I spent my formative years in a small town in central Florida. While I technically lived in Lutz, my school was in Land O’ Lakes. That’s right. I grew up in LOL, Florida. The most Florida, Florida could get. My friends and I would ride our bikes to the neighborhood retention pond to watch alligators. A sinkhole swallowed a house. My neighbor used one of his many pistols to shoot an eight-foot rattlesnake at my bus stop. A friend’s mom was an amateur body builder who worked out with Hulk Hogan.

Yes. Take a minute to think about that.

LOL, Florida.

That was my setting. From two-years-old to 13-years-old.

When we finally got a Wal-Mart (to *much* fanfare), we had to add time to every shopping trip, because we knew every single person in the store.

LOL, Florida. Population 5,555.

For the most part, it was pretty idyllic. Weekend trips to the beach, kickball in the cul-de-sac, nearly every friend having a swimming pool and/or a pet parakeet, dance recitals requiring silver spray painted shoes to match silver sequined headbands, an orange grove across the street literally dropping ripe oranges into our hands, I mean, I could go on and on.

I was a happy kid. Until I was a happy kid with a secret. And then I was a happy but worried kid with a secret. And then I was a pretending-to-be-happy kid with obsessive-compulsive behaviors because I was working so hard to contain my secret. Then, for a few months, I tried to be a boy (with less than stellar results). Then I was a teenager and we moved to Texas, leaving my friends and fresh oranges behind, but carrying with me this secret that threatened to swallow me whole, just like a central Florida sinkhole.

I think back on those days and I don’t even really know how or why I knew my secret should be a secret. I knew only that I kept a picture of Princess Leia under my bed so I could look at her face before I fell asleep every night, and that when I traded Princess Leia’s picture for my dance teacher’s picture, it felt… exhilarating and terrifying.

But what made me instinctively ashamed? Was it because I saw my friends crushing on Duran Duran and when I looked at the posters I felt only a kind of blank confusion? “Oh, his ears seem normal sized, yes, I guess he’s cute?” I went from being a kid who was mad I never got to play Superman in the backyard (“Kari Anne, you be Superman’s mom.” “What?! No!”) to being a pre-teen with this crater-sized emptiness inside her because looking at the dudes in Duran Duran triggered only this queasy feeling that I’d much rather have a poster of my dance teacher in my room. My friends were giggly and “boy crazy” while I waited blankly for some switch to get flipped so I could be boy crazy, too.

Reader, the switch never flipped. The switch was not even there.

I couldn’t understand what was wrong with me. Maybe I should try harder to kiss my elbow. That would turn me into a boy, right? Wouldn’t things be easier if I were a boy? If I were a boy, it would be perfectly normal to have a debilitating crush on my dance teacher. Right? I started hiding my hair in baseball caps, and wearing jeans and baggy t-shirts. I loved it when old ladies at church called me “young man.” Except… I didn’t really love it. I didn’t actually want to be a boy. I just wanted the cool things boys got to have. They could be Superman. They had better haircuts. They got have crushes on girls.

And so, while I don’t remember anyone ever telling me it wasn’t ok to be gay, I also don’t remember even knowing what gay was until school bus slurs defined it for me. Kids insulted other kids by calling them gay, but even that was relegated to boys. I had no place to exist, even in the world of taunts.

Sure there were tomboys I clung to like a rope thrown in a sinkhole (hello, Jo in The Facts of Life), but there were no queer women at all in my rural Weltanschauung. No books, no television characters, no cartoons, no public figures, no strangers holding hands on the street, nothing. (It would be twelve years – my entire lifetime lived again – before Ellen came out on TV.) There just wasn’t any representation. Lesbians were not a thing. Anywhere. Particularly in LOL, Florida.

I look back and see that so many of my heroines were queer, but they weren’t free to talk about it in any kind of form where a 12-year-old girl would see it. Sally Ride. Lily Tomlin. Louise Fitzhugh. If I had seen Sally Ride kiss her wife just before she climbed into the Space Shuttle… THAT would have been something. But I didn’t even know I could imagine such a thing.

Of course, the world has changed a lot since the days I painfully, confusingly daydreamed about my dance teacher. Lesbians are on TV now, they’re in movies, they make music, they teach school, they’re in the military, they run for public office, and yet… where are they in children’s literature? Where are the girls crushing on other girls in books on middle school library shelves? Where is the representation young women crave when they feel confused and alone? Where are the stories normalizing girls with girlfriends? There’s definitely more out there now than when I was young, but compared to books about gay boys? About bi characters? About trans kids? About anyone *except* young gay women? Not much has changed since the 80s. Lesbians are still not really a thing for middle school kids. The void is bigger than any sinkhole in Florida.

And yet, representation matters more than ever.

Seeing yourself in a book is just.so.validating. And this is something you can’t really understand if you’ve always had books that reflect who you are. It’s also something you don’t understand until you finally read the first book that has someone like you in it. Your world expands and collapses all at the same time. You’re stunned and thrilled and fulfilled and then… you’re sad and angry and hungry. You want to sweep your arm across all the other shelves, and demand more, more, more. You want to kick in the TV for killing the one minor-character lesbian you clung to. Why is it so difficult to find yourself represented?

