I've never wanted the big floofy white dress, and no true friend would put bridesmaids through seafoam taffeta. My partners are different in the big, visual ways, and the small, invisible ways.
I'm Queer-Bisexual, poly, a Radical (to the root) Feminist and a Leatherwomyn, these things have been constants in my life across my history with partners and 'mates' .
I've previously been married to both a man and a womyn (not at the same time!). I'm also a Witch- our 'wedding' rituals are called 'Handfastings', they can be of varying durations from a year-and-a-day to a lifelong commitment. (Pagans who go for that sort of thing may view the 'contract' as binding beyond the bounds of the lifetimes of those involved, personally, being an atheistic Witch myself, I don't go for that sort of thing.)
My handfastings have never been 'legally recognized' and I've never asked one damn thing of the State EXCEPT to be treated in my partnerships exactly the way other partnerships are.
So far as the State has been concerned both my husband and my wife have been nothing other than unrelated people who cohabited with me. Had either of them been hospitalized, I would not have been treated as family. On our taxes, we were not in any way 'family', and had inheritance been an issue we would have been screwed regardless of whether I'm talking about my wife or my husband here. Could I have fixed all that by just 'giving in' and asking the State's recognition of my and my husband's marriage? Yeah- and it was never possible for me and my wife, and that's exactly what's wrong with all of it.
If I get treated differently due to something so arbitrary as whether my spouse has a penis or not, then my entire position in relation to the State is well, based on and filter through the State's gender arbitrary biases and BS, codified into policies of discrimination.
These inequalities are things that yes, I would like to see redressed, but not through a Queered carbon copy of Het-marriage. Instead I advocate what we in Queer Nation referred to as 'full spousal equivalency'- that those who wished to be treated as spouses be able to live as such. That those who are family be treated as family. In both simple things and large- that if my life partner is hospitalized, I not be turned away merely because I do not meet an arbitrary third party's definition of family just because my partner and I happen to share a gender in common.
My Handfastings have both taken place in a context of not having much. There wasn't money for lawyers, inherences to pass on (other than a short lifetime's worth of accumulated odds and ends), and fortunately, both I and my partners were in relatively good health. Many of the legal stickinesses that legally recognized marriage just 'take care of' didn't come up for us. Naturally, as one grows older, these become more important- incredibly so if one has kids- which we didn't.
My husband and I were first Handfasted for a year-and-a-day when I was in my early 20s. It was a very serious decision, we made after careful deliberation. We both understood we were not ready for a lifelong commitment to remain together, but we were ready to make a lifelong commitment to be friends and love one another. I'm proud to say that through the years, we have lived up to those promises.
The ceremonies were held among our community- our peers, one on the east coast, where we lived and most of his friends were, and then a second in Ohio, where I was from among many of my friends. We were Handfasted outdoors, with no officiating clergy- we performed the ceremony ourselves. We needed no intermediary.
A year later, we renewed our vows, choosing to take on another year-and-a-day together. Again, the ceremony was performed by us, among our community, it was not about the State, it was not about religion, it was between us, and those who stood with us through difficult times and wonderful celebrations. It was a partnership, and we loved one another very deeply.
As the term of the second Hand fasting came to a close, we prepared for a third, but in the end, went forward together as a couple without ritual or social contract.
Eventually, over time, we came to recognize certain deep incompatibilities that would prevent us from happily spending the rest of our lives together. It was a painful realization, but a necessary one. After our years together, both Handfasted and not, I eventually left him. We've gone through periods of not talking, but now, many years later, I count him among my closest and dearest friends.
Following my years with my husband, I feel deeply in love with a womyn friend. Many of the details are not important to anyone other than us. Suffice it to say, for a time, we were truly inseparable.
We lived together in Baltimore, with a small knot of dear friends around us, who were supportive of us as a couple. The hardest part here is to figure out what to, and what not to write. She was everything to me.
Despite poverty, unemployment, all manner of things being difficult, there were also many times and ways in which our years together were incredibly good- for me at least, I won't presume to speak for her. I have always been 'an activist' (small "A") of sorts, and together, we did a fair amount of 'activist' work- always together.
So it was no great surprise when after several years together, we announced to our friends that we wanted to get Handfasted for life. In the course of deciding the details, we did what to us was a perfectly natural outgrowth of who we were, who our community was, and the fact that we, as Queer womyn, lived unequally in American society and were under attack.
We decided to get married outside the Christian Coalition's "Road to Victory" conference in DC. (No, I'm not kidding.)
We, and our dear Baltimore friends convoyed down to DC to meet with other activists, relatives, and friends to express our love through marriage. We directly made our love (and dissent) visible to those intent on making us into inhuman monsters and boogywomyn.
Our friends who here, will have to go unnamed, were just amazing, some made gifts, others dressed to the nines out of respect. You'd sort of have to know the people in question. It was incredibly touching. Small gestures we never imagined. All our community, from doing things like decorating the cars, to total strangers at the Handfasting itself, made the day incredibly special.
To this day, I still have no idea whose kid it was that invoked "Air" by blowing bubbles across the wedding party, but I am still grateful.
When the time came, she read her vows and I read mine, and we pledged ourselves to one another and bound our hands together with a cord, symbolizing our love.
