EXTREMIST ANTI-WOKEISM AT ITS WORST

Sometimes just shaking my head is not enough to carry on with my day and erase all recollection of a ludicrous, insulting act. Anti-Wokeism has become more zealous and outrageous than any current notion of Wokeism. If you want to see red, read this news item on The Advocate’s website. The rainbow crosswalk at the site of Orlando nightclub Pulse has gone black for the second time in a week. It’s now being guarded by Florida Department of Transportation employees. Apparently, the National Guard was unavailable.

 

Pulse, you will recall, is where a gunman murdered forty-nine clubgoers on June 12, 2016, most of them Latino and/or queer. 

 

This is clearly no ordinary rainbow crosswalk. Florida has been painting over other such crosswalks in places like Miami and Delray Beach, calling such installations a political act and a safety risk. (Safety risk? WTF?!) 

 

The Orlando crosswalk serves, in part, as a memorial. It was approved by the Florida Legislature and then-Republican governor Rick Scott. Current Republican governor Ron DeSantis even posed for a photo op at the site in 2019 before Anti-Wokeism became a Republican obsession. This is nothing short of a deplorable act in Florida’s ongoing Don’t Say Gay attempts to rewrite reality. 

 

The families of those that died at Pulse and the people who survived deserve better. The LGBTQ community deserves better. Florida deserves better. I hope residents continue to repaint the crosswalk in rainbow hues. To blacken the road again only takes a horrendous hate crime and covers all memory of it with more hate.

 

Outrageous.

 

 

 

  

TOGETHER & APART

With summer Pride events winding down—Edmonton and Calgary are still slated for August—I wonder how much a parade or a dance broadens minds. I’m not thinking about straight people. Our allies have shown they love a party as much as we do. Their attendance does seem to create more of a connection just from being there. My wondering concerns all the letters that comprise that alpha-numeric combo that sometimes represents us: LGBTQQIP2SAA (or something like that—there are various versions).

 

Is the rainbow flag sufficient or are more lines, colours and shapes required? What is it about queer that fails to encompass all?

 

A passage comes to mind from Jeremy Atherton Lin’s Gay Bar (Back Bay Books, 2021):

We hear the word community all the time. Often it 

sounds like wishful thinking. Queer community is just 

as vague—just piling a confusing identity onto an 

elusive concept. Maybe community…excludes inherently…

Imagining London, I saw not one big queer coterie, but 

different people moving in different directions, entropic. 

I thought of amiable moments I shared with nurses or 

people who worked in local shops. They came to mind

clearly. A queer community I couldn’t picture.

 

Community arises from coming together and wanting to belong. Hello, Pride. But I agree with Lin that, once you define it, there will always be outsiders. Even allies don’t quite have an in. They can support queers, but as heterosexuals, they are still technically apart rather than a part. I hear some queer people bemoan how bachelorette parties have taken over drag brunch venues. I also hear disdain in their voices when they say words like heteronormative and breeders, as if all things straight people do should be shunned. There are differences between heterosexual and queer lifestyles and mentalities but, as someone who deeply felt rejected growing up, I’ve never wanted to reject in turn. I don’t twist the golden rule into, “Do unto others as they do unto you.” Hate breeding hate just feels exhausting.

 

The exclusions that get my back up even more are based on resentments and dissociations within our alpha-numeric gobbledygook designation. When I was coming out, I’d hear of gays hating lesbians and vice versa, while both groups dissed bisexuals. In the 2020s, there are people in the “community” seeking to separate themselves from trans, binary and gender-fluid identities. In turn, I’ve been dismissed by a couple of trans people who vilify my gayness and lump me in with The Patriarchy. My queerness, my outsider-ness is not outsider enough. I cannot be trans; I am just an ally. I must not take up trans space. 

 

I do get the importance of having times and places that are just for people like you. Sometimes “community” can be defined broadly as with the grander Pride events but sometimes, even during Pride Week or Month, there are gatherings just for lesbians or trans or people who identify as asexual or aromantic. People perk up when what they have in common is more specifically in common. When I meet another vegetarian (not a vegan), I literally bounce. A vegetarian? Like me! The conversation can go deeper, the connections greater. Same, no doubt when two people who are bisexual or pansexual have an opportunity to chat. 

