While immersing myself in the theatrical film adaptation of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina
this week, I couldn't help but think of the historic changes we've
witnessed this past year. Social standards and their concomitant
hypocrisies are common to all human cultures. One hundred and forty
years ago it revolved around heterosexual adultery; today it's
gender-based bigotry. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
This long novel by Tolstoy, called by Faulkner the greatest novel
ever written, with what might be the first example of
"stream-of-consciousness" in literary history, is complex, layered, and
not easily amenable to film adaptation. It is very much a novel of its
times, as Tolstoy shares his thoughts about the sociopolitical world of
his contemporary Russia, as seen through the eyes of Konstantin Levin,
the landowner who works the fields with his hired hands who had been
serfs in his father's home. Tolstoy's worldview was prescient in many
ways, and most enduring in the focus on the doomed romance of Anna and
Vronsky. That romance occurred at a time when divorce had only recently
become less rare (the Bolsheviks instituted no-fault civil divorce in
1918), and while extramarital sex was common in all social classes, it
was expected to play out under the covers, and not in public.
So how is this relevant to the LGBT community? There have always been
gay and trans Americans, but until recently they, too, were expected,
sometimes on the pain of violence if not death, to keep under cover. Was
gender variance evident in our culture? Of course. Were same-sex
relationships happening in parks and bathhouses, bars and Boston
marriages? Surely. And just as Russian society did not really grapple
with gender relationships until the Tolstoys of the world boldly wrote
of such things, so did American society not take notice of the LGBT
community until Stonewall. I personally recall traveling to Greenwich
Village the second night of the uprising because, having heard nothing
of any insurrection, I had nothing to fear. New York papers carried
reports of riots in Harlem and confrontations in Ocean Hill-Brownsville,
but gays rebelling in the Village? Unheard of, because "those people"
did not exist.
What was most poignant to me in the film were the scenes where Anna
Arkadyevna brazenly walks back out into society, overtly flaunting her
affair with Vronsky. Heads turned away, whispered breaths and gross
comments abound, and you could see the pain in Anna's eyes. Yet she
still would not be denied. Damn the hypocrisy -- she was going to live
her life as she saw fit, find and cling to her happiness as she defined
it. And she was able to do so until she felt betrayed by her lover.
I, too, have felt the eyes of society peering closely at me at times,
wondering who, really, is that woman? Just as some gay persons attract
more attention than others, the same holds for trans persons, and women
more commonly than men. I've survived by years of preparation, years of
self-abnegation, focusing on helping others and hoping that I would find
inner peace through that life experience. It has worked for me, though
others have not been as fortunate. We read their names at the Trans Day
of Remembrance each year, and there are countless gay men and women who
still suffer the same as well. And, analogously to Anna, many don't make
it because they cannot overcome the social disapproval, the rejection
at work and at home, and the resultant self-loathing that can easily
drive one to despair. I believe most of us are still vulnerable to that
self-criticism to some degree, even those who are successful, those who
get married, and those who make a difference by helping others. It's
hard to outrun your culture's disapproval.
I personally support marriage equality for the same reason I support
comprehensive trans rights -- for the human dignity inherent in our
Declaration that we are all created equal. We may cut ads portraying
loving gay couples to push the agenda forward after our recent victories,
but it isn't really about happiness. It's about pursuing happiness, for
the wrong reasons as well as the right ones. It is for the right to get
divorced as well as to get married. It is for the right to be judged by
your skills, not your identity, whether you're capable of succeeding or
not. It is for friendship based on the content of your character, not
your sexual or gender identity. Frank Kameny, one of the earliest gay
rights activists, is known for coining the simple phrase, "Gay is good."
But it really isn't; it's neutral, no more valuable than straight. And
trans is not better than cis, just different in kind.
We Americans have a fundamental sense of fairness. In spite of the
resistance of sizable majorities of the population over the centuries to
those who were different, including waves of immigrants, the core
principles of the Bill of Rights have stood the test of time. In 2012 it
is the LGBT community that has benefited in a grand manner from that
sense of fairness. We are accelerating forward.
WINE RACK LAMP
9 年前
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