It shouldn’t be. Everyone deserves representation. And just as important… everyone else deserves books and movies and TV shows where gay ladies are part of every day life, too. We are not minor characters in real life. We aren’t always witty sidekicks. We aren’t killed for ratings. We are people who live in this world, alongside other people. Our visibility should not be less than his or yours. This is true when we’re 40. This is true when we’re 12.

I couldn’t go to my school library and find a book with me in it. That’s a sad truth. But what’s even sadder, what’s even more tragic, is that right now, today, in 2018, it is almost just as hard for a queer 12-year-old girl to go to her school library and find a book with herself in it.

Next year, though, at the beginning of the school year, she will have a book she can see herself in. And maybe it won’t be an exact reflection, and maybe she’s still figuring things out, and maybe the story is different than her own, but all of that is ok because she will be able to pick up a book, see two girls struggling together (and alone) to make sense of the world, and those girls will be holding hands. They aren’t killed for ratings. They aren’t minor characters. They aren’t an abomination. They aren’t adult content. They are young women living their lives. They are representative of millions of real girls who are not abominations or adult content or minor characters, either. They are the characters in a book I desperately needed, but did not have, when I was a young woman.

It’s pretty obvious that I have no control over Florida sinkholes, but I can do my best to close the void that tried to swallow me when I was a kid. I can write stories that say, “Hey. I see you. I get it.” And I can whisper to my pre-teen self, “One day you’ll be out and proud. You won’t be an astronaut, but you will be able to kiss your wife whenever and wherever you want.”

Next September, when Redwood & Ponytail comes out (ba dum bum), I hope it reaches the girls who need it. I hope it makes its way to every LOL, Florida-equivalent community. I hope it helps young women feel seen. And I hope everyone else realizes that a book about girls is a book anyone can enjoy. Our lives are just as universal as yours, our feelings just as shared, our jokes just as funny.

Representation matters.

Even and especially when you’re a girl holding hands with another girl.

On this International Women’s Day, it occurred to me (in a moment of shock and chagrin) that 2016 was the first year – THE FIRST YEAR – I answered “children’s book author” every time someone asked what I did for a living.

I’ve been a published author for 10 years. I have six books in stores, one out in May, and four more out next year. But in previous years when asked about my job, I would say “Oh, I work from home.” Or “I’m a writer.” I felt like I needed excuses for “just” writing books for kids. EIGHT BOOK CONTRACTS from 2014 to now, and I didn’t feel adequate.

Why?

Some of that was definitely on me. I could have been more confident, for sure. But there were also the times when I’d say I wrote books for kids, and the response was “do you plan on ever writing a real book?” or “no, but what’s your real job?” There is a weird undercurrent for women writers that our jobs are actually our hobbies, that writing isn’t a real job and instead it’s a fun past time we sometimes get paid for.

“But, Kari,” you say. “The kidlit community is dominated by women. How can you say women are undervalued?”

Well, let’s look at things like conferences and school visits. Women are often asked to speak for free. If we balk at that, we will hear that “budgets are tight.” Fair enough. Budgets ARE tight. I totally get that. But then, then, we learn that men (often with fewer books published and less experience) are being paid more. Not just more, but MORE. When asked why this happens, the reasoning is often, simply, the men are paid more because they ask for more. They value themselves because they are seen as valued.

It starts to make sense, then, why women authors — why *I* —  would value my work, my accomplishments, my self, as lesser than. If I am not seen as valued, I will not value myself. It’s an ugly cycle, isn’t it?

I feel like much of this comes from Society (which, ugh, I know, but bear with me). Expectations for women are so high. Back in my always-feeling-unworthy days, I felt constant judgement coming from every angle: I worked too hard, but I didn’t earn enough money. I let my kids spend too much time on screens, but god forbid I let them play outside unsupervised. My clothes weren’t right, but worrying about clothes isn’t very feminist. So many messages, and instead of any of them saying “Wow! Look at everything you’re accomplishing,” they say “You’re not doing enough, and you’re not doing it right.” It’s easy to see how a woman can feel undervalued… she is undervalued.

The thing is, though… when I was writing? I had the confidence of an average white man. When I was invited to speak or teach about writing, and I was paid what I like to call The Man Rate? I could blow away a whole auditorium. Even with rejections and revisions and setbacks and frustrations, I never doubted myself as a writer. So why, WHY, did it take me so long to admit that Yes, I am good at what I do? Why was it so difficult to finally say Yes, I am proud of my work and I deserve to be fairly compensated for it?

For me, it’s been a confluence of events. But I can tell you, at the top of that list is turning 40 and just not giving a damn anymore about confronting people when they act like tools.

So on this International Women’s Day, this International You Are Worth It, You Are A Beast Day, I want to reach out to all my women author sisters.

You have value.
You have talent.
You do not deserve less because you are a woman.
You should not ask for less because it’s expected of you.
May we all have not just the confidence of a mediocre white man, but may we crush it with the confidence of a 40-year-old woman who is sick 👏 of 👏this 👏 shit.

