Wanted: a shared experience that makes it feel like life is getting better

When our library accounts finally came back online, I could feel a frisson pass through both Internet Toronto and Real-Life Toronto. The news ricocheted through the city, we all dropped everything and ran to be reunited with our holds lists...and promptly crashed the site!

Still, the spirits were high - "We hugged it to death!" squeed one redditor - and millions of Torontonians spread the news, rejoiced, and did a happy dance while they waited their turn for the 503 error to go away.

I hadn't felt that very specific emotion in quite some time, and, after some thought, I realized what it reminded me of: vaccine hunting.

When COVID vaccines first became available, everyone rushed to sign up and promptly crashed the site. But we spread the news enthusiastically, shared tips for finding an appointment, and squeed at each other as we got in.

It's a very specific emotion: a shared experience that makes you feel like life is getting better.

I haven't felt that in so long - not since I was queued up for a mass vaxx clinic at the community centre - and I didn't think I'd ever feel it again.

In the first year of the pandemic, I was confident I'd feel that feeling again. Everyone was working to make things better, we were all in this together, surely one day we'd delight in the shared experience of things being better again!

Except...they never got better again. Those in power just stopped addressing it, and in fact took away some of the tools we can use to address it individually.

So I wasn't expecting to experience this solidarity of life getting better ever again, which made it a particular delight to experience when the library came back online!

But...the only reason we got to experience this feeling of something getting better is because someone did harm by cyberattacking the library!

Is there any hope for things to get better for everyone without getting worse first??

***

Some people are able to experience this feeling of a shared experience of life getting better through activism, but that just doesn't work for me and hasn't for a long time. Activism seems more and more about desperately fighting to stop things from getting worse. It feels like victories aren't even improvements any more, just temporary respites.

When I try to think of examples of activism resulting in things actually getting better rather than just stopping them from getting worse, the most recent thing that comes to mind is the legalization of same-sex marriage, which was over 20 years ago.

Is stuff getting better for everyone without first getting worse even a possibility any more? Because I sure wouldn't mind experiencing that emotion again!

Taking for granted achieved!

With yesterday's legalization of same-sex marriage nation-wide in the US (congratulations, by the way!), I was surprised to see a few people on Twitter suggesting that same-sex marriages had been legalized easily and without any fuss in Canada. 

At first I was shocked that anyone could forget, but then I realized that same-sex marriage was legalized in Ontario 12 years ago.  There are grown-ass adults who would be legitimately unaware of the struggle to get it legalized for the simple reason that they were children when it happened!

Five years ago, I wrote:

One day, in a couple of decades, we will be celebrating the 20th or 25th anniversary of the legalization of same-sex marriage. I will be in my late 40s, with lines on my face like my father's and salt-and-pepper hair dyed chestnut like my mother's, wearing no-line bifocals as though that little line is the only thing that betrays my age. My co-workers and I (for in my imagined future I'm still in the same workplace with the same co-workers) will sit around the break room reminiscing. Where were you when you first heard? Who was the first same-sex married couple you knew? When was your first big gay wedding? Newspapers will tell the story of how this all came about, track down the court justices and the Michaels and do "Where are they now?" profiles. And in our office will be some new hires, kids in their early 20s just out of university, who will look at all this fuss we're making and feel nothing, because for them it will be something that has always been there.

 I'm in my mid-30s, with the lines on my face just beginning to form and enough salt in my pepper that I'm aware of it but not enough that I'm dyeing it. My glasses are still monofocals.  I'm not chitchatting with my co-workers in the break room because I work at home, and I still haven't had the opportunity to attend a big gay wedding.  But already, 10 years earlier than I estimated, there are people who are unaware of the fuss and feel that same-sex marriage has always been there!

Happy Pride, everyone!

Happy birthday, same-sex marriage, happy birthday to you!

Today is the 10th anniversary of the legalization of same-sex marriage in Ontario!

I've already blogged the best tribute I can write to it here.

This blew my mind several different ways

From City of Toronto Strike blog (but not terribly related to the strike so you can go ahead and keep reading even if you don't like what I generally have to say about the strike):

Today a couple of 40-ish men approached looking festive in not-quite-matching pink shirts and funky shoes. I approached them as we do to be helpful and to avoid line-crashing, and said, “We’re asking people what service they need access to in City Hall because not everything is open due to the strike.” Tax collection and permits for example, are closed; Service Canada, the library, and marriage licenses are open.

One of the men flushed slightly and assured me in a southern American accent, “We know where we’re going is open.” But he didn’t tell me what they were doing inside.

They were going to get married, but they were embarrassed/hesitant/afraid/reluctant to tell people!

Imagine that headspace! You're getting married - like in just a few minutes - but you feel that you can't or shouldn't tell randoms! Personally, if my marriage was so forbidden or socially frowned upon, and I was literally on my way to get married, I'd be shouting it from the rooftops. "We're getting MARRIED and there's not a damn thing you can do about it! See this piece of paper? Booyah!" But these guys, even though they're in another country where same-sex marriage is totally allowed and on their way to the actual place where same-sex marriages are performed on a daily basis, still didn't feel they could tell people. That's a bit sad, and yet somehow a bit more romantic.

