First of all, my apologies for letting a week go by without a new post. I sincerely intend to do better.
Second, I planned the new post to be about comic books, but first, I want to share a suggestion that is, for the PnT family and her audience, something that is at least interesting and possibly something that a lot of us might relate to.
I'm talking about Two Spirits. Europeans first met Two Spirits among the American Indians in the 19th and into the 20th centuries. They were mainly men, but also some women, who dressed in the opposite gender's clothing and were respected and honored by their tribes. Even the shaman, or Medicine Men and Women, would seek their advice because their nature gave them a broader perception than anyone else. The Europeans freaked, of course, and apparently couldn't write "sodomy" enough in their memoirs when expressing surprise and general eww. The other Indians, however, didn't get all worked up over it. There are those who still practice their own Indian Nation's traditions, including respecting Two Spirits, but there are many more Indian people who have turned their backs on Traditions and adopted the perspective of the European missionaries who'd first visited them. Despite that, more Two Spirited people are living openly.
A recent documentary on PBS described what Two Spirit means along with the story of a Two Spirit named Fred who was murdered. But this wasn't your typical LGBTQ sad tale documentary. Though Fred's story is tragic, and I take nothing from it's seriousness, the documentary is also a celebration of Fred's life and of all Two Spirits.
To learn more about the documentary, "Two Spirits," you can go to http://twospirits.org/
There is also a spiritual facet to be Two Spirit. It's almost like being able to see everything at once.
Here's a quote from this post's suggested reading, The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture by Walter L. William, from a Lakota Indian Two Spirit named Michael One Feather:
"I always knew I had a different concept from what everybody else had. Of things, of life; how I saw things. Most people didn't see the way I saw. What I would call a way of looking at things. My ideas were always spectacular--overshooting, you know, and overachieving. I always had to do something more, to do it my way, based on my different view."
In other words, as I always say, "anything worth doing is worth overdoing" and "to be unoriginal is a sin."
Of course, those who talk about the Two Spirits tend to go into sexuality, but there is more to it than that. A lady can be a lesbian, but know she is 100% female, regardless of her look or how she behaves in a relationship. Being Two Spirit is about being male and female in one's identity.
So, might you be Two Spirit, also known as berdache? You can find The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture and read more about it.
Another book to check out is Two-Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity, Sexuality, and Spirituality by Sue-Ellen Jacobs, Wesley Thomas and Sabine Lang.
You might also like to read the essay "Lesbians in American Indian Cultures" by Paula Gunn Allen in Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past edited by Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus and George Chauncey, Jr.
Thanks to Lee Wind at http://www.leewind.org/ for the article that drew my attention to this essay
So that's what I have for this post. Hope you enjoyed it and come back when I start talking about comic books. There are some great ones out there, but you have to do the research to find those that are truly lesbian versus straight guy fantasies (hint: if the promo image is of two women in a loving embrace, it's truly lesbian, if one of them is holding a sex toy, it's straight guy). I mean, there was this one site, lesbian-comics dot something. Can't get any more obvious than that, can we? So I clicked and it was totally straight guy stuff, celebrities like Beyonce doing each other. Beyonce is stunning, don't get me wrong, and I wouldn't complain if she came out (which I'm sure there's nothing for her to come out about), but they did go too far on that site. I mean, really, the Olsen Twins?
Till we continue,
Angie
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