We are working hard and fighting hard and writing hard everyday. We don’t just deserve parity. We deserve respect. And most of all, we deserve to respect ourselves.

Qui tacet consentit. “Through silence, consent.” A colleague of mine posted this phrase on social media today after I had just hit send on an email that hurt my stomach to write. It’s a phrase I’ve been talking about for a while, and something that is especially poignant right now. 

You know, it used to be, if you said nothing then you were silently, tacitly giving your  approval. But now, even more than ever, it’s become if you *do* nothing you are approving. And there are so many things I can’t approve of right now.
Last year, when I began writing and doing school visits as my full-time means of income I knew it was going to be tricky. I need every contract, every school visit, every skype visit, every freelance job I can get. This allows me to pay rent, to buy groceries for my three kids, to pay exorbitant health insurance costs through the exchange (that thank goodness doesn’t punish me for having pre-existing conditions). I survive because I write. In so many ways. 

What this means, though, is that I can’t turn down work. Usually, that isn’t a problem. But now — I have had to make a decision. Do I say no to a paying school visit – do I risk the rent and the groceries and the health insurance payments – because I need to take a principled stand? Do I risk being seen as a zealot who is actually punishing students instead of a careless school district administration? Couldn’t I do more good in the world if I just took the money, spoke to the students, hoped to enlighten them, and then moved on?

Now more than ever, the answer to all of those questions HAS to be… I DO risk the rent. I am NOT a zealot. I AM doing good. Because qui tacet consentit. Through silence, consent. It used to be that you could raise your fist, be angry, and then go about your day. You could say, “Oh, Grandpa is a racist because he’s too old to change his ways.” You could say “Cousin Jane is a homophobe because she doesn’t know any better. What should I bring for Thanksgiving?” You would shake your head and say, “My boss is such a sexist, but that’s how the world works, and I need to get paid, right?” and you would carry on. But now? Now I am sick and tired of carrying on. Carrying on is tacit approval. Tacit approval lets the systemic poison burble happily along, splitting into more and more smoking veins of hatred until there are boiling calderas under every city, every school, every house.

It is not OK.

Last week, a small branding company in Austin, TX stood up to the entire Texas Department of Agriculture. The woman-owned business said they would no longer contract with the Ag Dept after the commissioner tweeted a profane insult aimed at Hillary Clinton. The Ag Commissioner responded by saying (this is paraphrased), “Why would they punch themselves in the face to punish me? That doesn’t sound like smart business.” What he misunderstood was they aren’t trying to punish him. They are taking a stand. They are risking their business by saying, “Hey. Enough. Maybe you’re our biggest client. Maybe we get most of our income from you. But you know what? You’re a disgusting man who doesn’t deserve the service we provide you. We’re out.” 

Do you realize how often this *doesn’t* happen? How many businesses and professionals, vendors and employees are afraid to do something like this? How they are trapped by powerful people who feel like they have free reign to be terrible (because they have had free reign)? Can you imagine what might happen if this kind of stand-taking happened more often? If rather than silent, resigned complicity, everyone said, simply, “No. This is not OK.”?

Today I sent a “No, it’s not OK” email. I made the choice to not get paid, so that I could make an important point. I chose not to be silent. I chose not to be complicit. Last summer the Round Rock school district made a choice to silence an author who was teaching students love and empathy and kindness and acceptance. The district didn’t like the message of acceptance, and effectively banned the author. They worked to gaslight him, and everyone, by stating a different reason for uninviting him, but those of us who have been discriminated against know the pattern. And those of us who know the author, know he is telling the truth. And so, in solidarity with Phil, I said no to Round Rock. It devastates me to miss out on speaking to so many children, to not be able to give my own message of love and empathy and kindness and acceptance. But if I go to the district, and I take their money, and I agree to speak on what they want me to speak about, then I am, ironically, being silent. And I will not be silent anymore.

You can read my letter below. I hope that everyone else will choose to not be silent anymore, too. Whether it has to do with school visits, or sexist bosses, or throwaway racist jokes, or or or or…. Please, no more qui tacet consentit.

###

Consider, if you will, these Fall movies:

A band of women are determined to protect a 19th-century Western outpost from a malevolent industrialist (Annette Bening). Charlize Theron leads the women, as Winona Ryder (a hard-drinking ne’er-do-well) helps – and hinders – the fight.

A baby is dropped on the doorstep of an unsuspecting British man, and he must figure out which of his recent lovers is her mother. Is it the romantic, American businesswoman or the attractive, but cold, ex-girlfriend? This blunder-prone man must stumble his way through this hilarious situation!

An autistic forensic accountant (Jennifer Garner) is recruited by a robotics company to locate a money leak, and she discovers a whistleblowing CPA (Chris Pratt) while also revealing her Beautiful Mind-esque math ability.

A boxing champ (Lupita Nyong’o) faces impossible odds to fight her way back into the ring after breaking her neck in a car accident.

A luckless prospector (Naomi Watts) tries to strike it rich in the Indonesian jungle while her steadfast boyfriend (Brad Pitt) works multiple jobs to keep the couple afloat.

