Proposition 8: Melissa Etheridge Won’t Be Paying Her California Income Taxes
Nov 10th, 2008 by admin
Okay. So Prop 8 passed. Alright, I get it. 51% of you think that I am a second class citizen. Alright then. …I am taking that to mean I do not have to pay my state taxes because I am not a full citizen.
..there is a lot I can do with the extra half a million dollars that I will be keeping instead of handing it over to the state of California. Oh, and I am sure Ellen will be a little excited to keep her bazillion bucks that she pays in taxes too. Wow, come to think of it, there are quite a few of us fortunate gay folks that will be having some extra cash this year.
…I tell myself to take a breath, okay take another one… Obama has been elected president. This crazy fearful insanity will end soon. This great state and this great country of ours will finally come to the understanding that there is no “them”. We are one. We are united. What you do to someone else you do to yourself. That “judge not, lest ye yourself be judged” are truthful words and not Christian rhetoric.
Today the gay citizenry of this state will pick themselves up and dust themselves off and do what we have been doing for years. We will get back into it. We love this state, we love this country and we are not going to leave it. Even though we could be married in Mass. or Conn, Canada, Holland, Spain and a handful of other countries, this is our home. This is where we work and play and raise our families. We will not rest until we have the full rights of any other citizen.
Link to my recent post about Melissa Etheridge, a long time hero to me
Very eloquently spoken. I know that it would be more moving for me, as a radfem, if it weren’t about marriage, though.
Marriage has *never* been about love, and has *always* been about ownership.
Someday the truth will be told about marriage, but until then, … zzzzzzzzzzz.
Yeah, Mary, completely agree. It’s again a matter of what het people have, everyone should have, including lesbians, so we (rhetorical “we”) work to broaden these categories, even though the thing is, as Satsuma said in one of her comments, the rights het married people have are rights everyone should have, and as radfems, we sure aren’t interested in making it easier for more and more people to get married. Civil marriage needs to go.
Governor Terminator is confident the state Supreme Court will throw out Prop. 8, much as it threw out the previous initiative with identical wording six months ago. See this Washington Post article, Legality of Same-Sex Marriage Ban Challenged
Aletha, that’s hopeful, still though, what a heck of a note knowing that more than one out of every two of the people you meet think you should not be allowed to marry or that your marriage should not be recognized. Not to mention that a goodly portion of that more-than-one-out-of-two would do you bodily or other kinds of harm if they had the chance.
Rage.
Two lesbian mothers attacked and beaten outside the school where their children attend, here in Ontario this month. Link shows picture of the beating injuries on their faces.
xttp://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/534469
(Heart, I figure that you can make the link live if you want.)
I think every citizen should be granted the right to designate anyone they wish as a legal beneficiary to anything, including social security benefits. Employment should not be the gateway to health benefits anymore than marriage should be the gateway to social acceptance and benefits of any kind. Marriage is simply a prison women have been in for a very long time, and it is such a powerfully coercive force, that even today women change their last names by the millions to husband’s last names — one small example. I’m still shocked when I ask young women why they did this. The blank looks speak volumes.
Any lesbian will tell you that straight people are most of the time clueless, arrogant and unaware of lesbian constributions and herstory. The straight feminist movement would never have had the power and dedication over the past 150 years or so if it had not been for the incredible lesbian energy of women who loved women. Think of all the women’s colleges in America, all the professors who were lesbians, think Susan B. Anthony and the power of lesbian nation worldwide. Think of what it is like to walk into a roomful of women who have NEVER been contaminated with sexual contact with men. NEVER. Think of the power of the virgin — Joan of Arc or the nuns of medieval times.
We did all of this with no “rights” at all. I think “rights” are basically an illusion. It shocked me to hear how many lesbians thought they actually needed “state recognition” in the first place. It never occured to me to expect anyone to have the power of “approval” for anything I did or said. I was going to say what I wanted to say, and never ever give in to popular opinion, unless I really liked the opinion or really agreed with a position.
The key to liberation is about freedom, it is not about rights. Freedom flows from within, it’s the power that drives you to do incredible things in the world. I knew that my lesbian driven inner power gave me a huge advantage in the world. It was the secret to my success, it was something that I had that most other women could never even dream of having.
Heteronormative ideology seems to think that lesbians are less than straight women or men. In truth, I thought I had more advantages than the average straight woman, because I didn’t ever have to fight the battle against sexism in my own home. I had the power to speak with a clear voice about women, about our truth and about what life is really like when there are no men (except a male dog) in a house.
This whole marriage thing is just about straight people wanting to only see us on “their terms.” They don’t get our relationships unless they can see this heteroimmiative nonsense that has wasted so much of our money. Over $60,000,000 spent on the stupid No on 8 campaign, when women’s shelters are starving for funds, when my lesbian sisters face homelessness right now…. I was amazed at how straight people actually asked me about my life during this campaign, as if they finally saw who we were as human beings. It was weird.
When I’ve talked to lesbian groups, a thing I do is have the group list every advantage to being a lesbian. They usually are stymied with this question, and can endlessly list the disadvantages. But the key to liberation lies in how you as a lesbian see yourself as at an advantage both economically, spiritually, and creatively.
