2019 Stark State College Composition Essay Contest Winner

Photo by Ezekiel Elin on Unsplash

by Emily Baumgardner

I saw David Bowie for the first time in Labyrinth, a 1986 Jim Henson film that he starred in, and his entrance was nothing short of fantastical. An owl bursts through the opening doors out of a storm, and the wind is blowing the curtains around wildly, and finally, the owl shifts his shape. Bowie stands in all his glory, hands on his hips in strong defiance, glitter raining everywhere. I was four years old. That wasn’t the end for me. Instead, it began an obsession of finding everything about this rock star I could get my hands on and devouring it. With the androgynous clothing, makeup, and long hair, it didn’t take long for the general public to wonder what exactly drove Bowie to express himself the ways he did on stage and screen. It resonated with me in ways that are hard to describe, but I’m going to try.

Growing up in a predominantly Christian, affluent, and conservative place like Green, Ohio, there was hardly any room for LGBT+ people. It wasn’t that the adults said mean things about queer people; they just never said anything at all. Being gay, lesbian, or bisexual wasn’t discussed because it was improper. Certainly, being transgender was even more so haphazardly shoved under the rug. So, when I finally figured out that these feelings I’d been having for my best friend and other girls at school weren’t just platonic, I was shaken to my core. Being bisexual wasn’t what I wanted for myself. I’ll be honest about that. If anybody ever genuinely stopped to think about what LGBT+ people go through in the duration of their lives while they’re “out of the closet,” I don’t think that they could come to the conclusion that sexuality is a choice.

I was 14 when I came out to my mother. I remember shaking in my seat, clutching the edges to feel a semblance of security. There were seconds of silence, their own tiny infinities, and then finally, an atom splitting that created lasting nuclear damage. My mother, still ignorant to anything outside of heterosexuality, turned into every fear I’d had about myself. She screamed about an incessant need for attention, that I wasn’t really who I said I was, and that these feelings were just exacerbated admiration gone off the rails. I cried for hours. I went to sleep that night feeling as if everything in the universe was cursing me, daring me to try and love myself.

And after that, I began a scavenger hunt of a separate kind: finding other people like me. I wanted – no, needed – to prove that I wasn’t some freak anomaly or just making something up for the attention. And lo and behold, who should I find but Bowie, my childhood hero. I was scrolling through an article about bisexual celebrities, absentmindedly sifting through the photos and paragraphs, when I first read about David Bowie’s sexuality. I stopped immediately, frozen in place as my heart pounded in excitement. It was real, I wasn’t alone, and in fact, I had great company. I felt this camaraderie and connection to this man nearly fifty years my senior who I’d never met and who had never met me. After reading that Bowie was bisexual, I didn’t feel so lonely. I felt like suddenly there really was a whole world beyond my hometown, and more importantly, there were places and people that could love me as I am.

Recently, I came across an article about an interview David Bowie gave before his death. Bowie, reflecting on his past, stated in a Rolling Stone interview: “The biggest mistake I ever made was telling that Melody Maker writer that I was bisexual. Christ, I was so young then. I was experimenting…” I was crushed. I felt like somebody had punched me so hard in the stomach that I could finally understand Houdini’s cause of death. And as hard as that quote was to swallow, this next one felt like it was lodged in my throat. In another interview with Rolling Stone ten years later, Bowie stated:

I think I was always a closet heterosexual. I didn’t ever feel that I was a real bisexual. It was like I was making all the moves, down to the situation of trying it out with some guys […] I wanted to imbue Ziggy with real flesh and blood and muscle, and it was imperative that I find Ziggy and be him. The irony of it was that I was not gay. I was physical about it, but frankly it wasn’t enjoyable. It was almost like I was testing myself. It wasn’t something I was comfortable with at all. But it had to be done.

