Abrazos to Ricky Martin for saying out loud: "I am not bisexual. I am a gay man."

image of Ricky Martin and his twin sons is from here

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A quartet of posts about Ricky Martin:
http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/11/abrazos-to-ricky-martin-for-saying-out.html 
http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/08/ricky-martins-memoir-me-due-out-in.html
http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/03/more-on-ricky-martin-coming-out-from.html
http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/03/la-vida-loca-is-far-less-loca-as-ricky.html
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Muchos gracias to Ricky Martin for bravely coming out and discussing his process of doing so with Oprah Winfrey today. He is such a lovely man, with such a good heart, and I am so happy for him that he is happy with his lover and with his twin boys who will grow up with lots of love around them.

I was particularly impressed with his response after Oprah asked him about his affairs with women. He noted something that someone once told me during the period in which I was coming out as gay: You can be sexual with women and still be gay, not bisexual." Heterosexism dictates that we all identify as much as possible with heterosexuality. And so the pressure is on both women and men to declare themselves "bisexual" when in fact they are lesbian and gay.

Portia DeGeneres, formerly Portia De Rossi who has taken her wife' Ellen's last name, was on Oprah's program yesterday speaking in great detail about her own coming out process and her struggles with eating disorders.

Both performers described excruciatingly intense self-hatred that was generated entirely by living in a heterosexist society, teaching each of them that their lesbianism or gayness was something to be feared and despised. So many thanks as well to Portia for doing so.

What is so moving to me about Ricky's story is how unfathomably important it is to Latino gay males to have a role model who is respected and regarded highly globally. During the program a few taped segments were played in which mostly Latino men described how Ricky coming out months ago was liberating for them, releasing them from a kind of "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, including within their families.

I never came out to my primary care-givers for fear they'd love me less if I did. I don't think any of them would have, in retrospect. But the harm to self-esteem and self-worth of heteropatriarchy ought not be understated. Heterosexism-in-practice, institutionalised, systematised, is a form of psychic sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and spiritual abuse. Those of us who are lesbian and gay are made to feel inferior to heterosexuals and the hatred against us is palpable. Most of the hate-comments I get that go unposted here at this blog contain degrading comments about my sexual orientation. If I had a dollar for every time someone has called me a "f*g" or a *f**got", I'd have at least a thousand dollars. That doesn't even include all the other derisive, insulting terms I've been called just because I'm gay.

While I have had some very close relationships with a few women, I never considered myself bisexual, in part because I knew I wasn't. But also because I get that the oppression against us is for being "like lesbians" or "like gay men" in our sexual or romantics lives--whether or not we are bisexual. It's for being "not heterosexual". We can note, for all it's political pitfalls, that the civil rights battle in the U.S. is for lesbian and gay marriage rights, not for "bisexual" marriage rights. This is partly because bisexuals do get invisibilised in most places, and U.S. society doesn't like to deal with grey areas in any social hierarchy.

It could be a misogynistic statement to make when any man declares he is gay not bisexual. Too often the place that remark is coming from is one that contains some level of contempt or disgust for women and women's bodies. But with Ricky so clearly demonstrating his love of humanity--which necessarily includes women, and his openness about his enjoyable relationships with women, I don't get that "misogynist gay" vibe from him at all. What I get is his need to affirm to the world, to his sons, and to his own spirit, that he is gay and proud of it. As well he should be!

Abrazos, Ricky!! Espero que su vida siempre está lleno de una abundancia de amor. <3 Julian

Here are links to both memoirs:

Portia DeGeneres's memoir, Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain.

Ricky Martin's memoir, titled Me.

Give a Damn! Fight Heterosexist Bullying any way you can. If in need, reach out to The Trevor Project.

My condolences to the loved ones of Raymond Chase and Cody J. Barker. May these two young men rest in peace along with all the other queer youth who have taken their own lives to escape the humiliation, degradation, and pain of being tormented in a heteropatriarchal and racist society for being gay, including Billy Lucas, Seth Walsh, Tyler Clementi, and Asher Brown. Condolences to their loved ones as well.

The violence of normalising and statusing heterosexuality and stigmatising homosexuality is one and the same. All of it is tied to misogyny. Here's another LGBTQ Nation article about two other teenage gay males whose lives are lost due to anti-queer/pro-straight violence. Please click on the title to link back and see related links at the end of the article.

Two more gay teen suicide victims — Raymond Chase, Cody Barker mark 6 deaths in September

LGBTQ Nation • Friday, October 1, 2010 • 

We are saddened to learn today of two more gay teens who have turned to suicide. This brings the total to 6 known suicides in September by openly gay, or perceived gay, teenagers.

Raymond Chase

Raymond Chase, a 19-year-old openly gay sophomore studying culinary arts at Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island, committed suicide on Wednesday by hanging himself in his dorm room.

Details of the incident are scarce and unlike previous reports, it is not known at this time what the circumstances were leading up to Chase’s death.

Johnson and Wales Vice President Ronald Martel emailed students with the news on Thursday:

Today I contact you with the deeply sad news of the passing of Raymond Chase, sophomore, 19, culinary arts major. The campus community is mourning the loss of this vibrant young man who leaves many JWU friends and teachers, and a loving family of Monticello, New York.

We have also learned of another gay teen whose death was sadly, but unintentionally, overlooked.

Cody Barker

In Shiocton, Wisconsin, Cody J. Barker, a 17-year-old openly gay teen, took his life on September 13.

Cody attended Shiocton High School, where he was active in choir. He recently attended a seminar aimed at helping him establish a gay/straight alliance at his school. Cody also enjoyed bicycling and gardening, and was a Lady Gaga fan.

