by Maria Bello
I’ve been dying to get my mom and Gloria Steinem together. I know they would love each other. They are on the same happy train. As Gloria says, “I’ve recently learned that laughter is the only free emotion.” Mom certainly lives by this rule.
I’VE DECIDED THAT EVERY TWO AND A HALF MINUTES A NEW FEMINIST is born somewhere in the world. Okay, while I can’t attribute this to a study by the Clinton Global Initiative or even Ms. magazine, my woman’s intuition and my personal experience tell me it has to be true.
But really, what else would explain the growing global feminist movement around the common needs, aspirations, and desires of so many women from vastly different cultures?
That budding feminist could be a boy or a girl. He or she could be born in New York or Sudan. And yet many of these children could grow up not knowing they are feminists until some defining moment brings them face-to-face with that label.
I’ve been lucky enough to travel around the world meeting women from countries and cultures vastly different from my own: Bosnia, Haiti, Kenya, Nicaragua, and many others. I always make it a point to see what we have in common. I’ve rarely met a woman who doesn’t believe that she doesn’t deserve social, political, and economic equality. And while we often start with very serious topics, usually we end up laughing about the stuff of everyday life. Some women proudly identify themselves as feminists. Some don’t know they are feminists. But all of them support their families in some way: by working in fields, carrying their babies on their backs for 14 hours a day, or creating a safe space for their children and husbands in very challenging circumstances.
On one of my trips to Kenya, with Jackson and five of my female friends, I sat in a hut with seven Masai women dressed in traditional garb. The mother of a friend of ours had married a Masai warrior and had arranged for us to meet these women. They all had earlobes down to their shoulders, and shaved heads. We were wary of each other at first, asking only serious questions of each other about our daily lives. “Are you allowed to work?” “Do you have a say in your household and community?” “Are you paid the same as a man for the same work?” “Have you ever been physically or sexually abused?”
After sharing our more serious similar experiences, many of us were in tears. Then we became a giggling coven, talking about . . . what else? Sex. The Masai women even passed around a rolled-up napkin to show their preferred size of man. We traded more secrets as the conversation wore on. They said that in their culture, they each had a lover and a husband. They were shocked and saddened to hear that only one of us was married, until we explained that in our culture we were able to have many lovers, and it’s called dating. The Masai women never did catch on to that concept, which is understandable since many of us in Western cultures have a hard time figuring it out and we’ve been dating for a long time.
In Bosnia at a refugee camp, I spent time with women who had seen horrific things during the war. In one moment, we were sharing experiences of violence and loss of husbands and lovers. And in another, we were sharing small acts of kindness, such as giving each other manicures and pedicures in our makeshift barracks. Women find ways to bond no matter what our circumstances. The more we know each other, the more we can support each other in standing up for our rights.
Feminism is a global movement defined and fueled by these common connections: our children, our faith in deep compassion, and our desire for equal opportunities economically, socially, and politically. I saw this everywhere I traveled and I felt it with every woman I talked to.
And it’s through technology that we are discovering our common connections at an ever-increasing pace. Technology enables people, particularly women, who may never meet face-to-face, to share the surprising common threads of their lives—their struggles, their joys, and their hopes and dreams. Technology helps rapidly spread the reality that women are no longer victims, that women are becoming full participants in global policy. My organization, We Advance, helps women to connect all over Haiti. Soon perhaps women all over the world will have the same opportunity.
Twenty-seven years ago, when I was studying peace and justice education and women’s rights at Villanova and working at the women’s law project in Philadelphia, I read a passage that defines feminism in a way that is relevant to our lives today. It is from one of my favorite books, Out of Africa.
Karen Blixen, the author we know as Isak Dinesen and who was so beautifully portrayed in the film adaptation by Meryl Streep, had raised an orphaned bushbuck. She named her Lulu. Karen bottle-fed her, and for years Lulu roamed around her home as if she were Karen’s own child. But as Lulu turned into a teenager, she disrupted the household tremendously: acting up, breaking furniture, and constantly trying to leave that secure place where she had always lived. And then one day Lulu disappeared. Karen was devastated.
Years later, Karen was doing the dishes at the kitchen sink and when she looked out of the window, she saw a magnificent creature standing before her at the edge of the woods. She knew instantly that it was Lulu. She wrote, “Lulu of the woods was a superior independent being. A change of heart had come upon her. She was in possession. She was now the complete Lulu, the spirit of offensive had gone from her. For whom and why should she attack? She was standing quietly in her own divine rights.”
The truth is that right now about half of the world’s population is on the precipice of standing in our own divine rights and saying to the world, “You do not have to include us. We are including ourselves. We are empowering ourselves. And whether you like it or not, because of our common connections, we will succeed in joining to make our world a better place for our children in the future. We are not asking to sit at your table. We are saying you’d be lucky to have us.”
We may still be fighting for and fighting against, but women all over the world are finding a new power, a new sense of themselves. We are advancing. Look at Malala Yousafzai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. She almost lost her life fighting to be educated. But instead of shrinking away, she stepped further into her power by inspiring others.
