange reminded me of a book I read back in junior high (Nowadays called middle school). It was about the struggle between Northern and Southern Italians. The Northerners were exploiting the South by extractng their resources, largely farm produce. Southerners launched a rebellion in the 1800s. Northern Italians in Rome sought to understand what was going on and looked around to speak with the only Southern Italians they knew, the aristocrats who collaborated with the North to send food from the South to the North. Naturally, because it was hardly in their interests to truly illuminate how the situation was so bad for Southern Italians in general, the Southern Italian aristocrats gave the Northerners bad advice and the situation got worse.

It's important then, for countries and cultures to have at least works of art to act as ambassadors to the culture that's in a dominant position. I've seen a number of works that have done this. I paid attention to the struggles in Central America that came to my attention as a college student in the late 70s, with conflicts in El Salvador and Nicaragua. But it wasn't until the comic book Love & Rockets was put out that I had more than a one-dimensional image of the larger Latino community as doing and being more than just fighting, dying and cursing the gringo. Reading it gave me a more complex picture, one that emphasized both the differences and similarities between them and us white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, both the things that made us all human and the things that made our groups distinct from each other.

What was the first artistic ambassador that explained one world to another? My guess would be Uncle Tom's Cabin. It described a society and a way of life that Northerners lived next to, but most of them had no personal experience of. As the University of Virginia concedes, Harriet Beecher Stowe drew an essentially accurate portrait of what it was like to be a slave in the South. The minstrels of the era tried very hard to present their own version of slavery as a benign institution, but their efforts didn't make much headway.

During the Iraq War, an educated young Iraqi woman who named herself River wrote a blog that captured the imaginations of at least the people who opposed the war there. In 2013, she added a post taking a look back. Her writings emphasized both how different the Iraqi culture was (She generally didn't like Saddam Hussein, didn't wear one herself, but was well-disposed towards wearing the hijab, was strongly opposed to the American invasion and documented how it hurt the Iraqi people) and, by adding lots of personal touches and mentions of people she knew (Always as pseudonyms), emphasized the common humanity of Iraqis and Americans.

Probably the most well-known comic that did the same thing for the gay community was Desert Peach. Pfirsch (Peach) Rommel was General Erwin Rommel's fictional gay younger brother, a colonel who was in command of the “469^th Half-Track and Grave-Digging Battalion” that generally stayed in the background of the war in Northern Africa from 1941 to 1943. And yes, like the real-life Erwin Rommel, Pfirsch was a complex character who tried to do the best he could in a situation that didn't allow for a whole lot of humanity or decency.

A fellow straight person commented on Facebook on how much he appreciated the TV show Will & Grace that ran from 1998 to 2006. A gay person replied on how that was a show that he never paid much attention to. He regarded it as a bit of fluff that had nothing important to say. I agreed that it probably had little to say to gays themselves, but thought and still think that the show provided a good introduction to gay life for straights. Jack sort of, kind of resembled the old stereotypes, but Will most certainly didn't. I can see Jack walking a pink poodle, at least in his much younger days. Can't see it for Will at all. The effect of that is to assure people that the stereotype is not entirely wrong, it's at least based on truth, but that it's a terribly cramped and limited way of viewing gay people.

Making contact with a larger, dominant culture can be a very useful thing for a less dominant culture to do and no, it's not necessary for members of the less dominant culture to say to themselves “Someone else is doing the cultural outreach, so I don't have to.” You never know what exactly will spark the interest of people in the dominant culture, so it's best to take an "all hands on deck" or "full court press" approach, to just try everything. 

A few Barbara Stanwyck films

Taped and just finished watching Sorry, Wrong Number,  The Mad Miss Manton and  Breakfast for Two. And I learned by watching the TCM commentary that  Double Indemnity and  Stella Dallas are big, acclaimed films of hers, neither of which I've seen. Sorry is an interesting film as the main characters are not at all sympathetic until the very end, when it's too late. Mad is interesting as Stanwyck's character heads up a sort of women's posse that runs around solving crimes. In that and Breakfast, an attempt at a madcap romantic comedy of the type that Katherine Hepburn did in Bringing Up Baby, I'm sorry to say that Stanwyck is completely unconvincing as a woman in love. The men in these films say that they love her, but their statements fall completely flat. Maybe that has something to do with the rumors that Stanwyck was a lesbian. As she had an affair with Robert Wagner that no one was aware of at the time (They broke it off because of the age difference), perhaps she was bisexual. In any event, there's a great deal to admire about her as an actor. And nah, I checked to see if anyone has ever collected her movies together into one set and no one has. The next TCM classic actor film-fest is for Loretta Young. Not sure if I've ever seen her in anything.

