In A Family Way
|
In
a Family Way |
by Arlene Istar
Lev
Editor’s
note: this is the corrected copy of the
story that ran in our April issue.
When controversial radical feminist
writer Andrea Dworkin died last year, a friend said she “didn’t
recognize her name.” I guess that’s every writer’s dream:
for your ideas to outlive your name. The passing of Connie Panzarino and
Mary Francis Platt did not make major waves in or outside of our queer
communities, although these fearless disabled lesbian activists transformed
much of disability politics in this country - their legacy lives on in
every ramped sidewalk in America.
When I was young, I would often watch
television with my mother who would gasp and cry at the death of some
politician or entertainer that I’d never heard of before. That scene
is now repeated with my children. “Oh my god, Betty Friedan died,”
I gasp, and my kids give me that look.
“Who’s that?” they
say disdainfully. How could anyone possibly be important if they haven’t
personally heard of them? A half century later, my children have no sense
of the pre-feminist world that detonated Betty Friedan’s dissatisfaction
with married life with children, or Andrea Dworkin’s fury at patriarchy
and pornography.
The icons of my youth are men and women
pushing seventy and eighty now; a generation is passing away. I want to
make note of some passings whose stories may not have made it to the evening
news, but who have made the lives we live possible.
Betty Berzon recently lost her longtime
battle with breast cancer, leaving her partner of over 30 years, Terry
DeCrescenzo, and a long legacy of gay activism. Betty was a lesbian psychotherapist,
at a time when that phrase was an oxymoron. She was the author of nine
books addressing lesbian and gay life, including Positively Gay, and Permanent
Partners. Additionally, she was a founding mother of the Los Angeles Gay
and Lesbian Center, the largest gay community center in the world, providing
services for over 1⁄4 million people a year (!).
Betty struggled with her lesbianism, suffering
psychiatric breakdowns until she came to accept her sexual orientation.
She then went on to found the first organization of gay therapists within
the American Psychiatric Association. Betty worked with others (like Judd
Marmor who died in 2004) to remove the diagnosis of Homosexuality from
the list of psychiatric disorders. In 1973, Homosexuality was officially
removed from the diagnostic manuals and in one fell swoop (to quote Richard
Green), “...several million mentally ill persons were cured.”
Stanley Biber was a medical doctor who performed
thousands of sex reassignment surgeries long before transgender was a
household word. From a small town of Trinadad, Colorado, which became
known as the “sex-change capital of the world,” he perfected
the surgical art of genital surgery, assisting transsexuals in their dream
to fully actualize themselves. Dr. Marci Bowers, a gynecological surgeon,
parent of three, and male-to-female transsexual herself who has continued
Biber’s practice, said, “He put the operation on the world
map. He made it safe, reproducible and functional and he brought happiness
to an awful lot of people.”
If you don’t recognize the name
Charles Socarides, you can thank people like Betty Berzon and Stanley
Biber for doing their work so effectively.
Charles Socarides continued to believe
that homosexuality was a mental illness long after most psychiatrists
had come to accept human sexual diversity. Socarides was a founder of
the National Association of Research and Treatment of Homosexuality, a
large right wing organization of clinical therapists committed to turning
gay people into straight people. Their theory, in a literal nutshell,
is that same-sex attraction is due to poor gender identification; their
treatment includes sending women to beauty parlors, and having boys spent
time playing football with their fathers. Socarides’ death represents
the passing of a homophobic era. By the way, his son Richard was a senior
adviser to Bill Clinton on gay and lesbian issues. Perhaps if he only
played more football with his son ... ?
I received an email last week that
a young man died - the 19-year old son of some colleagues. Although I
had never met their son, I burst into tears when I read the email, and
have cried many tears since for young Jacob. This is a mother’s
pain I feel, a pain so deep and searing that I never knew existed before
I held my tiny babies. When parents say they will give a kidney or an
arm for a child, it is not rhetoric. I can never hear of a death, a car
accident, an army casualty and not think: that was someone’s baby,
someone’s child.
My heart aches for my colleagues,
their loss, and the world’s loss.
We only have a short time here on
this fragile planet. Let us all do our work in the world with passion,
to honor those who have come before us, and for the children who are watching
our every move.
Arlene Istar Lev is a family therapist and is the author of The
Complete Lesbian and Gay Parenting Book and Transgender Emergence.
She and her partner Sundance are the parents of Shaiyah, age 10, and Eliezer,
age 5 3⁄4s. You can reach Arlene through www.choicesconsulting.com