Maria Peeples, Barker’s peer mentor through GSA for Safe Schools, said he was a passionate activist for all students, especially those, “targeted or ostracized for their sexual orientation or their gender identity and expression. … He really cared about making schools a safe place for students. That wasn’t always his own experience with school.” [Wisconsin Gazette]

Raymond and Cody mark the fifth and sixth known teen suicides in the month of September among openly gay, and perceived gay, teens in what has become an epidemic of gay suicides:

On September 9, Billy (William) Lucas, of Greensburg, IN, was was found dead in a barn at his grandmother’s home — he had hanged himself. While Billy never self-identified as gay, friends report he was tormented for years because other kids thought he was gay. Billy was 15 years old.

On September 19, Seth Walsh of of Tehachapi, CA, was found unconscious and not breathing after attempting to hang himself. Seth, age 13, spent the better part of 10 days on life support — he died on September 28. Seth was openly gay and suffered years of relentless bullying.

On September 22, Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi, 18, of Ridgewood, NJ, jumped to his death off the George Washington Bridge, just days after his college roommate broadcast live images on the internet of him having a sexual encounter with another man.

On September 23, Asher Brown, age 13, came home from school and shot himself in the head after enduring what his mother and stepfather say was constant harassment from four other students at his middle school in Houston, TX. Asher told his parents he was gay that morning.

On Thursday, the Human Rights Campaign issued a nationwide action alert asking Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to speak out immediately and to push every school in the nation to implement anti-bullying policies inclusive of sexual orientation and gender identity.

“Our schools and our nation cannot sit back and wait for the next tragedy,” said HRC President Joe Solmonese. “Tools and resources are available to protect our children and it is adults who must act to put strong laws, policies and procedures in place.”

Ricky Martin's Memoir "ME" due OUT in early November 2010

this is the cover of Ricky Martin's 2010 memoir

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A quartet of posts about Ricky Martin:
http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/11/abrazos-to-ricky-martin-for-saying-out.html 
http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/08/ricky-martins-memoir-me-due-out-in.html
http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/03/more-on-ricky-martin-coming-out-from.html
http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/03/la-vida-loca-is-far-less-loca-as-ricky.html
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It was a whole new layer of education for me, as a white U.S.er, to witness reactions to Ricky Martin coming out. Almost without exception, white folks joked about it in a kind of "AS IF WE DIDN'T KNOW THAT!" sort of way. We white people don't tend to consider the importance of events for many communities who are not white. I believe LGBTI youth, particularly and especially Puerto Rican and Latino gay youth, have benefited by a decades-long international celebrity coming out as not heterosexual.

White cynical or casual response only demonstrates that when one has privilege, one usually doesn't "get it" about what events mean for people without it. This is glaringly obvious when I witness what WHM with class-privilege organise about: challenging feminists; pretending women have more institutional power than men; freaking out about white populations decreasing--regardless of whether or not they are; freaking out about people of color generally--varying the ethnic group by the year or decade; ignoring the conditions Indigeous people live with due to global WHM supremacy and globalised capitalism. Currently in the U.S., this is the era of scapegoating two specific groups, while never not stigmatising African Americans. With specific focus, Muslims of color who are from what's termed the Middle East, or Central Asia--which is not where most Muslims of color live, btw. Most Muslims who are not white live in Indonesia. Also, Mexicans (who, due to Mexico being in the Americas, are already "Mexican American") and Mexican U.S. Americans are being targeted as the 'dangerous populations'--by the folks who control and own Western mass media: white het men. When will WHM realise whites and men are perpetually 'the dangerous populations' here, in the U.S.? I predict "not soon".

Meanwhile, non-dangerous South American people are doing some amazing things that whites could and ought to learn about such as how to shift politics away from corporate capitalism's imperative of serving the needs of the few, to instead prioritising the experiences and wishes of the many. (I think in English it's called "democracy", but I've become confused about what that really means, because I keep hearing in WHM U.S. press how we go to war with nations of color, mass murdering the civilians there, to promote "democracy". This has been the government and racist patriarchal press position for so long that I think in English, the term "promoting democracy" has become a synonym for "behaving in a genocidally racist manner, using military force".

What the white media in the U.S. could do to support the older understanding of "democracy" is supportively welcome the perspectives of people who are not white het men. Accordingly, and because I respect the man, I am posting this, to promote Ricky Martin's new memoir, Me, due out in a couple of months or so.

Memoir usually differs from "autobiography" in structure. They are typically more likely to actually be written by the person themself, not by someone else to whom biographical information was provided. Western autobiographies tend to be organised around linear chronology: perhaps a bit about one's grandparents or parents, then about one's birth through the time of writing. Memoirs may or may not be structured that way; they may also be more creative in style and have come under critique by some for purporting to be "true" while containing fictional elements. That most people's own versions of their lives contains fictional elements is ignored in that critique. I guess the issue is intentionally, willfully fictionalising parts or aspects of one's life without letting the reader known the degrees to which that was done. Memoirs may also focus on a few themes, and not necessarily tell you what happened every single year of someone's life.

Regardless of the book's structure, I'm looking forward to reading its content. Thank you, Ricky, for writing it. I have little doubt it will be VERY important to many gay youth, of many colors and ethnicities, even while too many whites, men, and heterosexuals roll their cynical, callous, casual, or cruel eyes.

What follows is cross posted from *here*.

Aug 19, 2010

Ricky Martin to talk sexuality, fatherhood in memoir

Ricky Martin will get personal about livin' la vida loca in his upcoming memoir, Me.

USA TODAY's Cindy Clark reports that the Grammy-Award winning artist opens up for the first time about his early childhood, his experiences as a member of the boy band Menudo, and coming to terms with his sexuality. Martin also talks about being a father and his work with children around the world.

Both English- and Spanish-language editions, called Me and Yo respectively, will be published in hardcover on Nov. 2 from Celebra, a division of Penguin Group.