These are all actual movies, but I reversed the genders. Does that make you want to see the movies more? Less? Does it make any difference? This is a game I like to play when I get my Entertainment Weekly, and it has a TV Preview, or a Movie Preview. I also like to do it with book reviews. Switch the gender. Change the race. How does that affect the story being told? Does it affect the story? I have to say that more often than not, the story seems A LOT more interesting. We lose the run-of-the-mill storylines, and open things up to broader topics and statements. The Bridget Jones riff up there looks pretty stupid when the genders are switched. (Though, arguably, it’s pretty dumb to begin with).

Anyway, one could hope that Hollywood execs and TV producers, when reading a script, would also experiment with the gender of the characters. “What would this story be like, if… all the humans on the oil rig were women, all the lawyers fighting over the Very Important Thing were women, the person having the midlife crisis and then going a road trip with a crusty old person was a woman… of color! What happens to the jokes when you switch the characters like this? Do they work? Are they still lazy? Do the caricatures they come across/interact with suddenly hold less (or more) import?

I don’t imagine Hollywood will do this. I imagine they already feel a bit hamstrung and hand-wring-y about the amount of female-driven movies they’re currently producing. (omgwtfbbq the internets hate ladies and movies have ladies and we made two movies with ladies and now we will only make $384658 billion instead of $384659 billion and what is happeninnnnnggg)

So maybe it’s up to the writers? Maybe you finish your screenplay or television treatment or your book (or if you’re lucky, you finish the outline and the first few pages/chapters instead of the whole thing) and then you go back and say “Huh. What happens if…” And you change things up. Maybe you ultimately keep the characters the same gender and same race, but in the exercise of switching them you see the blatant sexism/racism/lazy writing that happens when you depend on every day observations and assumptions. Maybe putting your characters into different shoes makes you a stronger writer, and your characters more interesting. And possibly, doing this will convince you to leave the characters that way and see what happens.

Women can pilot spaceships, and men can clean kitchens. Koreans can have their hearts broken, and African-Americans can be magicians.

I know a lot more needs to be done to diversify the pop culture we all consume, and I don’t have answers to solving that (other than, “shut your whiny pie holes, and make movies about ANYONE OTHER THAN WHITE DUDES that are written by ANYONE OTHER THAN WHITE DUDES and directed by ANYONE OTHER THAN WHITE DUDES”) but since Hollywood, just like my children, will never listen to me this seems like an interesting exercise for the rest of us.

In June 2015 SCOTUS gave the final say: gay marriage is the law of the land. Everyone shares equal rights now and WHEW that was a long battle and let’s all go get a drink and wear cute rainbow shirts and celebrate.

Or, wait.

Could it possibly be that in the first half of 2016 alone, 87 bills have been introduced nationwide that attempt to limit rights for LGBT people? That would be crazy, right? I mean, the *majority* of Americans support equality. Gay marriage is a done deal. It really is an amazing time to be out in America. And yet, suddenly the party of anti-big-government and pro-states-rights, is encouraging (and funding) new laws that not only attempt to limit equality, but that attempt to use a heavy governmental fist to prevent localities from providing equal rights for all? Huh?

So maybe it shouldn’t be shocking to go hunting for a rental house and to learn that the  application my girlfriend and I turned in was denied. Maybe I shouldn’t find that as galling and preposterous as I do. But here we are.

Was there a giant stamp on our denied application that said “NO LESBIANS ALLOWED!”? Nope. Because in my city that would be against one of those everyone-has-the-same-rights ordinances that defies state and federal doctrine. Instead of a NO LESBIANS stamp, we were denied because of our pets. Curiously, the listing for the house says “Pets OK, up to 3, See Agent.” But after our realtor discussed everything with the agent and turned in all our paperwork (wherein two women were listed as partners), we found out that Lo! “Pets OK, up to 3” actually means no cats and small dogs only.

Hmm.

Maybe it’s as simple as that. The listing was unspecific. Perhaps the landlord truly isn’t into cats or 40 pound dogs. Possibly that’s true. Possibly, instead of filling out the listing like every other agent does, saying “no cats” and “small dogs only” he just thought that “Pets OK, see agent” would cover pesky details like that.

I mean, when I googled the guy and found out that he’s an executive pastor at a conservative local church that condemns gay marriage, that probably has nothing to do with how he feels about people renting the house, right? That’s probably just me piling my own baggage onto him? There’s no way he would put in a nebulous pet policy as a loophole for discriminatory behavior, right? Only a conspiracy theorist/crazy person would think that! The fact that his church held a post-SCOTUS ruling seminar on “not sitting back silently while the world celebrates perversion of God’s design for sexuality” probably has nothing to do with any of this. Right? RIGHT?

Or maybe this kind of insidious discrimination has been going on since the dawn of time. Maybe the political climate is giving people a new boldness to deny others equal rights and opportunities. Maybe the abundance of “religious freedom” laws are creating a sense of “but it’s not discriminatory if my religion says you’re gross.”

Maybe I shouldn’t be shocked to be faced with this kind of conundrum. Is it insipid discrimination? Or are there just some craaaaazy coincidences designed to make ME look like the one who’s targeting an innocent person?