And I am not excluding all of the smart and compassionate men out there. I have a son who is an incredible human being. When I told him that some girls in the world were not allowed to go to school and that women in America made less money than men for the same job, he couldn’t believe it. Though gender roles exist and maybe always will, there is a new consciousness in this generation of kids, and not only in America. When a young woman in India was raped and killed on a bus, the population rallied. Men and women of many generations stood side by side to protest the violence against women in their country. Sociologist Michael Kimmel is a great example of a man whose life mission is to create gender equality. He is considered one of the top feminists in our country.
I believe the new feminism is not about gender. The new feminism is an energy. It is a principle that men and women both possess. It is a trait that is defined by gentleness, compassion, and the heart. We are stronger together than we are alone, and we are moving into an age where these values can and must take the lead in all of our decisions.
The new feminism isn’t about fighting against or for something; it’s about standing in your own divine right. That’s the woman I choose to be.
11
AM I LGBT OR W?
When I first wrote that Modern Love column in the New York Times, blogs, magazines, and tabloids made a big deal of my supposed confession. The headlines were predictable: “Maria Bello Comes Out as Gay,” “Reveals She’s a Lesbian in New York Times Piece,” and “Comes Out as Bisexual.” But in reducing my story to those terms, they missed the point. As the writer Mary Elizabeth Williams wisely put it in her article “Maria Bello’s Great ‘Whatever’ Coming Out” in the online magazine Salon, the “big deal,” for people like me, “isn’t the gender of the person they’re happy with; it’s the happiness itself.” She agrees, along with many others who have written to me over the past year, that people can change their sexual preferences throughou
t a lifetime or in a minute. As she said, “Maybe it makes for less simplistic headlines, but it’s a lot more accurate.”
MY FIRST ORGASM HAPPENED WAY BEFORE I KNEW IT WAS CALLED an orgasm. It wasn’t with a man or a woman but with a pillow. I just felt the sensation in my body and I liked it. So back then I didn’t know if I was straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, or a “pillower.” I am thinking maybe we should change the label to LGBTP?
Yes, let’s add a P. But not for pillow. Let’s add a P to honor a great Black, Gay, Transgender AIDS Activist. Her name was Marsha P. Johnson. When people asked her what the P stood for, she said it meant “Pay It No Mind.” To me, she was proclaiming herself a whatever.
In July 1992 I was sitting on a cement wall overlooking the Hudson River with a sweet boy from Long Island that I had been dating for a year. We were looking at the water on a sunny day, just minutes from breaking up. I was very into my full moon Goddess circles and rituals at the time and the down-to-earth Catholic boy was freaked out by that. I had told him I was a witch the day before. He didn’t think his mother would approve and was about to tell me good-bye when I pointed at something bobbing in the water. “What’s that?” I asked. He said, “A log.” I said, “No, it’s not. I think it’s a head.” When I walked closer to the pier I could see it clearly. “It’s a fucking head!” It was a head attached to a bloated, fish-bitten gray-colored corpse. I asked a passing biker to get the police. My boyfriend ran away spooked, as he was sure I had conjured it.
Turns out the floating body was none other than the magnificent, black American, gay, transgender AIDS activist Marsha P. Johnson.
Afterward, I saw her photo on every street corner around Christopher Street where I lived. I remembered seeing this always-smiling, flamboyant, beautiful woman, but I never had the fortune to meet her. Her friends and supporters came forward to say that she was not suicidal as the police had theorized, but the police refused to investigate. The poster campaign said she had been harassed and gay-bashed in the very same spot where she died. It wasn’t until 2012 that the New York City Police Department reopened Marsha’s case. They now think that most likely she was murdered. I am currently trying to find out where the case stands, and to find ways to honor her.
Marsha was a true revolutionary for gay rights and for human rights. Marsha was one of the transgender folks who led the 1969 Stonewall Riots, at the bar in the West Village that was a half a block from my apartment. Marsha was at the forefront of that fight, and the many that followed in New York City as the LGBT community fought for equal rights. She started an organization to bring food and clothes to the young trans women who were living on the docks and nearby Christopher Street. She used her voice and her tremendous stilettos to create a better world.
Marsha is one of the reasons I became part of the LGBT community long before I slept with a woman. She taught me even after she was gone that it’s not about who you sleep with, it’s about who you fight for and who you love.
Let’s be honest. Not everyone who sleeps with someone from the same gender cares about the great LGBT struggle for equality. They’ll wink and nod at you like “Ooh cool, you’re sleeping with a woman.”
After my article, a woman came up to me at a luncheon and said, “Welcome to the club.” She was a well-known lesbian in the entertainment community. I had known her a bit over the years and found her sneaky, hard, and a bit mean. I wanted to say, “I don’t want to be in your damn club, you’re an asshole.” The club the woman was talking about was just about sexuality. And then I saw a man across the room, apparently a straight man who plays a gay man on a television show, and I thought, “The LGBT club he belongs to is the one I want to be a part of.” A club that includes anyone who believes in human rights and allows anyone, regardless of what they call themselves.