Desert Peach & sexy pictures

I did an extensive illustrated post on why posting pictures that demonstrate excessive sexiness are inappropriate for forums like Facebook. I've never agreed with the Anti-Porn Feminists that porno is always bad, but I do agree that it's inappropriate under some circumstances. I pay lots of attention to a particular character in order to show that no, just because one is creating in a popular fiction format, that doesn't mean that one can't create complex characters nor that one has to avoid sexual subjects. Enjoy!

Throwing this out for debate...

Here's a subject for debate. I had an email exchange with someone who had written an editorial for the Inquirer about marriage equality for the LGBT community. He waxed poetical on marriage and our relationships to our ancestors:

Denying children biological ties creates all sorts of identity problems (including sexual identity problems)

…

Marriage also transcends the individual by placing him in a social web that involves responsibilities to parents, grandparents, children, etc. He finds his identity and is linked to generations and even to history.

…

...the overriding concept of marriage is that a man and woman give of themselves (and their particularities), temper their individual wants, in order to become something that is larger than the sum of the two. Marriage is greater than the sum of its parts.

…

For their optimum development and well-being, children do best when they are raised by their married mother and father. Every deviation from that ideal reduces outcomes for children.

So, from the perspective of children, we should make marriage more subserviant [sp] to their needs, not the desires and whims of adults.

Now, a buddy from my letter-writing group Rapid Response pointed out that marriage was not always centred around children, in fact, the post-World War II generation that gave birth to the baby boomers was the first generation in history that had the leisure time, the material goods and the physical safety that permitted them to concentrate so heavily on the psychological needs of their children.

Of course past generations paid attention to their children, Henry VIIII wanted a male heir to take over England after he passed away, but so long as the child was male and physically capable, Henry would have been content. Elizabeth I was a capable heir, but keep in mind that her childhood was a bewildering and chaotic one, with her mother executed when she wasn't yet three years old and a succession of stepmothers following. Of course, as a female, she wasn't expected to take over the kingdom, but everyone knew that, as she was of royal blood, she might very well do so. The idea that marriage in those days was centred around children, even royal children who might one day inherit the kingdom, was clearly not applicable. Were English marriages centred around children during the days of the “dark, satanic mills” or when the “Little Match Girl” perished in the snow? Obviously not.

Now, is it a good thing for children to know their grandparents? Sure, I guess so. I knew my great-grandmother on my father's side. “Great-Grammy” passed away when I was less than five years old. I liked her, but didn't really know her. My paternal grandfather passed away before my birth. Everything I heard about him was good. My paternal grandmother lived until my maturity. On my mother's side, both of my grandparents lived until then. My mother had a twin sister and they had a brother. I never met the brother and everything I heard about him was bad. His ex-wife had booted him out, he came back, his kids got tired of him really quickly and he moved out again. My sisters and I got along fine with the ex-wife and kids.

Did I miss either my paternal grandfather or my uncle on my mother's side? Not really. I certainly don't remember wanting to know more or inquiring about either of them. I certainly never got the impression that any of my uncle's bad traits were destined to be passed on to me. I don't remember feeling better because my grandfather was such a fine fellow. It just never occurred to me to look at myself as the product of my ancestors and their traits.

So here's my question. With people becoming orphans through wars and accidents and poor health, with children getting adopted and in many cases, never being able to get in touch with their birth parent(s), with parents immigrating and leaving grand-parents behind in the “old country,” with mothers having conceived their children via rape and thus not having any reason to ever care who the father was, with mothers being promiscuous and thus not even knowing who the father might be, is knowing one's social context a “nice to have” sort of thing or is it an urgent necessity that a child is lost without?

Round-up on the news 19Nov2011

Very pleased to note that Democrats hung tough on the latest vote on the Balanced Budget Amendment.

In 1995, 72 of the 202 Democrats who voted crossed over and voted for the BBA. That’s quite a few, and it means that it wasn’t just conservative and Blue Dog Democrats; quite a few mainstream or even liberal Dems thought it was worth supporting for substantive or political reasons. Today, however, only 25 Democrats crossed lines to support the amendment, while four Republicans voted against it.

