Welcome to Maoist Orange Cake. Each week one of our Divas posts a thoughtful (but not necessarily serious) essay on whatever calls forth her Voice or strikes her Fancy. We invite you to join us wherever the discussion leads.
Motto of the MOC: Sincere, yes. Serious? Never!

"I would also like to add that ‘Maoist Orange Cake is possibly the best name for a blog ever. Just my twopence." -- The Sixth Carnival of Radical Feminists, 1 October 2007


The Twelfth Carnival of Radical Feminists is up at The Burning Times blog and mentions one of our posts, Helen 'Wheels' Keller, for recommendation. Orangeists spreading our zest!

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

HERITAGE AND INTERPRETATION SHOULD BE IN CONSTANT FLUX -- by Maggie Jochild

Mary Jo Atkins, Midcontinent Supply, Bowie, Texas, 1945

When I was 13 we moved back to the tiny North Texas town where my mother, her mother, and three generations before that had grown up (and gone to the same school). What remained was the school, a gas station, and an occasionally-meeting Baptist church, plus houses and trailers of people who had not yet moved away.

My mother was valedictorian in high school. She was also two years younger than her classmates because she had twice been moved ahead a grade. Smart as hell. And, I slowly learned, had a wild streak. Her father was a Wobbly and that whole line was radical as well as bookish, so I figure it comes from them.


After we moved back to that town, from the people who knew my mother when she was a teenager, I learned things nobody else in our family had a clue about. Because of our relationship, I was able to go to her and ask her about these rumors. Most of them turned out to be true. The one that was false is that she had an abortion as a teenager -- which did seem far-fetched, given the region and the era.

Mama used her young age as an excuse not to date boys individually. She'd go out with groups of friends, but her scrapbook was choked with photos of the girls she knew, not boys. When she was 16 and had just graduated, that summer she had an affair with another girl, some years older than Mama, named Mary Nell Howard. Mary Nell had a motorcycle, which was an extraordinary rarity in 1943 in rural Texas. She would pull up to the farmhouse, Mama would run out and hop on the back, and away they'd go. Montague County was dry (as was most of North Texas). You had to cross the state line into Oklahoma to get liquor. But Mary Nell knew an Italian immigrant in the county seat who made bootleg chianti, so they'd roar over to his place and pick up a bottle, which Mama would hold in public view as they zoomed off to wherever they went -- some place out in the boonies -- to drink and make love.

One weekend Mary Nell didn't show. Mama had gotten a job in the nearby Big Town, Bowie (population 3000) as a secretary, so she went off to work on Monday worried sick. That evening, Mary Nell showed up wearing a cheap gold band. She had gone to Wichita Falls with some folks, gotten drunk and married an airman. The breakup was just that brutal. Mama nearly died. Her childhood friend, Son Henry (a distant cousin), talked her through the next few weeks.

Thing is, Son had been in love with Mama all their lives. His sister Margie was Mama's best friend, same grade, and Son was waiting for Mama to love him back.

Mama instead focused on her job, and quickly got promoted from secretary to bookkeeper at Midcontinent Supply. She still ran around with her friends, but she garnered the attention of the manager at her job, a married man named Johnny Cooper. Johnny was half Comanche, and his wife was not just full-blood but a member of a prominent tribal family across the border in Oklahoma. Johnny lived in Bowie during the week and went home to his family on the weekends.

Eventually Johnny hit on Mama, and, with no word ever from Mary Nell, she said sure, why not. They began having an affair. Despite Johnny's efforts, the scandal of course broke. After a few months, one day while Johnny was out of the office, a well-dressed older woman pulled up in a nice car and came in, looking for Mama. It was his wife, driving down from Oklahoma. She said, in a voice everyone else could hear, "So you're the piece of trash who's been shacking up with my husband. Well, honey, have fun while you can. He'll never leave me -- I've got control of the money. You're not his first and you won't be his last." Then she turned and left.

