Accentuate the Positive

[freya]

So, today I was out at lunch (Camille's Sidewalk Cafe) and the weather is pretty beautiful here, so I sat out in the sun -- a little cool, but, hey, this is Rochester, NY, so we take what we can get and are grateful for it!

Anyways, there was a young lesbian couple there, probably late teens, and they were very, very much into PDAs (public displays of affection, not tech gadgets) -- like just as much as any silly straight couple that age that wants all the world to know that they're "in love." And this was not like downtown, in any kind of "gay" neighborhood, but out in one of our southeastern suburbs. And, as far as I could tell, no one -- and there were lots of people around at the time -- was at all phased by their behavior, or even seemed to care in any way.

So, it seemed to me that this is a very, very positive thing: This young couple was acting just exactly like any straight couple that age would act: silly and overly demonstratinve of their in-loveness; and all of the other people around were acting just like sane adults would act around a similar straight couple: ignoring them and their over-demonstrativeness. I found the entire situation to be quite delightful in its everydayness.

And on the way back to my office, it occurred to me that we hear way, way too much about all of the big, scary dangers of being GLBT and of being out, and the mainstream media cannot give it enough sensationalist airtime when some terrible crime is perpetrated against someone because of his/her sex, gender and/or sexual orientation....but on the flip side, we don't give half as much attention to how much things have changed since June 1969 and to how very, very, very much more often than not, being who we truly are as GLBT people is just accepted without word or incident and very much NOT a big deal to anyone. (I'm talking here about most places in the US -- I know this is not the case everywhere in the world.)

And actually, just to put some of this in perpective, I was talking over the weekend to a friend of mine who works at our local GLBT community center and who teaches a workshop on "Coming Out," and she gave me this little statisitc she uses in her workshop (again from the US):

Chances of suffering bodily injury:
Due to an auto accident: 1 in 100
Due to a Sexual Orientation hate crime: 1 in 66,500

Chances of dying:
Due to injuries suffered in an auto accident: 1 in 8,000
Due to injuries suffered in a SO hate crime: 1 in 1,335,000

We don't get coast to coast sensationalist coverage of every terrible auto accident death, do we? Of course not, because, in the first place, it is probably deemed too commonplace to be newsworthy, except for on a very limited local basis, and in the second place, if every single auto accident fatality got the attention of a particularly violent hate crime, a lot of people would be too petrifed to get into an automobile and that would be problematic for society as a whole.

So anyways, I am thinking it might be a good idea to celebrate examples of the ways in which and the extent to which the presence and lives of GLBT people has become commonplace, so this is a thread in which we can share about things that we notice or that happen to us or that we participate in that show how far we have come and how much we have for which to be grateful (to HP, of course!).

freya

....and, if anyone feels a strong compulsion to focus on and talk about the negative and the scary and how far we yet have to go, that's fine, but please start another thread for that purpose, OK?

[freya]

Well, here's a very positive story from a few years ago. I posted it on a different thread once, but it goes here ever better:

When my gay son (L) was a sophmore in HS, he had to take this "health" class that included a seriously lame-*ss unit on sexuality. Anyway, the unit began with him having to explain to the teacher the difference between sex and gender when she started out by using the terms "male" and "man" and "female" and "woman" interchangeably, and it only went downhill from there.

Every couple of days he would come home with a story about some new silliness, and we would talk about what he might do to try to make the situation better for himself, but, after the first lesson, he really seemed to decide that he was just going to put up with it and keep his mouth shut -- except for complaining to me. Well, he did OK with that strategy for the the majority of the unit (If you can define "OK" as: managing to keep his mouth shut even though he was getting more and more angry and resentful and frustrated by the whole thing)......

....until, one day at the very end of the unit, I'm at lunch with some colleagues, and I get a phone call from him:

L: "Mom, you're going to be getting a call from a principal because I just walked out of health class."

Me: "What happened?"