But then think about it the other way around. You're about to get married to your same-sex partner, and in your headspace your relationship is so socially taboo you don't want to openly admit it even in a foreign country. Then you arrive at City Hall only to find demonstrators hindering access! Then it turns out they don't even blink at your same-sex marriage, they just want to make sure you aren't lining up for a service that isn't open, and maybe pass on some literature about why the City's offer is inadequate. That would be cognitive dissonance.

In any case, congratulations, gentlemen, wherever you are.

Everything you ever wanted to know about same-sex marriage in Toronto

Presumably in honour of Pride, the Toronto Star's Map of the Week has all kinds of cool data about same-sex marriage in Toronto.

Fun fact of the day

From a comment by Shawn Micallef in Spacing:

When Rev Brent Hawkes performed Canada’s/Toronto’s first same-sex marriage at the Metropolitan Community Church in 2001 he wore a bullet proof vest.

This is confirmed widely. (This was the one that was done by publication of banns and wasn't legally recognized.)

Same-sex marriage was legalized in Ontario in 2003 and federally in 2005. Some people made a bit of a fuss for a little while, but it very quickly became basically a fact of life. Some people probably still don't like it, but they just don't do it themselves and let other people get on with their lives. And yeah, we still kind of have the childish need to mention the genders of the happy couple when we're invited to our first big gay wedding. But overall, it's normalized.

So we went from requiring a bullet-proof vest to "Yeah, all right, whatever, I'm cooking eggs" in the space of maybe five years. That's pretty cool.

No smoking, no drinking, no talking

The year is 1994. I'm about to start Grade 9. High school, all new, Big And Scary.

One day, shortly before school is to start, my then-best friend calls me. "We have a problem," she announces. "The gym teacher...is a lesbian."

I was shocked and horrified. She's a lesbian! She likes girls! But she's allowed in our locker room??? Apparently her OFFICE is IN our locker room???? Why is this even allowed? I felt like someone should tell a grownup or something, but I didn't tell my parents for fear they might lock me in my room forever for knowing what a lesbian is or for having a course schedule that puts me in the general vincinity of an alleged lesbian or something.

So off I went to my doom. Not just high school, not just gym class, but high school gym class with a lesbian. And when we got there she...taught us gym. And then the next day she taught us gym. And every day after that she taught us gym, perfectly competently, with the occasional glimpse of humanity. Then the semester was over and I never took gym again and she became irrelevant.

Other things were happening around that time, in the background, in the media. On Friends, Ross's ex-wife was a lesbian. And she was...there, sometimes, when the plot demanded it. Ellen DeGeneres came out, and she was...there, on TV, I wasn't paying much attention. I found out Graham Chapman was gay, and that...didn't change anything, actually. And so it continued, every once in a while I'd find out someone was queer, and, except for the people who ended up being my friends, they'd just go on being ultimately irrelevant, like most people in the world end up being.

This is why the situation in California surprises me so much.

I can see how people who have never been exposed to same-sex marriage might arrive at the visceral "OMG THAT'S WRONG!" reaction. That's how I thought in Grade 9, and the reason I thought that was was because homosexuality had only ever been presented to me as a problem, so I had no reason to think that it might be anything other than a problem. What it took for my homophobia to go away was not happy rainbows and sensitivity training, but rather the sheer innocuousness of every queer person that I ever encountered IRL or in the news.

But in California, they already have this. They had legal same-sex marriage for several months. And, after a brief flurry of "OMG George Takei! OMG Ellen and Portia! OMG octogenerian lesbians!" it just became irrelevant to everyone who isn't immediately involved. So why do they still care after months of evidence that it's harmless?

I thought I understood the thought process, but this has me flummoxed. They do know that it isn't mandatory, right?

Happy anniversary!

Tomorrow (June 10) is the 5th anniversary of same-sex marriage in Ontario.

The traditional 5th anniversary gift is wood.

Civil unions

So apparently in New Jersey they legalized "civil union" for same-sex couples but refused to call it marriage. And then same-sex couples with civil unions (we really need a more concise way to say that) have had trouble sharing spousal benefits with their partners.

Has anyone heard anything about people having similar problems here after they legalized same-sex marriage in 2003? I never heard anything either way, but I don't know that many same-sex married couples and those I do know aren't close enough for me to bring this up in conversation. It seems to me that at least some people and/or computers would have problems with it initially - I mean it would be way cool if everyone in Ontario just reacted with complete business-like sangfroid when Mike came into HR to put his husband on his insurance, but there are some people out there who really have trouble with the concept. But I didn't hear about anything. Is the word "marriage" really powerful enough to make everything run smoothly? Or did the problems just not make the news here?