Mama was beside herself. Once again, she turned to Son Henry. She wanted to be done with Johnny, but she was afraid if she broke up with him, he'd fire her. And she really wanted that job. It was her doorway to independence. So she and Son came up with a plan. They let themselves be seen on main street in Son's open roadster with a bottle of whiskey on the seat between them and a folded blanket in the back seat. They headed slowly out of town and went to the lake, where Mama sat on the blanket and drank steadily, weeping not over Johnny but Mary Nell, while Son tended a small fire and kept his hands to himself. In the morning, they made sure to be seen at a local diner.

That's all it took. Word got back to Johnny swiftly. He confronted Mama, saying everybody knew Son was in love with her (which was jolting news to her) and now she'd cheated on him. He did fire her, after all. When I was in high school, Johnny was elected mayor of another nearby town. I never caught a glimpse of him, though.

Mama went to work as a soda jerk at a drugstore. Crappy pay, but one of her good friends worked the same shift with her and they were both lookers, got some tips that way. A crew of doodlebuggers was in town, looking for oil. They heard about the gorgeous babes making ice cream sundaes at the drugstore, and one night after work, a few of them dropped in to order shakes and have an ogle. One of the young men asked if he could come back after the drugstore closed and walk Mama home to her boarding house. She said sure, why not. Five weeks later they got married by a Justice of the Peace. That was my father.

He told me, several times, that he fell in love with her the minute he laid eyes on her. My mother, on the other hand, said that Daddy looked kind and he promised they would live in Bowie so she could find bookkeeping work, advance a career but stay close to her friends. She was right about the kind part, but not anything else.

When I was 17 and fell in love with my high school history teacher, and our affair was the talk not just of our town but the entire county, Mama pulled me into her bedroom one day after school and told me about her and Mary Nell, about Son and Johnny. She said I was going to get shredded, that this teacher would leave me to return to her husband. Then she said "I learned to stick to men, honey, because they'll never get close enough to break my heart."

But I had a date to meet my new lover out in the country, and I sat there impatiently, finally saying "I'm not you, Mama. Can I go now?"

I have a photo of Mary Nell. I'd give a hell of a lot to talk with her, but have not been able to track her down. After Mama died, I was the only person in our family who knew any of this. But the only reason I knew it, really, was because of the stories I heard from Mama's high school friends. When I began turning out like Mama, well, you can just imagine the gossip. And, of course, I followed up on what I heard with Mama. She and I talked, really talked. Even when it was godawful uncomfortable. I've kept her secrets until now. The rest of my family is dead, and it was a benign secret.

Or maybe not. Maybe Mary Nell took real advantage of my mother, as I have come to understand that the high school teacher, five years my senior, had no business on earth becoming lovers with me. I insisted it was love, it did me no harm, I wanted her. Now, thirty years on, I can see it was in fact part of my training as an object of abuse, welcoming the sexual attention of someone older and much more powerful than me. Despite the fact that we lasted five years, and I got a daughter out of it, I still wish I had not been lovers with her, after all. Some lessons come harder than others. We had no chance of ever being equals. And I've learned that power imbalance is actually not erotic, after all.

Ten years ago I ran across a photo of Mama's mama, Hettie, wearing a man's suit and bowler, in a passionate clinch with another woman. I pointed to the photo and hoarsely asked Hettie's sister, my Great-Aunt Lee, what that was all about. She laughed merrily and said "Oh, your grandma, she liked to dress up and play-act. It didn't mean anything." But Hettie married late, and only after the woman in the photo, Nora Armstrong, left for Fort Worth to work in a department store as a sales manager. Nora never married. Hettie died a year after Mama was born, so neither of us knew her. Still, I consider myself third-generation Lesbian.

Except we all collected our identities in different ways. I used what was available to me in the mid 1970s, a freedom they could not have imagined. I didn't ever have to bend my will to that of a man, not with regards to intimacy. I can't speak for them. I can pass on Mama's quote for what it's worth, but she also did come to love my father. Though I very much doubt it was ever as much as she loved Mary Nell. That's my bias. I could be wrong. If someone appears to shed more light, I'll be sure to listen.

