Out In The Mountains : Columns

This was a pretty big deal, actually. My second cousin in Ottawa, whom I barely know, was doing research on her computer about our family tree. Because my grandparents were dirt-poor Russian-Jewish immigrants, a lot of their history is impossible to trace. Who kept records of peasants from Eastern European ghettos? My cousin decided to have a first-ever reunion of the Freedman clan, inviting relations from all over the country to meet in Connecticut, where a lot of us grew up. I, myself, had written an informal family history based on interviews of my folks and their immediate siblings, who were all in their eighties, so I was particularly interested in attending.

There’s only one problem: I’m a lesbian.

I’ve been out to my extended family for years, so that’s not the issue. It’s the crossing of cultures that gets a little dicey. I was heterosexual for the first 20 years of my adult life, so I’m thoroughly familiar with the straight life; but most of the 50 people at that gathering have no idea what it’s like to live in the gay culture.

People were nice enough, but I felt strangely invisible. For one thing, I was the only one at the party dressed in a political t-shirt. It wasn’t even about queer politics. It was a t-shirt from Israel with the word “peace” written in Hebrew and Arabic. Only one person I hadn’t met before expressed any curiosity about the message on the shirt, and only as I was leaving – it was that kind of invisibility. It must have made them uncomfortable, so they decided to ignore it. My 30-year-old niece who grew up in Northampton knew what I was up against. During the ceremony when one of my relatives listed the family “accomplishments,” she kept nudging me with her elbow, because she knew “lesbian feminist activist” would never appear in that roll call. I would have been delighted to discuss aspects of my life with anyone who bothered to ask, but no one did. More invisibility.

For me, bridging two cultures has always been a struggle. By culture, I mean similar customs, shared language, and shared history. When I discovered I could be a lesbian in my thirties, I felt that everything inside – my guts, my values, and my dreams – completely turned upside down, literally revolved. Hence, I became a revolutionary. I was married to a man I loved at the time, so it was pretty agonizing. It was as if I chose to step over an invisible boundary into another dimension where my family couldn’t really follow completely. We loved each other, but I had to accept that the world treats them differently than I’m treated. Even if nothing is said, I always have to make internal adjustments to how people might react if they knew I was a dyke. I’m not sure if everyone feels the differences as strongly as I do. Perhaps I’m hyper-vigilant because I came out a time when the word “gay” was never uttered in the media. (I’m TV illiterate, so I was amazed the other night when I happened to catch a couple of sitcoms over my daughter’s house, and they both had queer characters in them – two in a row! When did that start happening?)

I remember when I was bisexual back in the Î70s; I felt torn in two. I simply couldn’t figure out how to co-exist in two different cultures at the same time. Over the years, I’ve committed myself to the lesbian culture whether or not I have a lover. Insisting on a lesbian identity has strengthened me immeasurably – kept me sane in a society permeated by sexism. A major task of a transsexual friend of mine is her struggle to learn how to fit into the female culture now that she’s switched genders. Society is probably somewhat more fluid than it used to be, but being born into a particular ethnic, racial, gender or religious group carries with it a variety of behaviors that are hard to shake.

I just heard on the news today that Al Gore chose a Jewish vice-president as his running mate. I was bowled over! It didn’t even occur to me that something like that could happen in my lifetime. That’s how deeply I bury my Jewish culture in my everyday life in Vermont. My first thought was “Oh shit! So much for the Democrats getting elected this year.” Now if that isn’t internalized anti-Semitism, I don’t know what is. Then I experienced an enormous rush of validation especially when I heard a sound bite from his acceptance speech when he praised Gore for his chutzpah. Joseph Lieberman immediately identified himself as a member of my tradition by the way he pronounced that Yiddish word. As delusionary as it may be, I now feel I have a direct link to the White House in ways I’ve never felt before. Being a member of an oppressed group (or two or three) makes for powerful cultural connections.

What do we mean when we say we can use “gaydar” to detect if someone is gay? It’s probably a combination of the way they move, dress, talk, or look us in the eye. It isn’t 100 percent accurate, of course, but I suspect it’s related to subtle clues that this stranger may share a common culture. Despite the struggles of having to accommodate at least two cultures in my life simultaneously, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Continuing to create lesbian culture for the past 20 years has enriched my life beyond belief.

Crow Cohen lives in Winooski.