Instantly, I cried. This hero I’d built up in my head for over a decade as a champion of people who felt like me and loved like me felt like a cheap imposter. But why was this so important to me? Why was I so emotionally compromised at this new information? Surely, his sexuality was just one component of who he was and the music he made was just as important

It’s easy to say that I was upset because I’m just an overly emotional fangirl who turns humans into idols, and I even considered that. But the truth is, the reason it hurt so much was because I believed in this man. I listened to his music, I heard his message, saw his music videos and movies, and I thoroughly believed in him. Bowie told the world that he was bisexual, and people still loved and revered him. He strode around gallantly with pride, and in a way, it made me feel like I wasn’t a freak or a slut. I found a kind of solace in the fact that he came out nearly forty years before I did, and that society had come so much further in the space between then and now. After all this time, all those years of being a bisexual icon and role model, and then snatching it away – it is detrimental to queer young kids.

Real representation is crucial to a person in any minority. In current pop culture, we have TV shows like Blackish, Fresh Off the Boat, and The L Word. These shows have casts full of authentic representation: real people who have experienced, to some degree, non-assimilations with the majority of the population, and the struggles that come with that. Blackish and Fresh Off the Boat are shows that contain real and authentic performances of people of different ethnic backgrounds in our society. The L Word is a show about lesbians, and some of the women on the show, including cameos, are LGBT+ in real life.

These shows and characters are incredibly important, especially to younger audiences who are watching and questioning parts of their identities and how they fit into the world around them. “Specifically for the members of minority groups, seeing oneself reflected in the media is crucial, particularly in the face of prejudice, discrimination, and the constant barrage of invalidating comments and actions,” argues Dr. Eric Anthony Grollman, an assistant professor of Sociology at Richmond University. If a young LGBT+ kid sees somebody who expresses themselves and isn’t publicly ostracized for it, they may feel they have a shot at a semblance of normalcy. But when that person expresses queerness, and then they reject it only after it made them famous, it’s damaging. It gives homophobic people the chance to say, “Hey, look at that guy – for him, being gay was a choice!” It allows those people to push for things like conversion therapy, or the systematic oppression of our rights to marry who we want, to work where we want, to start families how we want, and so forth.

I’m not sure of Bowie’s intentions, but it feels like a kind of dangerous cultural appropriation. Perhaps it’s like Bowie said that he wasn’t bisexual, but Ziggy was. But is authenticity really that crucial? What is the difference between having a character that is openly not-straight and being straight, versus actually being openly queer in the public eye? Ziggy was still loved and accepted and so was Bowie. And as much as I loved David Bowie for the extravagance he exuded, that was just one phase of his career, relatable to Picasso’s “Blue Period.”

The thing about Bowie is that he was ever-changing. From Ziggy Stardust to Aladdin Sane and the Thin White Duke, all the way to Jareth, the goblin king of Jim Henson’s fantastical Labyrinth, he held many faces up to the world. Alex Sharpe, a professor of law at Keele University in England states:

Bowie […] committed serial ritual suicide. Like a Gustav Metzger acid painting, Bowie dissolved before our eyes, only to be reconstituted elsewhere. To be a Bowie fan was to mourn, to let go and to learn to love again, and to become increasingly aware that this process would be repeated without end, or at least till the end, by which time, of course, it had inspired countless new beginnings.

I have to acknowledge the later days, the later music, and who Bowie was as a sum of all the characters he created. There was a purpose for each character: Ziggy was a cautionary tale of fame, sex, and rock ’n’ roll gone too far. Major Tom was most likely the character closest to the real Bowie. For example, in Bowie’s song “Ashes To Ashes”, released in 1980, he refers to Major Tom as a “junkie.” This was around the same time that Bowie was struggling with his own addiction. Furthermore, in Bowie’s 2016 “Blackstar” video, which Bowie made while he had terminal cancer, there is an astronaut’s suit which contains a skull on a strange alien planet, possibly alluding to Major Tom one last time. With each transition, he illustrated a point; “however, Bowie aimed not merely to change. He was not simply a chameleon. Rather, he always sought to ‘fuck things up’. That is, he was not concerned only with motion, but with challenging the taken-for-granted, the axiomatic, the self-evident.”

This isn’t to say that Bowie was a leader on purpose. He just expressed his thoughts and views on things without any expectation of reaction or reciprocity from the general public. In thinking about this flexibility Bowie had, I started to wonder how somebody who changed so much could really be something solidified, or finite, especially when it came to something with such fluidity as sexuality.

