Wishing For Gays

Ayelet Waldman is a columnist at Salon. She recently wrote this piece in which she discussed her seven-year-old son's friendship with a fifty-something lesbian. It is the kind of column that could serve as a perfect primer for writing parents on what not to write about one's children. Ayelet reveals that her sons thinks he's gay because he doesn't like girls and goes on to rhapsodize about how having a gay son would be awesome, and how she really hopes he is gay. A gay son would shop with her! But she doesn't want her daughters to be lesbians because they'll make her feel bad about shaving her legs.

Ayelet, I'll give you my mom's number so that she can let you know that, contrary to the stereotypes you insist on forcing on your son, many gay sons (this one included) do not enjoy shopping with their mothers.

I found the whole essay to be obnoxiously invasive of her defenseless son's life, in a way that is mostly indefensible, especially when there isn't anything interesting in it. She's not exploring his identity to make a point so much as to reveal her own sordid fantasies of having an "inappropriately intimate" relationship with her son. Writers expose themselves all the time. They also expose their loved ones. Most of us justify this with the aesthetic strengths of the art, or the intellectual gains made at the expense of privacy. Waldman doesn't have anything to justify her behavior, and comes off as unthoughtful (her column isn't much better than my blog, she wanders from idea to idea, contradicting herself and refusing to build anything like an argument) and creepy.

Of course, Salon's active reader base went crazy. Many gays wrote in to say that it was cruel to wish your son is gay because being gay is so hard (precisely the reason my mother wishes I were straight.) This is the kind of argument I'd expect from Salon readers, of course. Basic puritanism and homo self-hatred wrapped up in righteous liberal indignation. There's no real problem with Waldman wanting her son to be gay -- this doesn't make her a terrible mother. Writing about her son's sexuality while he is at a vulnerable age is a much greater offense, I think, and one fewer readers key in on. Okay, being gay is hard. Boo-hoo. Being a human is hard. Her son comes from an (at least) solidly middle class background, will likely have all the advantages of good education and masculine privelege. Being gay isn't so hard in that context (just ask me.) And why shouldn't she wish he was gay? Many parents wish their kids will grow up to be lawyers, doctors, handsome, smart, witty, why not add cocksucker to the list? The liberal myth that parenting can be done without any actual, you know, parenting is enfuriating. Children need some kind of direction, need their parents to have hopes and desires for them in order for them to learn that having hopes and desires is important. I'm not saying people should try to make their kids gay or straight. I'm just trying to say that Salon's readers are clearly raising the worst generation of humans ever, devoid of purpose or parental support (or rather, spineless support, "I support you no matter what. You just have to figure it all out on your own.") What happened to parents like my mother, so obsessed with finding me my true calling that she once suggested I become a mannequin designer?

Then along came a second batch of letters, mostly defending Waldman. One, however, is so magnificent that I must share it with you.

She has admitted that she has mental instability. She has been willing to write what she insists she didn't realize was a suicide note and publish it online. And now here come the Times and Salon, willing to publish whatever flits through her head without regard to coherence or content.

She is not provocative in a thoughtful way; she comes across as a person I would veer to the other side of the street to avoid, for fear she'd do something "wacky" that would turn out to be dangerous, or hurtful.

But the person who comes through in her columns -- in more than one publication -- projects an instability and lack of comprehension of the world that feels like a cry for help.

Please stop enabling her, Salon.

Oh, and clearly the person who wrote, "I cannot believe how uptight and shrill Salon's readers can be," hasn't been reading for very long.

[Oh, and please note (especially you Ben) that the woman in the drawing accompanying Waldman's column looks suspiciously like Camille Paglia.]

[Oh, and Ayelet Waldman is also a novelist of such hits as "Death Gets A Time Out" and once wrote a blog, in which she divulged even more of herself than she does at Salon. Lots of talk about her risk of suicide, how much she loves being bipolar, how crippling depression interferes with blogging time, her son's colorblindness, and in the only post that's actually any good, her fascination with dead children and freaks. As I share the fascination, I can finally relate.]