I've known I've been queer since I was 12 years old, but I didn't have a name for it back then. My first crush was this cool Italian-American girl; her last name was D'Ambrosio. We lived in the South Brooklyn area so I knew plenty of Italian people.
Italians, like the Irish, have challenging histories back in their homelands and here in the US. They've been 'good guys' and 'bad guys' (much like the rest of us) and they are known to be people who are proud of their heritage.
A slang word for a certain working class type of Italian person that was used a lot back then was 'guido.' I didn't really know any stereotypical 'guidos' (a heavy Brooklyn accent, 'broish-mobster' posturing, and hair-dos heavy on the pomade), I didn't hear or use the word very often, but perhaps my crush was a 'guidette' and I just didn't know it. Perhaps, she too was 'passing' in some ways like I was.
I used to picture myself being this girl's boyfriend, but in real life we were just classmates. She was besties with a cool tall girl named Darryl with 90s metal braces; she wore a lot of GAP and Doc Martens and walked around like she knew things the rest of us didn't. She had an older sister in high school who was supposedly cool, which gave her a bit more clout. D'Ambrosio tried to keep up, but I think she was a little more like me. She & her family didn't have extra money for cool clothes; not like Darryl did.
Anyway, one day the girlfriend of my fantasies asked me why I had hair on my forehead. In that moment, I got sucked into a dark hole of shame and embarrassment; my crush had crushed my heart. I knew then that I was not worthy of her time and I needed to stop thinking of her like I was; after all, she thought I was ugly. Soon enough I got some tweezers and started plucking eager to remove the ugly that covered my face.
When I was 14, I attended a summer Marine Biology program and met my first high school friend. Her last name was Polatchek (not sure I'm spelling it correctly); she was either first or second generation American of largely Polish & Italian descent, I believe. We got along quite well in the beginning, but we drifted and by the time we graduated, we were no longer pals. She was the one to introduce porn to me. It was a VHS and I think she got it from one of her older sisters; I can't recall. It was a 70s or early 80s flick, I think. It was an old movie of old cis-het white people having sex. We were curious, but it was meh. It definitely didn't get me hooked on porn. We didn't have the vast selection kids do now.
While I rollerbladed and she biked on the Shore Parkway Greenway Trail by the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, my friend looked down at my hand (the one holding onto her handle bars) and said "Oh my God, your hand is so dirty!" I'm not sure if I said anything in response, but pulled my hand away and rolled ahead of her. I didn't let on that I felt self-conscious, but I did. My hand wasn't dirty; it's just that in the summertime, when I get darker, my hands in contrast to my palms apparently make me look 'dirty' to some people.
I'm also quite hairy according to others. It's something I was quite self-conscious about for a long time until I started owning my queer identity more earnestly and openly. The more I realized feminine beauty standards didn't have to apply to me, the more I felt liberated. The more I embraced my masculine energy, the less I cared about the hair on my face and body. I can't say I'm totally free from the white cis-heteronormative confines of beauty, but it doesn't weigh on me like it once did.
When I was 16, I fell in love for the first time. I was a Junior and she was a Freshman; she was an Albanian-American girl. She was first generation with immigrant parents. I'd dated a couple of boys before I met her, but it was she that woke up my heart. My first kiss was actually with a Latina friend and that made it clear that I was, at the very least, bisexual because I liked it a lot. But she had a boyfriend and I was a secret and that was a hard position to be in; so, it had to stop. I'm pretty sure I stopped it, but the details are fuzzy so I won't claim full credit.
Last month, out of the blue, I Googled my first love. It was something I'd done at different times in the last 25 years or so since we last saw each other. I don't do deep stalking so nothing ever really came up, but this time, I'd found her address and voter registration information from a quick search online. When I discovered that she lives in Greenwich, CT and apparently votes Republican or began to in 2016, all I could do was laugh. Ghastly!