My gut-feeling could be completely wrong. The application denial could be completely unbiased and legit. I have no definitive proof in this particular case. But I do have definitive proof that the desire to discriminate is being heartily encouraged across the country. I can be told it’s not my sexuality that’s the problem, it’s really the cat’s fault. I can report the landlord to the local housing authority and the tenant’s council, and find out nothing can be done. I can make a donation in his name to a lesbian charity, to try to balance the scales a bit. I can feel lucky that it’s “only” something like housing discrimination I’ve faced and not the barrel of a gun at a traffic stop.

But what can you do? What can we all do together? I think the first step is just recognizing that this shit happens. Is happening. All. The. Time. And it has been, forever. It’s time to raise awareness instead of our shrugging shoulders. And it’s time to vote. Not just in national elections, but in the small local ones. These podunk asshole politicians who make it OK to discriminate give power to the non-politican assholes who feel threatened. And how are the asshole politicians elected when the majority of people support equality? They are voted into state office BECAUSE THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE DO NOT VOTE IN LOCAL ELECTIONS. Get out the vote, y’all, and let’s stop giving power to those who would take it away.

Growing up in the 80s, I got my ass handed to me a million times as I struggled to find my way. I was a shitty dancer, never earning trophies. I lost more than one speech competition because I went over time and got disqualified. I tried out for volleyball and I didn’t make the team because the other girls who tried out were better.

Guess what? Not making the team did not ruin my life. Losing competitions did not crush my fragile soul. Has my adult life been adversely affected by having grown-ups tell my kid-self I wasn’t good enough and should find something different to try? It has not.

In high school, I wanted the lead in a play. I did not get the lead. I got a supporting role where I learned that memorizing lines is hard, acting is sweaty, and though I loved the stage, I wanted to try something different. So I wrote a play. And that led me to write short stories. And novels. And boom, here we are.

What is my point? My point is that learning to fail is what taught me to succeed.

And I wonder if some of these Bernie-or-Bust supporters have ever had that experience in their lives. What must it be like to be young and privileged and earnest and to have grown up in a world where every little league player gets a trophy and no one keeps score? What must it be like to navigate the ugly real world now when all you’ve known is that there were 35 cheerleaders on the squad because if you didn’t make the squad your parents threatened to sue? What is it like to always hear that you’re special, and to never hear the word no? It must be really, really hard to be an adult and to learn these lessons for the first time.

It’s not that I’m advocating destroying the hearts and minds of children in order to make them toughened adults, it’s that I’m sighing deeply over “progressive” adult humans having multi-day temper tantrums because they did not get their way. I’m sighing deeply over weeping white boys with duct tape over their mouths that reads “silenced.” I’m driving in disbelief as I listen to NPR interviews with young women who say, “I see your basic point, but it’s, like, the principle of the thing?” when the interviewer points out that a protest vote for Trump actually endorses pretty much everything Bernie stands against.

Most of the time, losing sucks. Having someone tell you No sucks, too. Finding out there were dirty shenanigans behind the scenes really, really sucks. You’re pissed. You’re sad. You totally get to be those things. Feel the feelings, baby. Roll around in them. But then, grow the fuck up.

You know what happens after someone tells you No? You learn from it. You grow. You affect change. Understand that your temper tantrums do not affect change. Taking your anger to every single election in the next four years, the next eight years, the next twelve years, THAT affects change. Rallying people to start from the ground-up and revamp a shitty system, THAT affects change. Just because it feels like you lost this round doesn’t mean that you pitch a fit and boo public speakers and stick out your lower lip and refuse to vote. You know what it does mean? It means you feel like you lost, but take a deep breath and look around you. The party platform includes things it never would have included if you hadn’t made your voice heard. Bernie Sanders – who is not actually a Democrat, you know – has his arm elbow-deep in the muck of the Democratic party and he’s swirling it around. He’s frothing up that muck, y’all. He’s getting down and dirty, making allies, and jamming his foot in the fucking door.

Bernie is not the nominee, but his words have made a difference. His policy is already affecting change. Don’t you see that, Crying Children At The Convention? Don’t you see the leaps and bounds that have already occurred? And don’t you understand YOU WILL LOSE ALL OF THIS if Donald Trump is elected president? Everything you worked so hard for is going down in a flaming pile of shit if you abstain from voting, or if you vote third-party. You WANT the system to be ready for a third-party revolution. The system is not ready. What the system IS primed and ready for is a demagogue to rise to power on the backs of whiny baby special snowflakes who don’t know how to turn the word No into the word Change.

So buck up, buttercups. Feel your feelings. And then take your medicine, vote for Hillary, protect your loved ones from a world where hate and racism and bigotry are all state-sanctioned, and then vote, vote, vote in every local and state election until the assholes are gone.

And the best part about channeling your earnestness into down-in-the-local-trenches civic duty? You get a sticker every time you vote. EVERYONE GETS A STICKER! EVERY TIME!

