From: ciaran@county.lmt.mn.org (Ciaran Benson)
Subject: Long & potentially overdue clarification
Reply-To: ciaran@county.lmt.mn.org (Ciaran Benson)
Organization: LaserMaster Technologies, Minneapolis, MN
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 92 01:12:38 GMT

In article <2AAFA3D8.13987@news.service.uci.edu>, cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu 
(Janis Maria Cortese) writes:

> I've just realized that there is an interesting little non sequitur
> popping up.  You use the phrase judgement call, and Ciaran (who is a he
                                                              ^^^^^^^^^^^

  Thank you, Janis, for making that correction.

  I'm sorry if my not making a fuss about being called "he" or "she" has
caused a problem for anyone.

  When the confusion first arose, I _almost_ corrected folks.

  Why didn't I follow through?

  Well, the idea of specifically posting my gender on alt.pagan seemed
(and still seems) of uncertain value to me.  What gender people suppose
me to be has very little to do with what I have to say.  What their
supposition does to their perception of what I write is their own problem,
and has been thoroughly explored in previous posts.

  Janis's comments on male mysteries is as facinating for me as her
comments on female mysteries -- and I'd dare say that I've learned a
tremendous amount about my own perceptions of male and female mysteries
just reading the letters Ailsa and Janis have posted.  The same can
be said for the writings of Mary Daly, who has a _tremendous_ amount
of energy invested in her writings, and from whom I've learned, not
about excluding or defining through gender, but about embracing the
expression of self as an empowering ritual.  Her writings helped me
realize that it is possible to define yourself as a single thing
without slighting the alternatives, and to choose an alternative
without slighting or losing what you're "SUPPOSED" to be [note quotes].

  Reading the works of womyn trying to build their own space, their
own expression, has taught me as much (if not more) about seeking my own
voice as any of the male mysteries works I've yet read.  I'm not discounting
male mysteries or experiences, I'm just pointing out that I find inspiration
in the voices of _PEOPLE_, and women (and womyn) have as clear and as
empowering a voice as men.  Indeed, I've found myself more inspired by
the works of lesbian separatist writers than of, for example, Joseph
Cambell.

  Still, I do not by ANY means consider myself qualified to speak on
women's mysteries, or to pretend to any understanding of the particular
problems of being a woman, growing up as a woman, in a society like ours.

  By listening to women when they speak, and assuming that, for a fact,
I do _NOT_ understand, and can _NOT_ understand, I hope at the very least
to be less of the egocentristic, tetestorone (sp?)-driven, insensitive
lout that Madison Avenue worked so hard to make me.

  If some of you feel betrayal in that I did not make an official statement
that I do, indeed, have testicals (however disconnected they might be), 
then please consider that my intellect is what it is -- I am, through
my writing, just exactly what I appear to be.  If the knowledge that I
do not have a vagina radically alters your view of me, then perhaps I
should point out that a) I am in a long-term monogomous relationship, and
not interested in joining in any kind of new sexual relationships, and b) I
don't find the absence or presence of a vagina in others a deterent
to love -- indeed, the kind of love which I am seeking now and have been
seeking since my handfasting has been a love of thoughts and experiences.
If I love someone, I love them for what we have shared, not who they
sleep with or don't sleep with.  When I see someone I love, I don't whip
out a gender meter to find out how I should greet them -- if we're hugging
friends, we hug.  If we're kissing friends, we kiss.

  I quite frankly have fallen completely in love with Murray.  I was
mildly shocked when he mentioned to me that he was, indeed, a he.  My
mental image of "Murray" changed, just a little.  When the adjustment
was through, I still found the most attractive thing about Murray to
be, as it had always been, exactly what he has shared with me --
his thoughts, his mind, is experiences, and his perceptions of me,
of the world, and of himself.

  In fact, I'm still quite stunned by Murray's description of his mental
image of me (an image which, by the way, did _not_ include any indication
of gender).  Obviously, Murray's grown further in this than I have.

  Murray, if we meet, I want to go into a quiet corner, cuddle up, gaze into
each other's eyes and talk for endless hours about whatever fascinates us.
Same goes for Janis and Ailsa and a small handful of others who I've met
here (just because these are the only three who have enchanted me to this
point does not mean that there aren't others who I'd love to meet and
experience -- Tuneweaver and Jacquelyn and Hilda and, yes, even Scot Mayo.)

  Damn ... now I'm trying to figure out where I need to back-peddle and
throw in smiley faces and winky faces, and I just don't want to.

  I'm serious -- I understand the importance of saying "BTW, I am a man"
when discussing the relative merrit of various women's groups and traditions,
but I can honestly say that I do not think I have ever posted anythink
where my gender seemed a notable thing.  The experience of the Goddess and
God, and the expression of my religion, and my reverence for the expression
of others, is a genderless thing -- or at least, _should_ be a genderless
thing.

  >sigh<

  When I was number 1 for NorDCoG, I would watch a woman make a suggestion,
get cut down, and then not five minutes later watch as everyone applauded
the same suggestion from a man.

  It made me sick.

  I made it my goal to get everyone in the meeting to listen to whoever was
speaking, and to consider it without discounting it out-of-hand.  To some
degree, I think I was successful.

  I thought I understood.  I thought I could empathise with the women enough
to truely know what it felt like for them to have their ideas ignored, even
ridiculed, only to seem them successfully presented moments later by someone
else -- who by their gender are assumed to have ideas of value, and are
granted the dignity of being heard out.

  Then I started posting here.

  I was delighted to find out that my writing had reached enough of a level of
adrogyny (sp?) that there were some who couldn't figure out my gender.  I
took it as a great compliment.