I realized then that I needn't wonder anymore about what ever happened to her and if she ever thought of me. I got the answers I was after; she was twice married, managing a posh store in one of the wealthiest places in America. She was quite far removed from sharing time and space with the likes of me. How funny and not at all surprising, I thought.
I didn't think she was a Lesbian even when we were together, mostly because she crushed on and wanted to date boys. But also, she was Muslim and I was clear that queerness wasn't permitted in her religion or culture; not at all. I didn't even call myself a Lesbian back then; for me it was just about being in love finally. I wasn't ready for the out and proud stuff just yet, but it was coming. I'd assess the labels that would suit me best in college and beyond; heck, still today, I'm feeling my way through some.
M and I were friends before we were anything more. I'd go over to her house all the time and sleepover because she wasn't allowed to go anywhere; not ever. Her parents were strict. They worried a lot about poor influences from other American teens who'd try to corrupt their precious daughter. I get why they worried; I do. Yes, I was an American and an immigrant too; just like them, but that mattered not. They worried because M tried to push boundaries and lied to get a little more freedom very much unlike her older sister who played more by the rules. They worried because they must have felt a loss of control like my parents also probably felt as I was becoming more and more myself.
While the news didn't surprise me given my interpretation of her lived experience as I knew it to be when she was a teen, my ability to understand how she became a Republican doesn't take away from the hurt feelings I feel. If politics wasn't as partisan as it is maybe it wouldn't bother me as much. If immigrants and trans and queer folx and Black and Indigenous people and poor human beings of all types weren't discarded and treated like garbage by the GOP, then maybe I could get over it. But that's not how it is; the world feels so divided.
So, yeah, it's hard to accept that she leans RIGHT. After all, not only did she and I had something in our youth, but she also had a relationship with a Black boy after me. Neither one of us were/are people her parents would have approved of, but she was our friend. We shared our time and space in the energy of love; how could she NOT think of us? How could she not consider what it would mean for people like us to have 45 as our President? I guess when white girls grow up, it can be easy for some to forget that they knew us in their youth; we were their lovers and friends.
Love was new to me in 1994, but I welcomed it. And so did M; she was quite open to lots of different experiences back then. She seemed more willing than me to blur lines when we were alone. I was probably too scared to make the first move because it meant more to me than it could to her; I dunno. I remember our first kiss because it was one for the books. I can't recall many details of much of my past, but I remember the heart-pounding and glorious anticipation right before our lips came together and jolted me with love. That definitely sticks out in my brain and I'm grateful for it.
I think about people who've hurt me and I do the work it takes to grow my compassion for them so that I can forgive; and I pray that those I've hurt and can't directly approach to make amends with anymore can extend me the same understanding and grace I try to give. It's all a lot of effort, but it's better than the alternative, which, for me, is ANGER and RAGE.
These three girls I mentioned turned into women like many other young white girls I knew back then. I knew lots of first generation or immigrant girls from Russia, Yugoslavia, Ukraine, other former USSR nations, & Poland and I knew some from Afghanistan and Turkey and Greece and Bosnia too. These were NOT the blonde blue eyed European elite types; most came from working class families trying to establish themselves and, like me, they struggled to figure out who they are and how they fit into their families' and larger communities' stories.
Some were Jewish, others Muslim, & Catholics too; their religious affiliations ranged from being more secular-leaning to orthodox faithful. Well, at some point, just like I did, these girls discovered what races were and what it meant to be certain races in the USA. We learned to fill out boxes for college applications and things. Most became WHITE and easily accepted the assimilation demanded of us. But some of us, especially those of us who were darker or struggled to detach ourselves from our roots claimed OTHER if and when we could.
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I chose to start with and focus on these girls of my past because thinking of anyone as a child helps me center myself in empathy and I feel I especially need this when it comes to considering the role white WOMEN have played in my life. Why? Well, because like Latinx men compared to all other men, white women compared to all other women, have been the ones who've hurt me the most. And so, it's a challenge for me to trust them, both individually and as a collective.
