Being a bisexual Quaker often challenges my notion of our Testimony of Integrity. I am a bisexual, and I am not ashamed to admit it when it comes up in conversation; but the truth is that it never comes up in conversation at all. Because I am married to a man, the assumption is that I'm straight. This leads me to the awkward question:
Am I violating our Testimony of Integrity by allowing people to believe something about me that isn't true?
And then an even more awkward question follows if I answer yes:
How do I honor our Testimony of Integrity and correct people's assumptions about me?
I haven't found a good answer to this yet. Short of making an announcement of some kind, I have no real ideas. No one's ever said to me directly that they assume I'm straight; yet to me it feels like the assumption in my Meeting currently is not only that I'm straight, but that everyone who regularly attends or is a member is straight as well. This assumption allows us to postpone indefinitely dealing with the issue of gay marriage, which we could not find unity about 5 years ago (before my time with the Meeting).
But I fear that this postponement subconsciously affects the way we treat openly gay attenders, when they do in fact attend (which is not often). Knowing that this person could force us to deal with an issue we don't "feel ready" to deal with, I worry that we are not as friendly towards that person as we would be if he or she was straight. I worry that this person, even if we treat him or her exactly the same, will pick up on our hesitancy as a community to deal with gay marriage; and leave us for a more open and affirming religious community.
I wonder if my Meeting would be as comfortable postponing this issue if they knew I was bisexual. I remember a brief conversation I had with the Worship & Ministry committee, of which I am a member, about gay marriage. Most of them didn't understand why it mattered so much, unless a gay couple actually wanted to be married under the care of the Meeting. I tried to explain that it does matter, even if the person doesn't want to be married, because it is, in our minds, discrimination. Since gay marriage is an issue and straight marriage is not, the message non-straight people get is that there's something different, and indeed lesser, about their relationships compared to heterosexual ones. It is discrimination, as much as we'd like to pretend it isn't. It might be Biblically-based discrimination, but that doesn't mean it's not discrimination.
And in a Society that prides itself so much on its Testimony of Equality (look, we were anti-slavery before it was cool! we were for women's rights before everyone else was!), it gives me a great sadness that there is discrimination my Meeting can't even speak openly about yet.
2 comments:
Hi Tania: thanks for letting us know about the new blog. It seems like maybe there's two pieces here: sharing for self-identification and sharing for education.
The definition of "marriage" is all over the map these days but generally presumes becoming monosexual--the fidelity to one person (regardless of gender) becomes the primary sexual identity.
There are many types of identities that become hidden or moot by changing life circumstances (I still sometimes consider myself an urban hipster even though I moved out the city six years ago now!). Only when we've had friends that have known us for decades through different life moments do we have people who really know us in all of our complications. Do our current and rather limited identities make us look more boring that we are? Yes, but I'm not sure it's really an integrity issue.
There might be times in your meeting's deliberations when it's important to challenge assumptions. If everyone is assuming the membership is straight it might be a good time to inform people of your bisexuality. The difference is that you're not doing it to advance other people's perceptions of you (look at me! I'm cool! I'm bisexual!) or to hold on to an identity that's been trumped by the marriage. Rather you're challenging the meeting to be less parochial in its deliberations and not to assume (pre-judge) people based on stereotypes.
Good luck with the deliberations. May your meeting have the patience to go through this without long-lasting damage!
Your friend Martin @ Quaker Ranter
I don't quite understand why Martin thinks "sharing for self-identification" isn't an OK thing to do--and I'm not quite sure where the line is between that and "sharing for education." There are some things about my past that aren't so much relevant--nobody needs to know I was a punk rocker when I was a teenager and young adult, for instance. It comes up in conversation once in awhile, but I don't experience my failures to talk about it as issues of integrity.
But if a hidden identity means people are assuming none of "that" kind of person is among us, that can be a problem. My own meeting has had problems with making class assumptions--there was once a conversation, for instance, in which people were assuming that no one in our meeting had ever been on public assistance. For one woman who was present, and had been, it was painful. The conversation would have been different had it occurred to the group that they weren't talking about some people "out there" but that they might be talking about valued people among us.
Issues of sexuality can be like this, too. And it's tricky for people whose sexual orientations aren't fully reflected in a single parter--bisexuals in long-term relationships with partners of the same or opposite gender run into this. At least, though, for someone like a bisexual friend of mine who is often assumed to be a lesbian because of her long-term relationship with another woman, there's a visible queer in the room.
With all kinds of issues--around sexuality, disability, class--it can seem to the people who are already part of a group that it's not a problem or an issue to be considered until a member of that other group shows up--like the meeting not thinking it needs to talk about same-sex marriage until there's a couple wanting to get married. But that kind of waiting can create an unwelcoming environment, ensuring that those other people never will show up, or, if they do, they won't stay.
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