Florida Agenda

By Ily Goyanes

Representative Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis) is a pioneer. Rep. Baldwin, 48, was the first woman elected to Congress from the state of Wisconsin. She is also the first openly gay, non-incumbent candidate to be elected to Congress in the United States.

After fifteen years together, Baldwin and her partner, Lauren Azar, are separating. Baldwin and Azar were among the first couples to register as domestic partners in Wisconsin in 2009. Wisconsin’s domestic partnership legislation offers registered couples benefits such as hospital visitation rights.

As far as the separation goes, the former couple has kept mainly silent.

An announcement issued through Baldwin’s office has been the only public statement regarding the break-up.  “Accordingly, they will also terminate their Wisconsin domestic partnership,” the announcement says. “Neither Tammy nor Lauren will have any further public comment on this very private matter.”

An avid reader, Baldwin used literature to ease the coming-out process in college. “Books played an important role in giving context to a topic rarely discussed in schools or around the dinner table.”  Randy Shilts’ The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, and the works of Professor John Boswell and Rita Mae Brown, helped her realize that a lesbian can take an active role in shaping public policy.

First elected to the House of Representatives in 1999, Baldwin has been an avid champion of universal healthcare and LGBT rights. She has also played a huge part in orchestrating passage of the Domestic Partnership and Obligations Act, a bill that she co-sponsored in the House with Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), also a champion of LGBT rights. The bill ensures that the partners of federal employees receive federal benefits, such as health insurance.

After coming out as a lesbian in college, Baldwin has never looked back. While running for office, she decided that she would run a truthful campaign—and that meant being open about her sexual orientation. She never hid the fact that she was a lesbian. “But there was also, believe it or not, an advantage to being open and honest about who I am. In a world too full of half-truths and whole lies, those of us who are “out” are perceived as being honest–of having integrity,” says Baldwin on her website.

“When I ran for the Wisconsin Assembly in 1992, people told me time and time again that my integrity mattered. I remember being approached by a gentleman who I wouldn’t have picked to be a big supporter. But he got up to me and said, ‘Gosh, Lady, you’ve sure got guts. If you can be honest about that, you’ll probably be honest about everything.’ I got his vote!”

Baldwin’s political career began inauspiciously. As a middle-school student, she ran for Student Council President and lost. She also lost elections in high school and college, failing to become the high school graduation speaker and college class president. Despite these early losses, she forged ahead to pave the way for American women and lesbians interested in politics. “I hope that’s a lesson for other people, young and older, who are dreaming big dreams!”

By Ily Gonyanes

Not often talked about in the lesbian community, domestic violence affects a reported 30 to 40 percent of lesbian couples, similar to that suffered by heterosexual couples. Like their straight female counterparts, lesbians tend to keep quiet and stay in “the second closet” out of shame and fear, not reporting what is going on and not seeking counseling.

Lesbians do not often speak about their struggles with domestic abuse, or seek help for these issues, due partly to a lack of recognizing and understanding the signs of abuse. Relationship abuse can take three forms: sexual, emotional, and physical.

The most recognized and acknowledged form of domestic violence is physical abuse, yet even

physical abuse can be hard for some lesbians to define. Most people think of physical abuse as punching, kicking, and battering a partner, however, any kind of negative physicality is considered physical abuse, such as pushing, shoving, biting, hair-pulling, or holding a partner to prevent them from moving. Some lesbians in physically abusive relationships tend to brush off behaviors such as pushing and shoving, not realizing that such behavior can and will escalate in to more severe forms of physical abuse. “My ex-girlfriend would push me around and slam me into walls, but I didn’t think anything about it,” says Amanda, a 23-year-old lesbian in West Palm Beach. “Then one day, she punched me straight on the mouth and I was bleeding everywhere. That is when it first occurred to me that something was seriously wrong with our relationship.”

It is a common misconception among those outside the lesbian community that one woman cannot sexually abuse another woman. The reality is that 30 percent of women have reported experiencing sexual abuse by another woman. “Between the ages of 18 and 21, I had a girlfriend who would come home drunk and wake me up by penetrating me. I was asleep and she would penetrate me without my consent. It took me a while to realize that it was rape. In fact, if I hadn’t been reading a straight women’s magazine and come across an article on sexual abuse, I might have never realized it.

There is no material directed at lesbian women to help them understand they are being abused and how to get out of an abusive relationship,” says Lourdes, a 35-year-old lesbian in Miami.

