askyermom

I had a little moment one recent morning while I was flailing around looking for a slightly larger bag to tote all my slightly larger junk out into the world. On the front closet hung a rainbow bag. It was the wrong size, but that isn’t why I reflexively dismissed it. My thought, of which I am not proud, was, “Oh, I don’t want to be a messenger today!”

What?

Fortunately this wasn’t my only thought. It was part of a whole cascade of more or less stupid ideas about signs and symbols and mental shortcuts.

When we lived in a different home in 2020, yersis made a sign for a march. It was a large cardboard sign with bold black letters, “BLACK LIVES MATTER.” She marched with it, but I didn’t. I might have carried a different sign, but I think it was all I could do to get organized to get to D.C., signless. It’s too bad I didn’t take it. It was a good sign.

What does this have to do with the rainbow bag? Well! Nothing and everything. It has as much to do with that as Queen Elizabeth’s pins. Or not!

Carrying a sign is a message. People might decode the message using a wacky key, you might carry the message upside down, which is an opposite message–maybe–or whatever. It’s just not debatable that when you are carrying a sign you are sending a message, even if the message itself is debatable.

When you carry a rainbow item, it’s a more subtle message and this has caused a lot of grumbling in some quarters about rainbows being part of an agenda. At this rate, everything that decorates a kindergarten classroom will be controversial. Snowflakes! Pumpkins! Clowns!

Did Queen Elizabeth have a clown pin? I think that might lack subtlety, but I’d like to think she wore one for occasions of informal ridicule.

Anyhoo, the thing about the Black Lives Matter sign that explains the entire derailed train of thought here is this: she put in our front window–I mean, yersis did, not Queen Elizabeth. I saw it there and I felt a jolt of nerves. I did not know our new neighbors, and had a dark shrug of worry that someone might break our window or scold us for putting up the sign in a place where signs generally are not placed. A church nearby had had its Black Lives Matter sign repeatedly torn down in the years before, I knew.

We left the sign in place. My uncertainty clung for a bit, until one day I saw a man stop his car and hop out to take a picture of my window. He was so happy that I knew the sign had to stay, and it did stay without any unwelcome incident until we moved away almost a year later.

I think about that when I wear a rainbow pin or some other tiny symbol of encouragement. Not just that it will give people a tiny boost, but that it is literally the least I can do, to offer a tiny gesture of safety.

Anyhoo, my rainbow problem was solved as soon as it occurred. If I feel displaying a rainbow is threatening, how about being out in the world as a lone queer person? That is actually scary.

It’s one thing to feel uncertain of your new neighbors, to sense the blanket hostility of the unknown and sort of guess it might wrap you up in danger by accident. But it’s quite another thing to be shouted at, openly ridiculed and threatened as you live your life. It’s not hard for a woman to put herself in queer shoes and relate to being genuinely at-risk just walking down a street–and no, nobody is asking for that treatment.

When I was invited to a pride parade with my favorite lesbians, I felt that tug of hesitation. It might be dangerous in more ways than one. They haven’t gathered in years now because of germ worries. We went and we caught nothing more than beads and glitter.

I know some of my contemporaries think these events are just weirdoes celebrating their genitals, but honestly, I have the same assessment of most big events, like the Academy Awards. There’s the genital party, the uncomfortable privileges, but there is also the opportunity to love at others where shame is not invited to the party.

The disadvantage of using symbols is the ease with which their meaning can be twisted. Some people panic at the sight of a hexagon or a cross or squiggly parallel lines for ESP tests.

All the symbols bypass words and higher thinking to jab at our emotions. Even so, maybe don’t be mad at rainbows.

You can stay mad at clowns though. Nobody has time for clowns.

Love,
yermom

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