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I think I've figured it out.
My fear of having (or reticence to have) children (yet).
I once told Ami_B that I want my strangeness to be so indelibly inked (possibly literally) on my skin that I can never pass for normal.
In our culture (hell, in all cultures) it is the job/purpose of parents (from the culture-as-a-whole's PoV) to indoctrinate the next generation of culture-members into the norms and mores and so-on of the culture.
As such, parents (and, in this culture, particularly mothers) are under a great deal of pressure to provide an example of exactly what it takes to count as a Person in the culture. To give the children the right kind of role models so that the behaviour they learn, from the cradle, to imitate is behaviour that suits the dominant paradigm of what is appropriate.
I know that my husband believes that, in order to stay safe, one must stay closeted (as a pagan, as a queer, as an energy-healer, as a sex-radical, as a communist, whatever...).
In areas where one actually will get beaten to death/go to prison/lose one's family/etc. for a given practice or personal/biological trait, this is true. Sad, but true.
In a situation where that is not the case, and one is defining 'safe' not as "not having my life/family/livelihood threatened", but as "fitting in enough so that people who don't necessarily matter won't look at you funny", this is simply not the case.
In this kind of situation, one is safer being Out (as whatever) because if you know people know and don't care whether they know or not, you can't be blackmailed about Whatever It Is.
I am terrified that the wild lightning woman, the Amazon, that is me (the tart, the vamp, the sex-positive woman I'm only just starting to try and be; the woman who takes her shirt off in public because there's no law against it, the strong feminist, the pornographer, the poet, the singer, the woman who literally dances down the street, the goth, the goddess-woman, the openly queer bi-girl whose thoughts, just occasionally, throw a blip up on the Radical Radar), I'm terrified that the Me whom I love, all of the That-Which-Is-Me, will be subsumed/crushed/deleted by the sheer weight of cultural conservative-normativity.
I want to be the mom who wears PVC to the PTA.
I want to be the mom whose kids actually know about sex - not just reproduction + abstinence, but pleasure and boundaries and self-assurance and knowing (and asking for, and getting) what you want, and everything else - perhaps to the point where the other kids are coming to them for advice.
I want to be the mom with the gorgeous tattoo across her entire back.
I want to be the mom who doesn't cave to the pressure to wear a top with her bathing suit
I want to be the mom whose kids (I wish) actually like eating their vegetables
I want to be the mom whose kids know what weeds they can eat out of the back yard, whose got food growing in the front garden along with the flowers.
I want to be the mom who takes her kids and her husband to Dyke March.
I want to be the mom who buys juice in glass bottles (well, that I can start doing now) specifically because they aren't plastic bottles or tetra-packs.
I want to be the mom who, despite wearing four-inch-heels and occasionally wielding a flogger, despite having a strong, well-satisfied libido, despite not having an immaculately trimmed goddamn lawn, despite not fitting any of my societies norms, has bright, creative kids who turn out fucking awesome.
I do not want to be the mom who kills herself, slowly, dream by dream, and lie by lie, in the name of fitting in and looking like a good mother.
My fear of having (or reticence to have) children (yet).
I once told Ami_B that I want my strangeness to be so indelibly inked (possibly literally) on my skin that I can never pass for normal.
In our culture (hell, in all cultures) it is the job/purpose of parents (from the culture-as-a-whole's PoV) to indoctrinate the next generation of culture-members into the norms and mores and so-on of the culture.
As such, parents (and, in this culture, particularly mothers) are under a great deal of pressure to provide an example of exactly what it takes to count as a Person in the culture. To give the children the right kind of role models so that the behaviour they learn, from the cradle, to imitate is behaviour that suits the dominant paradigm of what is appropriate.
I know that my husband believes that, in order to stay safe, one must stay closeted (as a pagan, as a queer, as an energy-healer, as a sex-radical, as a communist, whatever...).
In areas where one actually will get beaten to death/go to prison/lose one's family/etc. for a given practice or personal/biological trait, this is true. Sad, but true.
In a situation where that is not the case, and one is defining 'safe' not as "not having my life/family/livelihood threatened", but as "fitting in enough so that people who don't necessarily matter won't look at you funny", this is simply not the case.
In this kind of situation, one is safer being Out (as whatever) because if you know people know and don't care whether they know or not, you can't be blackmailed about Whatever It Is.
I am terrified that the wild lightning woman, the Amazon, that is me (the tart, the vamp, the sex-positive woman I'm only just starting to try and be; the woman who takes her shirt off in public because there's no law against it, the strong feminist, the pornographer, the poet, the singer, the woman who literally dances down the street, the goth, the goddess-woman, the openly queer bi-girl whose thoughts, just occasionally, throw a blip up on the Radical Radar), I'm terrified that the Me whom I love, all of the That-Which-Is-Me, will be subsumed/crushed/deleted by the sheer weight of cultural conservative-normativity.
I want to be the mom who wears PVC to the PTA.
I want to be the mom whose kids actually know about sex - not just reproduction + abstinence, but pleasure and boundaries and self-assurance and knowing (and asking for, and getting) what you want, and everything else - perhaps to the point where the other kids are coming to them for advice.
I want to be the mom with the gorgeous tattoo across her entire back.
I want to be the mom who doesn't cave to the pressure to wear a top with her bathing suit
I want to be the mom whose kids (I wish) actually like eating their vegetables
I want to be the mom whose kids know what weeds they can eat out of the back yard, whose got food growing in the front garden along with the flowers.
I want to be the mom who takes her kids and her husband to Dyke March.
I want to be the mom who buys juice in glass bottles (well, that I can start doing now) specifically because they aren't plastic bottles or tetra-packs.
I want to be the mom who, despite wearing four-inch-heels and occasionally wielding a flogger, despite having a strong, well-satisfied libido, despite not having an immaculately trimmed goddamn lawn, despite not fitting any of my societies norms, has bright, creative kids who turn out fucking awesome.
I do not want to be the mom who kills herself, slowly, dream by dream, and lie by lie, in the name of fitting in and looking like a good mother.
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