While physical and sexual abuse are not rarities, studies show that emotional abuse is probably the most common form of abuse in lesbian relationships. “My worst experience in a relationship, probably ever, was subjecting myself to a woman who abused me verbally, emotionally, and psychologically, to the point where my self-esteem was nonexistent,” says Vivian, a 29-year-old lesbian in Aventura. “I was young and naïve; she was older and an excellent liar. It got to the point where she convinced me that I was worthless and that no one else could ever love me.”

At times, especially with younger lesbians, extreme jealousy and possessiveness are common. Due to the prevalence of this type of behavior, many young lesbians do not realize that they are in an abusive relationship until years after the relationship has ended. Controlling behaviors such as checking phone call logs, text messages and emails, and dictating whom a partner can talk to or socialize with, are forms of emotional abuse. Lillian, a lesbian in Miami, recalls this type of controlling behavior, “My girlfriend would unplug all the phones in the house and put them in her car. We had iron bars on the windows and an iron gate on the front door. She would lock me in the house. I couldn’t leave and I couldn’t call anybody. If there had been a fire, I would have been dead. And she would have been the one who killed me.”

Apart from being ashamed and scared, lesbians have an extra problem to worry about in regards to seeking help, which straight women do not encounter. “I remember one time that I actually called the cops; it had gotten that bad. She had hit me so hard that my eye was bruised shut; I couldn’t open it and my lip was split and bleeding,” says Lillian. “The cops came, took one look at us, and started laughing. They asked me why I didn’t just fight her back.”

There are no protections for lesbian victims of domestic abuse. Due to a fear of encountering homophobia or prejudice, many lesbians feel that they have no legal recourse. Most battered women’s shelters will not turn lesbians away, but these shelters are hetero-centric. They are not equipped to deal with the particulars of a lesbian domestic abuse victim.

While it is true that abuse is abuse, regardless of sexual orientation, lesbian victims do experience domestic abuse in a particularly unique way. “I am a butch and I was getting beat up by my femme girlfriend,” recalls Lillian. “People, including the cops, would ask me why I didn’t just beat her up; it was obvious that I was stronger than her. They didn’t understand and I couldn’t explain, there was more to it than who was stronger or who could beat up who. Even though she was hurting me, I didn’t want to hurt her.

Bobby Blanchard Lesbian Gym Teacher, Written by Monica Nolan. Kensignton Books. $15.00 (USD).

Review by Ily Goyanes

First off, the title alone should tell you that this is not a serious read, but Bobby Blanchard Lesbian Gym Teacher never, for a single page, pretends to be. Author Monica Nolan pokes fun at classic lesbian pulp on every page. From the beginning of the book, when we are introduced to Bobby (“not Bobbi”) Blanchard, we are taken on a sweet ride of guilty pleasure until the last page.

Ms. Blanchard once had a promising future as professional field hockey player until she was injured in a freak drunk-diving incident. Yes, diving, not driving.

Lying in her hospital bed and pessimistic about a future without field hockey, Bobby gets the best advice of her life from her old guidance counselor: Become the new Games Mistress at Metamora Academy for Girls.

The teachers at Metamora are all referred to as Mistresses. There’s the Art Mistress, the Math Mistress, the Chemistry Mistress, and so forth. Sounds like Bobby will feel right at home, right? As soon as she steps on school grounds, the not-so-subtle hints that other teachers and students might also play for Bobby’s “team” fly around faster than a hockey puck.

Although Bobby’s appearance is never described in full detail, we know she is a butch. Her muscular biceps, abhorrence of skirts, and proclivity for sports, are all obvious signs that the beloved Games Mistress is your stereotypical butch gym teacher.  The book is filled with other funny, palpable stereotypes, such as the two closeted male teachers who live together off-campus spending their time cooking and gardening, the “straight” woman “trapped” in an unhappy marriage who gets female loving on the side but would never leave her husband, and Metamora’s female student athletes who all have crushes on Bobby.

This book fleshes out the laughs with puns and innuendos throughout. Bobby speaks in sport‘s metaphors and relates everything that is going on in her love life to field hockey. Bobby’s penchant for ESPN-speak irritates Enid Butler, the Math Mistress, no end. Mistress Butler is a pedagogical intellectual who is adamant that sports are a waste of time. Of course, Enid and Bobby have instant chemistry, which we realize far before they do.