When we look at studies done on sexuality, and the different ways we interpret it, I can’t help but think of a moment on the TV show Orange Is the New Black. The lead character, Piper, explains to her then fiancé that her sexuality isn’t just straight or lesbian, and suggests that most people aren’t like that either. “You fall somewhere on a spectrum,” she says, nonchalantly. “You know, like on a Kinsey scale.” Before that scene, I’d never even heard of Kinsey, or his scale.

The Kinsey Scale, in layman’s terms, is a scale that helps researchers determine a person’s sexual orientation. It is based on their past experiences and their responses to questions. Alfred Kinsey, often referred to as “the Father of the Sexual Revolution,” considered sexuality to be non-binary – that is, not just one way or the other. Instead, people fell somewhere between straight and gay, respectively. The Klein Sexual Orientation Grid furthers this idea using a more intricate set up:

For each person, it sets out the seven component variables of sexual orientation, listed as A through G down the left side. The three columns indicate three different points at which sexual orientation is assessed: the person’s past, their present, and their ideal. The person then receives a rating from 1 to 7 for each of the 21 resulting combinations, one rating for each empty box.

The variables are as listed: sexual attraction, sexual behavior, sexual fantasies, and sexual identity. These variables illustrate just how complicated sexual identity really can be. When looking at Kinsey’s scale or Klein’s grid, it’s easy to see how Bowie’s statements of his own sexuality differentiate the way they do. The point of all of this is that sexuality is a very fluid thing, and it can’t fit neatly into one box. It flows over and around other boxes, constantly in motion.

So, in looking at all of this: the grid, the statements, the history of Bowie, and what real representation is, I can only come to one conclusion. It’s possible that even he didn’t entirely understand his sexuality. Bowie, at least to some degree, was bisexual. Bisexuality doesn’t change based upon who you’re with; it can fluctuate, but it doesn’t go away. No amount of conversion therapy will change that, nor can one man’s single statement from over thirty years ago. At the end of everything, what really mattered was Ziggy. It was Ziggy who gave bisexuality its voice. It was Ziggy that freed me from my bonds of silence and shame. And Ziggy, just like the Thin White Duke, Jareth the Goblin King, and Major Tom, was a piece of Bowie, however small he was. In the documentary Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World, Dana Gillespie, a close friend of Bowie’s said, “You don’t tame a man like Bowie.” That is true. Bowie was swift and ever-evolving; if you blinked, you missed it.

And while I felt hurt at first from Bowie’s eventual abnegation, I understand now that no matter who he was or what he identified as after the fact, he still changed sexuality and gender expression for the better. For the record, I still love Bowie.

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References

American Institute of Bisexuality. (2014). The Klein sexual orientation grid. https://www.bisexuality.org/thekleingrid/

Anderson, S. (Director). (2016). Bowie: the man who changed the world [Motion picture]. A2B Media, Screenbound Productions.

Grollman, E. A. (2012, September, 24). The importance of representation: Voice, visibility, and validation in America. N.p.

Human Rights Campaign. (N.d.). The lies and dangers of efforts to change sexual orientation or gender identity. https://www.hrc.org/resources/the-lies-and-dangers-of-reparative-therapy

Kohan, J., Jones, N., Kerman, P. (Writers), McCarthy, A. (Director). (2013, July 11). The chickening (Season 1, Episode 5) [TV series episode]. In J. Kohan (Executive Producer), Orange is the New Black. Tilted Productions; Lionsgate Television; Netflix.

