Witness & Testimony on Gender Expression

Content warning: This post has references to hate, genocide, the Holocaust, queerphobia, and LGBTQ+ issues.

No links are included to news reports nor to other online items that amplify hate and trauma.

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These days, creating legislation that calls for the suppression or repression of behaviors that don't conform to a person's perceived gender, and calls for the complete eradication of trans people seem to be current ways for some hurt, fearful people in power to be seen as being among the cool kids on the block. Being anti-trans and making threats or bullying anyone who appears to be crossing what used to be considered "normal" gender boundaries is quickly taking hold across the United States.

To say that it's frightening or unsettling would be a severe understatement. This soon-to-be legalized way of oppressing an entire group of people based on who we are and how we show up in the world is dangerous.

Globally, we've been here before--think The Final Solution in Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe; the calls for removing the "savage" indigenous people in Turtle Island; the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda; and modern-day Uganda, where there are ongoing open calls for death to anyone who is gay or lesbian.

In the U.S., when I was an adolescent in the 1970s, homophobic language was about as ever-present and blatant as today, but without the viral nature of social media. Nevertheless, the homophobic language and explicit fears in mainstream America were frequent enough and widespread enough that they reached me, and I questioned and doubted myself in my own uncertainty:

Was I a lesbian? How would I know? Would that mean I had a mental illness? If I were mentally ill, what would happen to me?

As a result of today's increasingly hateful, psychologically harmful, and dangerously inciteful rhetoric, memories of my own self expression as a child, a pre-teen, an adolescent, and a young adult seep into my consciousness. I feel a nudge to bear witness because if anyone comes for my transgender friends--some of whom have lived with me--then they also are coming for me.

MY EARLY GENDER EXPRESSION

Query: Did you ever have a time in your life when you wanted to dress and act the way you wanted, even if it was different from how you were raised or from how your peers were dressing and acting? What was that like for you?

I have a twin brother and a brother two years older than us. Growing up, I knew my body was different from my brothers'; I remember thinking at times how I wanted to be like them. I didn't have words for it back then, but it was more an inward response to the restrictions that I saw my mother and her mother living into: they were the cooks, the cleaners, the homemakers, the stay-at-homebodies. And they didn't express a lot of care for each other, either, just misery and bitterness for the life they weren't living, or so it seemed to me as a child. Why would I want to aspire to that life for myself as a woman?

Growing up with two brothers meant I was exposed to a lot of things that boys typically got to do: play outdoors, be loud, aggressively smash Lego bricks against each other, do some home-based science experiments, go to ballgames with Dad. Thankfully, I was frequently encouraged to "go play with the boys." It was one way my mother could grab some peace and quiet after schooldays and on weekends...

...except when my grandmother, Grandma G, came to visit.

She didn't seem to like how much time I was spending outside, learning baseball, football, and frisbee. She didn't seem to like how many pairs of pants I had and how few dresses, and she let me know it. I still remember the bright afternoon when she and my mother stood at the back door overlooking the backyard where we kids were playing--I must have been about 10--and my grandmother called out, "Liz, come inside and put on a dress!" My heart broke. I don't remember if my mom intervened or if I acquiesced or if I stayed put. I don't know if my brothers heard my grandmother--how could they not?!--or what they made of that command.

Come inside and put on a dress!

My grandmother was a force. She had other commandments, more often expressed as loaded questions:

Why don't you put on makeup? You'd look so much prettier.
Why don't you put your hair up?
Why can't you wear a skirt or a dress more often?

But my grandmother was also generous and often took me shopping -- for clothes. I must have gone with at least one of my brothers each time, because she never steered us into the girls' section; we spent a lot of time in the boys' section (back when the gender binary was on full display). I gravitated toward shirts with broad stripes and durable fabric. Nothing frilly or pink or tailored. Surprisingly, after just a single "Don't you want to look at dresses...?," my grandmother would just let me be and paid for the "boys clothes" I had picked out. To my mom's credit, she never criticized me and never made my grandmother take the clothes back. I was reasonably comfortable; I was me as best as I could be back then.