Meanwhile, Bobby is getting it on with members of the staff as well as the student body. The plot thickens when several subplots enter the playing field. There is murder, gambling, and sabotage afoot, and the only people who can solve the mystery are, of course, Bobby and Enid.

In the heyday of pulp fiction, publishers used the form to publish what would have otherwise been considered smut or pornography. Stories about lesbians, gays, and drug addicts, were not considered acceptable reading in the fifties and sixties, so to be able to read about woman-on-woman sex, you had to read a cautionary tale on the dangers of moral decay. Tales of lesbian love and sex were delivered as warnings about ‘The Wrong Kind of Love’ or ‘The Evil Friendship’.

Bobby Blanchard Lesbian Gym Teacher pokes fun at these times by using sentimental and melodramatic prose and stereotypical characters and situations, but never delves into the ‘warning’ category. Lesbian love is celebrated, and if the real world were anything like Bobby Blanchard’s world, lesbians would never need to masturbate. Bobby is constantly getting propositioned by all kinds of women, from an heiress, to students, to teachers, to alumni. If only, the real world were like life at Metamora.

When you want to read something light, entertaining, and funny, Bobby Blanchard Lesbian Gym Teacher is a sure way to score.

Reviewed By ILY GOYANES

Boys in Heat. Edited by Richard Labonté. Cleis Press. $14.95 (USD).

This varied collection compiled by Richard Labonté contains both sugar and salt. With some saccharine-tinged stories likeA Recipe For… by Kal Cobalt and some very briny stories likeMiss Vel’s Place by Jonathon Asche, Boys in Heat offers up tantalizing treats for all sorts of tastes. Of course, it is quite possible that the steamy man-on-man sex scenes will completely transcend previously decided palates.

Boys in Heat contains sixteen stories full of Y-chromosome action. A few of the especially tasty morsels are worth singling out.

Hooking Up by J.M. Snyder is a cyber-gothic one-night stand with two hot, young punk boys.

Rough trade doesn’t even begin to describe the roughneck main characters in Keith Peck’s Cockfighting.

Duffle by Dallas Angguish, takes us to college, so we can reunite with that friend of our older brother’s, whose image we jacked off to all through adolescence.

Like Peck’s cockfight, Miss Vel’s Place by Jonathon Asche takes us down metaphorical alleys where sex and smut combine to create a sour cocktail we just can’t help but crave.

Clarence Wong teaches us when it is okay to break the rules in Orbs.

Fluid Mechanics by Dale Chase, follows an eccentric professor on his journey to finding an apt pupil.

Hotter than Hades is Ted Cornwell’s story, The Key-Maker’s Wife. Cornwell weaves the familiar tale of a homo lusting after a “straight” person, and does it well. Another trip to Dante’s Inferno is Arden Hill’sTelling a Switch’s Story. Both of these stories are well worth the price of the entire book.

Bears. Edited by Richard Labonté. Cleis Press. $14.95 (USD).

This anthology is a must-have for lovers of all things bear. For most bear aficionados the attraction to bear culture is its largesse, which the stories in this collection serve in huge, bountiful spoonfuls. Containing seventeen very graphic stories of bear and cub love, Bears will satisfy even the most discerning chub lover.

If you like Muscle Marys, twinks, or other hirsutically-challenged examples of the Y-chromosome, you will not find much to enjoy here. When reading this book, it is extremely apparent that bear attraction is a fetish. Your ‘average’ person, whatever you might take that to mean, would not be turned on by many of the scenes in this book. The stories, though well written, will not appeal to everyone.

However, if you mentally ejaculate every time you see a “hairy, husky, bearded, big-bellied” beast, this is the book for you. The stories in Bears include threesomes, all sorts of bodily fluids, and highly inventive uses for sour cream.

White Meat by Daniel W. Kelly is a kinky exploration of jungle fever in which two bears share a piece of chocolate.

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh Yeah! by Rob Rosen is animalistic in more ways than one, and one of the sexier stories in the book.

Jeff Mann’s Leather-Bear Appetites is a wonderful example of honesty and gravitas in which you get to inhabit the mind of a Daddy Bear through some enlightened introspection.

A Glass of Cognac by Jan Vender Laenen is a snarky, comical romp through European bear bars.

Bears offers a choice to those unsatisfied by hairless chests and trim bodies.