Thought That Came Unbidden

The OED defines a fetish as “an inanimate object worshipped for its supposed magical powers” or, alternately, “a form of sexual desire in which gratification is focused abnormally on an object, part of the body, or activity.” My particular fetish falls squarely in the realm of the first definition.

I spent a lot of time at the office, either with my mother or my aunt, when I was a kid. So much time at my aunt’s office, in fact, that I had my own little “desk” behind the counter at the unversity dean’s office where she worked. I’d do a drawing, put it in the Dean’s inbox, he’d put a star on it, and send it back out. He was a really nice man. As a result of all this time at the office, though, I learned early on to like office supplies.

Pens, pencils, highlighters, new pads, spiral notebooks, looseleaf paper…shopping for school every year was a joy because it meant going through the sale circulars to find what I wanted for the best deal. Things have changed, though, and with identity theft on the rise my office supply fetish has taken a new twist.

Like any American with even moderately decent credit I get an average of three credit card offers per week. I’ve been pre-approved! A new low rate! No interest for the first three months! It’s even worse, I think, because I originally registered my domain names under the name of my freelance web company. Naturally, I get credit card offers for the company too. And these fat little envelopes are a pain in the ass. Opening them, making sure that I only feed the right number of sheets into my tiny little shredder, cleaning out said tiny shredder when it gets jammed…all tasks that are way more onerous than they should be.

But I may have found the holy grail of office supplies: a shredder that costs less than $100 that will let me feed those envelopes into its jaws completely whole.^*

* At the time this entry was posted this shredder was on sale for $99 + shipping

Now that June is over I feel like I can finally say this: Pride is irrelevant.

I’m not talking about the kind of pride that helps an individual have a healthy ego, that allows us to be happy when we do a good job, and indeed motivates us to do a good job at all. No, I’m talking about the rainbow flag waving, slow and poorly organized parade where no one throws anything, has-been dance music diva’s as entertainment shindigs that are thrown all over the country during the month of June. The same festivals that completely miss the point of why we needed Pride in the first place, and of why they no longer do anything but deliver us up as a captive audience to companies that really don’t give a shit about how gay, lesbian, or transgendered people fare in the workplace or in life.

In the United States June is widely recognized as gay and lesbian pride month. The riots that broke out at the Stonewall Inn in New York city in June 1969 are commonly and widely regarded as the birth of the gay civil rights movement. 1969 saw the immediate creation of two “liberation” groups, the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance both of which took on as their missions to fight oppression by both the police and by organized crime that gay men, lesbians, transgendered people, and drag queens faced as a matter of routine in the city of New York.

Pride festivals started as commemorations of the Stonewall riots, the Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day March on June 28, 1970 being the first with other anniversary marches organized by groups in San Francisco and Los Angeles during June.

The 1970s were a time of change for gay and lesbian people in the U.S. Politicians like Harvey Milk made their sexual orientation public and began fighting through the system to secure a life for gay and lesbian people that was free of official harassment.

Some time in the mid-1980s what we now know as Pride celebrations lost their political flavor. They mutated and changed, becoming street festivals and community festivals organized from the top down often by non-profit groups whose sole mission was the management of the yearly event. I think, though, that it wasn’t until the 1990s when big business started seeing the gay and lesbian community as a marketing niche, when companies started taking out special “gay pride” ads in program guides despite not having domestic partner benefits for their employees, that Pride really became irrelevant.

The thing of it is, as you get older, even if you’re still single, Pride celebrations become hollow. There’s very little to address the concerns of the gay or lesbian person who has moved passed the bar and disco stage, the person who knows the details of safer sex and ways to not get HIV.

There is very little to address concerns of aging and trying to move in the world as an adult. I can buy all the t-shirts, leather goods, and rainbow crap that I could ever want at Pride, but I can’t find someone to help me plan for my retirement.

The way I see it, as you get more comfortable with being different, sexual orientation fades into the background, as well it should, and as it should if we ever want to be accorded full civil rights. My concerns are really no different than the concerns of a married, childless, heterosexual woman of my age: I’m worried about approaching 40 and how my body will change; I’m concerned about maintaining good health; I’m concerned that I’m not saving enough for retirement; I’m concerned that I’m losing touch with mainstream culture.

Pride is, I think, a transition event and it is for the young and the newly out. It’s a way to get into the community, to show you options you may not have known existed before you came out or you got comfortable with your own sexuality. And those ends – connected the disconnected, providing unknown options – are indeed good and worthy things, but once you know those options exist, what purpose does Pride really serve?

Maybe my perspective would be different if I were single and I needed the social/romantic outlet that Pride naturally provides by gathering a large group of non-heterosexuals together in one place. Maybe my perspective would be different if I were an extrovert or a joiner, looking for a new group to become involved with.

Or maybe my perspective would be different if my community’s leaders were fighting a civil rights battle we actually had a snowball’s chance in hell of winning.

Until we can actually work on something that might bring some results, I’ll keep my Pride to myself.

Fashion has officially reached its nadir. I saw on the street this evening a young woman wearing hip hugger, bell-bottom clam diggers.

It could get worse but I just don’t want to think about how.

Courtesy of my friend Carrie, this blog as a graphic:

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Try it on your own site.

Happy Summer Solstice…I love 14h 54m of daylight in a day, don’t you? They’re getting 17h 37m in Glasgow, Scotland and 20h 57m in Reykjavik, Iceland today.

Want to find out how many daylight hours today where you live? Visit www.sunrisesunset.com Remember: 24 hour time and base 60 math!^*

* Base 60 math because you are working with clock time not regular numbers. To figure my location, Washington, DC:
Sunset – Sunrise = # daylight hours

Sunrise: 5:42am (converts to 24 hour time as 05:42)
Sunset: 8:36pm (converts to 24 hour time as 20:36)

20:36 – 05:42 = # daylight hours

Since you can’t subtract 42 minutes from 36 minutes you have to do the carry over but here is where the base 60 math comes in…you add 60 instead of 10 when you do the carry over so:

20:36 becomes 19:96 (19h 96m) (instead of becoming 19-5, 13-4, 6-2 as it would in base 10)

resulting in:
19:96 – 05:42 = 14h 54m

Yes, I know. I am a geek.