Bernie didn’t get the nomination. It sucks, and it doesn’t feel fair because you wanted it to happen. You really, really wanted it and you didn’t get what you want, and you are lost.  But now is the time to learn what you should have learned when you were eight. Now is the time to realize your lack of a trophy at this very instant doesn’t mean you will never have that trophy. It means you are going to have to work for it. It means you take this failure to fuel future success. You do not take this failure to fuel future flaming shit piles. Shit piles governed by fascists do not offer very many trophy opportunities.

You hear me? Good.

Now get off my lawn.

What happens when voices are silenced?
What happens when-even worse-voices are never even heard to begin with?
What happens when children don’t see themselves in the books they read, in the media they consume?
What happens when the news cycle never ends, when talking heads search and destroy as they grasp to find something, anything to keep talktalktalking about?
What happens when it is discovered that fear creates more ratings than joy?
What happens when the majority of people feel afraid, targeted, misunderstood, and isolated?
What happens when bite-sized, news-bubble fear-mongering becomes so popular, so comfortable it runs the legitimate news business into the ground?
What happens when facts are replaced with “facts”?
What happens when empathy is replaced by fear?
What happens when kindness is replaced by entitlement?
What happens when institutional racism just gets a head shake and a sigh?
What happens when institutional sexism just gets a joke and some memes?
What happens when an entire group of people experiences state-sponsored discrimination?
What happens when another group of people experiences this?
And then another?
And then another?
What happens?

I am not a sociologist. I am not a psychologist. I am not a statistician. I am not an anthropologist or a historian. I have no expertise in politics or economics. But I am a human. I am a human who is very good at watching other humans. I am a human who sees stories from miles away. And I am a human who never stops asking questions.

“Well what good is that?” You ask. “We are obviously a society in pain. We are obviously at some kind of crossroads. Who cares if you’re good at watching people? Who cares if you ask questions? We need answers. We need people to act. We need people to fight back. We don’t need watchers. We need doers.”

And how could I argue with you, really? Complacency is complicity. But do you know what is the opposite of complicity and complacency? Empathy and education. I don’t mean school everyday, then college kind of education. I mean education of the world at large. I mean getting out in it, seeing, meeting, befriending people who are different than you are. I mean learning how to have a conversation with a person who has different ideological beliefs than you, and not spiraling into name-calling. I mean being educated as a human being.

This crazy thing happens when you meet other people, when you go outside of your bubble and you talk to other humans, when you hear their personal stories. You learn that they are people just like you. You discover they are not just caricatures, they are not unfamiliar faces in a sea of more unfamiliar faces. Strangers are not strangers. Strangers are us. You learn that just because someone speaks another language he is not stupid. You learn that because a woman covers her head, she is not weak. You learn that two women kissing is not anathema, it is universal love. You learn everyone loves someone. And everyone is loved by someone.

Complacency is complicity and education is empathy.

And this is where our expertise as artists come into play. There’s a reason that when society begins to crumble the artists are some of the first people rounded up and silenced. It’s because artists tell the hard truth. Artists give voices to those who are not heard, are ignored, are unseen, are abandoned, are scary, are terrifying reminders of what life could be.

Artists allow those who cannot go out into the world to do it anyway. They bring you to city streets. They bring you behind shuttered windows of ticky-tacky houses. They put you in a car with a gun pointed at you. They put weapons in your own hands. They show you consequences without putting you jeopardy. They give YOU a voice. They give you validation. They prove you are not alone. They give you answers when no one else can.

A child might not be able to go out into the world to see how others live. It might be difficult for her to even get to school in the mornings, much less strike up a conversation at the bus stop. A teen might be ashamed, afraid or too stuck in his or her own head to be able to reach out — the feeling of isolation so overwhelming that they know in their bones no one else could have ever felt the same way. An adult might feel too much fear to be kind. So what happens then?

I’ll tell you what happens.

We put books in their hands.
We open library doors.
We fill schools with stories about everyone. Everyone.
We provide outlets for the angry and confused by giving them characters who are angry and confused — and yet these characters still find a way to clarity.
We stop being afraid that children will read books where gay people are equals.
We stop saying that books containing people of color “won’t sell.”
We stop sanitizing our shelves, afraid that kids will learn the ugliness of the world too early. (Newsflash: the world is ugly, and children bear the brunt of it)
We teach children empathy through storytelling.
We encourage everyone to learn about people different from themselves, through books, through music, through art, through conversation.
We tell the hard stories.
We offer them up.
We ask questions.
We answer questions – not with dogma, but with thoughtfulness.
We put books in their hands.
We put books in their hands.
We put books in their hands.

And maybe by doing this, the next generation will be better than we are at empathy and kindness. Maybe our legacy will simply be: learn more, do more, be more, read more. Maybe that will be enough. Maybe it’s not too late.

Two words have been bouncing around in my head today: Gaslighting and Complicity.

In 1944 Ingrid Bergman starred in a movie called Gaslight. The basic premise of the movie is that, in order to get something he secretly wants, a woman’s husband slowly and insidiously convinces her that she’s going insane.

Over time, the term “gaslighting” has become a kind of slang term used when someone tries to trick you into thinking you must be making things up. They tell you you’re crazy, a conspiracy theorist, seeing shadows where shadows don’t exist. You then feel confused. Are you just seeing something that isn’t there? Maybe you’re paranoid. Maybe you only think the worst of people. And so as this person questions the questions you’re asking, the tables are turned, the focus is blurred, and the subject quietly moves from the problem you were addressing to something completely different. Gaslighting. A famed tactic of emotional abuse perpetrators and of politicians.