You see once I grew up, my longest lasting relationships have been with WHITE women, most of them being 3 - 7 generations in this country. That specific aspect probably had a lot to do with my experience with many of them given that I am an immigrant and our struggles just aren't the same.
All of the white women I dated were openly queer; they may have had some challenges coming out, but it didn't feel like they were contending with the same fears and questions that I had. For the most part, they were also femme-presenting and just seemed way more accepting of their queerness and at ease in the world.
I, on the other hand, felt internal turmoil. By being queer, I felt like I was rejecting my culture for a more liberal but heavily whitewashed option. I lived in New England when I finally claimed myself to be an out and proud Lesbian. My first ever girlfriend whom I met in college pulled me away from New York and I was glad to leave because I saw it as my shot to delay or soften my coming out to my family. I wouldn't have to deal with the anticipated rejection if I was far away; at least, not in the same way. We U-hauled to the Pioneer Valley and I landed in Northampton, Mass a very queer and very white town.
I didn't stay there, of course, I moved around up and down the East Coast. But after my first girlfriend, Tara, while I was there, I met two Sarahs (all Princesses - two Jewish and one Catholic). And somewhere in between Sarah 1 and Sarah 2, I met this other Jewish-American woman who was studying to become an Art Therapist, which I liked a lot. She seemed to like me well enough, but when I shared with her that I had joined the service, she made clear that my being in the military was a major turn off. I explained why I had to, but she didn't want to hear it.
She chastised me and told me that she'd never sign up for any reason and I understood why. You see, unlike me, her family had money to help her pursue all her ambitions. And although I didn't have the language to explain it all, I did know that she had economic privileges that allowed her to draw clear lines in the sand. It stayed with me as I'd later come to see that many Liberal Progressives could take moral stances and judge harshly because they didn't have the same needs or worries of the poor and working classes.
Now, the second Sarah stuck around for 6 years; we were both working class and grew up with Jesus so we understood each other in certain ways I hadn't with Tara. But her family was and continues to be quite bigoted. As Sarah tells it, they became Trumpists and it all repulses her so. But she was also the first person to claim very proudly that she was "color blind" and that race didn't matter even though she's the only person that has ever explicitly said while driving to "lock up the car" because we were going through a "dangerous neighborhood."
There were other things that came up and I tried to challenge her thinking; don't know if she gets any of it now, but she didn't back then. She preferred, as many did, for me not to saying anything and chuck up each incident as being something other than racism or bigotry. It was with Sarah, someone I loved very much, with whom I first became aware of how culturally different we were as I started to see myself through her and her family. They saw me as a troublemaker who spoke up too much and didn't just accept the nonsense they said.
It didn't register to them that I was one of the people they didn't see or feared and disparaged when they said things about those that were different. Even though there were other foreign-born people that had married into their family, they didn't equate how their bigotry for others also landed on us. But then again, how much could I expect from them when before their daughter came out, there was a gay uncle Kevin and his advice was to basically hide and not ruffle feathers. It was hard to ignore and they'd never admit it, but my supposedly future in-laws were racist homophobes because, to some, they were perfectly nice.
NICE! That's what Minnesotan people are known for and that's definitely what my ex-wife considered herself. And she was; she had a kind heart. But once her spell on me was over, I started realizing that nice can also be quite cruel when it's the go-to that helps one avoid being real and dealing with the hard truths and major struggles others go through. My ex once said to me, "why does it always have to be about race?" when I was trying to talk to her about something important to me. I can't remember exactly what it was all about, but I'm fairly sure it was a conversation about something that was going on with me as it related to the rest of the world.
