Keep Parenting Queer

A while back, I attended a workshop for LGBT families. At lunch, the organizers asked parents to break into small groups and talk about "things that sustain us." My group was chewing its sandwiches in awkward silence, so I decided to plunge in: for me, one of the most sanity-preserving practices has been staying connected to my queer communities.

"You do that?" asked a gay dad in his late thirties. "How do you do that?"

His incredulity got me thinking. Chosen family and subcultural networks are two of the great blessings of being queer. For many LGBT folk, our queer communities have sustained us through better and worse, richer and poorer, sickness and health. So why is it that, after they have kids, so many people end up missing from the potluck and the film festival, the protest and the dance floor?

Is it exhaustion? Fear? Finances? Some kind of internalized oppression that says queer spaces are not kid spaces?

I have to admit, when Katy and I decided to have a baby, some of our friends were less than excited. They thought they weren't going to see us anymore. It felt like they were mourning just when we were celebrating, which was hard to take.

In spite of my friends' skepticism, I was determined not to disappear from their lives. It took me a long time to come out, and there was no way that I was going to trade my hard-won multi-generational queer subculture for a re-run of the nuclear family with two moms at the helm. It sounded boring, and it went against everything that I wanted to teach my son about community, engagement, and survival.

We've been parenting for six years now, and even our most dubious, anti-breeder friend has had to admit that things are turning out really different than she expected. These days, I feel closer and more connected to the people who really matter to me, but it's taken intention and effort to maintain those connections. With that in mind, I offer the following tips about what has worked for us:

1. Include your queer friends in your parenting. Dykes and fags love a good softball game, right? Well, recently we've found that they love a good t-ball game too. Our son, Waylon, has chosen "aunties" and "uncles" of various genders and orientations. They show up for his games, take him on adventures, and even babysit on occasion.

2. Include your kids in queer community events. Waylon is an old hand at rallies, vigils, and protests. (As long as he gets to make and hold his own sign, he's pretty happy.) He's been to conferences like Gender Odyssey (hooray for Gender Spectrum Kids Camp). He has attended innumerable concerts, festivals, and parades. Last year, at Houston Pride, people were so excited to see a gayby that they were just handing over their beads, glow sticks, and other swag. By the end of the parade, Waylon looked like 80's-era Madonna, completely weighted down with necklaces and bracelets. (Now, I know that some of you are worrying that parts of the parade might not be appropriate for young children. It's true: one year a bunch of purple-robed gay evangelicals who were marching in the Houston parade tossed Waylon a coozie with a picture of the crucifixion and the words "He Died For You." I thought that was a bit graphic.)

3. Have your friends over after the kids are in bed. Sometimes you need grown-up time with your friends. For the past five years, an evolving group of friends has come over on Sunday nights to watch L Word. It's not because we love the show (love to hate it, maybe), but because it gives us a chance to hang out and catch up with our friends without having to pay for a babysitter. Now that L Word is finally over, we're transitioning to a Sunday night salon/potluck with a different theme every week.

4. Get a sitter. This one takes a little planning and prioritizing, but it doesn't have to cost loads of money. We regularly trade with the parents of Waylon's friends for free babysitting. Waylon likes this system, because it means that he gets to have extra play dates and even the occasional sleepover. We like it because we get to know Waylon's friends and we get to go out without draining our bank account. We also factor babysitting costs into our budget. Paying a good babysitter is expensive, but I think of it like one of those cheesy Visa ads; Babysitter: $13/hour. Staying in touch with your queer community: priceless.

To be perfectly clear, my queer communities include people who are gay, bi, and straight, people who are gender non-conforming and people who are (mostly) gender conforming. What's queer about these networks of friends and chosen family is not necessarily the identities of the individuals. It's the commitment to forging new ways of being together. It's the creativity to look beyond the nuclear family and to find new ways of caring for each other. My friends have helped helped me survive illness, career change, political depression, bio-family drama, and the ups and downs of being a parent. Nurturing those networks is a skill I hope to pass on to my son.

The tips above have been helpful for me. I hope other parents will pass on what works for them.

Postscript: To see other parents' responses, check the original post at The Bilerico Project.

