Change over time

I think it is interesting how things change over time.  Not to date myself, but I took a computer class before there were windows, when dos commands were typed next to a > sign.  Technology has taken off and transitioned things that were once considered luxuries into common place must-have's.

Along with that we have seen changes in gay rights, the LBGTQ movement, as well as a number of other things.  In Halberstam's Gaga Feminism it states "We all know of the "protect the children" ruses that religious Americans have used to censor all kinds of materials that feature any kind of open discussion of sexuality" (xxi) that were evident in the 1970's.  I was raised within a religious family with all of the protection that my parents could infuse.  Over time we saw things change with the first occurrences of gays in television shows that were then viewed as bad.  But as things progress much like technology we find that things aren't as "non-normal" because over time they become normalized.  There are many programs that include gays and lesbians, instead of the few scant shows that were in the past.  Halberstam's article also notes that "this generation of kids - kids growing up in the age of divorce, queer parenting, and economic collapse - who will probably recognize, name, and embrace new modes of gender and sexuality within a social environment that has changed their meaning forever." (xxi)

I found it interesting in listening to a local radio show that the University of Toronto had a Key-Note speaker who was to speak on the sexuality of children.  The speaker is a professor at a California university.  He has written several books on children, sexuality, and pedophilia.  He has even claimed himself to be a "theoretical pedophile".  In listening to the show the host addressed the audience about this issue stating that we have seen the movement of gay rights and then posed the question, 'Do you think we may see the acceptance of pedophilia as an acceptable form of sexuality?  Email me your responses.'  So that makes me very concerned as a parent.  While I tend to be open minded, this, no matter how much the future may try to normalize this could never be right.  I just wonder how far will be too far before we realize that some thing like this cannot be normalized.  I am all for people having rights to be whoever or whatever they want.  That is their right.  We were all given free will.  I am also for the rights of the children.  I hope I never see the day come that pedophilia is normalized.  It may seem outlandish now, but we have seen things change over time as more things are introduced and lose their sense of "not normal".

Getting past the “norm”

I was brought up in an environment where normal was something you strove for. The father who worked; the mother who stayed home with the kids and volunteered time at the school PTA meetings; the house with the white picket fence and the 2.5 kids – well except for that as I grew up in a house where I was the oldest of four kids, but other than that, it was “so-called” normal. While we tried to maintain the “normal” status, behind closed doors it was more dysfunctional at best. Dysfunction threw me into a tailspin as a young adult. I struggled with the expectation that I was supposed to marry my high school sweetheart, have 2.5 kids, a house with a white picket fence, and be an at home mom. Instead my high school sweetheart left me as an unwed mother who worked outside the home and lived with my parents because my job didn’t afford a place of my own. I was not the “normal” child they had dreamed of – not by far. When I was 23 I met my husband. He wasn’t the “approved” model my mother and father had hoped for and vehemently told me not the marry him, but being the rebellious child I was, I did anyway. I ran away from the norm and ended up with a not so normal life. He wasn’t ideal for them, but he was ideal for me. He allowed me the freedom to explore things without a set of rules with which to apply them. He showed me how to break free from bonds that my mother still had over me – literally speaking she would withhold things from me like I was a child if I didn’t do what she said – like watching my son. He gave me so much that was not “normal”. Our roles in the household are not what my parents would consider normal. I work and my husband stays at home with the last of our five children. While he isn’t involved with the PTA, he oversees the homework aspect and the household duties. If anything, it is a bit of a reversal of roles. We have both struggled with finding placement in these roles because we were brought up with traditional expectations. Part of that struggle is an exploration of what seems to fit, what seems right. While we don’t have it down, we also have seen that we aren’t the only ones in this struggle of determining what are roles are. There are many families in which the traditional roles are reversed. There are other norms being broken as fathers are coming alongside mothers to do household chores as now they both work. I think struggle is a good word for transgenre, transgender, or anything that is not the norm. Struggle is something that comes from fighting against that which is common and comfortable, but struggle is what gets you to stretch and see what is possible. It’s an exploration, maybe to find what is you, maybe to find out what can be, maybe what is possible – maybe even that the next genre isn’t a genre at all but a freedom to do something without limitation. Writing is life and life is writing – that is sometimes how we find out what life is all about anyway.

Intertwinings

In Cha's Dictee, in the section called Love Poetry, she uses the pages in an interesting way in that the story doesn't read straightforward but jumps across pages. This may create some confusion but it also creates a story for itself. I believe what Cha was trying to do was to show that each story has layers. Just as each person does.

Writing can be flat. It can lack depth. A writer can tell a story but if it isn't layered it isn't as interesting. If a character is only shown in one light it seems to cheapen that characters ability to be understood. In this section of the book, Cha takes a woman watching a show at the theater and shows her becoming part of the movie as if she is watching herself on screen. This is one story, but she intertwines this story with a woman who was unseen.  This woman was married through an arrangement her parents made. She struggles to love a husband that she didn't select for herself.  There is no indication that these women are one and the same but it provides a look at two very different scenarios in which a woman can be viewed.

In some ways these two women seem to be juxtaposed in that one is seen while the other is unseen. I am sure many women can identify with both. In many ways America affords us the ability to have more equality with men but there are those who are still unseen - whether through culture or abuse or choice. Although I believe not many women would choose to be unseen.

I appreciate what Cha does with the story as it creates an interesting read when trying to piece it together. I believe this effect does something more than what words can really say. It tells a deeper story still.