The club I want to belong to is full of revolutionaries, fighting for theirs and other people’s rights to love who they love. But like any club, I won’t like everyone in it. I won’t be interested in being identified with them.
Clare has never been part of a club and maybe that’s why I fell in love with her. She never knows how old people are and never identifies anyone as black, white, Asian, etc. Sometimes I think she doesn’t even know an elephant from a giraffe, and I love her for this. And she has always been a revolutionary. From a young age she was a part of the underground in Zimbabwe, working to help both black and white folks fight for their rights to choose their own governments and their own identities. She thinks many of them were probably LGBT, but as I’ve said, she’s not one to label much.
When I met Clare, I had been with men almost exclusively. I fell in love with Clare from the first moment I met her, but not in a sexual way.
Five years ago, I was standing in front of a beautiful half-Chinese woman with short black hair at a fancy art gallery in New York City. She ran an organization that I hoped would donate to our work at We Advance in Haiti. I liked her very much, so I said yes when she asked me to join her and her girlfriend for a drink later that night.
Her girlfriend turned out to be the beautiful, curious, blond, blue-eyed Zimbabwean, wearing a bowler hat, who would be in my life from that moment on.
As I was looking through my photos while I was recovering from the parasite, I saw so many of the two of us, beaming with real love and laughter. And when I finally reached that black-and-white photo booth shot from New Year’s Eve, a hummingbird magically appeared. I took it as a sign.
When I next went back to New York, I decided to proclaim my love to her. After spending a whole day together walking the streets in SoHo, we sat in a little Italian restaurant. I didn’t know what to say at first. She and the girlfriend had been in therapy and were breaking up. I certainly didn’t want to hurt her girlfriend, but I needed to admit my truth. When I finally had the courage to speak, I got all teary-eyed.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” I said.
She was concerned, as she thought I was going to tell her that I was dying of cancer or had gotten accidentally pregnant.
I finally said to her between my tears, “I think I’m in love with you.”
It was a long, painful transition, going from friends to lovers. The process was tough for us and our mutual friends. And here we are, years later, with Clare sleeping soundly inside of our bedroom as I write outside on our balcony.
Clare has always been a whatever, having relationships with men and women, sleeping with some and not with others. It just doesn’t matter to her. But it mattered to me when I saw that photo and realized I could in fact love her. I hadn’t pictured living my life with a woman until then.
Here’s the thing I got: she’s not a woman or a man—she’s Clare.
My mother taught me not to pray for a certain way a relationship should go, but to pray for a relationship to be the best that it is meant to be.
I hope that in the near future saying that you are LGBT will be just like saying what you prefer for breakfast. Why should we care who is having sex with whom? Or who is attracted to whom?
When I first kissed a girl at 21, it wasn’t because I wanted to have sex with her. I just thought it would be fascinating to kiss a beautiful woman with bright red lips in a bathroom. It was a secret, so very sexy. But was that sex? Was I officially bisexual when I kissed the girl? Or was I officially bisexual when I was turned on by seeing two women kissing in a movie? Does the fact that I have had sex mostly with men in my life and have mostly fantasized about men mean anything?
I’ve wondered whether a man who has been married for 40 years but kissed a boy once when he was 10 because he was curious and attracted is bisexual. If a woman has only had sex with men, but fantasizes about a woman to have an orgasm, is she bisexual? How often and how far do you have to go to consider yourself bisexual? And if you have had sex with a woman and enjoyed it, but years later are only having sex with men, can you call yourself gay?
When people ask how long Clare and I have been together, I don’t
know what to say. Was it from that day at the bar when she gave me her hat? Or years later when we kissed? Or when we first had great sex? Or when we shouted our love out to the world?
I knew that the gender of the person I loved didn’t matter, it was the love itself that mattered.
There are no labels that can define my relationship with Clare. This relationship, like all relationships, constantly evolves. Call it destiny, God, or whatever. . . . Clare was meant to be in my life. We teach each other and push each other to grow every day—and though the form of our relationship changes, the love is always the same. By the way, when people say to us, “You are a perfect couple,” we always correct them and say, “It’s mostly perfect.”
So many people in the LGBT community have sacrificed so much to change policy, hearts, and minds. The entire world has benefited from their sacrifices beyond LGBT rights. The community has fought, marched, shouted, laughed, cried—all to move policies and to show the world it shouldn’t matter to anyone who you love or who you sleep with. That’s the part of the LGBT community I respond to the most. The struggle to love whomever you want without being disenfranchised.
An extraordinary thing the LGBT community has done is take back labels that were used to demean and disempower, and turn them into proud badges. Queer, Gay, Dyke, Lesbian, and Transvestite. Pretty much the terms I knew growing up.
So here we are today, calling our community of revolutionaries Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender. Will we have to add more initials to honor all the communities who are defining their own identities, such as asexual, gender-neutral, trans-bi, etc.? And why not? These are people who ought to have their own rights, too. We own the URL www.wlgbt.com so we can honor whatevers—as a chuckle and a tie-in to my book, but also to be respectful to whatever anyone wants to call themselves.