Advertisement

Good chemistry

By Dawn Wolfe Gutterman

MIDLAND – Jackie Anderson has been an activist for over thirty years. Now she is bringing her history of struggle with discrimination to the Triangle Foundation, where she is serving as chair of the organization's board of trustees.
Anderson began blazing trails with her professional life. At a time when women were expected to aspire to being nurses, secretaries, or – preferably – housewives, Anderson graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry in 1969, and followed it up with a Master's in Chemistry in 1978.
"When I got my degree in chemistry," she said, "I was interviewing in the San Francisco Bay area, and I interviewed at one location that told me specifically, 'We use our women chemists as librarians – do you want that kind of a job?' And I interviewed at another place that told me point blank that they used their women chemists as bench chemists, and they said … that a woman would never be a project leader."
Anderson talked about the discrimination faced by a friend of hers at the time, an African-American woman who had earned her degree in chemistry at about the same time Anderson earned hers.
"Her name was Elena – now, you think about a white woman getting a degree in chemistry in 1969, and here's this black woman who got a bachelor's degree in chemistry," recalled Anderson, "and you know that she had had to put up with a lot of crap. And I remember her because she was very funny – of course she had to have a good sense of humor, just to survive, and she used to talk about how these very 'helpful' people, white people, would with all sincerity be trying to give her hints about how to make it in the white world.
"And all of these hints largely revolved around having her not quite be black. Everything from how to fix your hair to don't go within a mile of watermelon," she continued. People also assumed Elena had relatives on welfare. "So their helpful hint to her would be 'Don't bring up your relatives on welfare.'"
Anderson said she sees a connection between the discrimination faced by her friend and by herself in the 1960s and the discrimination faced by all LGBTs today.
"I would make this connection, and it revolves around this marriage thing," she said. "I have some sense that there are some liberal straight people who sort of assume that what you need to do if you're a gay person, is you need to act as much like straight people as possible. So therefore, of course, you're desperately going to want to have marriage structures."
While Anderson, who has been with her partner Gretchen Van Gessel for over thirty years, believes that same-sex couples deserve equal legal protections, she rejects the concept of "the ideal marriage, the ideal family structure."
"I don't think there should be a genuine ideal. My personal opinion is, I have been in a long-term relationship with one person." Though this is her "genuine ideal, she said, "What right do I have to say, because I like that, I have to force that on everybody else?"
Anderson said that she became more active as an LGBT activist because of Proposal 2.
"I've been involved on and off for awhile, lightly, but I think like a lot of us I got a lot more involved in 2004 with our little Proposal 2," she said, "and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I just started making myself more and more active."
Anderson said that she didn't become involved "just" to protect equal marriage rights, but because of, "the realization of the direct, concerted attack, and that we were being used for political purposes. And – you know, frankly, to me that's more heinous than details about marriage or civil unions or things like that."
During the 2004 election season, Anderson took her activism to the classroom by offering classes about homosexuality and the changing nature of marriage to other retirees through the continuing education program at Saginaw Valley State University.
"I heard about a young man who's in this area … and he was just flabbergasted that this class was being given at SVSU and his mother is part of this retirees group and she was taking it," she said. "These young people need to know that us old farts can talk about these things, too."
In the near future, Anderson hopes to continue bridging the generational divide with a class discussing the ways that the face of LGBT discrimination has changed over the years, featuring herself and a young gay student at SVSU as the speakers.
"I think that the idea of people who are decades apart giving their reflections – that would be a big draw," she said. "So we're developing that right now."
In addition to her work with Triangle, Anderson is a member of the board of her church and also a member of P-FLAG/Perceptions, the support organization for LGBTs, their family and friends in the tri-cities area.
In her spare time, Anderson said, she reads "constantly," and she and Van Gessel enjoy kayaking, taking nature trips, bicycling and winter sports like cross-country skiing and snowshoeing.
Asked whether she feels she is busier now with activist work than when she had a paying job, Anderson laughed. "Gretchen says, 'It keeps Grandma off the street."

Advertisement
Topics: News
Advertisement
Advertisement