I was a girl-child who liked playing sports with boys and liked wearing comfortable boy clothes. And in my specific case, I also knew inwardly that I was a girl, not a boy. In school and at home, the word "tomboy" was tossed in my direction, and I never minded. But I want to make this point clear right now:

In my own life, I always intuitively understood that I was a girl; I was female. That congruence was and still is right for me.

Much later on, during my coming out process in my 30s as a bisexual woman, I knew experimentally that who I was wasn't a choice I made; it was a matter of wholeness that I affirmed. Similarly, now as a 60-year-old woman looking back at my childhood experiences, I understand that back then, I was seeking my own form of gender expression, an outward expression of my inward self, through what I wore, what activities I participated in, what norms I valued. And I understand experimentally that being transgender -- or cisgender -- isn't a choice. It's simply about being who and how we each are in our respective wholeness.

GENDER AFFIRMING CARE

Query: In what ways is your sense of wholeness, physical well being, and mental wellness affirmed and cared for? What services, relationships, and activities do you regulary participate in that affirm who you are and how you live?

I want to point out that all my life, I have been receiving gender affirming care. I've had ob-gyn appointments. I've purchased and been given supplies to deal with my monthly cycles. I've had mammograms and related imaging done. I've had a hysterectomy for my own health and general well being. I've had haircuts to my liking and rebuffed efforts to get me to buy and use hair product. I get pedicures; I look for ways to address my facial hair as I age. I wear clothes that make feel comfortable in my body. I cut my nails how I like them and occasionally wear nail polish on my toenails.

All of this is care for myself that affirms how I view myself along the gender spectrum.

To me, the idea of disallowing gender affirming care is repugnant. Why does one group of people believe they can decide what is right or acceptable for another group of people? Colonization, patriarchy, apartheid, white supremacy, misogyny... these are all parts of the dynamic of oppression and

It.
Needs.
To.
Stop.

I share all this because our personal experiences matter. Sharing our stories of who we are help us demystify and humanize the strangers that we don't know yet: our queer neighbors, our gay or lesbian family members, our transgender friends and fellow worshipers.

BEING A PATTERN

Query: Do you know anyone who didn't feel they could be their whole authentic self? Do you know how they felt at the time, or what they thought of themselves?

Testimony is about both how we carry ourself--our "carriage" and letting our life speak--and about the words we use; there should be a consistency between both. Quakers live into the Truth as a way to be a pattern, an example of faithfulness. Living out the wholeness of who we are, what we believe, and whatever our Given measure of Light is a form of embodied preaching that testifies to the Truth of the Divine Principle. George Fox provides a definition of testimony that resonates with me:

Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations wherever you come; that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them...

That is why I share my own experience of how I transgressed--crossed over a line regarding certain gender norms around dress and behaviors as a young person and how I continue to do so as a 60-something aging Friend.

To be clear, I don't actively push against conforming to gendered dress codes or heteronormative roles for the sake of being rebellious or anti-establishment or counter-cultural. I dress as I do and act as I do and pursue justice as I do because it is my expression of wholeness as I know it. When I am in my wholeness, I am happiest. I am able to walk cheerfully over the earth.

CONTINUING REVELATION TO ACCEPT MY TRANSGENDER KIN

My journey to accept myself as I am--my gender as an athletic, boyish girl/woman in a patriarchal society--was more straightforward than my journey to accept my fellow worshipers, neighbors, and friends as transgender. Being trans used to be as unfamiliar a concept to me as a girl wearing pants and boys' tops was to my grandmother. She couldn't wrap her mind or heart around it at first, but she still saw me as her grandchild. She went on loving me as best she could over the years and eventually stopped criticizing me for who and how I was in the world.

This is how I have come to welcome and love my transgender kin. It's the only way I know to grow, weave together, and strengthen the Beloved Community, by getting to know each other by spending time together. Sometimes it requires intentional changes in my own behaviors, like choosing to be more welcoming outwardly in my day to day life. Sometimes it means I have to educate myself about concepts I wasn't aware of before. Other times, it is by Divine Assistance as I feel my way into an openness and acceptance I hadn't known before-a wordless and mystical exercise between my heart and the Inward Teacher that changes me for the better, opening myself to know a greater slice of humanity I didn't understand or acknowledge before.