  Then I posted a letter sympathising with Janis in a thread where she
was getting thoroughly flamed.  A couple of days later, I recieved a
personal letter calling me butch dyke, and telling me to get my ass off
the net.

  I printed it, I read it, I thought about it.  I laughed about it.

  On the way home I got really mad.  Really, really mad.

  I tore it up and burnt it and deleted the message and never told my
partner that it had happened.  I couldn't admit to myself or her the
sense of total powerlessness that I felt.  There was no argument I could
make, no explanation I could give in response to a letter like that.
It just put me in my place and assumed that was enough -- that I had
gotten out of line, out of caste.

  Over the next few days, I got a couple of letters from others that
were a kind of patronising that I've never experienced before (I'm
physically kind of imposing).  All of these writers assumed that I was
a woman, and somehow that seemed enough in and of itself for them to
discount me and my opinion.

  Goddess !  What a hellish realization -- I had never understood, never
really empathised, never even had the slightest clue what it was like to be a
woman.  To sit on the outside and watch someone get slighted because of
their gender or their sexual preference or their race tells you _NOTHING_
about the experience of the bigotry.  To never have an end to it, to wake
up in the morning knowing that there'd be more mail, more patronizing 
letters explaining to me how _wrong_ I was by nature of my apparent
gender, just made it even more clear that I haven't the slightest damned
clue what it is like to grow up a woman, to grow up MOTSS, to grow
up visibly Indian.  To spend each moment of each day subjected to even
the possibility of such patronising and bigotted attitudes would be
terrible -- must be terrible.

  But I can't possibly understand in my heart of hearts what it means to
grow up that way, and to live that way.

  As a Pagan, I can choose to not wear my pentagram, to take out my ear-
rings, to dress "normal".  I can hide myself in society, escape without
leaving.

  Janis doesn't have that option.  Ailsa doesn't have that option.  None
of my immediate friends who are anything but what I physically am have that
option.

  And it tears out my heart that there isn't a damned thing I can do to 
make it stop -- to grab this society and shake the hate out of it, wring
it until it makes sense, until all the pain stops for everyone.

  So I pick up my foot and take a step.  And another.  And another. And I
don't stop, I can't stop.  It's the only way to make it where I want to be,
in a world where I can meet Ailsa on the street and _NOT_ have to prove
each and every time that I'm not a threat -- not what I appear to be by
virtue of my gender and physique.

  To live in a world where it is not completely reasonable for Ailsa to
hate me to the very core for being what I physically am and appear to
be, and where the appearance of intellectual adrogyny is not a threat.

  Yes, I'm a man.  I'm Lithuanian and Mongolian and Swedish and Chippewa.
I'm heterosexual by commitment of handfast, and monogomous by virtue of
emotional need.

  I am, by all appearances, a white anglo-saxon prodistent (sp?).

  And when I meet someone who looks like me walking up the street I
walk to the other side, because I've met too many who look like me who
are exactly what they were trained to be.

  A threat to my friends, my family, my religion.

  They tell me "Indian" jokes, they tell me "Faggot" jokes, they tell
me "Dyke" jokes, and don't understand when I tell them to stop.  I must
be "pussy whipped", I must be a "homo", I must be a damned "Indian-lover".

  Folks at work thought it was pretty funny that people were mistaking
me for a woman, and I laughed with them.  Some folks were kind of upset
that I didn't "fix" it -- that I wasn't threatened by the idea of being
mistaken for a woman.

  It's all been very, very educational.  I hope for more than just myself.

  I swear that I did not permit this to continue because of any desire
to deceive.  Nor was it something which I had to maintain.  What you've
read of me is how I write, how I think, and, for the most part, how I
talk.

  And it's not just this board either.  Every board I've posted to thinks
variously that I'm man or woman.  My newsletter; "Abolish Intolerance(tm)"
continually received letters to "Mz. Benson" to praise me for standing
forth as a vocal lesbian.  And now I'm writing fiction which is being
received in my writing group with the tongue-in-cheek anticipation of
whatever fans I might ever end up with showing up for a panel discussion
and finding me and three women on the panel; "which one's Ciaran?  And
who's the hunk with the beard?"  (hunk -- heh, I wish).

  Most of you, it seems, have not had any confusion about this, and probably
can't figure out what all this fussing and appologising on my part is
about.

  It's about truth and quests and masks and the honesty of a person's
words and writing.  What I have written has always been my truth, my
honesty.  I am exactly what I seem to be through these words; someone
who's trying very, very hard to understand the Goddess as She's
variously revealed Herself to me, and trying to live in a world where
all of my friends can be free from pettyness.

  The only mask is that I have been trained to act as I appear, and that's
just not the way I am.

  I like to think that all of us are what we seem, rather than what we
appear.  I like to think that what we say is more important than the face
that it comes out of.  I like to think that love means that I CARE rather
than I WANT.  I like to think that passion is more important than sex.

  But I will try to understand if folks are pissed at me for not putting
"I HAVE A PENIS" in my .sig.

  Blessed be, Ciaran Benson.

> ... (BTW, when I say "popping up," I don't mean that you guys [Murray & I]
> are being deliberately inconsistent, I'm just saying that this popped into
> my head when I was  thinking about the issue.)  

  p.s. Janis, what inconsistancy did you notice?  I've lost all of
the posts leading up to this one in the weekend purges, and I seem to have
lost a lot of the story.  I know that I'm far from consistant when it comes
to loading up with weapons and actually using them, but I'm curious if you've
noticed some I haven't.

------------------------
Ciaran@county.lmt.mn.org                 Not an LM spokesbeing

  "... hey but I don't care cause sometimes I said sometimes I hear
    my voice and it's been HERE silent all these years" -- TORI AMOS