L: "Well, she wanted us to do this exercise where we had to respond to some really stupid questions she handed out (for the girls) about how they feel about certain things that boys do and (for the boys) how we feel about some things that girls do. And it was so stupid and insulting and just like yeah-sure-everyone-in-the-world-is-straight, and I was just so angry and pissed-off already that when it came my turn to answer the question: 'I like it when girls.....', I said: 'I like it when girls go out with other girls and leave the boys for me,' and then I said '...and this lesson is so stupid and insulting that I can't take it anymore and I have to leave.' And I left."

Me: "Well, OK, go to your next class and if anyone gives you any trouble, have them call me. And when they call, I'll take care of it." (I did also take the Al Anon teaching opportunity to explain to him how taking care of himself by addressing some of the issues with the problems in the curriculum beforehand with the teacher might have kept things from having to get to this point.)

So, I get back to my office and, sure enough, there's a message from a principal asking me to call her back ASAP.........and, wow, after listening to him talk about this BS for several weeks and not getting involved or interfering in his life by trying to "fix" it all myself, I am SO fired-up and ready to rumble over this one, I call her back immediately:

Me: "Hi, this is CC, LS's mom returning your call. What's going on?" .... trying my best to sound all innocent-and-clueless-like, just waiting for her to try to start in on my son and/or to try to defend the BS curriculum.

......but the joke was on me because, instead, she says: "Ms. C, I'm very sorry to have to tell you that your son walked out of his health class today because apparently there were some serious problems with the curriculum and he felt discriminated against as a gay student...." ...and she went on to apologize to me profusely and offered to meet with me and L and the teacher to make sure he was OK, etc....etc.....etc...."

Wow! What a (pleasant) shock that was -- although I do have to admit it was a little bit of a let-down not to get to have a big fight over it, seeing as how I had gotten myself all worked up already and everything.

freya

[indigo]

That's great. It's good to hear some positive news it helps us thrive.

[Eroica]

Yes, it helps to think about the positive for our own sanity, but for informative and educational purposes the focus needs to be on the negative. I know people bemoan about how all the news on TV is negative, but I want to know the negative. I want to know if some psychopath is living in my neighborhood, or if a hurricane is headed this way. I want to know that *before* the positive stuff.

I can think of many instances in which ignoring the negative resulted in catastrophe. Like, not calling on the BS leading up to the invasion of Iraq. The invasion was portrayed as a positive thing, and those pesky naysayers were the "negative" ones.

Anyway, I'm not saying that thinking about the positive is bad..just that we need to think about the negative so we can change it into positive. If something is already positive, there's nothing to think about.

Just my opinion.

[NoelleR]

Just to keep this post 'sort of' on topic, I guess I'd have to say that I'm a firm believer in focusing/focussing [checked it out and both spellings are in use today (what happened to all the grammar rules we used to have....?)] on the positive.....I find that whatever I focus on is just what I get, and I want 'positive' .....! What happened when I focused on the negative.....? my world seemed to turn to !@#$%*&%^% lolol. [...and PS, I don't see being informed regarding psychopaths (or any other seemingly negative term) as a negative, but as a positive, so that I can continue my positive life out of 'his/her' way..... (o:


OK, enough of the topic, and now onto the first thing that came into my mind when I read the title of this thread (the rest of this chorus....?)..........:

You've got to....: accentuate the positive;
eliminate the negative;
latch on to the affirmative; and
Don't mess with Mr. In-between.....! (o:


NoelleR

[freya]

Originally Posted by NoelleR

You've got to....: accentuate the positive;
eliminate the negative;
latch on to the affirmative; and
Don't mess with Mr. In-between.....! (o:


NoelleR

Ha! ....and that's exactly where I got it from -- not that I'm that old, but that song is used in the opening credits of one of my favorite movies, Blast From the Past!!!!!!

freya

[adore79]

I've always been in hetero relationships, mostly because it was just easier. I didnt want the problems that came with the stigma of being in a same sex relationship, I thought I had enough problems. I was lucky because I had the choice to be in a hetero relationship, many do not. I have to hand it to everyone who does deal with crap just for being themselves, you are strong and who cares what society and ignorant people say. I'm very glad that being gay is getting more acceptable all the time.