Building meaningful relationships with people who are different from ourselves helps us demystify the ways of strangers, and our hearts widen so we may know that Love is the first motion--inclusion, not bullying; love, not fear; welcome, not eradication.

Query: Was there a time when you felt you didn't belong, or when you worried if you would be welcomed into someplace new? What and who helped? When in your life were you made to feel truly safe enough to bring more of your whole self forward over time? Are you doing that for other people? If not, what is getting in the way?

Are there other ways that we can be in the world, encouraging the Good to be raised up?

Open letter to white Friends: Good intentions fail our Friends of color

Friends,

I began writing this open letter to white Friends in the first part of 2018. I began sharing the letter publicly in early Seventh Month (July) 2018. I have a care-and-accountability committee at the meeting that holds my membership; that committee received and reviewed several versions of the letter. I also presented it to my meeting's Ministry and Counsel Committee, to other anti-racist Friends, to a few Friends of color initially, and so on.

The open letter is my best attempt at articulating what has been laid on my heart. It isn't perfect nor complete. While certain events prompted me to begin writing, the letter initially is directed to all of our unprogrammed Quaker worship communities in the U.S. and primarily at the systems within each: the people in decision-making positions; the processes we use; and the practices we adhere to, formally and informally.

Each Friend, each meeting, each yearly meeting will have its own labor to take up as you/they/it considers the open letter.

Below is the text of the open letter. A number of Friends have asked for permission to share it; the answer is Yes.

More important to me than receiving and sharing the open letter, though, is knowing that it has opened something new in you or for your worship community. Maybe you (they) have taken up new antiracism work or had a discussion that shed new Light on the problematic systems in your meeting or something else entirely. I hope so.

Blessings,
Liz

P.S. Because of the nature of blogging, I am taking extra time to include links to related material in this post that are not present in the original letter. I realize that over time, a number of links won't be valid.

_________________

Open letter to my fellow white Friends:
Our good intentions fail our Friends of color.

Mind the light, that all may be refreshed one in another, and all in one.  – George Fox

Firstly it is a timely reminder of the Advice to ‘listen for the spirit, even if it is expressed in ways unfamiliar to you’. Secondly it is a reiteration of the insight that every person ‘has a measure of the light’ with a recognition that then as now, our interpretation of the spirit can be distorted by privilege and hierarchy…  — Tim Gee, Peckham Meeting (UK), on the minute from North London Area Meeting, acclaiming that abolitionist Benjamin Lay was now in good standing.  November 2017 (as posted at Abington Meeting's website)

With a heavy heart, I begin this letter to white Quakers (aka Friends of European descent) after having been in conversation with two African American Friends during much of 2017. One had been read out of her meeting due to a racialized conflict; the other had traveled on different occasions to support the first. Both followed the Truth of their experience rather than conform to the unspoken expectation of yielding to the dominant white-influenced way of what constitutes Quaker conduct.

Woven throughout the half-dozen accounts that I heard over the year—most from white Friends—the thick presence of unexamined whiteness seems to have impeded or overridden the inbreaking of Spirit. I grieve for the missed opportunities to hear and believe the Truth as expressed by Friends of color. I grieve for the spiritual separations and for the emotional rifts that arise when Friends in the relevant quarter and in the yearly meeting, pressed by myself and others to intervene, ultimately resigned themselves to profess merely “The authority rests with the monthly meetings.”

This erroneous profession from where our corporate spiritual authority comes breaks my heart. Is there nothing more we can reach for than the written word? What does that say about our spiritual discipline if Friends “come not to the Spirit” that gave forth our books of Faith and Practice?  What we speak, is it inwardly from God?

What follows below is the Light I have been given during the first half of 2018. I pray that my grief and my compassionate challenge come through my own written words. I grieve because too often I learn how our good intentions fail our Friends of color.  I challenge because others before me have challenged me and have accompanied me through the difficulty and I am better for it.