I went to an artist talk over the weekend, and mentioned how powerful it was when women artists painted women looking at each other as women. Most people don’t realize that every portrait we have of women (before photography was invented) was done by men.
One of my favorite quotes from Monique Wittig.
Think Rembrandt, Degas, Leonardo etc. Rarely do you see women painting other women before the 16th century, for example. Either that or men destroyed this art work in its own time, that’s always a posibility with anything women create. Assume we’ve done it, and assume men have destroyed it, but failing to remember, we can always invent….
When I pointed this out, the room became alive, I could see the pride in women’s faces in the room. One of my gay male friends was surprised at how electrified women were at my words. I know I’m not explaining this very well, but I feel with the passage of Prop 8, we actually have a radical new opportunity.
You don’t need state validation to have a great life, you don’t need marriage certificates none of that. I guess I’ve always been happy knowing that my partner and I came together because we were intellectual equals, because we wanted a life of the mind and soul, and because we chose to be together for no other reason than this. We gained no “benefits” we gained no social approval at all, and yet, I’d say most people, even straight people find our partnership inspiring. What we did have was a firm belief in faith in women’s revolution, and in the great dream of radical lesbian feminism.
We had the world we helped create for other women, and I think in an odd way, this election helped me speak from a deeply spiritual or inspiration position. The words I said at the art talk deeply moved even the straight women in the room. They realized that this artist was a woman who painted women, and when I revealed just how extraordinary this was, and the world opened up just a bit more!
Satsuma, you can say rights are basically an illusion, but if you want to get down to that level, I could say the entire legal framework is an illusion. Rights are a legal mechanism to define which freedoms the legal system will protect, from other people and the government itself. Within the legal framework we have, people with no rights are generally equivalent to slaves. Before the first wave, most females had no rights or freedom, being either property of the father or the husband. Lesbians and single women were outside that framework, so had considerable freedom and autonomy. I think it goes without saying that being free to live outside this male-defined system is far more conducive to liberation than being stuck within it, regardless of rights the system has defined.
Randi Rhodes devoted much of her show today to Prop. 8. She had Melissa Etheridge on for a segment. It was an interesting show, for once, though Ms. Rhodes had to throw in yet another venomous remark about Governor Palin, something to the effect that Palin’s idea of the First Amendment was that she could say anything she wanted without being criticized for it. Perhaps that is the comedian in Randi Rhodes, stretching things so far they bear no resemblance to reality. She makes me wonder if sisterhood with women like her really is suicide.
Satsuma, you are quite right that a notable percentage of the first wave of American feminism was brought about by women whom today we would identify as lesbian. Often they lived with other women in ostensibly celibate but loving, life-long relationships that were nick-named “Boston marrriages” at the time. American feminism and many other social advances were largely due to the work of women-identified women, and we should never forget to give lesbians thanks for what they have done for all women.
Speaking of lesbian history, I’ve just purchased a new book by Lillian Faderman entitled “Gay L.A.”–a profusely illustrated tome which I think will be a fascinating read about Los Angeles’ lesbian and gay roots.
Satsuma is right that marriage is heteronormative. At its most basic it’s about property rights - a woman literally becoming a man’s property. In the UK when lesbian/gay ‘civil partnerships’ were introduced the government also introduced a change to benefits which meant that lesbians who lived with their partners had to claim benefits as a couple. So if your partner is working and you are unemployed you are now economically dependent on them. WTF? This is of course based on a model of heterosexual marriage.
All the other stuff is just based on heterosexual marriage too. I think feminists should be asking for the abolition of heterosexual marriage, not its extension to lesbians.
Interestingly a lot of people believe that you have to enter a civil partnership to become someone’s ‘next of kin’ if they were ill. I don’t know if this is true in the USA but it certainly isn’t in the UK. Yet I’ve heard many people who’ve entered into civil partnerships cite this as the reason to do it.
Yes indeed, women of the early 20th century did choose their own lesbian way of life without any of this stuff. I just can’t imagine putting my partner at risk by having her be attached to my “work benefits” at all. We have made sure we purchase individual health, life and other types of things individually. I would not want the government “doling” out the pitance most dependent women settle for.
What the marriage issue is really about is “third wave” young people who have become way more conventional than our early radical lesbian sisters from the 1880s or the 1960s. Marriage is about the social control of relationships and about property management. Therefore, I believe that no benefits of any kind should be tied to these legally sanctioned institutions. So no heterosexual “special rights” either. People should be treated stictly as individuals, not as appendages.
I will stand by my idea that rights are about going along with the state, and freedom is something entirely different. Most people, even sophisticated feminists, often get this wrong, in the run to “be like everyone else.”
Lesbians who pioneered all the radical women’s movements throughout time did not need any of this. You’ll find more intellectual brilliance among the women of Paris and between the two world wars than almost anything that exists today. Ironically, it was a world war in France, that caused lesbians to take over the place, with jobs, clubs etc., while the men were drafted. it is no accident that radical lesbian feminism emerged while men were “shipped off” to the Vietnam war, for example.
