By Sabrina Samone, TMP
No one but you can ever define you. Lao Tzu says, "Knowing
others is wisdom. Knowing the self is enlightenment. Mastering others requires
force. Mastering the self requires strength." The great Aristotle, lead by Plato, defined
the soul as the core essence of a living being, but argued against its having a
separate existence. Ramana Maharshi taught that, self, itself is the world;
self itself is ‘I’; self itself is God; all is the Supreme Self. The moral of
the story may simply be that even with thousands of great thinkers throughout
history, their ideas of defining who you are are no more than theories and the
answer to who you are still lies completely in your hands.
The next step, since defining yourself may take your entire
lifetime, we have race, gender, sexuality, nationality, religion and countless
other labels to try and define how we fit into the grand scheme of things. For
instance I often think of how we care for the elders of our community, differ,
depending on your culture. Many Asian
countries seem to master it a little more compassionately, to me, than we do here
in America. If there is someone elderly in the family, many come together to
care for their loved ones and usually remain a part of the family’s
household. To me, here in America, we
seem very quick to discard those in society after they have reached a certain
age. It seems to begin after retirement. Maybe a result of being a capitalist nation
seems that once a person is no longer on the treadmill of a working life, they
appear to be deemed less valuable to society.
This is misfortunate because with age comes wisdom that could be more valuable
than gold to younger generations.
After working in a dozen or so nursing homes I’ve noticed
how forgetful we are of loved ones. In
every nursing home there are lists of residents that only get the privilege of
seeing a relative, during Christmas, if they’re lucky. Its part of nursing home
gossip to notice who don’t get a visitor the other 364 days of the year. Why in this country, we don’t cherish those
that came before us is a mystery, maybe only Aristotle himself could answer and
in the LGBT community it is even worse. It’s been a joke on popular lgbt shows
like Will and Grace and countless others, that thirty years of age in the LGBT
community is equal to 50 in mainstream society. It may have been used as
countless jokes but the reality is more sad and true and if the way we treat
our elderly in mainstream America seems alarming, it’s a Greek tragedy when it
comes to the LGBT elderly.
The entire community actually reminds me of Greek culture in
ancient times, or at least from what I’ve read of course. I’ve read that those
born beautiful were given many advantages. Strength, physical beauty and power
were celebrated. The Spartan elders
examined all new born babies and ordered that any who were not well-built and
sturdy were to be killed by leaving them in the bush at the foot of Mount
Taygetus, according to Plutarch, “Life of Lycurgus”, 16. In Greek life they admired those that reminded them of their Gods,
those endowed with superhuman strength and ageless beauty. Ask any gay bar fly
nearing 50 if they are still in demand, or the fact that Miss Gay USA actually
holds a “classic” version for those
forty plus. Thirty is the brick wall in LGBT culture, forty is classic and
fifty is “you poor thing.” Add to the
fact, this culture is a sub-culture of the great American mosaic, who also,
from the time of birth we are trained to fight the ageing process and dread the
days of the old.
There is a
reason my generation of LGBT peers may have had a lack of how to deal with the
elderly; A plague in the eighties that killed millions, denying them, old age. If
your over thirty-five, LGBT, you may have started realizing how blessed you are. We
all have a list of people that didn’t make it to see 2013. The dreaded plague
maybe more controlled than ever before and no longer a death sentence with
early detection and treatment. But we kids of the late eighties and on know the
fear of first learning about sex, all while simultaneously learning, it can
kill. According to the World Health
Organization, thirty-five million people had died since the epidemic began
and according to Aids.gov,
nearly a million gay men in the USA. Until recently there hasn’t been much
research in how many trans-women and men have passed but you can be assure our
numbers are represented in that.
