Tiberius on the Lam: All about Contexts, understanding, changing, creating them
While on my morning walks, I have lots of time to think. Generally, I first load Tiberius into the car and take him to Ojibwe Park in downtown Saginaw. He loves it there. The park is empty in the early mornings, save a few people, mostly in cars, often just driving through. Today there were two police officers. Over the weekend, when I was walking with Tibe and the beloved and Emma, we saw someone who had been fishing in the Saginaw River. He walked up the bank as though he were going to approach me; Tibe barked, and the man said, oh, I know I’m not going to hurt you, and walked in the other direction. The context in which people encounter Tibe matters.
His barking in our suburban Maryland house? Loud, unacceptable, dangerous, threatening, not appropriate for the community (by some of our neighbor’s estimations). His barking in the public park of a depressed Midwestern town where some drug deals occasionally happen and people party at night sometimes with lots of alcohol, and I assume other intoxicants of which I do not necessarily see the evidence? Reasonable, useful, prudently protective. Same dog, different context.
Of course, this isn’t a new observation. The really hot butch I might desire at the bar on Saturday night decked out in a tie, wearing wing tip shoes, might be verbally harassed even physically assaulted on Monday morning for wearing the very same outfit. Different contexts, different results.
One of the core actions of my life has been creating contexts where what is vilified about queer people, and particularly lesbians, can be celebrated and understood as special. My work is about creating contexts for queer people, queer women, to be recognized and affirmed in ways that they are not in hetero contexts. I have been doing this kind of work to create contexts since Affirmations Lesbian/Gay Community Center in the early 1990s. Today this work continues with Sinister Wisdom and other publishing projects.
So I understand the power of contexts and of creating specific contexts in which marginalized and oppressed people can recognize and affirm their lives. The experience with Tiberius reminds me of the significance of creating contexts that resist and challenge the oppressive contexts in which we live.
Yet, the experience also reminds me that we cannot cede the contexts that seek to diminish, erase, and harm us. This part of the equation is always more challenging for me. I understand creating new contexts; I understand separating from a larger, oppressive context and creating a different, new, affirmative one. I do not yet know or understand how to challenge and transform the contexts that harm. And when I encounter them, I find them so painful and gut-wrenching that I often lose my bearings.
How can we challenge homophobia? How can we challenge contexts that see to diminish and harm us without absenting ourselves? I do not know how to answer these questions. I wish I did. I wish I knew how I could change the context in Maryland for Tibe. I wish I knew how to challenge the bullies and bigots in the places where they thrive.
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