It was 2015 and 45 was running for office; there was a lot in the news to address and unpack and work through, I thought. What was happening outside of me was impacting me internally and I was seeing the impact it was having on my community. I needed to process. But to her, a white medical student with a judge for a dad and a therapist for a mom, my concerns for myself and others in this racist country that was growing more intolerant of difference by the minute, my reactions seemed outsized and exaggerated. How and why I was experiencing everything I was experiencing didn't seem to matter. I felt very alone. She probably did too. She didn't like things to be hard and I was definitely not making her life easy with my own distress. I'd become too much; too dysfunctional for her to deal with and so she left. I get it!! Our vows hadn't meant anything; that's how it felt.
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Post divorce, I decided I could never be with white women again; I was done! They had hurt me a lot and for too long; I didn't have it in me to trust them again. Twenty years had passed since I'd been single and our rainbow community had grown a lot. Suddenly with the help of the apps, I had access to a larger dating pool that I'd never before imagined possible. But finding a woman of color who was around my age and not interested in a relationship right away and also liked me back proved harder than I'd hoped. I think it had a lot to do with the fact that I was living in Rhode Island at the time, the tiniest state in the union. And so, I opened up my range of possibilities to include younger people and I said yes to casual hook-ups with white women. Why not? I was free to be me and not interested in U-hauling again; so, that mean I was back to being an equal opportunity flirty friend. I gave myself two years before I'd ever consider trying at LOVE again.
Then one day out of the blue, I ended up connecting with my forever boo. I definitely didn't know it then because she was white and way younger than me and a Gemini to boot (just like my ex). I wasn't expecting anything serious, but she, like no other, has shown up for me. With her, I've learned a lot about myself and I'm able to be my most authentic self. She's white like most of the others, but she was different than anyone I've ever been with and with her love, I've been able to heal some wounds and stuff. Of course, some wounds remain open and I'm working on healing those on my own and with her support.
I have beef with white women stretching as far as I can recall, but I've not been able to name it or address it like I can now. I imagine it's similar to the way cis-het women have beef with cis-het men in a cis-het partnership. I mean, how could they not when the patriarchy is real and women have suffered a lot at the hands of men. But men are being asked to consider things - to do and be things - they weren't trained to be or do. And women grow impatient as they're taking their sweet time to catch up with something women have known all along and that's the fact that men need to shift their belief that women are their true equals and it's on them to show it.
While some try their hardest to be there for their wives and evolve with the rest of us, many still don't. Instead, because they can't handle the pressure or the new demands of modern times, they look for ways to feel better about themselves and try to go back to a past they deemed better - a past when they felt they had more power and control. It all makes sense when we reflect on the truth that those who can hurt us the most are those closest to us; you know? That's why it's on them and on us to learn how to navigate the evolution of humankind. It takes all of us.
I fear, I'll self sabotage and ruin this good thing I have with Mary if I don't holdfast to the belief that we have the power through love to heal and achieve whatever we want.
I want to marry her, I do. But her being white means she doesn't get certain things as much as she might try. And, to be frank, trying feels too hard for her a lot of the time because she's so overwhelmed with her own stuff in life. To me, it just feels like there's little room for me even though she gets our current socio-political reality. And now that I'm in a place where I'm clear about what I want, I ask for it. But she has her own journey to go through and I can't rush her understanding.
I tell her I need her to be a real ally - an accomplice - a comrade. I need her to get real and be willing to get dirty. To me that just means that she continues to educate herself on issues that don't directly affect her, to be mindful of her privilege and dig deeper to understand our history and the role she and her people have played. I tell her that she is not responsible for the tragedies and injustices of the past, that's silly! But she's part of this now and can do lots of things to co-create a future we both can thrive in.
I need her to learn to get uncomfortable and withstand the pain of being associated with a lineage of oppression, subjugation, and denial. I have to do the same as those conquistadores' sangre is in me too and I have loads to unpack; and if I can do it, then why can't you?