Loder, K. (1983, May 12). David Bowie: Straight time. RollingStone.com https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/david-bowie-straight-time-69334/

Lowder, J. B. (2016, January 11). Was David Bowie gay? Slate.com. https://slate.com/human-interest/2016/01/was-david-bowie-dead-at-69-gay-the-glam-rocker-had-a-complicated-relationship-with-queerness.html

Sharp, A. (2017). Scary monsters: The hopeful undecidability of David Bowie (1947-2016). Law and Humanities, 11(2), 228-224. 10.1080/17521483.2017.1344478

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by Katie McVicker

Headlines about single-parent adoption are far and few between, except in the cases of celebrities, such as Angelina Jolie, who is raising three of her biological children along with three adopted children in her multi-million dollar home. Do single individuals need to be millionaires to be loving, supportive, and resourceful adoptive parents? Single-parent adoption has become a major issue in recent years, corresponding to an increase in single-parent homes. In fact, an article from Adoption Advocate reports that “From 1980 to 2008, the number of single-parent households grew from about 6,000,000 to a little over 10,000,000, accounting for over 25% of households with children.” The same article points out that single adopting parents increased from between .5 – 4% to “28% of all parents adopting from U.S. foster care in 2017-2019.” While single-parent adoption has become more prevalent and accepted, there are still stigmas single parents face when applying for adoption. Traditionally, individuals still perceive adoption as ideally involving a two-parent household. However, the pathway for adoption should be as accessible for single men and women as it is for couples. 

Single men and women face more challenges adopting children. In fact, there is also little research representing single parents who choose adoption by choice. In a 2020 study described by Gasse and Mortelmans, a single parent by choice is characterized as a parent who chose to be single before becoming a parent through artificial insemination, informal fertilization (choosing a partner randomly or deliberately but without pursuing a relationship), unplanned pregnancies or adoption. The researchers interviewed single mothers to find out how the mothers adjusted their lives to raise a child on their own. Researchers explained adoption procedures are harder for single parents than couples, and only one single parent could be found to interview in the “adoption” category. The article discusses why it is harder for single people to adopt by explaining different types of “gatekeeping” barriers. Gatekeepers, in this article, are explained as people who can be helpful but can also be a barrier for a single person trying to adopt. Gatekeeping in the context of adoption is described as “more formal and evaluative,” meaning that single people who are trying to adopt are subject to a rigorous screening process. Gasse and Mortelmans emphasize that the difference between a single person trying to adopt versus a couple is the stigma attached to the screening process for single people. 

The stigma attached to single-parent adoption is different compared to the stigma related to adoption in general. Factors such as gender and subsequent related perceptions can complicate the adoption process. In a literature review explaining the challenges that single men face while trying to adopt children, Seeman compares different studies that have been done on single fathers who chose adoption, as well as examines complex attitudes that affect both single adoptive fathers and mothers. Despite some conflicting viewpoints, it was discovered that single men face certain types of stigma while trying to adopt. If the single man has a history of mental health issues, social workers in adoption agencies are more likely to disregard the adoption application.

According to Seeman’s description of research, most single adoptive parents are female. Contrary to the researchers’ expectations, however, single mothers face greater stigma in their communities and  “were described by participants in this study as ‘less intelligent, less desirable, less secure, less fortunate, less satisfied with life, less moral, less reputable, less of a good parent and less economically advantaged’” than single fathers. While the sample group in this study isn’t specified in the literature review, it reveals the pervasive attitudes some people have toward single mothers. The literature review suggests that mental health professionals require the proper training so that eligible candidates who are trying to adopt should not be discriminated against based on gender, marital status, sexual orientation, or any history of a mental health disorder. 

Family support is another key element for a single parent looking to adopt a child. A study described by Biasutti and Nascimento was conducted on multiple families with single parents with adoptive children. The families were interviewed to investigate how the adoption process worked for them, what they anticipated and what they experienced throughout the process. From this study, it was found that all families had a strong desire to parent children and, therefore, were able to overcome any challenges and changes that took place during the process. Extended family support played an immense role in the success of single-parent adoption. The study explained that some family members were hesitant with regard to their loved one adopting as a single parent and questioned whether it was the right decision. Some of the participants expressed their concern that the child would be lacking the role of the opposite sex. However, all the participants in the study accepted the child and, at one point or another, were part of the caretaking and support system. In this study, the researchers determined it would be important for the child to have involvement from grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Biasutti and Nascimento’s study, which agrees with Lindner,  shows that single parents are just as capable of a successful adoption, with an emphasis on the fact that single parents should have a broader support network. 

