Dreams

At first, I didn’t quite know what to make of “Feminisms, Genders, and Sexualities.” As I read, the word “staccato” kept popping into my head and I kept wondering how much of the varied history I would remember or what my final impression would be. It seemed to come at me like a too quick inspection of a patch–quilt, and I just couldn’t seem to get a handle on the page after page description of so many different ways to view the subject matter. For a long time now, I’ve been aware of the fact that there is no simple way to look at gender and sexuality; I’ve met so many people in my life that differ in these areas in so many ways. It wasn’t until I read the following words that I was finally given something I could hold onto: “It is clear from this overview that subfields of feminist and sexuality studies are diverse and multiplying” (237). At that moment, an old familiar unequivocal idea popped into my head, and what I was feeling made sense one more time. For better or for worse I’m a white–hetero–male living in a world of incredibly diverse genders and sexualities, and when that came to mind, so did the last verse from an old Bob Dylan song called “Talkin’ World War III Blues.” It goes like this ––

Well, now time passed and now it seems
Everybody’s having them dreams.
Everybody sees themselves walkin’ around with no one else.
Half of the people can be part right all of the time,
some of the people can be all right part of the time,
but all of the people can’t be all right all of the time.
I think Abraham Lincoln said that.
“I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours,”
I said that.