I tell her she can't hide behind her mental illness or her queerness and get stuck being overwhelmed and unable to do something about this mess we're in. Doing something is learning how to be strong and how to step up for herself and for me and our future family. Doing something means speaking up when she sees 'her people' doing wrong. 'Her people' is every person she knows and loves as well as the silent majority within her demographic category' that keeps the status quo going.
Yes, I mean that she needs to talk to her fellow white people, in general, but mostly I mean her family and other white folx she personally knows who expose themselves as enablers more than true bigots. I want her to learn to talk to the ones that think they "don't have a racist bone in their body" just because they don't use derogatory language. I want her to hone her voice and her skills so she can talk to those who'll hear her better or differently than they do me because she's one of them too. It helps because while I can speak for myself, I'm often perceived 'too emotional' or irrationally angry.
She's done this before and does this at times. She tries, but it doesn't come easily to her and more often than not, she lets things slide. And I get why since it's not like we teach this stuff. Plus as much as it annoys me, I try to practice what I'm preaching by extending my compassion and empathy to her. After all, she's a white person who's part of my inner circle and I don't just want to give up. Because if I do, then I'd be missing out too. Not to mention, I'm breaking down all the isms and phobias myself.
Talking about RACISM and BIGOTRY and REAL HISTORY can be hard to do across lines of difference, but I feel like we must. And, for better or worse, white women are and have always been in my lot. Like everyone else trying to engage white people to face their fears and their dismissive/destructive/oppressive behaviors, I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad, I just want them to wake the fuck up!!
White women are the mothers and wives and lovers and sisters and friends of Black, Indigenous & other People of Color and we need y'all to collectively do more and be better than what we're seeing every day on full display. We need y'all to call each other out; to look in the mirror and admit when you're being a Karen as much as you might hate to admit it.
We need y'all to realize that YOU have been and are the ones WHITE MEN have subjugated all along while being placed on a pedestal or being used to push their own interests. You were either made fragile and in need of white men's protection or you learned their ways and grew empowered to be the co-authors of the slave-trade and segregation chapters of our nation's story. Your purity was invented and made your greatest virtue and it's been used to justify horrendous vile acts against men of darker complexions. And you used the idea of your finer veneer to wield your power against the rest of us.
White women were the reason so many Black men lost their lives in the past, but you want everyone to forget about that because now you're willing and able to freely bear their children. You insist that you're on our side and while we can tell who are real allies are, too many of you still refuse to face the truth and assess your complicity.
You don't want to look more deeply to explore the ways you might be perpetuating some of the same myths that take away the power of other people and keep us all apart. It's hard to forget the past when the present is what it is. No, it's not just white women that are hurting our country; I definitely didn't say that. But who among you will admit, that it is white women who are leading and have led in the same old hateful rhetoric alogngside their male counterparts.
White women have been major players in the culture wars we are constantly in. Heck, they were all over the January 6th Insurrection and are growing militia and anti-government and white supremacist movements right beside white men. Of course, most will say those are people in the extreme RIGHT, not the majority of white American women. But even when white American women have been the number one recipients of affirmative action, when they see people of color in a position they feel belonged to them, they're quick to complain that they're the victims of such efforts to balance out the opportunity gaps in this country. It's been white women in my professional spaces that have tried to put me in my place more than white men. White women don't even support each other if they're different in some way and they definitely keep letting the rest of us down with their vote that, overall, tends to lean Republican.
I don't write this for the fiercest white women allies who are out there every day fighting for real equity; I know some of those women and they are amazing. This is for the ones who aren't doing the work of unpacking their privilege and getting more active because they believe being nice is enough or being with non-white people means they get a free pass. As if you can't be racist or bigoted or an enabler because you're with one of us.
Sure, you're not like the out and proud racists in the world; I'll give you that much. But if that's as far as you're willing to go to assess your own mindsets, feelings, and behaviors then I'd say your allyship is not real and at best, just performative. We need you to work on your fragility and callous up that skin so you can help protect and uplift those you say you love of darker melanin.