The New Woman.. that is the lesbian that has always been apart from that nonsense known as heterosexual servitude to men.
I’m not interested in the heterosexual system at all, and think its standards way to low, its pay scales for women pathetic, and its spirit killed by the time women get into their 50s. So why would lesbians want to become a part of this, when we have a rich culture that goes back to ancient Greece, when we defeated Roman armies, and when our intellectuals created a world that had never existed before in hetero culture?
Melissa Etheridge is a nice pop star, but even she has a rather odd idea of devotion. Pop stars and Hollywood are not good role models for lesbian independence in my opinion; they tend to be overly conformist.
Women actually require few laws. What we truly require is solidarity and a worldwide movement. Half the world’s population could completely write the history of human beings, if only they’d let go of the soul destroying servitude they continue to live in with men. Freedom, not rights, could be explosive. Rights are a pale imitation to freedom Aletha– “benefits” are only a kind of carrot heterosexually controlled women seem to think is the way to go. There is nothing more sad than watching a woman wielding three or four small children, reaching through her purse for pathetic rations known as food stamps– this “dole” dulls and dehumanizes women who don’t know early in life that the meer act of living with men is the beginning of the end.
So while I’m very happy that our people are in the streets and pushing the state of CA into action, I don’t believe that marriage is the true spirit of lesbian radicalism and exceptionalism that was so profound in the 1880s to about the 1920s. Call me quaint, but give me those professors on womens’ college campuses in the eraly 1900s any day!
And give me the completely woman centered Boston Marriage any day.
Lillian Faderman was and is one of our most brilliant herstorians, and we need to know about the times when women were academic giants on their own college campuses, in places where men hardly existed at all! Now that was heaven!!!
P.S. I believe it was the very threat of these early 20th century “new women” that drove the patriarchy crazy, so it had to come up with a new prison — Freudian psychology, where religion was failing, to get those women back under control.
After women got the right to vote, the movement could have gone even further. The passage of Prop. 8, ironically, spelled the reenergized gay and lesbian movement. Even the rather dulled college students starting showing up for huge rallies all around the state, our own rallies, not the hetero controlled presidential candidate rallies…. big difference believe me, and much more fun.
Satsuma, you are correct about Freudian psychology being the patriarchal response to women’s increasing rights–as particularly embodied by single women (spinsters) and women couples. I recommend that you read Jeffrey’s “The Spinster and Her Enemies” to see how Freud and other social scientists whammied uppity women back into the ground and made it anathema to not be in sexual congress with men. It’s a great book.
it is no accident that radical lesbian feminism emerged while men were “shipped off” to the Vietnam war, for example.
* bolt of lightning! *
Thanks level best for the Jeffrey’s book recommendation. I like Jeffreys, but haven’t read her in awhile.
What we have to question is why so many straight people suddenly are on the “gay marriage” bandwagon. Don’t trust ‘em.
Satsuma, I think we are arguing about semantics again. I am not really contesting what I think you are saying here. If you mean by rights things like gay marriage, the ERA, food stamps, I completely agree; those are a pale imitation of freedom. I think of rights in the context of my political philosophy, or the Bill of Missing Rights my friends and I worked out about a quarter century ago. Rights can be a means to an end, but without freedom, all kinds of rights can be on the books and mean virtually nothing, practically speaking. One obvious example is the constitutional amendments passed just after the Civil War, which theoretically gave blacks rights, but how free were they to exercise those rights? They were no longer slaves, but they were still very much second-class citizens.
I suppose what I am trying to say is, it is true that if women were free we would need few laws, but how do we get there? Words are tricky, meaning different things to different people. Your idea of freedom is not the same as mine. The Libertarian idea of freedom is not remotely the same as mine. Freedom could also be interpreted as freedom to be like men. Opponents of gay marriage are going around saying being forced to accept nontraditional marriage infringes on their freedom. The word is too vague for me to say that is all women need, or that it is sufficient to define the goal a worldwide feminist movement could coalesce around.
I guess I see ‘laws” as too limiting, and very much a waste of time.
But I do see the inherent strength of women worldwide– we have the numbers to do just about anything we want. Men do everything in their power to hide this from women, making women believe that they must get “laws changed” through men. I can see the points you are making Aletha, and I respect them, it’s just that I don’t see a lot of what people do in terms of politics as getting at the root cause of the imprisonment and enslavement of women worldwide. It’s something more, and we need to reflect on this.
I decided I should mention an alleged witness to that story Mary cited from the Star on comment 5 showed up on my blog Friday night to defend the man, on the grounds the lesbians he attacked called him the N word. He claims people will testify to that and that was the real hate crime. I posted the comment to tell him he was not believable and his hatred was showing, and as evidence these are not lone nuts who hate lesbians. His comment was rippling with hatred, kind of scary even for me, as one who guys like him sometimes presume must be lesbian, because of my man-hating views.
You know, I just don’t much read anything men have to say about women anymore. Even in political commentary, if a male by-line is writing a Hillary article, I just skip it. I’m not interested in what men think about women because they get it wrong 98% of the time. What’s they point, “they just dumb bubbas.”