Jan 25, 2011
13 notes

Thank you, each and all!

Thank you to the many hundreds of people who are circulating my statement about who is, and is not, my family into the public record: http://leslie-feinberg.tumblr.com/

Only two people—a Christian minister and someone close to him—are waging a public offensive to my statement. They called into question my credibility of reports of my life-long legal, social and political battle against bigoted group scapegoating by three living biological relatives: Irving David Feinberg, Betty Vance Hyde, and Catherine Ryan Hyde.

Their counter-narrative leaves out the experiences of my chosen family with these hostile relatives. Instead, they only focus on Catherine Ryan Hyde to make it appear to be a “sibling” problem—not the group dynamics of scapegoating by all three biological relatives. Their argument dismisses a 40-year legal battle for legal, social and political independence from a hostile patriarchal nuclear biological unit as merely a “family squabble.”

In this counter-narrative, my life partner of almost 19 years—who is my family—is disrespected by being ignored, without a mention, along with my children, grandchildren, comrades, loved ones, care circle, support circle, and the rest of my extended, loving chosen family.

These two counter-narrators, like Catherine Ryan Hyde, try to divert my statement about who is who is my family into a focus on Hyde’s book of fiction. Hyde’s novel is not the issue. For my response, see post above.

At this stage of illness, only a statement of great importance is worth losing ground in the struggle for health. However, I am so ill, that writing and posting the statement online has cost me 10 pounds of wasting, and I was already at a critical weight.

So I am especially grateful for all the individuals who have had the courage to answer reactionary attempts to negate the violent bigotry I’ve experienced at the hands of three chosen relatives, to defend my demand that Catherine Ryan Hyde stop defining my early identity in a way that denies the way I defined myself—then or now.

And most importantly, thank you for defending my chosen family, including my 19-year-relationship with Minnie Bruce Pratt that the state does not recognize—so that my loved ones aren’t confronted with legal claims by three estranged biological relatives that they are my “real family”—either before, or after, my death.

The only way that Irving David Feinberg, Betty Vance Hyde and Catherine Ryan Hyde can demonstrate acceptance is to stop claiming me as “family” and to leave me, Minnie Bruce and my chosen family alone.

Minnie Bruce and I have commented that the repostings of my statement about who is, and who is not, my family, feel like a protective peoples’ cordon of safety around us so that we can turn inward as a chosen family towards health and love.

Thank you each, and all for your support at such a critical life moment!

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I am so ill at this time, that this blog--digital social media as a whole--is the only way I can communicate. More, when I can. Subscribe via RSS.