Imagine the contributions to all our fight for equality and
respect in this country would be today had all these fellow LGBT friends were
spared this early death. Would we even,
at this point be still waiting on someone to ‘let’ us marry whom we love? The
generation that saw the greatest losses were the post stonewall
generation. The ones that fought back in
the streets with baseball bats, chanted in the streets I’m here and I’m queer,
who help remove Gay and Lesbian as a mental disorder from the American Psychiatric
Association and moved us so close to equality by the early eighties. Until Aids
came, ignored by the then conservative right wing powers and yes I still hold
them partially responsible for so many deaths. Ignoring for so long that Aids
was indeed an epidemic. The result...we lost a million of the greatest voices of
the lgbt movement and the stigma of Aids silenced the rest of us for nearly the
next two decades.
Now, thankfully Aids is no longer a death sentence it once
was and when the cure is finally given to the community, it’ll be happy days
again, but until then a new generation has emerged, not fearing this disease as
those born in the seventies, eighties had and the numbers are back on the rise,
especially among transgender men and women. We owe it to our Trans-sisters and
brothers to always make it a part of our daily conversation, to remind each
other to play safe, now is not the time to think the disease is finished. Some research has even stated that the
disease maybe mutating into a stronger more deadly version. We have lost a
powerful generation already, and my
unguided generation has done its best to keep the torch of freedom and equality
alive, we don’t need to just live long enough to see another generation wiped
from the face of the earth due to lack of self responsibility.
For those few proud LGBT soldiers of equality that now stand
where armies once stood, faced with becoming elderly, should not be forgotten
or brushed aside. Thankfully there is growing concern within the greater community
to provide care for LGBT elderly. The
city of Chicago recently approved financing and land transfer for the
Midwest first gay and lesbian-friendly affordable senior housing facility. Take it from someone, friends, who has worked
in senior care for several years, think life is tough if your LGBT now? I
promise you, it’s even scarier in a nursing home. Back in 2002, my boyfriend at
the time, and I worked together at a local facility in Florence, SC. There was a very outspoken elderly gay man
there, who had spent the disco era of the seventies, when there was no Aids (imagine
if you can), in San Francisco. The newly appointed Gay Mecca of the time and he
was a very involved gay man in the community with elaborate stories of life as
the gay elite of the time in San Francisco. Even on the days we were working he
was our pick, taking him out for ice cream, bringing him clothes and gifts,
since he had no family that would come see about him. Occasionally we’d check
on him on our days off, we adopted him as our grand pa. For me, being
transgender it was a no brainer, but I was very impressed by my boyfriend at
the time, who was a straight male never in contact with LGBT people until he
had met me. He was the first to call him grand pa. It was a conscious decision
on our part, because of what we saw and heard from other co-workers. Yes, even in
my face they’d use the F, word and refuse to do anymore than the minimum for
him, ask him in appropriate questions and try turning his roommates against
him. When we started working there and saw this, we did our best to change the
attitudes, and I being Trans became, reluctantly, the local Trans 101 instructor
of the facility. Our adopted Grand pa reveled in the attention and the growing number
of people over time that took up for him. I remember near the end of his life a
new girl began work in there and had been told he was Gay. During a smoke
break, in front of him, she began to
spit her bigoted venom, and before my boyfriend and I could attack her, several
other co-workers lashed out and said, “oh no, you can’t come here hating on
grand-pa now, go on with that”, it brought tears to my eyes. I’m grateful he
passed with more dignity than he would have if he did not have support.
That’s why the attention on the elderly in our community is
needed now more than ever. With people living longer with Aids and those they
were lucky enough to pass thru the storm are now faced with ageing in a society
that discards the elderly and yet still face discrimination due to their sexual
orientation or gender identity.
We as a community also need to share in the responsibility,
though we may not like thinking about becoming elderly, the average LGBT person
who does, may face it alone, with no family left alive and no children to care
for them. We also owe it to the LGBT youth that are coming of age to be
reminded of the dangers of unprotected sex. We have wisdom to pass to the youth
and wisdom yet to attain from those who came before us, but as a community we
should do more to help both, because helping the newest and oldest generations
is the key to helping ourselves. We have to start caring for our own.
Recent news topics from other sources related to elderly and
HIV;
Aging and being LGBT
HIV among Transgender
People
Related TMP Articles
Defining who we are pt. lll: The Trans* sex worker and exploitation
TRANSGENDER: DEFINING WHO WE ARE Pt. 1
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