My intention has been to await formal approval from certain small bodies of Friends, as is our custom, before sending this out more widely. Then after several weeks of waiting, one morning I felt myself released from the waiting, perhaps because the season of yearly meeting approaches. Then Way opened and this letter goes out initially to the Friends with whom I worship and to the meeting that holds my membership. Too numerous are the false reasons for waiting much further.

Socialized whiteness among us tells me to keep waiting. In matters of addressing racism and quelling white supremacy, however, I am learning to recognize this voice as more often that of the Adversary and not of the Shepherd.

……………………

We are cautioned in the letter from the elders of Balby that “these things [which we have shared with you] we do not lay upon you as a rule or form to walk by, but that all with the measure of light which is pure and holy may be guided … and fulfilled in the Spirit, —not from the letter, for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.” (Emphasis added)

Our current books of discipline, our yearly meetings’ books of faith and practice were conceived of and written largely by white Friends with limited or no direct experience, or analysis, of the cumulative harms of racism, white supremacy, and implicit bias. Year after year, generation after generation, although our good intentions as white Friends have carried our predominantly white worship communities through racial tensions, we have failed our Friends of color, whether they worship with us on First Days or not. We must begin to consider the possibility that our Faith and Practice may be flawed or that we have begun to rely too much on guidance from the printed word, rather than on the Spirit that brought them forth. The words and advices contained therein may reinforce patterns, behaviors, and worldviews grounded in unexamined whiteness, unknowingly cultivating attitudes that favor compliance or conformity to worldly norms rather than encouraging unity with the Living Spirit.

The result may be and has been that we dismiss or downgrade the concerns of Friends of color, and we insensitively or unknowingly default to the unexamined whiteness of our Quaker norms and practices. Testing the sense of the meeting is one such example: by default, the sense of the meeting emerges from our predominantly white membership… and all of our multigenerational collective implicit bias. Therefore, if we do not thoroughly examine and transform implicit bias, and if we do not directly address interpersonal, systemic, and structural racism, we as white Friends are likely to perpetuate and re-create it.

Some Friends may ask, “But if we aren’t to turn to and adhere to the guidance in our Faith and Practice, what are we to do?” In addition to seeking Light and guidance from the words of the scriptures, Friends also raised questions of one another, including “Christ and the apostles saith this but what canst thou say?” and “How does the Truth prosper with thee?”

We can acknowledge that our books of Faith and Practice represent a faithfulness that our yearly meetings once affirmed. It was the measure of Light Friends had at the time. But we mustn’t stop there.  God’s Truth and continuing revelation requires us to keep Listening, to mind the Light, to return to a unity in the Spirit and not a simple conformity to how we have “always” done things. Openings don’t stop once our books of Faith and Practice and our minutes on racism are published.

We have mistakenly professed that individual equality--that there is that of God in each of us--somehow equates to systemic fairness.

In fact, our policies, socialized norms, and decision-making practices among Friends all tilt toward an unexamined white, professional, urban, middle-class bias:

• We often avoid loud or persistent conflict, or otherwise deny or escape from it.
• We tamp down effusive expression of emotion, be it anger or joy.
• We erase or ignore or pass over the wider context of historical trauma, including our own religious society’s active involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
• We address a direct, concrete question in an indirect, abstract way.
• We insist that our “good intentions” override the resulting pain experienced by our Friends of color and indigenous Friends, including hurt from microaggressions.
• We abide by the prevailing Quaker practice to allow monthly meetings the final say in a situation that looks like it was either explicitly racially motivated, or was the result of racial bias, examined or unexamined.

As white Friends, ours is the responsibility to parse out the practices and norms into which we have been socialized without our consent--and shed those that regularly or systematically create barriers and inequities, especially those that Friends of color, indigenous Friends, and non-Friends from those communities critique. When possible, ours is the responsibility to work with and listen for the guidance of indigenous Friends and Friends of color in these matters—being mindful of the additional emotional and spiritual labor involved for those who have experienced racism.

We may unknowingly or unintentionally be tempted to give privileged authority and power to individual white Friends who insist that even including the words “racism” or “white supremacy” in our written record are inappropriate. And if we white Friends are tempted to say “Our meeting isn’t racist,” might we reflect on why communities of color and actively anti-racist groups frequently lift up their experiences among us, but our minutes, records, books of Faith and Practice, and other documents seemingly have little or no direct reference to them? What do these omissions tell us of our legacy and responsibility of being Publishers of the Truth?