I wish I could go against the grain in more areas of life just for the sake of stirring things up. I know that isnt what gay people do, Im just sayin I'd like to.

So good on you all!

[freya]

So, last Thursday we had some really fierce wind here, and, when I got home from work that afternoon, part of the roofing from one of my dormers was in the back yard. So, I called the people (big company locally) who put the roof on like 12 years ago, and they put me in touch with this guy who does their little touch-up stuff for them.

I called him on Friday, and he came over this morning to look at it and give me quote. Well, he was a super-nice guy, but a little different from most roffers I've dealth with...chatting about the history of the neighborhood (I live in an historic district), playing with the cats, etc.....and then he gave me his business card, and it was, literally, the most beautiful business card I've ever seen that wasn't an artist's card. It was very pastelly, and had 3 tools (a hammer, a screw-driver and something else) in some kind of jar, but it was all very impressionistic. And the whole thing was just very striking and beautifully laid-out.

I was quite impressed, so I said so and asked him who had done it for him.

And he goes: "Oh, my partner. He's a stay-at-home-mom now (little chuckle here), but he does some free-lance graphic design work."

Very cool.

freya

[freya]

This is really funny.

At my office here we have 6 private-practice financial planners and our support staff. All of the financial planners, except me, are men (and male) and all of the support staff people, except one freelance paraplanner who's here kind of as-needed, are women (and female). Well, several of the women are realtively young and very single, and our office manager is in her early 40's, but also single (divorced) and very actively looking.

The women can be pretty funny and very clever about "looking out for each others' interests" when it comes to identifying potentially interesting prospects, whether they be clients, or wholesalers, or delivery guys, or guys from the offices nearby, whatever....like if someone comes around that one of them knows one of the others would be interested in, they'll phone each other up and give each other a good excsue to be somewhere that they'll be able to see the prospect in question when the prospect is going to be there.

My situation in all of this is a little odd, because, obviously, I am one of the advisors and, therefore, one of "the bosses," which, in some sense, makes me one of "the guys," but, socially, and in terms of my management style (and also because there have been times in the past when I've had to take a very hard-line -- read "b*tchy"! -- stand in order to discourage some very misogynistic attitudes and behaviors on the part of my colleageus toward the staff) I'm also -- maybe even moreso -- one of "the girls."

And, of course, everyone knows I'm a lesbian and everyone knows I'm attracted to butches.

So, anyways, right before lunchtime today, I get a call from Cindy (our OM).

She: very urgently, "frey, I need you to come to the reception area!"

Me: "What's wrong?"

She: "Just come...NOW...and bring an overnight...I'll talk to you about it when you get here!" Click.

So, thinking she's like run out of overnights and is about to get in trouble with one of my colleagues, I grab an UPS envelope, and high-tail it over to reception.

I hand her the envelope, and she starts saying to me, as if I'd asked her about what overnights were going out today: "Well, we're going to have one going to Minneapolis...and I think Melissa's got one going to Albany if you need it....." and all the time she's like twitching her head back toward the stairway where it sounds like Jack, an advisor who has his office downstairs, is on his way up with a client.

And, the next thing I know, Jack comes up around the corner with this gorgeous butch client, whom he's escorting to the door....and Cindy, of course, is facing me, so neither of them can see the hugely self-congratulatory grin she's got on her face....and I'm trying not to laugh and trying not to stare..and Jack comes over and makes some typical Jack small talk with me and his client and then lets the client out, and as soon as he's around the landing corner on his way back to his office, Melissa (who's his primary assistant) comes flying up the stairs: "Did she (meaning me) see her (meaning Jack's client)? Did she see her?" And we all burst out laughing.

And I'm thinking that it's very nice of the girls to look out for me the same way that they look out for each other in these matters!!!!!!!! Actually, I think I might owe them lunch on that one!

freya