Social worker and blogger Amanda Booreman writes about the challenges she faced adopting as a single mother, as well as the support system she had from her family and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. After preparing for a year prior to the adoption of her five-year-old daughter, she discovered that adoption was not for the faint of heart once her child had been placed with her. Throughout the years, she and her daughter faced many challenges learning how to become a family unit and getting her daughter the proper care and support to work through emotional trauma and anxieties. At the time, finding the right support system was difficult. Amanda suffered financially and struggled to find her daughter the proper mental health care that would pinpoint the areas in her development that needed treatment. One strategy she used was reaching out to government agencies and the birth family for guidance. After years of conquering challenges, Amanda and her daughter now have a wonderful relationship with each other, and both advocate for systematic change in adoption. 

A fact sheet from Child Welfare Information Gateway, sheds some light on how to create these changes. This fact sheet lists resources and helps families navigate the adoption process. Among these, easily accessible support groups or free counseling (pre- or post-adoption) could benefit both single-parent and child. These resources would allow for a smoother transition and would also serve as a point of contact when experiencing times of unforeseen hardships. Also, prospective adoptive parents could be educated on their rights and responsibilities and provided with unbiased information on local adoption agencies, which could potentially improve the support and encouragement they feel throughout the adoption process. Lastly, quality and continual training should be allotted to social workers.

Recent developments in the United States could potentially raise the need for single-parent adoption now more than ever.  In an article from the “Perspective” section of The New England Journal of Medicine, the author Lazzarini discusses the overturn of  Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022. The overturn limits available access to women seeking abortion through medicine and prevents third parties from obliging services to a woman seeking an abortion. Abortion rights are still being decided at the state level, and some state legislatures have already passed laws completely banning abortion. Given the overturn of Roe v. Wade, it would be fair to speculate that the change in available access to abortions could then correlate with an increase in live births and further need for adoptions. More children needing adoption means a rise in the need for available adoptive parents so that these children don’t end up in the foster care system. 

Destigmatizing single-parent adoption would present an opportunity for a larger pool of adoptees to find a permanent home. Given the research stated above, it remains difficult to allow single parents to finalize the adoption. However, the United States continues to have an overflowing foster-care system with underpaid and overworked social workers attempting to govern this system. Stigmas should be reduced to lessen the burden on this system and allow single-parent adoptions to become more prevalent when it is appropriate. Of course, there should be an objective structured process to ensure a safe, nourishing environment for the child, but it should not correlate with individuals’ subjective opinions.

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References

Biasutti, C.M. & Nascimento, C.R.R. (2021). The adoption process in single-parent families. Journal of Human Growth and Development, 31(1), 47-57. 10.36311/jhgd.v31.10364  

Booreman, A. (2015, October 21). Nothing prepared me for adopting a child as a single parent. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/social-life-blog/2015/oct/21/adopting-a-child-as-a-single-parent-nothing-prepared-me 

Carter, J.R, Chang, C.Y, Parrish, M.S, Whisenhunt, J.L. (2019) Addressing single parents’ needs in professional counseling: A qualitative examination of single parenthood. The Family Journal: Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families, 27(2), 188-198. 10.1177/1066480719835343

Child Welfare Information Gateway. (2019). Adopting as a single parent.  https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/single-parent/

Gasse, D.V. & Mortelmans, D. (2020). With or without you-starting single parent families: A qualitative study on how single parents by choice reorganize their lives to facilitate single parenthood from a life course perspective. Journal of Family Issues, 41(11), 2223-2248. 10.1177/0192513X20911971 

Lazzarini, Z.,  (2022). The end of Roe v. Wade- states’ power over health and well being. The New England Journal of Medicine, 387(5), 390-393. 10.1056/NEJMp2206055

Lindner, A. (2021, September). Single Parent Adoption: The Process and Experience of Adopting Unpartnered. National Council for Adoption. https://adoptioncouncil.org/publications/single-parent-adoption-the-process-and-experience-of-adopting-unpartnered/ 

Seeman, M.V. (2018). Single men seeking adoption. (2018). World Journal of Psychiatry, 8(3), 83-87. 10.5498/wjp.v8.i3.83

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