We toss aside and pretend not to see or name in particular the 400-year historical context of erasing or zeroing out the lived experiences of Native Americans and African Americans—more recently, Asian Americans.  Like many of our white peers outside of our Quaker walls, we say that this country’s history of stolen land, stolen labor, and stolen lives isn’t our fault or isn’t relevant to the current (in)action that points to and exacerbates a stolen or distorted spirituality.

This erasure must end.

We must no longer turn from the Loving Presence that emerges from the hearts of our friends and spiritual family of color. Their Light is a measure of God’s Light, is it not? Their Light answers to our own Inward Teacher and searches us, compels us to bear witness to how our current practice of relying on waiting, as well as the over-reliance on the white-tainted authority of the monthly meeting, have strayed too far from the Shepherd that guides our feet and that helps us keep to the path not only of faithful living, but also of moving into a just form of deep communal living.

We must believe what our sisters and brothers of color and of indigenous heritage are telling us.  We must look for the patterns of injustice in our practices and meeting’s policies and remove them.  We must learn to recognize and uproot the seeds of implicit bias that undermine our ability to be faithful not to the words in our books of Faith and Practice, but to the Spirit that transcends those words and that illuminates the Light we live by.

Descended from distant European ancestors, too many of us as white Friends have assimilated into American whiteness without critical examination or analysis. Denouncing racism and declaring ourselves “not racist” isn’t enough. As white Friends, we must become anti-racist. We must look at our Quakerism with an explicit racial justice lens. We must be active in countering our implicit bias; in learning about socialization into whiteness; and in undoing systems, practices, and policies that replicate or perpetuate unintended racism. Our good intentions must align with even better anti-racist practices, ones that are are tested beyond our white membership.

When we white Friends believe the shared concerns of indigenous Friends and Friends of color; when we discover the unjust or inequitable practices and policies carried out by our meetings; when we do these things, we may become low and humble in our service, in our renewed dedication to restore broken trust and to make amends for our wrongdoings. By and by, we may also know experientially a living wholeness of Divine Family, a circle unbroken, a renewal of right and just relationship with all of God’s children.

Elizabeth (Liz) Oppenheimer
Sixth Month 2018

Sexual harassment, Al Franken, and a Quaker view

Amidst revelations about sexual assault by one of our Minnesota senators, I stand with Al Franken. Here’s my first go at explaining why.*

In my life, Native Americans ask us white people to return the stolen land to them, to safeguard it from the Black Snake, and to honor the treaties. More and more of us white people are acknowledging our complicity in widespread oppression of indigenous people and are working to do as the Native community asks, as part of our penance and reconciliation. We don’t do it perfectly or immediately or all at once. We begin and keep going.

In my life, Black Americans ask us white people to turn up when there’s police brutality and another Black person is murdered by cops; to work to end mass incarceration and predatory lending, to address systemic disparities in education, employment, and home ownership. More and more of us white people are acknowledging our complicity in widespread oppression and are working to do as the Black community asks as part of our penance and reconciliation. We don’t do it perfectly or immediately or all at once. We begin and keep going.

As a Quaker, in my faith tradition, we believe in continuing revelation—the ability to understand more and more of how we are intended to lead our lives and are able to see more and more of God’s Truth as time goes by. We begin and keep going.

We also believe that it is the Loving Principle that brings a person into redemption, and that we are required to “answer that of God” in anyone we come in contact with who is falling short, has “missed the mark.”

I stand with Al Franken because his actions today—admitting his sexual misconduct; asking for an ethics probe; and working on a bill to address rape—indicate to me that as a man, he is working to repair the lives of women harmed by his and others’ sexual misconduct, rather than remain complicit in male supremacy.

Personally, I believe that we women want men to be sharing the burden of addressing and challenging sexism, don't we?

Could Al Franken have done more? or done better sooner? Yes.

So could I, in my anti-racism and anti-classism work.

