Sally Ride and the elephant

Some years ago, my partner and I did a research project with a group of LGBTQ high school youth in Salt Lake City. These young folks had just created a gay straight alliance in their high school, which had caused a huge flap. Eventually, the city and then the state eliminated all non-curricular clubs rather than let this GSA meet. Needless to say, this is a wonderfully complex tale, bits of which will pop up here (in fact, some already have, here and here). This particular piece of the tale is about an elephant.

We were talking with these youth about how many adult LGBTQ people had suddenly sprung from the closet in the wake of these students’ courageous actions. In particular, we were talking about why these folks hadn’t been out and active before. Part of it, we knew, was context. Utah is a very conservative state, dominated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the LDS or the Mormon Church), which condemns homosexuality in no uncertain terms. Also, this was 1996, before same-sex marriage was really on anyone’s radar, before the Lawrence v. Texas decision eliminated all anti-sodomy laws (the laws that had made homosexuality illegal). So there was a historical piece to this, too.

But still, there were some adults in Salt Lake who were out, and there was already a fairly strong contingent of allies, including some supportive LDS. So why were so many folks so scared? One of the youth offered this great analogy, which we have used many times since. She said this:

It’s like training an elephant. When it’s a tiny baby, they put a heavy, iron chain around its ankle, and it quickly learns it can’t go anywhere. In fact, it can barely move, so it learns not to try. As it grows larger, they gradually reduce the size of the chain. At first, they exchange the chain for a smaller one … then for a stout rope … then for a lighter rope. By the time the elephant is full grown, it remains basically immobile with just a string around its ankle. That’s how oppression works. It makes the world seem so dangerous, so in control of your life that pretty soon, you stop trying. Even when the chain is gone, you remain frozen on your designated spot.

For years, decades even, now-older LGBTQ people were aware that any exposure of their true identity could spell disaster. Today’s elders (say, those of us in our 60s and older) grew up in an era when we could lose our families, our jobs, our children, our reputations if our identity were known. In fact, we could lose our very freedom, since LGBTQ identity was considered sick (so you could be committed to a mental institution against your will) and illegal (so you could be thrown in jail without recourse). It was a mighty heavy chain we grew up with. And sure enough, by the time we were adults, the world didn’t have to do it to us anymore. Our own gut-level fear—and maybe a belief that we deserved this sort of treatment—was enough to keep us in our place. So in Salt Lake, even though there was some support and there were some models of happy, out LGBT folks, that fear persisted, and folks stayed in their place.

I thought of this story when I read about Sally Ride’s death late last month. And when a friend nudged me with a comment she made, I decided to blog about Sally and the elephant. In case anyone missed this story, Sally Ride was the first American woman astronaut to go into space (“Ride, Sally, Ride!”). After she retired from NASA, she was a professor of physics for a while and then founded a science education program for kids, focusing especially on girls. She died from pancreatic cancer. She was 61.

The official obituary on the Sally Ride Science website ended like this: In addition to Tam O’Shaughnessy, her partner of 27 years, Sally is survived by her mother, Joyce; her sister, Bear; her niece, Caitlin, and nephew, Whitney; her staff of 40 at Sally Ride Science; and many friends and colleagues around the country. [underlining mine]

Here’s the elephant part. Sally Ride never came out publicly, but here’s her lesbian identity, shining out from her obituary. Many folks, including her partner in life and in work, Tam O’Shaughnessy, said Sally was out to her family and friends. She wasn’t more out than this, folks said, because she was basically a private person, and she believed that her sexual orientation wasn’t relevant to her professional life. After Sally’s death, the Web was awash with discussions of her end-of-life revelation—she and her partner had agreed on the language of the obituary before she died. Discussions swirled about whether she should or should not have been out, whether her orientation mattered or not, what a valuable model she could have been for young LGBT folks, the implication in her silence that she was ashamed of being a lesbian, whether privacy requires hiding ones most significant relationship. It was all reminiscent of the conversations when Anderson Cooper from CNN news or Megan Rapinoe from the US women’s (now gold-medal) soccer team came out. But this time, there was a big difference: Sally was not here to talk about what it meant to her. About why she hadn’t been out before. About what toll her secrecy took on her and on her relationship—or what peace it gave them.

Through it all, no one talked about the elephant. But they might have, had they known that story.

Was it Sally Ride’s story? We can’t know, but let’s consider it for a moment as a hypothetical tale. Sally Ride, like many of us, lived right into an era where homosexuality is no longer considered sick by mental health professionals (since 1973) or illegal in any state (since 2003), where same-sex marriage is legal in six states (hopefully more, come November), where gay and lesbian TV characters have become ordinary, and where famous people come out with increasing frequency—and to decreasing fanfare. So the historical context seems safe. She was secure and deeply revered in her career, apparently risked no loss of family (since they already knew) or kids (since she had none). So her personal life seems to have been safe. But still, it’s not hard to imagine that the fear was too great. What if people decide they don’t like me? What if my foundation loses its funding? What if people think of me as lesbian first and scientist second, when I want to be known first as a scientist? What if my stellar image is tarnished by lies and innuendo? What if I really am as awful as they say?

Lots of folks are in this place, and maybe Sally was among them. For some people, there is still a good reason to remain hidden. But for lots of us, the concrete reasons, the chains, are pretty much gone, and what remains is the string. I suspect that string is made up partly of our fear of what could happen, fear left over from ancient realities (even if they are no longer true). Some of it is our own lingering shame about an identity we learned to devalue, even despise. And some is the persistent prejudice out there in the real world. It’s easy to say we should just ignore that prejudice because it’s based on lies. We can remind ourselves that those folks don’t even know us. But the reality is that prejudice hurts, and any of us would prefer to avoid it.

Still, silence is a thin shield, and its price is living within the circle defined by that elephant’s string. I’m reminded of the wise words of a wise woman, Audre Lorde, a Black lesbian poet who knew something about fear and something about prejudice. She wrote, “We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language" … and … “Only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.”

I don’t know all the reasons that Sally Ride wasn’t out, and in truth, it’s not my place to guess. But her “at-death outing,” as my friend called it, did bring to mind the story about the elephant. And that’s a good story to remember occasionally.