Donald Trump doesn’t condemn an endorsement from David Duke for juuuust long enough that the people he’s getting his message to receive it loud and clear. Then comes the “oh gosh, sorry, right, that guy is terrible” wink wink, nod nod.

Gaslighting.

Dan Patrick releases a hateful and disgusting tweet after a shooting at a gay nightclub. It stays online juuuuuuust long enough that the people he’s getting his message to receive it loud and clear. Then comes the “oh gosh, that was a strange and serendipitous accident” wink wink, nod nod.

Gaslighting.

A school district decides to un-invite a renowned children’s book author after he book talks a middle grade book dealing with a transgender protagonist. The district is silent for juuuuuuust long enough that the people they’re getting their message to receive it loud and clear. Then comes the “that’s not what we meant at all, we just don’t like authors teaching kids to talk back to authority figures” wink wink, nod nod.

Gaslighting.

And do not even get me STARTED on “religious freedom.”

“Oh, we aren’t racists/bigots/intolerant, YOU’RE the one imagining things.” Right. Just like we’ve been imagining things for decades. Just like the senators who voted against the Civil Rights Act were doing it for states’ rights. Just like the law in North Carolina is to prevent child molesters from wearing lady-costumes and lurking in restrooms.

Why can’t politicians just say what they mean? Why can’t they cop to their hatred, their bigotry, their intolerance? Why do they hide behind the cloaks of religion and provisions of safety? Do we dare hope that the reason why is because they know they’re being terrible human beings? Deep in their caustic, bigoted hearts is a glimmer of guilt? Is this why? Or, are they offering an easy out for their trying-to-be-less-horrible constituents? It isn’t a stretch to think that vile gasbags like Dan Patrick are sending two messages. One is for their foul base – the people who are openly, blatantly full of hate. And the second? That one is for the people looking for an out; the voters who would never think of themselves as racist or intolerant, and yet they vote for racist and intolerant men and women every chance they get.

This is when the second word that’s been rolling around in my brain comes into play. This is when I think about complicity. Gaslighting provides the perfect cover for complicity, especially when people join the ruse. “He said he doesn’t want the support of the Ku Klux Klan! I can vote for him!” Really? Is that what he said? “That tweet saying gay people deserve to be killed was just a crazy coincidental accident. Whew! I can totally still vote for him!” These justifications don’t come from lunatics, they come from people we all know and love. They support some of the politician’s positions, but not all of his ideals. So they vote for him anyway. No harm, no foul, right?

Complicity.

Voting for someone who carefully calculates ways to denigrate, shame, and marginalize is an act of complicity. Plain and simple.

“But I have gay friends,” you say. “I support marriage for everyone.”
“My working buddy is black, and he does all right,” you say. “Look how far we’ve come!”
“I can offer any book to my kid, let’s not get too riled up here,” you say. “It’s just a book.”

Complicity.

“It’s taxes and jobs I worry about.”
“We can’t let the government get too heavy handed.”
“Women and children must be protected.”

Complicity.

My friends, do not go gentle into that dark night. Do not align yourselves with the perpetrators of evil. And do not roll your eyes at me and accuse me of hyperbole. These people ARE perpetrators of evil. They quietly gaslight everyone, giving a complicit nod and handshake to anyone who wants to pick up a rifle and take matters into their own hands. They offer thoughts and prayers, they condemn terrorism, and then they take thousands of dollars to ensure possible terrorists have no obstacles in getting the guns they need to wreak havoc. They preach love and Jesus out of one side of their mouthes and hate and intolerance out of the other side. They cry over Big Government and then try to legislate women’s bodies, restroom policies, and “religious freedom.”

Do not go gentle into that dark night. Please. I know it’s easy to look the other way. I know politicians are bred to be distasteful. But my God, Hitler wasn’t Hitler until suddenly he was. (And do not invoke Godwin’s law here — when there are riots in the streets and mass murders happening regularly, an open discussion on xenophobia and fascism should be welcomed.)

Demagoguery is easy. It is a coward’s way of gaining power, and a weak-minded excuse for support. It gets a lot of response for a little bit of effort, and it doesn’t require thought or facts.

Be smarter.

Be kinder.

Don’t be complicit.

Don’t let the gaslight blur your vision.

Please.

I’ve been watching a lot of coming out videos lately, and a common theme these days is whether or not a “Hey, I’m gay!” announcement is even necessary anymore. DOMA is done. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is done. The world is opening up. Does it even matter anymore for someone to make a proclamation? Has it become ho hum, lost in the noise of so much other information flying at us every day? Does anyone care if a famous athlete is bisexual, when we could all be watching a video of a baby moose being born in a Lowe’s parking lot?

It’s easy to say (and to think) the world is moving on — that coming out stories have lost their shock and awe. It’s easy to say that being gay isn’t a thing anymore, that people shrug and move on, knowing that their sister or cousin or brother or friend is the same person they’ve always been, and can’t we just go shoe shopping like we’d already planned on?