 

Sometimes I focus too much on the divisions and all the easy ways there are to pick apart any notion of a queer community. With a glass-half-empty lens, I am brought down by the othering that pops up within and by the disdain I hear as people protect and distinguish their more specific identities. 

 

Yes, the queer “community” has its own fractures and divisions. But then what community doesn’t? Unity is so hard to achieve when we’re all independent thinkers.

 

I was away at the family cottage when Vancouver had its Pride events but maybe a big ol’ “everybody’s welcome” Pride parade might have done me some good this year. Maybe I need to zoom out more often instead of zooming in.  

IS IT BACK?

The question in the title popped in my head but it’s wrong. “Is it worse?” is far more accurate. The answer: “Of course.”

 

Talking about my eating disorder again. I have nine hours until I eat. I’m telling myself I’m just dieting, but I don’t think people with eating disorders know how to just diet. As someone with anorexia, my restriction is significant in the best of times, extreme under other circumstances.

 

Sitting here in a café, I perked up when the barista asked if I wanted water: “Regular or sparkling?” I chose the latter, cheered that the bubbles will trick my stomach into thinking I’m consuming something more substantial. 

 

Club soda is now on my shopping list.

 

I recently spent two weeks at the cottage and that “vacation,” a trip intended for relaxation has triggered me. Driving from the airport, I stopped at the grocery store and stocked up on my “safe” foods. I tend to treat myself to a few scones on vacation and I needed to know the fridge supplies had things that would somewhat offset my intake. This is what I always do when I go to the cottage.

 

The problem was this wasn’t a regular cottage stay. Normally it’s almost all downtime, just me and the deck, the beach below offering an inviting morning walk, the river suggesting a quick swim (when no one could possibly be watching). 

 

Throughout the fortnight, however, I only had two dinners on my own. Friends and relatives were around me the rest of the time. It was all lovely. These are wonderful people. But, as is often the case, food is a central conduit for social activity. My eating disorder slithers on the sidelines in social situations. I don’t like to be a spectacle. I don’t want people seeing my small portions and pushing more food on me. When poked and prodded, the eating disorder gets worse. It doubles down. I eat even less. I refuse social invitations. I isolate.

 

I truly thought I was doing well. I ate “normally.” I socialized as best I could. I enjoyed the conversations. I appreciated the food. 

 

The eating disorder was left to sit back and stew. It waited patiently for the visits to end, for the time to take over, guilting me and sending me into severe restriction mode. The opportunity came as soon as I drove to the airport. No farewell donut, no mixed berry scone. Not even that little baggy of pretzels on the plane. 

 

I didn’t stand a chance in trying to dismiss the eating disorder. I was worn out. As an introvert, all the socializing left me exhausted. I was ignoring hunger pangs before I’d even landed back in Vancouver. 

 

People talk about being too tired to eat. For me, it’s the other way around. Not eating makes me too tired. My afternoons are write-offs. No writing. It doesn’t seem to make sense—not much makes sense with an eating disorder—but the only “productive” thing I can do midafternoon is exercise. I never think about food when I’m working out. The exercise is another part of my disorder. It demands full attention. There are no excuses permitted. 

 

I have several friends I’m supposed to contact now that I’m back. It’s been a week and I don’t have the energy to make any attempt to reach out. My social exhaustion is both separate from and woven into the eating disorder. The isolation helps me stick to my disordered behaviours.

 

As I’m sixty now, I wear the weight on my body differently. Even a year ago, some of the weight I perceive as gaining from pastries and full meals would have already dropped off. Only a little weight loss typically shows. Less than ten pounds under my standard weight and I start to look scary—gaunt face, protruding ribs, loss of muscle. The weight insists on lingering this time around. This will make my heightened eating disorder behaviours more established, perhaps even more drastic.

 

Yes, I’m thinking of club soda as a meal.

 

I’m telling myself this is just a rough patch. Some temporary tweaking. I should be so lucky.