Queer Time: Girls in the Nose Reunion

Last week I attended a 60th birthday celebration for my friend Joanna Labow, percussionist and one of several singer/songwriters for the groundbreaking lesbian rock band Girls in the Nose, which reunited for the occasion. Nose co-founder Kay Turner will also turn 60 this year. But--as Joanna noted in a song that she wrote for her party--this is not a version of old ladydom that you hear about in mainstream culture. These sexagenarians are still making music with their buddies, still eviscerating sexism and heterosexism with their lyrics, and still getting down (and taking it off) with the notorious Girls in the Nose dancers.

In her thought-provoking book In a Queer Time and Place, Judith Halberstam theorizes queerness as an alternative way of using time--one that departs from bourgeois heterosexual itineraries of reproduction and inheritance. One of the great attractions of queerness, Halberstam argues, is that it opens up "imaginative life schedules," which do not dictate that we abandon our youthful subcultures, take our place in the generational transmission of goods and morals, or devote ourselves to practices of longevity.

Check out this video: Come and Die

Girls in the Nose was founded in 1987 by Turner (featured in the video above) and Gretchen Phillips (of that other germinal lesbian rock band, 2 Nice Girls). The band describes their sound as "the B-52s meet Iggy Pop and sing about lesbian feminism," but this ain't the Iggy of "Lust for Life"--more like Funhouse, if you know what I mean: sexier, edgier. At their height they rocked Michigyn, Lesbapalooza, and the 1993 March on Washington, to name just a few venues.

To speak in terms of autobiographical time, Girls in the Nose's heyday was a little before my own (delayed) queer coming of age. The reunion show was the first chance I'd ever had to see them play live, and I felt so grateful for the creativity and indomitable spirit of dyke culture. Knowing these women has opened a treasure chest of "imaginative life schedules" that my bio family could never have bequeathed to me.

There was talk of a Girls in the Nose reunion tour at Joanna's party. In the expansive logic of queer time, there's no mandatory retirement age for lesbian rockers. Check them out on MySpace and let them know how much the world needs this version of what 60 looks and sounds like.

Don't Make Pride Benign on Behalf of My Family

I live in Austin, Texas, where Pride tends to be a little more laid back than other cities. Let's face it, when it's 97 degrees outside with 30% humidity, your eye shadow will melt, your leather pants will feel like a personal sauna, and any outdoor festival is going to feel like an endurance test.

Nevertheless, as a dutifully proud mama, I've been bringing my son to Austin Gay Pride since he was six weeks old. It's where he coined his signature Pride chant, "Rock on, gays!"

This year, the organizers of Austin Gay Pride successfully advocated with the city to move the fest to a prime downtown location. National acts MeShell Ndegeocello and Pansy Division were set to headline. It seemed like Austin's Pride was really coming into its own. And then, in an Austin Chronicle article that still has local queers buzzing, one of the organizers characterized the new and improved Pride as a "benign, family-friendly" event.

Here's a longer excerpt from the article, which quotes Ceci Gratias of the Austin Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce:

Our biggest issue is [that we have] minors watching the parade," said Gratias. "We don't really need to express ourselves so outrageously. And it's not out of acceptability but rather out of respect for the families watching."

Although I wasn't able to attend Austin's Pride this year (too busy gettin' hitched in California), I'm sure it was a lovely event in many ways. But as a queer parent, I feel the need to speak to the assumed dichotomy between "family friendly" and "sex positive." I believe that queer cultural values are among the most important things that I can bequeath to my son. At its best, queer culture can offer the rest of our society a lesson or two about valuing pleasure and eschewing shame.

While it hasn't happened yet, it is true that my son might someday see a thing or two at Pride that we need to talk about and contextualize. But the same is true of mainstream pop culture that he's exposed to every day.

Right now, Paramount and Lego are aggressively marketing the entire Indiana Jones saga--which is chock full of adult sexuality (it's pretty clear that that whip has multiple uses)--to preschool age kids. And I haven't heard a single straight parent at my son's school complaining. So I don't think we need to hold queer culture to a different, desexualized standard on their account.

I certainly hope that no one is making Pride more "tasteful" (another adjective from the organizers) on my son's account. After all, we're talking about a kid who thinks "Fart Mama fart in your face farty fart fart" is witty repartee. Assless chaps would probably make him laugh himself silly.