matters of the state.

yesterday, i was at the state department for an awards ceremony honoring various foreign service employees, one whom is one of my bosses, and you know how sometimes experiences just confirm everything you thought you knew anyway? yeah. so, sure, the administrative/support awards went to women. so, sure, everyone else who received awards were men. so, sure, everyone who gave out the awards (usually the sponsor of the awards or the family members of the person who sponsored the award) were white men, with the exception of one white woman. things were going very briskly for the first several awards, and then things slowed down a bit because there were awards given for "constructive dissent", and so we heard some speeches. the first was pretty impressive. this guy who works in the office in panama was speaking out against the profiling of muslims entering the united states and the lies told and the conditions under which people were held, and it was powerful and good and right and true. until the whole patriotic hegemonic part that he cushioned it in at the end. but still. more than i was expecting at an event like this. the next guy gets up, and before he even got up, i felt myself groan a little on the inside not because i don't believe in partner rights, because my god, of course i do. but because i will admit to having suspicions that gay men representing the cause will have tendencies for the dramatic in a way that doesn't seem all that relevant to me. and as he started speaking, i felt a little bit of me die inside. why the hell else would there be so much controversy about access to marriage if marriage itself didn't come with its own sack of privileges? not to say that i really believe in it other than to say, yes, marriage does exist, though usually not for long or very well, but sure, it exists, and sure, the appealing thing about marriage is the legitimacy of one's relationship. sure. but goddamn it, i don't want to be force-fed a much too long speech about family values and whatnot, how this is not about changing the definition of marriage, how this is about human rights...for fuck's sake, i'm a woman who's dating a woman, and absolutely, if she needed health insurance or whatever, i would do what i could to arrange that, but c'mon - i would do that for anybody i loved because access to health care? now that's a right. i would fucking do that for my ex. marriage is a goddamn privilege if you want to call it that. come back to me when you're ready to actually change the institution of marriage or eliminate it altogether as a bastion of inequality. so let's just cut the shit and say that everyone should be allowed to pick one person in their life who has access to all the shiny things in the embassy you work in, because that's really what it's about isn't it? if i was single, i think it's fair that i could choose a friend of mine to come with me and live with me somewhere if i worked in the foreign service. life partners be damned. we all know there's a pretty solid half and half shot that that's not gonna happen. when he's finally done scraping away at my intellect with his blunt object, what happens? he gets a fucking standing ovation, that's what happens. the man who got up before spoke about people in panama who were subject to inhumane treatment by us authorities - he got some nice clapping. but this guy? this guy gets up here and talks about how as an ambassador, his partner should have access to the embassy and training and whatnot, and he gets a fucking standing ovation? who the fuck are we kidding? progressive politics are laughable.

but besides that, and besides my sweating in my suit walking over there, and besides thinking my feet were going to fall off from wearing real shoes, i was in the state department, yo. in the reception area, and it was pretty cool. except, you know, when people were talking and stuff.