Afterwards, we, meaning the wedding party/activist community tried to enter the Washington Hilton (Where the Christian Coalition convention was being held) to enjoy champagne in the lobby bar. At first we were prevented from entering by hotel security. Then one of the protesters, who was also a member of a large professional association who annually held their convention at the hotel, pointed out that the association might be interested in how Queers and progressives were being denied access, not for any disruptive behavior, but simply because they intended to have a drink at the hotel bar. Soon enough, the hotel managed to see things our way, and in we went.
We went simply to be ourselves. We went not to protest, but to exist in that space at that time. Suffice it to say, the overreaction at our insistence we be treated just like anyone else brought home certain realities. The creeping horror some conference goers appear to have felt when they realized there were two brides but no grooms is something I will always remember. There we were, a group of friends toasting a newly married couple while others in that space wanted us dead. We exist, and when we refuse to hide ourselves and our lives some people decide we make nice punching bags.
As a small but very important footnote, a dear friend bought us a bottle of champagne, and a domain name as wedding presents.
While some may consider it a form of weakness to write what comes next, that it might be used against us, I guess writing reality is just more important to me.
It wasn't terribly long after our Handfasting that she left me. It was very hard, very difficult, and we're not in contact at this point. That was more than a decade ago. I was her first serious female partner. She was the longest committed relationship with a womyn I had ever been in.
All that said, there is a somewhat happy (not ending, but) where I am now.
After she left, I moved back to Ohio, took some time alone, and well, recovered as much as possible.
Ten years ago this fall, I connected with my current partner. He had been around through some of those earlier years, if only around the edges of my life, known through mutual friends. In time, we came together and became a couple. He had been there for my handfasting to my wife, and yes, was the kind fellow who bought the champagne. The URL he had gotten us as our wedding present was http://www.barf.org, which he and I have restructured and gone on to co-run in its phoenix-like new form.
So you may ask, have I 'sold out' sleeping with a man again?
As far as I'm concerned I'm doing exactly what I've always done- fallen in love with a person.
Is my life fundamentally different now that I'm with someone of the opposite gender?
In some ways, yes. Primarily due to how visually same gender couples are treated radically different a hundred times a day than same gendered couples are.
The primary difference?
The daily potential for violence, something Queers in same gender relationships live with constantly, is something that never crosses the minds of those who have never lived it. An presumably Het couple walking down the street holding hands don't have to worry about repercussions from that act. Potential violence, fear, threat, and self censorship over the casual everyday acts are not things most Het folk can begin to understand the depths of, the way Queers instinctually, down to our bones do.
So here I am, ten years on, my (male) partner and I are not married (legally or ritual/community-wise), despite being deeply 'partnered' and intending to spend the rest of our lives together.
How can I have my partnership with a man legally recognized by the State with all the privileges and direct benefits both societally and legally when there but for a twist of fate he could just as easily be a she, and I would be legally barred from such.
Here I am, a Bisexual with an opposite gender partner, 'lucky' enough to have the dilemma of only 'half' my very being having even that possibility. Were he a she, that other half possibility becomes a full null. That very zero-sum game, all or nothingness negates the very Bi nature of my existence. I occupy a both/and when the system is set up to only recognize binary possibilities.
I don't mean to draw any conclusions in this piece, rather, I hope to point out the basic inequality we as your Queer American neighbors inhabit.
Today, when Bush stands up and whines about my existence (Oh, but he's being so TOLERANT of my inequality) just try, for the space of one long diary, to understand that some of our lives, are what's on the other end of that rhetoric.
Now here I am, many years have passed, I'm not as young and penniless as I once was, and once again, those issues that legal marriage 'just takes care of' rear their heads again. And instead of just being able to list my opposite gender partner as my spouse, all that now dealt with, I'm instead confronted with again, the choice of lots of lawyering, or just getting legally married- which is something that opposite gender spouses are allowed to do- if not encouraged to do.
Whether I legally marry my male partner or not, my not marrying him doesn't help any other Queers. Yet doing so, thinking of getting legally married to someone of the opposite gender, instead of bringing me joy, just makes me angry- because it means that merely because I have a cunt and he has a dick we have potential access to the whole bundle of State sanctioned goodies- you know, simple human things, like being able to visit your sick lover in the hospital.
We both instead, feel deep ambiguity, and I feel deep betrayal. Betrayal by time and place I happen to live in. No, I can't wait for America to get it's shit together about treating Queers as human beings. But nor can I personally EVER feel fully right about just the 'simple act' of getting married- due to the sick inability for this country to do the right thing.
Here I am today, furious at how this country treats people. At times I feel repulsed by what 'marriage' has come to mean, not that it's necessarily something new, Feminism has long held critiques of the institution. In some very visceral sense, I at times feel deep unwillingness to have anything to do with anything so historically entangled with Church, State and misogyny.
Queer Nation used to define the word "Queer" as not only encompassing HOMOsexual people, but also as Kinky people, Transfolk, Bis, and yes even Heterosexuals working to undermine heterosexism and homophobia, people at the sexual fringes, considered Queer by society. We consciously took the term from the bashers and used it to define a family of people working together politically so that we all might simply be who and what we are.
Does this mean there are Gays and Lesbians who were NOT Queer? Absolutely. Does it mean that there are men who fuck womyn who ARE as a couple are Queer? Absolutely. Does it also then mean it is possible to have a opposite gender relationship that is Queer?
Welcome to my latest Queer non-marriage- thus far.
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