But the reality is, while people do seem to be considerably more accepting now than in the past (hi, Stonewall Inn as a national historic site), there is a LONG way to go before proclamations and videos and sweaty-near-passing-out discussions with one’s parents aren’t necessary. When terrible human beings like Dan Patrick actively request school districts to give up federal funding and violate Title IX laws for the specific reason of discriminating against children, then it becomes pretty clear that we still need to make a big deal when someone celebrates their queerness. (Or, if we don’t make a big deal, it can still be acknowledged in some way; there can still be a “we’re all in this weird game of being humans together” head nod. You know?)

How would my own life have been different had I known, at 10, that Sally Ride had a wife? That Lily Tomlin wasn’t into men. That Louise Fitzhugh dressed in men’s clothes and had girlfriends rather than boyfriends. What would it have meant to a young girl in rural Florida to experience a world where gay wasn’t a slur and where gender was unimportant when it came to partnering and having children? Maybe nothing would have been different. Maybe everything would have been different. What does it mean to a young girl today who *does* know that Sally Ride had a wife? Who knows Ellen and Portia are Hollywood mainstays, and who understands the kid in her school who looked like a girl last year looks like a boy now, because he’s always *been* a boy, he just needed to be able to match his outside self with his inside self? We certainly can’t discount these revelations, can we? Even if we want the world to be a place where it doesn’t matter, it still matters very much.

Then there’s another tricky thing… is there a responsibility to be one of the people who others look to? Is there a requirement to take this small part of you and put it on display so that your own fists get muddy while you help tear the barricades down? I don’t have the answer to these questions, but I think about them a lot. If you are a person who is congratulated for writing with openness and rawness and honesty and emotion, are you being disingenuous to leave out a very important aspect of your own life? Or is it really anyone’s damn business other than your own? Is it shameful to worry that while you could have a positive impact on children – you could be their Louise Fitzhugh living an open life – you could also harm your career, making it more difficult to buy groceries for your own children? Is it ridiculous to even have this worry in 21st century America? Based on some of the political rhetoric of late it isn’t ridiculous at all. How can we be moving forward and backward at the same time?

Eight months ago I needed to make a choice about moving forward even if it required some backward leaps to get there: was I going to continue to quietly suffer, or was I going to allow myself to be happy. It sounds so simple, but in reality, I was terrified. Could I really choose my own happiness over everyone else’s? Even if I desperately hoped my family would be happier in the long run, could I cause the kind of irreparable change that would leave an indelible mark on everyone?  Initially, I felt like the collateral damage I would cause wasn’t going to be worth it. I felt like my best choice was probably to keep quiet, learn to make do with the status quo, and then one day make a deathbed confession to my children, telling them I had stayed quiet to protect them, I had lived a secret life to make sure their lives would be better. But then I realized that was really stupid. Really, really stupid and the opposite of what I want to teach them — the opposite of what I’ve taught them already. I also realized that while initially the news was going to cause confusion and hurt, in the long run it really would be better for everyone.

So I did it. I came out to my family and close friends. I wanted to feel free. I wanted to celebrate finally being able to be the me I’ve always been. I wanted to shake off the years of being an outsider in nearly every world I was part of. I wanted to be ok.

I didn’t feel ok, though. And I didn’t feel free. Not at first. I felt selfish. I felt guilty. But then… there was a lightness that overtook me. And while I concentrated on talking to the kids, and answering every question, and being as open as possible… while I tried desperately to maintain a relationship with my now former spouse… the lightness prevailed. I do get to be me now. Does it tear through me that for me to get to be me I have to cause pain in others? Of course. Do I hope with a kind of flailing desperation that their pain will fade over time? Of course. Do I expect to be torn apart by people who think mothers should be living embodiments of the Giving Tree, sacrificing everything for their children until their own identity just disappears? I do. But here’s the thing… I am not just a mother. I am a human. I am a woman. I will sacrifice sleep and food and money and pretty much anything else to ensure my children are happy, but I will no longer sacrifice my own ability to feel quiet joy in just being alive. A mother’s joy and her children’s joy are not mutually exclusive.

In Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy, Ole Golly gives Harriet some advice: “Sometimes you have to lie. But to yourself you must always tell the truth.” In the 60s this might have been life-saving advice to a girl like Harriet (and in the 1980s to a girl like me). But it isn’t the 60s or the 80s anymore, and I don’t want to just tell the truth to myself. I want to tell the truth to everyone else, too.

I might not put on a rainbow cape so I can make a flamboyant video, and I might feel the guilt that comes with having watched others pave a path while I was too scared to help. But I’m here now, better late than never. My own little tributary path is now connected to the bigger road. Where that road leads isn’t something I know, and for the first time in my life I’m happy that the future is a bit blurry.

Kids made fun of me when I was in the 8th grade and still reading Harriet the Spy, but you know what? I’m 39 now and Harriet continues to be a guiding light. She’s an independent, sassy, pain-in-the-ass young woman, and I can only hope that in some way I’ll be able to help inspire another generation of women just like her.