Book club tonight

[pegkerr]

I have been invited to speak at two book clubs this week about The Wild Swans. The first one is tonight. We here in Minnesota joke about Minnesota Nice, a cultural inability to say anything negative about anything. I am curious to see whether Minnesota Nice will operate tonight, since I have heard that the woman who suggested the book to the group and invited me has gotten some angry flak from some in the group about having The Wild Swans nominated as a book club choice. Apparently, more than one person got as far as Chapter 12, the bathhouse scene, and put aside the book in disgust, never finishing it. Nancy says that some members are conservative, believing, among other things, that gays can be turned into heterosexuals if they try hard enough.

So it should be interesting. I have been to six to eight book club meetings, and the reaction has always been extremely positive. It will be my first time facing an audience where at least some are upset by what I've written. Like I've said, I am interested to see whether they will accordingly remain silent during the meetings, which would be the typical Minnesota impulse.

The second book club, I've been told, will have no such problems. The friend/member who nominated the book to that group is a gay woman.

Comments

[redbird]

Try comparing heterosexuality to alcoholism, as a difficult thing to fight but bad for you. Consider dealing with people who treat your marriage as at best the unfortunate effect of your disease, and having to defend yourself and explain, over and over, that you've tried being homosexual and can't manage it.

I'm not suggesting that heterosexuality is a disease, or a weakness that you should be trying to overcome. Rather, that exercise might give you some idea of why this analogy bothers people, and why we feel neither comforted nor supported by the suggestion that the reason we haven't become heterosexual is because it's difficult and we don't have a 12-step program.