Aside from a few of the usual slap fights girls get into from time to time, I've only had one memorable physical fight in my lifetime.
I was about ten when I shoved a tall, heavy-set, slightly older male classmate up against a fence and kicked and punched him, all the while screaming like a banshee. After about a minute or so of my puny attack, he finally had the presence of mind to push me away. When I fell to the ground, instead of hitting back, he reached inside his shirt pocket, pulled out a small, flat, sharp-edged stone and threw it at my head. (If you look closely, you'd see the scar left from the gash the stone opened on my forehead.)
But though I wore the evidence of that fight much longer than he did, the looks and comments I got from other classmates led me to believe that I'd done something remarkable: I'd dared to fight back when the school bully taunted and teased.
What was it that got me so incensed that I was willing to shut him up or die trying?
Every lunch period a group of us girls would go to a classmate's home (she lived near the school) and play a round or two of jacks. No boys were allowed even though some of them begged to come, the school bully included. So a slow rumor started that we were lesbians. I say slow because by the time most of us in the group heard of it, it had a life of its own. We had been paired off and each "couple" had been given nicknames, and an accompanying love story. The day of the fight I had finally heard the rumor and decided I wasn't going to our usual lunch spot. The bully saw me sitting alone and soon drew a crowd with his loud vulgar questions and taunts. Somehere in-between the taunts and stares, I lost it.
The fight ended the taunting. But some time later, much too late to do anything about it, I realized I'd never spoken up in denial of the accusation that I was a lesbian. More likely than not the prospect of an eloquent denial was restricted by fear and rage, and something else...
There were no openly lesbian women where I lived (several openly gay men though), so there was no substantive visible lesbian lifestyle (good or bad) with which I could identify or completely reject. I had nothing to argue sensibly against. So I remained silent, as did the lesbian women who HAD to have existed.
What did it mean that there were no openly lesbian women where I lived in Guyana, a little over 20 years ago? Was a woman who openly declared that she was not interested in a sexual relationship with a man (20 years or so ago in Guyana) destined to a life worse than a man who was openly gay?
Maybe (I'd like to think so anyway) somewhere in my 10-year-old mind I knew that to deny that I was lesbian was to add one more voice against it...one more voice...complicit...helping to uphold the cruel denying silence.
For one memorable minute (or thereabouts) I let my fists do the talking. I quieted one bullying voice which said lesbianism was wrong, and lesbians needed to hide in shame.
[Yesterday was UN-designated International Day Against Homophobia. In Guyana, the Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD) appears to be fighting the good fight against legally entrenched stigmas against homosexuality.]