I seem to be in a different place around Al Franken than many other Minnesotans. As I see it, we are all on our journey of accepting, rejecting, or delaying redemption, reconciliation, and repair for the harm we’ve caused.

I can be mad at and disappointed in Al Franken, and at the same time, I can hold him accountable and press him to do more, to do better, to keep going.

Blessings,
Liz

*This post is based heavily on my own post on Facebook about this topic. 

Staying woke: Confessions of my "No TV" days

NOTE: The following post has a number of hashtags included, noted with the "#" in front of a word or phrase.  A number of social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter, use hashtags as a way to follow a topic. You can do an online search for each hashtag to get more information about that particular topic. Include the # sign in your search.  --Liz

I had a conversation with two white Quakers the other day, after a Ferguson-solidarity event (#MN2Ferguson), about how a number of us Friends pride ourselves in not having a TV anymore, not listening to the news, or only listening to public radio, Democracy Now, etc.

But even those outlets are embedded in unexamined whiteness, unintentionally minimizing or even erasing the lives and the lived experience of people of color. (There's also unexamined classism, and systems embedded in unexamined middle-class norms, so keep that in mind, too.) An active part of my own journey into anti-racism work is the work of undoing my "socialized whiteness," exploring my socialized conditioning of overvaluing my "good intentions," and deepening my commitment to showing up for racial justice and for working for meaningful change.

I admit that it's been part of my white privilege to be able to turn off the news, or to get by without a TV... but that choice--to turn off the TV and simply NOT HEAR about what goes on in communities of color also had cut me off from the realities of what people of color endure Every. Single. Day.

It's a privilege to be able to turn away from deeply disturbing news and then get back to our everyday life. It's a privilege that also marks what some are now calling white fragility.

With the Green Revolution in Iran a few years ago, I learned to turn to Twitter--not to create an account, but rather to do an online search for hashtags back then: #GreenRevolution for example. ...And the news that was coming from Twitter was vastly different from the (lack of) news (initially) coming from the mainstream media.

That was the beginning for me, to learn to use the internet and social media when there were rumblings of things going on. I wasn't turning on the TV so much, but I was turning to Twitter.

Next up for me was to turn to Twitter for tracking and amplifying the work of marriage equality for same-sex couples, especially when the issue came to my state.

During the 18-month period of work to defeat Minnesota's proposed anti-GLBTQ marriage amendment, I began to find my own voice on Twitter, amplifying and repeating what others were sharing (that's called "re-tweeting" or RT for those who are curious).

My life is very different now: thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, marriage for same-sex couples is now a protected right.  More importantly, I actively choose to "stay woke," as younger people are now saying (the hashtag #staywoke is actually used in social media).  I choose to pay attention and seek out news, rather than avoid it.  I choose to go to news sources that point out systemic oppression and that track fast-breaking news--sources that provide consistent messages of what's happening when there are incidents especially involving racism.

Network television seldom provides the coverage I seek.  Being at #FergusonOctober in 2014 and comparing my own experience there with what the mainstream media was reporting at the time highlighted for me the difference between news provided by mainstream media and what civilians were posting on Twitter.

So now, when I hear or see a news story of significance, especially involving the police or people of color, I use that initial exposure as a reminder for me to check out social media, especially looking for/listening for reports from civilians of color.  And by centering on the reports from people of color, I am beginning to see the world through different eyes:  a different reality that had been hidden from me before, because of the thick veil of privilege I didn't know I was wearing.

It's all too easy for me these days to forget where I started my own journey, exploring white privilege and how I unknowingly, unintentionally used it to keep me comfortable and insulated from horrific news around the world, in my country, or even in my neighborhood.  But then something comes up, like #MikeBrown or #FreddieGray or a conversation here or there, and I remember:

I don't know what I don't know.

I'm socialized to disconnect or shut down when things get tough.

Good intentions sometimes have harmful impacts.

Good intentions don't outweigh harmful impacts.

Rewriting how I was socialized is a never ending journey.

We're all on a journey.

Friends call that journey continuing revelation.  Sometimes it includes turning off the TV; other times it includes using it differently.

Blessings,
Liz