Yes, Democrats have previously gotten all wobbly-kneed, caved in and voted for packages that they considered insane, but lately, they're definitely learning and toughening up.

Bwah-hah-hah!!!! Michele Bachmann insists "I haven't had a gaffe." Uh, gee, some random, unknown person in a receiving line tells Bachmann that a vaccine causes mental retardation, so Bachmann insisted that this random person knew what she was talking about. Erm, slight problem, the claim is complete and utter poppycock. Rush Limbaugh even came to the defense of the vaccine, and when Limbaugh tells you you've "jumped the shark," you've really gone overboard! Oh, and her plan to run the government without taxing anybody was a good one! Bachmann's gaffes have been quite frequent.

Speaking of Limbaugh, the fellow got very confused and claimed that the former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was gay. No, gays, straights and lesbians all fall into the category of adults who make love to adults on a consensual basis. Rapists and pedophiles fall into a different category, that of people who abuse victims and who really couldn't care less what the gender of their victims are.

Thankfully, the Super-Committee/Cat Food Commission II seems to be headed for complete failure. The likely result is sequestration in 2013. Given that Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have declared, in response to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's claim that sequestration would result in a "substantial risk of not being able to meet our defense needs" that

"We are staunchly opposed to this draconian action. This is not an outcome that we can live with, and it is certainly not one that we should impose on ourselves. The sequester is a threat to the national security interests of the United States, and it should not be allowed to occur.”

In other words, sequestration is not a serious threat as these Republican Senators will clearly not allow it to gut their preferred programs. Unfortunately this is, by the count of the FireDogLake blogger, President Obama's fourth attempt at a "Grand Bargain." Sure would be nice if it were to be the last.

It's difficult to keep from sympathizing with Occupy protesters when law enforcement authorities get so completely out of control that they use pepper spray directly onto the faces of Occupiers who are just sitting there peacefully. Of course, pepper spray is torture and should never be used unless police officers are in extreme peril, a condition that very obviously did not apply in this case. Great picture from the same blog, by the way. What's the ultimate goal of the neoliberals who are the opposition to #OWS? Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam and the US have been negotiating, behind closed doors naturally, for a Trans-Pacific Partnership that would lock in many of the worst aspects of NAFTA, but in the Pacific instead of Central America.

And lastly, former Senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum, gets all philosophical and declares that, when contemplating the vast number of Americans who are getting food stamps as opposed to being able to work at jobs, that hey, well “suffering is part of life and it’s not a bad thing, it is an essential thing in life.” Um, yeah, considering that Santorum’s estimated net worth is between $880,000 and $1.9 million, this is a real generous, Christian attitude.

I thought so

Pleased to see that my prediction was correct. I felt all along that when the military was told that gays would be accepted as full members, that they'd salute and get cracking on making gays welcome within their ranks. There were a number of skeptics, Marine Commandant General. James Amos and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) among them. General Amos said: "...he addressed some 12,000 Marines about the change and “everyone said, ‘Sir, we got it. We’re going to do this thing.‘”
McCain felt that 12% of the military would up and quit in response to gays coming out, but although it's impossible to say with absolute certainty why people may decide not to re-enlist, the numbers of those not re-enlisting are essentially unchanged from before. There has been no surge towards the exit doors.

Gays in the Navy

[I wrote a comment on a FireDogLake piece about my experience with gays in the Navy and got the following reply:

This is another comment, rich in personal history, which would make a wonderful standalone diary at The Seminal. Please consider sharing your experience there — I think people have a hard time understanding the historical inanity of this debate: there have always been gays in the military and people have never cared more than right now, it seems.]

Back when I was in "A" School (School you take between Boot Camp and the fleet), I was joking around with a few buddies. "Yes sir, I knew that I shouldn't have pushed that button and blown up that city, but I just didn't care. I just couldn't summon up the emotional energy to really give a damn, so yeah, sorry, I pushed that button."

That, to me, summed up my attitude towards gays while I was in the Navy. I served as a Personnelman and got up to the rank of 3rd Class (PN3, equivalent to an Army Corporal) from May 1991 until January 2001. When I was overseas from November 1996 to November 1998, my ship had 400 people on it. So we all knew each other, some of course better than others, depending on how closely we worked together.