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Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Pride Fundraising Opportunity and Sharing



Lesbians Against Police Violence Contingent, June 1979, San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Freedom Day Parade. I'm not in this photo, but roommates and close friends are. This was my main political activism group from 1979 through 1983. I helped make this banner, too.

In honor of LGBTQ and Ally pride this week, I'm going to copy in here a great fundraiser from The Point Foundation that is currently being promoted over at Bitch Ph.D. She says:
"The Point Foundation provides scholarships and mentoring to LGBT student leaders at all educational levels. They and Yahoo have come up with an easy fundraising drive. For every photo uploaded to the group's photo pool, Yahoo will donate $1 and up to $25,000. Currently, The Point Foundation provides scholarships to 94 people, one of whom emailed me about this; they select Point Scholars based on social, emotional and financial need, scholastic aptitude and leadership potential. We pay particular attention to those students who have lost the financial and social support of their families and/or communities as a result of revealing their sexual orientation or gender identity. Photos don't necessarily need to be of pride (especially if participants aren't queer or didn't go to pride), but they just need to be representative of people who are proud to be LGBT or are proud of LGBT people."

So, I'm headed there to put up some classic photos from my past, and I encourage you to do the same. The instructions at Bitch Ph.D. are clear and can be found at Bitch Ph.D./ The Point Foundation is at The Point Foundation/ And if you post photos there, let us know here which ones are yours! Mine are labeled as from Meggars and are of me, my daughter, and another LAPV banner in the 1979 SF Lesbian and Gay Freedom Day Parade.

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Sunday, June 17, 2007

DAUGHTER OF MICHIGAN -- by Maggie Jochild



As requested, here's a new post so the thread begun below can continue. I have many photos of MWMF but I'm reluctant to post nudity here. Ditto me and camping, but also I seem to be nekkid in all my tent photos. So, I'm using the closest Lesbian pulp novel image I had in JPEG format. Carry on.

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Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Oh Michigan, my Michigan...

Yeah, I know this is a crappy picture, but hey---it's free, and it's of some place in Michigan, which fits my criteria. (Plus, at first I thought it said "a long drive" which would fit for me; but on closer inspection says "a log drive".) Still, I'm keeping it. I'm just going to pretend those are a bunch of butch gals out there, pushing those logs around...

On our old blog of origin, there is an interesting discussion going on, highly reminiscent of one we had last year---http://dykestowatchoutfor.com/episode-495 . My opinion on the transgender issue then was that gender and sexual identity was in the mind of the beholder. That is, what one thinks and feels on the inside, constitutes one's sex, more than the body parts on the outside.

Now I'm not so sure.

What do we mean when we say "transgender" anyway? Does that mean someone who has gone "all the way"; surgery, hormones, etc? Or does it start at the beginning of the "transition"? Can a person be defined as transgender purely based on thoughts and feelings? What about "intersex" people, those born with ambiguous genitalia---are they transgender? A separate category?

And what about the children----hormones can be dangerous, surgery irreversible; should a decision about changing sex be left until adulthood? Or will it harm the child psychologically to stay in a body she/he is rejecting?

I realize I've asked a lot of questions, but right now that's what I have---questions. Are there others out there willing to discuss these things? (See what I mean?) Until then, here are some links related to the issue:

http://www.dykestowatchoutfor.com/index.php

http://www.michfest.com/

http://www.intraa.org/story/mwmffuah&print

http://www.chss.montclair.edu/~landwebj/ww/nyt_intersex.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter's_syndrome

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Tuesday, June 5, 2007

R.I.P. Shadow

Last week, May 31st, 2007, my namesake, the original "Shadocat" passed on at the ripe old age of 16, to what I hope is the next of many lives yet to come. She was an elegant lady, with long, silky black and silver fur; spookily beautiful, and completely devoted to my daughter Robin (that's her in the picture). She merely tolerated the rest of us mortals, although in her later years she would allow some of us in her inner circle to pet or keep company with her.
She managed the rest of the household pets with a deft and authoritative paw, from obstinate basset hounds, to runaway bunny rabbits, to foundling kittens with beauty and grace. I'll miss her---I still can't believe she's gone.

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