There was a fellow that I sorta, kinda had my suspicions about. He seemed to be a little awkward socially and we talked about fitting in with the group. He once complained that "I wish people would invite me to go out on liberty with them." We had to use a buddy system where when we hit liberty ports, we had to have at least one other person from the ship with us, which meant that sometimes a shipmate had to wait on the Quarterdeck until one or more other people wanted to go out on liberty and then the whole group could take off together. I cheerfully explained to him that no one was ever going to think of inviting him to be their liberty buddy, he had to wait on the Quarterdeck and invite himself to join a person or a group that was going off into town. I had to explain that being socially popular involved some measure of just jumping in and joining the group.

His chain of command decided to send him back to the States to learn some more stuff about how to do his job. We talked about how the Navy would pay for his TAD (Temporary Additional Duty) and we went through a pantomime about how he would take money from one purse, then from another purse, he'd add everything up and then he'd get paid for the whole thing upon completion of the whole evolution. Well, a few days after he'd taken off for the States, I heard that he'd gotten busted for being gay. I thought back about how we had related to each other and what I'd heard about him and thought "O-o-o-oh yeah-h-h! Yeah, that would explain why..." and various small things I hadn't noticed at the time occurred to me and now they made sense.

I didn't have any strong opinions either way about gays. To a sailor, a shipmate is more than just a mere co-worker. A shipmate is someone you live with as well as work with. You clean up your workspaces and berthings together, you perform fire drills together where get all suited up and you pretend to fight fires, you eat meals together where you just see an empty spot, sit down and start chattering with whoever's sitting there. But the off-duty habits of my shipmates just didn't concern me much. As I said in the first paragraph here, I just didn't care. It didn't make any big difference to me that one of my shipmates turned out to be gay. It made a big difference to the ship that we now had one less qualified sailor who had previously done a satisfactory job. Y'know, he may not have done a super-brilliant job, but he certainly wasn't known for doing a poor job and so much in the Navy just requires being steady, being reliable, getting jobs completed and reports filed on schedule and within parameters.

One time, on an earlier ship, we were about to leave on a voyage and a low-ranking sailor cleaned off a pipe down in the engine room. He came back a short while later and the pipe was covered with oil again. He recognized that this was not a good sign and reported that to his supervisor. Turned out the voyage had to be postponed for a day so that the pipe could be replaced. It had worn away so badly that it was now so thin that oil was just plain leaking through the pipe itself. If our sailor had not been observant and had not reported the problem..brr...I hate to think of what could have happened out there on the open sea. The point is, the ship was saved from a potential catastrophe by a shipmate who just plain did his job. He paid attention to detail. He did his job in a manner where he was aware and alert and that made all the difference in the world.

One time, I had a shipmate fill out an ID Card application with incorrect information. He thought he was being clever and was finding a way around a problem. We had to have a series of discussions, my supervisor was brought into it, the problem was fixed, the shipmate was scolded and we got on with our day, but that wasted an hour that wouldn't have been wasted if he had just done his job correctly the first time. Several years earlier, I applied for another job within the Navy. The fellow who was advising me on how to apply neglected to fill me in on all of the necessary details. I think maybe he considered it a learning experience for me, but the result was that my application was a mess and the Bureau of Naval Personnel had to get back to me several times and tell me that yet another piece of the application was missing.

In the military, attention to detail is very, very important. People need to know what they're doing, they need to keep their minds on their jobs. And y'know? We all need to get along with each other. The male sailors need to be aware of how they're dealing with the female sailors so that our language never crosses over from the "yellow" into the "red." White sailors have to be aware of how they're talking with black sailors so as to make sure that language never gets offensive. It's perfectly okay to suggest that an African-American sailor is doing a lousy job, but it's not okay to suggest he's doing a lousy job because he's African-American. We can joke around and have a good time, but we have to pay attention to our language.

Do we ask questions of our shipmates about their off-duty sexual habits? No, of course not. That kind of question could very easily be construed as a "red zone" sexual harassment-type of question. When we were in our home port and left the ship and went off into town, where we went and who we saw was our concern. I guess the really bottom-line concern of mine as a sailor was, "Is my shipmate doing a satisfactory job?" If he or she was doing their job and paying attention to detail and the instruction manuals were being followed, why is it going to concern me that he might be sleeping with another he or she with a she?

If I had been asked to make a list of my top ten concerns, the sexuality of my shipmates would either have not made the list at all, or I would have listed at least eight or nine concerns prior to that. As I said, I just didn't care.